Sub 1 Sat Summer | THE BITCOIN BRIEF 62 - 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.

(02:01):
You can use Cake Pay within the app to buy gift cards
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.
Good morning.
Bonjour, sir. How are you? Very well. Thank you. We speak almost too often now. It's it's like Yeah. I had that thought. I was like, it seems like I just sleep one night, and I was like, oh, I'm ready to speak to Max again now.

(03:00):
Normally, people need a bit more of a break. They need sort of at least a week between speaking to me just to recover.
It's a good job. I like you. Oh, I love you too, mate.
Gay.
But it is a lot. It's every Friday
and every other
Monday.
Putting in that work? Yeah. How's my audio, by the way?

(03:21):
No. You sound good.
Good. I I've got, like, an actual mic arm. I feel like a real podcaster now.
Nice.
What arm did you go for? Oh, it's nothing fancy. It's just like a Constantina
thing from Amazon. It was, like, £25.
Just means that I don't have to, like, manually drag the cable on the microphone that's on, like, a desk stand across the desk every time somebody wants to speak to me or I record. So first of all problems. Yeah. That's nice. I got one when I bought this Blue Yeti thing that I still record with. I think the whole package with the mic and the arm and all the bits and pieces was a £190

(03:56):
or something like that. That's not bad. Too bad.
It's done me for a fair few years. Considering how often you use it. Busy weekend. How's life? The children are vomiting and shitting. So Ouch.
Something. I don't know what's going on, but a lot of vomit, a lot of shit, crying and stuff. So it's been pretty good. What about you?
Yeah. Very good weekend for me. Fulfilled a a lifelong dream to go and see one of my favorite bands, Oasis, in their hometown of Manchester on Saturday. That was

(04:25):
as corny and cheap as it sounds, it was a dream come true. I've been you know, I never thought I'd see the day that they got back together. For those of you who don't know who they are, probably most of the Americans. Two brothers from Manchester that were, like, the biggest band probably
in Europe, if not the world, throughout most of the nineties. They then had a big spot, broke up, haven't spoken to each other, and then they've kind of kissed and made up probably because they ran out of money and they're doing another tour.

(04:50):
And, yeah, I managed to bag a ticket and went to see him on Saturday in their hometown, and it was rowdy.
I bet it was. That's a nice thing to tick off if that's your favorite band and actually getting to go and do that. That's the things that you spend your sats on. Yeah. And you know, like, sometime when you go to a gig and it's like a a current band and they'll do some old ones and then they'll shoehorn in some new ones that nobody really wants to hear. Like, this was just straight fire start to finish. Like, their back catalog's so big and so well known because they've been established for so long. It was just banger after banger after banger. Love it. Really good. And then yesterday,

(05:27):
I spent most of the day packing for a family holiday, which is coming up on Thursday. So, yeah, it's been a a busy time in the q and a household this last month or so. And
when I get back from holiday, I'm then going to Riga the following weekend for Baltic Honey Badger. So,
lots of travel. I'm a bit of a jet setter at the moment for various different reasons.
Is that gonna fuck us on that Friday as well, the free pizza Friday? Do you know what? Yeah. It it probably will, mate. Well, I'll I'll be able to record because I'll just hole up in a hotel room somewhere. I've got an early flight, so, I should be ready to set up in the afternoon when we're we're ready to go. You could always kidnap someone as well. Find someone that you think would be good for the stream and just kidnap them, bring them with you. That's true. Yeah. I'll have to have a poke around and see who's gonna be there. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good idea. A little mystery guest. Oh, yeah. Should we just, like, get them to speak and then get the first person to, comment in the in the live chat, who is it, and they win 10,000 zaps?

(06:22):
Yeah. Actually, I quite like that. Let's do that. Yeah? Yeah. Okay. I like that. I'll I'll have to remember to do it. But, yeah. What else are we going up soon? Yeah. Lots of travel. Lots of travel coming up. I did a bit of a livestream that was enjoyable with Katie the Russian from CitizenX.
Oh, yeah? You'd be best to find that on Twitter. I think that was sometime last week. All of these podcasts seem to merge into one at the moment. I seem to just be recording every other day. But, yeah, that was good fun. I I learned quite a lot. Obviously, she's very much, entrenched into the camp of flag theory and all that sort of stuff. So that was interesting to get to chat kind of all things Passport with her. And obviously, there's some nice combination of flag theory, Passport, like real life Passport, and then Passport Foundation. And yeah. It it was nice. It was good. Good fun. Just a quick hour, but, it was all good. And finally, very, very happy to say that Passport Core is due to begin shipping today, if not tomorrow.

(07:10):
Oh. We're gonna be ramping up the amount of which we can produce and ship just to clear through the backlog as quickly as I can. Can't see it taking much longer than a week to clear the backlog, after which point we'll have units on the shelf
for people to just purchase and have shipped next day. So we, appreciate everybody's patience. Once again, happy to say that we're we're gonna be shipping those devices, and Prime is not far behind as well. So when people are actually gonna be listening to this, you're probably gonna be shipping Indeed. Because this is gonna be going live sort of Wednesday, probably.

