The War on Bitcoin Privacy | Calle - What Bitcoin Did

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The Kraken is now putting its arms over the system that we've been building for 15 years now.

(00:11):
And yeah, we're starting to feel the consequences of that.
You need to be able to express yourself.
You know, we have understood that privacy is necessary for a democracy to function.
Otherwise, you're just a tool.
You're not a free human being.
The general population will only start to understand things once it starts to hurt.
We rely on a small number of large corporations that have a lot of control over our lives.

(00:37):
They have accumulated so much power, it becomes trivial to control those companies politically
and then affect billions of people at this point.
We're not trying to do anything bad.
We're literally just trying to improve the world.
As long as we just keep moving into the right direction, I think we'll, I hope we'll be okay.

(00:59):
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All right, Kali, man. It's been too long. How are you doing?

(03:15):
Danny, nice to see you again. I'm great. How are you?
I'm very good. I've not seen you since you came to Cheat Code, which was like a year and a half ago.
And you've been a busy man. But one of the things that I wanted to start with is in Bitcoin,
everyone's constantly saying we are winning. Bitcoin's at all-time highs. There's like
seemingly good regulation being passed through the US. New treasury company every week. So it's

(03:39):
like the taking down the traditional markets. But there's a big but in that last week,
the two samurai devs, Bill and Keone, pled guilty.
They're facing up to five years in prison.
From what I've heard, it sounds like they're going to get
the harsher end of that sentence.
Roman Storm was found guilty by jury.

(03:59):
And now the UK has brought in the Online Safety Act.
And all of this seems like we're not winning.
So I want to know your take, just like a vibe check.
What do you think of what's happening right now?
I think they're catching up to us.
That's what it feels like.
So on a financial side, everything is going great, right?
So the playbook is evolving just the way that people predicted it.

(04:23):
Price goes up, people FOMO in, institutions are coming, etc., etc.
That's the most predictable, maybe even like the most boring part of Bitcoin,
which is still a necessary part for Bitcoin to gain global dominance.
I understand that.
On the freedom and privacy front, which is kind of, in my mind, a necessary precondition for the first thing to succeed.

(04:50):
It seems like we've had quite some room to work on things for now 15 years.
And the system didn't quite understand what Bitcoin is and what we do with it.
and now it's closing down and using like old playbook

(05:12):
like oppression against freedom technologies that have been going on for decades so zooming out
I think it's just a continuation of a process that has already started if you want in the 80s
which is to clamp down on the freedom of expression,

(05:34):
whether that's messaging, calling people, just communication,
crypto wars 1.0,
and a continuation of that in the crypto space,
in the Bitcoin space, which is now exchange of value
without any intermediaries, without control, without borders,
any of the old rules that apply in cyberspace.

(05:58):
And the Kraken is now putting its arms
over the system that we've been building
for 15 years now.
And yeah, we're starting to feel the consequences of that.
So in the midst of this,
what do you think the way out for us as Bitcoiners is?
Is it just to build the tools that we need to use?

(06:18):
No, I think we need to engage much more
with the external world.
So, you know, we need to build the tools and we need to make sure that we build parallel systems that we can use.
So I think this movement is a constructive movement.
We're building a parallel system because the old system is not building the tools that we need for the next century.

(06:45):
And so there's a constructive part.
but we tend to be a community that talks a lot with itself. You know, we say Bitcoin is winning
and it's like everyone is repeating the same old sentences. This is good for Bitcoin and Bitcoin is
for enemies and blah, blah, blah. It's the same things that people just say in circles.

(07:09):
And I think it's a mechanism to ensure what the boundaries of the community is and what's inside
and outside, but we are clearly lacking the voices that bridge those gaps and try to communicate
to the outside world what we're doing here and why we're doing it.

(07:30):
And so what do you think the key things that we need to change are?
I think these movements, they live off individuals that represent the links between the inside
and the outside.
So there is a groupthink in the crypto and the Bitcoin space that has lasted for a while now, which is like as long as we keep building, then we'll reach freedom.

(08:00):
But I think we're waking up to the fact that we are still embedded in a larger system.
So we need to find the voices that can communicate to society in a way that helps people to understand why we're trying to build Bitcoin systems.

(08:24):
And why we're, you know, this is about human rights, freedom, freedom of expression.
It is about transcending nations and transcending politics.
It is about mathematics.
And, you know, these are complex questions that we are very used to.

(08:44):
We've been talking about these for years.
Yeah.
But talk to a normie.
And the association that people have with Bitcoin is trading, the value going up, or terrorist financing, tax evasion, all these bad labels that they've put onto Bitcoin.

(09:10):
Our job is not only to defend Bitcoin in a technological way, but also try to put out
the narratives that are stronger than the bad ones.
So, you know, we're in a situation where they determine what Bitcoin is from the outside.
And what we should be doing is we determine what Bitcoin is from the inside and spread

(09:34):
this message.
I want to give an example.
For example, I think Alex Gladstein has been one of the most influential and important people in shaping the narrative around what Bitcoin is because of his background.
It comes from human rights perspective.
You know, he's been working in that field before he's got quite some, you know, people know him from that world.

(09:58):
Yeah.
So he has managed to build like an entire narrative, very strong, very good narrative, an ethical narrative around Bitcoin, which is to help the people who need the help the most.
So whether that's refugees, political dissent, or human rights groups around the world, protest movements that rely on a system like Bitcoin to operate when a cruel, unjust regime tries to crack them down.

(10:34):
And Alex has done such an amazing job at that.
Because the message is so powerful and it's also one that you just can't ignore.
You can't sit there and pretend, you know, all the FUD against Bitcoin, whether it's on mining or whether it's used to finance terrorists or whatever.
When that comes from the mainstream media, you can't use the same FUD if you're saying this woman in Afghanistan is using Bitcoin to fund a school.

(10:55):
Like, it's just, it's such a powerful narrative.
He does such a good job.
When we did Cheat Code last year, the one you weren't able to come to, he had an hour slot where it was all human rights.
And a guy from the Bedford Independent came and was watching the conference.
And he wrote an amazing piece afterwards.
I'll put it in the show notes, but it was basically, it was how Alex Gladstein's hour of presentations,

(11:15):
all from different people across the HRF's kind of roster, just changes perception on Bitcoin entirely.
And like, I think you're right, but what I think is a really hard narrative to sell people,
and I don't know why this is, is the need for privacy.
I was talking to some friends when I was back in the UK recently,
and I was talking to them about the Online Safety Act that came in,

(11:35):
and how this is a terrible precedent to set,
and no one gets it.
Why do you think privacy is so hard to sell to people?
So the story about privacy is a long one
that has been going on for decades at this point.
And to really understand how the evolution

(11:56):
of this narrative in society evolved,
I think it makes sense to start with,
you know, what we call the Crypto Wars 1.0 at this point.
And we call it 1.0 because there is now Crypto Wars 2.0 also going on.
So Crypto Wars 1.0 is, let's say, in the 80s, even in the late 70s, where intelligence agencies in the U.S., primarily in the U.S., but this spread across the globe, started to fight encryption.

