TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - Rabbit Hole Recap: Week of 2019.12.23

Episode Date: December 27, 2019

This week Marty and Matt discuss: - BitBox02 brute force vulnerability disclosed, update to firmware V5.0.0 asap (h/t @freedomisntsafe) - BLW on Android adds support for hosted channels - Argentina local bitcoins volume hits ATHs amid further capital controls - As expected CSW makes excuses ahead of "tulip trust" access date - Ethereum Co-Founder Jeffrey Wilcke dumps $11.5M worth of ETH from premine - The Venezuelan Petro update - HK Police freeze $9M raised by activists via Spark Alliance - Popular chat app ToTok removed from app store due to concerns it is a UAE spy tool - US gov issues warning to service members asking them not to use DNA testing services - @dergigi releases 21 Lessons book - Kiara Bickers (@kiarabickers) releases Bitcoin Clarity book - Proof of Keys next week - John Newbery thread - German gold capital controls Shoutout to this week's sponsors. Cash App. Start #stackingsats today. Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $10 and contribute $10 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app. Unchained Capital. Head over to www.unchained-capital.com/vaults and checkout their 2-of-3 multisig vaults. GiveWell. Learn how much good your donation can do by visiting GiveWell.org/tftc. They accept traditional payment methods, Bitcoin, and several other cryptocurrencies

what is up freaks welcome back to tales from the crypt it's your boy marty bent here on a friday it's friday afternoon right morning friday morning what day is it it is friday december 27th it is friday december 27th we're back for another rip of tftc it's the holiday season but we're here for you freaks and we're actually we're actually not here together for you freaks we're remote and i'm actually getting some feedback matt how are things in long island right now well you're hearing feedback from me i think you're good you're good it's better now either way the mic the the freaks aren't getting feedback so that's good yes we're recording

locally uh currently the price of bitcoin according to the tftc.io ticker is seven thousand two hundred twenty three dollars and thirty nine cents current block height is six hundred ten thousand and twenty six or less than twenty thousand blocks away from the halving freaks uh don't have the hash rate we're still getting that back uh on the site and it's been uh it's been a week how your how was your christmas matt christmas celebrations christmas was fantastic uh a lot of family a lot of love uh just a great time of the year uh to just you know just uh i've i found myself a lot this week looking back at the year and looking how far we've come and it's been it's really been an absolutely amazing year uh just super grateful just super grateful to be a part of it all

yeah i can't believe it's uh it's almost over think about where we started the beginning of the year uh rabbit hole recap in the beginning of the year was what like uh three months old if that yeah what was like late august early september yeah it was late august because we forgot our anniversary remember we remembered in like september yeah started the year off with uh with bitcoin tina we ripped that episode at like the bottom around like 3500 we had a nice little pop there in the summer we had that pop around bitcoin 2019 to 14 000 we were telling people to market by at 13 000 there shake my head we're hovering around now we're hovering around 7200 it's been a year you remember the 10 year anniversary

uh live show on january 3rd or january 10th which one i think we did on january 3rd yes we did on january 3rd five drink matt uh introduced himself to the world that was like you said that you said that no exchanges would uh add lightning and uh by the end of the year that was proven wrong yeah and you know what else um i think a big one that i missed was i like btc pay is just it's it's such a massive deal you know it's such a big deal and i it wasn't really it was on my radar but it wasn't on my radar to to the proper extent i think i think this was very much the year btc pay yes i think this is going to be the decade decade the decade of btc pay decade hey yo you going to bird's game this decade um no btc pay is going to keep

rolling on we're all going to keep rolling on here we got a pretty light roster here today before we get into it you got to give a shout out to our sponsors uh giving is hard when you donate How do you know what your charity is going to accomplish with your money? Imagine that you went to help children. You found two trustworthy organizations that run different programs. One can save a child's life for every $300,000 donated, while the other can save a child's life for every $3,000. Obviously, you donate to the one that is 100 times better at saving children's lives.

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your donation up to $1,000 as long as the match lasts. They're running out of the match. Go to GiveWell.org slash TFTC. This episode of Tales from the Crypt and Rabbit Hole Recap is also brought to you by the Cash App. As you know, Cash App is the simplest way to send and save money, and now it's the simplest way to try to grow your money. It's your addition, Cash App Investing. Unlike investing tools, they don't let you buy entire shares of stocks. Cash App lets you instantly invest as little or as much as you want. We're stacking slivers of stocks now, if you so please. This way, when your favorite company's stock is just a little too expensive, you can still own a piece with as little as $1. Because Cash App is directly connected to your bank

account, you don't have to wait three to four days for your bank transfer. You can start investing today. Broker services are provided by Cash App Investing, a subsidiary of Square, and a member SIPC. And as always, you can still stack sats, sell sats, move sats, receive sats on the app. And if you have not downloaded it yet and you are going to download it, make sure you use the code stacking sats. You're going to get $10 and $10 is going to go to our good friends at Owls Lacrosse. so download the cash app today from the app store google play store and last but not least our good friends at unchained capital helping us keep the lights on here unchained is doing many great things first they got their vaults program which is a multi-sig setup you can engage