(07:42):
We'll be shipping by then, yeah, by the time people listen to this, which, again, very happy to hear. Yeah. If you are a customer, you'll obviously receive an automated email
with your tracking ID as soon as your unit leaves the factory. And, obviously, we'll be working
through them in the order that of which they were received. So if you've been waiting for much longer for a call, then, you'll be getting yours first. All those stealth goodies gonna be, into people's hands. Can't we see some pictures on the socials? Oh, do you know what I just thought? Before we dive into any news, I don't think anyone's claimed their

(08:13):
SATs from last week's Freedom Tech Friday. We had three
Ah. It's not that they haven't. It's that we haven't said who's won. That's what it was. We ran out of time. We better put that out on the socials and choose three. Because three people each won $50 from cake wallet. So Nice. We'll do that. Let's do that after this recording. We'll choose them. Okay. Sounds good. Yeah. That was a good one. A fun one, Freedom Debt Friday number three. We did a deep dive into

(08:40):
the first news article on today's list, actually. Obviously, I'm not gonna go into too much detail, but just a heads up that the Roman storm slash tornado cash case is now underway in The US. We did a a super deep dive where I'd give a pretty lengthy recap on the state of affairs there on last Friday's Freedom Tech Friday. So if you wanna get all the details there, you can either click the link in the show notes or go ahead and, listen to last week's Freedom Tech Friday, and you'll hear us kind of talking about all of the implications really as to what this can mean for Bitcoin and the wider crypto ecosystem as well because, I feel like not many people are paying attention to this. Yeah. I feel like it's sort of I have to say, like, I've paid a lot less attention to this than the samurai case, but it's all kind of the same. It's different people and there's slight differences. But at the end of the day, it's all the same fight. And just because it's Ethereum, it shouldn't be ignored. Absolutely.

(09:35):
Next on the list, the Genius Act, which is an acronym. I have no idea what it stands for, but g e n I u s,
has been signed into law by president
DJT
on July 18. This one, bit of a nothing burger if I'm being honest, but, I wanted to throw it in because it has implications to the wider ecosystem and potentially could be favorable

(09:56):
to, I guess, the ecosystem but more towards Bitcoin as well. So Genius Act establishes a regulatory framework for dollar backed stablecoins, making a significant step towards positioning The United States as a global leader in cryptocurrency.
The legislation focuses primarily on stablecoins.
It does indirectly benefit Bitcoin and the broader crypto market by creating a more favorable environment for digital asset innovation. Again, a lot of buzzwords there. And to be honest, I think the bigger impact will be the outcome of the samurai case and the tornado cash case. But, again Oh, yeah. This is I like to include positive stuff even albeit

(10:30):
very minuscule levels of positivity
whenever I can here. So, yeah, that one's into law. And I believe the Clarity Act, again, another acronym. That one has passed the house and is now gonna be going to the senate, and that's the one that could be more positive for Bitcoin and the wider crypto ecosystem
because it gives a lot more clarity in terms of regulations,

(10:52):
who's able to certificate and register
under whose jurisdiction the different assets fall under and how do we classify them, etcetera. So similar sort of thing. How many times have you heard
regularly clarity,
like, in every single pod and every news
thing is like, the price will go higher with regularly clarity.

(11:13):
Oh, shut the fuck up. But now you're actually dealing with it and building. You're like, actually, some of it would be quite nice just to know Yeah. Like, can I do this, or am I gonna go to prison? Can I do this, or am I gonna get a massive fine? It would just be nice.
Yeah. So it establishes rules for offering, selling, and trading digital commodities, requiring registration of brokers, dealers, blah blah blah. Decentralized

(11:34):
finance introduces safe harbor provisions to support DeFi protocols
defined as autonomous open source financial applications on decentralized systems. Protects preexisting digital assets with a safe harbor provided issuers meet disclosure and conduct requirements.
Loads more that people can read in the show notes again. So that one's passed the house with a vote, and then I believe it's gotta go to the senate. And I've no idea how challenging it's gonna be to get that passed, but we will see. Next up on the list, don't know if you've checked mempool.space lately, Max. You may or may not see some transactions in there with fewer than one SAP per byte fee rates. Have you spotted that yet? It's mad. I haven't actually seen that specifically, just how low they generally are. And then I've seen people messaging and I think it was TSB where people were getting sub one sat per byte payments through. And it's such a weird thing to experience to be hovering around all time highs.

(12:31):
There's like people buzzing around, but you can still
make payments for like pennies or like less. Like last time, at least when I first got involved, I remember like there being a bit of a post at 2017 or 2019? I can't remember which one it was. 2017 or 2019.
And, like, trying to make payments, and it was like, oh, that's gonna be, like, $200.

(12:52):
It's fucking
mental. I think, like, maybe people either weren't there for that or have forgotten, like, just how mad that is to be sat where we are and to be able to make payments
for nothing practically. I'm so torn on this whole thing. I didn't see this coming. Like you say, we're somewhere close to, like, a $120,000

(13:12):
Bitcoin price has almost never been higher. I'm looking at mempool.space
right now as we record
at 1PM
UK time on Monday, and the next block fee rate span
begins at 0.44
sats per byte. The next block. Jesus Christ.
So it's not the mass adoption we all kind of hoped for. In hindsight, probably isn't or shouldn't be surprising. And the reason I say that I'm torn on it is because

(13:38):
I would rather the, quote, unquote, mass adoption be people using self custody Bitcoin. Of course. But the fact that I can get into the next block with 0.5
sats per byte tells me that that clearly isn't the type of mass adoption that we've got. No. And, obviously,
people are using custodial solutions. They're leaving their funds on the exchange. They're buying Bitcoin treasury companies, or they're buying ETFs,

