We're Live! Kind Of? | FREEDOM TECH FRIDAY 04 - Ungovernable Misfits

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Bang. Okay.
Let me check on
the Twitters to see if we're live.
Yep. Seems to be working.
And when I do the the the texting, like messaging back people, I can just do that in this live chat on,

(00:22):
from my phone, can't I?
Yeah. You could do it in, like, Restream as well.
Yeah.
If you have that open because that one just has, like, everything coming in. Whereas, like, if you're Oh, okay. You know what I mean? Let me just open that up. Restream.
I've got zap stream. Restream here it is.

(00:42):
Restream,
and now I go into
I can just see the
episodes.
We're live kind of. Do I click on that to go to the chat?
Yep.
Okay.
Oh, there we are. Add a new.
Add a new And then you look at the right hand side and you'll see channels chat, and you click on chat.

(01:09):
Right hand side. Oh, yeah. Chat. Here we are.
Oh, yeah. We're live.
Test
test
testicle.
Let's see if that comes through
in the live chat here.
No. You can't see that on the

(01:30):
that doesn't come through on Twitter
because only Twitter shows on Twitter, but everything comes into Restream.
Yeah? I'd say you're wrong.
Oh, okay. No? Can you see my message? I'm just thinking about how wrong you are.

(01:51):
Just as a general rule.
Yeah. Fair enough, mate. Fair enough. Well Yeah. No. It's all there. You're being a clown.
Okay. Alright, mate.
Well, it's nice to speak to you too.
Lovely,
as always.
Oh, yeah. That's right. We're live. We're actually live. Yeah. Max is very nice. He's not a clown. So
He's not a clown. He's not a clown.

(02:15):
Yeah. How are you genuinely? If anyone out there has to just, like, verify,
that, you know, audio is good, all that stuff.
Yeah.
Let us know. Free.
Yeah.
Well, so this is a bit of a different one this week. We have a
live, not live, but sort of live show.

(02:38):
The live part is
us now for the next half an hour or so.
We're gonna jump into
the Fart nine stuff that you've been working
on. And I think you said something about as well, but we had a bad connection, so I couldn't couldn't quite hear that bit. But,
we're gonna do that, and then we're going to play the

(03:01):
live recording,
that me and q and a did that's gonna go after that between
nine and ten.
And, and I'll jump into the stream,
and do messages and stuff. That's the plan. Right?
That's the plan. That's the plan. So tell me, mate, what's on your mind? What's been going on? You've been,

(03:23):
beavering away,
like the the Canadian that you are, working on all sorts of stuff.
Yeah. Just kinda getting obsessed with, the Start nine stuff.
Right now, going through a little bit of trouble just because
I'm doing the four point o version of Start nine in a virtual machine, so I'm losing connection locally. And

(03:45):
so if anyone has any, tips on using VirtualBox
and, connecting locally,
hit me up
in the DMs because it's been frustrating.
So
hold on. Just just so I understand. So you've got to run it in a virtual machine
for testing rather than doing it on your own? I don't

(04:05):
I don't have to. It's just the the one laptop that I have available,
is a Dell Inspiron,
and it has just troubles,
sometimes with, like, Linux distributions and whatnot. And, obviously, like, the basis of, like, StartOS
Mhmm.
Is on a
similar,

(04:26):
similar base. Right? So it just
yeah. It has to do something with, like, the display drivers and stuff like that. So,
yeah, just a little bit of a hassle. But So you're dropping connection when you're trying to interact with this virtual machine, which is what you're trying to build and work on.
Yeah. So

(04:47):
I had, like, another machine that's running, like, a zero point three point six, the one that everyone runs. Mhmm. And
I don't want to deprecate that one just yet. So Okay. It's just sitting there, runs fine. And on that one,
that's a Lenovo, I think. So that's running fine.
It's just I don't have a lot of hardware around. Mhmm. So I'm just trying to make use of what I got.

(05:13):
But, yeah, because of the new start nine that's coming out 0.4,
long awaited.
I'm I'm doing packaging for, you know, stuff like such as Ashigaru terminal,
Fulcrum.
And what else do I got on the list there?
I think that's it.
Okay. And,

(05:34):
yep, so just getting that all
figured out.
So
you're building out the Ashigaru Terminal,
which
people, I believe, can currently use,
but just not on this four point o thing. Is that right? And they have to side load it.

(05:55):
Yeah. Almost, like yeah. The the only people using four point o right now are,
the the developers pretty much. Like, we're just all, you know, throwing the ISO, like, on a USB and, and firing it up. Mhmm.
And that's just because,
you know, StartNine obviously wants all these packages,
all
all put up and, like, in a nice, like, presentation

(06:18):
ready to go, like, for whenever they're gonna launch. Mhmm.
Because you can't have all these things, like, kinda half assed.
So
so, yeah, that's kinda just, like, the work everyone's doing right now. Like, you can obviously, every everyone can go on the GitHub and, like, look at, like, the progress.
They have, like, a nice list of all the applications
that,
the Start nine team is dealing with,

(06:40):
the community packages that need to be dealt with,
for people that are developers,
in those marketplaces.
And and yeah. So while I was working on zero point three point six for Ashigaro Terminal,
I was able to fire that up, pretty quickly,
and get that as a side loadable version.

(07:01):
But the reason why you won't see it in a community store or or marketplace or community beta marketplace,
is just because there's no reason to go through all the testing for that version,
when four point o is kind of on the horizon here. So just dedicate all the man hours
for the four point o testing.

(07:22):
Mhmm.
Right?
Yeah. And the same thing, no other updates. Like, even though I have Dojo 1.27
ready to go with all the,
great updates that
Soreband,
stuff and Mhmm. And whatnot.
That's just a side loadable version. We're not gonna go through the testing for Dojo on 3.6 anymore.

(07:45):
And Eric PP right now is working on the Dojo,
version for four point o. So
you'll see
the extended release,
come into those marketplaces
when when Start nine is ready to go.
So,
so Dojo,
obviously, that was worked on. What was that? Six months ago, a year ago, or something like that. And that was

(08:11):
a whole host of you sort of helping with that and and getting it ready. And that's now running fine, but you're just waiting for it to go on, like, be ready for four point o.
And now,
Ashigaru terminal as well.
So
at that stage,
people will be able to

(08:31):
interact with the Ashigaru wallet
in a pretty
nice, easy, clean
setup and run everything they kind of really need,
on their start nine connected to their phone.
Yeah. Exactly. And I and and the other part about it too is that, like,

(08:56):
I don't know how far I wanna go with this, but
I guess I'll just put it out into the ether.
What I kind of envision as well
is
having dedicated,
node boxes that have, like, a certain amount of structure.
Based on the packages that, you know, I I and others have worked on Mhmm. That,

(09:22):
are all within, like, one ecosystem.
So Yeah. If you think about it,
you have AshiGuard terminal,
important part of,
forward privacy,
for your funds.
You have your Dojo,
that is for you to communicate with the network and to push transactions. Right?
So those are two things.

(09:43):
Obviously, we've worked on Fulcrum,
which is the
especially when Caitlin comes out with two point o, hopefully, in August,
then you'll see, like, an unmatched indexer.
Right? So those are three things there.
Start nine also offers Ghost,

(10:05):
which is, you know, a a blogging slash, like, you can make websites with it. Yeah. Yeah. So if you had all these things kinda packaged up
into
like, you install
an ISO, and it has all these things on there already.
A bit like when you go to marketplaces, download anything. Like, it all just comes preinstalled.

(10:26):
A bit like with Graphi. That's the division I see so that people can just go and get an ISO, and it's just like your one stop shop for, you know, I wanna participate
in this ecosystem that we're building out.
Obviously, I think that's a little farther down the road, but I just kinda want to get people's minds
thinking about that because I think it'd be pretty cool. It'd be very cool. So it's a bit like graphene and the, you you know, the

(10:50):
the operating system comes pre installed with the types of things that they think that you might find useful.
And so
someone could go and just be like, I want everything that's gonna make it useful for me running,
Ashigaru
and,
some other things that, you know, people are gonna probably wanna play around with.

