You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 95: Alena Vránová - The Fight for Digital & Physical Security

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

My guest today is Alena Vránová, entrepreneur, author, and builder of freedom tech who has spent over a decade pioneering tools that defend both digital and physical sovereignty. She co-founded SatoshiLabs (Trezor’s mother company), which launched  the world’s first commercially available hardware wallet, joined the Casa Node team to make running Bitcoin and Lightning easy, and co-authored The Little Bitcoin Book, a global bestseller introducing why Bitcoin matters for freedom and finance. Today, she is building GLOK, a project dedicated to protecting Bitcoiners against kidnapping, extortion, and physical threats. In this episode, Alena shares her journey from legacy finance into Bitcoin, recounting how she helped establish an entirely new market for hardware wallets. We discuss the ongoing attempts to co-opt Bitcoin through regulation and confiscation, the dangers of KYC and data leaks, and why physical security is the next frontier for Bitcoiners worldwide. Alena also reflects on the role of women in Bitcoin, the growth of a truly global community, and why she believes building tools for self-defense—digital and physical—is essential for human freedom► If you got value, please like, comment, share, follow and support my work. Thank you!-- SPONSORS & AFFILIATES --→ Get your TREZOR wallet & accessories, with a 5% discount, using my code at checkout (get my discount code from the episode - yep, you’ll have to watch it): https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn → Shield your bitcoin with time-delayed transactions over multisig with BitVault: https://www.bitvault.sv/ → Get 10% off on Augmented NAC, with the code YCXKQDK2 via this link: https://store.augmentednac.com/?via=efrat (Note, this is not medical advice and you should consult your MD)→ Watch “New Totalitarian Order” conference with Prof. Mattias Desmet & Efrat - code EFRAT for 10% off: https://efenigson.gumroad.com/l/desmet_efrat → Get a second citizenship and a plan B to relocate to another country with Expat Money, leave your details for a follow up: https://expatmoney.com/efrat → Join me in any of these upcoming events: https://www.efrat.blog/p/upcoming-events -- LINKS –Alena’s Twitter: https://x.com/alenasatoshi Alena’s Nostr: https://bit.ly/4msttRb Glok’s Website: https://glok.me/ Efrat's Twitter: https://twitter.com/efenigsonEfrat's Channels: https://linktr.ee/efenigson Watch/listen on all platforms: https://linktr.ee/yourethevoiceSupport Efrat's work: ⁠https://www.buymeacoffee.com/efenigson   ⁠Support Efrat with Bitcoin: https://geyser.fund/project/efenigson-- CHAPTERS –00:00 - Coming Up01:40 - Intro to Alena & Her Background08:27 - Alena’s Journey Into Bitcoin11:08 - Building Trezor: Pioneering Hardware Wallets & Their Importance19:17 - Bitcoin Nodes: From Fringe to Mainstream22:37 - The Little Bitcoin Book29:08 - The Inevitable Evolution of Bitcoin: Regulation, Co-opting, Confiscation36:27 - Tech Innovation in Bitcoin40:02 - Kidnapping, Extortion & “Glok” - Alena’s New Security Project45:07 - Operational Security Checklist48:07 - Kidnapping Use Case & Glok’s Deterrent Solution59:17 - Women’s Safety in Europe1:00:17 - Empowering Women Generally & in Bitcoin1:11:27 - A Pronoic Mindset: Alena’s Hope for the Future

anytime there's a spike in price in bitcoin there's a spike in bad guys trying to steal you know your bitcoins kyc is just outright dangerous for human security and life we have more than 18 million usernames and email addresses leaked more than 2.2 million is with home addresses and transaction history women are the driving force behind purchase decisions economic decisions Women are the ones that are more risk averse, that are built, their DNA is built to preserve life, to preserve everything that supports life. Right now we are at more than two kidnappings per week in the crypto space and the Bitcoin space. These are numbers that are reported, that are known. Probably 60 to 80 percent, maybe even more than that, is unreported.

There was a continuous war on Bitcoin using the mass media. brainwashing people into thinking that it's a criminal money that it's too volatile too risky too shady another weakness of bitcoiners we overestimate technology and underestimate human factor so we think oh i have this really strong passphrase i have multi-sig and shamir secret sharing and whatnot but then there is a situation when when they take someone's father hostage and they start cutting off fingers and what do you do then? Hello and welcome to another episode of You're the Voice from Prague once again at the Treasure Studio. Thank you for hosting us. I'm super happy to be here today with Elena. Hello dear.

thanks for having me Efrat thank you for agreeing you've been waiting I've been persistent I've been trying I wanted to interview you from the first time I met you but um you were like I'm under the radar not right now I'm not ready I told him I told you no problem whenever you're ready we're happy to do it and here you are this is the moment that's it I'm so glad that you decided to do it. And, um, we met a year ago at the first BTC Prague that I was in when we were at a dinner together and we had a chat and straight away, I think it was like a minute into our conversation that I said to myself, Oh, she's one of the real ones. She's real human, real ones. You know what I mean like there are not many real people and you're one of the real ones and I was so impressed

by you and so I loved our conversation and I I could tap in with you straight away to like communism and the history of Czech Republic and everything that this culture went through and why they are maybe at least some of this population is like more resistant to coercion and to totalitarianism than other places it was so fascinating so i'm so honored to you know have developed a friendship with you and be here with you again well likewise likewise it was mutual i would say oh yeah and then when i learned that you are the queen of bitcoin i was even more i'll stop you right there right right i know you're modest and you don't want to you want people to think it but you are so let me just quickly share a short part of your bio and