(12:32):
because they thought that talking without the state's ability,
communication without the state's ability to intercept
and to read what you're talking,
allows criminals to, drug dealers, all this FUD,
human trafficking, child safety, and we can come to that later,

(12:56):
All these labels that they put on used to justify the fact that they wanted to put literal hardware into our devices that can listen to the messages that you're writing to someone, even with end-to-end encryption.
so what has happened since then is and this is a remarkable remarkable change and evolution that i

(13:22):
think we need to learn from is that decades of work from activists from you know people fighting
this fight had shifted the narrative around the need for encryption for communication quite
considerably. So while encryption was only for criminals in the 80s, sometime in the 90s and in

(13:44):
the 2000s, the story started to shift, but very slowly after decades and decades of fighting from
especially activists, not only like cryptographers, and there are like big cryptographers that have
that have fought that fight and were, you know, necessary to get to that point.
but the narrative needed to shift from the criminals needed to you needed to to write a

(14:10):
love letter to someone you needed to communicate to your family to your friends to you know to
retain your human dignity you need to be able to express yourself you know we have understood that
privacy is necessary for a democracy to function because you cannot be a uh an intelligent um

(14:30):
well, informed citizen, if you're not able to communicate freely with your citizen peers,
right? To form a political opinion and to be able to cast a vote in democracy requires you to be able
to get that information freely and to share information freely. Our democracy is literally

(14:51):
built on the necessity of privacy. In any democratic country today, the ballot is private.
It needs to be private. Otherwise, you can be pressured to vote for someone specific.
And after the fact, also that, you know, after voting, that also needs to remain private.
Otherwise, you can be, you know, you can get a bonus or you can be rewarded for voting for

(15:16):
this candidate rather than that candidate. By the way, like, I hope everyone remembers what Elon Musk
did with the American elections last year, which is like terrible way of interfering with a
democratic process that needs to remain pure because the process itself, the principle around
it is so much more important than the result of each individual vote. So I think, you know, we,

(15:42):
The fight is not over.
Crypto Wars 1.0 is still going on, to be honest.
But at some point, the DOJ was decided that...
No, sorry.
I should say the fight against the DOJ,
the Supreme Court in the US decided in a case against the DOJ

(16:03):
that encryption is everyone's right
and you're allowed to encrypt your communication.
So it went from being treated the same as munitions
to being the right of every citizen.
Correct, yeah.
The export of cryptography was treated
like exporting weapons in the United States,

(16:24):
which is insane if you think about it today.
And so the crypto wars was won.
And then narratives started to shift
and we've seen the EU parliament
than recommending to their constituents,
to the parliamentarians, like use Signal,
because Russia is watching
and people starting to understand

(16:46):
that we need to rely on these things.
And you have things like TOR being funded by US agencies
because they noticed that this can be a quite useful tool
for freedom in other countries
when you have political dissent
and they want to have secure communication.
So this is something that they want to push.

(17:08):
So the fight for privacy in communication has done quite some leaps.
And at this point, I think most people understand,
at least have a sense of intuition that the NSA is watching what you're typing here.
And it's kind of disgusting, the feeling that someone is watching you.

(17:30):
And I have a friend, I always think about,
like we were chatting on telegram and he told me like you know i i can't talk freely here let's use
signal and then we switched over to signal and the the way that communication changes once you
know that there is no one watching is you become like your normal self yeah it's like it's like

(17:53):
across this table yeah exactly like one street whoever you are that's how you should be and as i
like i want to repeat this this is necessary for democracy to work right otherwise you're just a
tool you're not a free human being we understand that and now decades of work have resulted in this

(18:15):
intuition of people feeling that it is you know a disgusting feeling that someone can read what
you're watching by the way in physical space we have this intuition already we've been in physical
space as humans. You know, we've existed for hundreds of thousands or hundreds of thousands
of years as Homo sapiens. You know, we have curtains, we do, you know, we whisper and we

(18:41):
hide our mouth when we talk because people can read your lips, right? We do this intuitively,
although we don't even understand why it's about reading the lips.
And you also even have a, almost like a sixth sense where it can make you feel uneasy if you
think someone's watching you in public.
And you, like, I don't know what that is,
but if someone stood in the corner

(19:02):
and they're looking at you,
sometimes you get that intuition of like,
you know it and it makes you feel uncomfortable.
Absolutely.
There's like, there's loads of psychological research
on behavioral science.
Like how do people behave when,
if there's a camera just pointing towards you
and like how your behavior changes.
And so in physical space, we have the intuition.

(19:24):
We close the curtain.
It's not a problem.
It's a human right to close a curtain.
We have ballot rooms.
You cast a vote in this little thing, the chamber.
In digital space, for communication, for phone calls, for chats,
we're developing an intuition.
I think we're still at the beginning there, but people are starting to get it.

(19:46):
Most people still don't.
Now let's come to financial privacy.
Sending money around, the most basic form of it.
I pay you in cash.
Like you, I don't know, you pay for the dinner, next day I pay you in cash.
We take it for granted.
We took it for granted that most payment systems, which was physical cash, was perfectly private.

(20:09):
And we never really, you know, got the feeling, got to understand what it feels like at this point.
We're starting maybe to understand it.
Credit cards and everything came a bit later.
So I think society doesn't get it at all yet.
when you talk about sending money to your friends even,

(20:30):
and the need to remain private,
then people still associate it with,
you know, only criminals would want that.
Or what are you trying to hide?
Or, you know, I have nothing to hide.
It's just a pizza or something like that.
Right?
So I think, I hope we will also get to a point

(20:50):
where we are with messaging in terms of financial privacy.
and I think we will have to get there
because people will develop that intuition.
The same way as when Edward Snowden revealed
that the NSA is literally watching everything
that is happening on the internet,
I think we will also get to the point with money.

(21:10):
And the reason why we will get there
is that money is almost as important,
if not more important than speech.
In fact, here again, the American Supreme Court has ruled that money is speech.
And I can make some examples why money is speech.
For example, you have a political belief.

(21:31):
You want to support this political movement.
You donate to them.
This is expression of speech.
Like, I support this political cause.
Now, someone could stop you from doing that.
That's financial censorship.
Or someone could just observe your bank account from, you know, you're doing that.
And then retroactively after the regime, you know, this current regime has been toppled by the next regime.

(21:51):
They might say like, hmm, actually, we want to persecute everyone who is donated to that to that foundation, to that cause five years ago.
Right. So there are many ways how we express speech or human freedom or personal freedoms through money.
I'll make another example is we're in Riga right now.
It's a Bitcoin conference.

(22:12):
you know your credit card statement says you're in Riga and Danny is in Riga right now so they can
see like you're in Riga right now maybe that's not so interesting but maybe they'll see like oh
there's a bunch of Bitcoiners now in Riga you know lots of people suddenly appearing in Riga and they
all go to the same place like this cafe shop has like a high influx of international credit cards

(22:35):
now paying at that cafe maybe there is a conference of Bitcoiners there right so there is a social
graph as well associated with money. It shows who your therapist is. You can see like, oh,
you're doing psychotherapy at this place. Or who you're going to cinema with. Oh, you paid for four
tickets and there were these people around you. So, so many ways how we leave traces around.

(23:01):
And unfortunately I care about these things you care about these things We kind of have an idea of what happening The general population will only start to understand things once it starts to hurt And with money I think like with money it can hurt really really bad
It can hurt more than with messaging, even.
Like when they turn off your bank account, you know, you might lose your home.

(23:24):
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I do think that's almost
the most dangerous narrative though,
is that I'm doing nothing wrong.
so I don't need to worry about privacy.

(25:57):
And I think that's like a very pervasive,
well, yes, yeah,
but I think that's a very pervasive
kind of way of thinking.
That is one of the things that we need to change.
But with messaging,
before we get onto the sort of
financial privacy side of things,
have we not just taken a huge step back
with this Online Safety Act?
I mean, I know this in the UK,
but I assume this is going to spread to more countries.
And with it, I know that Signal have said,

(26:18):
well, the government have said to Signal
that they want to have backdoor access,
and they somehow trying to say
that they can still be end-to-end encrypted.
but Signal just said they're going to leave the UK
if they try and make them do that
I applaud Signal and Signal Foundation
for doing that
and I hope they will do that
once that terrible point is reached
obviously I hope that point will never be reached

(26:39):
but they should definitely do it
and I hope the parliamentarians in the UK
will feel what it feels like
when Signal doesn't exist in that country anymore
but yes it feels like
we're taking a huge step back
the Online Safety Act at this point
it looks more like a way to regulate internet access to public internet services like Twitter,

(27:02):
Reddit, and so on. At this point, this is how we see it. Once they enforce messengers that are
meant for peer-to-peer, person-to-person interaction as well with the same techniques,
then I think most people will start... Hopefully most people will start to question whether this
was this is like truly just an issue for for the criminals or not so yeah online safety act is

(27:28):
it's it's truly astonishing how fast uh things have changed in the last couple weeks we should
say maybe in in france something similar happened uh one month ago or one month before that when um
under a similar disguise maybe we can put those actually actually side next to each other in

(27:49):
France, they've started to regulate the internet because of porn. Because they say porn is not,
you know, this is not moral. And you need to verify that you're actually holding a credit card
in order to access a porn website. Right? So because it's immoral. And then in the UK,

(28:09):
the narrative is save the children, protect the children. You know, it's very dangerous if children
can read a Reddit forum or be just a free user on X on Twitter.
So in both of these cases, and remembering the crypto wars 1.0, where this was about

(28:32):
drug dealers and human trafficking, it's basically, there is a scapegoat.
But there is some kind of a narrative du jour that people come up with that strikes the chords of the population the most.
Currently, it's about the children.
It's always been about the children for a while, actually.