(14:01):
which has had an impact upwards on the price or has had almost zero impact on the mempool whatsoever.
In fact, you could argue it's had a reverse impact on the mempool because fee rates
are now sold once up per byte. It's just a wild timeline. I just did not see it coming at all or not to this extent, I'd say. I remember chatting with a mate of mine who's been around for a while, and he was like, oh, you know, when we get into that next bull run, and we need to make sure that, obviously, we have all of our,

(14:29):
UTXOs,
like, managed properly and that we have all the different denominations
and, you know, make sure we do that now. And I actually spent a fair amount of time, like, going through and just making sure that I was organized and prepared for if I needed to make payments, that actually when this huge fee spike came, I wouldn't be caught with my pants down. I'm glad I spent all that time because,

(14:52):
there's absolutely
zero fucking need. And just to cap off the reason why I said I was torn, really, is that as somebody who practices self custody and nothing but, this is wonderful to me. Like, I can just make payments whenever I want for, like, less than a dollar on chain. Yeah. Permanent, immutable,
cost me jack shit. Don't need to worry about whether I've got any liquidity on lightning, and Bitcoin's still at all time highs. So for me, as a sovereign Bitcoin user, it's kinda nice.

(15:21):
But there's always that thing in the back of your head. It's like, well, you know, what's the trade offs of onboarding all these new people to what is essentially
fake Bitcoin? Yeah. Yeah. Just makes me uncomfortable.
Yeah. Where does it end? Because
part of you wants to see the fees rise, and it would make sense. And that kind of theory of, like, fees will rise over time, but so will the value of Bitcoin. And then you'll use second layers for smaller payments and blah blah blah and all that worrying and stuff. It because it kinda just feels weird now. It's like, are we just totally fucking wrong? Is this it? Is this is it just like, you don't really need the second layer solutions. You don't really need to worry about any of that because

(15:58):
no one's gonna fucking use Onchain other than, like, you, me, and about 12 other people on
Bitcoin, Twitter, and the rest of people are just fucking buying ETFs.
It would be useful for us in terms of the fees are gonna be down, but what's the long term implications of that? I can't see that it would be great long term. I guess we just enjoy it for now and see what happens. Yeah. It's kind of all we can do, really. I mean, for for as long as Bitcoin works for me and

(16:24):
my loved ones in a sovereign manner, I'm kinda happy, really. But like I say, it's it feels as though we could be in that kind of boiling frog
scenario at the moment where the risk of, like, all this fake Bitcoin and the concentration of capital and stuff like that just I know it doesn't give you, like, voting rights or anything like that in terms of the network, but I don't know. Just the concentration of too many Bitcoin in too few hands just makes me feel uneasy.

(16:49):
Yeah. We'll see, mate. Hopefully, we'll be dead before it's like a major problem.
Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. She has chased a lot.
Next on the list, I'm gonna caveat this one by saying I've relied heavily on some AI to kind of dumb it down for me because this is a very, very technical concept. Couple of weeks ago, we spoke about the fact that Ashigaru terminal is the new implementation

(17:13):
of Whirlpool from, obviously, the Ashigaru team. Very happy to see Whirlpool return, albeit under a slightly different guys from a different team. But a couple of days after they released it, there were some critique levels at some of the choices that they've made and some of the legacy choices
that have kind of carried across from the old, I guess, I'll call it samurai whirlpool into the Ashigaru one. Again, these are very, very technical concepts, but the the TLDR was basically that perhaps you weren't as well protected from a malicious coordinator as perhaps we thought in years gone by? Would that be a fair assumption as where we left it off last time, Mark, before I dive in? I can't remember what when we talked about it last, if I'm honest with you. I think it was on the last brief, basically. There was an initial really well thought out post by Adam

(18:01):
BC 1984,
I think, on Twitter. No idea who this guy is, but he always seems to have a, you know, a level headed approach to stuff.
And he did a blog post critiquing
some of the, I guess, vulnerabilities maybe is probably the best term to give them. The Ashigaru team since that last report have responded.
There's also been lots of other chatter as well, which again is even more technical. So I've done my best to summarize the initial report from Adam and then summarize the Ashigaru

(18:28):
response just so that people can stay up to speed on this. Okay. Again, I will give a final caveat that even after summarizing it, I'm still not able to kind of fully
understand the implications as to whether, you know, this is a go or no go in terms of using this tool. But let's let people make their own decision, and obviously, they can click the links in the show notes for the full, really technical, deep dive article and the response as well. So this is the summary of the report from Adam. Basically, Ashigaru made a solid effort to fix a known vulnerability from the original Whirlpool. The per client RSA

(19:00):
key differentiation
attack told you it was technical.
Mhmm. This attack would have allowed the coordinator to give each user a unique key, potentially breaking anonymity
inside a single coin join round, meaning that they could associate the input to the output of a specific user, assuming that the coordinator is malicious, of course. Ashigaru tackled this by hard coding a single RSA public key into each client. The client then outright rejects any key sent from the server and only uses the one that's internally coded.