then I'd love you to to share a little bit about your journey and how you started and where you came but Vranova is that how you say it? Vranova. Yeah. Pretty good. Pretty good. Okay Elena Vranova is a pioneering entrepreneur in the Bitcoin space and the former CEO of Satoshi Labs and founder of Satoshi Labs which is the building that we are sitting in right now is Satoshi Labs building so it's a closing a circle in a way where she helped launch trezor the world's first hardware wallet she later continued to work with other companies in this space and we will hear all about them and i think you have a background in diplomacy and marketing that yeah that's one of the studies that i've done yes so interesting um i studied a couple of things but my professional

background started in traditional finance like the legacy financial world really i've done business development in insurance and risk management for about a decade before joining bitcoin full-time so you started like what like early 2000s to do that i'm that old yeah that's okay you're We're in good company, you and I both, and you're passionate about digital sovereignty and building tools that protect individual freedom in a hyper-connected world, and you're definitely not a stranger to technology because you've been in this space for a long time and you've been developing a lot of different tools and different types of mechanisms to help people guard what's theirs, their private property, but also their sovereignty, I would

say even on a mental spiritual level. So I think that's super interesting. And you're a woman because that is quite rare to do that and to be in that space. I've always had to deal with that question of, you know, being in tech and being a woman and how is it? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, take me back. You started with traditional finance in insurance. And And that was also predominantly male space, by the way. Of course, absolutely. But that's fine. I think actually it's to our favor to be women in such space.

Yep, I agree. I don't see any disadvantages in that. Absolutely, I agree with you. Do you want to hear more about that? That's what I'm waiting for, dude. It might be a bit boring, but okay. It's not boring. I want to hear how you rolled up to come to Bitcoin and here.

All right. So right after my university, I've had some small minor experiences, as everyone does. But my first bigger gig was building what is today the second largest network of insurance brokers and advisors. And I was lucky because I was very young, super junior, I would say. But my two bosses back then were extremely inspirational, first of all, very knowledgeable. They gave me the guidance and they gave me a lot of space to do stuff. They saw some potential there. One of them was techie. He loved technology.

And consider this was like early 2000s. There were no CRM systems and such tools that, you know, you would just purchase off the shelf. And so what we did is we built the first online office, you could say, for insurance brokers and risk managers and risk advisors. And yeah, we consolidated half of the market practically into one of the fastest growing companies in Central Europe for over six years. and took it to 2 000 people in less than four years wow yeah it was it was quite interesting and then i did a couple more uh gigs in the insurance space um yeah like the first i know first uh online portal for insurance professionals i worked with number one in the brokerage later on and then i ended up working for society general which is society society general

it's a french it's a big uh decently big uh network of banks insurance companies building savings and uh you know consumer lending all this kind of stuff yeah and i was heading their external sales department and then when i found bitcoin right and it was my moment uh my aha moment i was like between 2 10 to 11 i was also studying diplomacy and international relations yeah at the time and i was focusing on international monetary system in the current imbalances back then, China owing the debt of U.S. and U.S. issuing the only real international currency.

And I was looking for a better form of money. Right. How lucky I was. Wow, what a timing. Yeah, what a timing. I was just lucky to... It was meant to happen, of course. Yeah.

And a good friend of mine, Pavel Luktak, he has his finger on the pulse of everything, always had. And I started talking about this topic and I was researching like local currencies and purpose-specific currencies, all that stuff. And like nothing was good. And he was like, yeah, of course, like Bitcoin. What is this Bitcoin? So that's how I got into the rabbit hole. And then later on, there was a... When he told you about it, did it make sense straight away?

I did not understand still how the technology works, obviously. I wouldn't even say today that I do understand deeply, deeply on a technical level. Of course you do. But it made sense on a high level. I started imagining a lot of stuff that can evolve from here. And then, yeah, then there was the first Bitcoin conference happening in 2011 in Europe. It was like two weeks after the first worldwide conference or something like this that was in the U.S. But the first European one was happening in here, in Prague.

Again, I got lucky. I was like, yeah, I have to go. and there max kaiser was jumping on the stage and yelling bitcoin and a lot of notable names some of them still in the space and well i was like okay there's a conference now must be i can probably must be shaping up people are building stuff and not not shortly after uh not shortly not long after um i reconnected with uh slush and stick and yeah they were the founders today of of treasure they they made treasure they were already working on a prototype they picked up on the on the idea because it was presented before

by a German professor who was working. There were several people trying to do a hardware wallet. Some of them did some like home hobby projects. This professor was trying to build it with his students. They never finished. We didn't find anything viable in the market. And so guys were like, okay, let's try and do it. And I was like, this is super interesting.

can i help you and uh yeah i started helping them while i was still working in the in the legacy finance yeah and then yeah after a couple of months doing both jobs i was ready to just choose one and that was uh that was satoshi labs so i went full-time bitcoin you're the voice is brought to you by trezor the original bitcoin hardware wallet company pioneering the development of self-custody for crypto assets since 2013 empowering individuals with an open source device enabling beginners and experts to easily and securely hold their coins i find my treasure super easy to use and recommend it to my friends and family enjoy my five percent discount on treasure product by clicking the link in the show notes and using the code a flat

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to sign up and use code flat for 10 off and then how did you guys arrange your roles who's doing what so guys slash was already um deep in in bitcoin uh because he was running the first mining pool uh so he had a good understanding of how bitcoin works stick was uh great with hardware with encryption he was this endless tinkerer you know to to play yeah and I did everything else so anything that comes with building a business hiring people dealing with accountants and lawyers dealing dealing with the production and logistics and customer service marketing, you know, all the boring stuff. It's not boring, but necessary to build a business. Amazing. And you've been doing that for how long?

