Predictable Plunder

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Now what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. Yeah. Oh. The greatest scam in history. Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.

Welcome

back to the Bitcoin Brief, the show where me and q and a catch up every two weeks to talk about Bitcoin, privacy, open source, keeping your Bitcoin secure, and the news and software updates that matter.

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Enjoy the show. Good morning, mate. How are doing? Good morning, sir. Yeah. Doing well. Had a nice little weekend away with Seth. Family. I actually had a day off on Friday.

Yeah. And Seth. Yeah. I was an absentee from Freedom Set Friday, which I have just finished listening to. Jordan and Max, well, all three of you did an excellent job, both Jordan and Max, the other Max were taking center stage and I think they smashed it. Absolutely. It was a good listen.

It was quite nostalgic actually because you don't really hear much bit 47 painting, samurai chatter these days for obvious reasons. So it's nice to hear about what he's been building and have Max Tannehill on to tell some gray beard stories and stuff, which was nice. Put smiles on my face. So The smart Max, the technical Max. Yeah.

Jordan, the technical Max.

And Jordan figured out the the video stuff as well, so you can actually go and watch it on Fountain or any of the other podcasting two point o apps that support it. If you're trying to de YouTube yourself and you wanna watch it somewhere more Bitcoin centric, then you can now do that on Fountain. So nice work again, Jordan. Yeah.

Because he does a full walk through of what he's built, which is quite cool. Yeah. I feel like if any of the Freedom Set Friday video side has been important, this is the one. So hopefully, we can leverage that a bit more now. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you two boys had a nice weekend away. Just dumped me, left me.

Luckily, those two hopped in and said, we've built some cool shit and we can talk about it. I was like, okay, perfect. So it actually went very nicely, but yeah, cheers for that. No problem. We still need to hash out what we're doing this Friday as well. Not right now, obviously. I think haven't we got Miguel?

Oh, is that sorted? Is it nailed down? I think it was agreed that he's coming on. So I think that's what we'll have. Cool. Well, that could be another really good visual one. Definitely.

Maybe if you wanna just double check that after the show and we'll cause that'll save me prepping this Friday. Yeah. I will do. Awesome. What else have I got on my list? Yeah. Weekend away with the family, that was nice, catching up with work stuff.

Work stuff, okay. It feels like, again, I say this very reluctantly because

timelines have not been been our friend over at Foundation in the last year or so. But it feels like this is the the week we're gonna be able to say that we've begun shipping Prime. We I've had untold amounts of last minute hurdles to jump over. I won't bore you with all of them now.

This you know, you just you feel like you've got to the final bug and you're fixed, and then you you go through the QA steps again and you're like, oh, something else crops up. That has quite literally happened since January where we felt so close, but we do have an internal release candidate build that we're gonna be starting to test

today and tomorrow and all being well once the factory reopens because it shut due to a blizzard in the East Coast Of The US, which is, again, typical and just our look. It looks like this week, we're gonna be provisioning those devices and begin shipping towards the end of the week.

For context, we are recording this on Monday, February 23, and it's just before 1PM in The UK. So America hasn't woken up yet, but I'm just going off what I've been catching up with over the weekend in the work chat. So it's looking very promising. It's not lost on me how frustrating it must be for people.

Some people ordered way back when we first announced it on day one, so they've been waiting over a year now, which is not great, and we had zero intention of it ever taking this long.

But it turns out they're building a brand new device and a brand new operating system quite literally from the ground up yourself with a very small team of less than 20 people. It's less than 10 people if you count engineers. It is

a huge task, and it takes literally twice as long as you think it's gonna. So Yeah. We're almost at the finish line. The reason that I haven't been talking about it much and trying to pump it up and stuff is because I know that people are getting pissed off and I understand it. So that's why I've not been doing much prime pumping lately,

and I don't wanna do that until we've begun shipping and it, you know, it feels more real to people. I'm hoping that this week is gonna be that week. If it's not, then you can hold me accountable to that, but I'm just giving people the most accurate and up to date information.

And once we do start getting it into people's hands and we're shipping next day, which shouldn't take long because a lot of the hardware is already built. It's the software that's holding us back right now. Then we're gonna do some pumping. We can talk about all the different apps.

I'm gonna do a showcase live on free internet Friday so people can see what it's all about. Yeah. Exciting times. It's been a long long time coming and, you know, the irony of that is not lost on me because people have also been waiting as well as as we have internally a foundation, it feels like we're about to have a big moment.

I'm just very very happy that the journey is, well, I say the journey is nearly over. The manufacturing and the the building journey is almost over, but it's only just the start of like what this thing is capable of because, you know, we're shipping with five apps,

but that's literally just the core ones that we've built and we're already working with or beginning to work with other people to help build third party apps and stuff, which is gonna take this device literally to the next level so that you can do so much more with it.

So it feels like we're about to close the frustrating chapter in building it and and open a very, very exciting new one where we're gonna be breaking a lot of boundaries. Fingers crossed, mate. One thing I think is maybe next time built in China because you've had all your issues

and they wouldn't let a thing like weather get in the way on these final days. They'll fucking do some weather manipulation or something. Just fuck that snow right off.

So maybe just consider that. I know it's cool you're building in America and all that. But Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. You're right. You're right. Everything has its trade. I was supposed to be clear.

It's the software side of things that's been the biggest lift here and the biggest thing that's been holding us back since the start of this year is just getting that to a position where it's ready for customers. It just took a lot longer than we initially anticipated,

but hopefully, that's gonna pay dividends in that, you know, people aren't gonna be getting sub substandard devices and, you know, having headaches when they're going through the onboarding because we want this to be as magical as we know it can be. Node woes, I see next on your list. Talk to me. Yeah. Talk to me, mate.

