3 Ways to Stop Doxing Your Bitcoin - The Sovereign Computing Show (SOV009) - ATL BitLab Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Jordan Bravo (00:00):
A good example of when decentralization of these
networks actually matters is, uh,a couple years ago when the Samurai
Wallet developers were taken down.
It had a chilling effect on the industry.
You really couldn't stop Bisq anymorethan you could stop Bitcoin because
every person that's running the Bisqsoftware is a node in the network.

(00:21):
Welcome to the Sovereign ComputingShow, presented by ATL BitLab.
I'm Jordan Bravo, and this is apodcast where we teach you how to
take back control of your devices.
Sovereign Computing means you own yourtechnology, not the other way around.

Stephen DeLorme (00:39):
This episode is sponsored by ATL BitLab.
ATL BitLab is Atlanta'sfreedom tech hacker space.
We have co working desks,conference rooms, event space,
maker tools, and tons of coffee.
There is a very activecommunity here in the lab.
Every Wednesday night isBitcoin night here in Atlanta.
We also have meetups for cyber security,artificial intelligence, decentralized

(00:59):
identity, product design, and more.
We offer day passes and nomad passesfor people who need to use the lab only
occasionally, as well as membershipsfor people who plan to use the lab
more regularly, such as myself.
One of the best things abouthaving a BitLab membership isn't
the amenities, it's the people.
Surrounding yourself with acommunity helps you learn faster
and helps you build better.

(01:21):
Your creativity becomes amplifiedwhen you work in this space,
that's what I think at least.
If you're interested in becominga member or supporting this space,
please visit us at atlbitlab.
com.
That's A T L B I T L A B dot com.
Alright, on to our show.

Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show.
I'm Jordan Bravo and I'm heretoday with Stephen DeLorme.

What's up?

Uh, we wanna remind you that you can boost into the show by looking
up the ATL BitLab podcast on Fountain.FM.
And if you go to Fountain.FM, that's thesite that you can use it in the browser.
You can also downloadit on iOS and Android.
And we are gonna get you ways to, otherways to contact the show in the future.

(02:13):
We are working on an email address forthe show that you can email into, and
we're also working on a matrix room.
So if you do not like using Fountainor for whatever reason, you just wanna
message us, you can do that in the future.
Coming soon.
Tm.
Um, today, before weget into our main topic.

(02:37):
We're gonna talk about a few correctionsfrom previous shows, or just errata
in general that occurs when thingschanged as they often do in software.
Um, we had talked about on a previousshow in-person payments and the
how, the limited options that wehad were basically limited to cash.

(02:58):
Uh, because if you're in person,you typically have to use your
real debit or credit card.
For, uh, uh, in contrast to whenyou're paying online, you can use
something like a virtual card.
We talked about privacy.comin a previous episode.
If you want more information aboutthat, go check out that episode.
But, um, again, we, there were noways of paying in person that you

(03:20):
could obfuscate your identity withunless it was cash, um, or Bitcoin.
Of course, however, in the, inthe time since I've done a little
bit of research and investigationand I actually found that.
When you go to BitRefill, which wetalked about for buying, uh, gift

(03:40):
cards, you can indeed buy virtual Visagift cards, but you can also have them
shipped to you as a physical card.
And so I am in the processof trying this out.
The card has been shipped to alocation that is not my home address,
using a name that is not my realname, and when, when it arrives.

(04:03):
Hopefully within a week bynext episode, you might hear me
have either success or failure.
I'm gonna take my card thatdoesn't have my actual name on it.
I'm gonna go to a coffeeshop or something like that.
And I'm gonna try paying with my physicalcard that has a random name on it that
was shipped to me to a random add, ornot a random, but to a address that

(04:25):
I have that is not my home address.
So, in other words, um, I paidfor it using Bitcoin on BitRefill.
I have it shipped to a private addressthat I can pick up from and then,
um, using not my real name and I,99% of merchants do not check your
id, you know, if you're at the store.

(04:45):
When was the last time youwere ID to match your card?
Not for something like buying alcohol,but just simply to match your face
to your credit or debit card, right?
It almost never happens.
So I think this is gonna be successful andI'll report back here with my findings.
Pretty cool.
I didn't know they had that as an option.

(05:06):
I didn't either.
So we'll see how it works.

Yeah.

The next bit of erota that we want to update
you all on is eims again.
In a previous episode, we hadtalked about getting EIM data
privately from um, providerssuch as Mint Mobile, silent link.
And, uh, at the time we noticedlive on the show that, uh, Stephen,

(05:33):
can you go back to BitRefill?
Yeah.
Uh, we noticed that BitRefill isactually offering eims, and so I
wanted to try it out, and I did.
And so here are my results now.
Whenever you're using a sim to testbandwidth, it's gonna be dependent
on how close you are to the nearest.

(05:54):
Tower.
That's, and, and whether or notthat tower is actually the primary
infrastructure of your provider.
So for example, if I'm on a, if I'm onT-Mobile right, and I'm near an at and
t tower, it's not, I'm not gonna haveas strong a signal because my bandwidth
might, is, might be constrained.
But any case for the, the variablesthat I could control for which were

(06:18):
just staying in the same location.
I tried out three different eessims and did a speed test on it.
So I did um, bit, I did um, silent link.
I did the BitRefill eim that I got, andI did mint mobile and my results were
the BitRefill was by far the slowest.

(06:39):
It was seven megabits per second.
Then silent link was 40megabits per second, and.
Mobile was about 400 megabits per second.
Wow.
So you have, uh, almostfactors of 10 there.
Um, I, I had been using silentlink for the last several months
and it was usable but slow.

(07:03):
The BitRefill one was,in my opinion, unusable.
You don't wanna use, I wouldn't use thatunless I was absolutely desperate in the
middle of nowhere and had no other option.
You know, maybe you could use it for.
Sending text-based messages.
But uh, for anything else,even web browsing, it was
a struggle for silent link.