For about four years. Amazing. And then how did the company evolve in those four years? Well, the main point was that we have tackled a digital risk that was prevalent at that time. uh in a fairly user-friendly way up until then there was no way for people like you and me to just manage their bitcoin safely yeah uh and that was mission achieved i would say amazing we established a completely new market of hardware wallets blue ocean it was a blue ocean literally um right after us came ledger to to the space how long after they were working so when we were launching treasure like the launching party um

uh they already were working on it so they must have been just about a year or so later than us year or two maximum um and then there were many copycats coming up and forks of trezor and not many originals but surely after we had you know beatbox and cold card so the the space developed really nicely today you have many uh many options to choose from depending on your level of you know technical knowledge and what what you're expecting from the hardware wallet i think the space is like this is a the norm i would say it was not the norm before it is the norm but still you know if you hear the statistics of how many people actually use a hardware wallet it's still nothing it's like a few single percentages out of the whole really like yeah wallet holders yeah

Last year, Mathieu gave me that statistics here in Trezor when we talked about it. Interesting. I don't remember the number, sorry. But I think it's like 85% don't even have any hardware wallet. Like they all still hold their coins on exchanges. Sorry if I'm saying the wrong number. You can go check out my episode with Mathieu. We talked about it there.

But it's ridiculously low. So most people that hold crypto and Bitcoin today don't have a hardware wallet, which is ridiculous. in my eyes i agree right it's like yeah it's like building a home and not making sure you have a good lock on the door more or less yep like you went into all that trouble of building your own home that is something very valuable and then you want protected the right way true it's that simple true right okay but it's it's also not that surprising uh when all the life starts to concentrate into a small device you know that is like everything is inside one device it's very comfortable for people to just do everything through the phone

that and also it's hard to keep up the pace of the developments and even if we think that you know a cold storage wallet is so obvious for most people come into that space they do have a learning curve and it takes some time to realize how to do it properly yeah or they just need to lose some money yeah there are different ways of learning i remember a story uh that was probably shanghai 2015 we went to a conference there and there was a guy right next to us having a stand i honestly don't remember what he was doing probably mining uh-huh and we had some uh nice ladies on our booth offering a discount for a treasure wallet and he did not buy it and like one or two weeks later turns out he got hacked he lost like 1000 bitcoin or something like this

and he was regretting much uh so yeah some people need to have that um experience shit yep no people if you're still listening to me and you haven't got a hardware wallet then please step up your game okay let's keep going so you were four years with trezor and then um what was right after well i was doing uh after some time out some traveling and then some advisories for different businesses yeah uh also beyond uh bitcoin uh-huh um but then one of the conferences i was in i was sitting on a panel uh with with the founder of casa and uh jeremy jeremy and i don't know the audience i think it was some some new york city like wall street guys you know suit and ties and i just told them like if if you mean it you know with

creating like a little fund uh or something like that and i would definitely advise you to to go with either this company or set up something like a multi-sig like what they're what they're providing they provide it with a white glove service and so he was just very happy and I recommended him on stage we started talking and I was like I have this idea in my in my drawer I have a drawer you know with many ideas and sometimes it's good to look in the drawer and look into the old nodes and I always wanted to create a home node a little computer that would be working together with a hardware wallet and that would allow you to have a network of such nodes with decentralized storage decentralized applications running bitcoin node running

lightning node and so on and so working with casa on that uh we did the first plug and play uh bitcoin lightning network and that note um which was fun it was a very funny first uh version i must say because that this self-connecting cable was a raspberry pi yeah in a in a simple casing and but it blew my mind uh how quickly it got out there uh we've had to the bitcoin community to the bitcoin community but to what kind of people okay we've had um we've had customers like there was a couple for example that was 80 plus and they always wanted to run a node but it was way too technical what a weird combination and they were you know seniors and they just a huge bitcoin fans but finally there was some

solution that where they can just plug it and run it and not worry about come online so it really it was really a from my point of view a huge success beautiful and again it started uh an entire like new market of nodes yes now you have many options to run that's right at home which is cool yeah um yeah um what else after i co-authored the little bitcoin book which was my my that was a pain point at that time i wasn't able to first of all explaining bitcoin is just in just like couple sentences you know that's difficult to a complete noob uh and pointing to some literature is also difficult because at that time we had mastering bitcoin from andreas antonopoulos on the shelf i don't even think that saif deen's book was out i think it was later yes i think it was

later and there was maybe this little the bitcoin money for kids you know with funny drawings yeah and that was it like no good no easy to digest literature and so when i was in oslo at the oslo freedom forum 2018 um we were like standing on uh on the in the foyer or somewhere and complaining with other bitcoiners like there's there's no there's no good book to give to these people that were attending the Oslo Freedom Forum, activists, journalists, you know, dissidents, but just about like anyone from my friends without burdening them with too much technical stuff. And so that was a really cool project because I'm not a huge writer myself, like I do write, but more most of that is business stuff and marketing stuff and some pr but

sitting and writing a book i had i struggled finishing my thesis so and you took on a big project like a book okay but this was fun because it was eight eight authors we met for four days yeah in one house and in four days the book was out wow in two weeks later it was published So it's probably the smallest and the fastest ever written book on Bitcoin. Who are some of the others? So guys from the Human Rights Foundation, Alex Gladstein, Alex Lloyd, Jimmy Song, Luis Buenaventura. Who else? Alex Machado, Lily Liu. Did I forget someone?

