TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - Rabbit Hole Recap: Week of 2020.01.13

Episode Date: January 17, 2020

This week Marty and Matt discuss: - RIP Tamas Blummer - Tor Browser 9.0.4 - Zeus v0.2.0-rc1 : Android APK + Dev Signature - Instant VPS powered by lightning - Liquid support on BTCPayserver - Kashmir internet shutdown 170+ days now - BitMEX Research shows more lightning usage than expected - Samourai Wallet announces OXT Research - FBI tries to set encryption backdoor precedent once again - Coincenter reintroduces bill to add tax exemption for small purchases 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? It's your boy Marty Bent here for another edition of Rabbit Hole Recap. A day late this week. Sorry, freaks. Matt was traveling the world. It's because Alex Svetsky complained of all the podcast content, so he delayed it for you guys. He was complaining? Yeah, I saw him complaining on Twitter. No, yeah, a lot of traveling, and I wanted to get back up to speed with things before we jump back into RHR. Before we jump into RHR, let's talk about why you were traveling, if you're allowed to elaborate. right i i think i am a little bit um but i uh i was in san francisco i was helping out with the

human rights foundation uh they had like this amazing group of i guess i call them fellows but they're activists um from all these different countries and we gave them like a bitcoin 101 workshop and it was like true it was truly humbling like they were amazing people yeah it sounded like an incredible event alex really trying to get the technology out there were uh were they receptive they were very receptive i mean a lot of them have like bank accounts frozen their communications are watched uh i mean like i can't we talk about you know financial censorship all the time like these people live it and they're fighters and it's really impressive and so i mean it wasn't the the value to it to them was obvious to begin with i i think

and we like showed them like the best practices like as a beginner um you know we were walking them through using green wallet with tor um they all got given ledger wallets uh but like doing it in a responsible way there's it's just really yeah you said it highlighted some pain points oh my god man it's just really so frustrating there's so much nuance and there's so many different privacy concerns like the way like privacy was there was two right it was spending bitcoin like how do they actually use it once they have it um and it was all the different privacy trade-offs and to be aware of them and how they can shoot themselves in the foot um so like basically my main pitch was to just use cash as much as possible but the idea was like if you can't use cash mainly like

donations from abroad um bitcoin is really well suited for that and i think specifically btc pay is really well suited for that um but this was like you know like we how do you then you going out to the btc pay conversation takes up a whole nother level um and i i think btc pay will get even easier to use in like six months seven months um so hopefully it'll be like an ongoing discussion um but like stuff like yeah the the privacy i think was like so that was the second biggest concern i mean how do you um explain to someone who's never used bitcoin before uh just go from zero to 60 all the way that quickly yeah so we just tried to make them aware of as many risks as possible um doing you know basically the entry into the discussion

not to like just jump all in yeah um but then the other thing to keep in mind is like these people like they need to use in real situations um they have individual threat models right so uh for some of them they didn't care like if the u.s government could spy on it as long as their local government couldn't um so you have to like localize things and it's a very humbling experience i mean this is i think why i think bitcoin is so powerful right so um it was just really amazing to like be there and be a part of that yeah it sounded like a great event again shout out to alex for putting that together yeah alex glad and you for traveling foundation i was spending your time to help educate square hosted shout out to square as

well speaking of square have you freaked out about the cash app as you know cash app is the simplest way to spend send and save money and now it's the simplest way to try to grow your money introducing cash app investing unlike investing tools that only let you buy entire shares of a stonk cash app is letting you instantly invest as little or as much as you want this way when you want your favorite company's stock and it's just a little too expensive you can still own as little uh as one dollar of that stock because cash app is directly connected to your bank account there are no four to five day waiting periods uh for inbound transfers so you can start investing today and guess what you can still stack sats motherfuckers all right if you don't want to

stack stocks you don't have to the option is there brokerage services are provided by cash app investing a subsidiary of square remember sipc and as always use the code stacking sats that's one word stacking sats you're going to get ten dollars and cash app is going to send ten dollars so we're good friends at al's lacrosse all right uh use the code stacking sats and that wasn't planned marty just threw that in there yeah i had to use the segue when you threw it there shout out to square for uh for hosting that event we had to get it out of the way i know you did it it was impressive you know what else we have to get out of the way this one there you go this episode is also brought to you by unchained capital our good friends at unchained capital

providing financial services dedicated for bitcoiners all right they're helping you secure your bitcoin with their multi-sig quorum their vault program you can engage in a multi-sig quorum with unchained they will hold one key for you uh you can hold two or more you can n of them you can get into weird uh not weird complex uh signature schemes with them and if you ever need them to sign for you. They are there for you, but you don't need them. You can sign it yourself and move it off. On top of that, they have their loan program. If you don't want to sell your Bitcoin, you can take out a US dollar loan with Bitcoin as collateral. So you can hold onto that Bitcoin while you get some liquidity. And then on top of that, our good friends at Unchained

are beast in the open source realm, working on things like Caravan, which open sources, their multi-sig quorum. So you can make it yourself without them. Slip39 and Hermit. And on top of that, they just released it this week. They updated Caravan with some new UX flows. So go check that out. www.unchained-capital.com unchained-capital.com Sorry for throwing that on you.

Are we just going to stare at each other? Do we have another ad? No, that was it. Okay, awesome. Let's go. Let's go. I'm ready now. You're ready now. Before we hop into the topics of the day,

Let's pull up Clark Moody's stats here. The price was a Bitcoin dot Clark Moody dot com Bitcoin dot clock clock Bitcoin dot Clark Moody dot com slash dashboard. Right now we're looking at a price of eight thousand nine hundred seven dollars. A little bit a little bit of a pump this week. We're at block height six hundred thirteen thousand three hundred seven. We had a difficulty adjustment this week and the difficulty adjusted seven point one percent upwards. and we're 1,573 blocks away from the next adjustment. And what's the Tor percentage?

