Running, Gunns & Passports | The Bitcoin Brief 51 - Ungovernable Misfits

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Bitcoin
is close to becoming worthless.
Bitcoin.
Now what's the Bitcoin?
Bitcoin's like rat poison.
Yeah.
Oh. The greatest scam in history.

(00:25):
Let's get it.
Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.
Welcome back to The Bitcoin Brief, the show where me and q and a catch up every two weeks to talk about Bitcoin,

(00:49):
privacy,
open source,
keeping your Bitcoin secure,
and the news and software updates that matter.
I just wanted say a massive thank you to everyone who's been supporting Ungovernable Misfits
and a big thank you to Foundation Devices
for supporting the show. If you haven't already checked them out, go to foundation.x,XYZ.

(01:14):
They make cypherpunk tools for fuckwits, and anyone can use this, even me. If you have any questions or you want to reach out, feel free, and I'll be happy to go through things with you. For anything super technical, I'll pass you on to q. If you wanna buy one of these incredible passports,
use the code ungovernable.
It will get you a discount, and it will let them know that I'm shilling.

(01:38):
I'd also like to say a huge thank you to the k Wallet team.
Not only are they supporting this show, but they're also bringing out some incredible features.
For those of you who actually use Bitcoin
and actually care about their privacy and security,
Cake Wallet make it incredibly simple for you to live outside of the traditional financial system. You can use Cake Pay within the app to buy gift cards

(02:05):
for food, petrol, and whatever else you might need day to day. You can use silent payments,
and, of course, you can use Monero.
You can connect both Bitcoin and Monero nodes,
use coin control,
and this team are constantly innovating.
And I'm really excited to be working with them. If you have any questions, you can reach out to me, but check them out at cakewallet.com.

(02:30):
Download the APK
or start using this today
on Mac, Windows,
Linux,
iPhone,
or of course, your Android device.
Enjoy the show.
Ready when you are. We're live, mate. We're already live. Oh, look at that ninja launch on me when I wasn't even in the room. How's it going, mate?

(02:51):
Yeah. Pretty good. Fresh coffee on the go. The sun is shining through my window.
Afternoon rip once?
Yeah. It's very different. And I, went and trained
first thing in the morning. So at least I feel like I've achieved something when we're speaking, which is quite nice. Pre or post breakfast?
Oh, yeah. Pre breakfast.

(03:11):
I've literally just eaten. So I do the fasting thing,
get in there with just a black coffee,
absolutely murdered my legs for an hour,
and then sat in the sauna for, like, fifteen minutes and then came back. Nice. Starting the day off right. Yeah. What about you? Have you been a lazy cunt or have you been training? No, it's been going good at the moment. Yeah, training's been pretty on point. I've actually

(03:34):
started running.
Once a week.
Yeah, which
twenty twenty four and beyond queue would have also
said that exact same noise
if I'd even uttered the word running.
But, I don't know. I just didn't wanna become a bit of a one trip pony really and just have
semi decent calves. So I thought I probably should be able to run five ks in a semi decent time at the age

(03:59):
that I
am. I've never been a runner. I guess in school I used to be a I used to like compete for Cross country?
No. God. No. No. Complete
opposite. The maximum I'd do is 200 meters. Up until, you know, recent months, the concept of doing a five k made me shudder.
Mhmm. But weirdly, like, I've got over that initial shock of, like,

(04:21):
using
my legs in a different way and not being able to walk for a week.
Got over that bit, and I'm actually kind of enjoying it now. And I'm I'm a big
stats nerd. I can imagine you're tracking it. Tracking my times and they're coming down each week and that keeps keeps me coming back for more the next week. So
it's,

(04:41):
it's been it's been, yeah, been quite enjoyable. I'm just trying to balance it though because I've got you know, obviously, I wanna stick in the gym, and I've got all the hobbies that involve using my body that I don't wanna
screw myself out just for the sake of trying to have a good five k time. So just to balance it, really. But it's it's been pretty good fun, actually. And, you know, it's it's quite addicting to see the times coming down.

(05:03):
Yeah. I think running is gay.
Unless you're running away from the police
or some sort of major issue, it's quite gay. And I think it just function these up too much for my liking. If you are a runner, you are gay. That's as simple as that. Nice to get the endorphins pumping, but I agree. It's definitely gay. One hundred percent. Swimming's a better option if you if you have access to a pool. That's objectively more gay. You have to wear Speedos. You don't have to wear Speedos. You can just swim fast? No. I swim fast anyway. Just wear, like, normal sized, not massive shorts, just normal sized shorts. And then you can really burn yourself out if you especially if you have those swimming pods, you know, the ones where they, like, blow like, the jets where they blow water at you.

(05:48):
Pods. Yeah. So you can go to, like,
four, five foot by 10 foot
pods of water, like little pools. And they have, like, a remote at one end, and then they have a jet at the other end, a really powerful jet. And you can program how much current you swim against. It's a water treadmill, essentially.

(06:09):
Kind of. But, yeah. I mean, like, if you go if you go on the good ones, it's like swimming in a riptide. If you swim for thirty, forty seconds,
you are absolutely
fucked. It's like doing sprints
against, like, the wave, basically, and it's fucking hard. So you can do, like, you know, thirty, forty seconds on, ten, twenty seconds off. You can do, like, sprint training with it, and it's really fucking good.

(06:34):
Tell us, in the comments, please listeners, which is more gay swimming or running?
Definitely running.
I, I've had a certain someone in my DMs
repeatedly.
Many, many, many times a day. Every day for the past generations.
I don't think he's Asian.
Okay. He's like a very excitable little puppy.

(06:57):
Is it like an excitable
Jack Russell type that's sort of like a bit mangy and mangling, but also kind of lovable as well. Very yappy. Yeah. Imagine that, but then you give it, like, the biggest dose of crack possible.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. So, yeah.
We're going to see Ben Gunn next week. Looking forward to meeting up in person once again. Was it it was Amsterdam '20 '3, was it, the last time we were all together? Was it '23?

(07:24):
Yeah. It must have been. Yeah. It wasn't last year. So, yeah, we're we're going down to his new his new place,
which, if you're a proper and governable listener, you'll already know all about because he Yeah. Did a podcast with Max a couple of weeks ago to explain all the details. But we're going down to have a look what he's been up to and check that he's not just full of shit, essentially. Looking forward to that. So he's been pestering you and yapping in your ear? Oh, mate. He yeah. He goes on on me more than my wife does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Same. Yeah. Unbelievable character.

(07:54):
What's the stuff it's not Ritalin. What's the other stuff that people Yeah. It is written. Yeah. It's it's like ADHD meds, isn't it? Yeah. But there's another one that's not called Ritalin
that they use in The States. Whatever it is, he's on it. Oh, Adderall.
Adderall. Yeah. There was a stage in my life where I was not so stable,
and I had a girlfriend who was a fucking lunatic. And we used

(08:17):
to snore Adderall throughout the day. Fucking.
I know. This went through like a bit of a phase, and it fucking gets you proper wired. That's what it reminds me of with Ben Gunn, just having a general just having a cup of tea with him is like that. Oh, god. Yeah. Looking forward to seeing him in in person anyway week. That should be a a bit of fun. And, we're gonna record live as well, aren't we? We're gonna record live. Obviously, he will be there. I think Black Coffee might be there as well, so we might rope him in as well, go and have a look at the land. He's a lunatic,

(08:48):
but
he's not talking shit. Like, he's doing great things. He's not like the lunatic that you stay away from because they they're fucking mad, but they don't do good stuff. He's like the one that does great stuff, and he's fucking mad, but you love him. He's not a Craig Wright type lunatic. He's more of a this might trigger some people, but, like, an Elon type lunatic?

(09:10):
He's better than Elon. He's definitely better than percent on the spectrum, but can actually get shit done. Oh, we get shit done. Yeah. For sure. We're gonna go and see the new units that he's got, the massive CNC machine that he's got, the black coffee setting up, thinking, like, literally fucking cut and print houses.
That was one of the things that he text me actually last last week. It was like, do you want a house? House. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll send you a house. Yeah. I know.