Beautiful. it was it was really cool uh composition of authors because all of us were from very different background we were from five continents you know venezuela had big trouble with money yeah czechoslovakia had history with monetary trouble philippines the same america with their financial surveillance has a different set of trouble you know so we were able to put in all these viewpoints in a quite simple to read easy to read format what's the name of the book the little bitcoin book amazing why bitcoin matters for your future finances and freedom awesome so it's really just like the big picture why why you should be interested in bitcoin not how it works yeah

awesome answering the the most common questions and misconceptions about bitcoin super cool yeah super cool like and and it worked it worked beautifully um i think i don't have the exact number of books sold uh it's definitely one of the best sellers in in between up till today but it worked in the sense uh i went afterwards to some conference and speaking to a couple and she goes like my guy has been talking to me about bitcoin for years like five or six years He was trying to brainwash me with this Bitcoin thing. And he was like, yeah. And she was always like, ah, leave me alone.

And then he ordered a little Bitcoin book. And he fell asleep on the couch, you know, while reading it. Probably too boring for him. She grabbed the book. Until he was, while he was sleeping, she read the book. He woke up and she says, I'm going with you to the conference. Ah, that's so cool. She was sold.

She was sold. And I heard a lot of good response, good feedback. So there's definitely space for this kind of approach, like not just highly technical, but also very approachable kind of writing. Tired of feeling like your freedom and future are fading away? Do you live in a country with growing inflation, crazy housing prices, weird culture and a chaotic economy?

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you need a plan b in another country the team at expat money can help you build it legally safely and without wasting years of research visit expatmoney.com and leave your details for a follow-up in a world hypnotized and sleepwalking towards totalitarian control and digital enforcement awakened voices rise to inspire change and radiate hope in december 2024 i had the honor of hosting professor matthias desmet at a conference i produced called new totalitarian order this master class is now recorded and available to watch the conference explores the psychology behind global mass processes offering a behind-the-scenes look at science economics and human potential it addresses challenging global agendas mass formation

transhumanism consciousness societal change and the path to transformation click the link Link in the show notes to access three and a half hours of exclusive presentations, in-depth content, and my fireside chat with Professor Desmet. Use my code AFLAT for 10% off. I hope you find great value in it. That is super interesting. Okay, I want to ask you something before we get into today and what you do today and what projects you're working on today.

So as someone that has been in this space forever and ever, I mean, more or less from when it began, you have a very unique point of view also being involved in so many different companies and seeing this space evolve throughout the years. What is your opinion? what is your view the elena view on the evolution of this nascent technology that has more or less appeared out of nowhere i mean yes there were pre pre press pre i forget the words like um other technologies that existed there before to base bitcoin on but it was relatively nascent and and very exciting. And then from this small project that no one knew if it's going to take

off or not became what it is today, 15, 16 years later. And now you're seeing, you know, governments and institutions and enterprises and the suits embracing it. So what is your view on those 15, 16 years they say it was inevitable i don't know some people were losing patience i think along the way because um the idea was like obviously this is the best better form of money so what hey world what are you waiting for uh so people thought like in 10 years everyone will know bitcoin and everyone will have bitcoin and now we're 15 years and it's still it's still quite fringe um and the reason being there was a continuous war on bitcoin uh led through uh using the mass media yeah um brainwashing people into thinking that it's a criminal money that it's too volatile too

risky too shady to everything they came out of everything yeah um and now the game continues into trying to co-opt uh bitcoiners you know whatever they they're trying to do so uh how do you see it being co-opted um trying to really regulate uh through and through whatever there can be regulated make it almost impossible to use as the as the freedom money that it was created um so yeah basically countries trying to create their strategic bitcoin reserves by confiscating other people's money by using i think they will go smart about it they will first of all try to attack a lot of companies a lot of actors in the space okay prove that they either haven't paid their taxes or they have acquired the bitcoin via what illegally or illegally and whatnot without

licensing that will be a good one um and then through dormant asset laws what does that mean dormant asset laws are in place in every country oh we're talking about the great taking like well the great taking it's it's like um this this is in place since since a long time yeah every country has a limit on a time limit uh when you can leave your money in the bank or on some account with the insurance company or some investment company

and not move it. And if you don't move it for five or ten years, depending which jurisdiction is a little bit different, the state will take it and they can use it for the public good. It is for your

protection, they say, because they hold it for you They hold it for you securely and you can claim it any time back. Now the devil's in the detail. How are you going to claim back your assets and Bitcoin? They have now passed this kind of legislation in California as well. They've had that legislation. In many states, not in California.