in a multi-sig quorum with unchained where they hold a key and if you need ever need them to sign they're there for you on top of that they have their their uh collateralized loan program uh if you are thinking about selling your bitcoin wait a second reach out to unchained they can help you not sell your bitcoin you can use your bitcoin as collateral for us dollar alone um so you don't have to sell your bitcoin and then on top of that they're a beast in the open source space with their multi-sig setup they've uh open sourced their process there with caravan which is a desktop app that will allow you to set up a multi-sig quorum by yourself without Unchained so that you can get the level of security that they have

in an individual fashion. So go to www.unchained-capital.com today. www.unchained-capital.com today. All right. Got through it. That owl call gets better every episode. I feel like I'm becoming an owl. i'm actually working on like constricting my neck almost 180 degrees i'm getting pretty far

it's pretty crazy bitcoin's up 82 percent year over year you know like everyone who's just like obsesses over the price you know and freaks the fuck out all the time and you just you know like like imagine if you were in a coma the man in the coma you just come out of the coma it's up 82 you think is the best year ever right man in the coma forced huddle somebody has to go to jail for a couple years come out it's people are obsessed i mean it's the volatility the volatility the nature of the volatility is such that it just incites reaction right i think it's it's moving quickly it's hard not to pay attention if you're in a coma november 2017 and then you woke up today the price is exactly the same it's been fucking that's insane do you imagine that it's absolutely

insane right yeah bitcoin man it is uh could you imagine how much less stressed out that that man in the coma would be though he might actually live longer even having gone through a coma not having to go through uh the the stress of the news cycles the last two years comas consider them hey you can uh you can do uh medically induced comas too maybe that might be a trend of the future for people want to force auto please let's i don't want that meme to begin let's not if you if you're not starting an uh accidental boating service or excuse me a boating accident service maybe think about the medically induced coma to force auto the problem is it's i don't think you could do that in a trustless way right you would have to yeah you'd have to trust someone

to actually wake you back up. Yeah, you'd have to do it with a time lock too. So you know that they're not moving your Bitcoin while you're in the coma. That's true. This is interesting. We're going to spitball on this, freaks. All right?

We're going to spitball on this for a couple episodes here. Yeah, light list this week. Where do we want to start? Do we want to start Bitcoin? Do we want to start global macro? We've got to front load this vulnerability disclosure as is tradition.

Okay. Let's go for it. Bitbox. yeah has yes i saw this you can brute force the passwords like after 10 000 guesses or a thousand guesses right no you get up to a million guesses at least a million guesses uh basically the secure element uh which is supposed to enforce the uh like the ticking time bomb when you when you put in uh incorrect passwords like it ticks down so that the the device bricks itself if you've you made a certain number of incorrect attempts um uh lazy ninja on twitter at freedom isn't safe

uh who's a great uh adversarial hardware guy he always looks into all these hardware wallets um he's looked into cold card in the past some of the other ones uh he discovered that you can basically see from the power usage uh if it's incorrect before the secure element realizes it's incorrect so then you can just reset it real quick and do it again um so this is fixed with the most recent firmware uh 5.0.0 so if you do have a bitbox uh hardware wallet you should update that as soon as possible yes um so this requires physical access of course yes and that's funny this is same company it came hard a cold card a couple months ago um for for disclosure stuff um again the hardware wallet world my uh my advice to all the hardware

wallet creators out there is give peace a chance you're all sitting on a hardware that is probably susceptible to some some form of hack at the end of the day i mean these independent researchers it's like the best thing ever right like we should everyone should be attacking each other uh today the bitbox is now more secure than it was before the cold card is more secure than it was before um the trezor is still just as insecure as it was earlier from physical attacks because that's a hardware issue and they can't update it but at least people are aware of it you know use a strong passphrase if you use a trezor be aware be aware um that was the only that was the only vulnerability we have on the list right now yeah you know it's christmas there's no there's

less there's less vulnerabilities during christmas uh blw i i mean you've never used this wallet bitcoin lightning wallet on android some positive news uh they released support for something called hosted channels um so hosted channels are like kind of like a quasi custodial channel it's still custodial uh you know third party hosts the channel for you you are trusting them but it comes with the benefit that it is transparent so you see what's going on um so it's like a slightly better custodial option uh which is cool to see you know it comes with the conveniences that a lot of these custodial solutions offer um while having slightly better trade-offs yeah yeah it's um no again slowly but surely the the optionality expands um over to

more macro stuff argentina local bitcoins uh volume hit an all-time high as capital controls get uh tighter there uh matt alborg was tweeting about that earlier this week and you can find that at useful tool ups but yeah i think uh i saw somebody tweeting too that that um that argentinians are beginning to to use bitcoin more uh as a store of value too because of these capital controls yeah we got into an argument about it did you see me and kruger uh alex kruger on uh no i didn't i didn't see that what uh what was that fight about i was like find safety in sats you know which is my thing of course i'm gonna say that uh and he was like please god no don't do that like no one's using it for a store of value they're just using it to get past capital controls and then get into

us dollars and i was like well i'm not going to comment on whether or not they're using as a store value because i have no idea but even if you're using it in that method you're still finding safety in sats like i don't see how that is uh how that's a relevant distinction there right like if capital controls are your threat then you know skirting them are is safety right yeah so i don't know about that but someone commented underneath he's like i'm venezuelan plenty of people use as a store of value yeah it's like hey that dude loves to to poo poo everything he wants to be contrarian you know it's good for engagement uh i i was you know i respect him i'm glad i'm glad he's in the space i'm glad he tries to keep us honest and and as you see we wouldn't have had