(09:36):
Absolutely ridiculous. But it's true. Like, they can literally do that sort of stuff. You literally put a design in with CAD, and you can just fucking cut anything out with laser precision.
You can do it with steel. We can do it with, timber. We can do it with everything. And then you got black coffee behind it, making sure everything works and building it. So he's got those. And, yeah, these huge containers that they're starting to build out and the land to put everything on, It'd be good. It'd be a good trip. Once you see it, you'll be like, oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Stuffed it. Forward to it. I've shed a thought. Ben and Black Coffee are like yin and yang, aren't they? You've got, like, the excitable

(10:12):
drugged up puppy and then mister stoic. It's it's actually the perfect,
perfect combination.
Anything that he throws at him that's technically possible, he'll just work out just calmly with a cup of tea. It's brilliant to watch. Looking forward to it. Any other business, mate, going on in life? Or we is that about rounded up for you? I think that's it for me. Couple of, passport related or foundation, should I say, related,

(10:38):
topics. What do you got up to now then? As always, working very hard to get Prime out. Time is hurtling towards us at a rate that we didn't even think possible, and I can't believe we're saying that we're almost six weeks away from the March when we promised to be shipping these devices. So we are cranking
as hard as we can. And we
also unexpectedly,
absolutely did not see this come in, completely sold out of current gen passports at our US factory last week. Like, you lot Oh. New listeners bought every

(11:07):
single one. Wow. We kind of thought when Prime was announced that the sales were gonna peter off for the current gen because people just wanna wait for the Prime. It's been the opposite. They skyrocketed.
I can see that. Yeah. So to be clear, just so there's no confusion here, we're sold out at our US factory for roughly the next three weeks while we produce some more. We do still have stock with our European distributor, Bert, from Bitcoin Brabham, who's based in the in The Netherlands.

(11:36):
So if you're a you're gonna purchase and you're within the EU where Bert would be fulfilling all of those orders for us, then there'll be no delays whatsoever. You'll have it shipped next day as normal. Nice. If you're from any other part of the planet where we would traditionally ship from our US factory, there's gonna be up to a three to four week delay. So that would be UK as well then? UK included. Yep. Since Brexit. Yeah. Yeah. Working hard to ramp up production to get those back in stock, but, kind of blindsided us a little bit, to be honest with you. We,

(12:06):
we just weren't expecting them to sell at such a rate of not. So good problem to have. And, hopefully, once we've built that stock back up again, we'll be able to monitor that a little bit better and not be out of stock at any point in the future. So it's it's good to see that the existing one hasn't been kind of bastardized by the the new product coming in, and we plan to sell these side by side for the foreseeable as well. It isn't the case of one replacing the other, so they are kind of brother and sister within our product suite. Yeah. I can see that. Like, I would always have the two of them because they're just kind of slightly different use cases Mhmm. For me at least, and I can see that. And and then you probably, like, from bringing the new one out and people have seen that, they're probably then it's been a bit of a marketing exercise of, like, they've always already built this already really good, and people might not have seen it. So Yeah. Well, that's good. Yeah. Absolutely. Bear with us. Kind of three to four weeks, we're working hard to get those back in stock. We're just waiting on the global supply chain to send some parts over to the factory in The US and get those, built up. We did also tease

(13:08):
something new
or a little twist on something
current, should I say, that's coming
after we re up on the the passport, as you know and love, in the usual shape and form that it takes. We're gonna be doing another run. It's still a passport, still a batch two. It just has a little bit of a twist to it. If you're listening to this thinking

(13:32):
maybe I should wait in case, you know, this one's more powerful or this one has new features, that is absolutely not the case. Internals are gonna be the same. Functionality is gonna be identical. Form factor is gonna be identical. Yeah. Just a little twist just to cater to
other tastes.
I already know what it is. I'm sure most people do. We've spoken about it many times on the podcast. So Yeah. I don't wanna give too much more away because I'm gonna get myself into trouble. But safe to say, I am very excited

(13:59):
for this. Very exciting indeed. That will be when the new sock comes
back,
then we'll be able to order this. Yeah. Yeah. You'll have plenty of notice. Don't worry. It's probably gonna be a couple of months at least by the time we've got the parts in and Okay. You know, produce them. I was very excited about that.
It only took me nearly four years of internal partitioning.

(14:22):
I know. I know how long it worked. Just goes to show if you moan enough, you can get where you want in life. That's it. Persistence pays
is the phrase.
Indeed. Okay.
That's it for AOB. Should we hit the news? Yeah. Let's get into it. The Human Rights Foundation has now successfully awarded all 11 Bitcoin development bounties.

(14:42):
So this started in
2023
when they launched, like, a bounty program, essentially, where they saw 11,
areas within Bitcoin where they wanted to see, you know, something was lacking, and all they wanted to see something built and developed. So Mhmm. The HRF ponied up and basically just put a bounty on each one to incentivize some devs

(15:04):
to go and build it, basically, and build it such that they're gonna get paid for it at the end. Some really cool stuff to come out of this. Bitcoin Design Guide has been open sourced. We've got serverless PayJoin, which we spoke about last week or the week before, end to end encrypted Gnostic group chats, silent payments in a mobile wallet, more on that later, human readable BTC offers, that was claimed by somebody affiliated with Zeus, self custodial mobile lightning addresses was claimed also by Zeus.

(15:34):
Mobile border wallets from friend of the show MTC and SPA. Nice. Easy mobile multisig by Bitcoin Keeper. Frost multisig by the Stack Wallet guys.
Bit 47 expansion was claimed by BlueWallet. So there's been some cool shit come out of of these incentives.
And, yeah, the I guess the news piece here is that they've successfully awarded all of them now. Nice. Meaning that the end products have been or the end goals have been met by each one such that the bounty can be released. So successful exercise, and they gave away,

(16:07):
two, four, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Gave away, like, 16 or 17 Bitcoin. Wow. So we're not talking about chump change here. Like, this, you know, this, you know, significant amounts of money here. So, hopefully, if they've still got some money coming in, we would love to see them do something like this in the future and and incentivize more cool stuff to be built. MTC can eat again now. That's good to hear. Yes. Seems that way. Yeah. They got 2 Bitcoin for that one. Wow. Well, actually no. Sorry. Sorry. That wasn't given to MTC. It was awarded to Bitcoin Tribe Wallet developers.

(16:40):
Oh, actually, that is from the guys at
Bitcoin Keeper. I'm sure that's a spin off of
So hold on.
How
does SPA and MTC
get anything?
To my knowledge, no. Because that that bounty, the way it was worded was that we think border wallets are incredibly cool. Yeah. We want to see them integrated into a mobile wallet solution. And how would you integrate

(17:06):
that into a mobile wallet solution? What like,
what's the Bitcoin Tribe wallet is. I I admittedly, I've never tried it. Okay. But, yeah, it's there. It's available, and you can use it. I have to give that a go. I think it's a massively underrated project. Not that people don't know about it, but I just think, like, of all the things that I've seen over the last few years where I'm like, that's really cool and clever, and you can get very tricky with it if things get a bit

(17:34):
if things get a little bit scary out there,
I think that's something that people should potentially lean into. It's it's very, very useful.
Absolutely. I I think one of the main problems that project has had and probably remains to this day is it's
not easy to understand.
Yeah. So people might look at it, look at the website, and think, fuck. It just looks too complicated without fully understanding what it can do for them, which I guess you could say is true of a lot of things in Bitcoin.

(18:03):
Yeah. Should we give a little rundown of what it is in case anyone new is listening and they're like, what the fuck is it? I I don't know that I'm gonna do the best job, but I'll try.
It's a way you could have, like, a grid map
of all of the, whatever it is, 2,048
words
out on a sheet,
and then you could overlay an image

(18:25):
or a pattern
that would help you to remember or see those words. So for example, you can have a a grid as, like, an a four sheet of paper, and then you have a smiley face, and that would be like I number one, I number two. That's two different words. And then the smile runs along the next
however many words, like, next 10 words if it's 12 word wallet. And then you could keep those two things separate.

(18:52):
You could cross a border.
You could redownload
the border wallet number because they change
it depends which one you download. And then you could just overlay that smiley face when you get to your new destination, and then you could recover that wallet. Nicely done. Does Does that sound about right? Yeah. Yeah. It it does indeed. Obviously, you're explaining it to somebody who's kind of fairly,

(19:15):
familiar with it. Oh,
okay.
That too. That too. But, yeah, it it can be I I think this is one of those things where you have to, like, see it in front of you. So if everything that Mark just said kind of lost you, just go to borderwallets.com,
and they've got a great kind of introduction to it. It's also in Spiro as well, which I think is pretty cool. Is it? Okay. Mhmm. Do you know the other thing as we're talking about different ways to secure seats? I went back through

(19:45):
yesterday because I had a bit of time because we hadn't recorded any episodes for a few days. And I was like, oh, I don't have any editing to do. What can I do? Went back through your material
on the foundation website of the setup guides for the passport
just because I've got nothing better to do in life.
I really like this backup
micro SD.
And when you first spoken to me about it, I was like, no. No. No. It's okay. I don't like it. I don't like relying on the fact that there's something electronic. Because anything that's electronic that's mine is definitely gonna break, so fuck that. I don't like it. Once I went back through that video, I was like, actually,

(20:21):
you can make multiple copies of this thing Mhmm. Very quickly.
You can have all of your, whatever you call it, BIP 85
child seed stuff, account things,
all saved alongside
it. I was thinking it's so much better than having your seed
just on a seed plate In plain to it. Down somewhere because yeah. Exactly. Then someone can see it. They can take a picture of it or whatever.