(19:31):
This means that all participants use the same public key and the server cannot track
users with custom keys. So far so good. However and this is one of the key points. The fix, it then came to light, introduced a new and potentially worse privacy issue,
cross round linkability.
Because that one RSA key is reused across every single mixing round, a malicious coordinator or even a well funded observer

(19:57):
could potentially link activity across rounds.
This opens the door to long term behavioral profiling
even if users did everything else right. So while the original per round attack was about breaking privacy within a single mix, The new one brought about by the architecture changes they made is about breaking it over time. Again, to stress, this assumes that the coordinator is malicious.

(20:23):
Yeah. Yeah. So there was, again, a lot of chatter, but Ashigaru came back. They responded publicly, transparently, and point by point. Again, if you want the full details, check the link in the show notes. They accept that they've increased the risk of a denial of service attack compared to Samura's implementation, but they disagree with the comparisons to the much weaker Wasabi
one point o setup, which was, in fairness, not leveled by Adam. That was one of the kind of side comments from a chap called NothingMuch who used to work at Wasabi, funny enough.

(20:52):
Mhmm. They mentioned that they're actively working on a fix for the RSA key tagging concerns,
testing a method where the client sends a verifiable pool ID and a block hash to the server for a signature. Again, told you it was complex.
Mhmm.
In terms of per round RSA key rotation, this was a big recommendation from Adam's report. It's something they've looked at, but they haven't found a safe way to do it without introducing other vulnerabilities

(21:18):
like per client tagging. They also said that they're open to short lived RSA keys and rotating them daily or weekly, which would mitigate the kind of longer term tracking potentiality
of a malicious coordinator,
and they're still exploring that as a possibility.
Mhmm. Something else that was mentioned in kind of all of the feedback was where is the decentralized coordinator that samurai was working on and seemed to be very close to before all of indictments. Yeah. It was. I remember that being, like, we're, like, one step away, and it it was kind of like an imminent thing. Weren't they talking about each Dojo

(21:53):
would be running as one? Probably haven't got the technicals right, but basically that. That was my understanding. Yeah. Which obviously seems like a bit of a utopia. The comment from the Ashigari team at the moment, as for decentralization, they've made it clear that they're not gonna try and copy Samara's hidden road map or resuscitate the original Whirlpool project.
They thought the co renamed it and are building their own path forward. So kind of a bit of a vague answer there really, but it wasn't a no never. It's probably just a case of it's really fucking difficult, so we're just taking our time.

(22:21):
Yeah. I guess also if they're smart and they obviously are to be able to do this stuff, it's like if you tell people you're gonna do something,
you're gonna be constantly criticized and people asking when, when, when, you know, it was always like when this, when that,
and then you can't build as effectively. So I can imagine even if you are working on it, you might just not say. You might just do it and drop it. Having been in a similar position where, obviously, you know, I work at Foundation. We've got a lot of customers and a lot of opinionated customers, which is great. But if we kind of sat there and just listened and waited for people to tell us, oh, implement this or do this, like, the project would be a mess, and you'd never get anything done. So you do have to just stick to a road map whilst being cognizant of what your customers or users want. It's a fine balance, even more so for these guys that are kind of operating

(23:11):
without social media, without any customer support or anything like that. It's like it seems to be like a one way track. You know, again, I commend them for that because they are putting their necks on the line. Yeah. Absolutely.
So so what's the after you've AI'd it and, like, your understanding is basically
everything
is okay.
There is a level of trust in the coordinator.

(23:34):
As it stands, my understanding is they solve one problem, but introduced another. I think the problem they've introduced
is only more of a problem for people that wanna stay in the pool and mix for a long time because this is that kind of cross round tracking
potential if they turn out to be malicious. But if you're kind of just wanna hop in, do a quick mix, then the changes to the architecture that they've made seem to make it much more private for you because there's almost an impossibility that

(24:03):
a malicious coordinator could deanonymize a single mix.
That's so weird because that's like flipping it on its head from previously because it was always
you're better off staying in there, and it's better for everyone else's
privacy the longer you're in there as well. But you benefit from their continual mixes because you can't separate yourself from them. Which remains true. It depends who's your threat model here. The vulnerability we're talking about is about Ashigaru as the coordinator being malicious.

(24:30):
Let's assume that they're not, which hopefully they're not, but we could never know for sure. If you stayed in a mix and did 10 mixes, to everybody else other than a malicious coordinator, you still got exponentially better privacy.
Yeah. So what you said is still true.
It's just a case of there remains an unfixed problem that there is a bit of trust in them not being malicious as a coordinator.

(24:51):
Can you not mitigate
that from what we were talking about on Friday
with Seth? There was a question that was like, what's better doing a Monero swap or using Whirlpool? And we'd sort of said, well, use both. Go through Whirlpool, then do a swap or open a lightning channel Mhmm. And spend like that.
Because if Ashigaru were to be malicious,

(25:13):
then your spend post mix would actually be very difficult for them to track.
Yeah. Absolutely. The previous people who could have tracked you because your identity might be linked, it's now been broken by Whirlpool.
So that kind of still stands even with whatever critiques there are here, and I'm way too dumb to understand it. It's gone over my head, but it's like, if that was the case and worst case scenario, they were malicious and they could track you because you stayed in there for long enough for them to do it and de anonymize you or whatever you would call it,

(25:45):
then you should if you're that paranoid,
then maybe open a lightning channel or do a swap, and then you sort of cover all bases.
Yeah. It's it's layered privacy, isn't it? It's always gonna be bright and you choose the right options. It's gonna be additive. But, again, it's not a utopia because with each
step, you've got cost, you've got complexity,

(26:06):
you've got time. It's not perfect, but it would mitigate the specific vulnerability we're talking about today. Yes. Absolutely.
Okay. So just to be clear then,
it is still a massive win to have Whirlpool back
regardless of what could or maybe
might be a potential problem possibly.
We are looking at a massive edge case and also with the assumption of them being malicious. Malicious.