(07:24):
Again, totally usable.
I lived on it for the pastsix months, I would say.
Um, and it's very private and convenientto pay, but it wasn't fast enough
that I wanted to continue using it.
And so recently I went back tousing Mint Mobile, but I have
an update for using Mint Mobile.

(07:45):
US Mobile in our episodepreviously where we talked about
decoupling your phone number fromyour data, um, mobile provider.
Two of the recommendations I made wereusing Mint Mobile or US Mobile and paying
for it anonymously by using a virtual ora Visa gift card that you could buy on.

(08:06):
BitRefill with Bitcoin.
So since I last triedit, it no longer works.
I tried it again just a few days ago.
Uh, and neither Mint Mobile nor US Mobilewould accept my Visa gift cards that I
bought on BitRefill, which is unfortunate.
Yeah.

(08:26):
So, yeah, I mean, that, that takesaway a, a large, uh, or a really good
method of getting premium cellulardata for in a completely private way.
Uh, did you have anycomment on that, Stephen?

Nope.
Just that it's a bummer.

Yeah, yeah, it sucks.
However, I did find analternative that is not perfect,
but still pretty, pretty good.
And what, what I found is that Best Buysells Mint mobile data and Best Buys
are great because they are everywhere.

(09:03):
It's a national chain.
So if you're in the US, you'realmost always near a Best Buy.
You know, maybe, probably within.
You're gonna be within drivingdistance of a Best Buy.
Most people are.
And so what I did was I went to BestBuy and I just bought a chunk of data.
In this case, I did three monthsfor cash and I just paid it cash.

(09:27):
And they give me this physical simor the eim and you activate it with,
um, random names and stuff like that.
And you're good to go.
And so now I have fast 400megabits per second cellular
data and it's completely private.
And the thing that's a more of a painin the butt about it is that you have
to actually go in person to buy that.

(09:48):
I don't know if I'll be ableto renew it, uh, remotely.
I'm gonna give it a try, but I mighthave to go back and do it in person.
However, once, now that I know thatI really like Mint mobile because.
It's private and has fast bandwidth.
I'm going to, next time I go andrenew it, it'll be for a whole year.
So if I do have to go inperson, it's kind of a pain.

(10:10):
But if, if I only have to dothat once a year, I'm okay
with it if I get great privacy.
But um, I will report back onthat and let you know how it goes.
And that wasn't just buying data, that was

actually like registering for the SEM you were able to do in person.

That's right now.
As I talked about in the, in the episodewith decoupling, your phone number,
even though I get a phone number withthat eim, I'm not actually using it.

Mm-hmm.

I willfully forget it, and the numbers that I'm using
are my, uh, my VoIP numbers thatI'm getting from, in my case.
JMP.
And that way if I ever wanna switchproviders, like I just recently did
when I was trying out BitRefill andSilent Link and MIT Mobile that I, my
phone number's not tied to those, soI can just swap in and out at Will,

(11:02):
and my number is completely separateand I can keep my number and do
whatever I want with my phone number.

Very cool.

All right.
The next bit of erota that wewanna get into is in our episode
about private web browsers.
We had mentioned Firefoxas being a great option.
Well, we have a news article that thisjust came out in the past week or so, and
this is Mozilla re rewrites, Firefox'sterms of use after user backlash.

(11:36):
So actually Stephen, this is, thismight be the like reaction to the
original one that we want to talk about.

Yeah.

You see the first after fielding user backlash.
So maybe that's whatwe wanna, we wanna dig
into.

So the response to backlash terms saying it's
not using people's data for AI.

So for those of you who weren't, didn't hear about this.
Uh, the open source community typicallyfollows what people, what organizations
like Mozilla do pretty closely.
And so Mozilla released newterms of service for Firefox.
And a lot of people were suspiciousof the, because the wording sort

(12:20):
of sounded like they were suddenlymaking a legal claim to users'
data that they previously weren't.
And so Mozilla, it seems,is trying to play, um.
Public relations game now, and they'retrying to maybe walk back their policy
a little bit or, or justify it maybe.

(12:41):
Um, but, but the gist of it was thisquote right here, I'm gonna read, it
says, when you upload or input informationthrough Firefox, you hereby grant us
a non-exclusive royalty free worldwidelicense to use that information.
And so that I think was the.
Problem that, thatpeople were pointing out.

(13:02):
It's a lot of people are suspiciousthat this is paving the way for
some new AI play by Mozilla orsome kind of data collection play.
And as we talked about in the episode onbrowsers, Mozilla's and, and therefore,
Firefox's primary source of revenueis getting paid by Google to include

(13:24):
the Google search engine as default.
And so.
Mozilla has long, had a, the pastseveral years have been that, um,
have shown them trying all kinds ofdifferent moneymaking strategies and
they, and nothing has really panned out.
They've, they tried things like.
Uh, Mozilla, VPN and A, the pocketservice, which was where it, it was

(13:50):
built into Firefox where you could login and have your website synced and the
whole Firefox sync account thing, andthey had a premium service for that.
But all of these various products,ideas that Mozilla has tried over
the past few years have all floppedand been complete business failures.
And so it's been interestingto watch them try to find

(14:10):
other ways of generating money.
Which is admirable on their partbecause if they don't want to be
completely beholden to Google forall of their revenue, you would
think would be a good thing.
Uh, the problem is if they start doingsomething similar to Google in, in terms
of privacy invasions, whether that's datacollection or advertising, uh, it, it, it

(14:36):
makes people wanna turn away from them.

Yeah, the, it's hard to know what to make of this.
I think, uh, I, I don't know.
I, I feel like I see this language,uh, uh, all over the place.
And you know, on the one hand it couldjust be like some kind of, uh, 'cause
it says to use that information tohelp you navigate experience, uh,
experience, interact with online content.
So at least if we interpret thisvery strictly, it doesn't say.