(20:46):
That puts you at massive
risk. And then so if you don't want that, it's like, okay. Well, you can maybe split the seed, and then it's like, yeah, but that's still not actually as secure.
So, actually,
on reflection,
I'm wrong.
It is better to do that, but do multiple copies and have them obviously in in multiple locations.
And then, yeah, it's probably worth having it stamped in steel or something as well, but that to be in a very, very, very difficult

(21:15):
to get to fucking buried 10 foot underground
somewhere,
you know, that you just
somewhere that you'd get to if you absolutely fucking had to, the end of the world had happened and somehow all your micro SDs had gone.
But other than that,
it's better. And I think people should probably think about using that feature if they're using a passport.

(21:36):
Massively, massively underrated.
And Yeah. Basically, what you just said is exactly how I explain it to all of the the concierge clients when I do the onboarding.
It's like seed words are beautiful. They are the universal standard. They are what prevent you from ever being locked into a specific vendor hardware wallet or even the software wallet on your phone.
But you write them down in plain text, so that makes them very hypersensitive piece of information.

(22:01):
Anybody who sometimes takes a photo of them,
memorizes them, steals them, can basically just go and restore your Bitcoin elsewhere. So you only want one copy of that for most people.
Yeah. You want that
really safe, really secure, and away from anybody that you don't have the maximum amount of trust in, but then you're like, okay. Great. Well, what happens if some something happens to that seed or it's buried in the backyard and I get a knock on the head? And I figured that where I buried it. These encrypted backups allow you to be a lot more liberal liberal with creating loads more redundancies. You can have, you know, I don't know, three different SD cards, one at your parent, one at your siblings, one with a friend, safe in the knowledge that if any of those locations become compromised

(22:41):
or those people go rogue and try to steal from you, they gain absolutely nothing because all they've got is an encrypted SD card that's entirely useless to them Yeah. Because you intentionally have not given them the 20 digit backup code, you know, the password, essentially.
Mhmm. And then on the flip side to that, you can be just as liberal with your 20 digit backup code, you know, one with another friend, another sibling, shit, even your iCloud account or your Google backup or something like that would be important. Again, safe in the knowledge that if any of those locations become compromised, all that person learns is a 20 digit code that's completely useless to them because they physically need to go to your house or wherever you keep your SD card, put them together, and know what to do with them. So you can have loads of redundancy

(23:25):
from like, you could have multiple
life changing disasters
Yeah. Happen all at the same time and still not lose access to your Bitcoin if you deploy something like that kind of made up scenario I just mentioned? It's a much, much better option. I do I still would want the still backups as, like, an absolute
fucking disaster recovery. There's some sort of solar flare, and it fucks with all everything that's got a chip in it, and it

(23:49):
and
it wipes everything. And so you still want that as like a backup, but they're much easier to hide. You know, you could easily have a micro SD hidden somewhere with a friend or family member, and they don't even know, so you don't even have the risk.
They're easy to move around different places if you're traveling as well because you can be in a camera. It can be whatever. You know, it's encrypted anyway, so it's, like, it's really, really good rather than trying to write some words down or do any of the stuff that people do. Yeah. I really like it. The only thing I thought was,

(24:21):
with the code, it might be worth if someone isn't already doing it to make, like, a little,
like, a little steel plate
for the 20 digit code. Might be quite nice because you're using numbers rather than letters.
Like, you know, there's mini ones that people are doing. That could be cool. Yeah. Anyway, I digress. But I was wrong. I'll admit I was wrong.

(24:45):
That's fine. It's okay to be wrong every now and then. Speaking of, iCloud, actually, the UK government has ordered Apple to create a backdoor for encrypted iCloud accounts
worldwide.
Yeah.
Apple has received a secret order from the UK Home Secretary Office requiring the company to provide access to any user data protected by its advanced data protection for iCloud.

(25:08):
So secret that we know about it. Yeah. Indeed. I'm not sure who's leaked this actually. But, yeah, for those that don't know, the advanced data protection is
essentially the end to end encrypted, toggle that you can turn on for your iCloud if you're an Apple fanboy.
Basically, just prevents Apple from accessing any data in your iCloud Drive or your Mhmm. Password manager or whatever or the shit you've got in there.

(25:33):
And, The UK is basically trying to get them to backdoor it, not just for people in The UK, but for everyone
worldwide.
Apple's got a pretty good track record of saying that that's not gonna happen.
It's unclear at the moment as to whether they're gonna bend the knee here, but if, you know, if history was to repeat, then they're not going to. What that would mean for, you know, Apple being able to operate in The UK in that scenario, I've got no idea.

(25:58):
The bottom line here is that if Apple were to do this, you know, if they were to to abide by this, we wouldn't know. Like, it could already be in place because it's all just closed source software. Yeah. My assumption has always been
that it already is in place and that the rest of it is probably theater.
Like, I just I struggle to believe

(26:19):
from what we know from, like, the Snowden case
all those years ago and
everything that we've seen from that.
We're spied on less than we were then. I would think it would have increased
exactly the same way
the eradication of free speech has increased,
control of money, and everything else has increased. Like, everything

(26:40):
has got worse
for freedom
and for privacy.
And then to think one of the largest companies in the world that, like, half of people pretty much use
hasn't been co opted. They haven't got some dirt, blackmail or some bullshit where they they have a trigger where they can say, yeah. We're gonna have access to that. I just don't believe it. I, like, I I use a Mac, and I use it under the assumption that, like, fucking hell. If they really want me, they've got me. Yeah. I I think that's probably a fair kind of way to operate.

(27:13):
I would be
saddened if that were the case. We're never gonna know. But it would make the whole marketing around Apple's
use of advanced data protection for iCloud even more egregious because
the way that that this is marketed is that, like, even we can't see this shit. So if what you just said was true, like, they're just basically lying to your face.

(27:35):
Yeah. But what I mean, surely I mean, all these big corporations and governments do that over and over and over and over again. So you could only
assume that that's what they're doing. And the only way that you could prevent that from happening is to use open source software
that
is reviewed by enough people
and enough eyes on it that you know that you've got yourself covered or you think that it's most likely you have yourself covered otherwise.

(28:02):
And I'm not saying this, like, to have a go at people who use Apple because I fucking use it myself. I'm not like, oh, I'm too cool for school. Like, oh, I only use Fedora, Linux, and blah blah blah and build my own computers. No. I'm a retard. I use Apple. I just don't believe that they're not spying on me. Yeah. Again, good assumption to live your life by.
But not good to to hear that it's being pushed that way in case I'm wrong and it currently is,

(28:26):
happening. And the other the other side of it is if they aren't currently
spying on everyone
and the UK government is pushing them in that direction,
my guess is that Apple wins.
Like, The UK still think they're big dicking, but no one gives a fuck. Like,
no one gives a fuck. And what would everyone, like, what would everyone in London do who sat there with their soy latte,

(28:50):
sat with their MacBook? Like, what the fuck would everyone would go, what? Hold on. You're telling we can't use Apple anymore. They'd all leave.
Yeah. All the money would go. Well, that's already started to happen anyway. We certainly yeah. Quick update on the Tornado Cash developers.
Roman Storm
has,
he's been tried in, in The US. He's petitioning,

(29:13):
the Supreme Court at the moment because the judge
has ordered,
well, both the defense for Storm and the prosecution
to disclose their witness statements ahead of trial
upon request of the government,
which the defense is describing as unprecedented. So, basically, he's gotta give away his
defense strategy,

(29:34):
which isn't the norm, so I'm led to believe. Yeah. But in fairness, the judge has said the prosecution's gotta do it too.
However Right. Under the Federal Crime Procedure Rule 16, the defense must only provide
names of expert witnesses on their statements ahead of the trial if it has asked the prosecution to do the same.
If the defense does not move the prosecution to

(29:55):
disclose its expert witness, the defendant's expert
witnesses may also remain undisclosed too, which I can only presume is the case here. Mhmm. But the judge is, basically, the judge is
can only presume is the case here.
Mhmm. But the judge has basically ordered them both to say, no. Show your cards. Okay. Which,
the fact that he's filing for a petition to kind of veto this tells me that, you know, his defense thinks that it would weaken his arguments in court by having to disclose it all ahead of time. And, evidently, they haven't asked the prosecution to do the same either. So it seems like the judge has kind of gone rogue here. Again, I'm not a US Law Expert,

(30:32):
but,
here we go. A quick quote. In Storm's case, the prosecution asked the court to order reciprocal
disclosure
absent of any mesh request made by the defense. A misapplication of the law, the defense argued, pointing to Storm's right to preserve the confidentiality
of his defense strategy, which the judge dismissed as, quote, gamesmanship

(30:52):
and parlor tactics.
Very strange.
That is very strange.
And a quick update on the other Tornado Cash developer, Alexei Pertsev. He's now been released
from his detention
ahead of trial. So he's actually, you know, using air quotes here free at the moment to kind of be at home and prepare for his trial properly,

(31:17):
which I guess is good from a temporary perspective. Yeah.
Doesn't, you know, change the turmoil that he's going through, but at least he can be with his friends and family whilst he's kind of
kind of, you know, mounting his defense battle here.
I forget where he's been tried. Yeah. He's been tried in in The Netherlands, isn't he? Yeah. Mhmm. But at least he's home for now.