(26:30):
It
is still a massive, massive win and something that should be, strongly considered
for probably most people spending. I think that's a fair assumption. They seem to be very open to kind of feedback that they've had this particularly when it's really well structured by in the case of Adam and stuff, they came back sort of in a proper manner and and said, look. Yeah. We know about x, y, and zed, and we're looking at x, y, and zed to try and mitigate that as well. So it's not a case of this is the tool, like it or lump it, use it or don't. It's a case of, yeah, where it's an iterative

(27:00):
kind of process.
Again, I got no idea. Ashigaru could be one person. It could be 20 people.
We're just gonna have to bear with them and just hold them accountable to what we see and what we can use. So far, that seems for them to be good faith actors. Yeah.
Alright. Next on the list, I'm gonna rifle through the software updates, and we'll do the boost at the end, mate. Okay. We're gonna be hitting the big green button on Envoy two point o today. So hopefully, by the time this is released on Wednesday, all being well, you will be able to upgrade your Envoy to version two point o. Massive update, big changes to all of the onboarding flows for both Passport Core and the upcoming Passport Prime. That's the main driver for this release is bringing everything up to speed to be able to cope with the new device in Passport Prime. Obviously, that comes with it, new connectivity. Obviously, we've got all the old QR code stuff from Passport Core, but we now have Bluetooth and stuff that is

(27:53):
used for Quantum Link connection between Passport Prime and Envoy as well, which if you're a new user, it's a game changer in terms of how easy it is to get started. So I'm very excited for people to get to be able to test that out. We've also upgraded to BDK
Bitcoin DevKit two point o, which is the underlying framework that kind of powers Envoy and many, many other Bitcoin wallets

(28:14):
built by the team over at Spiral. So thank you for their work on that as well. Just loads of improvements, new fiat pairings. We've got default Electrum backend options just like in Spiro. So if you don't run your own node, you can go and choose from the foundation node or a list of preselected
public Bitcoin as alternatives as well. So even if you don't run a node, you still don't have to trust us to serve you your transaction balances or anything like that. So that's a a good improvement as well. I know we're trying to do a tight one here, but just as you were saying that had me thinking, if a user I should know this as well. I kind of probably do and forgotten. But if a user

(28:48):
goes on,
chooses one of those Electrum servers,
make some payments and receive some payments,
all the rest of it, and then they jump to another one, are they kind of creating more risk for themselves, or are they creating less risk themselves as a general rule? Do you want me to get out? Yeah. I know what you mean. Well, what they would be doing essentially there is because we work on a gap limit in Envoy, we don't kinda send an entire expo. In that scenario, what it would mean is that the first server they connected to would see, like, the first 50 addresses and know that those 50 addresses belong to

(29:21):
a Tor user or an IP address depending on which connectivity option they're using. Mhmm. If they then switch to another node after that, there would be a different set of 50 addresses, albeit with some overlap depending on how actively used the wallet is. And then that second server would know about those 50 addresses being controlled by the same IP address or Tor address.

(29:42):
So it's not the end of the world. Again, there's no publicly identifiable
information or personal information or anything like that. It's just a case of
server a knows about these 50 addresses, and they belong to one person. Server b knows about these 50 addresses and so on and so forth depending on how many times you switch.
So that's the reason that you might choose to have a lower gap limit rather than a larger one, or is there any other reason why you might have a The main reason for a lower gap limit is to just speed up syncing times.

(30:11):
If you've got an Electrum back end that's not as optimized as Fulcrum or something like that
Yeah. Then,
every time you open your wallet, if you're checking for fifty, hundred, 200, 500 addresses, that's gonna take a long time for your wallet to load. So most just default to 20, which for most people is absolutely fine. You know, if you're not a merchant, you don't have a BT pay serve and you're just kind of doing one or two receives a week or probably a month for most people, then a 20 address gap limit is fine. Especially if you're not messing around in the wallet and scrolling through an address list and just picking random addresses where it's gonna make a bit of a mess, then, you know, a standard gap limit is, is fine.

(30:49):
Okay. I should have done this one first on the list. Ashigaru terminal. It's coming out in StartOS 0.4.
Yeah. This is exciting.
Do we have any more info? I've literally just got a message from Jordan saying, look what's coming. Yeah. Got no dates, no timelines. I checked my start line this morning. It's not there at the moment. So what do you know? I don't know. He's been quiet

(31:10):
because he's just been hammering work out, basically. So I I've had the same message. I've spoken to him a couple of times
briefly. I know that he was working on it, and then there was some reason
that he couldn't get it into the store. It had to be side loaded, which I believe
b two c sessions has done a tutorial on, like, the side loading. Oh, nice. Okay. I'm pretty sure anyway that I saw that either yesterday. Sometime over the weekend, I'm sure I saw that. You can sideload it,

(31:39):
but I think it's in
their point four
release or what do you call it? Their
Yeah. 0.4 is that's the right release numbers, which is not out yet. I did check this morning. Yeah. So I think it's that once that
comes out, they can do it, and there's some technical reason why.
He, like, did it, then he had to redo it because they changed something, and then they changed

(32:01):
something else, and he had to redo it all because he's kind of working to their specs is my understanding. And I think Will it be in the community
app store? I believe so. I take it it won't be in the main one. Yeah. No. I believe it's gonna be in the community one, but currently, you've gotta side load it. I did ask him to send, like, a voice mail or something so that we could play it so that he can explain because, you know, as usual, that's above my head. But Mhmm. All I can say is I know he's been working extremely hard doing this, and he's he's been doing it for a while.

