Farley on Nostr: The push for Fedimint seems to be rooted in fear-based scenarios—either government ...
The push for Fedimint seems to be rooted in fear-based scenarios—either government overreach (door-to-door key confiscation) or the need for enhanced privacy. But in reality, both concerns may be overstated in the long run.
Key Confiscation Fear – If authorities are physically raiding homes for Bitcoin, that’s already a dystopian breakdown of law. At that point, Fedimint wouldn’t save you—it just shifts the risk from an individual to a small group. And if someone snitches or if all the guardians are pressured, it still falls apart. Self-custody with strong opsec is already a better solution.
Privacy Concerns – Privacy in Bitcoin improves as adoption grows. The ledger today looks transparent because relatively few people use Bitcoin in fully self-sovereign ways. As more people transact peer-to-peer, data obfuscation will happen naturally—not through artificial layers like Fedimint, but simply because the sheer volume of transactions will make it impossible to trace with certainty who’s who.
Fedimint is a reaction to the past four years of surveillance-state escalation, but long-term, Bitcoin’s natural evolution solves these issues in a more robust way. What people really need is better self-custody tools and education, not more complexity.
The question is: Are these kinds of projects helping people take responsibility, or are they just another crutch delaying true sovereignty? I’d argue the latter. What do you think?
Key Confiscation Fear – If authorities are physically raiding homes for Bitcoin, that’s already a dystopian breakdown of law. At that point, Fedimint wouldn’t save you—it just shifts the risk from an individual to a small group. And if someone snitches or if all the guardians are pressured, it still falls apart. Self-custody with strong opsec is already a better solution.
Privacy Concerns – Privacy in Bitcoin improves as adoption grows. The ledger today looks transparent because relatively few people use Bitcoin in fully self-sovereign ways. As more people transact peer-to-peer, data obfuscation will happen naturally—not through artificial layers like Fedimint, but simply because the sheer volume of transactions will make it impossible to trace with certainty who’s who.
Fedimint is a reaction to the past four years of surveillance-state escalation, but long-term, Bitcoin’s natural evolution solves these issues in a more robust way. What people really need is better self-custody tools and education, not more complexity.
The question is: Are these kinds of projects helping people take responsibility, or are they just another crutch delaying true sovereignty? I’d argue the latter. What do you think?