Get an overview of lightning wallets in this episode with Anita Posch. Anita walks through what she found in testing self custodial lightning wallets under conditions of poor internet connectivity. We also talk about themes that came up at the recent Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town South Africa.
- On the ground insights
- Results of the self custodial wallet test
- Which LN apps came out best?
- The situation with fees
- Where the test might not be suitable
- How things may change with a Liquid or Fedimint approach
Links:
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Podcast Transcript:
Stephan (00:00.255)
Anita, welcome back to the show.
Anita Posch (00:02.885)
Hi Stephan, thank you very much for the invitation. I’m happy to be here again.
Stephan (00:07.594)
Yeah, that’s great. And I know there’s lots of things going on. We’re going to obviously hear about what’s going on the ground. And so I know you were just recently at Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town in South Africa. So let’s start with a few of your reactions on that. What was the event like for you?
Anita Posch (00:24.961)
Oh, I was very happy to be at the first Bitcoin only conference in Cape Town. And a lot of the people there also said it’s so great to finally, after a lot of blockchain, crypto conferences in South Africa, that they can finally attend and be a part of the conference. And they were also very proud to say that it’s really a conference from Bitcoiners, for Bitcoiners.
And so it’s the second Bitcoin only conference now on the African continent after Afro Bitcoin in Ghana. And it was, you know, we are at many conferences, I would say it was one of the smaller ones, but very well organized. And what I specifically loved was the diversity of people there.
And also there was a big, big focus on earning and spending Bitcoin and replacing and less more, less, less a focus on hodling and Bitcoin as a store of value and as an investment. Of course, we all know that’s also a big part of Bitcoin. But the focus at that conference was more very practice orientated. And I love that.
Stephan (01:40.226)
Great. So while we’re on that, let’s hear from you. I want to hear your perspective on that. So why is earning and spending Bitcoin important?
Anita Posch (01:51.385)
because it’s a part of money, it’s a function of money. And if we want to prove in a way or show that Bitcoin is money, then we gotta use it in a way, it would be a great way. And it’s also a way to onboard a lot of people who may otherwise say I don’t have any money anyhow to use it as an investment or a long-term possibility to store my value.
because there are millions and even billions of people who don’t have that possibility to save. And so for them it is and can be a tool to get free from restrictions on the amount of money you are able to send in and out, the fees you have to pay sometimes. Or like speaking of Zimbabwe, many people
don’t even have the possibility to send money in and out of the country. And Bitcoin gives them a tool to do that. And in other… Because I’ve also been to BitcoinWidzand the last two days. And it’s also like… It gives also merchants and job owners the possibility to make more profits because it attracts Bitcoiners.
They come to their small towns and villages and spend money there, which they otherwise might not have had. And so I think for, I think adoption is two-sided, or I guess more, more sided than two sides, but it’s a store of value and it’s a money for me and a tool.
Stephan (03:32.578)
Right, and that’s fair enough, I think, from the perspective of maybe people like us who are willing to earn and spend. I also acknowledge that there’s a whole camp of people out there, maybe more so from the Western world, where for them, they just see it like, I’m just going to hodl my Bitcoin and I’ve already got fiat income and I’m just going to spend that fiat income. And so, you know, I think it’s more just a question of…
right tool for the job. And because for some of those, like let’s say Western Bitcoiners who have access to US dollar bank accounts and credit cards, debit cards, et cetera, they see it like, oh, it’s just inefficient for me to use Bitcoin because maybe capital gains tax, maybe because of Bitcoin transaction fees that are not built into the current credit card and debit card rails that they are using today, right? Like I’m not endorsing that view. I’m just saying that’s what…
Anita Posch (04:20.517)
Mm.
Stephan (04:24.894)
many people are facing, right? So I think that’s probably just, that’s why maybe there’s a slight difference in this kind of worldview where there are some Bitcoiners typically from the Western countries and more of an investment case and savings and long-term hodling. And then you’ve got sort of the, let’s say, on the ground in lower socioeconomic circumstances, people who are maybe more focused on the earning and spending and the direct transactional nature.
Anita Posch (04:53.217)
Yes, that’s one part, but it’s also the necessity. So Bitcoin really fulfills needs. It’s a utility here. And that’s why I think that more people will be adopting it from the side of being a payment, like a money to pay things and to earn it. Then in Western countries, as you say, a lot of people, why should I use…
Bitcoin, which is complicated. I need to learn about it. And I can just use my credit card. Yeah, I get that. I mean, that’s one of the reasons why I’m working in the global south and not in Austria, because people are staring at me and saying, what do you want? Yeah. But it’s even there more, there are more use cases popping up there too. Because I heard, for instance, from an Austrian comedian.
whose bank account was suddenly closed. He seems to have said something that people didn’t like and he’s using Bitcoin now to get his crowd fundings and his things going. So it’s coming everywhere, you know? And, but I really think that the necessity driven part here and the utility that Bitcoin has for people is the main driver of adoption.
in many African countries.
Stephan (06:14.558)
Right. And let’s talk a little bit about the obviously you’re on the ground, right? And you were obviously seeing talks from or seeing people talk about things like, I know, I forgot his name. Is it Karel, the guy who does the crypto converted? And they’re the guys who are doing pick and pay. So people in South Africa, this is a big, you know, shopping supermarket.
Anita Posch (06:30.481)
Carrie.
Stephan (06:39.874)
place and people can actually pay with lightning. So could you just elaborate a little bit on that and what’s the experience been like for that kind of thing?