Tor percentage right now is 38.5% of the Lightning Network nodes. It's gone down slightly. Yes, I believe it was around 40 last week. Keep an eye on it, freaks. Keep an eye on it. Yeah, well, it's a good segue into what will now be our first topic. The team at BitMax Research dropped a research piece on Sunday, I believe, about the lightning network and they uh found that there were over 60 000 non-cooperative channel closures and what this led them to believe is that there are a lot more private

channels and people uh may may know at any uh at right now because it just seemed too high if it was only the public channels that were doing it yes um that's the gist of it so lightning excuse me bitmex research has a very extensive series on the lightning network this was part six of them uh doing this research so the main findings that the number of lightning network non-cooperative channel closures in bitcoin's history is over 60 000 over 1 000 bitcoin has been spent in non-cooperative channel closure transactions um and again uh the conclusion that is coming out of this research is that there are a lot of private channels apparently it's good to see right this is something we've speculated about for a while

a lot of the mobile apps default to private channels it is kind of interesting do they talk about I didn't really read this do they talk about the fact that why are so many people

doing cooperative why aren't they doing cooperative closes why are they doing forced closes I think it's I think the reason was because i don't know you can't really know right i would imagine it's just because people don't really communicate with other people they're up in channels with yeah i mean if they're both online

it should be a cooperative close yeah you just press the button okay so uh so maybe it's a mobile app issue i don't know analysis is challenging it's difficult to tell with absolute certainty if these are lightning transactions however it is possible to directly identify these transactions as lightning with a reasonable degree of certainty the transaction may be characterized as a non-cooperative closure more actually when the output of the transaction is redeemed during the sweeping of the funds following a channel closure so all lightning channel open and closes are two of two multi-sig transactions but you can more clearly see the non-cooperative closes than you can yeah so in the event of a non-cooperative channel closure the transaction can potentially

be followed by three types of scenarios two of which represent a sweep transaction using bitcoin's op if script identifying these op if sweep transactions with a relatively high degree of certainty is possible by not analyzing the blockchain so it's easier to track they know they they're tracking that so they extrapolate because i was wondering why no one had been doing two of two multi-sig uh and basically tracking private channels that way but i guess there are like a decent amount of other users using two of two multi-sig i mean at least while it is yeah i don't know how many people actually yeah maybe yeah there's some good diagrams in there too we're gonna link it makes research great as always yeah they had uh they actually had another

research piece that we don't have the list on the list it was actually a guest post by john attack i believe it was a bitcoin maintainer talking about the the uh bitcoin's build systems becoming more efficient over time and the the time it takes for bitcoin to compile its build system is been cut down significantly oh that was a great piece i remember that piece yeah yeah um the other thing to keep in mind is here that tor percentage is for public capacity that we were talking about earlier um so obviously all the private channels aren't included in that percentage uh i assume i don't know actually i'm not going to make that assumption i was going to make an assumption about how much private capacity is in tor versus public but i all the mobile apps aren't you know none of

I don't think any of the mobile apps are using Tor besides the ones that connect to a home node. Yeah, Zap. No, besides the ones that connect to a home node, right? Yeah, yeah. Does Zap have a... I don't know if it's default, but... Does Zap have...

Can you just run a lightning while on your phone, or do you need to connect to a home node? Pretty sure you need to connect to a home node. I don't know. Pretty sure. But I know like Async, like Phoenix, Breeze, none of them are using Tor, but they're all using private channels. Yes, I believe so.

Yeah. I imagine it would just be too hard to run Tor over your phone. No, but I mean, GreenWallet runs Tor over your phone. Zap runs Tor over your phone. Zeus runs Tor over your phone. But Zap and Zeus are connecting to a home node. Yes. And GreenWallet

isn't Lightning. So is it technically running over your phone or is it running on your node? It's just using Tor to connect to your node. Oh, okay. There we go. GreenWallet is using Tor to connect to their node. Okay. Block streams node. All right.

All right. Speaking of Tor, while we're on it, the Tor browser 9.0.4 has been released. What can we expect with this? It was like a critical security fix. That's why I put it in there. Make sure you guys update. Do you ever use Tor browser? I'm going to be honest here, not too often.

I feel like it's a good time to shill it. It's come a long way. It's come a long way. It works pretty fucking well. It's not, you know, it's not going to be good for any kind of video streaming or any kind of high bandwidth thing, but it's just like a pretty great overall browser. Yeah.

It's got all the blocking built in, and it's got the Tor built in. You can speak to this more than I can. I mean, like, of course, like, you know, don't assume it's perfectly private, but it's a huge improvement. Especially, like, depends on the computer you're running it on. If you're running it on Windows, you know,

you're running it on Mac, you don't know what's going on there. You fuck up with your Linux. Yeah. There's always concerns, but... Doesn't it come with Tails out of the box? Yeah, Tails is the best way to do it, right? But, like, for everyday browsing, you're not going to boot up Tails.

Like, it's really nice that Tor Browser, you could just be using a Mac and you can have Tor Browser, and, you know, you open it up, and that's probably as private as you're going to get on your Mac, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a nice little... So, that's our Tor Browser shill. Nice little plug.