the venezuela uh oh i said venezuela we wouldn't have had the argentinian underneath there commenting and providing light there if he hadn't given that comment right um one thing to keep in mind is that the weekly volume even though it's all-time high is still only 430 000 us dollars uh so you know it's not negligible volume but it's not exactly um huge no i think but and also local bitcoin volumes but also just like a a leading indicator and like the tip of the iceberg right i would imagine as volumes hitting all-time high to me that's probably new users coming on for the first time a lot more new users and then i i i'm like pretty much convinced that a lot of these people are just setting up connections like after one or two transactions and just transacting in

private after that off of local bitcoins yeah why would you use i would never use local bitcoins for like repeat transactions right you like already have your dealer and you just uh reach out to them directly going forward so you you cut them out you cut local bitcoins out yeah um yeah so this was uh yeah local bitcoins volumes going up across the world uh matt's continuing to do some great uh great research he was tweeting about another country earlier this week too let me find it real quick they hit all-time high volume as well um on paxful um give me a second here useful tulips.org is great um yeah so definitely definitely keep an eye on that i've been i it's one of those things i check like once a week uh just take a look and and and stay stay

abreast of of what the volumes are looking like across the world yeah i can't find this tweet right now but volumes going up on the pdp exchanges um so pdp exchanges people use that for privacy right p2p you don't give up their name you don't deal with people um over the or i keep saying over the weekend because it feels like it's a monday but uh during the week we found out that a um an original ethereum founder one of the developers i believe he developed the the ether real the go client for for ethereum we we we were able to see that he moved 92 000 ethereum to uh kraken i believe uh to sell and the reason we were able to tell that is because he had linked his wallet to uh one of the the ens the eth uh naming system uh whatever it is the dot eth thing

like he linked his name to that that sort of linked his stash to that name and when he moved his eth to kraken earlier this week we were able to know that it was him one of the original developers one of the founders one of the founders moving to dump so that he can develop his video game well to be fair uh well first of all we the chain was it was pretty clear that that the stash had come from the the ico pre-mine um it just to note this was 11 and a half million dollars worth of eth um this guy also was one of the main developers behind geth which is like i think their leading client so uh he wasn't like a nobody but he had stepped back um you know ethereum has like 50 co-founders uh yeah they have a lot of co-founders so this is one of them i i never

i never really heard of him i was following him but i i guess i never just like registered um exactly who he was um so we so we knew right away because there's a transparent ledger we knew right away that these funds were coming from the pre-mine some people said it was connected to Vitalik. And then we were able, Trustnodes was able to connect it to Jeffrey Wilk because he had linked it to his name through Ethereum name service, as you said, that .eth that you see everywhere on Twitter from the eth people. You know, this is, they've had plenty of situations where they have dApps and stuff that link your real ID. I mean, I remember, do you remember peepeth uh the twitter clone a bunch of people inadvertently linked their funds to their names

through that i remember no i remember and i remember you were like researching like you were able to find some people on crypto twitter like had a lot of eth yeah i doxed our buddy nick carter it was like right in the beginning of our friendship too and i'm glad uh i'm glad we're still friends after that um but i mean if an ethereum co-founder can fuck this up uh anyone can fuck it up and it's just a very risky idea like you know ethereum for starters uses this account-based model so they don't use new addresses every time by default um so you link one of these accounts uh to your real identity whether that's through an ip address whether that's through publicly posting to pp whether that's ethereum name service with your real name um and then from

there it's trivial to compare everything else because you're not even at least with you know bitcoin's utxo model like you can figure it out but at least there's still some level of plausible deniability if you're not reusing addresses but with the account model you know you're just everything's going to that same address you see all the tokens that are in there you see everything every transaction uh so this is you know i people got to be careful if you're using ethereum you got to be careful you're not you know don't reuse your accounts i guess i don't know just don't link it to your name uh the other thing is you know everyone jumped to the conclusion that he dumped and he did dump because he admitted it on twitter later when he was like raging at everyone that was

giving him shit about it but he could have been going leverage long and cracking you know or whatever right yeah like he couldn't necessarily people jumped yeah yeah so let's getting to this this point of this topic is like what does it say that one of the founders is dumping a huge stash of his initial uh initial distribution um to develop a video game and that's what like a lot of the conversation around this particular action um was about like the original vesting schedule of eth and the ico and i just found that poetically hilarious that that's what it like oh we should have a better vesting schedule it's like no you should have a pow launch where everybody like all this shit just again we talk about social scalability in these systems like this is

a zero day social scalability bug within ethereum the initial distribution it's a zero day bug that'll haunt it its whole existence there was no vesting schedule right it was just they just got the money um yeah so i mean yeah i mean they shouldn't have gone in the pre-mine to begin with right but at this point like i think it's hilarious that they're giving him shit for it like it's his fucking money like you gave it to him you were fine with it up until this point well you can't you can't dump it when he wants uh i'm sure he wished he had better privacy about it though yes no i i that's what i feel bad for the guy like the dude did a lot of hard work like one if like if you design the initial distribution in this way like don't get mad