Anita Posch (06:47.853)
Absolutely. I mean, it’s mind blowing for me. It’s I should actually come to South Africa and live here because I was at Pickenpay and with Karel, Karel van Wijk is his name. He was one of the co-founders of Luno, which is a big exchange in South Africa and other African countries. But now he’s working with his own company and he built a app.
which is basically a translation app, because PicknPay, they came to him and asked him how is it possible to integrate Bitcoin payments to our system? Because what they are using is already, a lot of people here are scanning QR codes at the tills at PicknPay to pay for their purchases. But it’s a unified QR, so many different…
systems from the traditional banking world are already using this unified QR. And of course, it was easier for Karel to adopt that standard so that not PicknPay had to start issuing Lightning invoices, but that he built the app which is translating this crypto QR, or let’s say it’s a payment QR by PicknPay, a unified QR, to a Lightning invoice.
and how it works. A lot of people go there and want to pay with the Lightning Wallet directly, but it doesn’t work because it’s not a Lightning invoice. So what you first need is this app, which is called CryptoQR, and then when you set it up, you’re guided through the whole setup because it also makes a short test payment for you. And then you can choose which Lightning Wallet you want to connect with it so that it opens automatically.
So basically the process is you go to the till, you say scan to pay, then the cashiers know what that means because with Bitcoin and Lightning, they don’t even know that they accepting that. And so they show you the QR code, you open the CryptoQR, you scan it with the CryptoQR and this app opens immediately your Lightning wallet.
Anita Posch (09:08.033)
And then you just say pay and it’s done. And I paid for my grocery shopping there and it was done in like one second or two. And I was like myself, I was like, wow. And the Pick’n Pay is the second largest retailer in whole of Africa. So maybe there’s even the possibility to go to other countries as well. At the moment it’s possible.
in any retail store, in any pick and pay in South Africa to pay with lightning, which of course is a great way to foster adoption when we are thinking about Bitcoin Ecasio and Bitcoin Witsent and other, hopefully other circular economies that are popping up in South Africa. So I felt it was a great experience. And
Also, he showed us his data, like the transaction volume. He started it last year, I believe. And it’s like, yeah, going up, you know, like he says it’s still small. So it’s not a lot of transactions, but the numbers are growing. So hopefully more people are using it. And also, Karel has this focus on earning and spending Bitcoin.
because he also speaks about the restrictions that people here are facing and how complicated banking is. And for instance, the banking fees in South Africa are higher than in Germany. So maybe that’s also a reason why you want to use Bitcoin and not banking.
Stephan (10:50.398)
Yeah, okay, yeah. So if it’s just a genuine fee saving, then yeah, of course. So are there any other, I guess, any other themes that you wanna highlight that came out of adopting Bitcoin in Cape Town?
Anita Posch (11:03.337)
Oh, there was also a lot of discussion and knowledge sharing about circular economies, of course. The learnings from Bitcoin Ekasi, for instance. Then there was Edwin from Bitcoin Vincent with Nicky, his partner. They are basically the driving people behind the Bitcoin Vincent project. I met others from other countries as well. The Bitcoin for Fairness has a branch now in Zambia.
And we were able to bring one guy over from Sambia to South Africa because he is also going to be a teacher for a new project in Victoria Falls. It’s called Bitcoin Vic Falls, which is very interesting because Vic Falls is, yes, at the Victoria Falls on the border from Sambia to Zimbabwe. And a lot of tourists are coming to Victoria Falls. So I…
think this could be a chance to have a circular economy there with similarly in a way to Bitcoin Beach where people come in and want to spend Bitcoin and he’s going to teach their Bitcoin so that they have their own teachers then because I think that’s the important fact also about new projects popping up that we have people on the ground with the knowledge.
So circular economies and also how to share Bitcoin knowledge with your peers was also a topic, at least in the panel and the talks where I was a part.
Stephan (12:41.902)
Great.
Stephan (12:45.646)
Yeah, sure. And you mentioned Bitcoin with sand as well. So tell us a little bit about this circular economy. What’s the status there? Like how many merchants and how many sort of people are part of that one?
Anita Posch (12:57.705)
Yeah, so Bitcoin Vincent is half the way to Bitcoin Ekasi from Cape Town. And it’s totally different in that sense that you have a totally different population there. In Bitcoin Ekasi, it’s a project in a township where really people are, like, let’s say, having the least, you know, chances of all. And Bitcoin Vincent is an African community.
It’s like 400 people living there, I believe. And it’s a tourism village in a way, because a lot of the houses there are empty. They are owned by people who come there on the weekends or for the holidays season. And they onboarded, I can’t tell you really how many shops, but I would say 10 maybe. And yesterday,
I was, we were in a liquor store, so I was paying for beer and wine with lightning. And it’s like they have signs that say Bitcoin preferred and it’s not even a special topic, you know, like it’s the cashier in there. He was not very impressed that I bought my things with Bitcoin. The only surprise was like we then we went into the next store, which is more like a grocery store.
and we bought something with lightning, yeah, easy, everything. And then I thought, oh, I got the Bitcoin ring on me. I want to buy something with the ring. So I went back and I bought three lemons with the ring. And the cashier was like, what’s that? Where do you have that from? I wanted to, you know. And so it was really she was really totally surprised. How is that possible now?
Stephan (14:41.144)
Right?
Anita Posch (14:53.117)
and they have a put place. So they have some tourist attractions where you can pay with Bitcoin. You can buy built-on with lightning in the next village. So they are spreading it a little bit out already. And as far as I understand, they also have got a grant or donations now to replicate that model in a village nearby. So then you might see
more Bitcoiners. And also what interesting was that Edwin said to me, you know, I can give you the tourist experience, but actually the more interesting thing is that these people, and it’s a rather say more on the older side, the society there is more on the older side. And Edwin says they are the youngest people, the youngest grownups there.