Check it out. um a more somber topic but one we feel compelled to talk about uh we lost a very good bitcoiner this week tamas bloomer um he's been working on bitcoin's rust implementation since 2012 he's also been working on a lot of spv wallet uh code bases as well for bitcoin uh built in rust i believe as well as well and uh yeah he fought till the end his last tweet was on bitcoin's birthday and it was in the midst of when he was at the tail end of his fight with cancer his battle of cancer and fuck man this is a tough loss and he tom tomas is an example of somebody who thought bitcoin was bigger than himself and felt compelled to work for it and his last tweet

and we'll share that in the show notes as well was basically him showing gratitude for being able to work on the project which was that being the last message that he sent to the world on the internet and it's pretty powerful yeah i never i never met tamas but um i was always a fan of his work appreciate him so much and this one really hit me hard i mean i had no idea he was you know fuck cancer man yeah i had no idea yeah i'd never met tamas at all but yeah always somebody he's I've been following him on Twitter for quite a while now. That came out of nowhere. I was not expecting that.

It's just always a reminder that you've got to appreciate everything you have. You only got one life, freaks. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. Don't be an asshole. Make it worthwhile. Hold the door. Rest in peace, Tomas.

We're thinking of you today. Hard to segue out of that one. we could just do a Zeus update yeah let's just do that Zeus released it's newest version go update if you use Zeus on your phone and it's also on iPhone now I don't know when that happened but it is on iPhone now

so you have to do test flight to get it on iPhone and Evan has provided the dev signature as well so if you want to check that before you download make sure you're getting it from the right repository I really appreciate how he always

how he posts it is he posts it very effectively he's got here's my apk and here's the signature yeah yeah um so go check that out if you're running zeus definitely upgrade test it out let evan and team working on that now need distributed team if uh you have any prs or questions or notes or anything feedback feedback feedback important i had a very good discussion with jeremy rubin yesterday about uh developing for this stuff and it's a it's a for us non-developers it can be more frustrating at times and i think we we really realize yeah i'm super excited for that i uh i would i'm almost done with the jamal episode on polar but that one's great i think those two episodes like really

bummed i didn't get to sit in on those uh i'm really excited to listen yeah we wanted you here you were traveling yeah the nice thing about podcasts is you know it's like you are sitting in in the room yeah um but i love jamal i've never met jeremy neither have i until yesterday and it was again i'm somebody else i've been following on twitter for years now and uh exceeded my expectations a person awesome consummate professional pumped to listen pumped to listen and this was pretty cool this next topic so it got demoed at bit devs last week an instant vps powered by lightning uh andre nevis from the zbdo team uh uh demoed this at bit devs and it's cool but you can get a VPS stands for a virtual virtual personal server.

So if you're like an app developer and you want to not have not be building stuff on your computer, you can whip up a virtual server using the lightning network 66 cents an hour. I believe we bought six hours for, I believe a couple thousand sats. I think it was 5,000 sats we paid for six hours or something like that. Yeah. Just like instantly pops up.

I mean like don't use it for anything. nothing critical no critical apps or anything just you want to test an idea and iterate real quickly this will obviously be exposed on the the uh the web server that you're hosting it on but if again if you don't want to overwhelm your computer with data you can quickly spin up these personal servers in the cloud yeah it's vps's uh private server private server that's what it is um but yeah you can it's like people might know like digital ocean and stuff like that or like aws yeah um and this is also kind of similar to what keto had yes yes i dig it it's a cool use cool use of lightning yeah so go check it out bitclouds.sh but as you know as we said don't

use it for anything uh critical or sensitive yeah don't like create wild software and put funds on it because especially since they have like easy commands to launch bitcoin d and stuff like that yeah yeah so be careful with that um this was big news in my opinion i didn't write about it this week everybody else jumped on it so i figured it was covered but liquid support has been brought to btc pay server is this big news i feel like it isn't big news i mean i was like like right if you're so that's that was a big debate like is it who's using that right like so if you're using liquid and you're what do you want to buy a cup of coffee you're in the federation and you're okay with being kyc'd um and right so liquid's trust model is it's basically

like ripple without the token yeah it's just another um so it's like a big multi-sig and you have to trust a plurality of the uh to trust that the federation isn't gonna fuck you or something like a majority of the federation is like an overwhelming majority i think yeah isn't gonna screw you um yeah so if you already trust one of them which is why it makes sense for exchange to exchange uh i just feel like the whole btc pay thing was kind of just like they were able to add it into btc pay so it's like good pr well so this might be good for like liquid tether right because that's a big debate so i'm going to use like liquid no you're not going to use it at the bodega but that's been like the big knock on tether not coming to liquid or bitcoin right

is the the in uh the lack of wallet options on the market right so this just provides another wallet option in my mind but like as a bitcoin user right i don't care i'm not gonna use no but i'm saying as a bitcoin user uh how is me and like so i with all this shit going on i was like i already like kind of had my preconceived notions of liquid like i said like i think it'd be good for exchanges the big bottleneck is like actually to me I you know is like you can't you you can't go between chains without trusting a third party like you can go through side shift AI or one of the exchanges and side shift doesn't do KYC I guess Bitfinex doesn't do KYC but they could and they get your information it's like shapeshift you know they're just swapping in and out

so in that case like if you're using if you have to download green wallet to get like a liquid wallet on your phone and then you like send lightning bitcoin to side shift and then you get liquid bitcoin well you can send lightning or liquid it's side shift so it's like shape shift they're just taking it and sending you other shit right and then you can get liquid tether that way like why wouldn't you just use like erc20 tether or something or tron tether like why do you need what's the difference there is there a difference again the difference is for tether specifically that within the federation if you're using uh liquid tether which has confidential transactions you can't be tracked when you're trading but again for this you can see the to and from address you

just can't you don't know what asset it is you see the amount or the asset type you can't see the amount of the asset yes yes that's it yeah so it could be there could they could do some interesting things like coin joins in there like i i but you'd have to be able to move large amounts of bitcoin to and from the chain without kyc and that doesn't seem like it's possible no i don't think that's um but if that ever became possible then maybe liquid could have some retail you know usage but besides that i don't see um like i so what so someone what's the flow here is someone like buying tether on bitfinex and then going shopping with it yeah so i guess that would be the flow you have like if you want to use that tether at a merchant that has btc pay and the