(31:39):
Oh, quick PSA. I should have included this at the top of the show, but
Robosats has migrated
its domains.
They will all be linked in the show notes.
But the impetus for this is that the original maintainer
of Robosats, which goes by Reckless Satoshi,
has basically just been MIA for several months.
So the community

(32:00):
has kind of come together to say, okay. The original onion address where the default way to access Robosats
has been down.
You were able to access that if you self hosted your own front end, maybe on, like, a start line or something like that, or you could go to one of the the front ends of one of the multiple coordinators that are available as well. But this is just basically, again, a a coming together of the community. Say, okay. Here is where the documents live now. Here is where, you know, the default

(32:30):
kind of front end, Onion address is. So no change to the way it operates or anything like that or even to any of the coordinators.
It's simply just that they've kind of had to migrate away from the overall control of the the initial maintainer because you seemingly just
got off the record. Yeah. Stepped away, which I don't think is a bad thing.

(32:50):
Yeah. I've got, a little bit of news. Apparently, there is a scammer,
posing as Ashigaru
on Twitter and maybe on Nosta as well just for people to be aware.
A scammer account or a scammer website or both? A scammer account, I believe.
So if you just follow the links to Ashigaru in any of our shows, you'll find the correct one. But, yeah, just be aware because I don't think the Ashigaru

(33:17):
team have any social media presence,
like, the actual real team. So if you see someone out there with some social media presence as Ashigaru,
they are scammers.
Nice. Maybe we'll get Jordan to include the link direct to their website as well so people can They're scammers. Yeah.
Yeah. As long as we get paid. Yeah.

(33:37):
Mister Mele from,
Argentina has been caught with his pants down shilling a a meme coin.
Apparently, he he he did a promotional tweet of a meme coin Mhmm. Called Libra
Okay.
Which
subsequently rose to a $4,400,000,000
market cap before tumbling

(33:59):
by 95%
the following day. Brilliant. And you've got the president of a company
of a country tweeting about it. That's amazing. Insider's pocket, 87,000,000.
Melee deleted his original promotional tweet and revealed that he wasn't aware of its details.
Course you were. Why would why would you tweet it in the first place?

(34:23):
Amazing.
Fair enough. I'd like with all this stuff, though, I just go,
have people not learn?
Like, come on.
Come on every single time. Just stop buying this stupid shit
just because someone tweets it, whether they're
president of America or
whether they're Millet or whoever they are. Just fucking stop it.

(34:47):
Little quote here. Libra, the the meme coin, rose by more than 2000%
in forty minutes following his tweet. Good.
I'd have loved to have been an insider. Or, you know, they're like country, and you you think about it. You go, like, it's really bad. Like,
you know, taking money off people who are obviously
not that smart, and they're putting their money into these things, and you're then profiting, and that's really gross. But at the same time, I'm like, fucking hell. 2000% in forty five minutes. That'd be nice, wouldn't it? Not a bad, racket if you can get in on it. Yeah. So if anyone's listening and they are thinking of making some shitty meme coin with some president of a country and they're gonna pump it by 2000%, just let me know. I'll, I'll back it in some queue.

(35:30):
Last piece of news,
ending on a positive.
The Czech Republic
has completely
eradicated
capital gains tax on Bitcoin if you hold it for more than three years.
More than three. That's very good. No CGT.
Cool.
I like that very much.
Yeah. Pretty good. So if you're, a Czech HODLer,

(35:51):
congrats.
Yeah. What difference that makes? Like,
not having the cap gains just makes this we were talking about it last episode, weren't we? Like, how it makes it difficult to use and peep well, peep a lot of people will be scared to use it because of all the issues, and you've always got to do the calculations and blah blah blah blah. But just introducing something like that would make a massive difference to any system there. You probably see some people moving there for these reasons.

(36:17):
Yeah. Agreed. I'm sure there was a an additional carve out in this ruling as well where it was something like
you don't need to report
Bitcoin transactions on the 4,000
of the local currency as well.
Okay. To find the euro or the Czech Republic? Do you know what? I I'm embarrassed to say I don't know whether they're in the euro or not.

(36:39):
I thought they were. No. They can't be because if they were, they wouldn't probably be allowed to do it. They might be in the EU, but I don't think they use the euro, do they? May yeah. Maybe it's that. But then there are, like, Portugal did a no cap gains thing. That's true. There are other European
countries that do it and then draw talent into the country.

(36:59):
So
I don't know. And they use the euro Portugal. So
Czech Republic. Yeah. They've got their own currency called the kuruna.
Okay.
Are they in the EU? Let's fact check ourselves live, shall we? Yeah. I feel like they are, but maybe they don't use the currency.
Christine Lagarde would be very upset.
I don't know when this hang on.

(37:23):
The joys of Eddy's Europe's so fucked, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, we're we're probably in no position to judge in The UK, but yeah. No. No. We're fucked. I mean, I take that as an absolute
given. That is like, we're probably more fucked, but but, like It
is an even though.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's so shit. It's sad, really, because, like, there are some great parts of Europe and really beautiful places

(37:48):
and cultures and stuff, and you just sort of look around and go, oh,
if things are as bad as they look and if things are as bad as they are in The UK,
oof. Indeed.
Probably buy that Bitcoin stuff, I reckon, in case it all goes bad. Might be worth a shot. Yeah. Right, mate. Should we hit some boosts? Yeah.
I'll let you kick off the first one because I have zero idea how to say that name.

(38:17):
Poe
jam
Meeze.
That's the unpronounceable cunt. You know? Oh, really? Well, yeah, I I would agree with that judgment.
Yeah. They've changed it back. They're trying their luck again. So
Po Jan
Meeze, the unpronounceable
cunt, sent
24,300
sats

(38:37):
Thank you. With no message.
Is that no message? There's no message. Indeed. Either that or Jordan's fucked up. Oh, well. Do you know what? That guy I've just gotta say this. He's getting so demanding.
Oh, god. Like, we'd literally press record. So last time I was recording
was with Spencer.
We're mid recording, and my phone's fucking buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. Oh, what is this? Just check that, like, the kids are alright.

(39:01):
Open it up, and it's Jordan. Send me the file. Send me the file. I need the unedited file, please. I'm like, oh, fuck off. I'm still I haven't even recorded it yet. And guess what he's doing now? I've already got it. I've got these GIFs coming through of someone, like, just going, what the fuck?
Why have I not got my stuff yet? Just sending it to me now as we record. I spoke did we not, tell him that we we were recording late today? No. I did. He just he's forgotten.

(39:26):
Ah, okay. It's the Canadian
brain fluff. So so we are. Expatriotic
with zero point one three two XMR,
and then we've got a Slash0.396
XMR. I'll take it. You might have sent it through? Yeah. He sent it twice. He sent it while he was messaging me. And just before you read the, the XMR boost, I just want to say,

(39:47):
he has been working really hard recently on a load of guides. He's doing an Ashigaru guide and a few others. So if you haven't already checked him out, you really should do. He's doing some good work. Yeah. The the Ashigaru is in the show notes. I've already got that as a talking point later. So if you if you wanna read that,
have a scroll down. Good. And he said, ask XMRChat to let us put in XMR amount rather than fiat.

(40:11):
I paid with my monero.com
wallet.
Please change the name to not be a URL.
Shield my blog xpatriotic.me.
Done.
Trying to do shit and get shit done. No more fiat work. Well hats off to you sir. It's good to see you. We're cranking out those guides. I have no idea what he's on about by saying please change the name to not be a URL. But

(40:35):
Yeah. I don't know what he means by that, but I know what he means by he wants to be able to pay in XMR amounts,
not dollar amounts. Do you know when we read it, it tells us the amount in XMR?
Mhmm. But when he wants to pay, it says, like, how many dollars do you wanna send? And he doesn't want to and he doesn't wanna denominate things in dollars. He wants to be like, I wanna send 0.2

(41:00):
or whatever. But nobody knows offhand how much zero point two XMR is. X Pankajosic does. How much 0.015893
Bitcoin is? Like, just put $10.
Does. He's a beautiful mind. He's like Rain Man. You can throw any beautiful mind, but I think he might be on the autism spectrum with Ben. Oh, for sure. For sure. We can test him. Maybe we'll test it. Next time I speak to him, I'll just throw a random number, a zero point, and then, like, five numbers after it, and I'll see if he gets the conversion rate right at that time, the spot price at that time.