I this is something I know a lot about. Yeah. Well, I say node wise. It was a pretty easy fix in the end, but the fix wasn't immediately obvious to me. So somehow I figured out that my Lightning node was not running. I think I tried to load Zeus or something, and it just wasn't connecting. Went on to Umbrella,

and it said that the Lightning nodes couldn't start. Then I went to the Bitcoin app on the node, and it said that the Bitcoin wasn't running. Looked in the logs, my disk was full. So the reason I put this in, other than to have a little known, is that it probably a bit of a PSA that if you're

running a node and it's on a one terabyte drive Mhmm. You're probably gonna be in a very similar position very, very soon in the fact that if you haven't already hit it whereby that drive, just with the Bitcoin blockchain and a couple of apps and all of the OS itself and things, it's gonna be full very, very soon.

So you need to start thinking about contingency. What you're gonna do? Are you going to migrate to a two or a four terabyte drive? Are you gonna

start to prune your node? Like, you just need to think about that if you're in a similar position. I'm gonna say if you do run an Umbrella, but if you run any of these nodes, they'll have a screen somewhere where you can look at the disk capacity. I'm pretty sure Umbrella actually puts it on the front screen.

So it should be pretty easy to find. I'm surprised you haven't done this already. I'm surprised you had a one terabyte drive in there. It doesn't sound very q and a at all. This is my longest running node. Like, I've had this, like, the node up for, like

I'd have to check, but maybe at least three years. I've never had an Electrum server on it because I run that on a Start nine, which runs on a mini desktop.

Obviously, the Electrum server also takes a big chunk of data, and and that one runs on a, like, say, separate server with a huge disk on it. The reason that the Umbrella, which runs on a pie with a one terabyte drive on it, has only just hit it is because it literally just has the blockchain

and a lightning node on it. So it's been lower capacity than most Bitcoin plus Electrum, which Mhmm. Had this problem quite a while ago. So maybe it's not as commonplace as I thought it might be. So I was like, fuck. What am gonna do? So I was like, maybe

I'll try and migrate turn my start nine into an umbrella, just migrate over to that over my local network. So trying to get that mini desktop booted into you know, we have to go into like the BIOS mode to boot from a USB to flash umbrella.

Just it wasn't having any of it. It just wouldn't do it for some reason. So I was like, oh, fuck. I was like, this is like my only self sovereign Lightning node that I have. And I was like, I'm pretty sure you can run a Lightning node and just have a pruned node.

I was like, I could just keep this existing Pi node with the one terabyte drive, prune the Bitcoin blockchain down to 10 gigabytes. It would do me for the next ten years then. I'd literally be using, like, I don't know, 50 gigabytes of storage maximum on the node, and I've got a full terabyte. So I did that and problem solved.

No need to change it, I just wrote a prune node now, lightning l n d runs perfectly fine on top of it, and my start nine is the full archival node where I can do all my deep wallet in, you know, recoveries and all that sort of stuff. Mhmm.

Best of both worlds, and I didn't need to spend any money and it turned out to be a quick fix of just a couple of clicks within the Umbrella UI. Very nice.

I was hoping for more woes than that, to be honest with you, just to feel like you're a human, but this is close as we're gonna get It took me longer than I care to admit to realize that I could just prune it. For some reason, I had it in my head that because I was running lightning, I needed a full node, but that is not the case.

Very good. What's going on with you, mate? Any a or b? Any woes? Any illnesses, sicknesses? Any forklift races? No. No forklift races. Back in the gym, which is quite nice. Sort of like three, four days a week, which I've been doing, I don't know, maybe three weeks now. So I feel a bit better. Kids still constantly fucking sick.

One of my kids got kicked out of school, the new school, so having to sort something out with that, which is really good fun. What else? Never a dull moment. Never a dull moment, mate. Oh, I can tell you that.

Fucking unbelievable. They're proper little uncoverable bastards. What else? Yeah. That's it really, mate. Just just sort of chucking along, getting bits done, trying to be healthy, still not drinking,

still doing my, like, two coffees a day, which I know isn't one, but it's still pretty good. And then just, like, a million problems at our house just constantly fixing shit. Like, today is fixing air con day. Like, tomorrow, back to plumbing problems. It's just forever.

Do you need air con at at the North Pole? Well, you have like air con and heating system. It does Oh, I see. I see. Yeah. Okay. Well, like I say, never a dull moment. I had just had a random thought pop into my head before we jump into the news.

And it may be because I've missed it because my usage of podcast apps and specifically fountain is diminished somewhat recently. Mhmm. Oh, you cunt. Oh, you cunt. You cunt. You cunt. You cunt. I just spilled fucking coffee all over my MacBook.

Fucking cunt. You can carry on.

Apologies to any children listening. Any sort of pro tips if you just poured fucking coffee all over your MacBook?

I would tip it upside down so that all the water can drip out at least, all the coffee. If it's any consolation, I can still hear you, so it must still be working. It is still working. But, know, you don't want it, like, getting in there and then causing problems down the line.

Some definitely went into the speaker bit down the side. Okay. There we are. That's that's now upside down for maximum drippage.

That is I was literally saying the other day, was like, oh, it's actually done really well. Because, you know, they sort of don't last as long as they used to. Like, when I first had MacBooks or iBooks, whatever they were called at the time. You know, they'd like, oh, they'll easily last, like, years.