(15:03):
We can use this to sell it to advertisersjust as we can use it as long as we're,
you know, helping you navigate experienceand interact with online content.
I'm not sure how, uh,legally broad that is.
And, um, you know, also another thingtoo is that it looks like we have the,
the CEO of, uh, brave, uh, trying tocapitalize on this to drum up controversy

(15:26):
and all that kind of stuff, which makesgood sense from a, a business perspective.
Right.
Um, so.
Uh, it, it's, you know, alarming and,but you know, it could also be nothing.
I'm not sure.

Right.
This could be a complete nothing burgerand we'll keep watching it and report
back if there's any major updates.
I personally am gonna keep using Firefox.
If anybody else out there is interested,there are some popular forks of Firefox
for people who either are distrustfulof Mozilla or just want something

(16:03):
that's even more privacy focused andwe'll, we'll name those out real quick.
There's gonna be water.
Fox is the first one.
Um, they have in their tagline, getPrivacy outta the Box with water, fox.
And so all of these are gonnabe very similar to Firefox.
They're just gonna have maybe outtathe box some more private options.

(16:23):
It's probably nothing you couldn't doon your own with Firefox going into the
settings and manually tweaking things, I.
But at least with these privacy focusedforks, you're getting that outta
the box as well as if Mozilla wereto do anything shady with Firefox,
like start collecting data, you canprobably bet that these forks are not

(16:44):
gonna pick up that part of it as well.
So water fox is gonna be one.
The next one is Libre Wolf.
Again, they, their tagline, theymentioned that they're focused on
privacy, security, and freedom.
And then the last one is called Pale moon.
Pale moon, one word or maybe two words.

(17:06):
Um, and they're also based onFirefox and they're focused on
efficiency, custom and customization.
So they don't explicitly talkabout privacy, but if they're
basically Firefox without any new,uh, shady changes, then you can.

(17:28):
Sort of glean that it'salso a private browser.

This,

so have you ever used any of these, Stephen?

I have not, but just, you know, uh, eyeing the, the websites
of these things, pale Moon looks likeit was, you know, put together by like.
Hardcore open source Linuxusers and, you know, has been, I
don't know, it's, that's, that'sthe vibe I get from that one.
And then like the, the Libre Wolfand like the Water Fox both have

(17:59):
like, uh, incredibly simple andappealing looking marketing websites,
especially the Water Fox one.

I think Pale Moon was forked off of Firefox many
years ago before Firefox underwentkind of a major version upgrade.
And so they still have thatold school look to them.

Yeah, yeah.
But no, I haven't
tried any of these.

The, there's one more special mention browser I
that I have not tried, but I'veheard people talking about it.
And that's Floorp, FLO.
ORP

Flooooooorp..

Yeah, so it looks like the, the domain is flop app
and it's another Firefox Fork.
And, uh, I'm not really surewhat's so good about it.
It, it also mentions privacy andI've, I've had a lot of, heard a
lot of people talking about it, but,uh, if you're adventurous and you
wanna try out Flo, give it a shot.

(19:10):
All right.
Anything else you wanna comment onthe, the Firefox or browser topic?

Uh, I think I'm good.

All right.
Today's main topic we're gonna talkabout is we're going to do a deep dive
into how to acquire non KYC Bitcointhat's non know your customer Bitcoin.
And for those of you who listen toour episode on private payments, we
tease that we are gonna talk moreabout how to acquire non KYC Bitcoin.

(19:41):
We talked about how when you buyBitcoin from a place where you have to.
Uh, KYC yourself, where you have, wherethe company has to follow, know your
customer regulations, they have to putyou through a series of steps where
you're supplying identifying information.
And that's gonna be things like your realname and address, your government id,

(20:04):
phone number, and bank account in thiscase, because you have to connect some
kind of payment system for buying Bitcoin.
And so.
When you use something like Coinbaseor even a Bitcoin focused app, like
Strike for example, you, there's noway around it you, they will not let

(20:28):
you use their service unless you areproviding your personal information.
And when you buy Bitcoin in thatmanner, you are creating a record
in a database that they haveto keep for regulatory reasons.
That shows an exact time, date, timestamp,basically your name, your information

(20:51):
and information about that Bitcoin thatyou bought as the amount and the UTXO.
So if it's on chain, there's a permanentrecord of that on the Bitcoin blockchain.
And if somebody has that privatedata, even though a company's database
is not public, it's possible thatit could get leaked or just um.

(21:12):
Searched via a warrant by governmentagencies, and that's gonna be
permanently tied to your UTXO, yourBitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Uh, before we go further, I just hada thought, maybe Stephen you would be
able to answer this, but when you buyfrom a lightning enabled provider,

(21:33):
let's say you're buying from strike.
And then you are sendingit out via lightning there.
Since there's no UTX, since there'sno on chain transaction there,
there's no UTXO to tie to your name.
Do you know how they would possibly doa compliance based tracking of that, of

(21:53):
that bitcoin that you're sending out via
lightning?

Um, what do you mean by compliance based tracking?
Like checking, like.
Do you mean, um, checking likeare you allowed to send to this
address or invoice or whatever, or?

Yeah.
So I mean, I, I know from where I workwhere we sell Bitcoin, we, we have
to, when a customer buys Bitcoin, theyare gonna send it out to an address.
Mm-hmm.
And before they do that on, sendthat on chain address or send
it to that on chain address.
Uh, we have to scan that addressand compare it against a. OFAC

(22:37):
compliance list, and if it's, ifit's banned, then we are not allowed
to send it out to that address.

Sure.
Then,

so
I'm just thinking when it's lightning, youdon't have the exact same mechanism there.

Yeah, exactly.
And there are some services that likeoffer, um, compliance checking and similar
sorts of things for lightning payments.
Um, but it's definitely more difficult.
I think the, the, the.
Like, one obvious way to do it is, um,just with like a lightning node id, so

(23:10):
ba basically what I mean by that is likethe pub key of the node and either the IP
address or the tor address of that node.
Um, you could certainly, um, just, uh,take a lightning and say, you know, okay,
this, this is on the, uh, we're, this ison the sanctions list now, or whatever.
This is a bad guy.