Now they did it on Bitcoin. In California, it's three years only. And they enacted Bitcoin to it. Exactly. And when I saw it, I said it's ridiculous. and some Bitcoiners came up and told me we were part of helping to shape up this legislation we think it's great and I'm like in what world is it great that the state takes your property I don't care how great you think you are helping people the state should have no business zero business

with our with what's ours that's in my opinion it's it's in the world where you think that corporations are big evil and the state is here to protect you against the private businesses yeah or you know what or the state is here to protect you period from anything anyone i do not buy it i don't think that the state needs to handle my business in any way definitely not with my property or money yep agreed okay so that's another way you're saying that it could be co-opted okay but in the end you know when i learned about bitcoin in the very first years i i was thinking okay um this is like a um a reserve i don't want to say central bank reserve because it's like a reserve held by people it's gonna be a um something like a gold

standard in down the line because the the limitation on the supply just makes it to the ultimately scarce uh asset out there and i was thinking okay eventually uh people will experiment with other uh cryptos and start pegging it to bitcoin that was like it's not what i wanted to do myself but i was imagining this would happen and of course you cannot it's a free money so free money in the sense it's not asking who you are uh you know you can be a good bad person you can be a company you can be a government to own bitcoin and i think that's fine as long as is not acquired by theft as long as it's acquired by proof of work absolutely okay so i'm taking you back to my question so zooming out on the last 15 or 16 years you think that the evolution of this

technology and project is inevitable right if i hear you right like it's going the way it has to go and you cannot control what's happening is it faster slower than what you had thought in terms of adoption is it as big or small as you thought like when you were just starting off depends on how i wake up you know it depends on the day it's really sometimes i i see like so many awesome developments and new projects and it's like it really rolls your mind how much is happening yeah when you step outside of our micro world when you step outside of the you know the the venues on um btc pay uh btc yeah then and you listen to other people they have no idea what's going on right it's probably that the that this bitcoin always still exists oh no way it's over

100 000 so uh it really depends which perspective you're taking seeing it a little bit closer up i think it's incredibly moving forward oh yeah the the tools of the wallets that we have these days it's just mind-blowing it is mind-blowing in the early days you had desktop wallets you had bitcoin core you had to be a real uh geek guru and geek to to be able to that one there was electrum which still is running today by the way there was multi-bit run by two guys uh out of uk uh that's closed and there used to be armory and that's also that and so these were like the four desktop applications and out of the mobile wallets there was the bitcoin wallet from from germany and soon after around the time mycelium started i don't know if mycelium is still going

i don't know but there is a an abundance of new wallets and technologies coming out green address was there right yeah so these were most of the wallets basically and now it's amazing i keep constantly hearing about wallets i never heard of and then new new approaches uh mini scripts are coming which is fantastic what are mini scripts It allows you to add features to the very robust and lame Bitcoin. It allows you to create some conditioning, something like smart contracts that Ethereum has, but without loading. Yes. So you can have wallets like Liana that allows you to set some delays on withdrawals, stuff like that. It's really cool what's coming. I think soon we will enter like yet another phase of Bitcoin wallets. uh hopefully better backup solutions you know hopefully uh easier to use hopefully better

ways to inherit bitcoin right that's a super inheritance yeah you can set up a good multi-sig yeah um you can play with shamir secret sharing of course it's a bit nerdy but it's a good way it's still paper backup yeah but most people will not bother multi-sig is more operational i would say you can still use it while you have a good security um so dealing i mean solving inheritance nicely would be cool would be very cool yeah yeah that's one thing and um it's not going to be boring in the next few years no no well no no and then and then yeah no if you want to add anything else because i want to take you to today yeah i'm actually bridging there unfortunately it's also not going to be boring because of um the bitcoin

price the the number go up yep is attracting uh bad guys again yep and so when we were starting uh to build a hardware wallet to protect against digital risks um soon after uh introducing hardware wallets uh we saw the first uh bitcoin ransomware right so people started extorting Bitcoiners. They would steal their private data, photos, sensitive data or just outright lock their computers and say if you don't pay Bitcoin you lose all your computers. And so similar criminal minds now step forward more and more into the actual kidnapping and extortion and we don't have great solutions for that so I was thinking how to solve it and I started Glock. So that's a new startup or a new project do you call it a startup already

or it's still called a project? It's called project yeah. Okay so we have a new project called Glock G-L-O-K right and how long have you been working on it now? I've been thinking about this topic since 2018 uh-huh uh because that's where we had a lot of kidnappings happening you know 217 was the spike of price yeah by the way anytime there's a spike in price uh in bitcoin there's a spike in uh criminal bad guys trying to steal you know your bitcoin so obviously um there's so that that was the first like bigger wave of kidnappings and i was already um having discussions with i know former navy seals and like military guys to to figure out what could be the best approach to to making a normal normal guy in a black t-shirt and crazy hair who happens

to have a few bitcoins to protect himself and i didn't do anything about it up until this year earlier this year when i got a kick you know i realized that okay this is starting to happen again and again and right now we are at more than two kidnappings per week wow uh in the crypto space and the bitcoin space wow and this is these are numbers that are reported that are known yeah so imagine how much is not probably 60 to 80 percent at least maybe even more than that is underreporting yes yeah so it's an issue because when you're born into a wealthy family you know you are born into the adversarial thinking or the anti-risk thinking so wealthy people have their assets in trusts and funds they don't have their name on their house