(41:33):
Look forward to it. Late stage Huddl with 15,000
sats.
Max saying
z in his gay
American voice cracks me up every time. I was listening in the grocery store, and someone looked at me as I just uncontrollably
laughed for a second.
Aubergine,

(41:53):
question mark. Never heard of her. Seriously, I appreciate
that as I've always heard eggplant and never aubergine.
Also, only heard of capsicum.
Maybe one other time. It's still a pepper here in The USA.
Speaking of groceries,
when you go to the store,
do you push the shopping cart

(42:15):
or buggy
or just use a bath? No. Use a trolley, don't you? Trolley. Yeah. None of the above. None of the above. You use a trolley.
And if if you're gonna get pissed, you could get trolley'd.
Yeah.
Yeah. English is a wonderful language.
It is. It is. Yeah. Do you like how I do z now?
Z. Yeah. I mean, the Americanisms

(42:38):
have got a weird way of, like, worming their way into your life, haven't they? I suppose you and I are exposed to it more than the average Brit by, obviously, you working with John,
obviously, me working at a US company. Like Yeah. Yeah. I I put zeds everywhere now, unfortunately. Or zs. Sorry. But I actually say z.
And I think what really tipped me over the edge is when I do the foundation.xyz

(43:01):
ad read. And then, you know, I made that song where it's like Yeah. Foundation.xyz.
And then it really got into my head, and now I can't say xyzed. It has to be x yz.
I'm glad it makes you laugh.
Anon boosted with 6,666
sats.
Wasn't going to boost, but then you mentioned the address checking feature of Passport, so I changed my mind. Keep it up. Yeah. You're very welcome, and thank you for the sats. Another one of my favorite features of of Passport alongside the encrypted backups. I wonder if they've done that boost because they didn't know it was a thing, and then they tested it. Or they just love it so much that they've gone, yes. I'm gonna send you some stats. Yeah. Maybe

(43:43):
before now, they've just been doing the max
verification method where Actually physically type it out. Yeah. They they get a typewriter.
They type in b,
and c and one
and q
and then do a visual
you will enjoy this. I did that on

(44:04):
Friday
when I was connecting
Sparrow
to one of my nodes that had gone down, and I fixed it again.
And I manually typed it all out again. Oh, Max.
Yeah. I know. But it worked. You know? I got it working.
So Just took three hours. It just took three hours. Yeah. Jesus.
I don't know.

(44:25):
Shadowy badger
with 5,000 sats.
Awesome episode.
Appreciate the free samurai callout.
Why
is the e f f supporting other devs, but not samurai and t dev?
Perhaps once a month, you guys could summarize the situation, example,
upcoming court dates, etcetera, to help keep things at the top of the mind for everyone.

(44:50):
There is so much noise.
This matters.
I totally agree with you, mate. I feel like we kind of cover things as they come up. Yeah. Anytime there's any pushback to dates or anything like that, it's it's we've covered everything.
Yeah. I like to think that we do. Oh,
a few people have been reaching out asking for free samurai hoodies and T shirts.
We've

(45:11):
I won't go into the whole fucking story, but we've had an absolute nightmare with our printing. We no longer
have access to the same quality of printing that we had previously.
I refuse to drop the quality. And so
while I try and find
a solution,
we can't sell any more T shirts and hoodies. But,

(45:32):
anyone who wants them, they can actually reach out, and we'll put them on a waiting list and all of that because those, free samurai hoodies and T shirts people are hungry for all the time. So sorry about that, but we are working on it as as fast as we can. Love to hear it. This one's got no names. I think Jordan screwed up again, but it's January.

(45:54):
How big of a risk is RFID
leakage from hardware wallets in computers and phones
for a transaction
where all the hardware is nearby.
I'm referring to IoT
devices, particularly as well as Windows and Mac computers. Yep. As as well as Windows and Mac computers that might be able to sniff the RF leakage

(46:16):
from devices in the same room or nearby.
Love the technical aspect of this show.
You think you've just taken the technical aspect of the show to the next level, whoever you are? I was just thinking that.
I'll jump on this one, mate.
I don't
know.
Distinctly put. Yeah.
My my TLDR is is the same. However, I'll try and elaborate.

(46:39):
With stuff like this, I always like to refer back to
when you when you know what? Look. People love to get tinfoil hat ish, don't they? Big time. And and, you know, it pays to
be paranoid, especially in in Bitcoin. I get that. And, you know, I subscribe to that notion. But I always like to come back to how many
real world exploits of this type have we seen documented.

(47:03):
To my knowledge, I don't know of any in the time that I've been in Bitcoin. Now, obviously, that's not to say that it isn't possible or isn't there isn't some minute risk somewhere. But would it be in the top 10 things I I would worry about when it comes to practice in self custody?
Not even close.
What does RFID stand for?

(47:24):
Radio
frequency
you're gonna make me Google it, aren't you?
Yeah. Radio frequency identification.
Basically, it just means, like, most good hardware wallets like Passport, they're they're offline. They don't have any Wi Fi, all that sort of stuff. What he's referring to here is that if you've got a particular device that when you press a button on a a hardware wallet,

(47:48):
it will you know, it it sends a signal down
a a computer chip and, you know, that emits a very, very faint
kind of electromagnetic
signal of some sort. And I know I'm butchering the terminology here. I'm not an engineer. But what he's saying is, could you get devices that are able
to eavesdrop on that traffic,
interpret it so that they can I don't know? If they see start to see a pattern so that they can say, oh, okay. Well, we see this pattern. That's probably him entering his PIN into his hardware wallet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, we can work out that it's you know, it might be the combination of numbers.

(48:23):
Like, is that theoretically possible?
Probably.
Is it realistic?
Probably not.
You'd need specific equipment. You need to be close to wherever you're interacting with your hardware wallet. There are easier ways. You'd need to be exposed to it for a long time. And even then, like, let's say in that scenario that you get okay. We think we know his PIN. You still gotta go and get the device.

(48:46):
Well, that's it. So you can skip that whole RFID
fucking having a van outside and sniffing and checking and waiting, and they put their PIN in, which they do. Yeah. I mean, literally,
that you skip all of that and you go tell me your fucking pin or you're gonna be in so much pain. Like, the the almost always people are gonna go for it because it's just an unnecessary step because you've got the hardware wallet. I'd be more concerned if it was like, you're not using hardware,

(49:13):
and then somehow it leaks your password, and then someone can remotely access your phone or laptop somehow. I mean, this is all fucking pie in the sky stuff, but it's online, whereas your hardware wallet is offline. So even if you have that information, you have to physically have access to the thing. Exactly. So maybe it's maybe for, like, software wallets, it could potentially be a risk, but, yeah, I've never heard of it ever being a bigger thing. Right. But then you should just be using the right tool appropriately. Like, don't have your life savings on a hot wallet. Yeah. Well, loads of people would argue the other way. They're like, I've I've so many people have argued with me. Oh, yeah. It's absolutely safe and because it's sandbox and blah blah. And I'm like, not for me. It's not for me. Not for the sake of a couple hundred quid of hardware,

(50:01):
which is specifically designed
for exactly this type of stuff and to be idiot proof and
for for checking you know, like we're saying, like, verifying addresses and all the cool extra features it gets. It's like, if you've got your life savings on here, unless you've really not done that well in life, $200
is not gonna be the vast majority of your savings.

(50:23):
Mhmm. It should be a smaller amount of your savings, and you need it to have peace of mind. It's worth it. Absolutely.
So focus on the basics.
Get your backups in place. Use a hardware wallet. Look into passphrases and multisig if you're concerned about a single device.
Look into encrypted backups.
Don't tell people that you've got Bitcoin.

(50:43):
All of the usual stuff. Like, that is all of those are much bigger foot guns than somebody using RFID leakage to work out your PIN on your hardware wallet. Like, you you've already gotta listen to the history of this show. Like, it's almost every other week at the moment that I say, oh, you know, there's been another kidnapping in Thailand, and somebody's had their fingernails broken off. Like, that is Yeah. Although it sounds horrifying, that is much easier to pull off than somebody

(51:07):
doing an RFID attack on your hardware wallet. Definitely.
That's just made me think of something. You know, when your new device comes out, you're gonna have, like, a password manager and all that kind of stuff. Well, to be yeah. So as you cut in, the password manager won't be at at launch. That won't be one of the core apps. Fucking hell. You do you guys do no work. Absolutely ridiculous. Move shut with our feet at the moment.

(51:30):
When it
comes, will you be able to
encrypt
micro SDs
on that device?
As an example,
you've got your backup
of your 12 or 24 words. Right? You've done that on a micro SD. You've done that on the passport.
You've got your 20
digit code. You've got that stamped somewhere or separate. Okay? So you've now got two separate locations and probably redundancy, so it's four separate locations.