when people cash out at some point like it's just going to happen like seeing everybody like scream for altruism at this guy like oh you should have donated to this project to that project you could reinvest like shut the fuck up this guy's made his money you can do whatever the fuck he wants to do with it like don't try to shame him because he's spending his money how he wants to like it's it's a flaw in the way the system was designed not in this guy's choice in life yeah and i mean i would say the distinction here where like i give like charlie lee more shit and i would give vitalik more shit is that i mean he wasn't i mean no one i he wasn't like out in front you know shilling the project at least at least from my um yeah but like i like

i said he can still go fuck himself for the pre-mine but to then make the distinction that oh then he can't spend the pre-mine as he deems fit like four years after the fact when you guys we're all fine with it this whole fucking time uh is pretty hilarious uh yeah and it just goes to show once again why we think uh you know imagine if he was malicious about it right instead of just dumping right away uh and capitulating like if he just kept moving it around to spook the markets and had leveraged shorts you know on bitmex and stuff like that he can completely play with the markets uh so yeah that's interesting and i think this is also why it's kind of good that a lot of these exchanges do have leverage capabilities to go long

with the collateral being the underlying because you can't make that assumption right away when it gets sent to an exchange otherwise the markets get spooked super quick um but yeah it's just it's just something that's inherent with these chains right now yeah yeah no it's i mean and again going back to social scalability there's a couple of social scalability zero days in a lot of these blockchains and i think initial distribution is one zero day that that a lot of people are extremely blind to specifically uh ethereum well it's kind of funny too because vitalik was trying to do like an about face about the pre-mine earlier this week and then it just all like kind of blew up in his face he was saying like oh we only pre-mined 11 11 yeah he said he

said sending bitcoin to the contract address was essentially mining which like means every ico was a mind ico yeah okay bro yeah ridiculous they're gonna they're gonna try and gaslight everything they are trying to gaslight everything did you see that um that one tweet about like trying to say that die was the first stable coin like the compounds the first decks like yeah yep they're trying to rewrite the history so die is not the first successful stable coin and if you want to talk about like distributed stable coin bit shares was the first one right yeah i mean distributed with quotation marks but i guess same with die right yeah yeah exactly and first decks nobody ever talks about counterparty the counterparty built the first decks in their wallet counterparty

built the first uh non-fungible tokens um and that that whole tokenomics ideas really started on top of bitcoin with counterparty i mean i don't think it really matters who's fucking first if it's not like a uh a long-lasting project like if it's not built if it's built on quicksand and you just get there first so you can yell first you know what there's no value there's really no value there uh so it's like kind of a moot point to begin with no i think no i think the trailblazers who tried the ideas first should get the credit like trying to say that die was the first stable coin it's just a slap in the face even if they were bad implementations bad ideas not like anybody didn't try them before and to a certain with a certain amount of success like

those projects before ethereum not huge success but they had a certain amount of success within the niche uh realm that we're in and considering the size at the time like it was counterpart it was pretty successful considering how how small this whole space was at the time i mean but bit usd was like a complete failure and a garbage project that no one knows yeah it was larimer's first scam yeah so we're gonna oh it was it was the first you know yeah i don't know yeah but yeah scammers have done it before i i'm just trying to uh put forward my my belief that there's a lot of weight gaslighting going on right now a lot of gaslighting yeah a lot of history revision you know talking about history revision we had csw uh the famous fake toshi uh

he came out you know this whole time he's been saying that he has this tulip trust where he holds uh his 800 000 bitcoin you know because he's satoshi and he's not going to get access to it till january 2020 um and a lot of us said well that was obviously bullshit uh i mean like imagine satoshi like creates this whole trust minimized system for restoring uh value and then he like puts it in a blind trust that's like led by the legal system as the most ridiculous concept ever but anyway now that he has this issue with uh the kleinmans uh in florida in the court where he's supposed to give them a bunch of that bitcoin um mixed with the fact that he can't actually access the bitcoin uh there was a whole article in bloomberg today about his excuses for

why he's not going to be able to access it in january um which is you know exactly what what most of us expected so that's pretty fucking funny can we stop talking about craig wright after this i think it's a tool update original date comes and passes and those coins aren't moved we should ignore ignore ignore don't appease that motherfucker he's not he's an idiot like stop paying attention to craig wright after the tool date comes and passes which is very soon was it the third or the tenth i think yeah i don't know but yeah i mean i agree i mean that's why i didn't say his name even though you said his name i use the initials uh but i i just thought it was great to uh i'm not yelling at you yeah i i just it's an important time to dunk because you know we've

had to deal with this shit for years so um we will only we'll only cover him when it's dunkage uh yeah i think that's fair no no i was i was screaming at the at the uh at the at the abyss there not at you matthew that's fair screw you abyss yeah uh petro looks like it's getting implemented the venezuelan petro i saw uh javier bastardo he's becoming one of my favorite followers on uh to get information about bitcoin in venezuela he was tweeting earlier this week uh a video of a bunch of senior citizens outlined at some uh uh vendor that was accepting yeah grocery store that was accepting petro payments and it's a biometric system you had to be uh what does he have to be part of the party a party member a senior citizen and you have to

give up your your fingerprint as well it's like it looks like they're they're paying uh via their fingerprints like that's how they have to pay yeah it's retirees and other pensioners and they're calling them bonuses uh but uh you know obviously they're paying them out in the pseudo the pseudo cryptocurrency that's completely centralized and you know completely owned by the state controlled by the state um and the only way they can redeem them is with their fingerprint and obviously they have to be a card carrying uh party member uh so they have to you know bend their knee uh and the lines are crazy because there's so few stores that accept it um and i guess lines there in general are you know pretty bad right now because the economy but uh extra bad