(23:31):
Um, but, you know, a a again, it might be,it, it, that's not a, a perfect metric.
Well, the on chain one isn't perfecteither, but, um, you know, it's
still not a perfect metric because,you know, somebody could just, you
know, a bad guy could just makeanother lightning node or whatever.
Um, you could also have a lightningnode that, you know, um, may, maybe it's

(23:54):
not the final recipient of the payment.
It might just be like, um.
You know, providing a route hint to wherethe actual payment is going and all that.
So it's certainly not perfect,but it would probably be done
through Pub Key and IP address.

Okay.
Well, that's actually good news becausethat right there tells you that even
if you're buying KYC Bitcoin, if you'rereceiving it over lightning, that's
already a privacy benefit right there.
It's not perfect, but it's certainlybetter than on chain, I would say.
Yeah, definitely.

(24:31):
Um, let me pick a pause on the topicfor a second and talk about why we
might actually want non KYC Bitcoin.
So what's the problem with just buyingBitcoin via the typical KYC fashion
where I'm buying it from Coinbaseor Swan or something, and then
sending it out to my Bitcoin wallet?

(24:52):
Do you wanna to dive into that?
Yeah, I mean, I think that wouldjust be, um, the, the, you know,
whole idea.
We, we kind of touched on this alittle bit in the private payments
episode, but it's just that, you know,it's all observable on chain, right?
So, uh.

(25:12):
Once you, once you've identified,like, I'm looking for anyone just
listening, I'm looking at men spaceand, uh, I'm just looking at Bitcoin
addresses here in the ledger.
I don't really know who that addressbelongs to, but if I, if I were to
figure out their name, then, um, Iknow this address belongs to, um,

(25:33):
you know, Jordan, let's say, andthen I can follow this around if,
if I knew it was his and I could.
Uh, not only figure out like, youknow, trace back, like where it
came from, like which address itcame from, but I could also see like
where it gets sent to in the future.
Right.
I could, uh, I, I, I, I couldsee, I, I, I could just follow

(25:53):
this over the course of time.
So, um, you know, it's a different, um,it's a, it's a different, um, kind of, uh.
Privacy question.
I think a lot of times when, uh,privacy, uh, like, like privacy with
Bitcoin payments, I think and all,all that is a little bit different
than privacy in other areas.

(26:14):
A lot of times, um, when you say stufflike, uh, you're talking about a private,
a messaging app, let's say, um, peoplemight say things like, okay, well I don't
have anything to hide, so I don't reallycare if Facebook reads my messages, or,
I don't really have anything to hide, so.
I don't really care if the governmentis able to get in and read my messages.

(26:36):
Well, I don't think that's, um, a, agreat, you know, viewpoint to have.
Uh, I would argue that, uh, even, evenassuming you, you agree with that boy
viewpoint is fundamentally differentthan when it comes to Bitcoin privacy.
'cause Bitcoin privacy is, thequestion is more like, do you want
the entire world to be able toobserve your financial activity?

(26:57):
And that's kind of the situationwe we're at with the Bitcoin
blockchain is that, um.
You know, on chain you can pretty much seeeverything that happens and if somebody,
you know, links a bunch of addresses toyou, you know, it's not just a matter
of whether you're comfortable with a,a, a single company knowing your balance
or your employer knowing your balance.
But do you want, like I. Youknow, your, your friends to know.

(27:21):
Do you want everyone in your communityto know how your know your exact balance?
Do you want like people you know,do you want your enemies to know?
Like how many people are you comfortablewith actually knowing, um, you know, your
bitcoin balance and bitcoin activity?
So it's just kind of a fundamentallydifferent question, I think.

(27:41):
Agreed.
Great, great point.
There.
So we understand why we wouldnot want to buy KYC Bitcoin.
Let's talk about where wecan buy non KYC Bitcoin.
And the first place I'd liketo talk about is Hoddle Hoddle.
And I wanna go over this one first becauseit's probably the easiest for people to

(28:03):
get started simply because they have a,um, a website that you don't need tor for.
You don't have to install anything.
So you could just pop open a webbrowser and get started right away.
And this is a peer-to-peer buyingand selling, uh, Bitcoin platform.

(28:24):
Last I checked, theydon't support lightning.
So it's all on chain, which means youhave your 10 minute or more wait time.
But it's still a greatmethod for non KYC Bitcoin.
You, it's pretty similarto like an eBay type flow.
Once you've created an account andlogged in, you're gonna see sellers.

(28:45):
Let's say you're, you're lookingto buy Bitcoin, you're gonna see a
list of sellers and they're gonnahave ratings next to 'em, and, and
much in the same way as on eBay.
You're gonna use your judgment tosay, this particular seller has a.
99% positive feedback rating with10,000 trades or something like that.
And so you'd say, okay, they'reobviously very popular and they're

(29:08):
highly rated, so I'm gonna choose them.
And then you, um, what they do,the Hale Hale acts as a escrow
service and using a multisig, so.
The seller sends the Bitcoin to thisMultisig escrow address, and then
you send a payment to the seller.

(29:30):
That's gonna be something like using Cashapp or you could pay them with Strike.
Um, you could also usesomething like Zelle.
But I would recommend against Zellebecause you have to use your real name
and it's attached to your bank account,so the seller will see your real name.
There's no way to obfuscate thatversus things like cash app and Strike.

(29:51):
You can just put some randomusername and that's all they'll see.
So.
You send it to them, you hit con.
I've confirmed that.
I've sent they, once they'vereceived it, they hit release.
And then HodlHodl releases the Bitcointo whatever wallet you've entered.
Um, if there's a dispute,of course HodlHodl will deal

(30:14):
with it, they'll arbitrate.
Um, I've used this quite a bit andnever had a, had a go to dispute,
which is either really fortunateor a good sign that it's rare.
Um.
Yeah, I, I don't think there'sany more to say about that.
Do, can you see Stephen, whetherthere's a way to pay out over lightning,

like to filter by?
Uh, well, they do say, I mean, it doessay in off in the offer details here.
Uh, some people,

oh, look at that.
Yeah.