And so he told me, you know, the people actually exchange privately in the sense of, okay, you wanna buy my fridge, pay me in Bitcoin. So I find that also very interesting. So it seems to really become a Bitcoin community there where they also exchange goods, but basically with Bitcoin, which I also find great.
Stephan (16:19.562)
Great. And so let’s talk a little bit about the tooling and the wallets, right? I don’t know. This is also you’ve written and recently done, I guess, some field research of with different wallets. Let’s start with the question around fees for a lot of people, because I think that’s, you know, it’s kind of funny because in the online world, there’s all the people, you know, I prefer to call them spammers, but the, the inscription,
people, particularly the BRC20 and stamps. I think those are the really pollutive examples. And so we’ve seen these big fee spikes recently. And I guess the way I’m seeing it is we always knew this is going to happen eventually, right? It’s just sort of a question of, is it happening a bit prematurely now? Or maybe it’s like a bit kind of lumpy in the way it’s happening because like every now and again, there’ll be a big new mint and all of a sudden the fees are high and then that makes it difficult for people to actually.
self custody and I know you’re obviously very focused on this also in terms of self custody and what we’ve seen is a lot of people who then because the fees are high they end up going to a custodial solution. So do you have any initial reactions to that and how are you dealing with that on the ground?
Anita Posch (17:32.289)
Yeah, it’s, uh, ordinals and inscriptions made the life of course, much more difficult to the life of an educator, of a self custodial focused educator. And I said it on, in my keynote at adopting Bitcoin, I said, I would never have thought that I will say that one day, but start with a custodial wallet. You know, it’s, it’s really not possible in any other way at the moment to onboard people who can’t afford fees.
that high fees and I mean I myself I don’t want to pay $40 fees for a $50 transaction. So yeah to be like to be honest I mean I’m pretty much annoyed by all these ordinals and stamps and whatever because I mean I have the focus on bringing bitcoin to people who need it the most who can profit the most from its uh
technology and all the possibilities you get and also, of course, from the upside we have over the long run to make the wealth inequalities less. And then the Western guys come in and say, ah, we’re having fun now on chain and I don’t care if it’s $50 and I don’t care about the people who can’t afford. For me, this is something which annoys me very much. And as you see, I’m getting emotional. But on the other hand,
Bitcoin is a technology that’s neutral. And if you can use it for that use case, then you can use it for that use case, you know? I’m definitely not gonna want to censor or where do you start and where do you end in this file, also, as I understand. It’s technically not really possible to, like, make them go away because they will find other ways to do other things. And we’re at the same point again.
And so I think it’s, as you said, it’s a earlier version of something where we would have gone to any house. And in a way, I think it’s good because for myself, I can only tell you that I learned more about liquid now and about E-cash and about other possibilities to scale. And I have also have to say, yeah, I changed my mind. There are some sorts of…
Anita Posch (19:56.421)
shades of self-custody, I guess, in the future. Not everyone will be able to own a on-chain UTXO. That’s how it is. And everyone knew it, actually. And I also knew it, but I never really thought about it, you know, like what will be the effect or prepared for it. I was also just like sending five dollars to people on-chain. And now after…
reflecting on it. I’m just like, I made a mistake there, you know. So now I’m changing it and I’m telling people if you can’t afford to, let’s say, earn or buy 1000 US dollars immediately, then don’t go on chain, or maybe 500. Yeah.
Stephan (20:32.203)
Right, yeah.
Anita Posch (20:48.409)
because I believe that’s the size of a UTXO that will be like the fees will not be higher than that pretty soon, at least I hope so. So yeah, I started educating myself and also sharing knowledge about other scaling opportunities and opportunities for people to have some sort of self-custody. But I think we gotta start with those who have the least.
with earnings Satoshi’s through gaming, podcasting value for value, being sapped on Nostra and things like that. Yeah, and then from there, of course, there are possibilities to bring them into shared self custody, federated custody, which are by far still much better than a bank account or traditional banking, yeah.
Stephan (21:43.762)
Yeah, and I think that’s the realistic pathway that it’s going to have to go. So let’s now go and talk a little bit about the review that you recently did of some of the different Lightning wallets. So as I understand, you did a similar thing, was it like one year ago or about then? And now this is like an updated version.
Anita Posch (22:01.209)
Mm-hmm.
Anita Posch (22:05.209)
Absolutely, exactly. So last year, I think the only two self-custody lightning wallets that were available were Preece and Phoenix. Self-custody in that sense, I mean, if you don’t run a node yourself at home. So in that sense that you have a node on your phone. So anyone can easily have a node, yeah. And then back then I realized, okay, with Preece it’s not possible to sync in that.
environment with the slow internet and Phoenix was clearly the winner because everything worked. So this year I thought I’m doing it again especially because there are more self-custodial lightning wallets now and I wanted to try if anything has changed if there is a new
kid on the block basically, which is doing the lightning payments in a great reliable manner. And also I was interested in the fees. Yeah, because if you have to open a channel from on chain, then you might run into the same problem because people can’t afford $40 to open a $50 channel. So I thought I do it again.
This time I used Blix, Green, Mutiny, Phoenix and Zeus. And for the fun of it, I added Wallet of Satoshi. I didn’t add Priest the second time because I was talking with Roy and he said, yes, we changed some things. We updated the wallet, made it better, but I don’t think that it will work. So I just left it out of the test. And for me, what’s…
Most what was interesting is also to see the different setups of the wallets in terms of what how can you open a channel and what can you do then? I mean is it a is it more for newbs? Is it easy to use wallet that guides you or does it have more options for advanced users and things like that? And so the first thing I had to do of course was to open a channel.