And I feel like well, even even ten. Now I feel like it's kind of, you know, two, three if you're lucky, and I've had five out of this one. And so I was like, literally the other day, was like, oh, that's actually pretty good.

And now I've probably killed it. Well, so far so good. Let's let's hope that the the drippage works. The drippage. Maybe that's just like the world telling me that I need one of these Mac Studios or Mac Minis now, and I need to join the cool gang. I need to be part of the up and coming.

If I was loaded, I would love to drop, like, 20 k on, like, the maximum spec one and just see what it can do, but we don't live in that world. So I don't think they're 20 k. I was having a play around with the configuration even for a Mac Studio,

like, fully specked up with the m three pro, whatever it is, chip, all the stuff. That was, like, 10,000, I think it was. Bargain. If you have it with the m four chip, and that's dollars. So, obviously, if you go to America, it's 30% off.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So, like, if you buy one in The UK, say it's $9,999, it will be for the exact same thing. It'll be £9,999. But obviously, the dollar in comparison to the pound is worthless.

So Indeed. Yeah. So you get 30 off. I've literally just done it while you've been chatting there, maxed out on everything. So an m three ultra chip, 32 core CPU, an 80 core GPU, 512 gigabytes of RAM, wow, a 16 terabyte hard drive, that's it, Comes to £14,299, which is $17,000,

something like that. Yeah. But in dollars, it'll still be 14,000. Yeah. I see what you said. Yeah. Okay. So I didn't spec mine up with the storage. I think I kept it at, like, one or two terabyte.

Yeah. Apple storage is notoriously expensive. And you can expand it. I'm pretty sure you could just have something plugged in running that's separate. Yeah. True. Yeah. You could definitely plug an external drive in, but, like, are you really gonna spend upwards of 10 g's on a Mac Studio to then have a really ugly external drive

sat next to you on the desk. I I couldn't live with that. Really? Because I think the I think upgrading the storage on that is, like, thousands. Like It is. Is it, like, 4,000 or something? It's ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure if you went to anywhere other than Apple and bought it, it would be like 10 times cheaper.

So you could just save yourself, like, $3. Mhmm. Yeah. I'll probably do that. Oh, yeah. There's definitely cheaper ways to do it. I wonder if there'll be, like, a new one coming out soon, though, because it's normally March.

Well, they've got an event in the March, haven't they? So I'm sure they'll announce something. Whether it's to be a new device or just the same device with the new m five chip in it. Yeah. Something like that. Anyway, that's maybe for another show. Yeah.

You can bet your bottom dollar that it will sell like hotcakes, especially with all the the self hosted AI stuff that seems to be Mhmm. Very much on vogue at the moment. By the way, check out the Open Call episode of Freedom Tech Friday if haven't done so already. Yeah.

Definitely go and check that out, and there'll be more to come, I'm sure. Anyway, back to Bitcoin stuff. We're twenty minutes in and we haven't even started the news yet, and I was supposed to be on a tight time scale, so my fault. We'll get through it. We will. Let's whiz through the news. First item comes

from our friends over at The Rage. A bit of positive news, Max. You can now make tax deductible donations to fund Bitcoin privacy. Now I didn't see that coming in 2026 after the proceedings, did you? No. Certainly not.

The PayJoin Foundation has now been recognized as a five zero one c three, which is, like, the standard that you need to meet to be able to receive

stuff. Yeah. And when you do so, you can do it as a tax write off if you're a US citizen. It's like a proper recognition from the IRS basically that formalizes its role as like a public charity, which is ironic given, you know, what the Payjoy Foundation was set up to solve, you know, or help Bitcoin's privacy problems.

So this is good to see. Just to draw a bit of similarity here, OpenSat is is one of the best known kind of five zero one c three charity in The UK, US even. Wow, I'm all over the place.

So this is good. It's a bit strange to me that this has been able to happen, but I guess that's, you know, it's probably just flown under the radar because it's opting as a charity rather than a service that's taking people's money, you know, in fees and and kind of promoting it that way. But nonetheless,

it's good to see. So if you are in The US and you wanna make some tax deductible charitable donations, consider doing so to the PayJoint Foundation because you'll be helping advance Bitcoin's privacy and getting a a bit of a tax break as well. Alright. Next on the list. This one is absolutely insane.

I couldn't believe it when I read it. No, it's not. When I read it, I went, yep. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is where I have a little saying here where it's like, shall I put on my I told you so t shirt?

Because like, we have been talking about this sort of stuff and it it when we were talking about it, even for us that kind of could potentially see it, it still seemed like quite far fetched.

But the Dutch parliament or Dutch parliament member, Michael Hoegherveen, sorry if I butchered your name, Michael. Right. In fact, I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry if you're doing They released a video to explain how the 36% unrealized capital gains tax, which was just passed by the House of Representatives, will work.

Now I am gonna walk through this because it is insane and there's gonna be a lot of maths here and you I might lose you along the way, but I will summarize at the end. So here's a detailed example.

Starting position, you own 500 shares. Could be 500 value of Bitcoin. It's the same thing. The value of those shares on the 01/01/2028, presumably when this is coming in, is €50,000. The value exactly one year later on 01/01/2029 is a €100,000.

So you have a paper gain of €50,000. They're classifying that as your unrealized profit, €50,000. But crucially, you did not sell a single share. But for tax purposes, that €50,000 is treated as income. Remember, you have not got the additional €50,000

in your bank. It is not income. Step two, you apply the exemption. So you're married, so you get a €3,600 exemption. Well, very kind of them. So now we're down to a €46,400 taxable amount.