the places that accept the petro um so i did javier actually post this video that i posted today did i miss that it wasn't that one he had the lines right the lines of the yeah yeah so video people in lines yeah yeah so i had a source who wanted to be anonymous who sent me the actual promo video and it's pretty fucking crazy promo video uh it's you know it's worth watching where they're like oh it's the petro it's the future of money and it like shows them how they have to use their fingerprint and everything and tries to normalize this idea that um you pay with fingerprint which is like the worst um from a privacy point of view it's like the worst idea ever um and from a security point of view it's not even that secure because uh people can lift

fingerprints pretty easily uh fingerprints should not be used um as a password yeah yeah be be aware um i mean this is to be expected in places like venezuela like we all know the petra is bullshit um and it's just like what what is like what is the ledger that is being uh that is being amended at the end of the day with these finger this biometric system like is there a ledger at Yeah, it's a it's a dash fork. So there is a ledger, they just control all the nodes. And it's supposedly backed by assets, you know, similar to something like tether. So then you also have to trust them that the assets are actually being held somewhere, which, you know, doubtful they are. So it is really just all bullshit. But it's another way for them to print money. And it's another way for them to surveil their populace. so of course of course they're all for it um yeah and they're not the only ones it's a hot hot theme around the world hong kong this is a big thing this week the police froze nine million dollars raised uh by activists via spark alliance and i believe this was an hsbc account correct i

think the other one was hsbc i think this was a was this also hsbc i thought this was a different bank there was another they froze someone else's fund spark alliance platform yeah spark alliance platform oh no no it was it was it is hsbc both of them are hsbc hsbc has been closing a bunch of accounts um but yeah so you know another perfect example of why but you know bitcoin is inherently seizure resistant you know it's not perfect um but you can't just press a few buttons at hsbc and just lock lock all the lock all the accounts well and it's again a theme of this podcast might be poetic um it's poetic that hsbc is doing this and just think about like all the controls all

these capital controls all these kyc aml laws and compliance that they throw on you it's under the guise that they are here to protect you here to fight against money laundering here to stop the drug dealers, the terrorists, when HSBC, a bank that's supposed to be compiling with these KYC AML laws and looking for these money launderings, literally created bank windows with specific dimensions for briefcases that Mexican drug lords could push cash through, that they could facilitate money laundering all these laws and all these capital controls and all this compliance that you have to put up with all the personal data you have to give up to just participate in the financial system is under the guise that they are there to protect you from drug dealers terrorists

and pornographers and child molesters yet the banks that are supposed to comply are literally working behind your back to make it so they can launder money for these institutions it's not to protect you they want to control you it's capital controls they want to control your capital speak up against these fucking fascists yeah it's ineffective it's dangerous and then when they get caught actually doing it at scale for like the real bad guys um they get a slap on the wrist and just the cost of doing business i mean there's like a massive irony here like i wanted to go back to venezuela we moved away really quick i mean the big irony of venezuela is that the venezuelan government understands that bitcoin has a lot of value and will continue to accrue value they are

accumulating bitcoin it appears that that is very likely that they're accumulating bitcoin but at the same time they created their own shit coin that they're that they're putting on their people right so so it's not that that these people don't realize they absolutely realize and they just do this double speak bullshit um to to control us and at the same time benefit themselves right so you know it's fucking bullshit and i think the freaks know that it's good it's all about control but that's what i wrote about in the bent today like there's a bunch of people passively wandering through a labyrinth that was designed to control them to make them act in a certain way and again it's all under the guise that the levers that are there to control you are put there under the

guys that they're there to protect you and they don't protect you they don't do the things they say they're going to do all the bad stuff still happens and they facilitate it like fight back this is not fair i'm sorry i'm really really pissed off here right now yeah you should be hsbc hsbc in particular is fucking like the fact that they're able or they're like acting holier than now to to stop money from flowing to these protesters um after being so hypocritical with the mexican drug lord stuff it just like pisses me off yeah it's super infuriating because you know i have an hsbc account and uh i uh they like make me go through so many fucking hoops like just to get like a 50 cashier's check you know and i'm like fully kyc'd and everything through them like

they know everything about me like all my transactions like why are you making me why does it take me an hour 45 minutes an hour and i have to disclose all this information about my 50 cashier check and meanwhile hundreds of millions of dollars you're laundering you know it's like absolutely ridiculous yes on a more positive note i don't have this on the list but i listened to uh peter mccormick's what bitcoin did uh with these two guys from el salvador um el salvador as you know as a horrible economy uh and they're running a bitcoin charity down there um where they employ kids and they they teach them about bitcoin and pay them in bitcoin and they have this whole like circular economy where they have merchants and stuff

who accept bitcoin so it's definitely worth a listen um you know it's one of the one of the ways that bitcoin is helping around the world in these in these places um it's not all negative of stuff there. There's a lot of positive going on out there. And one of the interesting things I thought, one of the interesting takeaways was that, you know, a lot of times we talk about because we're self-custodying our assets, our Bitcoin, it puts you at bigger risk of theft. Actually, in El Salvador, they think of it as the opposite because it's a very cash-dominated economy. Imagine you're a kid and you're walking around with some cash in your pocket. It's way more likely that that cash gets stolen uh than bitcoin does because you know there's just there's