Anita Posch (24:20.809)
And for that I stayed in the capital of Simbabwe Harare because I thought I might not even be able to open a channel with slow internet. And so I did that first. And I also was interested in the difference of possibilities and the costs of opening a channel. Because as you know, you can open a channel directly from the blockchain.
You can open it from another non-custodial or custodial lightning wallet. And you can even use liquid and swap it into lightning via bolts exchange and then open a channel. So you basically also open it from lightning, but you can take it from liquid. So, and that was very interesting because, for instance, with Blikst,
I only could use a on-chain transaction. I mean, there’s the possibility to buy inbound liquidity and I think also to get a channel opened, but I didn’t want to do that because I think it’s another step again, you know? I’m looking for the solutions for people who don’t know that much about Bitcoin to onboard them. And that’s also a fact why I do these tests is…
Stephan (25:37.516)
Yeah.
Anita Posch (25:42.045)
I only want to recommend things that I’ve used and where I know they work and where I can honestly say I did it myself. And so what was very interesting with the channel openings was that, as I said, Blix needed two on-chain transactions, which was different with other wallets. I had the not feeling. I thought…
the others are somehow hiding away that second channel, the second transaction. So anyhow, maybe, yeah, yeah.
Stephan (26:17.954)
Could it just be, in that case, is that something like a just-in-time channel going on, something like that, where maybe Blixt had to be funded on chain, and then you had to set up a channel inside of Blixt, whereas in maybe the others, they’re doing like an on-the-fly channel creation, which does require maybe a little bit more trust on the LSP side, and maybe there’s some more technical complexity there, but that’s perhaps what’s going on there.
Anita Posch (26:44.057)
Yes, I assume that’s exactly what’s happening there because with Phoenix, my channel was set up in five minutes or something. And with Blikst, I couldn’t set it up. I mean, it took me a whole day because that was at the time where transaction fees were fairly high and the times it took, you know, I went home in between because it was already night. So interesting was that actually green,
Stephan (27:10.007)
Yeah.
Anita Posch (27:13.165)
was the best option in terms of how much I had to pay and how much outbound possibilities I had. So I used, for every channel, I used 100,000 Satoshi. So I started the channel with 100,000 for each of the wallets. And in green, I had 97,500 Sats.
in my channel outbound so to be able to pay from that. And so that means I only paid 3.5% of the 100,000 satoshis as a fee to open the channel. Whereas with Suus, how do you say Suus? Zois? The wallet? Suus, okay thank you because some people stare at me when I say it.
Stephan (28:01.398)
Yeah, I just say Zeus. Yeah.
Anita Posch (28:08.293)
And I had to pay 48% for the channel opening. So I.
Stephan (28:13.698)
Yeah, I guess a lot of this probably, it probably really depends like on a range of factors, like how much priority was it assigned with, and how much did you fund it with, right? If the intent is, you know, people might say, look, if you’re self-custodying, and we should try to keep, we should, as a rule of thumb, maybe you should have UTXOs larger than 1 million Sats, right? So if one Bitcoin today is about what, 43,000?
So that means 1 million sats is what, $430, let’s say, roughly. So 100,000 sats is like $43 in today’s terms. So maybe you could understand where maybe a listener or maybe the wallet developers would say, oh, no, Anita, that’s kind of a user error here. You should have done it for a bigger amount. That’s what they could say, potentially.
Anita Posch (28:48.046)
apps.
Anita Posch (28:58.417)
Sure, they could say, of course they can say that, but let’s assume I’m a newbie. I mean, yeah, you can tell them use a million sets, but who knows that? So it was just interesting to see. And for Soos and for Green, for both, I used Liquid with the side swap wallet, swapped it via bolts into a Lightning invoice and paid the 100,000 that way.
Stephan (29:07.372)
Yeah.
Anita Posch (29:28.51)
So, like the costs for the incoming…
Stephan (29:30.882)
Sorry, so just to be clear, that’s an example where you were, the wallet’s starting from zero and you had another wallet with a liquid balance and then you used bolts to kind of fund or be the initial creation of that channel. Now, some of these Lightning wallets have it automatically built in and other cases, I guess you can just go separately to bolts.exchange and sort of, you know.
Anita Posch (29:55.081)
Yeah, no, these ones that separately. So I had the website open. I sent from the Sideswap wallet to Bolts and Bolts. I put in the lightning invoice from the wallet that I wanted to open a channel. Yeah, exactly. I put that invoice into Bolts. It’s just, yeah.
Stephan (30:09.75)
that you were testing, gotcha. Yeah, so it was kind of like a lightning setup, basically, is what you were testing, like an onboarding from lightning straight away kind of thing. Like the idea in this example, let’s say, yeah, you’re pretending that the newbie in this case just has the wallet and then the experienced person or the teacher already has a lightning wallet set up and that they’re finding it that way to get them started. Yeah.
Anita Posch (30:20.975)
Actually…
Anita Posch (30:31.489)
Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, I just wanted to see the different ways also you can have a lightning invoice paid, you know? And interesting is like for Blixst, I paid 116,000 Satoshis in total for this one transaction to open the channel. With Mutiny, I paid 100,404. And with Green and Soos, of course, I paid the same.
Stephan (30:48.694)
Damn, okay. Yeah.
Anita Posch (30:58.521)
because it’s a liquid to bolts, it was 101,000 satoshis. So these differences are just so small, but I think it makes a difference in the setup of the channel, the amount of satoshis that you then have available, and also how much you can receive. Okay, so that was the setting up of the channels.