wallet accessible they i guess the the merchant would also have an account set up where they could liquidate that right away or maybe it's the opposite maybe the merchant maybe they expect the merchant to use tether to like lock in some of their gains yeah maybe potentially who knows it's it's possible now if they want to do it i don't know how it's gonna work yeah i don't i really don't think it's like that big of a deal and it definitely doesn't compete with lightning no they're two different i mean that's i mean that was a debate that popped up yesterday it definitely doesn't compete with lightning yeah two different risk models two different risk models um but again it's just they highlight that's the other thing it doesn't have to be one or the other

like just you use whatever suits your needs at any given point in time yeah it's all opt-in coin joins opt-in yeah liquids opt-in lightning's opt-in segwit's opt-in yeah it's all opt-in here opt out of the system opt-in to bitcoin yeah so also you should use lightning and you should use coin join yeah should you segwit yes that as well and like you know play around liquid if you want to play around with it it's like i said it's like i feel like it's ripple without the token and and confidential transactions which is dope yeah ripple without the ripple analogies throw me off right now well because ripple you don't need that the token has nothing to do with the trust model yeah no it's the same idea it's a

federation yeah but they just added the token in there to get rich right so liquid is like basically the same exact trust model but without the ripple token sitting there just you know minting money for shit corners yeah no that makes sense right yeah but then they also like that's they actually care about like privacy and so they add confidential transactions and this is something i've been saying on this podcast since it started like just from a design perspective this seems like the right way to do it like push the trade-offs to higher layers right and that's what's happening um some people don't like it some people do like it again it's all opt-in you don't have to use it if you don't want to and i think the uh framing of liquid or lightning is a

bad framing yeah they don't compete yeah there's no competition there yeah um this was something i had no fucking idea about and this shocked me cashmere hasn't had internet for 170 plus days we haven't talked about this at all i just i discovered it this week so i was like gotta put that one in there we definitely need to talk about it this is fucked yeah so for you freaks that don't know and i'm not an expert on the kashmir um what's because modi modi's like fucking cracking down like a motherfucker yeah um so kashmir has been a very tumultuous area oh yeah in india there's like water wars going on down there it's it's it's india versus pakistan like ever since the split yes um and they meet at the border and i'm like the military marches every day and it's

very very like a lot of people worry about the u.s and russia engaging in nuclear war but a lot people in the know actually freak out more about india versus pakistan being the insight of of nuclear war potentially um but yeah apparently cashmere hasn't had internet for 170 days what the fuck how's this not being talked about so i guess um what is it a heavy muslim population in kashmir that modi's cracking down on and part of that has been land line cell phone access and internet yes so the um and they say it's the longest ever in a quote unquote democracy and i the reason it doesn't get reported is because modi's our ally it's fucked right so the government and apparently the government has gradually restored land lines and

sms services were restored uh new year's eve but seven million kashmiris uh still do not have online access and the longest internet shutdown ever imposed on a democracy like you just said keep in mind new year's was when they restored it that was like 150 days yeah that's still not good um that's fucked man that's why it's so important like all these other infrastructure projects like mesh nets and using satellites and yeah it's actually not on the list but somebody google's blimps i saw the uh the loca mesh uh they've been working on that they have a nice case now yeah you saw it naked in san francisco right yeah yeah so now you can plug it you can so the loca mesh devices you can plug in the internet connected computers and contribute right

contribute to the mesh network yeah or you can receive from it yeah yeah so they're being worked on but the like so this is an instance i don't think they've actually started at least i don't think they started like selling them or anything no i don't think so they're working on it um but it's getting closer it seems but again this cashmere instance in iran a few months earlier hong kong hong kong really highlight the need for alternative transaction relay networks uh fuck man i did not know cashmere was in the dark almost half a year at this point yeah that's it's been effective right because those people don't have communication out yeah i guess we should be talking more about cashmere yep well it starts

today yeah um samurai wallet this was a good announcement uh oxt research so they got a new publication coming out and they launched the first one and they hired ergo yeah so ergo the first one they did was ergo's plus token um but he did it it's like prettier and better than ever yeah it's like 30 page it's like proper yeah it's very nice it's his best work yet yeah everyone should give them a follow and they should go check out what is it research.ox.me oxt.me yes and if you're not using oxt.me it's one of my favorite block explorers the very visually uh visually pleasing but that's not the main reason you use it like remember earlier this week there was like a huge billion dollar transaction everybody's freaking out oxt lorraine has done such a good job with

this block explorer i was able to like go to oxt.me check the transaction and immediately see that it was bitfinex wallet like yeah it does like light chain analysis yeah and then they have a tool where that's what ergo uses the tool um to plot transactions going through so they basically between that they have that and they have kycp.org i believe so yes um and those two together are like the first step we've seen where regular users are getting some of the tools that the corporate users are using like the chain analysis tools and stuff and i think it's really important so you so we can level the playing field so you know what exactly you're exposing um and i think what also is really cool about the space is um like historically the block stream

guys and the samurai guys have always had beef um and my my two favorite sets of block explorers are blockstream.info and OXT.me slash KYCP. So that's Samurai, Blockstream, and then my two favorite on-chain wallets are Blockstream Green and Samurai Wallet. So the

competition really just helps the end user. I'm very excited to see what they put out with this research project for content from the people building these privacy tools. Yeah, because blockstream.info also does some light chain analysis. It doesn't take it as fully to the level as OXT.

um i like blocks but it's clean it's like almost like a what they do show you is like a little bit cleaner yeah blockchain helps show you uh if you overspent uh how much you saved or if you did a self-transfer yeah like it knows right away like you did the self-transfer yeah um yeah so block explorers getting more and the reason it knows the self-transfer by the way is because if there's no change if you like send all yeah self-transfer yeah you can it's a heuristic yeah um even though Andrew was saying that Bitcoin Core tries to send all, right? Like in no change?