some information asymmetry there where you know a gang guy will not realize you know that there's money on on the phone like protected by a pin or something like that um so just an interesting perspective that we we don't really cover often i thought that was that was pretty cool no that's uh no it's good to see the people who need it most using it and then actually it's yeah the five dollar wrench attack something everybody's scared of but the people who actually need it most are like yeah no it's not that bad well it's just cash is just easier to five dollar wrench uh but yeah that's true um on to dystopian surveillance watch popular chat up to talk not ticked off from the app store to talk not tick tock to talk this is uh from the united

arab emirates very popular app and basically i believe that all the data was just going straight to to the government they're spying on everybody um was it like were people outside of the uae using this yeah so there was like a lot of usage uh in the middle east in particular but also it was like on the top of the app stores on both app stores i think part of the reason and part of the reason they named it to talk was because people thought they were downloading tiktok you know so um which is a chinese app that's probably doing exactly the same thing but these apps are ideal because instead of hacking people you just get them to give you all their messages all their contacts their location data photos like all the permissions that these apps take

and all it takes is your one that one app that's the weakest app uh and it can just siphon all of your data off your phone and you that's not complicated at all it's super cheap for them to do um you know they they got like a third party contractor built this app for them they didn't have to build the app so it's just you got to be really aware about what you install on your phone what information you keep on your phone you know this this information can really um you know we talked about the new york times about all that location data that they that they talked about this information especially in aggregate can give so much detail about what you do you know this is why the kyc all these kyc laws are so dangerous because if you can see every transaction that

someone has made you get a really good picture of what they do um and then you can control them from that aspect yeah it's scary shit man and uh staying on this topic tiktok is a cursed app just delete it if you have it it's uh it's making people do weird things forget about that i mean i mean first of all tftc is not on tiktok we're proudly not supporting tiktok but it's a chinese company you know they're just siphoning all of your regardless of what it's doing to people on a social level uh just this idea that you're like giving this app permissions on your phone uh is highly questionable and um i i consider it i consider it an attack i consider it a chinese attack chinese state-sponsored attack if they if they can get one of the just as much as you know

if not more so but the same idea as facebook is a state-sponsored attack against uh the rest of the world right because it gives the americans eyes into all these people's phones um but you know the chinese are are better at this shit and they they unilaterally act so um there's like no doubt in my mind that tiktok is just uh is being used for basically collection of data from people's phones yes be aware be aware and especially if you're doing like bitcoin things you're just going to get sent like where you're going to build a following on tiktok like they're just going to fucking close your account like you're just wasting your time there's absolutely no reason for bitcoin just to be on tiktok but there's my rant tiktok is a cursed app i'm convinced

it's not good for the children um the u.s government is warning service members asking them not to use dna testing services they don't want to dox themselves did you read the letter the letter is fucked man uh i mean when the u.s government starts saying shit like that and i'm pretty sure like the u.s government is is part of the you know surveillance of these dna apps like you know it's uh you know it's a real issue like they even they're worried that uh this information will get out and as we talked about earlier you know one of the the most dangerous parts about this is you're not even giving up just your privacy you're giving up all your past and future relatives privacy as well since they have um dna connection to you uh this is a quote from

the office of the secretary of defense um there is increased concern in the scientific community that outside parties are exploiting the use of genetic data for questionable purposes, including mass surveillance and the ability to track individuals without their authorization or awareness. Scary shit. What are we doing? Freaks, what the fuck are we doing?

We have to take a step back and think about the systems that we're building and the future that we're building. We're speeding forward into the digital age without a lot of uh contemplation and reflection i think um especially with these big issues like data and dna storing um we got to think about this stuff i think there really needs to be a massive conversation on a global scale about data security and again going back to like how much control the state and all these corporations and banking apparatus should have over individuals like it is we are we talk about this a lot but we are getting near i fear a point of no return in

which we may not be able to to fight back against the control that they want to imbue on us yeah i mean i think like historically humans have just rushed into things without thinking through the long-term consequences in this case as you said like it's particularly dangerous because it's going to be hard to come back from it you know like if we have all these dna databases leaked around and shared around and stuff like that um like generations and generations of people are being doxxed uh so you know like if if my financial transactions get leaked like my grandson should be okay you know there's no risk there for there's limited risk there for him you know he might be poor uh but like there's limited risk there for him uh if my dna gets leaked uh he's doxxed he's

in a database you know they know his exact genetic breakdown they can frame him for crimes um they can surveil him easier uh so these it's and forget about i mean i don't even want we're going to get just straight into sci-fi i mean like cloning and shit like who the fuck knows so uh it's an issue it's a major fucking issue maybe like that that's actually a good point like we'll get to the point where courts may not be able to use dna evidence because the possibility the probability that it was uh fabricated evidence pulled from some dna bank uh being being higher than it would have been previously right like the probability is a lot higher than it was 10 years ago that somebody could do this to try to frame somebody yeah i