(28:53):
And it also feels like literally no one cares about the children.
It really doesn't feel like they're trying to help the children at all.
You might even say, you know, the opposite.
it but um so right now we've seen in the last couple weeks that a surprising shocking number

(29:14):
of internet platforms have introduced uh age verification due to the online safety act
in the uk so that means if you're an online user your ip address is from the united kingdom
then um you go to reddit or to twitter and many other platforms and you will you won't
even spotify you won't see or hear certain types of content that was deemed to be not okay for

(29:41):
children by someone that someone could be an automated algorithm that makes mistakes that
also could be just you know a ministry of truth in that country that presses the button like this
is okay and this is not okay and um you know you know just this is not this is not about porn or
hiding like nudity or anything uh rather what we've seen like there are already mistakes that

(30:05):
are showing up i've recently seen um a post by you know i'm not an expert in uk politics but
like we're uh there was like a post by by some politicians in the uk where they said like we're
making a new party and they're leaving like your summers coalition or something like that and
And then like, hey, I'm excited to start, you know, to join this new party or something like that.

(30:29):
And that was blocked by the same online safety act.
So it has already affected just pure political speech.
Nothing bad about it.
It's just like it was blocked by whatever mechanism that happened.
It's terrible that this could even happen.
and uh and if this just keeps continuing we'll see like more and more of the internet becoming

(30:54):
a kyc hell where you're you'll have to identify yourself to participate now i need to say this
it's called online safety act first of all this is like this is psyops uh like saying that word
i feel bad saying that because it's it's like saying us8 you know it's a id and this is like
online safety acts portrays this whole problem as if it's increasing safety somehow and it could

(31:22):
be the opposite like maybe there's information that you really need to get but it's blocked by
the online safety act because someone has you know sense press the sensor button um so
So I think the end goal is to introduce a KYC door through which everyone needs to go in order to access the internet.

(31:48):
Because, you know, this all ties back to the beginning of the story.
The internet is the biggest innovation in human history.
It is the most important thing that we need to protect.
We're just at the beginning.
Like, you know, the graph is just like starting here.
And we have hopefully thousands more years to go as humans, right?
Everything will be online and digital.

(32:09):
That's clear.
Everyone, like even the boomers got that at this point.
And they're noticing that they're losing control.
You know, people are talking to each other, spreading, you know, information about their
governments, leaking information and, you know, holding people accountable.
There is misinformation and fake news going on.
They're talking about things that they shouldn't be talking about.

(32:32):
So the political system is losing control about what people say and think and do.
And more and more, it becomes stronger and stronger with every day because everything
gets more digitized and more online.
So now they're trying to put a door there where you need to go and you need to swipe

(32:54):
your credit card before you can get into that door. And that's not how the internet was designed
in the first place. So we need to, we need to put all our efforts into protecting that and
hopefully helping people to circumvent these tools. I hear now that politicians in the UK
are fighting even VPN use. It's like for the good of the children, please don't use a VPN.

(33:20):
But I do think that's one of the most interesting things that came out of this. From the day that
this online safety act was put in place.
VPN usage went up like crazy in the UK.
It was the top of all the app stores.
And I just wonder if it's one of those things
where things have to get bad enough
for people to see kind of behind the veil
and make change.
Well, very good question.

(33:42):
And I don't know if I'm optimistic about it.
So we've just briefly talked about this.
You know, we are...
we're um we're governed by boomers old people they are let's say like 50 plus
they don't know what the internet can be most of them don't know they're like the you know they're

(34:08):
they're at the iphone level like yeah they've never you know done anything interesting with
their computers most of them i'm not saying like everyone so there is an older population that just
doesn't get it and it's too late to tell them and again like there are many ogs and very very cool
very old you know super important old people that also help and fight this fight i'm just saying how

(34:32):
it is and i don't think that you can you know you can really educate that part of the population
about what the internet will be for the rest of humanity going forward they're kind of stuck in
this, you know, you have 20 channels on your TV and information is filtered through this,

(34:57):
this, the ministry of truth. And, and I never say anything edgy. I never did anything edgy.
You know, those are people, often people will say, you know, I have nothing to hide. I have
nothing. I've done nothing wrong. On the other spectrum, you have the younger generation,
let's call them Gen Z, that really don't know what it felt like to be free on the internet.

(35:23):
You have like people with now 16 years old, 18 years old, 14 years old. They're growing up now
and they're growing up in a world where the internet already has to go through that door.
They need to go through that door. So they don't know what it could be. There's a thin sliver

(35:44):
of a population of let's call them like plus minus millennials that are that grew up with an
internet that was like wild west complete freedom no identities just no logins yeah no logins you
know just irc chat rooms anonymous people you just talk about your interests and you don't present

(36:07):
yourself it's not about like look at me but it's look at this interesting thing and anything goes
file sharing sharing of information the age of wikileaks you know we're going to revolutionize
the way that the planet works because we can now finally communicate we're going to grow together
as humanity because now we have this internet that is like this this web of neural web the

(36:32):
global neural web that is going to like put us together there's like this idealism from that time
affected only a small part of the population
that is still around today.
And those are the people that care the most.
Do you think the birth of social media
was like the death of the free and open internet?
That's a good question.

(36:53):
So the birth of social media,
for anyone who has been around before social media,
remembers this very vividly, I'm pretty sure,
is when profile pictures started to pop up,
when people put their faces online
and then put their first name and last name there.
whether they were single everyone else was like what the hell like why would you say who you are

(37:13):
to everyone it's just you know and then people started put their uh their their vacation photos
online and just dump everything without thinking twice about the consequences of that i mean you
know there's also an interesting development there that people don't do that anymore the
people starting to understand like it's kind of idiotic to just overshare yeah and could get you

(37:36):
trouble to overshare. So you're kind of selectively sharing what's good or not.
So, but yeah, the rise of social media was inevitable in the sense that the normies
needed to join at some point, right? The internet should be in the hands of everyone. So, of course,
it's going to get normalized. But what couldn't have been predicted maybe is that the social

(38:04):
media platforms are going to dominate the internet and going to be the biggest companies in human
history or be extremely profitable and control web standards fight web standards and you know
build these silos that people think that that's the internet there are many countries out there
where people think that the internet is facebook that's all they have and where you get free data

(38:29):
if you want to access Facebook, but everything else is paid, you know, which is also against
net neutrality principles where everything should be treated the same because bits and
bytes are just bits and bytes, right?
So I think, yes, social media definitely put us into a place where we rely on a small number

(38:50):
of large corporations that have a lot of control over our lives.
That's why it's so important to advocate for systems like Noster, where we're trying to bootstrap social connections outside of the control of individual companies.

(39:10):
And it's just because there is too much risk to put all your communication, all your social online life into the hands of a single company or a small number of companies.
And yeah, so they have accumulated so much power that at the end of the day, once the draconian laws come into play, like the Online Safety Act, it becomes trivial to control those companies politically and then affect billions of people at this point, which we're seeing now.