Yes. So then it looks like a self-transfer. Interesting. And then let's just stay on Samurai. We're on it right now. Like Whirlpool, other people are freaking out about like the Samurai

having your data on their servers. Like Ronin Dojo is out there now. Oh, we should talk about this. Use Dojo. like if you are going to use Whirlpool you should probably be using Dojo if you don't want to trust it. Yeah I mean Dojo is getting easier to use

it's now on my node which is fantastic my node like lets you you can set up like all these different services and the total price with hardware and stuff you buy the hardware like a Raspberry Pi 4 and an SSD and like little cute little cases for them so you can like design them

how you want to design them and then you install the my node software and then you can pick which um software packages you you put on it so you can put on stuff like btz pay mempool.space so you can view the mempool locally instead of hitting someone else block explorer electrum server and now samurai and dojo and then you simply pair it with your dojo and what's nice here is you could even have a friend um you can have a friend uh pair with your dojo. They're trusting you, but it's a different trust model than necessarily trusting Samurai with the public keys. Now, there is an argument that if there's users that aren't using

dojo and they're in the mix with you and Samurai knows their pub keys, then they can, by process of elimination hurt regular dojo users um so the talk back and forth is like do you have full dojo pools or do you have do you allow non-dojo users in and one of the reasons why it's so important to give non-dojo users access is because they're going to release mobile mixing i'm like i'm part of the beta right now um and it's already like it's it's already pretty slick and like the whole idea is like you just like press mix on your phone and it mixes right um which will you know be a lot be a lot of use to a lot of people um and it does there is a trust model there where you're trusting samurai to a degree um i mean if you're not using dojo you're trusting them

completely you might not be giving them your ip address if you use tor but you're still trusting them with like the on-chain data but at least you're protecting yourself from everyone else and those light users will provide more liquidity to the whole system um and then last but not least the argument which i pretty much agree with now is samurai's argument um is that the trust model even if you're using dojo shouldn't be like if you're trying to protect if samurai's a bad actor like it's probably you know not going to help you anyway um and that's because, at least in a low minor fee environment, the main cost to Sybil the Mixes is the Samurai fee.

Right? The first TX0 fee. Right. Samurai doesn't have to pay that fee if they want to Sybil the Mixes. Wasabi doesn't have to pay that fee if they want to Sybil the Mixes, right? Because they're just paying it to themselves. um the but you would they would still have to make they may not technically pay for it but they still have to make a fee transaction right to make it look to themselves yeah but they would

just be paying themselves and because minor fees are so low it would be negligible cost to them to do it and especially like five person mixes right you could simple those um for minimal cost at least so like the threat model really shouldn't be um you know with with dojo only or with non-dojo it's probably pretty much the same threat model for the dojo users because it is a lot easier to pull xpubs than it is to so we're presumably so we're back to trusting samurai no i think everyone should use dojo but i think like there there is um like if either coordinator team wants to be malicious malicious here i think like they they could probably glean at least you know a good chunk of information uh just because they could civil the mixes right like that's the main um

concern with all these schemes is sibling the mixes uh i mean and even at these low volumes like an outside actor can civil the mixes yeah it's true right um dude that's why you need more liquidity that's why plus token accidentally civil the mixes yeah uh just from like poor practice yeah which is one of the reasons why liquidity coming up is important and i mean like so keep in mind here liquidity helps a lot in this situation right because if you have even if they're trying to civil the mixes if you get in a couple mixes in there where they're not they don't have enough parties then that's why remixing is so important um and that's why things like pay join and stuff um and also like person-to-person coin joins so like with samurai they have the

tools afterwards where you can do a coin join either with the recipient um or with like just a friend and if you do those samurai is not a party to those transactions right um so when you mix and match the different tools you can get some more better assurances right yeah yeah anyway i'm fucking i'm really bullish on whirlpool right now i'm sure all the listeners have figured that out uh i just i think that the simplicity of it uh makes it way more reasonable for most people to use yeah like i was like thinking through like you could have a situation um i mean look ideally it's always better to buy with cash buy no kyc like if you possibly can if you can earn without kyc like that's always better uh but most people if you're gonna get a large if you're trying to

buy a large amount of bitcoin or like trying to dollar cost average you know a decent amount of bitcoin um you're gonna have to go through kyc and if you go through kyc samurai could be part of that flow uh where you minimize at least the amount of data that these companies have you know you could i was thinking the other day like you could have a service like get bitter or something um and then or like bull bitcoin you have like a dedicated x pub that you have a dedicated samurai wallet that's just your onboarding wallet right and you give the premix x pub to get bitter and And then every time it DCAs, it goes into the pre-mix. And the fee paid is the TX0 fee.

No, no, no. No? Not even going that far. That would take more Samurai. That would have to be an actual partnership. But you could just give them the pre-mix XPUB to GetBitter, and GetBitter can generate a new address every time just to automatically deposit it into your Samurai wallet.