(11:12):
And when you say a node box, are you thinking like,
someone actually
buys this thing
with,
like, everything pre installed? Or are you talking about, like, it's just something that they download and then run on,
whatever hardware they have? You're thinking actually might produce some hardware as well?

(11:34):
No. No. I
it's like,
you know, if you ever ask a guy like Max Tannehill about hardware, like, he'll just say, like, it's,
it's just such a tough game to participate in. Mhmm.
You know, when he used to run, Mamushi. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember.
Right. Like, dealing with phones, like and then, obviously, like, you know, I looked at it, and I was like, oh, this is an awesome business.

(12:00):
Super cool.
But, it's just it's just hard dealing with hardware.
So it would just be, you know, you go to the GitHub.
There's an ISO there ready for you.
That kinda thing.
Okay.
People can also point out if, like,
my idea is stupid too. But that's just kind of what I had going through my head. I'm sure they will.

(12:24):
That that happens. So Yeah. It would be the first time. I mean, it sounds like a a good idea to me at least. It's like, okay, you can you can have this thing and it sort of has everything that you're gonna need.
Just the fact that even without that though, like, even without that extra step, just the fact that these things are
available,

(12:44):
on a start line, which
is so easy to run and so,
from my experience, so stable
is a massive step. Like, if we
think about how much
more difficult it was
to run these things and,
to have a stable node. Like, I I never had really any success with it,

(13:08):
previously. It would I'd always have issues.
And like we talked about with the Ashigaru terminal running that on a laptop,
it's great. It's cool, but it's only gonna work while you've actually got the thing up and running. So,
just having this dedicated always on
server running,
is a massive is like a massive, massive step. I think it,

(13:32):
it can't really be overstated.
I think,
it's something when I do my next setup,
I'm I'm kind of thinking about just running something on its own with this stuff, like its own dedicated things separate to everything else. Because the last couple of times that I've tried to, like when I tried to do,

(13:53):
Dojo on my start nine, if you remember, it just fucking collapsed and, like, I don't know what happened. Something with the hard drive and
all that kind of stuff.
And the same when I tried to,
have a Monero node running on it, it it caused all sorts of problems. I don't know if that's still a problem, but it it definitely wasn't the start line. So,

(14:14):
yeah, just, like, maybe having something separate, one of these what what are they called? Is it, like, Geek Pie or one of these, like, relatively cheap,
little little boxes?
Yeah. Like, I'm an OptiPlex Maxi. Like, because it's like The Dell thing.
Yeah. Like, the Lenovo, like,

(14:36):
I thought it was Dell. All the guys, like, in TSB, like, run these things.
I forget. Like, I don't know if
sometimes they're interchangeable, sometimes they're not. Okay. But,
yeah. It's just the idea that, like, for an extra $100,
you're just getting, like, supremely better hardware.
In terms of in in terms sorry. In in terms of,

(15:00):
like,
quality of build, you mean? Or or like Yeah. Like reliability.
All of it. Yeah. Mhmm.
And you're dealing with, like, x 86, all that stuff. Right? You don't have to deal with,
you know, I I don't think RASPI is x 86. So
it's like an arm arm or something like that. Like yeah. Yeah. And it's Yeah. I I'm out of my depth obviously as people can tell.

(15:28):
Okay. So and you can get one of these,
Optiplexes
for, what, $300
or something like that? $400 and get them used to Even cheaper. Like, just
Yeah. Yeah. Used hardware markets.
I think there's even a guy,
his name's Warren. I forget his Warren Tagami.
He I think he runs, like, a community

(15:51):
on
Twitter,
and he just, like, posts,
like, OptiPlexes that are for sale that are good deals.
Oh, okay. So
yeah. No. It's,
I I've never interacted with the community itself. I just always see it on on the side
there. Here. Let me see here. Yeah. Use ThinkPad for

(16:11):
l n nodes.
Yeah. His latest
his latest one was, like,
yeah,
on
June 23.
Xeon 64 gigs of RAM, two terabyte SSD, and it was, like, $300.
Wow. That's very good.
Like, that's crazy. Yeah. That's incredible.

(16:32):
Yeah. So you I mean, really, you could you could,
run everything you need,
anti monero node and everything, all like this sort of like a privacy,
privacy specific
server that you have on all the time,
for for a few $100. And that's, I mean, that's not that much more than people would play paying for, like, a Raspberry Pi and,

(16:57):
like, a nice little box for it, you know, like a three d printed box or whatever.
People would spend sort of similar money,
and this is
far and away better.
Yeah. Yep. Exactly. And and, like, I always believe, like, just separating all these things out. Like, I know you guys have talked about in,

(17:18):
past episodes, but it's just the idea that, like,
all this, you know, Ashigaru related stuff or Bitcoin related stuff, like, that's going on one thing. Or if, like, you know, if you're a Proxmox guy
and
you're containerizing
all these things, you could have, like, six start nines going
on a on a Proxmox

(17:38):
and, you know, one container's running Bitcoin stuff
and another container's running, like, your pictures and your documents that are personal.
Right? And then these containers are never, like, touching each other. They don't know about each other. Mhmm. Like, there's plenty of ways to do it. You know?
I'm not,
as smart as, like, ape Mithrandir, so I'm just gonna, you know,

(18:00):
be
a be an ape about it and just grab
another piece of hardware because I can physically see, like, the delineation between, like, what is
what is on what box. Right? So.
Yeah. Yeah.
And these deluxe plexus don't exactly take up a lot of space anyway if you're running them at home. Exactly. Yeah. It's like, you know, the for

(18:24):
for someone like me, the same, I'd be like, okay. I know these are separate. They're separate boxes. That makes sense in my head. I'm not, like, relying on some sort of clever software or whatever it is, whatever you just mentioned that I don't understand. Like, just having them physically separated is is,
is preferable to to some someone like me. And the other thing is, like, at least

(18:45):
if one thing goes down, it's not everything. It's not the full stack. It's not like,
okay. Now because this,
this has gone down, so has my BTCPay, and now we can't receive payments on government misfits, and that's all gone down, and, you know, the lightning node's gone down and everything else. If it is sort of containerized and separated out,

(19:08):
you you're gonna have less problems, I think.
Yeah.
Yeah. So then,
you know, I got about eight minutes here, boss. Mhmm. So I just wanted to make sure that, I do a little bit of housekeeping here.
There's a
there's a gentleman named Remco,
and he was the guy that made Sparrow,

(19:30):
Webtop for Star nine. So
it allowed you to run your Sparrow wallet on your Star nine. Mhmm. And it uses a
so Webtop is
it's
a really simplified Linux
Linux environment.
Mhmm. So it runs like essentially like an operating system within your operating system
just in this little docker container. Right? The way that star

(19:52):
nine outlines how it should be.
And,
so to get Ashigaru terminal online,
I I just
cloned
Remco's repo,
and I essentially just, you know, replaced the sparrow guts with the Ashigaru terminal guts.
And that's how it

(20:12):
came around so quickly.
So I just wanna thank Remco for you know, if he didn't kinda build the path there, I would, probably still be
hammering away at it. So thank you so much, man. And if you go check out his repo, he's got, like,
at least six different, like, start nine projects
that,
you know, he's contributing to. So Nice. The guy is an absolute machine.

(20:38):
Shout out to you, mate. And
yeah.
And then just before
like, so it's yeah. Okay. So
another thing was with the operaturn code.
You know, obviously, Bitcoin Core has decided to,
make that
unlimited bite size. Mhmm. So

(21:00):
or at least not put a cap on it, let's say.
So that,
creates the ability
to make a multiple notification transaction.
And in PayNAM world, that would be connecting to multiple PayNEMs within one transaction,
because you're not restricted
anymore.

(21:21):
So I think that'd be really cool.
And for instance, this would be a use case for me because I think about it all the time.
I'm I have my wallet
and, you know, over, you know, however many years, I've connected to certain people. You know, I'm connected to Max. I'm connected to Barn Miner.
And I've made payments to all these guys over the years.