(39:43):
So I want to move on to the financial privacy side of it.
We did a first show on what you're building at Cashew.
I think it was about two years ago now.
So a lot's changed, and it was really in its infancy then compared to where it is today.
Do you want to start by talking about what eCash is and what you're building at Cashew?
Yes.
So let's start with a bit of history.

(40:05):
So this system that we're working on is called Chomian eCash.
and chomming e-cash is named after the inventor of this david chom and david chom is one of the
og cryptography professors who's done so much for the fact you know that we have private
communications today and he's working on private voting and he also invented the concept of digital

(40:30):
cash so e-cash was invented in a famous paper and blind signatures in 1982 by david chom
where he described for the first time how to make a digital money that works online but is untraceable.
So it has the same properties as physical cash, but digital.

(40:50):
So e-cash, electronic cash.
And he was way too early for the world.
No one was online yet.
The internet still takes like 15 years to propagate to most people.
And even then, people weren't spending money on the internet like they are today.
No, no, no. There were no websites to spend money on the internet on.
But he was extremely visionary, extremely visionary.

(41:12):
And he's also, you know, he's famous for saying things like
that privacy is a necessity for a free society.
So he knew in the 80s that we're going to live in the world that we live today.
He knew that everything will be digital at some point
and everything will touch the internet.
So we need to work on a way to make private transactions possible on the internet.

(41:36):
Otherwise, the internet cannot work because you're not going to register for every single
service that you're going to use, right?
So that's kind of funny.
Yes, we are.
Yes, we are.
So he came up with this idea and it's called Chominy eCash.
And it was 30 years before Bitcoin.
And he started a research revolution in which thousands and thousands of researchers after his invention tried to improve on it.

(42:02):
And that's the quest for digital cash, by the way.
So it starts with him.
And people have been working for decades for how to improve the system.
Because there was one big flaw in his idea, which is you need the banking system in order to make it work.
So his idea was, so I'll briefly explain what it is, is you go to a bank.
your bank Chase account. And then, you know, imagine you go to an ATM and you withdraw

(42:27):
physical cash, right? So it's subtracts from bank account, you get physical cash, and then you go
around and spend it. Instead of doing that with physical cash, you do it with electronic cash.
You log into your bank account, you press a button, you download eCash that's stored on your device,
and then you walk around the internet and you spend it. And then the receiver gets the eCash,
and then they can go back to the bank and then say, like, look, here's eCash. Can I have it back

(42:51):
on my bank account. So that's how he envisioned it. So maybe the naive part of that was thinking
that banks would give up that kind of financial surveillance. Well, interestingly, the world was
different back then. So the banks loved this idea. This was the most revolutionary financial
technology on the block back then. And literally everyone wanted a piece of it.

(43:12):
Wasn't it even in Windows 95? They were very close to putting it into there. They had the
history of it is crazy so you had like the big banks they wanted this like they said this is
crazy we want this everything is going to be online let's put e-cash into our systems so there
were already digicash is the company by david chom that had these talks and then even microsoft

(43:33):
that might have been one of the biggest potential deals was said that like this is this is great
let's put this into windows 95 maybe 98 uh i'm don't quite remember let's put it like as a
standard default wallet into every installation and um well you would ask like why didn't it happen

(43:53):
and the reasons for that is kind of like business related when you look back it's like david shawm
did some mistakes and the negotiations were really bad and he changed the terms after saying yes and
so on blah blah blah and none of this happened so all these big banks is credit suisse and you had
like MasterCard and you had like Bank of America, like big, big, big banks. We said like, we want

(44:17):
this. And then everyone was evading, awaiting it to happen. This is mid nineties, beginning nineties.
And then nothing happened. Like none of them really implemented this. And then there's silence.
And then 95, 96, 98, we had credit cards, you know, things like PayPal pop up and those kind of

(44:39):
completely different.
There's no notion of privacy
in the systems that came after it
and then conquered the internet.
But I think what's more interesting
than the business perspective here
is the research perspective
that this caused.
So in 98,
when you started working on this,
people started,

(44:59):
like the cypherpunks
are getting started.
And they noticed that
this is amazing.
We need digital money
for the internet.
This is privacy preserving.
Now let's make it decentralized.
Now let's take away the trust part
that we still require towards the banks.
And then there is like 25 years of research.

(45:20):
And what they're all trying is kind of like improve e-cash,
try to like get rid of the trust here
and improve the properties there.
And you see all these papers coming out.
These are like wide eyes, B money and things like that.
Yes, so they all built on this whole story that starts with David Schaum until Satoshi Nakamoto, 2008, 2009, where he released the white paper, the first code.

(45:47):
and with finally a solution to the electronic cash problem,
which is finally a way that is sustainable, that works,
that doesn't require any third parties or intermediaries
where we can transact with electronic cash,
a peer-to-peer electronic cash,
the title of the Bitcoin white paper,

(46:08):
is where we can transact with electronic cash
without the need for the banks.
And the way that he did it is,
first of all he decentralized it So he came up with a way to decentralize it He came up with a way to with a similar way to how he decentralized he also managed to you know
to limit the issuance of it, 21 million Bitcoin.

(46:28):
And back it with physical energies
to protect it from the outside, right?
So fantastic.
And that's kind of the conclusion of this quest,
which was finally found.
and um so at this point we're very different from original charming e-cash there is no bank involved
but there's also no like tokens that you share and so on this is a blockchain system like that's

(46:53):
invented the idea of blockchains you can imagine this like in the physical in the ether there is
some kind of like this this this blockchain thing and then when you want to make a payment you just
like say hey blockchain i want to send money to danny and then something happens here and then
it pops up on your site.
So then we started looking into Bitcoin

(47:14):
and Bitcoin was its revolution.
But the big trade-off with Bitcoin
is that it isn't inherently private.
Yes, that's one of the trade-offs of Bitcoin
is it's not inherently private.
Although, you know, to be fair,
some of the altcoins that came after
also found ways to make it more private.
Also accepting other trade-offs, right?

(47:35):
That we don't want to accept in Bitcoin.
The auditability.
Especially the auditability.
So there's a trade-off between privacy and auditability.
And Bitcoin went full-on auditability, no privacy,
in that sense that all the transactions can be traced in the blockchain,
but you don't need an account with the bank.
So you're just like a random number.

(47:55):
So you don't need an ID.
You don't need to talk to anyone.
You just start your Bitcoin node, and you're immediately part of the system.
And you're making it stronger by starting your Bitcoin node.
So it's an amazing thing.
It started a whole revolution.
And so that's one trade-off is the privacy.
And the other one is speed.

(48:16):
So Bitcoin is slow by design
and it is slow because we want to keep it decentralized
and easy to verify and easy to participate.
So there's again, another trade-off is a super fast system
and how many people can participate, right?
A super fast system requires very big servers.
So then your Bitcoin node is not like this,
like a hundred dollar machine

(48:38):
that you can run in your bedroom
that protects the Bitcoin system.
Whereas like when you go full retard,
like Solana is like,
we don't care about decentralization.
Like we're just-
There's three nodes.
Super fast,
but there's only like three nodes
controlled by a single company.
Like, I don't know,
but like a handful of people
and no one can reproduce it

(48:58):
or replicate the system.
And like, they want that.
Like, whatever, like have fun.
so um it's it's not really private and it's not really fast and those are very conscious decisions
that are necessary to make bitcoin successful that satoshi chose um very consciously so okay

(49:20):
um 82 2008 and then 10 years of bitcoin uh 15 years of bitcoin we're building the lightning
network. We're trying to scale it and so on and so forth. But very early in the history of Bitcoin,
already 2010, I think, there were already people theorizing about now that we have a

(49:49):
parallel financial system, can't we implement the ideas of David Charm on top of that parallel
financial system, on top of Bitcoin? So in the beginning, we needed to build this on the banks.
and all the problems with making deals
and the bank says no and then it doesn't happen.
Let's scratch all that.