And you press Mix, and then the opposite side, you have the post-mix tools. And GetBitter can't see the post-mix XPUB. They can only see the premix X pub. Yeah. So get bitter. Can't follow it. The user is just doing very basic, uh, UX, the UX flows a lot, but that's a huge improvement. Yeah. Um, yeah. What are, uh, what are your thoughts on wasabi these days? I still think, uh, you know, I'm not, I'm not of the type that, you know,

says that wasabi is like completely broken. Um, I'm just, I'm frustrated with a lot of the decisions they've been making lately. Um, and I just think Samurai is a better tool now. Um, I think, you know, with Wasabi, the big thing is you got to definitely remix. Um, and the UX doesn't incentivize that at all. Like even like their default and onset, which like my issues with Wasabi is like, is I shouldn't have to, when I'm like trying to get,

teach people how to use it, tell them like three things they need to change. Like or keep in mind before they use the software, right? Yeah, so like I have to tell them to increase the the default and onset So it remixes Alone the fees are already just you know, making it so people are less likely to do it And then when you go to the manual coin control, which I really like the whole labeling that they have there Looks like samurai should add something similar to that. They do have labeling but it's a little bit more difficult to use they'd have a select all button that you should never click why there's no situation where anyone should click the select all button and combine all their transactions um so when you when you

have those two things together and i just i just really like the whirlpool transaction zero setup where it's just uh like the daisy chains of coin joins i just it seems like a better setup but i don't i like i still like have a lot of respect for the wasabi guys and i yeah it seems like they're they're working to improve it um pretty intently and they're actually got a good uh good um campaign going on right now because bitcoin core uh and wasabi wallet are they don't get past anti-virus software i'm saying is that like a good campaign that seems like a waste of time to me is it well well for wasabi maybe but for bitcoin core no i don't think i mean do we really care about stuff that's running on windows with like anti-virus software installed

because like that's what the campaign is for yeah maybe i don't know it's a it just seems like a waste of time yeah we'll see like should you i don't really think anyone should probably be using wasabi on windows right that's a good point like how what is it we're talking about like how private software is and then yeah that's good i mean but then you you do have that same issue with samurai like using an android right so there's like all these different trust models keep in mind i like that there's that there's two options um and obviously the main advantage on wasabi is you don't need an android phone but i think you just buy you you know just buy an android phone just for you want to go like super super hardcore you buy a pixel and you install graphing on it and

then you run run whirlpool on that yeah that plus dojo if you do like a ronin dojo uh raspberry pie kit that's like what another two hundred dollars um and then so 200 plus 300 is like 500 and you get like a pretty great setup that like friends can pair to if they want to use it yeah be aware of the trade-offs be aware of the nuance this is something we're trying i mean you keep up with this more than i do um but it seems like it's the coin join space is evolving in the right direction but at a very quick pace i also don't like that the wasabi guys put their fees they they still have the fixed fee address fixed fee addresses that one's the biggest that's the biggest fucking like crazy and then they take their fixed fee they take the money they get in the fixed fee

and then they put it into the mix and then every user is paying per the onset so they're paying for the amount of people and so you pay for them to remix their fixed fee bullshit Interesting Ridiculous Did not realize that I think if they fix that It's a lot better Because it's a lot of taint

That fee address Yeah Low hanging fruit Frustration Low hanging fruit Away from Bitcoin Back to the Scary world

Of tech security Apple Not as safe as you think it is The FBI was able to Use a hacking device Called a grey key To get in And draw data

From an Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max Which was owned by Barris Ali Koch which is the newest one yes it's the newest model um and the fbi is still uh begging apple to let them well no so what they're using is so the point is is that the pensacola florida shooting that happened at the military base they got an iphone in that yes they got two iphones and they're older iphones and the older iphones have known vulnerabilities to get in them we already

knew that the fbi could get into the older ones um but they if they can get into the newest one they definitely can get into the older ones yes uh and but they still want apple to give them the back a back door into it just because they're posturing like they don't have they're you it's like a classic use of like you use a terrorist attack to try and permanently encroach on everyone's freedoms patriot um and i think like the freaks understand like with encryption you can't there's no such thing as a safe back door um because if one person can get into it then it'll either leak or be intentionally shared or someone will figure it out and other people can get into it no one's private in that situation so in order for the the good people to be private

like everyone needs to have that privacy yeah yeah no and it's scary man we're taught that apple's the creme de la creme of modern day privacy tech that was our huge ad campaign recently well i you know i think uh i am i am extremely suspicious of that whole positioning yeah uh they're just trying to like lure people into complacency but then also like at the same time um we don't know certain details about which phones they can get into or not like i wonder if they could get into an iphone that had like the the newest iphone that had uh the 10 10 tries at wipes option enabled which isn't enabled by default curiously right and like instead of a pin like a long ass password like a 30 digit password like i wonder if they could get into that iphone

i think i think you should assume they probably can um apple immediately handed over all the icloud data so keep that in mind um but yeah it's interesting yeah it's i mean if you're using like the face recognition stuff too you're fucked already if they get your phone no yeah they can just or fingerprint yeah that's not constitutionally protected yeah only pin or password is and obviously password is way better um i mean but kudos to apple they do have uh they put the feature on their phones before they put it on like at least the samsung's and stuff the feature that automatically turns off the biometric so like if you have biometric and you get like pulled over by police or something you can like press the two buttons together and it

makes the password have to be entered yeah um so like little things like that but then at the same time it's closed source biggest company in america probably complicit in all this shit are they bigger than amazon um but then you know maybe like so what's your threat model like if you don't care about the u.s government spy on you which i think you should everyone should but if you don't like maybe apple's a good privacy purchase right um but really i'm really excited about graphing right now on android and i have have to i'm gonna pick up a pixel and i'm gonna yeah it's like a special os that's privacy focused okay doesn't have like any google services or anything on it boss so you like buy a pixel for 300 bucks and then you

load it up yeah similar to tails or something like that well tails is not persistent so tails isn't supposed to like remember where you left off it's supposed to wipe all right um this is more like a daily driver i'd be like installing uh like ubuntu on your on your computer or something yeah um so be aware be aware apple uh the feds might be able to get into your shit if you don't have good passwords and wiping practices no and i'm just pissed off that they just keep it's like this whole encryption backdoor thing they're just going to keep trying forever yeah i mean like the encryption war has never ended william barr the attorney general came out months ago and said he ones yeah and he's been jumping on it with this new case a lot recently don't let it happen freaks