(21:43):
K. Well, maybe I just wanna switch up my my hot wallet. Like,
it's not a lot of effort and, you know, maybe you wanna
create a better passphrase or something like that, you know,
Make it a little longer.
But so if you create a new wallet, then you're gonna lose all all those contacts
and all those connections.
Mhmm. Well, you know, what if you could

(22:06):
make the new wallet?
And then just with one transaction,
you could be connecting back to
all the people from your old wallet.
So that's just one use case I can think of. But,
but, yeah, I just think it'd be really good from a UX perspective.

(22:28):
Not
because that's
in my mind, that's
payment payments is amazing. But it's yeah. It's just about being able to carry things like an address book, carry it to another wallet, carry it. You know what I mean?
I've I just did the most retarded thing that I've done in at least a day. Right?

(22:48):
I, I went to mute my mic
and I slightly,
misjudged where I was pressing, and I hung up our call for Zencastr, so it's not recording on there.
Oh, really? Yeah. Like an absolute fucking amateur.
But we're still this should still all be working and recording, and I should still get the,

(23:13):
the OBS recording, shouldn't I?
I have no idea.
Okay.
It should be. I
mean, let's have a listen. Can we hear it and I I just did the most retarded Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we can still hear. So then I can just say Are we good? I think we're fine. I'm just I'm just fucking stupid. But so okay. The,
the PayNim stuff,

(23:34):
I was thinking about this the other day. It was like,
when you wanna do payments as a business
or you're doing, like, larger batching transactions and stuff like that,
it would actually be
a really, really fucking useful thing.
Like, obviously, we have our own use cases for it and, like,

(23:57):
they're great for that. But, like,
if you have,
you know, a 100 staff and you're paying them in Bitcoin, and you don't wanna have address reuse and all that sort of problem, like,
Payniums are really fucking good for that.
Yeah. And you could already batch. Like, if you if you're connected,
to all the Payneems.

(24:19):
Right? Like, you actually,
I forget what the terms are. Like, there's connect and,
regardless,
so you've done the initial notification transaction, let's say. Right? And you're connected to the these payments. You can batch transact to payments already.
But it it's just that initial one where it's just like maybe, like because I think the deterrence is that, like, people don't wanna do, like, a transaction connecting to each person. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Right? So if you were able to just do, like, 20 at once

(24:52):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To me, like, that UX is just, like,
awesome.
Yeah. That that would be really cool. And and how would that work for fees and stuff like that? Would that bring the fees down as well, presumably?
I would assume that you would, yeah. It just depends.
Okay.
You know, we're we're sub, one sat. Right? Are we still? Yeah. Sub one sat summer.

(25:16):
Yeah. Which was good actually because I had to close some lightning channels yesterday.
So that was quite handy.
Oh, mate. We're at five sats per per byte right now technically, based on mempool dot space.
Okay.
So,
Heavy. Yeah. It's crazy out there.
What does next block have to say?

(25:38):
Was it nextblock.
Is, is it?
Nextblock.cypherpunktools.com.
Hosted by sponsor of the show,
Random Nim and my Nimbox.
What a legend. I recorded with him,
yesterday? No. Day before yesterday.
Yeah. I'm looking forward to that.

(25:58):
Excellent.
Really, really Alright, mate. Well, I gotta head out here. Okay. Alright, mate. Alright.
Hey, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry.
Some of us have jobs and things to do and I understand.
I know what it is. It was a blast.
Okay, mate. Always good to speak to you. Before you go,
can you just,

(26:19):
stay on the line for one second? Because I need to now play the live but not live bit with q and a.
Do I just
press the little I button and then play, do you think?
Yeah. Try it right now while we're Yeah. And shall I shall I stop my
shall I stop my audio capture? Like, should I mute my audio capture?

(26:40):
No. No. Just let her go.
And then pause it afterwards. Yeah.
Okay. Hold on. So Well, here we are. We are back again. Welcome to Freedom Tech Friday.
Although, this is a little bit of a different Freedom Tech Friday for a multitude of reasons. The volume. So let's get our excuses
out of the way first, shall we, Max? Let's get them lined up. You're good. First off, to be very clear,

(27:04):
we are being streamed live. Max is now sat in front of his computer, but he's watching this recording, and it's being streamed to you guys. Yeah. Yeah. We
are currently sitting here on Wednesday afternoon, UK time, recording ahead of time
because I'm going on holiday in the morning. I can't. Seth is also otherwise engaged on Friday,
and I didn't wanna leave you poor listeners just with Mac waffling to himself for an hour because nobody needs that, do they? And, of course, we didn't wanna fall at the the the fourth hurdle. Should I this is the fourth Freedom Tech Friday. Shall I now mute my So I thought let's, you and I meet up. Yeah. You should. Seth is also business day, unfortunately. Mute the Mac We'll prerecord a show. We've still got loads of questions from previous weeks that we haven't gotten to, so we're still gonna have some great audience participation.

(27:50):
But, yeah, we we're just doing it a little bit back to front, but we're we're doing doing it in in good faith so that, we make sure that the listeners
that have got their whistle wet over the course of the last few weeks with, three wonderful shows
so that they don't miss out this week.
If, I'm not mistaken because we're in sync. When the listeners are listening to this, they will have just heard you and Jordan

(28:14):
actually waffling on actually live,
for about thirty minutes. Is that right?
Yeah. I wanted to bring some live element. So we're gonna jump on half an hour before
we'll probably cover some of the stuff you've been doing with Fart nine, and then we'll jump into this. And then I'll also stay on in the
chat as well. Okay. So But no one else can be me now. Shouldn't they? It's only going well. Be able to waffle on in the chat. I'll hang up in this call just in case you Join in and participate

(28:42):
in that way. Love to hear it. It'd be good to get Jordan. I love you. He hasn't been, on a on in terms of voice. Obviously, he's in half in every single show we do. But, it'd be nice to to hear his dulcet tones once again. So, It will. Yeah. I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say the last thirty minutes that you guys recorded
sorry. Didn't record.
The last thirty minutes that you guys did live was fantastic, and I think you've nailed it.

(29:06):
I appreciate that. Quick reminder for those that that are new to this. This might be your first ever Freedom Debt Friday. Welcome.
This is traditionally a a live stream every Friday
on Twitter, Nosta,
and on YouTube, all on the ungovernable accounts on all three of those places where we talk live for sixty minutes
about anything FreedomTech related.

(29:29):
It could be something that we're interested in, some new tool that we've seen. It could be something that's in the news. Mhmm. Basically, anything that is FreedomTech related, we usually kick off the show with kind of a little bit of a mini topic where the three of us or today. The two of us will have a bit of a chat, and then we will get on to some listener questions.
Some of them will come from the socials in the week because we always ask for audience participation

(29:53):
leading up to that. But, hopefully, there's gonna be people in the live chat as well whilst you're there on Friday taking some more questions that we can then use in subsequent weeks as well. How's that for a recap, Max? Have I missed anything? No. I think that's very good. I'll just add in there, Sometimes we can source new updates and things that we haven't even heard of in the FreedomTech world from you guys. So

(30:15):
if you have any ideas,
it doesn't have to just be questions. You can, give us a nudge and let us know if there's any, cool FreedomTech stuff. Just no shitty bullshit, please. Don't don't send us white papers and
some janky, weird bullshit thing. But real stuff, send it in. Yeah. Absolutely. I keep hopping on about this, but audience participation is a a huge part of this show. We try to pack as much as we can in. You know, we wanna talk about the stuff that you guys wanna hear about, and answer the questions that you guys have got about anything FreedomTech related. So please please please continue to get involved. The the, initial uptake has been wonderful.

(30:52):
So long may it continue. Thank you to everybody that's getting involved and helping make the show what it is.
Last week, we gave a a good recap on the tornado cash proceedings, which is still ongoing.
This week, just to show how wide ranging is, the the topic that I've picked for you and I to discuss at the top of the show, Max, before we get into some, of the wonderful listener questions.