(50:09):
We have a system that cannot be stopped.
Let's build a charming e-cash banks on top of that.
And Halfini himself, the first Bitcoin contributor,
the first person who was positive towards Satoshi Nakamoto,
by the way, everyone else said it's not going to work.
And he was the first one that said like, amazing.
He even proposed this very early on

(50:31):
that we could build like charmian banks on top of bitcoin right so and then he saw like the vision
of his bitcoin world before you know we have now also other ways of thinking about scaling that
weren't present back then but he already envisioned that so 15 years later then a couple of projects
in bitcoin started to pop up that actually wanted to implement this idea and i want to know that two

(50:53):
of them are fediment and cashew i work on cashew it's a charming e-cash system so what this allows
you to do is to basically build a community bank on top of bitcoin without having to ask anyone to
do it you just like plug it into your computer the bitcoin protocol is underneath it and you can like

(51:13):
run the software on top and then issue e-cash tokens that are backed by the bitcoin that people
can deposit or not so replace the entire bank account thing with bitcoin and then issue digital
e-cash to the users they can now trade online on the internet for example and so what this gives us

(51:35):
today de facto is mainly two things is one of one is that it greatly increases the privacy of
custodial solutions right now so this is a trust-based system still you still need to trust
the issuer of the e-cash that they don't debase the e-cash um but it but accepting that is uh makes

(51:59):
you allows you to increase the privacy of that system like many many folds so it's like almost
perfect privacy e-cash is known to be like the best in class in terms of privacy and the reason
for that is like many cryptographic reasons as well but like you can imagine the fact that i have
now a bear e-cash token that is like cash in my digital wallet. And to pay you, I don't have to

(52:23):
now call the Bitcoin blockchain and say, hey, Bitcoin blockchain, can you send any money?
I can just take it out from my phone and just hand it over to you. You can scan it with a QR
code. We can do tap to pay or something like that. So the money flows peer to peer from me to you
and doesn't even really touch the internet. And you can do offline payments with this.
One side can be offline.
So to complete the entire flow is you need to,

(52:46):
the receiver needs to reissue the token once with the mint.
We call this object, the issuer, we call it the mint.
You need to reissue the token once.
Otherwise I could double spend it with someone else.
So this is super cool because first of all,
the transaction is kind of, it doesn't require the internet.

(53:06):
The payment itself happens only between the two of us.
You need internet to verify and then reissue.
So I cannot double spend the coin that I just gave you.
But we can also reverse the roles.
You could be offline as a receiver and I could be online as the sender.
And what I can do is I can lock the eCash token so I can construct the token so that only you can spend it.

(53:32):
So you can look at it and say like, this is a token that only I can spend.
You don't need to be online for that.
So with eCash, we can build a system where one of the two parties can be offline and we can still make a transaction work.
Make it work means not double spend the token.
And this is like very common for a merchant situation where you have a merchant.

(53:52):
The merchant is, for example, online.
They have a payment terminal point of sale that is connected to the Internet.
And then I, as a customer, can come with my eCash wallet that is backed by Bitcoin.
and I can just like do tap
and it goes instantly goes from my phone
into the POS system.
The POS is internet and can say like,
this is verified, everything is done.
So I can be offline as a payer.

(54:14):
It gives me amazing privacy for the payer
and like instant confirmation.
So I think one of the things
that's probably most misunderstood about eCash
is the fact that there is a central issue.
So you're not in total control of your own funds.
But maybe you could explain how you should use that
to make that as little of an issue as possible.
And then also last time we spoke, these things like multi-nut payments weren't a thing.

(54:37):
So maybe you can go through some of that.
Yeah.
So yeah, we've built quite a lot.
So the way you have to think about this is that, you know, there is not a single Mint,
the big Mint that everyone uses.
And we all need to trust that one Mint with the Bitcoin that we give
and then hope that the e-cash that we get is actually backed.
No, it's like a completely open source system.

(54:59):
and it's just code that you can download and run yourself and you can run this for your local group
of bitcoiners like 20 people if you want you can run a mint for them and what people are doing is
like for for their village or for their uh for their like physical bitcoin meetup community that
there's like one technical guy and that technical guy runs the mint and the friends around the guy

(55:25):
can use the Mint to make Lightning payments,
to have like a custodial wallet with the guy,
like an Uncle Jim system,
where they can make Lightning payments.
So it's enough to have one guy who's technical
to help like 100 people around that guy
to have like a perfectly private

(55:46):
and offline payment system that they can use.
But what we're also seeing is
that this is not only for physical communities,
but also like digital communities basically if you if you want so there are websites that have
like some kind of a payment system inside and they they would usually like you go to a website and

(56:07):
it says like you know charge your account then you send some bitcoin over then it says like you
have now 20 000 satoshis on that website and then you do you press some buttons you watch a video
video or something and that's like subtracts from your account right you can replace this system also
with a Charmin Mint.
So instead of like charging your account
and then showing it like up there

(56:27):
where the balance is like fully controlled
on the web service database,
what the web server can do is just run a mint
and give you e-cache.
And then you have the e-cache,
you have it.
And then you use the website
by interacting with the website,
you pay back the website for the services
that you use.

(56:47):
For example, video streaming.
What we're seeing right now is for AI use,
this is really popular.
where people are building like chatbots,
like AI chatbots that everyone knows,
where you can pay Bitcoin to charge your balance.
You don't really have, like you don't charge your balance,
you get e-cash for it.
And then as you chat with the chatbot,
you pay for the service with the e-cash.

(57:08):
And why is this cool?
It's cool for several reasons,
but like the most important part
is that you don't need an account
or you don't need to register to be able to use it.
There is no email address or telephone number
required to be able to use the system, you just send Bitcoin, get eCash, use eCash. That's it.
And just pay it back. So it's super easy to onboard users. And at the same time,

(57:35):
the privacy of using it is like best in class privacy. Just by default, it's like the best
privacy that you can get. For the chatbot use case, it means that you as a person, you as an
email address, you as an account identify, you cannot be connected to the payments that you do
for the chat interaction. So no one really knows who's the person now entering this text there.

(57:58):
So we have use cases where people build wallets with this. And we have use cases where people
just build web experiences with it. And the nice thing is there are many men's out there that are
run by individuals, by companies, by web services, and so on that you can choose from. And you can,

(58:18):
because it's a protocol, Cashew is a protocol. It's not an app. It's not a company. It's just a
bunch of code with specifications. That means there are many different people who have built
the mints and the wallets. So it's kind of the first that you can choose which wallet you want
to use. And you can choose the custodian that you want to use. And you're not bound to that wallet

(58:42):
or to the custodian. So you can choose from like 15 different wallets, the one that you like most.
And then in that wallet, you can have like 10 different mints where you have like 2,000
satoshis in this mint, 5,000 satoshis in that mint, and so on and so forth. And then just keep
using it like a normal lightning wallet. So it doesn't lock you in. You can choose the software.

(59:02):
If you don't like the software, you can just say, I don't want this anymore.
Move to the other one and just keep using the same protocol with a different app made by someone completely different.
And you can also move your funds around between the different mints, depending on, let's say, I trust this guy more because this is like a regulated company.
And I'm OK with leaving 100 bucks on that account.

(59:25):
No, it's not an account, but getting from that mint.
and like maybe 2,000 sets
only from this rando
that I found on the internet
that whose Mint I used.
So, and this,
most of it is abstracted away.
So I was going to say
for anyone listening to this,
it's not as complicated as it sounds.
Like all of this is abstracted away.
And the first time I ever received eCash
was from you on the last show we did

(59:46):
a couple of years ago.
Yeah, I remember.
And it was almost like
the first time you send
or receive a Bitcoin transaction.
The fact that it's like,
holy shit,
it's a mind-blowing thing.
People should try it out.
Yeah, you should try it out.
So you can go to cashew.space.
You'll find a few wallets there.
And then you can discover mints using Nostra, and you'll find them.
You can try them out.

(01:00:07):
The experience is very different from using a normal Bitcoin wallet
because the eCache itself is like bearer.
You can copy-paste it.
You can take the message.
You can take the eCache.
And I think last time I sent it to you over Signal or Telegram or something.
And it looks like a piece of string text.
That is like you can imagine it as a piece of paper money, basically, that you can send over the internet and the other person receives it.