stand up and fight for your rights speaking of that this is on the list either you see what's going on in virginia i saw like a clip of a sheriff yeah sure yeah well i think that was in north carolina a sheriff from north carolina saying that they would uh be a sanctuary city for any quote-unquote virginia felons who wanted to come exercise their second amendment rights in north carolina so did virginia ban guns or something they're trying to and so there's a huge march this weekend i believe by gun gun owners on the capitol and uh the governor has issued a state of emergency based off of uh insights that people want to do nefarious things at this get together but yeah virginia there's a battle for the second amendment going on right now

if you freaks aren't aware i think it's something that should be that you should be paying attention to there are local townships throughout virginia vying to be sanctuary cities and will not institute the laws put in place by the governor and the state government and they're forming local different state no no it's all virginia okay the video you're referencing was a sheriff in north carolina yes it was just talking on the topic yes but but there's actual cities in virginia that say that they're not going to honor it yes okay and they're the sheriffs are are like appointing deputies like citizen deputies basically starting small militias oh wow i have to um i've been kind of out of it because of all the travel so

yeah that's an interesting so be on the lookout for that protect your rights kind of protect your rights while we're speaking of that uh the people at coin center who are in dc uh fighting on behalf of bitcoin and cryptocurrency is that what they'll have us believe uh they are um coin center's great yeah coin center's great i don't know they go back and forth i think you know it doesn't matter if they get shitcoin funding and they're protecting shitcoins like it protects bitcoin with a buffer zone they're like building they're building a moat you know like part of the reason why i just worry that they slip in something that isn't good and they're seen as the the uh authority on i mean when they do then you know then you slay them but like at this point

like i like this is this is good and like their privacy coin stuff is good too and like they if if like ethereum is such an easier regulatory target right so if they're like protecting ethereum and like protects bitcoin by default and worse and worse and worse if they fail protecting it then like ethereum goes down hey we're just we're just we're just exploring and i think the privacy coin protection shit is good even though they're heavily funded by the cash protection cash is fucking ridiculous just being devil's advocate here okay this is a big one this is a big one well this is something i've been trying to do for years uh they they've uh put this forward a couple years ago or three years ago i believe the virtual currency fairness act

now it's of 2020 since it's the year 2020 um basically it's uh attempting to create a sensible de minimis uh exemption for low value cryptocurrency transactions uh day-to-day use it's 200 last time it was 600 yeah so if you yeah and it didn't get anywhere uh so this is it's bipartisan bill and it's if you make a purchase under 200 it's not a taxable event yeah and i think that's like super important that's one of the main reasons that and everyone ignores it one of the main reasons um merchant adoption like the whole spend and replace idea doesn't make sense from a tax perspective yeah and not even just paying the tax like having to like tabulate two dollar purchases and stuff yeah um so hopefully this goes through um we'll see i mean again this is

like one of the big taboo topics that nobody likes to talk about like taxes and in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies because and again it's not taboo because people want to hide from the irs or the government which i'm sure there are some that want to it's taboo because it's like what the fuck do we do like can you give us some clarity please that was one of the things that pissed me off that coin center did was they were trying to i think they're currently trying to uh deal with like proof of stake income and that's just a complete distraction but you know i'm who am i to tell them i i've given them some donations but definitely not funding coin center i'm not a major funder of coin center so i'm not going to tell them how to do their shit they overwhelmingly

do good shit yes i'm very very grateful for having them i just wanted to be clear that there are some bitcoiners out there who don't like there's a lot of bitcoiners that don't like coin center yeah yeah um this piece was written by naraj i'm a big fan of naraj uh love the work that they're doing Did you see what he tweeted out today? No. He's like, don't rat me out to the at coin center account. I run that one too. That's funny.

Yeah, you're snitching on him. He's getting all the snitches. Last topic, pretty important topic. Yesterday, Peter Willough officially moved the ball forward on BIP Schnorr, BIP Taproot, and BIP Tapscript, basically saying, creating an official PR to say, hey, we should start officially reviewing this seriously.

And I think also, I can't say this is a complete certainty, but I believe this is the step in which the BIPs will get official numbers. They get the actual numbers. They get the numbers and it becomes more legitimate and the conversation gets raised a little bit

and the prospect of these PRs getting merged increases a little bit. And this is on like the tail end of probably one of the most participated in review processes pre-BIP. Thank God they did the review process. They found something wrong with BEC 32.

It was pretty crazy how many developers were involved in that. It was like 240 at least. I thought it was even more than that. Might have been more. I thought it was like 1,000 or 2,000. The stat you're referencing is last year there were 824 core contributors to the code base, I believe.

Well, maybe I just got it off by magnitude. That's how bullish I am, guys. i just multiply everything yeah so this is yeah this has been actually like uh 2020 i tweeted it uh this morning it's been bitcoin development has been like a bat out of hell this year so matt corral 2020 yeah it's like the last 17 days yeah last 17 days like um we have what peter put on the the like the we have what peter did yesterday presenting uh bipsh nor bit tap script for official numbers earlier this week we had matt corallo uh or it was late last week after we recorded uh rabbit hole recap matt corallo came out and uh posted to the bitcoin dev mailing list

a uh potential activation path for his um consensus cleanup uh pr that he wants to get right the great cleanup yeah the great consensus cleanup there's some contention there jeremy rubin uh brought up some good points interesting uh first for certain things that he wants to get merged in that pr in particular matt um but yeah no it seems like the ball is getting pushed forward on a lot of things that we've wanted to get uh implemented into bitcoin do you think this is like the new year's resolution effect uh what do you mean like we want to be productive like everyone it's it's just like how everyone says they're going to go to the gym all the time it's like uh the both of these things people have been working on them for a while now right and it's

like new year's happens it's like okay time to get the ball rolling you know we're gonna take the next step i think it's coincidence right because the review the review session just ended what the end of november um new year's resolution effect yeah hey fine by me fine by me too go to the gym freaks yeah so shout out to uh shout out to sippa to peter willow for putting Moving the ball forward on this And if you are a developer A business owner Or a Bitcoin user

Who will be affected If these things get merged You should definitely research them Understand how they will affect Bitcoin And affect your Bitcoin experience And I meet I met Peter for the first time ever At BitDevs?