And then I was happy to go out 40 kilometers from Harare to a rural area. And I was looking for a place because I had free devices, you know, for the wallets, because some I already had on one phone and yeah, et cetera. So I found a place where I could use one of the two mobile providers I was using because on one…
place one worked on the other place the other worked. So I then decided I just hotspot myself. So, and then I started, I had set up a protocol like I want to send 50,000 first and I wanna receive 50,000. And I always use the Phoenix wallet as the wallet to receive or send from to the test wallets. So that is always the same.
And so I was successful sending 50,000 to Phoenix from Phoenix, oh sorry, yes from Phoenix and from Mutiny and of course from Wallet of Satoshi. But the interesting thing is that Wallet of Satoshi took nine seconds to send the 50,000 whereas Phoenix only took three seconds. So the self-custodial Phoenix to Phoenix.
Stephan (32:43.158)
This is Phoenix to all of them, or which one? Oh, right, but that’s, I mean, you can understand why that’s because that’s kind of like an internal, not fully internal, but at least async kind of on their side can make the connection more easily because they know it’s another Phoenix wallet.
Anita Posch (32:48.513)
No, that was.
Anita Posch (32:55.031)
Uh huh.
Anita Posch (33:00.641)
Yeah, that’s right. I guess, yes. And then Mutiny, it took 50, five zero seconds, but it also worked, but I had to wait a little bit longer. And then I did the other way around. I say, okay, let’s receive 30K from my external Phoenix wallet that’s not in the test. And it was Mutiny, Phoenix, and Wallet of Satoshi all did it in three seconds. So they all worked fine.
Blix, Green and Soos, they just didn’t work. And I know why Blix didn’t work because it just didn’t sync to the top of the blockchain. So it was never there. Green, I don’t know what happened with Green. I waited two and a half minutes for the payment to work, but it didn’t and I got an error message. I sent it to them. I don’t know what it meant. And Soos also, I waited five minutes. It wasn’t able to sync or to…
Be ready for the payments. Yeah, I mean the suits guys
Stephan (34:03.818)
Yeah. So I think, um, some of this comes down to like the model that the wallet is using. So as an X, as you mentioned with blicks and I believe breeze in the, let’s say the old model breeze or the original model of breeze, it is using neutrino. So it needs to sync to the chain. It needs to use the compact block filters and it needs to then download the blocks that, that it has a relevant transaction in. And so that is just going to be difficult. If you’re in a rural area in Africa with.
Anita Posch (34:10.299)
Mm-hmm.
Stephan (34:32.706)
poor internet connectivity. And so that’s where I think depending on which wallet type and what infrastructure it’s using, it could be very different, right? So Phoenix, as I understand, is using more like an Electrum server lookup model as opposed to going and trying to download the neutrino filters. So you can sort of understand why that would be really much faster.
Anita Posch (34:55.489)
Yeah, I don’t know exactly how Mutiny does it, but I was also very happy with Mutiny. It worked also very well. And then the next test I did was sending to a lightning address. I don’t know why I couldn’t explain technically, but I thought maybe it’s a different experience. Maybe there’s something different involved in it. And so I sent from the wallet to my wallet of Satoshi lightning address.
And it took me two minutes that Mutiny did it. I mean, it sent it, it was successful, but it took two minutes. And then interestingly enough, Green worked. It was able to send 20,000 to my lightning address. It took 40 seconds, but it worked. And Phoenix again, in three seconds, it was done. So that worked fine. And of course, Blix and Zeus still,
Stephan (35:49.15)
Yeah, I mean from the like the software, yeah.
Anita Posch (35:52.238)
Didn’t work, yeah.
Stephan (35:56.55)
That’s unfortunate with them. But yeah, I think, I mean, it’s polling the, you know, like that web server and saying, hey, give me an invoice, and then trying to pay that invoice. So it’s probably not that different really, but in terms of practical, you know, use people might be more accustomed to working with lightning addresses in the future, as opposed to copy pasting invoices. So we’ll see if that, you know, changes things. So then I guess,
Anita Posch (36:10.554)
Mm.
Stephan (36:26.07)
Like overall kind of results wise, like from reading your post, it sounded like Phoenix pretty much came out the best. And I guess Wild or Satoshi, because obviously it’s custodial and there’s kind of less, it’s less complex.
Anita Posch (36:38.249)
Uh, no, I didn’t include, I didn’t include wallet of Satoshi in my results as it’s a self custody wallet test. And so for me, yeah, exactly. For me, the two winners were Phoenix and Mutiny in that test. And also from the perspective of, from the perspective of how easy it is and usability for people you want to onboard. I think that Mutiny does a great job and Phoenix as well.
Stephan (36:44.83)
Right, because it’s custodial, yeah.
Stephan (36:52.894)
Right. Interesting. Yeah.
Anita Posch (37:07.525)
Um, so that was also a reason for me. I mean, I was very, um, disappointed to be honest, because Mutiny says they are in experimental phase, uh, like their development, um, and everything worked quite well. Green also says it’s experimental and I actually had to get a special code to, uh, open the Lightning account in the green wallet. And I was especially excited about green because.
You can use it with Bitcoin on-chain, you can use it with liquid, and you can use it with lightning. And I also assume for many people in African countries who use, a lot of them use stable coins like USDT, you could use LUSDT in green. And I like the fact that you only have one seed for all the different accounts. So I was a little bit disappointed that the payments didn’t work.
Stephan (38:00.343)
Yeah.
Anita Posch (38:04.301)
And but I assume and I hope that as soon that they are working on it and that it will be better next year. So, yeah, I’d go for Phoenix and Mutiny. And but I also have to add it’s very specific also like which channels are open and things like that because yesterday when we were in Bitcoin with Sand
I had two times trouble in paying with Phoenix. And whereas Peter Todd, who was also with me, he had no problem because he seemed to have other channels open on his own note. And so I then reimbursed him with Show Me An E-Cash in the Fetty wallet, which was also great because, yeah.