The tax rate is 36. So 36% of that remaining amount is a 16,000 I'll call it 17,000 rounded tax bill. The bill is due in May even though at this point you still have not sold a single euro's worth.

Step three, the market tumbles before you pay your tax bill. So now suppose that by May, when you're due to pay this tax, the shares have dropped in value. The new total value is €60,000.

So your portfolio is no longer worth the €100,000, it's now worth €60,000. Again, remember, you haven't sold anything. But the tax bill remains equated at the €100,000 because that was the the deadline, so you still owe €16,000.

So step four, you must sell your shares to pay tax. To raise the €16,000, you sell part of your shares. After paying the tax, you are now left with €43,000. Originally, you had 500 shares. Now because you had to sell to pay the unrealized capital gains tax, you have 360 shares because you are forced to sell a 140

of them. So you've lost 28% of your shares. So let's recap on what has happened economically. You got raped. Before the price correction, your paper gain was €50,000. You were doing well.

After the price dump, your portfolio was worth in total €60,000, but the original cost basis was €50,000. So your real gain or your real on paper gain is €10,000. But you've paid €16,700 in tax. So instead of being up €10,000, you are now €6,700 below your original starting value

and you've lost 28% of your shares permanently. I have no words to explain how abhorrent and ridiculous that is. It's no longer stacking sats. It's shedding sats. It is just yeah. Again, I have no words. Yeah. I I literally

am I I I've never been less shocked by anything in my life because this is something that I was looking into before leaving The UK and speaking, like, nonstop to tax advisers, anything that I could to try and get my head around what was coming.

And I came up with get the fuck out because this is gonna happen. I'm pretty sure I bleed it to you and every single person, like, unrealized gains are coming, like, and they're gonna come everywhere, and it's fucked.

You have to get out. I just think the whole European Union slash UK, they're all gonna do it. I'm pretty sure. If it's not this year, it's next. And it makes absolutely no sense, but that's why it's gonna happen. Yeah. I mean, it's completely insane. If you're a Bitcoiner and you have the means to do so, I would definitely leave

The Netherlands for sure. Yeah. I'd imagine if one's gonna do it, the rest of them are gonna follow suit. Yeah. They're all gonna do it. And I don't know what the answer to that is really because presumably, this is across just all assets except presumably this can only be on assets that can easily be priced.

Like, they're not currently doing that on, like, property even if it's commercial or whatever, I assume, or maybe they are. But it will be, like, stocks and

Bitcoin and stuff like that. Yeah. Not sure on any exemptions there. But, again, looking at the insanity of it, I wouldn't be surprised if it was on property because, you know, most places you pay capital gains tax on property sales and stuff, don't you, if it's Yes.

Well, if it if it's not your main well, do you pay it on your main residence? I can't remember. Not currently. Okay. Not currently. But I mean, again,

I'm sure they'll find a way. But as much as I joke about it, it is fucking disgusting because that's like forcibly shaking people out of their positions. Which is probably the intention. And especially with something like Bitcoin.

It's definitely the intention. And then, like, imagine that with Bitcoin. It's like, oh, this asset you know, because if you're talking about generally, if you're, like, holding SMP or you're holding things that, like, they might do, like,

five to 10% in a year, like, 15 if you've had, like, a a mega year. That's one thing. But when you're talking about Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, these things are they move fucking all over the place. So there's nothing stopping you having, like, a 200% increase,

and then it crashes, like, down, like, 80% after you've filed this thing. And you suddenly end up paying a load of money, getting shaken out of, like, basically everything that you hold and just being fucked. Yeah. Absolutely. That's mental.

The example was almost in terms of timing, talking about January is the date, like, I'm just looking back now, like, it was quite accurate. Like, in January, we were at like $96,000, and we're now down at 66. So it's like, yeah, it was like almost a spookily accurate example that they gave

when it when applied to Bitcoin. Yeah. It's those Dutch that have been fucking with the markets, I reckon. Yep. Possibly. Possibly. Well, to all our Dutch friends, and we have quite a lot of Dutch friends, actually. To all of you, I'm sorry to hear this. And if you can still get out without

paying some sort of exit tax. Have they done an exit tax yet there? Not that I know of. Okay. Because I they've done it in Canada. I was speaking to someone from Canada the other day, and they they got exit taxed to get out of that hellhole and had to pay a load, then that's gone up again.

So if you can still and there's not an exit tax yet, and and it's possible, please please just get out of there. It's a cool country and everything, but that's that's no good. Agreed. Alright. Next on the list. Another one from the rage. Hackers have exposed age verification software powering the surveillance web.

Three hacktivists tried to find a workaround to the Discord age verification software, which by the way is now going global. It's not just in the dystopia of The UK. Discord worldwide is soon launching the quote, team by default settings for its global audience.

But these hacktivists, instead of kind of finding the workaround, what they found is that the front end for the age verification software completely exposed to the internet.

Again, this is like a tale as old as time, isn't it? But anyway, bit more context. Ten days ago, the social chat app Discord announced that it would be launching its teen by default settings for its global audience.

As part of this update, all new and existing users worldwide will have a teen appropriate experience with updated communication settings, restricted access to age gated spaces, and content filtering that preserves privacy and meaningful connections.