(01:00:31):
And because it's a bearer asset, the eCash itself is a bearer token.
We can build experiences with it that are not possible with like OG normal Bitcoin, which is, for example, tap to pay, which I'm very excited about because the fiat system is like really, you know, putting it out there.

(01:00:52):
But the UX of Tap2Pay is amazing.
The UX of, like, that's the most bearish thing that I can think of.
You go to, you know, you go on a hike in Guatemala in the mountains, and there's like a little hut that sells you like a Coke.
And in the middle of nowhere, you take out your iPhone, you do this beep, and it takes half a second, and the payment clears.

(01:01:12):
It's just amazing, really, the level, the bar that they set.
Very high.
And it's very high.
And we as an open source community working around Bitcoin, we should also try to replicate,
you know, the same ease of use and the same intuition for payments.
So with Cashew, we're really trying to rebuild also these experiences for the Bitcoin space

(01:01:38):
because we care about how Bitcoin works and how easy it should be to use Bitcoin.
In my mind, like the prototypical user I always think about is the mango selling old lady
in the Brazilian beach where the internet is bad, right?
That's like, I want to build software for her.
I want her to have the best privacy

(01:01:59):
and the best experience
and like the fastest transaction possible.
And I think we'll get there.
So like it's one of the tools
that we have in our tool belt.
So when we last did that show,
the Cashew Wallet was new.
I remember you putting a tweet out,
which was like, I've just built this.
It's full of bugs, but have a play.
And now, like I still use the Cashew Wallet.

(01:02:19):
I've used macadamia as well. That's very good.
What's the state of Cashew now?
Is it to the point where it's really solid?
Anyone can trust it with a decent...
Obviously, it's not something you're going to put a lot of money in,
but a decent amount of money.
Yeah, so I think in terms of software quality, cryptography,
how much effort we've put into it at this point,

(01:02:43):
I can really say it's a solid system, and I trust it.
and it's open and verifiable.
So you can just like, you can look at it.
If you're competent, you can read the code
and you can look at it yourself.
And if you don't trust the app,
if you don't trust the app that someone else made,
you can just make your own app.
There's specifications.

(01:03:04):
They're written in English language
and you can read those documents
that describe exactly how Cache works
and you can build your own app.
That's why there are like 15 different wallets.
So in terms of software, I think, yes,
where like really solid at this point it's super fast it's super reliable it just works
and it doesn't require you to know any of the things that i just said uh it just works in terms

(01:03:30):
of trust uh what it means to put money into it i would always advise people to just you know do it
with microscopic amounts just small amounts i treat it you know i'm a developer in that space
I treat it like my physical wallet.
I wouldn't put like hundreds and hundreds of dollars
into my physical wallet and run around

(01:03:51):
because you could lose it.
You could forget it in a bar and someone could steal it.
So the way that you make that trade-off with physical cash,
I make the same kind of trade-off with eCash.
So I keep, I don't know, a dozen bucks, 20 bucks,
maybe a hundred with different mints.

(01:04:11):
and i tried to separate it if one of them tries to rug me well then i might lose like 20 bucks or so
which obviously sucks but you know it's a calculated risk that i took have any of them
yet any of them i don't know of any mint that has rugged so far no no one has rugged so far
as far as i know like um i don't also i'm even like knock on wood there haven't been any major

(01:04:38):
technical issues either. So I'm not aware of things going super bad for anyone. There might be
a bug here and there with the wallet, but that's isolated issues. But no one has rugged. And I hope
that continues. But obviously, it's not in my control. I don't run these systems. It's just

(01:04:59):
people can do with it what they want. So I want to ask you a question that's a little bit awkward.
and I'm nervous to ask it
because I don't want to wish anything into the world.
But when we've seen such a crackdown
in privacy developers in Bitcoin,
are you nervous at all?
It does affect me.
Yes, because I'm a normal person.

(01:05:21):
I care a lot.
I care about the people in this space
and I care about Bitcoin
and I care about the safety of the people
and what it does to the psyche of a developer.
I'm not alone.
I'm in touch with many developers out there.
We're trying to be a union of developers
that also care about each other and each other's safety.

(01:05:46):
So I'm not the only one who's affected
by the things happening around us
because we all believe that we're doing the right thing.
We're doing a moral thing.
And we're not trying to do anything bad.
We're literally just trying to improve the world.
and we're thinking about the most vulnerable

(01:06:06):
and those who need it the most.
And at the same time,
you see that governments
even contradict their own suggestions
on how to operate, right?
So we've seen Wasabi Wallet,
I'm sorry, not Wasabi Wallet,

(01:06:27):
Samurai Wallet and Tornado Cash
as two prime examples
that were the developers
and the operators of these systems
were heavily sanctioned
and now also are threatened with jail time
for operating non-custodial systems
where everyone, like with FinCEN guidance, basically.

(01:06:49):
Yeah, well, FinCEN said they couldn't register with them
even if they wanted to.
Government guidance that says, you know,
these are the rules, play by these rules,
everything will be okay.
And then you start building
and then some, you know, due to unforeseen,
how do you even calculate that risk?

(01:07:12):
And so I think the most stressful part
is just not knowing what the rules are.
And when you don't know what the rules are,
it can really affect your productivity.
and i mean obviously also like mental health and and psyche and some people are more stress

(01:07:36):
resistant than others but especially the the way that we can move forward to build to build our way
out of the old system it requires like a lot of energy and mission driven like focus and lots of
people cannot handle that you know the fact that we just don't know so i think it's more important

(01:08:01):
than ever to show support to your local neighborhood hacker to support them and to you know just be
vocal about what your ideals are and and and especially show them that they're not alone i
know we're not alone we have like a big system of individuals and organizations that really care

(01:08:27):
and that that are also like that can protect uh you legally so i would advise for anyone who feels
like this and i again i know that there are people out there who feel like this to just reach out to
others and just talk about you know the situation that you're in and often it really helps a lot

(01:08:52):
but then again uh do not lose focus we you know we're just one individual in a larger process
and the goal is more important than the localized like little failures and the successes like the
goal is much, much, much bigger than that. And, you know, as long as we just keep moving into the

(01:09:16):
right direction, I think we'll, I hope we'll be okay. Yeah. Well, I think it's amazing what you're
doing I think you definitely are building tools that humanity needs So I very glad you staying in your building because I would understand why you might walk away from a project like this at the moment So I think it very cool But what next I know you been working on BitChat
Yeah, I've been also working on BitChat.

(01:09:37):
So I like freedom tech.
I like cypherpunk tech.
And for me, that means, you know, shaping the Internet in a way that I want the Internet to be and fulfilling the cypherpunk vision of the Internet.
So we've just talked a lot about Bitcoin, money, e-cash and how that, you know, the role that plays.

(01:10:01):
But communication is a big part.
Communication and, you know, things like Signal, for example, or Tor or Matrix.
Those are projects driving it forward.
so um recently i've been involved in a project called bitchat bitchat is a project started by
jack dorsey no other one than jack dorsey who uh i mean i had nothing to do with that he just came

(01:10:23):
up with a he vibe coded it he vibe coded a project that is a messenger that runs on your on your
iphone initially only on the iphone that's what he built that connects to uh to your peers over
bluetooth so you can chat over bluetooth but the most interesting part is that it builds a mesh
so it's a mesh network what does it mean you can imagine it like a network like a yeah like a

(01:10:47):
network of individual phones that all can like that can transport the messages between them so
the message between me and uh you um like if there are people between us they can transport that
message from me to you so that means like bluetooth it's a bluetooth mesh messenger and

(01:11:08):
Bluetooth has a fairly limited range in terms of proximity.
It can be a couple dozen meters or sometimes even more,
but it's certainly not going to be hundreds of kilometers.
It's not getting across the city.
No.
But if you have a mesh that is large enough,
there is at least a chance that you can reach your destination

(01:11:30):
through multiple hops through that mesh.
And lots of network systems work that way,
Even like the normal internet that you use is a protocol that is routed.
So when I send a message from my computer to your computer, it doesn't go like single hop,
but goes through several routers who all help me to reach you.