(31:15):
Is,
self custody
a technical challenge? Is it just a technical challenge,
or is it a cultural one as well?
Now to set the scene here,
in
the course of the last twelve to eighteen months,
I have personally seen quite, a big,
how can I put it, dilution

(31:37):
of
what we would traditionally constitute the average Bitcoiner?
And I I say that tongue and cheek because
there is no kind of average Bitcoiner. But what I mean is, I guess, the most commonly
yeah. I don't know. You might need to help me out here, Max. But the the most common approach that people take when they're interacting with Bitcoin, how's that? What's the norm,

(32:00):
I guess? And what's the norm is a great way to distill it down that we would interact with and yeah. I've seen the same, like So massive change. In years gone by, the norm was
you bought some Bitcoin probably on a an exchange like Kraken or or maybe, you know, if you're a, you like to go the extra leg you bought, you know, in cash on a peer to peer market or directly from a minor friend or something like that.

(32:24):
And the norm was you put that into a self custody wallet, you know, be that a mobile wallet or a hardware wallet. You held your own keys.
My first question to you, Max, is and we obviously don't have stats to back this up, but would you say that it's still
the
norm for,
or there are more people practicing self custody with Bitcoin than there are not practicing self custody,

(32:48):
or do you think that the balance is already tipped,
in favor of people holding
IOUs?
I think it depends how you look at it. It it depends if you're looking at number of users or if you're looking at percentage of coins held.
Well, let's break that down. Answer both for me. So I think if it's percentage of coins held, I think it would probably heavily tip towards

(33:11):
not having self custody.
It would probably be more
ETFs,
exchanges,
whatever else.
Mhmm. I mean, you know, like a sailor, for example. Like, he's got a few coins kicking about, but he
isn't self custodying that. So there there's a few of those types.
I think it probably,
probably slants that way

(33:32):
in terms of percentage.
Total users,
total users, I'd probably say, is the same way. I would say a lot of people
from what I experience who are first getting onboarded
are shield something like wallet of Satoshi to get their first sats.
I wouldn't class that as self custody either. I think a lot of people are walking around with some sats in their pocket, and it's not on an exchange, but it's also not self custody. So the traditional,

(34:01):
as you talked about, holding your own keys,
having a backup of your seed words,
using hardware, all the rest of it. I have zero stats to back this up, and I'm in my own bubble and so are you. But I think that it's probably
not the average anymore.
And
not the not why. We're gonna get onto the why we think that shifted soon, but the what of so if people aren't buying on exchanges or peer to peer exchanges and holding

(34:33):
their coins in a self custodial wallet,
what alternatives
do you think are the main drivers for the shift that we've seen in the past couple of years towards people
not practicing self custody?
Think the ETFs are probably a big
big part of it. And I think also these kind of holding companies like MSTR

(34:54):
and the copycats
are probably a big part of it as well. And just general sort of cultural change
in terms
of what I see and what people are talking about, like, where it used to be much more of a hard line of, like, not your keys, not your coins
kind of approach.
Now it's like, well, e cash is cool. You know, it doesn't really matter. Like, yeah, you don't really need to really have control. And, you know, there's all these things in between. Yeah. Liquids are right, and it's it's just much more of a loosey goosey

(35:24):
kind of approach
even within the circles of Bitcoiners, which is a small percentage anyway.
I just think, it's all of those all of those things making the change.
Yeah. I cosign that, to be honest. And then I'm I'm now gonna move on to to the why, and I'll kick off, and you can you can chime in afterwards.
So so why do we think there's been

(35:46):
a a significant shift towards people holding things like ETFs,
treasury companies, or even just leaving their shit on an exchange, which we know clearly is is not a great idea.
Me, personally,
I think the first driver is,
price appreciation,
which then drives more people
becoming interested

(36:07):
in Bitcoin.
And the more people that we get interested in Bitcoin,
naturally,
you know, that we're we're gonna get more kind of general population people, whereas
the the kind of
ideological
early adopters that we've seen, you know, spanning from
2009

(36:28):
all the way up to, I'd say, probably 2017,
those people as a percentage of the general population
are very, very small. And the more and more general population we get come into the the, quote, unquote, I guess, community,
then the the smaller and smaller
and more representative
the kind of Bitcoin community becomes as a part of the larger, I guess, global community

(36:53):
where those those types of people are just in the minority because of
well, I guess that's just the way the world works.
So we get we get number go up, we get people get interested, and we get people that are not as ideologically aligned as us coming into Bitcoin,
and they see things through a different lens.
They're mostly

(37:13):
well off, and I use that term comparatively with the rest of the world, westerners,
you know, probably North America, most of Europe,
where these people come in and, you know, yes, we can point fingers at inflation
and shitty governments
and poorly run countries, which all of which are true for all of the countries I've just mentioned.
But

(37:34):
the quality of life and the stability of the currency in those countries compared to other parts of the world
is, like, exponentially
better.
So the those kind of, again, quote, unquote
wealthy westerners that are coming into the Bitcoin ecosystem
see less of a value proposition
in

(37:55):
the ideologies
or properties of Bitcoin that you and I and the more early adopters did in the case of, you know, on central
digital cash, pay to pay, electronic cash, yada yada, all of the usual talking points.
They they just haven't felt enough pain yet from,
you know, having bank accounts closed or oppression, etcetera, etcetera, to be looking

(38:17):
for a solution to that and seeing Bitcoin as a solution to that. What what they're starting to feel right now,
even in these western countries is inflation. That is starting starting to take hold since,
I guess well, it's really started to ramp up since COVID since they shut the world down and started to to do all of their,

(38:38):
QE slash money printing. And, you know, clearly, we're feeling the effects of that now.
So I think that's been another driver of
driving in more, I guess, what we call normies that would,
consider themselves, you know, not on the breadline, that have some money to invest.
The only need that they're feeling right now other than the allure of number go up

(38:59):
is that, they start to feel a bit of inflation. You know, they've got less money left at the left at the end of the month with their paycheck.
And, you know, it only takes enough of us kind of ideological people to stop or continue rabbiting on about inflation and some Bitcoin being a potential hedge against that for the normies to start to take notice because they are starting to feel that pain. And naturally, you want that pain to stop, and you look for alternatives. And clearly,

(39:26):
more and more people are looking to Bitcoin for that.
But
I say all of that
with a view of, you know, these people are coming in and they just see it as an inflation hedge.
So if that's all they see Bitcoin as as an inflation hedge or something that's gonna, you know, not lose value over time, and they don't see the the allure of all of the other properties of Bitcoin I mentioned earlier,

(39:49):
then the only thing that matters to them essentially is is price appreciation or having price exposure to Bitcoin.
Everything else and and they're gonna do,
the they'll take the the path of least resistance.
And this is where I'll kind of take my hat off and say that the ETFs
and the treasury companies

(40:10):
are, for most people, the path of least resistance because they've probably already got,
you know,
access through their bank to, like, an investment account or something like that. Like, it's it's quite a common thing in the Western world is to have one even if it's used very little.
For that to be shoved under their nose and then to just hit a couple of buttons on their phone alongside their usual banking activities, then I can see why people do it. That's aside from all of the criticisms that I would clearly level at, you know, the fact that it's IOU, all that sort of stuff. But

(40:42):
I think that's one of the main reasons as to why people are,
number one, looking to Bitcoin. Well, I guess, quotes Bitcoin exposure
and not going down the route of self custody. And I'm gonna pause that just to let you chime in before I continue.
Yeah. I agree with most of what you said. Like, the people who are approaching me about buying Bitcoin

(41:03):
now
are generally boomers that I was talking to about this for the last, like, seven or eight years, and and they're starting to like, a couple of family members,
a couple of friends of friends, and people are like,
oh, yeah. You know, this Bitcoin thing is you gotta buy it now. It's a good time to buy it now.
And I think a lot of that is because they they can get that exposure

(41:25):
that that it's, you know, obviously, price appreciation,
etcetera, etcetera.
I would say the majority of those people,
even though self custody is
so much easier than it was previously,
I would still
feel like they would struggle.
And even if they wouldn't struggle, they'd have the fear.