This, of course, means that to use Discord the way you're used to, you'll have to let it scan your face and the internet wasn't happy. Many community quickly announced their move to other platforms and others like the security researcher Celeste, who goes by the handle vmfunc,

were convinced there would be a workaround. So together with two other researchers, they set out to look into Persona, the San Francisco based startup that is used by Discord for this biometric identity verification.

And they found a Persona front end exposed to the Internet on a US government authorized server. In 2,456 publicly accessible files, the code revealed the extensive surveillance Persona software performs on its users, bundled in an interface that pairs facial recognition with financial reporting and parallel implementation

that appears designed to serve federal agencies. On Monday, Discord stated that it will not be proceeding with persona for identity verification. Interesting. What a world we live in, mate. What a fucking world we live in.

To use your own comment from five minutes ago, none of this is surprising. No. None of it is surprising. It's another tick in the box or a reason for me being glad that decentralized web alternatives as shit as they can be exist.

Mhmm. Because like, if Discord goes through with this, like, they will lose millions of users and they'll go elsewhere. And, you know, I'm glad that we've got alternatives. The elephant in the room is that they'll probably just go to another shit centralized alternative, and it'll take multiple of these steps before

a decent enough decentralized alternative maybe on something like Nosta actually gets used. But we've seen it happen before with things like BitChat, which I know we've poked a bit of fun at before now.

But when the shit really hits the fan, like in Africa with the protests and the election stuff, like, people will eventually coalesce on something that is unstoppable. And Mhmm. It remains to be seen as to whether this will be another one of those stories. We shall see.

We will indeed. Next on the list comes from Bitcoin Magazine, and they were featuring another in-depth piece of research that was being conducted by the guys over at River, I think it's river.com.

And it says Bitcoin's Lightning Network surpasses 1,000,000,000 in monthly volume as adoption grows, which I was very shocked to see. Bitcoin's Lightning Network topped 1,170,000,000.00 in November monthly volume across 5,200,000 transactions according to River Financial,

which says the milestone reflects growing adoption despite flat price action. So what we got here? Yeah. Rivers Research aggregates anonymized data from Lightning node operators to provide a network wide estimate.

Their methodology accounts for overlapping channels and extrapolates to untracked nodes, giving a more accurate picture of the Lightning ecosystem. Which was my first thing was like, how the hell are they working this out? Quote, this approach allows us to debunk misconceptions that Lightning adoption isn't happening.

River said, noting contributions from entities like Async who are behind Phoenix, Kraken, Breeze, Lightspark, LQWD, and others. They managed to sample over 50% of the network capacity. Interestingly, the transaction count fell compared to 2023,

but researchers attribute this to the fading of micro payment experiments in gaming and messaging that are temporarily inflated activity. So volume's up, but number of transactions is down. So people are transacting with larger amounts.

Interesting to see. I mean, promising as well. I know there's a little bit of, you know, in their own words extrapolation

here, but they seem to have sampled enough of the network that gives me confidence that even if the numbers aren't necessarily accurate, there's enough of a trend that the overall headline is that Lightning is being used more for higher value payments,

which is, again, good to see. Especially when fees on Bitcoin network are so low. It's not like people are being pushed to use it because of high fees or anything like that. It's just actual usage because people are using it more.

Yeah. That's a very good point as well. Yeah. Very interesting and very promising. Okay. Next on the list, the guys over at Futurebit have launched their new miner, the Apollo three. Funny that we were talking about Mac Studios actually. It literally looks like a Mac Studio.

I've not seen this. Futurebit wasn't Futurebit that did some sort of mining thing? I can't click on anything because my laptop's upside down. I can't even see it. But

didn't they do some, like, mining thing years ago and pump was pumping it, and it was, like, very, very inefficient? Like, you couldn't possibly make your money back, or am I thinking of something different?

I don't know about the pump think, but they historically have specialized in like desktop miners that have been low hash rate, but think much less than a an s nine, but much more than a BitAct. It kinda sit in the middle.

They had a baked in node and they kind of, you know, wanted to make it like the kind of like the umbrella of miners if you if you know what I mean, with a bit of a UI around it and it sits on your desk, it's quiet, but it's got enough hash power that it's not sort of a lottery ticket that's never gonna come in sort of thing. Yeah.

So they've announced their third iteration of this, which again, I know you can't see it. It literally looks like a a little bit of a taller Mac studio. Okay. Preorder is available from next Friday, '20 or this Friday, February 27 at 2PM eastern. There's no

word on pricing yet, but we have got some specs. They've got three nanometer American designed ASICs. Not sure who's producing those ASICs, but interested that they're American designed, maybe Intel. Up to 18 terahashes of hash power in a single five inch cube. So there you go. It gives you an idea of the size. That's not terrible.

Yeah. It's like, well, you you think how much desk space 18 bit access would take up. Like,

it's in terms of space, it's, you know, much more optimized than that, and it will be you know, it's got a big fat fan on one end. I'd imagine it will be much more efficient than a lot of miners as well. 30 watts per terahash, you can tell me whether that's good or bad.

It's been so long since I've done any shows with John, but I think the s 19 j pros had, like, a 100 terahash, and they were, like, 15

or 18 or something like that. Mhmm. I can't remember how efficient, but I don't think it was far off that. But, you know, you can get one of those. Like, they throw them in Happy Meals now. You can get them so cheap. So you get four times the hash power for probably, I don't know, a $100, couple $100 or something like that.

But they're loud and, you know, they don't look pretty, all that kind of stuff. So it just depends what you're going for. Yeah. Absolutely. Obviously, it has all the node stuff packaged in as well. They've got their own OS called Apollo OS. It's a full Linux desktop experience with a custom Ubuntu based system.