Stephan (38:36.396)
Yeah.
Stephan (38:53.554)
Right, okay. So in Peter’s case, was he using Phoenix as well? Or you mean he had like a separate like Zeus setup with his own?
Anita Posch (38:59.193)
No, he has his own node and he used Suce for it, yes. And he said, I think that the setup in like the merchant nodes, I think that Edwin doesn’t have a channel to async, but I think they opened one yesterday so it should be better now.
Stephan (39:21.458)
Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so yeah, that’s an interesting thing as well, because sometimes like, big nodes need to set up some more connectivity between each other, and then after that, sort of, the payments can flow more easily. But I think, look, I think the other broader comment that people might have, or I might have on this is, we have to think about who our audience is going forward, right? Because if, okay, inscriptions or not, ordinals or not,
Anita Posch (39:32.982)
Mm-hmm.
Stephan (39:49.206)
fees are going to rise and it’s going to become impractical for people below a certain, let’s say income or net worth threshold to be using self-custodial lightning. And that’s gonna mean that it’s sort of like, who are you really targeting now with self-custodial lightning but small values? It’s like, maybe that’s not really the right use. Like maybe the only use would be for people who can afford to be self-custodial, right? And
It’s not a reality that we like, but maybe that’s just, that’s, that’s realistically, you know, that’s just being pragmatic about what, what we do going forward.
Anita Posch (40:27.949)
Yeah, I think we need to be pragmatic about it. I mean, self-custody above all, of course, I’m a proponent of that, but I also want many, many million more people to use Bitcoin. And I mean, we know that we can’t scale the blockchain in that sense that everyone can have full self-custody. So I hope for solutions in the future that we have several levels of self-custody. And yes.
there might be like e-cash for instance I think is also I mean it’s fully custodial but if you have a federation for instance where you trust all the guardians that are involved that are maintaining the mint and then I think it’s fine it’s a little like this uncle chim setup you know where a lot of people might also have a family member or trusted friends.
who run their nodes for them, where you share the node, or in future maybe share UTXOs and things like that. So yes, I think we need to be pragmatic if we want Bitcoin adoption. And that’s also the case why I, for instance, now say to people, if you want to start, then start with wallet of Satoshi or Albi.
Stephan (41:40.127)
Right.
Anita Posch (41:52.409)
until you have maybe an amount of a hundred thousand satoshis or two hundred thousand satoshis in that custodial wallet. But be aware it’s custodial. And as soon as you have that, either you open a self-custodial lightning wallet or you move it into liquid. Or if you can afford the fees and you know about the fact that in future you will need to do UTXO management and things like that, then you can also go on chain.
But it definitely hasn’t made my life as an educator easier. But I try to, I think the most important thing, if you want to onboard other people, is also to see their situation. What are their goals? What are their possibilities? And what are their needs? And then specifically look for a solution for them. What might be the easiest? And also the…
Stephan (42:20.545)
Yeah.
Stephan (42:27.755)
Right, yeah.
Anita Posch (42:49.477)
the most economical and most secure at the same time. So what is it? What’s the optimum, you know?
Stephan (42:51.092)
Yeah.
Stephan (42:57.482)
Yeah. So one other question just around Blink. Have you played around much with Blink? I know that’s another custodial one that’s sort of also becoming popular as an onboarding custodial lightning app.
Anita Posch (43:11.585)
I have to be honest with you, I haven’t used Blink. I have never tried it because of the custodial effect. And also, you know, it’s just also a time problem that I have, but I wanna use it because for instance, I need to be able to talk about it, of course, and experience it myself, because also a lot of people are using it in Bitcoin with Sand, for instance. So I’m sure, and it seems to be very easy.
Stephan (43:15.671)
Okay.
Stephan (43:24.053)
Yeah, yeah.
Stephan (43:36.778)
Right, yeah. Because from my understanding, Blink does have some good merchant features as well. So yes, it’s custodial, but there are some aspects where maybe if you’re a merchant, and again, the lower socioeconomic status merchant who can’t afford to go on chain, well, maybe it makes sense for them as a practical matter that, okay, yeah, you’re gonna have to start custodial. We wish everyone could be self-custodial, but that’s not the reality today. So I think the other aspect to…
Anita Posch (43:59.993)
Yeah.
Stephan (44:06.338)
think about is trying to onboard people, but without scaring them off and also being clear to them about the actual trade-offs of what they are going into, right? Because if they are not going into self-custodial context, into a fully self-custodial context, and they are, as an example, another example might be Aqua, right? So Aqua is more like a liquid-based wallet, if you will, like your main balance. I mean, you can have Bitcoin on chain.
but you can also have a liquid BTC balance, and then the wallet can do the swaps, like they’ve coded in the background to have like all these swaps going, so you can have stablecoin swaps and lightning swaps, and I believe they’re using bolts.exchange for that, but that’s another example where it’s another trust model now, because if that user, obviously you and I understand what that trust model is, but how do we skillfully convey that to a new person and say, oh, actually, when you’ve got this balance in liquid, it’s actually kind of like a,
Anita Posch (44:49.913)
Mm-hmm.
Stephan (45:05.974)
fancy multi-sig bank with 12 or 15 federation that they’re the ones who can potentially rug you or not. They’re the ones who can block your peg out, let’s say, or your swap out. But at the same time, that is a way to have lower fees, but with a slightly different trust model. You’re not trusting just one exchange. You’re now trusting this kind of
Anita Posch (45:15.417)
Yeah.