So it may be that they support lightning.
Now, I.

I wonder if that's just a swap, like you can pay lightning
and get on chain or vice versa.
I

think you might be right.
Yeah, I think that might be what it is.
Which at that point I wonder why youwouldn't just, there's probably submarine
swapping services like bolts exchangethat, like on that note, I mean it
might be also just working, lookingat, very quickly, I think it's Bolt
Start exchange, is that their address?

Yep.
And they'll let you swap between BitcoinLightning liquid and like root stock.
Um, so yeah, that works pretty good.
So if you just need to swap between onchain and Lightning, this, this would
probably be probably a simple service.
I mean, they, their fee is pretty low.
Um, hot

(31:43):
you might get as.
Consistent of a price, um, as, as,as you would, 'cause it's gonna
depend on the seller and all that.
But if you wanna go from fiat

to Bitcoin, this is certainly a good option.
Have you ever had
on, um, any issues using thesetypes of peer-to-peer marketplaces?
So, I, I, I had an issue on another.
Peer-to-peer marketplace that Idon't want to mention right now.

(32:20):
But, uh, so I had an issue with likeexchanging between currencies where it
was like, okay, I wanted to buy, I don'tknow, it was like a hundred dollars
worth of Bitcoin or something like that,which seems pretty straightforward.
You know, I was, you know,quoted a price very much like
this in this column every year.

(32:40):
But then when, and I think the methodI chose was PayPal, so I was gonna send
a PayPal payment to get the Bitcoin.
I was really just testing the service tosee, and I, I ran into this like really
interesting dispute where, um, when Imake the PayPal payment, it alerts me that
the other person is going to receive it.

(33:01):
And like, I think it was British pounds.
And so they received the payment andthen they come back to me telling
me, like, kind of debating with me inthe chat that like, oh, I didn't get
as many British pounds as I wanted.
And I'm trying to be like, well, um,no, like I was quoted in dollars.
If I was, if I was asked to payyou a certain number of pounds, I

(33:23):
would've happily paid it, but the,the order that I agreed to on the
website was denominated in dollars.
I was asked to pay that many dollars.
Um, and, and, yeah.
And then the person likewanted to get into all this
like, annoying stuff with me.
Like wanted be like, I wantyou to like, you know, kill
this order and start a new one.

(33:45):
And I was like, this is really shady.
And I ended up just, uh, like, can't,like they ended up just refunding
the, the money to me over PayPal.
And, um, I, uh, we ended up just cancelingthe peer-to-peer order 'cause it was, we,
we just couldn't reach an agreement on it.
But anyways, have youever run into the any.
Negative situations or like disagreementsover currency swaps or anything like that?

No, I've never run into that.
That's, that sounds like there was somekind of exchange, like foreign exchange
fee being taken out without eitherof the users having any say in it.

I think so.
Um, well, I think what it wasis it was just slippage, right?
It was just the exchange ratebeing slightly different.
So by the time the, mm-hmm.
Um, by the time, I guess what wasI, I guess I would be considered
the buyer in that scenario.
So by the time the seller got aroundto it and looked at it, it wasn't the
amount of pounds they were expecting.
But the thing about it isthat like, as the buyer, you

(34:49):
don't really have an option.
Like you don't get to.
If you're typing in, if on yourscreen it says a hundred dollars and
you go to PayPal and type a hundreddollars, you don't get to choose how
many British pounds that comes out.
Uh, out as on the other end.
Right.
Versus like, if somebody on PayPal wereto say, request a hundred British pounds

(35:13):
from me, then it would be, then, then,then that would be the way to do it.
Does that make sense?
It would be like.
So it, it's like if it's imperative thatit comes out as a certain number of pounds
on the other end, then the seller needsto be the one to like create that invoice.
Um, it's like the person who likein initiates the transaction.

(35:35):
That's where it chooses, um, that, that'swhere the exchange rate gets defined.
I think

I, I can't tell in the situation whether it was.
The responsibility of the selleror whether the platform is at
fault for not making it clear thatthere's gonna be a foreign exchange
happen, in which case there's.
They should have laid out whatthe fees or the final price
or the final amount would be.

Yeah, exactly.
I mean, the way I looked at it is theseller should have denominated it in
pounds and not in dollars at that point.
Like if they wanted a specificnumber of pounds, it should
have been denominated pounds.
But yeah, anyways, I think that's just,that's looking at some of the edge cases
and kind of annoyances that some ofthese peer-to-peer platforms can have.
So it might be that, you know, um.

(36:24):
You know, you just look out for thatand like make sure that when you're
using the stuff that the person is,you know, actually expecting dollars
and um, that that's what they wanton the other end of that trade.
I think if you're especially, andespecially for like some of this
stuff, I see some of these are likedenominated and like Tether and so if
you're dealing with Tether, I don'treally think you can really, you

(36:45):
probably can't really go wrong with that.
Um.
The, the, and I think if you'reusing Cash App, uh, you also probably
can't go wrong with that because Idon't even think that's available.
I'm not even sure it'savailable in Europe.
I might be wrong on that.
It's, it's, the tricky one isplatforms like PayPal, which support
a wide range of currencies, sojust something to keep in mind.

I, yeah, good to know.
Okay.
Well the next one we don't wanna talkabout, the next peer-to-peer non KYC
service or app to use is, is RoboSats.
This happens to be my particular favorite.
Um, you do have to havea TOR enabled browser.
If you're using Brave, that would work.

(37:29):
Also, the Tor browser, um, youcan u do this on mobile and
then in addition, Android has anative mobile app for robo sets.
I don't know if they're gonna beable to come out with one on iOS
anytime soon because of IOS's.
There, there's a ongoing problemwith mobile app devs where iOS.