(32:32):
I know that he'll get it done. Probably watch that BTC sessions,
thing if you're listening to this and interested, and just give it a try. I've asked him to come on and do a confab with me at some point. That's my hope is that we can run through the Ashigari Terminal stuff that he's been doing because it's not the first time that he's brought something

(32:52):
to Start nine.
Cool. And the TLDR here for why we're excited about this is essentially
with it being on start nine, which is, you know, a Bitcoin node amongst many other things that it's on twenty four seven. It's a server. It doesn't need a screen. And you can just go to the web UI from your phone or from your computer, start your mixes through the Ashikari terminal, and then, presumably, the start nine is just gonna take care of everything after that, and you just get remixes.

(33:16):
Yeah. That's my understanding.
Previous to this, he brought Dojo to the start line as well. And it wasn't just him. I'm pretty sure Kofi was involved in helping, and and there were other people as well. And I forget who, so apologies to you. But, a great example of someone who's actually out there and building and bringing really fucking useful tools to people and just builds quietly. And correct me if I'm wrong here, and, obviously, no need to share any doxing information, but he's not a dev or anything close to it. Right? He's just a smart fucker who works really hard and cares about this stuff. And he just works it out just like he did with all of our OBS stuff and

(33:53):
live streaming and all that kind of stuff. I think I said it in the last episode, but we're gonna put a donation
link, pay him for him. And if you like what he's built, if you're running a dojo and start nine and you wanna do a little donation or, if you get one of these side loaded
and you like what he's done there,
consider it.

(34:13):
Absolutely. Awesome work, Jordan. Keep up the the good stuff, man.
Next on the list, Cake Wallet version five point one point two.
These guys seem fucking relentless.
Can't keep up.
New Cake Pay mobile UI. We've completely redesigned the Cake Pay mobile interface to be more intuitive, user friendly, and visually appealing.
Improvements and fixes, silent payment,

(34:35):
sync bug fixes.
I've seen a lot of people, moaning about this one on Twitter. They have resolved several issues related to silent payment synchronization to improve reliability and performance,
corrected balance discrepancies,
and enhanced sync speed as well. Looking forward to testing that one out. Yeah. I have to say I never got it working. I had to play and tried to do it a while ago, but I had no joy. Zeus version zero point eleven point two main release is now available.

(35:02):
I think we quickly covered off the beta release on the last brief. We now have lots of nice new features, extended message signing with on chain addresses.
That's useful for those of you that use services like Bitter and all of those kind of services where you need to sign addresses to, quote, unquote, prove that you own an address.
Mhmm. They've added the ability to select and share QR codes or texts,

(35:25):
some cashew related stuff,
point of sale system. You can now set your tax rate for individual items,
some LND updates,
and they've also added MMP and AMP lightning
explainers as well, as well as many other bug fixes.
Nice. Nice.
Phoenix version two point six point two has been released.

(35:48):
The main item here is they have added a new screen to easily convert an amount into multiple fiat currencies at once.
This screen is accessible from the settings menu or from the amount input when generating an invoice or sending a payment. Pretty useful, especially if you're living on a Bitcoin standard. Mhmm.
Electrum
desktop. Remember that? Yes. I do.

(36:11):
We haven't mentioned it for a while.
Yeah.
I do. Version 4.6
has been released.
They've got Electrum now uses Nosta in the context of submarine swaps for discovery. They've also added more submarine swap providers, Once again communicating over the NOSTA network. They've added some third party plugins,
lightning anchor channels.

(36:32):
They've also released a terms of use screen, which is added in this version,
to the install wizard.
While the license remains unchanged, we ask users to agree with the fact that we are not a custodial service or a money transmitter.
Mhmm. The terms of use screen also makes clear that all issues are to be resolved in public and that there is no user support via private channels.

(36:56):
Interesting.
Mhmm. Well, bit of ass covering.
Yeah. I'm not sure that having a disclaimer that the customer thinks it's not a money transmitter is gonna stand up and hold any weight in court, but who knows?
No. I doubt it. But at the same time, I can understand where you might put something like that there.
Yeah. Indeed. Bitcoin keeper version 2.5

(37:16):
o and subsequent two point five point one, which just had bug fixes.
2.5
ad support for USDT.
So Tether
which one's USDT? I'm not really that up on my stablecoin. It's Tether, isn't it? US dollar Tether. USDT.
Is it the Tron one, though, or is it Oh, fucking hell. I don't know. I'd like I think USDT is just generally US dollar

(37:38):
Tether. I just think it's that's what it is, and then it runs on different networks or something. I see. I have never used
a stablecoin
ever.
So I just No. Just not in
I understand the need for it, but just not for me. Like, my knowledge is very limited. There's there's USDT,
and then isn't there USDC, which is like the the Coinbase one or something like that? Circle one, I think, isn't it? That's the circle one. There's a few, isn't there?