At BitDevs Last week Yeah That was crazy I was Yeah he's He's so humble That was a fucking insane BitDevs

He's a very We talk about being humble He's a very humble guy That was a fucking insane BitDevs Yeah We're not allowed to talk about BitDev, so we've got to be careful about it. Yeah, we're not allowed to talk about who was there personally,

but I believe people were talking about people. That one leaked out, so I didn't feel bad about it, but I'm not going to say anything else. But that BitDev's meetup is... Creme de la creme. Yeah, it's something special. That 100th Socratic meetup particularly was special. When I was in...

Oh, that was like ultimate. That was like a security risk for Bitcoin in that room. It really was. You know what I appreciate about NYU? They have no cameras in the room. Yeah. Shout out to NYU. And they don't KYC us when we walk in the door.

No, they don't. Shout out to NYU has been hosting BitDevs since they moved out of, where were we before this? It was a co-working space or whatever. Yeah, I forget what it was called. Wherever it was. The nice thing about that place is you could have beer when you were there. Yeah. Not so much at NYU.

NYU is an academic institution. But they don't KYC us and there's no... The other place did, like, like KYC. Yes. And there's no cameras. Yeah, they made us give our email address in the last one. I was like, why do you need this? I don't want to come work at your co-working space.

But I saw you did a shout-out to your, what, DePaul. Yeah, DePaul. Do you have someone in Chicago that's going to host it? Well, Chris Stewart from Short Bits. Oh, right, awesome. Yeah, I met Chris. Yeah, so Chris was in town. Yeah, we just, yeah.

Okay, continue. And so Chris, for you freaks that don't know, He's the founder of Shored Bits, which is working to make lightning apps for enterprise users. I believe that is their goal and their mission. Chris, incredible Bitcoiner, lives in Chicago now and is running the BitDevs meetup there and is looking for a space where BitDevs can be held consistently in Chicago. Just the experience we've had at NYU here in New York, as some of you freaks may know, I went to DePaul University in Chicago, which is in the heart of the city.

So, yeah, I got on Twitter to sort of light the fire under the ass of DePaul students and faculty to house BitDevs in Chicago and foster an incredible technology. I chuckled to myself and then clicked retweet. When I was in San Francisco, I was talking to so many people like Bitcoiners or whatever that I met with. I was like, did you go to the San Francisco BitDevs? And they were like, no, I'm like too overwhelmed. like i'm not developer like i can't handle it i was like motherfucker you just go and you just sit there and it's just like you just hope some of it comes in through osmosis like yeah there's only like five percent of the people in that room that understand everything that's being said if

that yeah i think it's like only the people in the front room would truly understand everything but yeah no that i definitely don't like every like you said you learn via i've learned the most about bitcoin by going to these just sitting that's why we have an unfair advantage yeah it really it is like i'm actually uh i looked at my notes before i went to 100 socratic my first bit does was january 12 2015 insane impressive that was the one where you've you fucked up the the clock the clock yeah yeah peter todd forgive me for being an idiot um yeah that's all we got this is we're coming in on an hour here we got any uh thing to riff on here um i always i have a million things to talk about but whenever you ask me if i have something to

riff on i don't have something to riff on i'm trying to think of how i do anything um oh what i talked about on monday the macro fed talk here we're gonna end on that the fed if you guys listen to my episode with parker lewis a few weeks ago where we talked about the repo operations in that episode uh basically everything that's come out since september 15th we've come to find that uh the liquidity crunch is being at least the bis said the liquidity crunch is being driven by hedge funds that need uh liquidity for their margin positions uh and during that episode of parker i was like so are these hedge funds going straight to the Fed window and getting access to the Fed window directly? Or is there some mechanism

between them? And Parker assured me that there was a primary dealer between the Fed and the hedge funds acting as a buffer. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal Monday morning came out with what seems to be a exploratory piece to gauge public perception about a change that the Fed could make that would give hedge funds direct access to the window which would be insane so the fed if this if they actually cut out the primary cut out the middleman well they make they would essentially just make the hedge fund a primary dealer and cut out the middleman but like yeah so the fed would be the last the lender of last resort for hedge funds running margin positions in the markets and the conspiracy theory is not really conspiracies anymore it's turning

into conspiracy fact that the fed is propping up markets it's going to be hard to deny if that is the case if they do actually execute that tool so but isn't it obvious they're propping up markets does it matter if they're propping up markets i mean is it that's just the margin super risky so it's more likely that it's all perception it's all con game like you're like and the perception is getting worse by the day i think you just gotta find safety in sats find sanity in sats i saw that i chuckled at that one too it's insane these policies are insane bitcoin is sane it's sanity. Find sanity in sats. You can verify.

But I'm not implying you're crazy. No, I might be crazy. If you're telling someone to find sanity from the crazy world that we live in. Yeah, find sanity. The traditional financial system run by the Fed is insane. Find sanity in sats.

Because we'll end it there. Cheers, freaks. Stay humble, stack sats. I thought you were going to miss it. Peace and love. Thank you.