mean i think that's a positive element this is what i think about like deep fakes right like i'm like excited for deep fakes because it's basically like coin join for your face and your voice um so yeah you know you can also maybe rich people in like 20 years 30 years will just make a ton of clones of themselves so they have plausible deniability this is like a bunch of matt odell's running around uh oh no no matt i'm not i'm not saying i'm gonna do it but i'm just saying like you could see you know someone doing that right presumably then you get the organs and shit and you get plausible deniability i don't know that's got really dystopian really quick i gotta reading too much sci-fi i got some good sci-fi books for christmas did anyone get

and your family get dna tests for christmas no no it's a good sign uh i've i've scolded everybody not to do that same with me there's there was none there was there was no alexas there was no google homes there was no dna tests super proud super proud of the family uh that no one even considered it as an option yeah no very uh yeah no electronics we didn't get any electronics actually now that i'm thinking about it it's all clothes and got a nice whiskey set we're gonna have some old fashions when we when we meet in person the next time i love it i got two bottles of scotch uh and a bottle of urban so there's people they know me well they know me well yeah yeah um yes that's scary all

right on to lighter news into more positive stuff how how can we help fight against this we need to educate ourselves right we need to educate ourselves number one that there is a problem and then two that there are solutions to these problems we believe that bitcoin is a big solution particularly to the financial sovereignty and privacy uh problem uh and our good friend uh gg has released 21 lessons as a book he's had the website that we've talked about before in the past but now you can officially buy the 21 lessons book on amazon um which is huge it's a good way to learn about the philosophies behind bitcoin i think the 21 lessons book uh or series is uh particularly again number three of the podcast

is good because of um the angles it attacks the the essence of bitcoin from from many different angles and it helps anybody from any perspective uh find something to to get interested in bitcoin yeah i mean uh gg's a good friend uh i love gg he's at der gg on twitter at d-e-r-g-i-g-i on twitter 21 lessons is fucking great it's good to see it on book um i'm gonna start poking him to So he starts selling it for Bitcoin. I don't think he's selling it for Bitcoin yet. It's only on Amazon, but it's a good first step in that direction. He's come a long way this year as well.

I'm super excited for him. So yeah, everyone should consider going and buying that book. It's a really good starting point for people. And there was another great book that got released the last couple of weeks by Kiara Bickers, at Kiara Bickers on Twitter, called Bitcoin Clarity. and i'm actually i'm like a quarter of the way through that one uh it's great it's uh it's that's a fantastic it's really fantastic she did a really good job there's like these diagrams that are just the diagrams like really make you know the book's called bitcoin clarity

they would make it really clear like how bitcoin works um so i i i also highly recommend that book yeah i was dming with kiara over the holiday break we're gonna get her on the podcast next time she's in new york yes uh very good underrated bitcoiner she's been around for a while yeah um i think she was at blockstream was she at blockstream for a little bit yeah she was a she worked at blockstream for a while um and then yeah now she's got this book out um yeah care underrated i met her in san francisco out there i met her in san francisco she's great i have not met her in person yet i am uh very much looking forward to the day we meet in person they were like uh forget who introduced me someone was like kiara you have to meet matt when your book comes out

he's a good guy to get to shill it so here we are it was like eight months later it came to fruition i've shilled the book it's a great book it's a solid book i i don't i only show things i believe in and fortunately she made a book that that is very good yes um and then on that proof of keys is next week uh so january 3rd is the proof of keys initiative if you want to take your keys into your own hand and prove that these exchanges are uh hold the bitcoin that they say they do um january 3rd is the day in which bitcoiners are going to uh do proof of keys we recommend you do proof of keys all the time um and i will note actually somebody did i'm just looking for the tweet i couldn't find it but somebody did tweet at us saying that they initiated

a withdrawal from coinbase earlier this week and it's not gonna and it's not gonna hit their wallet until january 3rd so if you're trying to do proof of keys on january 3rd it seems on queenbase particularly it's gonna take you're not gonna be able to get them that day well i mean well first of all a lot of these exchanges have uh limits withdrawal limits like our sponsor cash app they have withdrawal limits on weekly basis so you want to do this this guy was this guy was trying to take 50 off yeah but i think with i was about to get there with coinbase like if you do a bank transfer uh they they they like you have to wait it was like he just purchased it he purchased it and he went it went to withdraw right away they never let you i'm pretty sure they never let you

withdraw right away at least that's how it used to be when i used it like years ago um but yeah i like not your keys not your coins like the word you you should just never be keeping large amounts on exchanges and brokers you should be pulling them out right away as soon as possible a constant process um you shouldn't be trying to like pull off all your funds uh in a super panicky way like on january 3rd that's like the the worst that's the worst way of handling it uh you need you need to just be constantly like learning how to custody your coins better um you know and slowly and steadily moving stuff off especially if you're new you're just getting into this don't feel any pressure to like uh be part of the gang proof of keys make sure you know

what you're doing first like practice practice practice it is so it's not extremely straightforward is something that should be taken very seriously and just make sure you know what you're doing um get get a level of comfort okay yeah don't wake up on january january 3rd and like send all of your money to like a mobile wallet and this is like a horrible idea in that respect so you got to be careful about it but just it just should be a constant process like every time you buy you should be withdrawing every time you buy you should be withdrawing just use it as an on-ramp don't use it as a wallet yes exactly and use coin join in between there so that they don't They can't follow your funds afterwards.

Otherwise, they can see all your past and future transactions. And they still might be able to if you fuck up CoinJoin, but at least it'll be more difficult. And if you do it right, it'll be way more difficult. And hopefully we get things like PayJoin in the future where every transaction is a CoinJoin. Shout out that thread, John Newberry, good friend of the show.