spell or their mailbox they don't uh you don't you don't find their faces online they don't speak about having bitcoin they don't talk about it oh i finally i'm a whole coiner you know to see a lot of people shouting on online and they shouted probably a couple of years ago when i'm a whole coiner now i want btc and now they realize oh but that's over 100k worth in in dollars and there's some regions of the world where that money is a big money of course and we've had stories unfortunately of people being killed for way less than half of a bitcoin wow so a bitcoiner is absolutely unprepared for this yes um unaware um to most for most of them it's a like a risk that's that they may assign to just you know the brian armstrong's of this space like you must be

really a big uh business guy or whatever og minor to to be at risk no that's not the case the truth of it is anyone can be at risk anyone who's ever touched a regulated crypto exchange and provided their home address is by the way kyc is just outright dangerous for human security and life and if i if i was a lobbyist this was this would be one thing that i would be constantly doing lobbying to ban KYC. We have more than 18 million usernames and email addresses leaked online. More than 2.2 million is with home addresses and transaction history. wow coinbase gemini robin hood ledger customers there's much more yeah these are the people that walk the streets unaware of of them being a target and so we gotta arm up just like we armed up

you know with using a hardware wallet yeah and with using a multi-sig yeah it's time to arm up on the physical level physical level privacy level and how do you do that with Glock I started by creating a a physical security checklist for myself asking like myself questions like um and putting writing them down um and trying to see if there's anything i can do to improve my security so if i can share this with uh with your viewers absolutely we'll put a link to your funds it's uh you just go to glock g-l-o-k dot me slash checklist you can download is for free and print it out and start self-evaluating whether you bought your house in your name. For example, what are all the public registries that people can search and find where

you live? To your mobile security, how are you leaking your location, your whereabouts? Are you tweeting where you're going to be next up yes are you even tweeting which hotel and picture of the hotel room you know stuff like that so some basic awareness some situational awareness some behavioral changes that need to be done come from going through the checklist there's a bunch of there's a like how to secure your home space yeah just securing the basic locks can you lock the windows what do you do when you leave home do you wait when until the garage door closes who can get in and how who can get visual access to your windows so many things to consider up to just being uh staying vigilant on the street um how to spot that you're being followed that you're

being surveilled what to do you know are you gonna run home would that be your answer you know for me yeah for you know like what would you do so just start thinking about those things and then the last question on that list was like okay now imagine um the kidnapping is happening yeah uh am i well prepared do i have a setup uh that allows me to win time that would be the multisig for example okay or some time locks uh some distributions of uh distribution of wallets so that, you know, your beloved ones or whoever is there to transfer the money cannot get their hands on it quickly and easily. How do I behave when I'm taken?

What should I do? What should I not do? How to de-escalate the situation? How to maintain inner calm? And most of all, how do I get found when I need it? Yes. And so I was searching online. You know, there's a ton of different devices and trackers and, you know, tracking apps and everything else connected to surveilling your loved ones to keep them safe. But none of them was good.

None of them was good enough for a Bitcoiner. Right. You would either have some little devices that work with Bluetooth only. and use the connection to your phone to send out an alert. Well, that's fine, but it only works for the first couple of minutes and then when you're transported somewhere else and your phone is being taken, it doesn't work anymore. Then you have a lot of solutions that need some network of phones

like the AirTag from Apple. that's great but but not to use for yourself you don't want to constantly have a trace of where you're going you want to probably put into it put it into the luggage occasionally when you travel just in case it gets lost you know oh it landed on on a different airport um none of them would be autonomous and so I started thinking okay maybe I have to do my own the first thing that Glock is gonna launch is a mobile app mobile app that allows you to launch the alert fairly quickly which is like a button click or quick press it will geolocate you and encrypt the gps and send through the noster network to a list of of your recipients so you

will whitelist recipients you will pre-approve they will also approve that you can actually send alerts to them so they will watch your back. I will not know who you are because we're using Nostra identities. I will not know where you are because the GPS position will be encrypted and I will not be attackable so I will not run any servers that will relay these alerts. All of the other solutions are running a server.

so if I know that that person is a high value target and he or she happens to use a certain device then I would probably DDoS the services of that company then kidnap you know if I was a bad guy so I will not be a honeypot of the knowledge about right Bitcoiners so there is no incentive to come after your data like the data you hold of other people because there is no data there is just transferable all the time yeah people will run it on their phones uh transmit over noster relays um there's a list of noster relay so it will be a there will be fallback scenarios you need to ensure deliverability of of the alert you need it to work right And then, of course, no technology is good enough unless it's used properly and unless people are ready.

So another weakness of Bitcoiners, what I observe is we overestimate technology and underestimate human factor. Okay. Okay. So we think, oh, I have this really strong passphrase. I have multi-sig and Shamir secret sharing and whatnot. But then there is a situation when they take someone's father hostage and they start cutting off fingers and what do you do then? We are not ready for that, right?

We underestimate all the other preparation that needs to be done and how to deal with this. I know it's not a very jolly... Convenient, fun topic. It's not a very jolly topic, but I also don't want people... But it's also super important. No, and I don't want people to be depressed about it or scared or like anxious. My goal is the absolute contrary.

