PayPal cashapp and venmo are also "more options" that allow you to interact with more different merchants. and if optionality is a form of freedom, by that yardstick they offer orders of magnitude more "freedom" than custodial lightning does. and in what way is a merchant "sovereign" if they rely...

It is amazing that this is what we are debating here… These people have lightning derangement syndrome and do not live in the real world. Also there is this weird obsession that everything needs to be decentralized and self custodial. Centralization and convenience makes sense for a lot of th...

> Even custodial lightning allows you to participate in the Bitcoin economy. It allows you to interact with fully sovereign merchants for example. It gives you more options. Only if the custodian allows it, that is, it is no different from a regular bank, which, if it decides to allow you, is the o...

Options are good *for people.* The problem with custodial lightning is not that people shouldn't have access to options. The problem is that people want the promise of decentralized lightning to work and it doesnt, so they post rationalize custodial lightning. Its sunk cost fallacy more than anythin...