(37:50):
Is notorious for killingbackground processes.
So if you have something thatyou need to be running in the
background, it's not really possibleto keep it going, um, unless you
do some kind of weird janky tricks.
So it sounds like right now there's noimmediate plan for robo sets to be an iOS
native app, but if you are on Android, youcould go ahead and take advantage of that.

(38:14):
So RoboSats is another one ofthese peer-to-peer marketplaces.
And when you.
Create an account.
It's actually an ephemeral account.
They encourage you to spin up a newaccount every time you, you start
robos, and so it'll automaticallygenerate an account for you.
You can copy and paste a token stringthat will, if you ever need to come back

(38:37):
and recover your account, sign in again.
You can do that.
Otherwise it just willgenerate a new one for you.
So that's one level ofprivacy right there.
The other level of privacyyou're getting that we just
talked about is it's over tor.
There's no option toaccess it over a clearnet.
So by using Tor, it is obviouslya little bit slower because

(38:57):
that's generally how Tor is is,but it's also a lot more private.
And the other thing about robosthat makes it one of the best
is that it's decentralized.
So it's gonna be more resilient tobeing shut down in the future, uh,
versus compared with if it werea, uh, single point of failure.

(39:18):
They've recently, in the pastcouple years, taken the steps to
have about five or six different,they call 'em coordinators.
So it's actually running on severaldifferent servers around the world,
geographically distributed and.
For those of you who are watching, youcan see Stephen's going through the

(39:39):
onboarding flow here, where it generatesan identity and it gives you a name, um,
and a, a cool looking robot to go with it.
And then when you, when you get to thisscreen, you can click on offers or create.
So if you wanna just see the existingoffers, go ahead and click on the offers.
And this is where you'll see allthe stuff that's for, for sale.

(40:01):
For sale and people who are buying.
So, um, Stephen, if you scroll up a littlebit, you'll be able to see the filters.

Yeah.
Let me hide the unsafe thing.
Okay.

Yeah.
So what I would do is, um, yeah, I wannabuy, and then I'm gonna select dollars.
And in this case, this is how you'regonna avoid one of those problems like
you encountered Stephen, where you're,it's, it's, uh, using the wrong currency.
And then for method.
The two I've had the most successwith are Strike and Cash app.

(40:37):
I like, I like Strike.
I've had a lot of sellers tell methat they like Strike the best because
there's fewer fraud attempts on it.
That could be by virtue ofthe fact that it's just a, a
small, has a smaller user base.
You know, not as many people knowabout Strike compared with Cash App,
so there's fewer scammers on it.
But in any case.

(40:59):
Um, what I would do then is clickon the premium column, sort it
by how much they're chargingover the typical market price.
And, and then, um, I would justchoose, typically I'm gonna choose
the cheapest one, which is at the top.
And
you could see right here that, that thisseller accepts both cash app and strike.

(41:24):
And he, there is one.
Caveat with, with robos, if youhaven't used it before, you are gonna
need to already have some Bitcoin tobe able to lock it up in, in a bond.
And you could see where it says the, uh,where it doesn't say the bond amount.

(41:46):
Can you go back to offers?

Yeah.

See if you can find that same one.
You might have tosort it.

Uh, I think it was this one right here.

Hmm.

CashApp strike 1.8% premium.

Maybe maximize this thing in the bottom left quarter.
There's a a square box icon that will.
Enlarge this whole window.

Uh, hold on one second.
I don't see that actually.
You said in the lower left.

Yeah, but um, you see, you see smart ya 8, 6, 7.
The last

Yeah.
Oh,
I see.
Bond.
There you go.

Okay, so it says bond and then 2%.
What that means is however much you'rebuying, if you're buying, let's say
you're buying a hundred thousandSATs, you're gonna have to pay, lock
up 2% of that and you get it back.
That bond, both, both the seller andthe buyer, have to put in a bond,
and that's just to prevent eitherparty from abandoning the trade.

(43:10):
So you will get that back as long asthe trade goes through, and even if.
You both mutually cancel thetrade, you'll get it back.
The only time you wouldn't get thebond back is if you try to cheat and
they arbitrate against you, or ifyou completely abandon the trade.
Hmm.
So, um, in the amount column, you couldsee how much they are willing to sell.

(43:32):
So if you wanted to buy somewherebetween a hundred dollars and $220 worth
of Bitcoin, you would click that one.
But let's say you wanted a lot more.
Well, you'd need to drop down tothat next seller 'cause he's selling
up to $4,000 worth of Bitcoin.

I see.
What's the difference between the hostand the, I did not mean to back out there.
I,
hold on.
Let get back into there.
Doing it live.
Um, what, what's the differencebetween the robot and the host?

Okay, so the, the robot is the seller or buyer.
Uh, the host is one ofthe coordinating servers.
So like I was saying, there's aboutfive different coordinator servers.
Um, there's a way to bring them allup to, I believe, yeah, the big lake.
That's the host, AKA coordinating server.

(44:30):
So it says become, becoming a robo sets.
Ooh, that is in Portuguese.
Becoming a RoboSats coordinatorrepresents boosting intrinsic values of
decentralization and economic freedom.
RoboSats solves the problem of KYCand loss of privacy that that big
exchanges are forced to comply with.
I believe that decentralizingthe lightning nodes will adv

(44:52):
enhance the robustness of thetool, allowing more users to join.
I'm excited to be part ofthis new phase of growth.
So that's the descriptionfrom the Robos project about.
Why they are decentralizingthe coordinator server.
So originally there was only onecoordinator server that was run by the,
the project creator, and now it's uh,there's five or so of them and they are

(45:18):
not run by the co the project maintainer.

Hmm, interesting.
Yeah.
And each one
can,

or
maybe one of them still is.

Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah.
Pretty cool.

If you, if you click on, in the bottom right, there's a more tab.
Yeah.
I think that might show all the,
there's somewhere that shows thelist of, uh, different hosts,
but it's not super important.

I'm not sure.

Oh,

oh, here we go.
Here's somewhere.
It's in under the settings.

There it is.

Yeah.
The big lake, temple of SATs,Bitcoin, Venito, and over the moon.

