The synthetic paper we use is laughably difficult to tear -- it more readily deforms and stretches instead. You need to cut across a trace.

I like the idea of a note "humidor" with included cutter -- instead it's fireproof and includes EMF shielding.

Meaning the cutting part is literal and the notes are basically single-use?

Yes, literal cutting -- if not cut, the notes can be re-keyed and recirculated until the expiration date in 2029.

Oh.

So you took a non-physical asset, materialized it, and require a physical alteration to realize.

Why?

None of the reasons in comments or on your website make sense.

Cash is the most popular peer to peer payment medium. By far.

Most people don’t think about its implicit properties but it’s low trust, instant, final, anonymous, and works offline. If you care about transactions per second it outpaces Visa by a country mile.

That there is no onchain record of your transaction, instant settlement, and the receiving party can’t see your balance are nice enhancements for Bitcoin in certain types of transactions.

Further, most currencies be it yen or dollars, operate mostly electronically but still have a cash form. Now Bitcoin does too.

But it doesn’t. This concept will never play like actual cash.

It’s adding steps to a seamless process. Literally, adding seams.

I don’t think we’re on the same page.

Would you mind explaining to me how you think this works so we can clear any confusion?

Thanks.

I assume this is a technical limitation rather than a business decision to sell more notes. But I do wonder (as someone who doesn't quite understand cryptography and multisig beyond the basics of how Bitcoin works), barring a protocol update, is it technically impossible to have reusable notes or was this a trade-off/design decision? If it is possible, is the trade-off it requiring an on-chain transaction to update the multisig every time the note change hands?

This looks like a cool gift, but the necessity of destroying the note to move it, or otherwise trust the giver didn't copy the key, makes it a bad currency (I understand that cold-storage is the aimed use-case, not currency). My first thought on the landing page was that the keys were inaccessible to the holder without destroying the note for moving it to a known address (which would be somewhat alike trading in US dollars for gold, back in the day). I.e., that you could trust the note holds it's denomination as long as it is not cut. That would make it a proper offline and trustless currency. Is there a future where such notes will exist and does it require a major protocol update?

> I assume this is a technical limitation rather than a business decision to sell more notes. But I do wonder (as someone who doesn't quite understand cryptography and multisig beyond the basics of how Bitcoin works), barring a protocol update, is it technically impossible to have reusable notes or was this a trade-off/design decision? If it is possible, is the trade-off it requiring an on-chain transaction to update the multisig every time the note change hands?

This is a trade-off; we could issue notes that never expire and do not require cutting to claim (and could be reloaded), however, this would require perpetual trust that we remain in existence without a fallback. Creating an expiration date mirrors how real money wears out after use. Our intent here isn't to sell more notes; in a medium-confidence scenario our hope is that after a long life in circulation the final holder of the notes re-keys them and puts them in a safe place until 2029 at which point they claim without cutting the notes (and retain them as collectable artifacts with no Bitcoin value thereafter). Our goal is not to sell more notes because they are cut/expired, but rather because we have new designs and denominations.

> This looks like a cool gift, but the necessity of destroying the note to move it, or otherwise trust the giver didn't copy the key, makes it a bad currency (I understand that cold-storage is the aimed use-case, not currency). My first thought on the landing page was that the keys were inaccessible to the holder without destroying the note for moving it to a known address (which would be somewhat alike trading in US dollars for gold, back in the day). I.e., that you could trust the note holds it's denomination as long as it is not cut. That would make it a proper offline and trustless currency. Is there a future where such notes will exist and does it require a major protocol update?

If there is anything beyond zero trust that we exist in some form into the future, the goal is that the recipient can re-key a note from an untrusted giver without cutting the note. In a medium trust world you can assume that a note hold value without scanning it so long as the expiration date is not past. But this requires several things -- (1) trusting that we will continue to exist and facilitate key rotation and (2) that the previous holder carried out some validation and is somewhat trustworthy -- e.g. potentially a bank or large retailer. For low value notes this doesn't seem completely unreasonable, but I appreciate why no one would treat the notes that way without some track record. Given a theoretical new chip which doesn't exist there are some additional possibilities here.

Your physical note itself expire 2029?

What? Why?

Decirculating old currencies can either happen intentionally or unintentionally.

Intentionally decirculating old currencies is called demurrage. Think Swiss bank notes. They tend to recall old notes every 30 years when they issue a new generation of notes. They are currently on generation nine and just recalled generation eight. Bitcoin Note is on generation one.

While it is somewhat common in centralized printed currencies like the franc or the pound it is an important feature of decentralized printed currencies to help dirciculate old notes as there is no central mechanism to cull old notes. One wants to put economic pressure to dicirculate old notes for a variety of reasons but perhaps one of the most important ones is because chips become less secure over time. (Analogously one wants to put economic pressure on miners to upgrade to the latest bitcoin network (such as when taproot came out).)

It's important to note, the Bitcoin stored on the note doesn't "disappear" after 2029 - but rather the multi-sig on the note reverts from 2-of-2 to 1-of-2 so the value can be claimed - in effect turning the note into something more like a claimable voucher or gift card. It contains value, you just generally wouldn't circulate it after then.

For a casual overview see: https://beyondmoney.net/monographs/demurrage-is-it-a-good-id... - that article doesn't talk about economic levers on non-centrally issued currencies because those are frankly quite novel.

Unintentionally dircirculating old notes is called revolution.

What happens after the expiration date?

At that point in time the note downgrades to a 1-of-2 multisig where only the user key on the note is needed to create a transaction. Cutting the note isn't required/is irrelevant as the second encrypted key has no function at that time.