(38:06):
Yeah. I think Coinbase has got one. It is the Tether one. So you can have a dollar wallet in your app Okay. With the gas free architecture. You don't need to hold any other crypto for paying the transaction fee.
And it has the same recovery mechanism for the whole app. No need to back up again.
And you can also buy and sell USDT
right into and from your wallet. Send and receive USDT on Tron, so it is the Tron version. Interesting.

(38:31):
Okay? I guess if you're like
trading, I can see the kind of appeal. If you're, like, a crypto trader, bro Yeah. I could see that it's, like, it's all in one wallet, and you're, like, you're not actually using banks,
which would always be a problem.
Yeah. Indeed. I just didn't have that on my bingo card for Bitcoin keeper to be out in trouble. I guess

(38:53):
USDT is probably the most used crypto in the whole world, right, especially in developing countries. So I guess it makes sense to look at support for that and gain some user base. Next up on the list, I just wanted to quickly mention this. This actually came out in Vegas and I forgot to mention, and then it popped up on my radar again. FrostSnap.
I don't know whether you clicked the link, Max, to have a look at this. I've heard of it. It's the small USB c devices with a small touchscreen on

(39:17):
that kind of operate in something analogous to what I can only describe as the human sense speed for those that have seen that film. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. If you haven't and you're at work, don't Google it.
I've actually never seen it. It's I'm too disgusted by the idea of it. Maybe wait until you're at home and on a private browser tab to Google what I mean. But, once you do see what it is, you'll you'll understand what I mean. But,

(39:40):
the interesting part here, I know one of the guys, Nick here, he's a great guy. He's one of the team here. The interesting thing here is that this is the first kind of reluctance to call it consumer ready because it is kind of very new tech and new hardware.
But they are selling a product, so let's call it consumer ready, doing basically taproot multisignature
Mhmm. Where you just have the two devices,

(40:02):
and everything boils down to a single signature on the blockchain.
So this is the first kind of real implementation we've seen of that where we're using the Taproot side of what we can achieve with multisig in a consumer facing product, at least, anyway. You ain't gonna get any kind of flashy UI here. From what I can see on the website, it's somewhat rough and ready. Like I say, it is new tech, and they are a very small team. But it's good to see teams pushing the boundaries here, and I long for the day where we can have slightly more well, significantly more private multisig where

(40:32):
anybody looking at your addresses on chain has no idea that there's three keys protecting your funds, which is or was one of the main selling points of the Taproot upgrade when it was first being banded around all those years ago. You know when you have, like, an assumption that's in your head and you just run with it and you don't question it too much.
I remember speaking to Black Coffee about this, and I was like, yeah. You know, one of the reasons I don't really like multisig is that your footprint is different. You stand out from a crowd. It's obviously not good for privacy, and so, you know, I don't really like it for that reason. And he was like, yeah. But any attacker knows that you have multisig, it makes you a lot less of a target because they know that you have multisig. And I was like, that's not a bad point. Like, I'd never really thought about it that way, but it is a double edged sword, isn't it? It's like, okay. It might make you stand out more, but it also means that people can see he's got multisig.

(41:25):
That is less attackable
than someone who doesn't in a lot of cases.
Maybe we move on to the next person.
So you can kind of see it both ways. If you're a thief walking down the street and you see two people, one's got their phone
strapped to their hand,
and they're a big fucking unit. And the other one Yeah. Is like a 10 year old girl who's, like, balancing on the end of her finger, which one are you gonna go for?

(41:49):
Yeah. The other cool part here is that it's using the Frost technology as well, which means that you can rotate keys
out without having to do any on chain transactions at all. So if you lose a device,
you don't have to go and create a new vault and rotate all the funds out and potentially have to consolidate your funds or do loads of transactions to restore your

(42:10):
privacy. But if you lose one or you have, like, a company structure here where somebody leaves and, you know, you just need to get rid of that key, you can do all that completely off chain with no movement of funds as well. That's pretty cool. Yeah. This whole Frost stuff is when it when it goes mainstream, it's gonna be pretty cool what we can do with it. Mhmm. And that will mean even fewer transactions on on

(42:30):
the
We're gonna get to a point where you actually get paid to make transactions. Yeah. Mine isn't gonna be throwing sats around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Please transact.
Yeah. We'll be there. We'll be collecting them. Last thing on the list is
BT sessions are starting nowhere. Just did a couple of very, very short rough and ready videos for somebody, I believe, that just asked a question on Stacker News. And I just come across it. I thought, you know what? This is pretty useful for people to watch in the over the course of ten minutes and and learn. The question was around how can I do software only based multisig? Mhmm. Because most people, when they do multisig, they run straight to a hardware wallet for all of the obvious reasons. But this one, he makes literally in ten minutes, he shows you how to use Spiro and BlueWallet to create a two of two multisig where the phone app holds one set of keys and Spiro holds the other set of keys, and you need both signatures.

(43:21):
And then he does a spend as well. It shows a really, you know, useful video and just to demonstrate that, you know, you can actually achieve
multisig here without a hardware wallet if you wanted to. Obviously, be cognizant of the risk and stuff. But and again, two of two is just the example here. I presume you've done that just to keep the video time short, but you could do a three or five there with different versions, different phones and stuff. So check that out. I just thought it was very useful, and hopefully people will get some value from it. Very nice.