(51:58):
Could you, with this new device,
type in your passphrase
into that device
and create an encrypted backup
of
that passphrase
to be stored
somewhere
using the same code or a different code if you wanted,
or does it have to stay on the device?
I I gotta be honest, mate. You lost me there. What are we trying to back up, and where are we trying to put it? You've got your 12 or 24 words,

(52:24):
and you have a passphrase.
Okay. You've dealt with the backup of the 12 or 24 words. It's not an encrypted micro SD card. You've got your 20 digit code, which is in separate locations.
Done. Right? Happy with that. Now you wanna back up your passphrase.
You might not wanna keep it in your head because Yes. You might get your head bashed in, and Mhmm. People will get it out of your head. So you might want it to be somewhere separate rather than stamping that into steel. You could

(52:53):
either have it on this new device
or
you could have it on an encrypted micro SD. And what I'm asking is, with the new device, would you be able to encrypt
a micro SD
card with your passphrase
using that device?
I don't see why not. I mean, it's just a user provided

(53:14):
password. So, yeah, I don't see why we wouldn't be able to achieve that. Because you can't do it currently unless I'm missing something on the current passport. You could only
yeah. And so then to encrypt to micro SD, you'd have to use a separate device, and that would have to be a phone or a laptop. Yeah. They're connected to the Internet, and then that has its own issues and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. So I was just thinking, like, that might be a cool way to store a passphrase,

(53:40):
which currently is a little bit more technically
there are, like, questions around there. I would be worried to do it because
I wouldn't be comfortable using my fucking MacBook that's probably being spied on. Right. Yeah. Okay. No. That that makes sense. Obviously, we'd need to kind of have a bit more of an offline conversation to iron out the details to make sure I fully understand it, but anything's possible with enough, with enough, dev hours.

(54:05):
Okay.
Pies
with 420
sats.
V for v,
mushroom, strong-arm,
you British
fucks,
exclamation mark. America
equals
gold, number one.
UK
England
equals

(54:25):
shit emoji.
Thanks, mate.
Yeah. Thanks, Pies.
You missed one out, so I'll go back and do the last one.
Wartime,
333
sats.
This is referenced in our conversation on the last show, talking about my idea well, I say my idea. Something that popped into my head. I'm not saying it was a unique idea. Somebody's probably thought of it before about,

(54:45):
locally hosted AI
chain analysis.
I liked that. WarTime said, Blitz Wallet has a ChatGPT
built in, and you can pay for the API use per query with Bitcoin.
It is made by one of the late Satoshi crew named Blake. It's the only way I will use ChatGPT,
and it's super convenient. I just whip out my phone, pull out the wallet, and ask a question, and it's done.

(55:07):
That's pretty neat. That is cool. And we're big fans of late Satoshi.
So Yeah. Blake, if you're listening,
or wartime, if you listen to this, give him a nudge and get him to maybe
jump on a call with me or something. Record where we can record, like, a little bit of info on it, and we can post that out. I think that's cool. Absolutely.

(55:28):
Finally, thank you to all of the streamers. As always, we love seeing your one and two sat stream in. Special mentions for Cas Peeland,
Vaultbite,
We All Eat, and Pleb two Polymath.
Love to see the amount of people,
doing the the streaming by minute.
Rising. So, yeah. Thank you very much, guys. Really appreciate it. Very nice. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, mate. Big long list of updates and releases,

(55:55):
for today's show. Should we shall we, jump into it? I won't go into too much detail because we'll be here all day. But, there's some cool stuff here.
First on the list, Proton Wallet is now available to all users on Android, iOS, and in the web.
So
this obviously is Proton,
the email client and drive and whatnot that their suite is ever growing. They've had

(56:17):
a wallet in beta
for what feels like quite a long time now, maybe six months or so. Well, it's now freely available to anyone who is a Proton wallet user. Presumably now when you create the wallet, they're not using the same algorithm, whatever they were before because there was some sort of bug in that. That's right. Yes.

(56:37):
I presume they fixed that. That was some time ago, but, yeah.
Well, I I hope they fix that. You type so. So, yeah, it's now available to to anybody who's basically just wants to get access to it. Obviously, you've gotta be a Proton account holder, but you can get one of those for free. Proton's got a very large user base, so this is pretty cool.
You know, it's it's a fairly simplistic wallet, does all of the the basics, and I believe it's built on top of, BDK,

(57:03):
which is the the open source framework that we use for for Envoy as well. And, you know, it powers many other wallets. So just your standard simple self custodial Bitcoin wallet. All users' transactions, notes, and messages are end to end encrypted as you would expect from a company like Proton.
And I guess the the kind of unique selling point here

(57:24):
is that you can send Bitcoin via email. Obviously, Proton is predominantly an email provider. So you can then send
Bitcoin directly to any of your recipients
just using their email address. So a little bit like Yeah. Kind of lightning address.
I believe as well if they don't have
like, if you send it somebody who's not a Proton user, it will email them a link to go and claim the funds or something like that. But again, I haven't,

(57:48):
I haven't tested that feature. It's one of those features that, like, to us, we just, like, don't care. We wouldn't use it. But to the masses and, like, with their massive user base, it might be nice because it's kind of what they're used to to in a way. It's like, oh, yeah. I can just send this thing by email, and here's a link.
And I can see that people might like that. Yeah. Definitely.

(58:11):
And, if you wanna check it out, just go to wallet.proton.me.
Nice.
Lots of hype about this one last week.
Obscura
VPN has finally,
been released. Well, I say it's been released. It's been released on macOS only currently.
Have you heard much about this one before I go into that? In in loads and loads of Telegram groups that I'm in, I keep seeing it pop up. I've done no research into it at all. But,

(58:35):
yeah, I've seen it talked about very heavily. Yeah. So Obscura is,
a well, I used the quote here. This is their marketing speak. The first provably private VPN that can't log your network activity by design, and it also outsmarts network filters for enhanced
censorship resistance.
Currently available on macOS

(58:56):
with support for other platforms coming soon. So this is, built by a guy called Carl Dong.
Try not to laugh.
That's probably only gonna be funny to The UK audience, I'm guessing.
Yeah. Probably.
Who is a Bitcoin Core contributor,
amongst many other things, I believe.
The difference here, I guess, between
kind of Molvad

(59:17):
and Proton, etcetera, you know, who are the the widely
used kind of privacy preserving VPNs,
is that
Obscura
uses, like, a two hop method, basically.
Mhmm. So what happens is Obscura will
encrypt your traffic and then bounce it through a mobile server as a secondary hop. So it's like a bit like a onion routing

(59:42):
kind of Kind of. Yeah. It's it there apparently, there's a feature very similar to this in the Tor browser with I think it's called, like, one hop routing or something like that. This is a similar thing, but basically, that just doesn't use doesn't use Tor.
So the idea here is that you've got two independent parties that you, you know, unless they collude, they can't really kind of deanonymize you. So the Obscura service can't decrypt

(01:00:08):
the WireGuard packets as they encrypted with the Mullvad service WireGuard public key, and that's a bit in the weeds really. But basically, they're playing each other off against one another. So Mullvad is like the final hop out to the Internet, but they don't know who you are because you don't have, you know, a Mullvad
account. It's just your obscure is rooting through them. So you're kinda, like, separating

(01:00:29):
the the secrets,
so to speak. And, of course, you can pay for it in Bitcoin, via on chain or Lightning as well. Okay.
Any
drawbacks here? Like, is there any reason
after you've looked into it that you would say, just stick to using Molvad, or would you go, no. It would make more sense now to use this? Not really any drawbacks.

(01:00:52):
I guess just it's only on Mac OS at the moment, but I haven't actually tried it yet. Okay. I they are planning on doing an app, but, it's not available yet. So I haven't tried it because, I don't really wanna pay $6 a month to use it on a Mac that I barely use.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. And then, join in then. Fair enough. Mister Craig Ross, back to being prolific again. Three releases,

(01:01:16):
since we last recorded.
Wow. 2.1
o, two point one point one, and two point one point two. Two point one point o was the big one. Loads of additions here. Scrolling down, there's literally like a 50 line entry into all of the updates here. Obviously, I'm not gonna go through them all, but, the main ones would be support for the new J plus hardware wallet over USB,

(01:01:38):
perform native pairing with the Bitbox o two to avoid reliance on a previous external pairing configuration,
optimization for ledger devices,
updates to the lock, which is his USB hardware wallet communication
library, which actually replaces HWi. That's pretty cool. Support for PSP v two
and loads of other stuff as well. And then these two subsequent releases were mainly bug fixes,

(01:02:04):
that cropped up from the the the master release of 2.1
o as well. So Mhmm. Nice to see him back on the release schedule.
What a guy. What a project.
Speaking of prolific,
releases,
Zeus version zero point nine point five has been released. Embedded LND, you can now export the seed in different formats so that you can monitor your LND seed in something like Sparrow, which previously was only

(01:02:29):
enabled to be done by BlueWallet. So that's pretty cool. Mhmm. Improvements to lurker mode, so some privacy improvements.
And then they've also got 9.6,
which also came out, which is just bug fixes again for the the prior release.
What is the thing there's an app that you can use
on Graphene
where if you're downloading by APK

(01:02:52):
rather than downloading by APK, it's like some clever app that
checks
to make sure that you're not downloading something that's
not signed by the correct keys and keeps things up to date so that you don't
run Obtainium. You know what you're trying to say? Obtainium.
That's the one. Do you use it? I do not. I mainly

(01:03:13):
use f droid for apps that are not in,
in the Play Store. Okay. There might be the odd one or two where
I'll just be testing them out, and I'm happy to just go and download
Fine. An APK
one off. Because, yes, Seth was telling me about that Opitanium thing because I was like It's very cool. Yeah. I was like, mate, you've got some real problems with your app here. I'm just gonna go through them with you. Here's some product testing. And I went through a couple of things. He was like, yeah. Yeah. We fixed that, like, fucking six months ago, mate.

