LynAlden (npub1a2c…w83a) good morning! I loved your discussion of scalability on What Bitcoin Did podcast. What are your thoughts on the viability of the fedimints in hostile regulatory environment?
I agree that from the end-user perspective that fedimints are appealing because of your points about surveillance and censorship risks being reduced. I can also see how evidence of reserves paired with neutral third parties within the multisig quorum can be used to mitigate rug risk.
My concern is now for the custodian. The legal and regulatory risk seems too high to be worth it . The threat of being sued by mint participants suggests that an uncle Jim model of running one in your community would require setting up a business entity to shift liability. However, it seems that forming a business entity would open you to legal and regulatory risk from the government.
On the other hand, if the custodian's identity is private even from the mint participants, then liability for the custodian is limited to the extent of their OPSEC. However, now we have reduced the extent of trust that can be conveyed to potential participants since we have removed the "punchability" factor that comes from knowing your community custodian in IRL. Reducing that need for trust gets us to something like a Mercury state chain making fedimint seemingly unworkable in a hostile regulatory environment.
jitters1254 / Jittering Blender
npub12p…x6r3e
2024-01-18 17:12:03
Author Public Key
npub12p82gc4svdusfqdxacsnn8xec5lygcj8t6y6tek2g6p2y0u2p8rqlx6r3ePublished at
2024-01-18 17:12:03Event JSON
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"content": "nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a good morning! I loved your discussion of scalability on What Bitcoin Did podcast. What are your thoughts on the viability of the fedimints in hostile regulatory environment?\n\nI agree that from the end-user perspective that fedimints are appealing because of your points about surveillance and censorship risks being reduced. I can also see how evidence of reserves paired with neutral third parties within the multisig quorum can be used to mitigate rug risk. \n\nMy concern is now for the custodian. The legal and regulatory risk seems too high to be worth it . The threat of being sued by mint participants suggests that an uncle Jim model of running one in your community would require setting up a business entity to shift liability. However, it seems that forming a business entity would open you to legal and regulatory risk from the government. \n\nOn the other hand, if the custodian's identity is private even from the mint participants, then liability for the custodian is limited to the extent of their OPSEC. However, now we have reduced the extent of trust that can be conveyed to potential participants since we have removed the \"punchability\" factor that comes from knowing your community custodian in IRL. Reducing that need for trust gets us to something like a Mercury state chain making fedimint seemingly unworkable in a hostile regulatory environment.",
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