(43:47):
Alright. So we, hit the boost, and we might actually finish on time here, Max.
Just about, I reckon.
Okay. Let me jump in. Oh, here he is. Jordan Here he is. With 30,000
sats.
Thank you, Jordan.
What a guy. Do you think he does all this stuff because he knows deep down

(44:08):
being Canadian? He needs to do better, and he just wakes up in the morning and says, I need to do better. And that's what drives this. I live in The UK. I'm in no position to be better. You can't speak.
No. No. Yeah. That's fair. Okay. Refused to comment there. Okay.
For q and the misfits,
I just had a remix go through using my Ashigaru

(44:30):
terminal on Fart nine,
fire emoji.
Due to the new packaging requirements
of the upcoming start nine release, I don't think you'll see it around the marketplace
anytime soon,
but I have a release on my GitHub to sideload
at
and then a link which we will put in the show notes. But this was obviously sent from the last

(44:53):
episode. So I'm not sure how long ago that is.
I think what we spoke about in terms of it coming to version 0.4,
that is after what the boost that you just sent. So Yeah. We we did those the wrong way around and Yeah. Let's say yeah. Hats off, Jordan. Again, awesome stuff, mate. Yeah. Love it. And just go into the show notes and click the link if you want to side load it and have a go. And, again, BCC Sessions. I'm I'm almost certain it's done one. And if he hasn't, maybe I'll just, like, will it into existence for him to do one anyway. Catan's done one as well. Oh, okay. Lovely. Late stage huddle, 6,000 sats. I'm on vacation. I might forget to boost. So Dot dot dot. His 6,000.

(45:34):
Thank you, late stage huddle. Yeah. Thank you, mate. Silas
Thornbrook,
catching up with my two favorite guys while sitting in an ER bed and getting prepped for surgery. Thank you, gents. Fucking hell. He's finally getting that penis enlargement, is he?
He He told me it was a reduction. He said it just gets in the way. It's too much of a problem.

(45:56):
I hope you're recovering well, mate. Yeah. Yeah. I hope you and your penis are doing well. Sir seriously, though, I hope you're alright. That doesn't sound nice. Surgery's scary. I hope you're good bye. Indeed.
Turkey with 500 sats. No comment. Poopsicle
with 300 sats. It's not a trap if I know I'm being trapped. Okay?

(46:17):
I have no idea what the reference is there. Maybe you can shed some light on that one for one for us, poopsicle. Yeah. I have no idea. Maybe he's like a mouse. He's going for some cheese. He's like, it's fine. I'll go for it anyway. If you are a mouse, shout out to you. Stack Jarrow, 250
sats. Here's to sharing some ungovernable currency with you, fucky lookers.

(46:39):
A I b l e
says great show and sends 200%.
And then he writes again with another 200%.
I definitely use the code max.
This is from when I was asking about the foundation thing.
I definitely use the code max. My boosts
are a pittance compared to what you deserve.

(47:00):
God is support if I can. Passport
is the best wallet I've used hands
down. Love it. Thanks, Abel.
And finally, mister Pies with a 100.
Hey.
And he just gives us a salute and no abuse.
Thanks, Pies. Thank you, mate. I appreciate that.

(47:20):
Well, I think we've just done it in time, mate.
We have fifty four minutes on the recording at least. I'm sure you'll be able to chop that down by a few as well when you edit. Cut out some of our usual waffle. Should we give a an apology ahead of time? This week, Freedom Tech Friday
may or may not happen. It may or may not be prerecorded,
and do my best to twist Max's arms to make sure that we get something available for you on Friday, guys. Okay. Bear with us. We're going through holiday season where there's multiple of us off at the same time. So we're trying to figure some shit out to make sure that we don't miss a week on week four, which would be a catastrophe. It'd be pretty embarrassing, wouldn't it? Yes. Indeed. So we're we're trying to figure that out and fit it in around work and family requirements. So, we'll see what comes on Friday. We'll get something. Some feedback. Once again, we really appreciate everybody's support on the brief and on Freedom Set Friday. It seems to be really, really well received, and we appreciate you being patient with us working through technical issues and stuff and supporting the show. So hats off again, guys. Thank you very much. It it really does help give us a boost. Definitely.

(48:22):
Alright, mate. Well, I know you're busy, so I'll let you go. I'll get this over to Karen for the editing. And then, oh, we're gonna do the, choose the winners. So we'll do that today as well. Let's do it. Alright, man. I'll catch you in two weeks. Yes.
Speak better. Bye.

(48:56):
I'm

(53:07):
Banger after banger after banger.
Before you go, I have an announcement.
Weblipe is hosting a
privacy
meetup
in Charlotte, North Carolina, July 26
at six to 10PM
at Great Wagon
Road
Distilling.

(53:28):
We'll workshop Ashigaru
and their Whirlpool terminal.
You can bring an Android
device.
Other topics include NIM, VPN,
kWallet,
Rediswap,
and more.
I also like to congratulate
Ungovernable
Misfits on the new partnership,

(53:48):
MyInbox.
Mineinbox.i0
help keep your online
presence
hidden.
They provide anonymous server hosting solutions, virtual private and dedicated servers, domain
registration, and DNS
parking. They don't require any of your personal
information,

(54:09):
and you can purchase using Bitcoin, Lightning, or Monero.
No personal information required.
None.
Zero.
Stay.
Ungovernable.

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