Like we arm up and everyone who will come after Bitcoiners will regret. You know, that's my mindset. That's what we should do. So that's why I'm also trying to set up a nice program of education. sorry so that people kind of become aware that there is such a thing that hopefully will make them think twice before they try to perform these kind of anyone carrying a Glock on them is not a good target not a good target not a good target right um that's a good way of putting where I have a headline if unarmed carry a Glock

isn't a glock also a name of a of a weapon yeah there is a glock yeah like the c c k uh my glock doesn't use any bullets that's cool i love that okay it's a it's a deterrence mechanism yeah and a mechanism to summon help when you need it yeah um together with this will come a training we're launching a one-day training yeah that is a counter kidnapping training designed specifically for crypto and bitcoin owners it's a day packed uh with with knowledge from former military guys people who have been uh rescuing guys out of hostage situations from the middle east to sub-saharan africa they've done close protection they've done close combat wow that's really useful and they've done also training specifically like they trained

government employees that were traveling to hostile and and volatile environments on the behavior skills on how to avoid when is that happening uh we will do one uh the next one is happening in Riga in August in 8th of August right before the Baltic honey badger so I need to get this episode before okay maybe yeah let's see if that's possible fine if not there will be much more coming up okay we'll try to provide this with every Bitcoin conference that's a good idea hopefully with all the other crypto conferences yeah uh anyone in this space needs uh needs a better awareness uh skill up you know and be be safer more secure and they can get information about it on the blog website yes we'll put a link to

everything okay awesome wow that is such a topic to tackle you chose uh another real one Real Elena choosing real stuff. I don't like bad guys, let's put it like that. Of course. I like, you know, when people earn their money and they lead normal lives. And I also don't want to be walking afraid in this world. That's not me. I think none of us should be.

And then I go to some conference and see some guy from an exchange telling to the noobs in the space to be afraid to buy their Bitcoin peer-to-peer because you're going to get dirty coins. Oh, come on. It's only safe if you keep it on exchanges. And, you know, this is just wrong. Bullshit. On so many levels. Yeah. um so i want to provide yet another level of security where people go okay i can go and buy

peer-to-peer i will be safe uh i can do you know whatever i want to do in my life because i have a network of people that are watching my back and leveraging this beautiful community that is out there and even if you're not connected to any bitcoiners that's fine you can just create a watch watcher you know glocker group with your family and friends this will be available to to anyone for free the app is going to be for free uh so i'm hoping that people in crime-ridden places of the world can start a neighborhood watch simply by creating a group watching each other and you know a girl walking at night uh being followed by someone will just click the big red button and someone from the neighbors will come out or just call her even calling the potential

victim is an act of deterrence the criminals usually get like oh this is not a good situation to attack let me back off alone she she's she's being helped yeah there's there's um you know So being a woman, obviously, my motivation is not just help Bitcoiners, but also help women to be more safe. There's been a huge increase in sexual assaults and rape in Europe in the last 10 years. The statistics are crazy. It's over 150% increase in just this department.

uh not in all parts of europe some parts of europe are still very safe yeah but if you look into sweden uk belgium france spain germany that's not those places are not safe as they used to be definitely for girls especially so yeah that would be probably another um area where where this could be used absolutely super important yeah amazing that you're working on it i'm so happy to hear about it that's really really great now you've let's stay on that that topic of of women or girls uh we both sat on a panel a few days ago um for women in bitcoin so and in the beginning of this conversation you mentioned how it's actually quite an advantage or a really pleasing experience to be a woman in this industry and I agree with you because from the first moment

I got into this community I just felt so embraced and accepted and loved obviously there is the occasional douchebag here and there and people that are just mean or bored or whatever I call the keyboard heroes they feel like a hero behind the keyboard but on the most part it's a really embracing loving and and accepting community to be part of even more so than any other business or tech community that i've been part of and i have been too many so what's your take on the women women in bitcoin topic uh again depends uh what they ask me you know one day i wake up and i feel the exactly opposite there's difference between the bitcoin space and the corporate space right in in in the way uh people treat each other yeah uh in bitcoin there's more honesty but also more

cruelty yeah uh in corporate world people are more polite yeah that's right more civil yeah more civil more polite yeah they don't dare uh to you know especially like you're representing a corporation yeah you're so you you know there's a name put on your shoulder or on your forehead yeah and um you better behave nicely um so at the same time um there can be like weird situation for a woman in that space as well sure you know i was one of very few um top level managers in that space and i just learned to not uh uh where i i did decollete for example you know there's that um it's different kind of weirdos in that space uh the weirdos in bitcoin will start talking about hash rate on on the first you know date let's put it like that

it's different it's different um it's more genuine uh it can be more more uh cruel as i said unforgiving um what do you think women should um remember when they come into this space what should they know that bitcoin is for everyone right right absolutely and also that and that in most families women are the driving force behind purchase decisions economic decisions uh economic decisions women are the ones that are more risk averse that are built their dna is built to preserve life to preserve everything that supports life preserving their nurture nurture exactly and so the the the role of a woman in the the home finances is irreplaceable critical the guys will go and invent all the cool stuff for the woman

yeah and that's that's a very like stereotypical now yeah of course we have some women inventing cool stuff in bitcoin but the stereotype is as such that it's usually the men like tinkering yeah and the women making it then uh ubiquitous in the real life and so um yeah there's there's space for for everyone i was super super delighted and impressed by the engagement of women at that panel we had how interested genuinely interested in practical solutions they were yeah uh how happy to to hear some some advice like writing down notes absolutely that's really lovely i agree with you and i think that it just women are also looking for um groups where they can feel more comfortable to express who they are without being apologetic or even sometimes simply like not being