Ethernet, Bluetooth, NVMe drive supports, USB ports,

all of the usual stuff. So you can kind of it's it's a multifunctional device that doesn't look terrible at all. I mean, it's pretty tall, but it's a minus, so they've got a lot to cram in there. Oh, they do, sorry, they do two versions and they do have the prices. I've just had to scroll like right to the bottom of the page.

Mhmm. That's not the best way to design your website. I apologize. But they do the the minor and the node, which is starting at $1,099. And if you want the minor only, which presumably will be slightly smaller, it starts at $8.09 $9.

Okay. Again, I'm not that up on my mining stats to know whether that is a good buy or not compared to what else you can get, but I'm sure there's a market for this. Well, it's not if you just want hash rate.

But if you want something that's a node and it gets, you know, dips your feet in and just gets you playing around with this stuff, you could argue that this is as good as or potentially even a better option than Bitax's.

So no hate on it. It's it's cool. But it's just, you know Yeah. It's it's not like you're not gonna have someone who's already been mining and wants to increase the hash rate going and buying this. It's just a completely different customer.

Yeah. Absolutely. And I I'm open to be corrected on this here, but I think they assemble in The USA as well Okay. Which is nice to see. Similar to also Foundation, so hats off for that. Nice.

Okay. Next on the list, we have Bitcoin advancing towards quantum resistance with BIP three six zero, which has been announced, and yet another output type. This one's called p two m r, and I have no idea what the m r stands for. Quick bit of a I say recap, this is new to me. Oh, there we go. Pay to Merkel Root.

So Okay. BIP three sixty is a proposed lanes to prepare Bitcoin for the future computing threats. It's been merged into the official BIP repository now, which makes it, you know, somewhat official and marks new steps in efforts to strengthen the network against emerging quantum threats.

The proposal introduces a new Bitcoin output type called p two m r designed to support quantum resistance script tree functionality while maintaining compatibility with existing Tapscript infrastructure.

This has been, I think, proposed by merch, the oh, no. Sorry. It's by Hunter Beast, Ethan Hellman, and Isabelle Fox and Duke. What a name. Isabelle Fox and Duke. Good name. Very good name. So just in proposal status at the moment, but good to see that there's obviously a lot of hype and people flexing their muscles on social

one way or the other about this quote unquote quantum threat. Mhmm. But it's good to see the the actual people who, you know, I presume have more of an understanding of this beginning to put the building blocks in place to kind of future proof this.

I would imagine it's probably gonna take a couple of years before this gets any form of consensus or adoption. Once again, nice to see that progress is being made against this unknown threat.

Alright. Last one on the list, just a more of a PSA than a news item really, but the Bolts team, which is one of the best, if not the best, non custodial Bitcoin swap services where you can swap from Lightning to Onchain to Liquid and between any three combinations of those. They've closed their telegram

entirely because for the obvious things, spam and scams

Mhmm. Just unacceptable levels. The exact same reason we closed ours at Foundation. If you need to contact them off the website itself, we'll have a support page or a support link, but you can get their updates just from Twitter or Nostow, which will be linked in the show notes as well. Right. Should we do some boosts? Let's do it.

I can't scroll down. Let me do the first one, two, three, four, five because I can't scroll down. Well, we've only got five anyway, so go for it. Weld it in with 4,444 sats. Turbo Nerds is the name of our ungovernable warehouse machinery racing team.

There you go. Yeah. I like that. Jordan with a thousand sats. I was signed up for the off grid cash waiting list, but I'm thinking I might go with Freedonia. Anyone else have good experience with them? I don't know about off grid cash, but I have heard good reports from Freedonia.

A mutual friend of ours has used it and seems very happy. So any thoughts there, Q? Yeah. I've had multiple positive reports about Freedomia. Both, you know, the general kind of gist of the feedback is it just works. Top ups are easy. The Telegram group is very active. The actual support side of it outside of the community

is very active as well. One of the contacts I have actually had an issue with a swap being frozen. I'm not sure on the context as to why it was frozen. To be clear, the swap is not handled by Freedomia. I think they use a a swap service, a little bit like Bolt, but I don't think it is specifically Bolt. Mhmm.

And whoever runs Freedomia was like excellent in helping them handle whatever it was that was going on with the swap service and why the funds got frozen essentially.

So it wasn't a case of, you know, oh, we don't do the swap service. You need to go and speak to them. It sounds like the Freedomia team, I presume it is a team behind it, was very helpful in helping them kind of orchestrate the retrieval of the funds. So again, purely on it though, all in just one person's account.

But, yeah, anybody that I speak to about it is that used it has only has positive things to say about it. And I I believe I don't know whether it's active now or it's coming soon, but they told me that lightning top ups are are coming soon as well, which is great from a privacy perspective.

Nice. I'm I'm sure I read through on their documentation. Not documentation. Documentation. That makes me sound like I actually read stuff. I read on their Telegram group that there was someone who'd managed to do a cash withdrawal with it as well with, like Oh. Tap. Some of these cash machines have, like, a tap function.

So they could do that and then withdraw cash as well as spending, which I thought was quite interesting because it's like it's basically a cash sale if it's not linked to your name with, obviously, the fees associated, but a lot less risks than you could have. So I thought that was interesting. I don't know

whether that works on all machines. I'm pretty sure they'd said something like, wherever it was they were in the world, there was, like, five or six cash points and one of them it worked on.