Stephan (45:33.282)
12 or 15, so you could sort of argue that, okay, it’s not as bad, and maybe you could have lower fees that way, and you can have stablecoin access that way. So how are you sort of, and then, okay, as another example, you’ve got, like, let’s say, FETI, which is, again, federated mint. It can potentially give that user a very slick user access, user experience. So how are you sort of thinking about balancing these things when we’re out there, you know, trying to teach people?
Anita Posch (46:01.761)
Yeah, that’s a complicated thing, of course, because even if you have a group of 10 people in one community, they might have different needs, different possibilities. There are people who can afford fees, others can’t. They have different goals and things like that. So it’s very complicated, to be honest with you. And so like also with Aqua, of course, Aqua is great because you have the stable coin option. You also have the possibility to use lightning.
Of course, it’s not lightning, as you said, it’s liquid swap in, swap out. But the next thing that you need to tell people in a way is with lightning, it’s only ever going to be hot storage. You can’t have a cold storage. You can’t use a dresser or a cold card or Bitbox or whatever hardware wallet.
to secure your lightning funds, but you can do that with liquid because liquid is similar to the Bitcoin blockchain. It’s federated. So, to be honest, that’s why I rather do not onboard people, like going there and telling them, hey, why don’t you use Bitcoin, install wallet of Satoshi, and I’m off again, sending them five Satoshis, because they will never use it.
they don’t know the risks associated, they don’t know what it is, whatever. That’s why I always try to do at least a 20 minute intro, you know, where I can tell people about the most important things so that they are aware of and maybe cautious and or that what self-custody actually means, ownership with the 12 words. So I think…
For me personally, in my education, for me it’s very important also to tell people and whenever you run into problems, you can contact me. You find me there and there. And with my educational programs online, I now also have the possibility, which I was missing the last years, to tell on aspiring educators and community builders, come on.
Anita Posch (48:17.921)
you can have a scholarship for my course. And then you can be one year in my program at least. And then you can always ask questions and you can always get the newest information about wallets. I mean, just like the thing that happened with Blue Wallet, for instance, last year, with their custodial lightning accounts that they basically, I don’t know how many months did we have, one or two, and they said, we’re deprecating it.
And I onboarded a lot of people to that. I mean, I know you can still get out the Satoshis from there, but I can’t reach most of the people. So that’s why I also say it’s so important to have a local community, a meetup, or a group of people where you can go if you have questions, because we will need to change. I mean, just thinking of me, I don’t know how many Bitcoin and Lightning wallets I have on my devices. 10, 15, I have no idea.
And I’m changing them all the time, you know, now Aqua is coming to it, Blink, others like BLV, I’m not using BLV anymore. So I also tell people you might need to change the wallet in the coming years because this is a new and upcoming technology. There’s a lot of development going on. So but on the question of what do I recommend then?
It’s really very depending on the use cases, on the knowledge of the people, or let’s say on their level of education, because I think you have to abstract it, make it the more easy, the more you see, okay, also this person is not really interested in learning. They don’t have the capacity to it for different reasons.
Stephan (50:07.414)
Yeah.
Anita Posch (50:09.037)
Like in Zimbabwe, people don’t have so much time to learn about self-custody and what it all means. They have so many trouble with their own daily life. So it’s really important to look into who is the audience for this event, for that tutorial, whatever. I think that’s the most important thing, to specifically focus on their needs.
and challenges and where you can bring an easy solution.
Stephan (50:44.21)
Right, yeah. And I think it’s quite complicated because as you were saying, it’s also a factor of some of these wards might not be here in a few years. So then you kind of are also from that perspective, also trying to protect that person, but it’s just genuinely not an easy sort of thing. If you’re dealing in the case of people who are
Anita Posch (50:53.644)
Exactly.
Anita Posch (51:00.493)
Yeah, I mean-
Stephan (51:06.934)
you know, not able to afford going on chain, right? Because if that person can afford to sort of use full self-custody, then it’s a bit more simple. You can sort of put them to like one of the, you know, write down 12 words, keep these 12 words safe. As long as the 12 words are safe, you’re okay. But it’s kind of a different story with some of the custodial lightning.
Anita Posch (51:16.613)
Mm-hmm.
Anita Posch (51:20.909)
I mean, we also…
Anita Posch (51:26.009)
We also have the 12 words with the self-custodial lightning. But still for me, I mean, yeah, it’s still more complicated than as you say, on-chain. There are more standards already on-chain, you know, with the 12 words, the HD wallets. Sorry, now I lost, I wanted to say add something, but please go on.
Stephan (51:44.466)
Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah. But I mean, even with the 12 words thing, I think that’s relatively standardized now. I think most people have this BIP39 context down. The only difference is maybe like Moon Wallet, whereas that was kind of a popular wallet a few years ago before the on-chain fees had sort of risen a lot. I think the other thing is a lot of people didn’t understand that it was not Lightning Native. It was more like an on-chain Native wallet that was using submarine swaps in and out to do Lightning.
Anita Posch (52:08.357)
Mm-hmm.
Anita Posch (52:11.642)
Mm-hmm.
Stephan (52:12.69)
And in a high fee scenario, it kind of breaks down a bit if you’re doing a lot of smaller transactions. So that’s where maybe the native lightning, but again, it comes back to, choosing the right tool for the job, go on.
Anita Posch (52:18.722)
Yeah, but speaking of-
Anita Posch (52:24.417)
Yeah, but that was one of the reasons. I mean, at the beginning, I also recommended Moon because I thought it’s a lightning wallet. And then when I saw their backup, which they had a non-standard backup, you know, with different letters, that’s not the standard words. I was like, I don’t like that setup, because it will be difficult to explain how to move from Moon to something else with that. That’s not a seed, you know.