heard not being listened to and that is something that i did experience in many scenarios where i was an only woman or just in a minority where men can be sometimes so dumb dominating the space and like you know our voices are slower and maybe quieter physically and and sometimes we take more time to analyze things before we talk or we want to listen as well and so sometimes you tend to disappear if you are in such a communities and i think for many women and i think both you and i don't really have an issue with that because if we want to we can just elbow someone and get our expression out there i don't think we we suffer from this thing but many women do and and i get many women approaching me like in person whenever

i go around the world thanking me for creating that type of space for them so that they can also show up and speak out and feel comfortable and be around like-minded women and or have a podcast where they see a woman you know talking about things like that that maybe women don't don't necessarily talk about so my my take on it is that we just need to be who we are and by that we lead by example and and give inspiration to other women and that's enough like we don't need to do so much more than that um for me it is a little bit of a social game yeah and a litmus paper yeah into probing what kind of person is in front of me uh-huh um typically a woman in the space can be just someone's girlfriend right yes um and so i want to i'm a very observant of people and how

they behave to other people and uh there's a group of people you know and there comes a guy and hands his hand to all the guys and skips the girls oh it happens to me so many times person i'm unlikely to engage in conversation after okay uh and it doesn't matter whether man or woman i i want to see uh is this person interested in the other person doesn't ask what are you up to what you're doing who are you or are they just talking about themselves or are they just self-promoting right And so I would take it away from even from the man-woman to the level of human personality and how actually people act to each other, do they speak over each other or do they have a conversation?

Are they genuinely interested in the other people? Are they really listening? Yes, exactly. And yeah, that would be probably more important for me than the statistics of how many women we have in this space. I'm with you. A thousand percent. Although I must say that I'm delighted to see how many chicks are out there.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's awesome. That meetup was with 70 women? Uh-huh. Whoa. And there could have been a lot more because some of them just didn't know about it because of marketing like we didn't have much time to do marketing but you know the one of the first

conferences uh in bitcoin i was to was ah 2013 i think in amsterdam were you the only one there was probably 400 people in the room uh-huh we counted four women four women one percent sure one percent sure i think i was the only one uh professionally involved right of course now you go to the expo at btc prague and you see women everywhere business and everything so that's that's a huge move like absolutely the main topic the main theme of of that event was bitcoin going mainstream and you can see that you can see that it's happening and it's not happening with the michael sailors you know of the world and with that it's happening when you see 70 year old women coming to this conference yeah and asking the right kind of questions so yeah 15 years and

yeah it's happening it's happening and we're so on the right track now i'm with you we are so early yeah we are really early i am so curious i'm so grateful to be alive right now and just to wait and see how this thing evolves it's going to be fascinating yeah did you ever think that bitcoin is still gonna be bitcoin or that it may be replaced by something else well playing with that i've only been in that space for like three and a half years so i don't think i've ever asked myself this question because when i came into this space it was already a fact it was already like it's here to stay this is not going to go i mean the more i learned what it is and how it is used and the use cases and everything it was like

it's not this is not going to be replaced yet i don't think so yeah well it may be it's the usual beginner doubts right and also the um you know technology is evolving so fast So who fucking knows what's going to happen in 10 years or 15 years? Who knows what quantum is going to bring with it? Like, I am really staying open, but I do believe that Bitcoin has a really good chance of sticking around for centuries. I think it's a solid technology.

Don't you? Well, now we only need to survive those couple centuries. That's right. I have doubt in that more than I have doubt in the actual protocol. To be honest with you. Efrat, let's do less party then, you know? More sauna. More sauna, dude.

More healthy lifestyle. Elena, let's go to the sauna. What are we doing here with all these fake lights? Let's go to the sun and the sauna. Dear, okay. So let me ask you one last question then. What gives you hope and inspiration for the coming decades? hmm i returned back to being pro-noic i was a pro-noid pro-noid person what is pro-noid

it's the opposite of paranoid oh is it i never heard this word before you know a paranoid person thinks that everyone's conspiring against you yes and that everyone's trying to take away from you or whatever beating you uh in your game yeah and when i was little i just knew i knew i was convinced that everything's working out in my favor and so sometimes i didn't prepare for the exams and my mom was worried and i was like mom it's gonna be just fine and it was always fine Yeah. And there was a period in my life where I stumbled and I fell on my nose and I wasn't feeling in my strength. And I took a few years to rebuild myself from inside. And now I am led by this pro-noic mindset that there is, you know, something that's guiding me or that I'm doing the right steps because my focus is there on to building log, to help people.

I think if it turns out well, it can really improve the situation for many, many out there. And this is what I'm doing now. This is what I'm supposed to do now. I don't know what I'm going to do in 10 years from now. But this is it. And I'll give it my best shot. Yep. And the universe is there, you know.

Oh, yeah. To support you and guide you. Conspiring in my favor. Conspiring to your success, Elena. Yeah. Beautiful. Please keep doing what you're doing. Thank you.

This is so important. And never get tired of us in this space. I know you can. You have that privilege because you've been around for a long time. But thank you for persisting and sticking around and doing this. We need you. My pleasure. Yeah.

Love you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for being with us. Please take a minute to give this episode a like, a comment, and subscribe or follow. and please share it with your friends so they can also get value and choose to take some positive action in their lives. Till next time!