(01:03:41):
And I was like,
oh, did you? He was like, what version are you on? And I told him, he was like, yeah. That was, like, six months ago. You need to get Optanium
because you're not you're not keeping things up to date. I was like, alright. I'll fucking ask you about it.
Yeah. No. It's a very cool tool. I should use it really. I I've become a little bit,
because my my one phone is kind of multifunctional
for work and Bitcoin and Yeah. Well, everything.

(01:04:04):
I've become a little bit more reliant on the Play Store, and I'm happy with the trade offs that that that brings with it. But for, you know, absolute kind of privacy and people that only wanna interact with APKs and or F Droid, then Optanium is a great addition. Okay. The Zeus guys have also got version 0.1
in, alpha testing at the moment. There's been three alpha releases in the past week.

(01:04:26):
The big additions here, we've got renewable channels. I've got no idea what that means, but it sounds cool. Nosta wallet connect client support. That's pretty cool. So Zeus is entering the fold with NWC.
What else have we got? Ability to export
your activity as CSV could be useful for those of you doing tax returns, etcetera.
And in the Zeus pay feature, you've got the ability to delete addresses as well. Once again, that's in the alpha release, so so don't go hunting for it if it's your your main daily driver.

(01:04:57):
Seed signer version zero point eight point five has now made it to main release. We covered this a couple of months ago, it feels like now, when it was in testing. And it's the Spanish
release of the SeedSigner
UI. So pretty cool.
Yes. The first multilingual release that they've got, and they've also hinted that subsequent releases,
you know, is is gonna be much quicker to do. I presume, yeah, they're using Transifex there as well. So, yeah, cool to see and getting it into, even more hands as well. So well done, guys. Nice. Envoy version one point eight point six has been released. A bit of a maintenance release.

(01:05:32):
The ATM map provider that we used to use for you to browse all of
the, Bitcoin ATMs in your local area,
the service was shut down, so we've migrated to another one that's powered by OpenStreetMaps.
Same functionality,
just a different provider.
We have just updated the Telegram link. Obviously, we've since closed our community Telegram or closed it to to comment, should I say. It's still active for an update perspective

(01:05:57):
and, linked our new community forum, which if you haven't checked it out, by the way, just head to community.foundation.xyz.
And the last one, this one actually came from a a user where since we've had the buy feature within Envoy, we've also had the option to turn it off. But that
didn't hide the feature as well. It just made it inaccessible,
which annoyed a few people, which is fair enough. So now when you kind of turn off the buy in Envoy feature, if you got no desire to use it, it just removes it from the UI completely,

(01:06:27):
which makes perfect sense. So if you're that user, thank you very much for your feedback.
BISK version two point one point six has been released. This is just a security update
to enhance security for buyers and sellers
to ensure they've got a sufficient reputation score.
It sounds like they have,
found a little bug there. I used to have a problem with that, that reputation thing. Really? Yeah. Like, I had it to start with, and then there was some glitch, and then I we never got to the bottom of it. And then the other thing that Seth was saying to me the other day about BISK, which I just do do this as, like, a warning that if anyone's listening and using BISK, if you're using a BISK token

(01:07:05):
to bring your fees down and whatever else the token does within BISK,
it links all of your trades and all of your transactions within BISK
together.
So from a privacy perspective yeah. Yeah. It's not good, is it, really? And I'd never heard of anyone covering this before. So when Seth said it, I was like, really? Yeah. Yeah. It's really bad. So just a warning there. Like, even if it is saving you some fees,

(01:07:30):
just be careful because it's already kind of clear that you're doing a trade on BISK anyway because the way it's set up. But if you introduce this token on top of it, it's like
you're really making yourself potentially a target. So just a a little warning there. Yeah. Wow. I've never known anybody use those BISK colored coins.
Neither have I, but I just think that people probably must use them. Some people must use them. Yeah. Yeah. There are so many features here on this version. New profile card comes in that basically just gives a summary of your trade partner as well, and you can access that from anywhere within the app. And they've simplified or further simplified the create offer wizard. It's now just been consolidated down to three steps as well, which is good to see. Nice.

(01:08:13):
Bitcoin Keeper version 2.0.1,
big release, new design, mini script integration with various hardware wallets.
The new design here, looks like they've done a great job. And, obviously, they've added support for MiniScript integration, which is pretty cool. One of the first mobile apps to to do so, if not the first, I believe. Mhmm. So if you have a MiniScript compatible hardware wallet of which

(01:08:36):
there's a couple that have them in main release at the moment. I think Bitbox
and Ledger, and then everywhere else, if it's available, it's in kind of like a test firmware. So again, tread carefully, this is new stuff.
But, yeah, this is we've spoken about it before, but it's they've enabled kind of, enhanced
multisig volts
powered by MiniScript so that you can do all of the cool stuff like degrading

(01:08:58):
Multisig and all that sort of stuff. I love that. I don't know how deep the functionality goes yet. I believe it's quite locked down. I think they they're using something called Emergency Key Vaults. Mhmm. So I think that the the MiniScript integration kind of ends there at the moment, but it's great to see that they've started the ball rolling. And I don't doubt that they're gonna vastly
improve that as as time goes on. They've they've certainly started to just that, though. Say again. Even if it was just that, though, the degrading multisig,

(01:09:26):
that is fucking brilliant. That solves a lot of big Yes. We covered this on the last one, but, like, I'm a really big fan of the idea of it if it's technically
possible and not dangerous and if it proves itself out in the wild, that is something where I'm like, yes. That's fucking excellent.
Absolutely. Yeah. So it looks like they're at step. They've in the the link that'll be in the show notes, they've got the road map here as well. So they've got step one, which I presume is now upgraded server key, emergency key vaults, and hardware wallet discounts.

(01:09:55):
The next step moves into time locked vaults, which is probably what we're talking about. Then we've got step three, social recovery.
Step four, guardian roles, family wealth management. So got some grand plans. So stay tuned. Yeah. Pretty cool. Nice. Oh, and they've also updated the desktop app version 0.2
o, which basically just adds all of the same support that we've just spoken about but adds it into the desktop application, which I haven't tried.

(01:10:22):
It's, kind of tough to drag myself away from Spiro, but I suppose there
is a differentiator now with MiniScript. I'm sure it won't take Craig long, but,
Yeah. If you have it done by next weekend, right? Yeah. Chock, chop, Craig.
Aqua Wallet version 0.2.7
has been released.
Some new features here. We've got a different selection of price feeds. You can set a passcode. You can toggle between Bitcoin price, total balance.

(01:10:47):
Some nice usability stuff here as well. A nice,
simple,
normally friendly wallet here, admittedly, with some liquid based trade offs, but I like the way that they've done the UI and their simplicity.
Oh, they've also got new integrations as well with Changelly,
which allows you to do swaps for all of that Tether type stuff if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Peach Bitcoin app has been released to user version zero point five point three, mainly just some bug fixes, remove Firebase Analytics. That's good to see.

(01:11:17):
That's for for Google based notifications.
They've increased their fund limits,
and they've added a warning to never share your seed phrase. Good advice. Nice to see them continue to ship. Yeah. It's been a while. Yeah. So well, I say that the previous release was December 3, so it hasn't been that long. But they've been kind of off my radar for a little bit of time. Yeah. BlueWallet version 7.1.0,

(01:11:39):
they've added support for importing mini keys.
We haven't heard that term before because I hadn't until I've read this. I've never heard of that. Is it something to do with mini script? Or Well, no. It's not. The in brackets after mini keys, they've got Cassacious coins, Satori coin, etcetera.
So I didn't know they operated on a different type of key, or maybe it's just a different naming structure. Who knows? How many people are using those still, though? Yeah. Who knows?

(01:12:07):
I can't I can't imagine as many. Well, I guess with, Bitcoin hovering around 100 k, you know, you might get some early HODLers that have got some cash out
and port the key into BlueWallet. Now they can. Yeah. Bitkit version 1.0.9
has been released.
They have added a fee weather widget and Bitcoin's a fiat calculator.

(01:12:30):
So the fee weather widget, this is a pretty cool concept. It fetches API data on current transaction fees and compares them to monthly and yearly averages
and labels fee conditions as favorable,
average, or poor so that you can get a quick at a glance
kind of
idea of whether it's a good idea to do that transaction you've been putting off for some time. And the Bitcoin's affiliate calculator, yeah, as it says in the tin, gives you users real time accurate conversion rates between Bitcoin and your local currency. And I believe they show that in a graph as well. Everybody loves the graph. Interesting.