Yep.
And so you can disable or enablethem if you wanna hide one or more.

Very cool.

Yeah, so I've, I've had great success with this.
I've been using RoboSats for a coupleyears now, and once you do it the first
couple times and you, you figure out theflow, you know, the first time it's new,
so you're learning, you have to figureout the UI and how do I lock up SATs.
But once you've got it down, it takesme maybe five minutes and I've got

(46:48):
non KYC Bitcoin, so it's really fast.
It's over lightning.
Um, everybody's very responsiveand you have escrow protection
from getting scammed.
So highly recommend it.
And, um, that's all I haveto say about this one.

Where should we go next?

All right.
The last non KYC place to buyBitcoin is gonna be bis, that's BISQ.
And Bisq is a little bit moreinvolved simply for the fact that
you can't use it in a browser.
You have to actually download itto your desktop or laptop computer.
They don't have a mobile option.

(47:36):
But once you have it installed, ifyou go to Bisq Network, they've got
pretty good documentation and once it'sinstalled, it uses TOR under the hood.
So you've got PRI great privacy there,and similar to RoboSats, you're gonna
have to start out with an amount ofBitcoin because it's gonna use that

(47:56):
as a bond to prevent people fromcheating or trying to scam each other.
So again, if you need to getthat first bit of Bitcoin.
Recommended ways to get it are huddle.
Huddle, like we talked aboutearlier, or talking to somebody
at a meetup, a local meetup, andgetting some face to face Bitcoin.

(48:18):
Um, or you could even buy some KYCBitcoin just to use as your bond and
then keep that separate and startyour non KYC stack using one of these
methods we're talking about today.
So Bisq have been around a long time.
They recently.
Underwent a brand new majorversion so that they have Bisq two.

(48:38):
Um, keep an eye out for Bisq two if youare trying this out, because that's,
that's the, um, route that you want to go.
They still have BIS one runningbecause it's the legacy network
and they don't wanna shut it off.
But Bisq 2 was completely revampedand made to be a lot more user
friendly and easier to use in general.

And, but it's still like a separate piece of software that you
download and run on your computer, right?

That's right.
Oh, you know what, I takeback what I just said.

Mm-hmm.

You no longer have to have, you, no longer have to start out with
an amount of Bitcoin to get started.
They have something calledbis Easy as part of BIS 2.0.
You see up, up at the top in theheader, there's a, I'm on bis Easy.
I'm on there right now.
Okay, cool.
Bis Easy was Law launched in March, 2024as the first BIS Bisq 2 trade protocol.

(49:35):
Designed, especially for newand novice Bitcoin buyers to get
their first Bitcoin in a safe,private, and self custodial way.
So that was one of the major complaintswith Bisq was that for new users it
was hard 'cause you have to startout with Bitcoin to use as a bond.
Uh, you kinda like a security deposit.
And so with Bisq two, they've nowmade it an option where you can

(49:57):
buy from certain buyers withoutneeding any kind of collateral.

Hmm.
That's cool.

So if you've, if any of you listening or watching have tried
Bisq in the past and felt it a little toocumbersome, it's undergone a huge change.
So maybe give it another shot andsee if it's your liking nowerratays.

Do you know why it requires this like
other application to run?
You mean Bisq two versus Bisq one?
Well, they both require us todownload like a piece of software
that runs on the computer.
Right,

Right.

I guess I was just curious about like what, why that design
decision, why does it need like its own,um, its own piece of software to run?

As opposed to running in a TOR browser, for example.

Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean just, you know, we have thesereally complicated web applications.
We got stuff like RoboSats where it'slike all the order book stuff can kind
of happen in the web browser there.
Like what's fundamentally different aboutBisq that makes it need its own compiled
software binary that you have to run.

I don't have a, a perfect answer for you, but I do
know that it was written in Java and,uh, Bisq is a lot older than robos.
Right.
So, yeah, when Bisq first was, wascreated, I don't think we had the
technology to create the same richweb applications that we do now.
You know, it wasn't possible to do thesame kinds of things in the browser.

(51:37):
Uh, so I think that drove the designdecisions back then and now I think the
code base is so extensive that they don'twanna do a complete rewrite from scratch.
I think they're just buildingon what they already have.
So I. It might be a technical limitation.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, but I, that's just a guess on my part.

Yeah.
I just curious.
I know, I, I, it is kind of like itsown network protocol too, isn't it?
Like, aren't there, like the, theBisq servers and all that, don't they
have like their own like little, uh,little protocol language they speak
to each other or something like that?

You could be right.
Uh, um, it's.
Go ahead.

Yeah, I was just gonna say that's, I think that that would be my
only guess is why that might be the case.
That it's kind of like running aBitcoin node or a lightning node.
Like you need this piece of softwarethat's like capable of speaking
whatever protocol and like talkingto other nodes on the network.

Hmm.
That makes sense.

Yeah, I don't know.
It might be a, a fun UX thing.
Uh, at some point if somebody could makelike a wasm client or like, you know, some
kind of yeah, like wasm binary that couldlike run as part of like a web application
that could still talk to bis and it might,uh, might make the like onboarding to
Bisq a little easier, but I'm not sure.
I'm just spitballing ideas right now.

That would be cool.
I would say the major thing is.
Whether or not Java can compile to Wasmand that's web assembly for those of you
who don't know what we're talking about.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And I mean, yeah, you know,easier said than done, right?
Like if, if this community's, you know,stuff is already built around Java and all
that, that's a, a lot of code to write.
It would, it would have tobe like a brand new client or
something like that, probably.

A feature that I would like to see from Bisq, and I
know that this has been requesteda lot in their feature request.
Forum is the ability to have a, todecouple the sort of demon that has
to always be running from the GUIclient so that you could have the
demon running on your server, likelet's say with your Bitcoin node.

