Redeem a Cashu token

What a Cashu token is

Cashu is ecash for Bitcoin. A mint holds sats and issues blinded tokens against them, and those tokens move around as plain text: pasted in a chat, sent in a DM, printed on paper. Whoever holds a token can redeem it at its mint. That bearer property is what makes ecash feel like cash, and it is also why you should redeem tokens you receive rather than leaving them sitting in a note somewhere.

A token string starts with cashuA or cashuB and encodes the mint's url plus the signed proofs that carry the value. This tool decodes it so you can see the amount, the mint and whether the token is still unspent before doing anything with it.

How redeeming over Lightning works

Redemption is called melting: the mint takes back valid proofs and pays a Lightning invoice of your choosing in exchange. Enter a Lightning address, and Azzamo's redeem service asks the mint for an exact melt quote, creates an invoice for the token value minus the mint's fee, and completes the swap. The sats land in your wallet, and the token becomes worthless everywhere else, since its proofs are now spent.

Two honest caveats. First, redeeming requires trusting the mint that issued the token: if the mint is offline or dishonest, the token is not redeemable, which is a property of ecash itself, not of this tool. Second, a token can only be spent once. If someone shares a token publicly, the first person to melt it gets the sats.

What Azzamo does with your token

Decoding and redeeming run through Azzamo's Cashu redeem service, which talks to the token's mint on your behalf. Azzamo does not keep the sats and does not take a cut: the payout goes straight to the Lightning address you entered, minus whatever fee the mint charges. Because the token passes through the service while it is being melted, treat it like any other bearer instrument and redeem it promptly rather than storing it.

If you receive Cashu tokens regularly, redeeming them promptly into a wallet you control is good hygiene, exactly like depositing a paper check before it goes stale.

If the amounts involved are meaningful, split the job: redeem a small token first to confirm the mint responds and the destination receives, then redeem the rest. Ecash is designed for small, fast, private payments, and treating it that way keeps surprises rare and cheap.