(01:11:51):
So you can imagine this a bit similar, but hyper localized.
So BitChat allows you to chat with those people in your proximity.
And wherever you go, it doesn't require an email address or sign up.
you can just like you start it up then you see who's around you and who's reachable and you can
just start chatting with them it's funny because i i didn't get in on the test flight of this app i

(01:12:13):
got it when it was like on main release only a few days ago and i've been looking at it and i've
not had a single connection until you walked in the door see yeah it's running on my phone and
yeah it's constantly like if you leave it running it constantly looks for other bit chat users and
you can just start chatting with them and um so he put out that ios app and i thought it's like
fantastic it's amazing it's like exactly it's up my alley and and uh i'm an android user so i took

(01:12:40):
it and i also like i heavily love vibe coding a lot so uh i took his ios app and translated it
into an android app that looks and feels the same and published that so now we're kind of working on
two different apps. He's building the iOS app. I'm building the Android app. And they're compatible
with each other so they can talk to each other. And we're at a conference here in Riga. And

(01:13:05):
today we had the developer conference, the pre-conference BTC++. And it was super fun and
very useful at that conference. So basically, lots of people have that app running. And you can just
You can watch a talk and you can take out BitChat and you see like 25 people are online right now.
And you can just talk about what you're seeing.

(01:13:27):
You can, you know, or say like, what's the Wi-Fi password?
And like people sending me the Wi-Fi password over BitChat because you can use it while you're offline.
It's just it relies on Bluetooth, which is completely different from the other Internet apps that you have on your phone.
So it's cool because it's a parallel system again.

(01:13:47):
It doesn't require internet.
It doesn't require registration.
And it doesn't require anyone's permission.
So you can just like, we don't need a SIM card
that we would have to buy and register.
Or we don't need a router that would need
like a cable internet connection.
It's just peer-to-peer pure magic
being, you know, hopping from one phone to another.

(01:14:10):
What's like the best use case for a mesh network?
Because even if you're in a pretty highly
densely populated city,
you still have like this so for example the building i live in like i could imagine a mesh
network working in that building but if i want to message the building over the street like it's
probably not going to reach that far so like what is the ideal use case for a mesh so um like with

(01:14:30):
any network there is a network effect that means like the it gets more useful the more people use
it yeah right so i mean that's also true for any messenger but here in this case it's like
literally true for the infrastructure itself so the more people have it running the more people
you can reach in principle funny because i also use it like in in apartments talking to to neighbors

(01:14:50):
and work kind of it worked really well um so let's say if they're like we don't know how well it
scales yet uh the the largest meshes are still kind of small but potentially like what are use
cases for it is especially in cases where the internet doesn't work this can really shine so
and there are many cases where the internet doesn't work especially when people concentrate

(01:15:11):
so this could be a sports stadium could be a festival could be a conference but it could also
be a disaster situation where i don't know maybe an emp has turned off the internet or some like
natural disaster has taken down the cell network or something where you still want to be able to
communicate to your neighborhood for example in those cases like an app like bitchin bitchat can

(01:15:35):
be the last digital communication that you have.
So obviously we're not building yet
for the disaster use case.
So it's still an early development
and we need to test it
and make sure that it scales to larger meshes
and see how reliable it is to reach people.

(01:15:55):
But it's looking pretty good so far.
So we're just going to keep improving it.
And I think since this hasn't really,
there are other mesh projects
that we can mention like MeshTastic or LoRa,
the technology.
There's FireChat that is like previous work
that has done something similar.
So maybe one interesting example here is FireChat,

(01:16:17):
which was important in the Hong Kong protest in 2019.
Oh, that's cool.
Yes, where the Chinese regime monitored
the internet of protesters
or also can play around with the internet,
and turn it off to basically make it harder
to voice your political opinion and organize on the streets.

(01:16:39):
People started using FireChat back then
to send each other messages.
Like, it's safe here now, now we're going here.
So anything where the communication requires you
to talk to lots of people around you
and you don't wanna go over the internet,
this is super useful.
That's very cool.
And so, like, as this scales,

(01:17:00):
Is it the kind of thing that you could use
as a mesh network that's also connected to the internet
when you're not in one of those disaster scenarios?
Yes.
Yes, so we're already working on this.
There are like already, you know,
BitChat has this already,
for the iOS app has this already integrated,
which we can, where we can connect meshes,

(01:17:21):
individual meshes basically through Noster.
So there's another freedom technology like Noster
where you can just talk to a public key, basically.
So the way it's implemented right now
is that we two meet in a physical space.
I see your phone, like your public key, you see mine,
and then we can favorite each other's.
So to make sure that we're actually the person

(01:17:43):
that you know that you're talking to.
And then when we spread and we go apart
and there is no Bluetooth connection between us anymore,
then we can default back to Noster, basically.
And then use the Noster network to talk to each other.
So it's not taking a social graph from Noster.
It's just using the public-private keypad.
So the base is like the, yes, the basis for it is your bit chat identity.

(01:18:06):
And Noster is just used as a communication layer in case the Bluetooth range is out of range.
I see.
That's very cool.
And so I want to know about you vibe coding this app because like I've never written a single line of code.
Oh, you should.
So that's where I'm at with this.
But when you take the iOS app that Jack developed,
is it literally as easy as like putting that through AI

(01:18:27):
and being like, make this the same, but for Android?
Kind of, yeah. Kind of, yes. And no.
I mean, it really, it definitely helps when you know,
if you know what you're doing and what the machine is doing.
Because like right now, the AI tools are in this like,
first of all, they're amazing.
So I should like be super encouraging to anyone listening here

(01:18:48):
is to try it out because coding itself gives you the feeling of, you know, agency. It is
the closest thing to magic in the current world that you can get to is making electrons do what
you want them to do, right? Trust me, Kelly. I know how much you love this. I remember when you
came to Bedford for cheat code on the second day, whenever I went to the football, everyone's

(01:19:12):
hanging out, drinking beers, you're in the clubhouse coding. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't alone.
So two years ago, maybe two years ago, this required expert level knowledge.
You couldn't do anything.
As a beginner, just to get to a point where you can do anything interesting
required so much effort.

(01:19:34):
And it's still worth the effort.
You should still learn how to really code if you really want to walk that path.
But sometimes you just want to make a website.
Sometimes you just want to make a game.
Sometimes like maybe you're a designer and you need a website or you have just like a crazy idea and you want to see it live and see like play around with it.

(01:19:54):
The tools today are good enough for a person who doesn't know like almost nothing about coding to get an agent and try something and let it build an app that you like.
And then you can just like, once it starts to build like a framework around and shows, look, let's say you say, let's build a marketplace where I can put like where I can sell objects for my neighborhood or something like that.

(01:20:21):
And it will make a website for you where you can like list objects and then communicate with those who are interested in buying them, for example.
Right.
So it will be able to do that at this point.
You can do that without knowing a single line how to code.
for a project as complex as bichat that's like more on the complicated side

(01:20:42):
you can get away like you can do 95 percent 90 percent of the work without even looking at the
code but at some point things are at this point at least the ais aren't there yet that they still
need someone to hold their hands so as a coder who's been coding for a very long time just without

(01:21:05):
ais and you know knows i kind of know what i'm doing um it becomes like you you you change your
role from being a developer into a project manager where you you're talking to the ai as if it's a
programmer and you can even larp a project like we're working on this project and it's supposed
to be great and like i want it to be super stable and easy to use and it should you know it has these

(01:21:32):
requirements and then you say like make a detailed plan of how you would approach this and you can
just generate a very detailed plan like in a project that you would do in a software startup
for example where it says like step one build like the framework of the app step two build the
interface step three talk to bluetooth step four find others step five implement dms step six

(01:21:57):
implement nostra so step by step by step by step you can spell out what the project should be and
you can take this long plan give it back to a give it back to the next day so what you do is like
you're managing multiple ais doing it you can choose one is better at planning the other one
is better at implementing and so on like you you gain more experience in doing that but yeah generally

(01:22:17):
speaking as a software developer i think like at this point like almost everyone understands if
you're not in this game right now then i mean i hope you'll have a job in five years because
it's the the most ironic part about the the uh evolution of ai right now is that we thought
it would replace the boring jobs yeah everybody was it was always meant to be the blue collar

(01:22:39):
workers that would get replaced yeah yeah it's a good good news uh your job has just gotten more
important than before the plumber is not getting replaced yes and i'm very happy for the plumber
on the contrary software developers around the world are kind of like you know are in a high
alert mode right now i hope most of them are is that if you are not on top of your game

(01:23:01):
and using ai to increase your own productivity by like 10x then you know you're falling behind
You're falling behind.
And the question for a company in a couple of years will be like, do I need 20 people
to build this app who don't use AI?
Or do I need three of them who use AI?