(41:48):
And probably half of them
actually, more than half of them would not be able to shut their fucking mouths down the pub
or wherever they are, and they would tell everyone
how much they've invested,
what gains they have, all the rest of it. And then
my issue there is you have someone who's not technically savvy,

(42:10):
who doesn't understand what Bitcoin is really about. They just seem that it's gone up in value. They wanna get some.
If they're a bit of a technical and they can't keep their mouth shut, we've seen what can happen,
and that would put me on edge even
trying to help them with self custody.
Obviously, for someone who's, like, really close and I really care about, I'll take the time and explain and everything. But

(42:35):
I think, honestly, for some of these people,
maybe it is safe it's safer until it's not. You know? It's safer until they log in, and it's like you can't access it or they've suddenly started,
taxing it or they've done some sort of sixty one zero two or where any of the crazy shit that they could do.
It's easier and safer

(42:58):
until it's not.
Yeah. Do do you think that's the next kind of pain point that people,
sorry. I won't say people. I'll say the demographic I'm talking about, the the normie that's coming in that is, you know, not practicing self custody.
Do you think that is gonna be one of the next potential pain points that kind of forces people towards self custody?

(43:20):
And and I'm talking, like, sixty one zero two maybe or,
wealth taxes,
uncap unrealized cap gains, etcetera, etcetera.
Do you think, like, a rising prevalence of that is is the next natural thing that would be the the impetus for the next,
I guess, tranche of people to see the true value
of self custody, or do you think it's gonna be driven by something else?

(43:41):
No. I think it will be that. I think it will be unrealized gains
or,
something along those lines that I see probably happening not too long from now in Europe.
I think that's what will suddenly get people to be like, ah, fuck. You know, we need to do something now. But then even then, it's like, okay. They introduce it. Well, now it's happened.

(44:03):
Like, you can't go back in time. So now a percentage of your wealth has been seized.
Now moving forward, you might decide,
to try and self custody.
Wherever wealth you've already stored, you've already lost a percentage of that. So you can only do that going forward.
And then if it's anything else that's more drastic than a wealth tax, like

(44:25):
a war breaks out or a natural disaster
or
whatever,
there's, like, physical threat and that kind of stuff,
then, again, it's like it's too late. You know, if you can't access it, you can't access it. So I don't know. I think I think there's a just a percentage of people who will probably not make that jump. I think a lot of these, like,

(44:46):
75, 80 year old people sat on
large amount of wealth.
They're just used to doing things a certain way, and I don't think
they will see the value in uncensorable,
unseasonable,
in theory, money
until it's too late. Those type. But I think there's also gonna be a group of,

(45:07):
is it Zoomers and, like, the generations below us to who Yeah. Gen z. I think they already see it. I think they already see
can't buy property.
Things are pretty tough.
There's a there's a large percentage of them who are just like, what the fuck is going on? And I think they are more leaning into

(45:27):
the idea of,
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
They're already
generally pretty technically savvy enough to fucking
set up a passport. I mean, I can do it, so they can certainly do it. They probably they would do it while online gaming with their 20 mates,
while doing whatever chat rooms they're doing and everything else. They do it all at the same time, blindfolded.

(45:50):
So,
you know,
not to be mean,
but I care less about
the boomers
and whether they're gonna go on their 12 crews of the year.
And if they get a percentage of their
funds
seized, I'm not saying I don't care,
but I care less

(46:10):
than the gen our generation or the generations
that come after us because
it's fucking hard out there, and they need this stuff. Like, they see the need for it. I think there is hope. I think that you just have to accept that some people won't, but the people after us is is where we need to educate and,
allow them to use these tools.

(46:31):
Yeah. Well said. I just wanna quickly push back on on
your thought process around
the fact that maybe a sixty one zero two or or unrealized cap gains probably being the more likely thing to ever happen
would be an impetus to push people towards self custody. Because
for the demographic again that we're talking about, the the quote, unquote normie,

(46:53):
even if they did help hold it in self custody, 95%
of them are gonna have bought through Coinbase or similar. So the fact that they hold it in self custody,
yes, it means that it couldn't be easily, you know, taken from their account. But if if if we're talking about unrealized capital gains, all's it takes is a sternly worded letter from the IRS or the HMRC.
95%
of those people are gonna fold like a pack of cards

(47:16):
for for and and to be clear, like, understandably so. Like, nobody's going nobody wants to go to jail over this shit. No. Not really.
The only other option they have is really just to flee. But then most most
countries
actually will
work with the IRS or HMRC.
And if you have any assets in the new country, then they can come after them. It's not just like get on the plane and leave. And and most people, especially at that age group, their lives are,

(47:43):
complicated enough and enough ties that it makes it very difficult to leave. So
in majority of cases, like you say, 95, 98%
of people are just gonna go, there you are.
You know, that that there's your money, HMRC. Go and fucking
spend it wisely as you always do.
Yeah. I think that that to my answer my own question about, like, what what could be the next kind of impetus for the next drive towards self custody

(48:08):
aside from
user experience, which is the the thing I wanna go into shortly,
could be,
one of these big regulated
entities that are holding an ETF or maybe even a bank that's self custodying
Bitcoin on behalf of its customers is that one of these suffers a really large loss.

(48:29):
Completely unclear to me what would happen to the creditors there.
If it was large enough, I'd say that the government may step in and make people whole again.
But I know with a lot of these bank or smaller banks that are are are taking their first steps into this sort of stuff, the government have have said, look. You know, you're kind of on your own here. We can't guarantee this sort of stuff. But

(48:52):
I personally think that, you know, a a large enough event like that from one of the, you know, the big
five or 10 banks like HSBC, Barclays,
Chase, or something like that that ever if they were ever to go into the this kind of
world where they were holding it for their customers and they lost a shit ton of it, that could be a a big driver to to wake people up and be like, holy shit. If if an institution that I've trusted with my wealth

(49:17):
for my entire life can fuck up this badly, then maybe I need to look for an alternative.
Maybe. But do you not think they would have thought that every other time a bank or institution has fucked up in such
a enormous way over the last few years? Like,
I don't know. I don't know if they would even think that. It would be someone else's fault. Honestly, I don't think that would do it. If Coinbase

(49:42):
if, if they had a massive hack or or something like that Yeah. I think
well, don't don't Coinbase hold all, sailors,
sats and loads of other peoples as well?
I've heard various different companies banded around. Mhmm. I'm not entirely sure. You know, if something like that went down, then it wouldn't be the proper normie normies who have got it in their investment accounts. It would be the next group, which are like, oh, okay. This is a separate thing.

(50:12):
Thing. I'm gonna have it on an exchange. Well, I'll just keep it on Coinbase. You know, they've been around for a long time or or equivalent. They've been around for a long time. You know, this they're gonna do a better job than me, blah blah blah blah
blah. I think those types of people might then rethink things.
But but then, you know, it's already been taken, so they'd have to start again.
Yeah. Indeed. And just quickly before we go on to the next point about your point around, well, wouldn't they have already done that with the banks that have failed in in years gone by?

(50:38):
Well, the only other option they had was another bank until Bitcoin came along. So there is an alternative now.
That's true.
The the last thing I wanna cover off with this, in and around this question,
is we we've skirted around the the concept of people taking the the easiest path, you know, the ETF, their their stockbroker account,

(51:00):
their banking account, and just holding paper Bitcoin or an IOU on an exchange.
And that is the easiest path for most people whether we like it or not because they're they're already kind of in that ecosystem,
and they don't have to,
more importantly, take
responsibility.
Like, if it's in there, they just know that, oh, you know, that bank's been around for god knows how many years. And if I lose my password, they'll help me out,

(51:27):
which brings me on to the last point of UX
improvements and and,
in and around wallets, mobile wallets, hardware wallets,
anything to do with self custody.
You and I have been in the space for, you know, a similar amount of time, and I'm sure, you know, I can probably speak to you for you here and say that the user experience improvements we've seen in the last, like, seven years in terms of self custody

(51:50):
has been huge.
Oh, fuck. Yeah. It it it's only a number of years ago where people had to kind of save individual private keys like HD wallets as we know it Mhmm. Backed up by seed words with unlimited
almost unlimited amounts of dress of addresses are not actually that old of a phenomenon.
Mhmm.
And it seemed it's something that we take for granted now. And, again, hardware wallets, offline key storage, that wasn't even possible just, you know, just a handful of years ago. So we've come a long, long way.

