TIL the Chinese predated Blockstream's trick with a 2nd layer:
"The chinese realized that the best way to control gold is to force everybody to sell their gold at the borders for a piece of trusted paper money, and
like fair tickets you could not go back and cash those pieces of papers in for gold, there was no link between the paper and the gold. Your only option was to spend the paper money in
the economy, this was a brilliant scheme, it allowed the rules to hold all the global money such as gold while the people carried a local money that circulated within their borders"
This is exactly the plan behind “Liquid btc” on LN.
History always repeats itself
From 'The Trust Machine (the history of Bitcoin)':
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