(01:23:23):
And that's already happening.
So yeah, you better get started if you haven't yet.
I really need to improve my website.
What AI tool do you use to do this?
There are many to choose from.
My favorite one is a goose from Block.
um that's a fully open source interface that's like a chat window on your computer and then the

(01:23:47):
good the nice thing about it is that it can talk to any lm provider that you want so you can get a
subscription with grog or gpt or entropic and you put your uh api keys in there and then it's it's
an agent so it's not just a text chat box like you know from chat gpt where it can like ask a
question get a response but it's an agent and that means that it can do things so it can it can

(01:24:11):
change things on your computer it can write files on your computer it can execute commands on your
computer so you're kind of giving it control over your computer and that's how it can just like
generate an entire website for you with a single command at this point they are so good that you
can say, build me a educational Bitcoin website for activists from Asia and explain how multisig

(01:24:38):
and coin joins work. Right. So that could be a prompt. I'm pretty sure with that prompt,
you could one shot a website that looks pretty good. That's insane. It's a, it's fucking cool to
see. Um, I'm so impressed with everything you've done, Kelly. You're like the most prolific dev in
Bitcoin right now. Can we close with one kind of big question? So I did a show with Odell

(01:25:00):
maybe three or four months ago now. And the whole thing was on like, is Bitcoin still freedom money?
And with taking into account like everything we've gone through today, do you think Bitcoin
is still freedom money? I absolutely do think that Bitcoin is freedom money. And the nice thing
about Bitcoin is that it does not depend so much on the interpretation of what Bitcoin is.

(01:25:25):
Bitcoin is just is. It has the properties that it has. And those don't change with, you know,
the bull market and the bear market or the suits coming in or the suits selling their
stash again or tornado cash and and and you know being indicted or not so bitcoin is a constant

(01:25:48):
so and because it has it still has the same properties that it had when satoshi invented
it which is it is decentralized it is uncontrollable it is unstoppable it is verifiable
and it's fair and everyone can have access to it without permission those things haven't changed
However, I want to say that Bitcoin also depends on the people who use it.

(01:26:14):
So as long as there are enough people who uphold these ideals, I think we're in a safe place.
But, you know, even for those who are just interested in the monetary value that Bitcoin brings them in the investment case and just, you know, the number going up.
I think
even that number go up

(01:26:36):
story depends on the
basis of these properties
that I said
if Bitcoin becomes just
like an
investment account
that where you
never make use of the properties
which is like permissionless
use of it
if all the Bitcoin in the world would be held

(01:26:58):
at the banks
and the only interaction that people have with Bitcoin is from an account where you don't control
the Bitcoin, then it will lose all of its interesting properties. Even the 21 million cap
is not worth anything if the underlying principles and the underlying properties are not met.

(01:27:20):
so the bitcoin i think you know the white paper says it it's peer-to-peer electronic cash
it's made for payments and it's made for individuals that use it at their own free will
so we we we cannot lose that mission from like we cannot lose sight of that mission and

(01:27:45):
And all the stories that we tell about Bitcoin on top of it all rely on this.
Luckily, it's one of the most resilient and most stable, most badass systems ever created in the history of the world.
So I'm not worried at all.
But it depends on people listening to this that understand what the value proposition is to drive this forward.

(01:28:14):
because no one is working on it except us.
It's not improving if we don't improve it.
It's not reaching more people
if we don't spread the message.
So we cannot depend on the people
who are just interested in the financial aspect of it.
That's not what makes Bitcoin great.

(01:28:34):
And 21 million of something that is useless
is not worth anything, right?
21 million of something that has these properties,
that is worth something, right?
So even if you're only interested in a financial use case, then you should think about how you can support the basis of that investment.
So support developers, support open source development, support all the foundations and organizations that support this open source movement.

(01:29:05):
Because those are the people that keep it alive and that give it the purpose that it has.
So we can just go forward for another 100 and another 1,000 years.
Maybe a more interesting way of framing that question is,
what percentage of Bitcoin users do you think will use Bitcoin as freedom money?
That's a good question.

(01:29:26):
I think right now, probably most people who are interfacing with Bitcoin
are using it in a way where they do not control the Bitcoin itself.
so most people most people have bitcoin on on an exchange account but also the number of people who

(01:29:47):
don't have an exchange account is increasing so i don't know the number but as long as there is a
healthy number of people that just you know keep running the nodes and keep verifying the network
and like give us hash rate to secure it,
then as long as that is given,

(01:30:07):
then everyone who uses Bitcoin
in a way that doesn't support its principles
still has the option to fall back.
So that's the most important part for me.
I'm not saying, you know,
I'm not moralizing that you're using Bitcoin wrong
and you're using Bitcoin right.
Just like, just use Bitcoin.
Like even the wrong way of using Bitcoin
is already great.

(01:30:28):
but we as developers and the community and educators we need to remind people that you know
and make sure that also the institutions and organizations who manage bitcoin for others
respect these principles is that they can withdraw their bitcoin from a from a exchange account you
can put it in your cold storage and that also i mean it has many technical dimensions we need to

(01:30:52):
scale bitcoin we need to be able to provide like faster transactions and cheaper transactions for
the increasing number of people using Bitcoin.
So the most important part is that there's always an exit
from the permission system into the permissionless world.
And yeah, so I think there's a significant number
of people that make use of that.

(01:31:14):
And, you know, I'm not too worried
that we're in a bad place.
Well, Kali, man, this has been amazing.
I think as Bitcoiners, we're very lucky to have you.
So thank you for giving me the time, man.
Thank you, Danny.
Oh, actually, before we go, first of all, everyone should go try out eCache, try out Nostra.
But where do you want to send anyone?
Where can they find out more about you and Cashew and everything you're doing?

(01:31:36):
You can go to cashew.space.
You'll find a lot of information.
If you're a user, you can find applications that you want to use.
If you're a developer, then you'll find ways to contribute.
You can find me on Nostra and on Twitter, but you'll find me.
That's not the interesting part.
I'll just say, like, whatever.
if you're i want to talk to the software developers if you're a software developer

(01:31:58):
you're working in a company and you feel like your your job is shit it doesn't give you fulfillment
and you're like you're always thinking of how could i change the situation i'm in
the bitcoin space literally needs you like we need more people working on bitcoin and improving
bitcoin so please consider it open source is now viable we never had a system where the system can
fund itself from the inside so join bitcoin and contribute to bitcoin put some effort into

(01:32:24):
improving Bitcoin. And I can assure you, you will have the most amazing experience because
the open source world is there and it's waiting for your contribution. So please join us.
Work on Cashew. If you're not interested in Cashew, just on the broadcast,
Bitcoin ecosystem, join us.
And if you talk to me directly,
I'll hold your hand and show you around.
So whatever we can do to increase

(01:32:46):
the number of developers and the support that we get,
I'll do my best to help with that.
Let's go.
All right.
Thank you, Kali.
Appreciate you, man.
Appreciate you too.

(01:33:08):
Thank you.

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