(52:22):
But, clearly, it's not enough to
for us to see levels of self custody that, you know, we maybe once hoped for or we thought of would happen, you know, by the time we got to 2025.
So I'm gonna let you take this one first because, naturally, this is kind of my bag here. It's what I do day to day, and I've obviously got some some some takes on it. But what needs to change in the self custody world

(52:47):
for you to think, okay.
Doing it through my Chase bank is no longer
my
is no longer the easiest one, or there is a an equally easy equivalent in self custody? What what would need to change in the architecture of any app or wallet or just generally in the ecosystem to get closer to that, becoming a reality?

(53:10):
I'll flip it on its head a little bit.
I think that the $5 wrench problem
is gonna become a
larger problem
as things get worse out there and things get better,
for Bitcoin.
I think that
when these numbers start to get bigger

(53:33):
and these threats,
or these attacks
start to become
more enticing for criminals
and more and more people's data gets leaked, I just think that that's gonna ramp up. And, honestly, I see that as probably the biggest
it's not specifically a UX hurdle,
but it kind of is because

(53:53):
to protect yourself from those attacks, you
have to do things
quite differently
than just
taking control of your funds. Like, there's levels to this stuff. And so
my thoughts are, like, things like time locks.
Is it like, degradating
multisigs

(54:15):
Mhmm. That go down to one address,
in case
something happens to the person holding and they wanna make sure their family gets it.
Those are the types of things I don't know if you'd specifically
call it UX, but it is the experience that you have whilst holding.
I actually think that's the biggest one. I think that what you guys have done with, with Passport and Envoy and everything else, like,

(54:39):
I'm pretty sure I could sit with I'm gonna say anyone,
like, 70 and below
pretty much
and do this in, like,
an hour
comfortably with single SIG and and it not really be a problem.
Yeah. I might have to chase them every year to say, look. Just make sure that you double check everything and get familiar with it. But it's not that hard. Like, you've done a very, very good job. I honestly I think that's the biggest problem. I really, like,

(55:08):
inheritance is a problem.
$5 wrench is a problem.
People keeping their fucking mouth shut is a problem.
Data leaks are a problem. All of that.
And the last thing that anyone wants is someone on their fucking doorstep, whether that be government with guns
or
someone else with guns.
Yeah. I I think you fucking nailed that, mate. You you took all of my good talking points, so I'll just try and add where I can, basically. But I have been and remain a seed word maximalist.

(55:37):
You know, this summer, we've had a lot of chatter around, you know, Bitkey saying seedless is safer.
And we've we've done some deep dives into that on on the brief before now, so I'll kinda save it here. But I think seed words are still paramount for where we're at right now.
Do I think that people are gonna be stamping,

(55:57):
12 or 24 words,
and their passphrase
into sets, you know, pieces of steel in ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty years' time?
Definitely
not.
I think we're
thanks to all of the improvements of four and the ones that we don't even know about yet, such as, like you say, a mini script,

(56:18):
Taproot.
The
functionality
of multisig
will be vastly improved
as will, you know, what you can do with inheritance
and social recovery
such that you're gonna be able to construct a wallet
where
you have
keys that are not yet active, thanks to the mini script,

(56:39):
that you can give to family members,
that you can rotate out, thanks to, you know, the frost protocol
even without them being involved or having to make on chain transactions.
You can do the same with,
with inheritance.
There's gonna be privacy benefits thanks to, you know, Taproot based multisig as well. And all of this is gonna be a you're gonna be able to do all of this without having to ever touch a seed words. You're just gonna have multiple

(57:08):
phones, hardware devices,
each with their own one, and you're gonna have enough redundancy
built in
without having any single points of failure, which is kind of the the problem we have with multisig right now in terms of, you know, if I've got a two or three and I give you the third key to look after Max, that's not necessarily a single point of failure, but I'm putting a lot of trust into

(57:30):
you to look after that key for me. And, you know, if something happens to one of my keys, I can only call upon you.
All of the stuff I just mentioned is gonna open up that
massively so that we can do it remotely. You can have more keys. You can give away keys that, you know for a fact are not yet active and all that sort of stuff such that it's gonna become,
active and all that sort of stuff such that

(57:50):
it's gonna become
almost fruitless because if we can make that kind of behavior the norm,
the whole $5 wrench attack kind of becomes
almost
not impossible, but it becomes not worth the risk to the attacker
because the normal
security
standard that a normal Bitcoin has,

(58:12):
you know that, you know, if you break into their house, all they've got is their phone or one hardware wallet. And most people, that is just not gonna be enough to spend from where their real amounts of Bitcoin are. And if you want to kind of stick around, you're gonna have to hold them at gunpoint,
wait for time locks to elapse, take them to different locations,
compromise family members,

(58:33):
and you're gonna have to do all of that without raising any alarm. So it's just gonna become, you know, almost pointless for for most attackers once we get all of those kind of improvements that, you know, you and I have just mentioned. And and I think that will be one of the big impetuses for for for kind of the next wave of self custody because it's literally just a case of you've got this app on your phone or you've got a hardware device.

(58:57):
You don't need to do any backups because you've got enough redundancy built in. It's just a case of, you know, NFC or QR code. Tap this. Scan this. And if you lose something, again, you've got loads of redundancy,
built in such a way that, you know, even if you did lose one or multiple of your keys, you can still call on friends and family members to to help you out. Yeah. I think at the end of the day, if if we get to that stage, and maybe we're not a million miles away from it, suddenly the juice is not worth the squeeze for these criminals

(59:25):
who, at the moment, like, they're looking at a lot of this stuff. They're like,
this is fucking easy. This is easy. All I have to do is scare this person enough or cause them enough pain, and and they're gonna squeal, and they're gonna give me a load of money.
If it becomes the norm that that doesn't work,
then I think it's just gonna be that they go, okay. This is no longer the hot new thing. This is not what I'm gonna try. I think it's also gonna be important that that's

(59:52):
in some way provable
because
you can get attacked by somebody who might not believe you, and
you're still in the same situation.
You still get the shit beaten out of you or tortured or whatever else happens to you if they don't believe you even if it is true.
So,
having some way to show without actually compromising the security,

(01:00:17):
Look.
I can't fucking give you what you want. This is why.
Very clearly, like, this is what you would have to do now to get this.
Trust me. It's not fucking worth it.
Here's another wallet that I have with x amount on it.
I'm gonna give you that just to leave me the fuck alone. Alright?
It's not what you wanted. This is all I can do, and they can see that and it's clear. Because otherwise, you're gonna have that problem

(01:00:44):
regardless. Yeah. They're not gonna get the money, but you might leave without kneecaps or whatever. And it's a real risk. And, like, we've joked around
about it before, but when there's family involved, it's it's another step up.
When when people have their life savings, it's a step up. It's, it's no joke, and there are there are bad people out there who,

(01:01:06):
will do bad things. So you need to protect yourself.
Yeah. That that provability,
when under duress
is is a great point, by the way. And and it's one part of the beautiful parts of, like, miniscript. And, you know, if we get Vault built on top of CTV,
it's all enforced on chain.
Like, if I've got a Vault built on top of,

(01:01:27):
c t the the CTV
upgrade where I've,
you know, encoded,
address my call source addresses with a script to say that they have to go through
a holding address where the keys are you know, they're in fucking, I don't know, Australia or something like that just to be a little bit hyperbolic.
Yeah. We can be like, yeah. Alright. You try and spend to that spend from that address and see what happens. If you try and spend to anywhere other than this wallet, it ain't gonna work, mate, and that's enforced by the Bitcoin miners.