So I don't think it's all of them, but that is quite interesting if that works. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. I I wasn't aware of that. That's interesting. Nice. Okay. Yeah. For context, by the way, we're talking about freedomia.io,

which is the website if you wanna go and check that one out. I'm just trying to see from their FAQs whether lightning top ups are active, but it doesn't mention it. So you'll have to go and find out for yourselves. DeckBytes sent 500 sats. Looking forward to the Umbral interview.

Okay. Not yet. Yeah. We need to make that happen. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't reached out. I haven't done anything. I just said it and then have done nothing. So thanks for the reminder. I'll have to who do you speak to from the Umbral team? Do they have, like, a person who does pods? The two I know about is Luke Childs,

who's prolific kind of Oh, yeah. Coin contributor. He's done loads of cool stuff before he Yeah. He was over at Umbral. And then you've got I'm gonna butcher his name now, but he's quite public on Twitter. He's he's the guy in the videos. I think it's Mayankcak

or something like that. Okay. I'm sure either of those would be up for it. Okay. Nostergang with a 111 sats, no comment. And BTC onboard with a 100 sats, Humble hardware is a little expensive, but great quality and performance for people who don't want to be part time sys admins.

Can't comment on that. I haven't actually seen that hardware, but it looks especially that new one that we were talking about Oh, yeah. That that looked to be very, very nice quality. And that's it. Yeah. Absolutely. And and you hit the nail on the head really, BCM board.

Like, yeah, you could build it yourself cheaper, but, like, I think it's a quite a compelling product. And like you say, it's it's excellent for people who wanna dip their toes into self hosting without having to smash the head off a keyboard in the command line. Yes.

Okay. Shall we whiz through the updates and releases, mate? Yeah. Let's do it. I can't see anything now, just so you know. Okay. No problem. I'll describe it all for you. First one on the list is actually the first time we've ever mentioned it on the brief is Ibis Wallet.

Seems to have been gaining a bit of support over on the socials. Comes from Aeon BTC, prominent Bitcoiner on Twitter. Looks like this is their first foray into wallet creation. The headline is basically Ibis Wallet is a self custody Bitcoin wallet for Android

inspired by Sparrow Wallet, but built for mobile. Designed for experienced users, no hand holding, no training wheels. And they have just released version 2.1 beta, which has Electrum seed support, wallet reordering, export your server settings, and auto server switching as well.

But just a quick recap because this is the first mention of this wallet itself, I wanna kind of give a bit of an architecture overview. Built on top of BDK, which is Bitcoin development kit, which is the the framework for a lot of these new Bitcoin wallets these days, Envoy included.

It has encrypted backups. It supports batch payments. You can manually broadcast raw transactions.

It has cloak mode, which is similar to stealth mode with Samurai Wallet, where you can disguise the app as a calculator app. You've got auto wipe, so so you can set a threshold for a failed unlock that automatically and irreversibly wipes all of the app data.

Duress pins, normal pins, replaced by fee, child pays for payment, coin control, custom Electrum servers, built in TOR, hardware wallet signing, import private keys, watch only wallets, multiple seed wallets.

Yeah. Quite fully featured considering it's only been out for a couple of weeks, I believe, it's been on my radar for a couple of weeks is all I've seen it for. Yeah, feature packed, very new, so tread carefully, especially if you're going to be putting private keys into this.

There's probably going to be very little to no code review on this at the moment, so I would say treat it very much as a as an alpha or a beta product and act accordingly. But, yeah, nice to see another one popping up built on top Especially that so feature rich as well at such an early stage.

Okay. Next on the list, we have Spiral Wallet version two point four point one. We have an improvement on Samurai Wallet backup imports. We've got a couple of bug fixes. We've got added KikKey passphrase support. I suggest configuring a custom wallet directory when opening a wallet from a non default location.

And I also believe that since we last recorded, there has been version 2.4 o as well. So I'll cover that one here because we was after the cutoff of the last show. The headline there was that we added add bit three seven five PSBT fields and verify DLEQ proofs for hardware wallet support when sending to silent payment addresses.

So if you've got a silent payment compatible hardware wallet like a BitBox, I believe, you can now coordinate all of that through the Sparrow UI as you would with any other traditional transaction, which is very cool to see. As always, Craig is pushing the boundaries.

And there's also been some additions, add wallet discovery feature for connected devices, Trezor Safe seven support, Legend Nano Gen five support, and then loads of other bug fixes as well. Next up, we've got Aqua Wallet version 0.4 o. Oh, and a quick update on the Dolphin card. I mentioned at the end of

Didn't get pulled. It got pulled and I I left an open comment for I wasn't sure how they were handling getting the the funds back for people who,

you know, had money on their Dolphin card. I believe that everybody has now been contacted via the email associated with your Aqua wallet so that you can claim back the funds in l b t c, I think. Okay. Or it might have been Tether or you you've been contacted to to claim it back.

So if you were a Dolphin user, check your emails, specifically the one associated with the Aqua wallet, and you should be able to claim all your funds back into the wallet itself. Anyway, back to version 0.4.

This is a major release that introduced a full UI and UX redesign across the app along with multi wallet support that allows you to manage multiple wallets seamlessly. A multi wallet support is designed to work in tandem with the SAMRoc protocol in BTC Pay Server, enabling merchants to set it up easily.

We've improved readability of addresses, IDs, and invoices, blah blah blah blah blah. Yeah. So just big UI and UX overhaul. Haven't checked it out yet to see what the improvements are, but it sounds like it's a bit more of a big release.