So that was why I didn’t, I stopped recommending it. And what I wanted to add before because of the wallets, and also I think it’s so important even more now when we have that incident when Wallet of Satoshi shut down for the US American users. I mean, if you are not on Twitter every day like we are, how do you know that Wallet of Satoshi, if you don’t use it on a regular basis, yeah, you use it once.
And six months later you see, oh, they are not operating here anymore. Maybe you see it, maybe you don’t. So of course you can send the Satoshi’s somewhere else. But I think that’s a big problem that we have that education has or Bitcoin in general, that it moves so fast. And there are these many different wallets. And you also don’t know who are actually these people who make these wallets.
I mean, what’s the knowledge, you know? That’s why I also put into the, about security and safety and usability, because that’s why I also put into the test, like how many seed words do they have? Is the backup forced? So do you need to write down the 12 words before you even can start using the wallet, which I think is a good practice, because a lot of people start using it and they never write down their seed afterwards.
Or there are wallets that allow you to copy the 12 words into your clipboard. I mean, I know exactly what’s happening next. People are sending it via email. They are putting it into their messenger on their computers and then the money is gone. And then the argument comes, yeah, but it’s only lightning. It should only be a little bit. Yeah, but for a few people, that’s everything they have.
Anita Posch (54:38.817)
So I think it’s also important to have these standards in the wallets. And I am advocating for that. And yeah.
Stephan (54:50.086)
Yeah, but I think the trade-off with that though is there will be some companies who say, no, but that’s like another hurdle to adoption. That’s a hurdle to getting people to use the thing because now they just want to be able to play around with the wallet. And you can understand all the kind of arguments that will go back and forth there. And even on the, as you mentioned, wallets Satoshi shutting down in the US or at least stopping US customers. Part of that is also…
driven by regulation, right? And so it may be that, and again, I’m not speaking of what I want to happen, I’m speaking of what I think might happen is, it may be that non-KYC custodial wallets in the US go away because of regulation. But maybe in the non-US context, they may still survive. And that’s where maybe the Blinks and the Wallet of Satoshi’s and some of these others, maybe Fedi and others,
Anita Posch (55:34.186)
Yep. Yeah.
Stephan (55:46.378)
will still be out of play because they’re not in the US and they’re not serving US customers, at least on that. Whereas it may be that, you know, in this age of government regulation, that the custodial wallets will end up being KYC ones. And so that’s kind of the other element to add in.
Anita Posch (55:52.78)
Yeah.
Anita Posch (56:07.317)
I feel the same and I gotta say, well done wallet of Satoshi not bending the knee to that and rather go out of the US than making it KYC. And I think with Fedimints, the chances are higher that it can still be a non-KYC because the federations usually don’t know who the guardians are.
So it’s a technology that allows for that shared custody without people even knowing who is behind of it, you know? So from that perspective, I hope, because I mean, we need privacy tools, of course, that things like that can sustain. But yeah, we’ll see.
Stephan (56:51.426)
Yeah, but yeah, I think this recent, you know, last year or so we’ve seen these big fee spikes. And the other aspect is it’s not constant, right? It’s not just saying the fees are $2 every time, or the fees are $40 every time. There have been times where it swings between anywhere from, let’s say, $1 to $30 a transaction on-chain, that is. And so I think that is maybe going to force a different conversation for those of us who are kind of in the education world.
of trying to help put out educational material because it means you really have to know, you have to sort of choose the right tool for the job. You sort of have to understand the person you’re trying to teach, what is their use? Are they a hodler mainly? Are they not gonna transact that much? Okay, are they above a certain value? Okay, go for this particular wallet because it’s on chain, you get your 12 words and don’t worry about lightning. You don’t really need that. Or if they are somebody who maybe they can’t afford
Anita Posch (57:30.734)
Exactly.
Stephan (57:50.626)
to be above one million Satoshis, and they kind of have to use spending and receiving, and they do transact more regularly, well then maybe that’s where a Blink or a Wallet of Satoshi or a Fetty, something, or an Aqua potentially, might make more sense for that person. But really, and then they might be like, oh no, I’m a privacy person, so I really want the privacy aspect. It’s just, you really have to sort of understand what they want and then try to sort of have good knowledge of the options and then say, okay, for you,
this is the best option.
Anita Posch (58:21.645)
Absolutely, I totally agree with you. So it’s going to be very specific towards the needs and the possibilities of your group, your audience, yeah, what people need. Yeah, so I think we will see more specialization also in education.
Stephan (58:38.09)
Yeah, all right. Well, let’s yeah.
Stephan (58:45.215)
Yeah, right. So let’s wrap up then. So as you as you mentioned, you know, we’ve talked about a lot of things this episode, we talked about adopting Bitcoin Cape Town, South Africa, some of the ramifications of a swinging fee market or block space market. There’s some of the different your review of the self custodial lightning apps and, you know, kind of a discussion of where things are going in the future. Just as we finish off.
Where can people find you? I know you have a course and Bitcoin for fairness. Where can people find you online?
Anita Posch (59:18.713)
Yes, so the course is cracktheorange.com and it’s a video course where I learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin, why is it important, the history, what are the differences between self-custody, custodial services, which wallets to use, how to set it up, what are the best security practices and things like that. And it includes a live call once a month where people can ask me questions directly.
And so the best thing to stay in touch with me is actually my newsletter because once a week I send out a newsletter for free with important updates and new videos and educational material. And you can find that at Anita.link slash weekly. So that’s the best way to stay in contact.
Stephan (01:00:10.038)
Great, okay, well thanks, I’ll put all the links in the show notes and thanks for joining me.
Anita Posch (01:00:14.725)
Thank you very much, Steven. Have a nice day.