(01:01:54):
Exactly. Yeah. And it needs to be you know, we're talking about UX,
for simplicity of onboarding. Honestly, I think we're very fucking good. Like, it's it's still
still has some room, but it's those type of UX things that I think are gonna matter the most. It's like, okay. You have a gun to my head. Look. Here's a screen. It's not a load of gibbery fucking gobbledygook

(01:02:17):
of,
like, code. It's like, look. Here you go. You can see. It's on chain. They're like, what the fuck is that? I'm gonna hurt you more now. That's annoyed me.
It it needs to be it needs to be
very clear, picture book clear.
Look, mate. You're not fucking getting it.
I think those are the things that need to be worked on. I think that
geographically located stuff is is gonna be key. Time locks are gonna be key.

(01:02:41):
You know, all of these types of things and just making that more standard practice,
is gonna be an important thing.
Yeah. Agreed.
I'm we just riffed on that for, like, forty minutes. That was a that was a really good one. Even if I do say so myself, a good first topic.
Very, very keen to get some comments, if you haven't done so already in the live chat or even in, on Fountain afterwards? You know, send us a little boost and let us know your thoughts here. Do you disagree with anything?

(01:03:12):
Do you think there's other stuff that we haven't mentioned that might be the impetus for the next wave of people practices practicing self custody?
What needs to change in terms of, you know, self custody UX? What are you looking forward to? What do you think is shit? Get involved and let us know what you think. Yeah. Definitely do. We've got also
loads and loads of questions

(01:03:32):
from the previous episodes.
Obviously, we've we've gone for 40. Should we jump into some of those? And then any questions that people have, I'll I'll be now live, hopefully,
typing away very slowly responding to people in the live chat, and
we'll also cover anything that I can't, on the next one. But for now, yeah, should we do some questions?

(01:03:52):
Yeah, man. Let's do it.
I think did we do this one on the last show? Did the unbounded part? Did he ask about our thoughts on Stack Wallet? I'm not sure whether we covered that one. The unbounded. I've not been on the unbounded pod. He's, he's he's a friend of mine, and he sends us a question in, asking, curious to know to know your opinions on Stack Wallet, the just Bitcoin and Monero Wallet. It's an interesting approach, I. E. Dual stack approach, but don't know much about

(01:04:18):
them. Yes. Indeed.
Yeah. I can jump into this one. Yeah. Stack Jira, they've been around for a long time. We've had Diego
on the pods
maybe a couple of years ago, something like that. Seems like a guy works with his missus. They do or she does all the UX, I think, and he does the other dev work. I've used it. It's

(01:04:41):
pretty good, actually. It's like a a simple, nice UX.
You either have the the normal stack, which has all the different cryptocurrencies
and, swapping services built in and all that stuff, or just the Bitcoin and Monero,
StackDuo.
I I can't say a bad word about it. I think it's really good. Is it, cross platform? And I know I've tried it on Android.

(01:05:05):
What did I try on? I think I tried it on Android as well, so I couldn't tell you,
honestly.
Maybe someone in the chat can,
can mention it. I think it is, but I couldn't tell you for sure. No problem. Alright. The next question comes from Rob g.
And he asks, is an iPhone set up without iCloud,

(01:05:28):
no Apple Pay, location services set kept off brackets except when needed,
good enough,
or does one really need to move over to GrapheneOS?
I'm just so damn used to my iPhone.
Max, your thoughts.
Congratulations,
Rob g, by the way. You won, $50 worth of Bitcoin on Monero in the last days. Yes. Thanks for getting involved.

(01:05:53):
Yeah. Please do come and claim that from Cape Wallet.
I like both.
I still even though I said six months ago that I was gonna move just to one phone,
I haven't managed to do that. I kind of like to run an iPhone
and Graphene.

(01:06:14):
I don't know if it's if it's enough, if I'm honest. I never really fully trust my iPhone,
but I also
like it much, much, much, much, much,
much, much more than Android for a day to day phone.
I'm not sure is the answer. What about you?
Yeah.
It's hard to ignore the the allure of the Apple ecosystem, isn't it?

(01:06:38):
Rob, to to answer your question,
I'm gonna
answer it with a question, which I know is kind of annoying, but allow me to to pad it out afterwards.
It it depends,
like, who is your threat model? What are you thinking about moving to GrapheneOS to protect yourself against?
What do you use your phone for,

(01:06:59):
day to day? Like, what's important to you?
You know, are you just using your phone
to chat with your friends and family on WhatsApp,
to take some photos of your kids,
and to, you know, do do some general social media stuff?
Then, yeah, an iPhone is probably absolutely fine. Yeah. You're probably gonna get served some personalized ads and have

(01:07:21):
your data from Instagram harvested and whatnot. But I guess that's the you know,
that would be no different on something like GrapheneOS if you use the phone for that sort of stuff.
Or to flip it on its head and to go to the other end of the spectrum, you know, are you,
let's say,
you know, do you do you value

(01:07:42):
verifiable,
encrypt end to end encrypted
chat messengers and value open source software?
Are you talking about
issues with your friends that you want to be certain that nobody,
no outsiders can can read? Do you value,
an operating system that is, you know, again, open source and verifiable?

(01:08:05):
Are you storing lots of Bitcoin on your wallet? You know, are you an an anti hardware wallet person and you think a phone is good enough?
Then, yeah, maybe it makes sense to to go down a more focused route and take the trade offs,
that come with it in the sense that you,
you know, you're not gonna be able to have Google Pay.

(01:08:26):
You said that you're gonna, you know, keep all of the the location tracking off and all that sort of stuff.
I guess, however, there is a caveat with that even with the location services turned off. Like, if you're using a SIM in your phone, like, you're still easily trackable by the right person. So that's a a trap that a lot of people fall into. So,
and, yeah, I guess, like, do you, you know, do you want the sandbox in that? GrapheneOS does all of I believe iOS does this as well.

(01:08:50):
It it it's a difficult one.
The the main the main one for me, right, is because I I firmly believe that iOS is a very, very secure operating system.
And I don't believe that Apple are openly malicious to their customers,
but it is a very much a trust me, bro,
security model.
Completely closed source. You've got no idea what's going on.

(01:09:14):
So you just have to trust that they're being honest and that they're saying, you know, if you've got advanced data protection turned on and all that sort of stuff that you can get, that it is truly end to end encrypted and there's no backdoor because you simply cannot verify it.
If that's important to you and not the deal breaker to you, then you need to look elsewhere. You know, GrapheneOS is clearly, you know, the the the the front runner. And then you need to look for alternative services to, like,

(01:09:38):
iCloud and things like that, again, where they're open source and you can
verify that, let's say, the Proton ecosystem is is one I'm a huge fan of Yeah. Where you can store your files, your photos, your emails, all, you know, end to end
Or maybe just to cap it off, there's there's there's a hybrid here. You know, you can use an iPhone in the way that you've mentioned with all that shit turned off. Although, you know, you could argue that that kind of kills a lot of the magic of iOS.

(01:10:05):
And then use bolt on services on top of it like the proton ecosystem. You know, if you'd not if you don't have iCloud, then use Proton Drive. Use,
Signal Messenger instead of Apple messages or what I'm not even sure what it's called. But there are alternatives, but, again, they're all still being run on top of a closed source ecosystem. So
is there some benefit to doing something like that? I would say yes. But, again, you you cannot quantify it because it's just running in a walled garden.

(01:10:32):
Yep. That's fair. I think, like, just if it really matters to you, there is not gonna be a better option than GrapheneOS,
like, realistically,
but just it is gonna have some trade offs. It's not gonna be as usable.
It's not gonna be as slick and pretty and everything else.
So
weigh it out. We'll have two. You know? That's the other option. You can get an old Pixel for not a lot of money and use it for your Bitcoin stuff if you need to.