Did an incredible thread on Monday, forward-looking about the technologies that may come to Bitcoin. um and it's very promising like if if a lot of the stuff does get added it seems that bitcoin's future is going to be more scalable uh more ux friendly and more private which is which is very good i mean i'm just going to take time i get sick of the prediction uh posts this time of year but john's was the best one if there was that should have just been the only prediction thread and or post or interview or whatever of the whole year i would be completely fine with it

that was the best part i wasn't even like a prediction friend it was like hey here's what's actually being worked on yeah this is what he wants it's like what what john's vision is i was we definitely should link it it was great i just wanted to note that gavin andrewson uh former bitcoin core maintainer um potential coin founder yeah uh he definite spook did you see his quote retweet of fucking about the lightning networks the lightning network won't be ready till 2022 like fuck you gavin like how do you read that thread like this most positive constructive thread from john just fucking hustling every day and and you give this this lowbrow fucking comment like if there's any what is uh if there's any uh people that still think

like oh maybe he was acting in good interest like come on man like it's fucking ridiculous what's his shit coin name isn't he the creator of pure coin no that is alleged that was uh sunny uh something it was under a nim a nim created it but a lot of people a lot of people think it was him and that he wanted to move bitcoin to like a more centralized proof of stake model um but yeah he's done tons of questionable things and in best case scenario yeah and the best case scenario is super naive in the worst case scenario he's just a government spook uh who's acting with bad intentions and i i when he when he posts shit like that on such a positive thread like it just it's it's really it's like impossible to give him the benefit of

the doubt you just can't no no fuck that dude um yeah one of the one of the like yeah that's he's a perfect example of don't don't find any heroes in the space like a lot of people don't like clung on to him early days like even us don't look at us like don't like even whom i even say that you would even think like that but like honestly don't like just think for yourself what i'm trying to get as think for yourself yeah don't trust on anybody don't trust us don't trust anybody um be skeptical always be paranoid uh you know be ready to slay your heroes whenever necessary yeah um one thing that i put on the end here that we didn't talk about i think we should talk about is uh the pictures of people lining up to buy gold in germany uh this week

apparently in january 1st the limits uh through which you can buy gold anonymously without having do kyc aml are going to drop from 10 000 euro to 2 000 euro so you're gonna have an 80 drop um in the amount of gold you can buy without having to um uh to register your your personal information and this was two years ago the limit was 15 000 euro and then in 2021 after they drop it from 10 to 2 000 euro this year they're gonna drop it from 2 000 euro to 1 000 euro in 2021 so it seems that in germany at least the government is trying to crack down on gold buyers and they're trying to make it harder for them to get it anonymously

and they want to know who's owning gold and our friend Giacomo Zucco pointed out that the only reason that they want to KYC AML gold buyers is so that they can confiscate it later. They know who owns the gold. They know how much they have and they can go confiscate it later. That's why these laws for gold particularly

are getting more draconian. Yeah, the first step for confiscation is figuring out who has everything. It's the same with Bitcoin. uh it's the same with cash this is why like two of the biggest competitors to bitcoin is cash for private payments and gold for store of value um and we see governments around the world cracking down on both right uh and it it should be by design should be harder for them to crack down on bitcoin and that's why bitcoin is so important you know it's uh to people that say like compare

them as alternatives you know i always argue back that they won't be alternatives for very long uh so you know something to consider that and like pay attention like slowly but surely just look at these headlines it's they're tightening tightening the the ropes around you uh like they are the writing seems to be on the wall that they know something is wrong they and when they know something is wrong and they being the kleptocratic uh political and banking system that rules the world today uh they try to clamp down and control again they want to control you they want to control your capital they want to control where you can spend what you can do who you can talk to what you can see where you can go it's all about control and they want to

control you and signs like uh them not allowing you to buy gold without giving up your personal information is not a good sign they want to in some way use that to control you in the future And a lot of this is probably because they're moving into negative rates. And if they move into negative rates, they don't want people like pulling their money out of the banks and storing them in gold or cash at home to escape it to escape that what basically amounts to an additional tax. And let's let's be frank here. Like this is this is happened before. Like we had the executive order 6102 in the 30s in America. This was exact playbook.

they did you know they first figured out who had the gold and then they confiscated the gold from them and they you know they gave them a bullshit market price that they got redeemed at and then gold price went up afterwards uh after after they confiscated everyone's gold so um you know if you don't take if you don't take these matters into your own hands there's no one's out there is going to protect you you know you just gotta it's you know your your future family uh is counting on you and you and you got to handle that yeah um be aware i'm sorry if this uh this rip of rhr was is a bit depressing but these are heavy topics heavy topics a lot going on matt speaking of family you have to go embark on a lunch with yours yes yes i do but it's you know it's it's

important uh you know bitcoin never sleeps so neither does tftc right so here we are beaming live into your ears every week let us know what you freaks think join the conversation we forgot to read a shout out this week I'm going to get to that next week I'm sorry

I'm going to read the shout out next week on the back burner this week just to let you know let us know what you freaks think about this if you're liking it smash subscribe share it every every review every rating helps every every tweet retweet like on youtube uh goes a long way merry christmas happy new year stay humble stack sets peace and love freaks