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@ mleku
2025-02-26 09:12:23
i think chaumian blinded signatures have their uses
but i think that as a payment method is shit
they are literally exactly the same as the old silver certificates that Dollars were once upon a time, in wildcat banking days
the risk of them being issued without sats backing them, or the "mint" disappearing without honoring their tokens is very high
the privacy features many tout entirely are dependent on the ethical calibre of the mint operators, and it is very simple to see how they can be paid to deliberately not issue them in a proper way so as to make it possible to track who is using them and where they are spending them
they make good vouchers though, such as gift certificates, but even in this situation they need to be constrained by giving them expiry dates for the protection of the users, to limit the risk of the tokens not being redeemable
they could be a good way to sell uniform quantities of bandwidth, for example, on an internet service or anonymously paid anonymising network along similar lines as Tor, or for buying blocks time for a time based subscription like relay service or music/video streaming