(01:10:59):
Indeed. Yeah. If you're a psychopath, obviously, because carrying two phones is just really crazy.
But, yeah, I see where you're coming from. The next one, very open ended this one, so we can take it wherever we we want, Max. But the Dennis Prade
asks, is lightning really private?
Yes. The most private coin
in the world.

(01:11:19):
It's incredible. There's no flaws. Perfectly private for sending and receiving.
Literally nothing to worry about.
Yeah. As always, Max, is being a little bit facetious there,
and the the the true answer is a lot more nuanced.
Can Lightning be private?
Yes. In some circumstances.

(01:11:42):
If you're using,
Wallet of Satoshi custodial
database,
then, no, it's not private because they are seeing the destination of all your payments.
The same is true even for Phoenix, a wallet that I am quite a big fan of because of how easy it makes,
self custodial lightning.
They can still see all of the, destinations

(01:12:05):
of your payments.
But if you wanna go through the hurdles of setting up your own lightning node on a start nine or an umbrella or similar,
managing your own channels,
then, yes, you can make quite good private payments with the lightning network.
The reason for that is when you operate your own channels and your own node,

(01:12:27):
you are doing all of the kind of route path finding yourself on your own node. You're not sharing that with anybody else, and you're not offloading that to a third party that, again,
by the nature of them doing that, they see the final destination for you.
So, yes, generally, and this is a a kind of sweeping generalization,
if you run your own channels, then payments within the Lightning Network,

(01:12:49):
can be,
in my opinion, private enough.
And that's kind of the big,
selling point here.
The problem that we've got with lightning
and privacy at the moment is
on the receiving side.
Generally speaking, if you use it,
in the most naive way where you just send somebody a a BoltEleven invoice,

(01:13:12):
encoded in that invoice is your node destination. And from that, anybody that gets that generates an invoice for your node,
is able to see the UTXOs,
that powered the,
or or or a part of that lightning channel as well. So you do share quite a lot of information just simply by sending somebody an invoice, which is not ideal.

(01:13:36):
And then from there, obviously, if they've got a link back to the chain, then if they're a sophisticated enough actor, they can then start to do some chain analysis to analyze the where the funds came from before they even entered the lightning Network as well. Clearly, that's not a very low hanging fruit, but it it it's a possibility for the right motivated actor.
There are,

(01:13:58):
developments
afoot,
in varying levels of implementation,
things like rendezvous routing, trampling routing,
and things like blinded paths, with respect
to c lightning and bolt 12,
where they basically are able to mask all of that kind of receiver,

(01:14:18):
information that would typically
be shared by a Bolt 11 invoice.
These kind of implementations or these upgrades
aim to fix that. So once these are prevalent, then I will,
reconstitute my answer. Obviously, I have to do a bit more homework, of course. But,
to say that is Lightning
really private?

(01:14:39):
Yes. It could be good enough,
if you want to go through the hurdles,
of mani creating and managing your your own channels, then, yes, I see,
I foresee a future in the not too distant future where, yes, Lightning could be good enough,
from a privacy perspective.
Now the point remains, and this is where I might let Max chime in,

(01:15:01):
is, you know, you've gotta get those funds into Lightning.
So
the the your on chain privacy is still important because you need to enter the Lightning Network somehow. And if you're doing that in a self sovereign manner by managing your own channels, then you're gonna have at least one UTXO
entering the Lightning Network to be locked up into that to to multisig.

(01:15:23):
That seems like it's a completely separate question and would take me way over time. But, I've been waffling for a while, so I wanna see if Max has got any, any hot takes, to tell me I'm wrong.
No. No. I agree with all that. I just I would say you can use, like, a bolt swap or something like that. It's not a bad option,
or other swapping services

(01:15:43):
if you're using a UTXO that's not currently
tied to your identity. Maybe you've taken it as a payment for goods or services or bought it in cash or it's been mined or something like that.
That would be the ideal thing for opening,
a channel or for doing the swap.
And then, yeah, once you're once you have lightning and when you have your own channels and things,

(01:16:07):
it is definitely no question better for sending than on chain for privacy. Like, there's no question there. That's not what I'm debating.
If I have the option to send and it works with Lightning, I'll use that over on chain,
but I'll use Monero
over Lightning.
It's just there's levels to it.
So, yeah, it's just if you are gonna open the channel, then make sure that you're thoughtful about how you do it. Yeah. Absolutely. I

(01:16:35):
think just before, because I'm gonna run up on time shortly.
Before we take,
well, we're not gonna have time for another question just to part this one out just for one more minute. Any recommendations or what would your personal recommendation be for somebody that did wanna enter into self custodial lightning? Because I know it's something that you fucked around with with varying
levels of of success,
in the last couple of years.

(01:16:59):
Yeah. I mean, I've I've run
many, many lightning loads
and fucked most of them up. I think best set up can you hear me, by the way? It's raining like fuck what I have. Yeah. You can hear the rain in the background, but your voice is still coming through. It's okay.
Yeah. I think the most success I've had
is running c lightning

(01:17:20):
on a start
line that has
been pretty solid, and then I'm using Zeus connected to that on my phone.
And that's yeah. I think, you know, I haven't really I can't really complain.
I also run currently a Luna node,
which is
pretty solid.

(01:17:40):
We use that for all our BTCPay
stuff. That's not bad.
Outside of that, I don't really know what to suggest. I think both of those options are pretty good. Obviously,
we now have my Nimbus as a as a new sponsor. Like, that could be another option for running a lightning node if you don't wanna do it at home. But,

(01:18:00):
you know, Zeus is very good mobile.
It's always channel management that seems to be some type of issue for sending larger payments.
Yeah. Tend to cosign most of that. I I rag
on Raspberry Pis all the time.
However,
my longest
running lightning channel is actually still on a lightning

(01:18:21):
on a Raspberry Pi, running an umbrella, which is which is funny.
Yeah. And I I often think similar to to, you know, multisig backups,
lightning channel management,
often gets or or the burden of which often gets overstated.
For most people, if they kind of set up a robust Lightning node, again, I would recommend something like a start nine on a mini desktop PC, a proper piece of hardware,

(01:18:49):
then choose c lightning or LND
and and open up, you know, a large channel, you know, probably like
a thousand dollars or something like that, and then you just have all the liquidity on your side just to spend, and you're you're not a merchant, you don't need to receive very often,
then the the the rate at which you're gonna need to manage that channel or or the liquidity within is gonna be pretty low for most people.

(01:19:13):
So, you know, the the it can often be overstated how much of a burden it is,
especially when you're just starting out and you're just kind of doing a few small payments here and there, sending and receiving. Like, you're not gonna need to worry about,
yeah, you're not gonna need to worry about rebalancing those channels. It's when you get into the realms of being a merchant. You've got lots of payments coming one way maybe. People purchasing

(01:19:36):
hoodies off your ungovernable web store and that sort of stuff is when, you know, the headaches start and the the the more kind of
attentive you need to be to your channels.
Yeah. Yeah. I agree with all of that. Yeah. I think it's not you know, I sometimes do overstate how much of a fucking nightmare it can be. I guess it's
it can be done. It's just extra work, and it is a very, very useful tool and better for sending for sure. Yeah. Absolutely.

(01:20:04):
Thank you for your question,
the unbounded pod, Rob g and Dennis Prade.
Appreciate you guys getting involved and giving us something to riff on for twenty minutes or so.
I think that was a successful show number four, Max, don't you? I think so. When people are hearing this this Friday, not live,
I will be in Riga

(01:20:24):
next Friday, hopefully live,
for, show number five. And hopefully,
we'll be, back to the three of us all being well. I don't think Seth's gonna be in Riga, so we're gonna be in three
very different parts of the world. So let's, work on tying up our time zones, in the meantime.
But with that said, if you're listening to this, thank you for being in the live chat. Thanks for getting involved. Keep posting your questions. Keep, sending us your topics.

(01:20:50):
Yeah. The more of you that get involved, the bigger the show gets. Please share it. Please like it. Please send us a boost. Really does help. And, yeah, free samurai. Free samurai.

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