(53:56):
And then the GUI client that youcan access via a browser that way.
'cause the way it currently is, atleast the last time I used Bisq.
One of the annoying parts of itis that Bisq has to be running.
Yeah.
In order for you to be able to transactor interact with the network, and so you
have to leave your computer on, right?
You can't let it go tosleep or it's gonna cut off.

(54:19):
And so if you had that ability toseparate, decouple the, the client and
server and you could put the serveron your, always on server, let's say
where your Bitcoin node is running, thenyou could not worry about having to.
Turn it off and on.
It's just gonna be always runningin the background, and you can
access it from your laptop,your mobile browser, whatever.

Yeah, that, that, that explains it right there.
It has to always be running.
That's probably why itneeds its own application.
Like I, I haven't studied this protocol,you know, at, at all As, as evidenced by.
Um, how many questions I have and how,you know, little I know about it, but
it sounds like if they have somethingthat need, like a daemon that needs

(55:01):
to be running all the time, thenthat means that like, I don't know it
need it, it just, it, it sounds likeit needs very, very frequent state
updates from the other, like what'scalled a Bisq nodes on the network.
So, yeah.
That, that's probably,

Oh, you're
right.
And, and the node, a Bisq node isthe right way to describe it because.
Unlike RoboSats, for example, orHodlHodl, it's completely peer-to-peer.
There is no centralized server,so BIS might actually be the most
resilient and decentralized of theservices we're talking about, but.
The downside is that you do have tohave these nodes that are always on

(55:39):
in order to be part of the network.
And so that's why it would be great if youcould decouple the client from the server.

Yeah, I agree.
Like it would be kind of like on theBitcoin side of things, we're really
getting into the weeds here and thisis more philosophy than actionable
cyber and computing advice, I think.
But, uh, it's interesting for me, likeon the Bitcoin side of things, it's like
obviously running a Bitcoin node is the.
The most sovereign way of doing it.
But there's also these other optionsfor, you know, different situations

(56:09):
and people who need it, right?
Like you could use an electrum server,so you could just get your block bitcoin
block data from somebody else's node.
Um, you could also have multiple electrumservers to find like some, some Bitcoin
software supports that, where you can kindof request block data and transaction data
from multiple different electrum servers.

(56:30):
So if you don't trust.
Want to trust one of them.
You can, you know, just samplefrom a couple different ones.
And then there's also stuff like compactblock filters and like neutrino and
stuff like that that, um, you know,allow you to kind of not run a full
Bitcoin node but just kind of selectivelyget block data, block filter data.

(56:50):
Um, so, uh, yeah, there, there's justa lot more options out there in terms
of how we get Bitcoin block data.
There's a lot more workthat's been done on that.
Um.
Uh, but it sounds like with Bisqit's still kind of, it is sounding
like it has this still more like youneed to run a full node approach.

(57:11):
Like, it sounds kind of like it, it'swhere Bitcoin itself was, you know,
in the early days where it's like, youknow, everyone using Bitcoin in 2010 was
probably running a Bitcoin node, right?
So it's like every and, and solike similarly today, anybody
using BIS is running a Bisqnode and there's not that like.

(57:31):
Flexibility in terms of how you caninteract with the protocol, I guess.

Right?
And you have, so you getdecentralization with the trade off
of a more difficult user experience.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And for those who might think, this all sounds very theoretical.
A good example of when decentralizationof these networks actually matters is,
uh, a couple years ago when the SamuraiWallet developers were taken down.
It had a chilling effect on the industry.
A lot of people, a lot of entities inthe US that were Bitcoin related had

(58:08):
to stop doing business in the us, andone of those entities was Agora Desk.
And Agora desk was a KYC freeBitcoin peer-to-peer exchange,
similar to Hoddle Hoddle.
But, um, they were a great source,and I had used them a lot in the
past, but, but sadly, they had toshut down just because they were

(58:28):
scared of the legal implications.
And so the reason that they werevulnerable was that they were
a single, centralized server.
Mm-hmm.
And so if the authorities cameknocking, it would be trivial for
them to shut them down, whereas bisq.
Uh, I mean, this thing has beengoing on for a long, long time.
I can't remember the exact year itstarted, but it's, it's very resilient.

(58:51):
The only way that you could, you,you really couldn't stop Bisq anymore
than you could stop Bitcoin becauseevery person that's running the Bisq
software is a, is a node in the network.
And so in the same way that you wouldhave to go out and shut down every
single Bitcoin node in the world to stopBitcoin, you would've to go out and shut
down every single Bisq node in the worldto stop people from trading on Bisq.

Hardcore.

Well, that's all we have for buying Bitcoin in a non KYC fashion.
If there's anything you listeningor watching would like to comment on
regarding that topic, you know, tellus boost in, did you, have you used
non KYC Bitcoin exchanges before?
Do you have any non KYC Bitcoin?

(59:37):
Oh, one last thing I'd like tothrow out there a pitfall to avoid.
When you are buying non KYCBitcoin, it's important to keep
track of the Bitcoin that you have.
That's non KYC and the Bitcoin that youhave that you bought from a KYC exchange.
So make sure you keep those separate.
If you mix 'em together, you'vetainted your non KYC Bitcoin and now.

(01:00:01):
You've kind of lost that privacy.
So anywhere that you send it, it'sgoing to still have the same privacy
downsides as the KYC Bitcoin.
So I just wanted to put that out therein case anybody is new to this topic.

Stephen DeLorme (01:00:14):
Yeah, absolutely.
I agree.
All right, so boost in,let us know what you think.
Well, alright everybody, thanks a lot forlistening and we'll see you next time.
Catch you later.
Hey, thanks for listening.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
If you want to learn more aboutanything that we discussed, you can
look for links in the show notesthat should be in your podcast

(01:00:37):
player, or you can go to atlbitlab.
com slash podcast.
On a final note, if you foundthis information useful and you
want to help support us, you canalways send us a tip in Bitcoin.
Your support really helps us so that wecan keep bringing you content like this.
All right.
Catch you later.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}3 Ways to Stop Doxing Your Bitcoin - The Sovereign Computing Show (SOV009)