(01:13:02):
Yeah. I'm a big fan of their UI. I think I've said this before, but this is a great onboarding wallet bit kit. The the way in which they do it and the speed at which you can get set up is is pretty cool as well. So I'm a big fan of their design.
Ellenbits,
after five years and 8,500
commits, is almost out of beta.

(01:13:23):
Using Benarch's words here, by the way. They're releasing version one in a couple of weeks, which is good to see.
One of my favorite open source projects.
It's just, you know, for for many reasons. Number one, what they enable. Number two, completely open source nature. Number three, you know, loads and loads and loads of different contributors.
Mhmm. And, basically turned your can turn your Lightning node into a bit of a Swiss army knife if you have loads of different use cases. So very cool piece of software that it's been, you know, a joy to see mature. And, yeah, just congratulations to Ben and everybody else involved with, with version one after five years.

(01:14:01):
Yeah. They seem to do a lot. I remember asking coffee, like, so what does it actually do? Like, can you just talk me through it? And he, like, went off with, like, 50 different things. I was like, what does it not do? That's like a that's an easier question.
Yeah.
I I like the summary. I think I think it was Ben that came up with it. It's basically like WordPress
for your Lightning node. Oh, that's good. Yeah. That's a good one. So there's loads of loads and loads of different plugins, and you can kind of choose your own journey and, you know, add little bolt ons to your lightning node that might be a post sale system. It might be a jukebox. It might be a marketplace. Like, there's loads of different stuff, and you can just choose to install

(01:14:39):
whatever you see fit. And it just integrates lovely with your, you know, your existing lightning node such that if somebody uses your point of sale system or if somebody uses your little makeshift ATM or sends you your Lightning address,
it all just is backed by your own node and just happens seamlessly.
New release here, very much alpha mode, so don't go lumping any real funds into this one called Dana Wallet.

(01:15:03):
They've released version 0.4,
which it's essentially a a silent payments proof of concept wallet. I believe these guys were in receipt
of one of the bounties that we talked about at the top of the show. Downloaded it early today. It's a very, very, very basic UI.
But, you know, if you wanna go and play around with silent payments and just receive quickly, you can do so. But I absolutely wouldn't advise you to do so with real funds at the moment. But, again, another project to keep an eye on.

(01:15:29):
Mempool,
not to be confused with mempool.space.
Version one point five point two has been released. So this, for those that didn't hear the first time we talked about this, is kinda like, I guess you could look at it as a mempool dot space app that lives on your phone. You can configure it to talk to your own node, and it gives you all of your mempool
stats or in an app format on your phone just so that you can go and query transactions

(01:15:54):
or look at the hash rate, look at the difficulty,
see how many blocks are in the mempool, all that sort of stuff. Mempal is a an app basically that you can have running locally and connected to wherever you see fit so that you've got, you know, a standalone app to to query all of your nerdy Bitcoin stats. Version one point five point two has been released with updated welcome street

(01:16:15):
welcome screen. They've added hash rate and difficulty adjustments to the dashboard,
and they've modified the auto refresh intervals as well so that you can have it refresh
as infrequently or frequently as you like.
Fountain, the podcast app, version one point one point one six has been released. Now add support for Nosta live streams.

(01:16:36):
So you can go watch your favorite
live stream. Could be, a Bitcoin show. Could be, well, anything, podcasting two point o essentially that communicates over the Nostra framework. You can now watch those natively within the app, which is pretty cool. And, obviously, you can have all of the all of the usual bells and whistles that go with that. So you can comment on the livestream, you can boost the livestream, etcetera. So, yeah, pretty cool. Nice. And they've also added a storage manager as well to allow you to view and delete file storage for audio, video, transcripts, image, basically anything that Fountain is able to store so that you can kind of optimize the performance of stuff as well. Mhmm. Nice. Onto the Nosta shell section. It's just a short one. Primal version 2.1

(01:17:16):
has been released. So this is one of the most popular
Gnostic clients out there, cross platform, available on Android, iOS, and on the web. It has now added Gnostic WalletConnect support,
which is very cool because previously, if you want if Primal was your daily driver, Gnostic client, and you wanted to zap people, you had to go through their KYC wallet integration, which, obviously, I was not a big fan of. Mhmm. But they've now adopted the wider Nosta Wallet Connect so that I can install Primal on my phone and connect that to my Lightning node seamlessly so that when I hit the Zap button within Primal, it takes the funds from my node such that I don't have to go through all of the KYC

(01:17:55):
junk that was previously there. That is still there, I believe. So if you want the easy onboarding and you wanna kinda just use the KYC wallet, go for it. But if you're a nose runner or you have something like Albie Hope or anything like that, then you can connect it directly over an Osterwalek Connect as well. Pretty cool.
Last one of the news,
UTX
Oracle.

(01:18:15):
Have you heard about this one, Mark? So I think you might like this one. Okay. Go on. It's a decentralized alternative to estimating the daily price of Bitcoin.
I think this is
magic,
basically.
It determines
the price of Bitcoin on any given day in the past. Obviously, it can't tell the future. Basically, just by looking at on chain activity.

(01:18:38):
Right. And you might think, wait. How the fuck is it doing that? Basically, they just look at on chain activity, and they can determine with a very high degree of accuracy
what the dollar price of Bitcoin is. How? So UTX oracle prices are accurate as accurate as prices from exchanges. Different exchanges have different prices and therefore, different ways to calculate averages.

(01:19:00):
UTX Oracle finds the average using on chain clusters of payments at round USD amounts,
$20.50,
a hundred thousand dollars, etcetera. This effectively averages all of the prices used by exchanges to make transactions.
Current and historical UTX
oracle prices are tabulated below. Link will be in the show notes. There is a comparison table here, and, basically,

(01:19:23):
the line is identical to the the price line of Coinbase.
We were literally talking about this, I think, on the last episode, weren't we, about saying don't use round amounts
and how to sort of obscure thing. Or maybe it was the episode before last, but it just goes to show it's good enough. People do it enough that this can actually show pricing through Bitcoin's history. Yep. And to be clear, this is this is not for the faint hearted. It's a Python script that you have to run on your computer.

(01:19:50):
But, you know, if you wanna run that, you can. Okay. That's cool, though. I know. I'm sure somebody will wrap it into a UI eventually. But, yeah, it's a very cool concept, isn't it? The fact that you can pull that off. Yeah. Very nice. And, obviously, you know, the benefit here is that if you run that locally and you wanna say, I don't know, what was the price of Bitcoin on x day? Then you can go and do that just by querying your own node. Pretty cool. Yeah. That is nice. Yeah. Just two final pieces before we round out the show. We've already given a shout out to xPatriotic,

(01:20:19):
who has produced an awesome Ashigaru guide. Again, link will be in the show notes. Shout out to him for that. Very comprehensive. Very cool. Also, I wanted to give a shout out to a good friend of the show, Orange Surf, for his work at Menpool Research. Did a very interesting
block size report
kind of piece of research, which again will be linked into the show notes, looking at the historical

(01:20:41):
size of Bitcoin blocks and then looks at some projections as to how and when they might increase in the future.
Very interesting read. Very nerdy. Yeah. But, yeah, well worth checking out. It's a very well written piece. He always produces very high standards of work. I've been, pecking away at him for about six months now. Bit of foreplay trying to get him on the show. Getting close. He's dropping his pants eventually.

(01:21:06):
Well, now I know that, you want him on the show. I'm gonna go and peck his head too. You know what you wanna do, actually? Just put him in search of Ben Gunn. He'll relent in about a day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of outsource the pecking. Yes.
Yeah.
That's a warning to you, mate. If you're not on the show within, let's say,
within the next two months, I'm gonna release the hound.

(01:21:30):
It'll be a big problem for you. You have been warned. Yeah. You have been warned. Right, mate. That brings us to the end of the show. I have no other business. Neither do I. I will see you next week. Does that mean, by the way, let's do some business on air quickly. Mhmm. Does that mean the listeners
are getting another show next week?
Or are you gonna hold it back? Or how's that going? Hold it back because I'm

(01:21:52):
going away for a while
soon, and I'm sort of, like, trying to stack some shows and get them all edited and ready. Police finally caught up with you, did they? Oh, mate. You have no idea.
Problems here. But yeah. So we're trying to keep the schedule as normal, I think, but we're gonna record it early. But my thinking is that next episode will be less

(01:22:16):
focused on news that's kind of, like, matters right now in the moment, and it's gonna be more of a loose conversation with me and you and maybe Ben and maybe coffee. So it'd be a slightly different spin on the Bitcoin brief. That's my thinking. Sounds good. Next week should be easy then. We won't need to say much. Will we have Ben's around? Yeah. Exactly. Ben's around. He'll he'll fill in 95% of it, and and then coffee will have some interesting tidbits that he can throw our way. So we'll just sit with a cup of tea and a coffee and just put our feet up and chill. Sounds good to me. A bit good. In that case, I will see you next week. And, as always, check out p2prights.org

(01:22:53):
and Free Samurai. Yeah. Free Samurai. See you next Tuesday.

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