And just for context, I think the the Samrock protocol in BTC pay server is essentially how you can have be a Bitcoin merchant with a BTC pay server, but not have to have, like, your own

like, you know, in the back end. I believe it all works over liquid and you can just seamlessly connect it to a mobile wallet like Aqua or I believe or Bitcoin also supports this as well so that you can have like you know, you don't have to have the headache of dealing with the Lightning side of things if you Mhmm.

You know, are happy with the the trade offs of liquid. However, the open question I have is that if you've gone through the headache of setting up a BTCPay server, it seems like you, you know, you know how to set up and run a server. So, like, why wouldn't you do the Lightning side of things? I know it's absolutely an extra headache,

but it just seems like well, I suppose you've got hosted versions of BTP as well that are one click. So, yeah, maybe there is some some value to that. What do you think? I don't know, really. I I'm not really, like, a liquid user.

And, yeah, I would think if you've already gone through those hurdles, I don't know. I guess a lot of this stuff is just, like, for a very small percentage of people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Next, BTC server version two point three point five. New features, they've got allow BTC Pay server to start without any on chain payment methods,

add custom text box for checkout, new custom rate providers, support multi crypto wallet balance widgets, and ability to update previously downloaded language pack along with some other bug fixes.

Then we've got BISC two, a new feature sorry, version two point one point nine. They've got expanded locales. You can now run it in over 50 languages, automatic wallet restoration, show loading banner, and display improvements.

Cake Wallet version five point nine point zero, they've titled this one strengthening the privacy ecosystem. Welcome to BNB Smart Chain and Zcash upgrades. Doesn't look like there's any additional Bitcoin related stuff, so I'm gonna gloss over it.

Yeah. Nothing in there. Frost Snap version zero point two point one, app only release. No firmware changes. Devices running version two point o firmware are fully compatible. They've now added QR scanning on all platforms, and they fixed Electrum connectivity on IPV six networks

and loads of other bug fixes as well. We talked about frost snap on Freedom Tech Friday. Yeah. I was gonna bring that up actually. I actually wanna try this. I think I might buy myself one. Try what? Human Centipede?

Yeah. Just the frosted version, the real life version.

Yeah. I think it looks quite cool. The only thing, like I said in the show, is I think they should do a redesign and do rather than mouth to us. They should do sort of, like, side by side. It'd be more of a hug than a fetish.

Yeah. Like a group hug. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think that's worth considering on the next release if they do one. Agreed. Moistro version zero point one six point three been released. Just some bug fixes. Nothing to write home about. Peach app version 0.69 been released. Nice. Mainly bug fixes.

Umbrella version one point six point one has been released with absolutely no release notes whatsoever, so your guess is as good as mine. LNBIT version one point five point zero, release candidate two has been released with zero release notes, so your guess is as good as mine. The same with Mempool version 3.3

o beta has been released with zero release notes. Come on, guys. You can do better than this.

Oh, and Zeus version zero point twelve point four beta one's been released, mainly just fixes for boring stuff like databases, so nothing huge to talk about there.

Oh, sorry, I missed one off the end. Bull Bitcoin mobile. This is a non public release, even though it's public on their GitHub. Only used if advised to by the support team. It's called swap, recover, build. So it sounds like they've found a break in chains that's affected some users, and they've got a a release available

only if people actually need it. So don't go and install that one unless you have some issue. And if you do have an issue, just contact their support first because it does say only install if advised to do so by the support team.

That is the end of the list, mate. Any other a o b? Any other things you wanna moan about? Any other things you wanna talk about? Any requests from the audience? Oh, I do actually. Completely unrelated to Bitcoin, but we did cover it on a Freedom Tech Friday topic.

Cameras, when setting them up, I think I asked you this privately as well. Like, you've gotta connect to an app of the like, their their app of the cameras and then set up the hub and all that, and then you can move it across to HomeAssist.

I think you said there's no way around that. But, also, you can't, for some reason, run one behind a VPN. So, like, when I'm trying to connect to my Flint two router,

like, to set it up, it just won't work. And then I went back and forth to chat GPT, and it's like, oh, just turn the VPN off. And I'm like, well, no. Fucking don't wanna do that, do I? Because, like, there's a reason I have it.

So for context, anyone listening, we did a show on smart homes on Friday. It must have been, like, couple of months ago.

And Yeah. Q was talking through a setup and, like, basically, that you could have your security cameras and your lights and all the stuff that you might want in a smart home running on this thing called HomeAssist, which is open source,

and you have control of it rather than things being in the cloud. So I've taken his advice and gone and bought some bits and pieces and, obviously, having a few issues. So that's what I'm talking about here.

So you can access it on the local network and nowhere else. Is that the the problem? I tried first putting it into my Flint two router. Wouldn't work. Just a red light on the front of the home hub. Just wouldn't work. Wouldn't work. Kept troubleshooting. Couldn't find a reason.

Then it said, oh, it could be because it's behind a VPN because I talked through, like, what network it's on. Then I tried it on the ISP router. Same thing. Just red thing on the front. So

bit of a loss at the moment. It suggested, oh, we'll turn off your VPN on the Flint two because I could see it on there. Like, I could see it when I logged into the GLI or GL Yeah. Yeah. Something. Yep. In there, I could see it.

But, yeah, it was saying something to do with you're trying to connect the cameras, and it's trying to call out to their servers to, like, set them up, and then it can't

call back because you're running the VPN or something like that. Did you have a similar issue? Or No. Mine's plugged directly into my Flint router with no issue. The only difference is I don't run a VPN at the router level. Mine's around per device. So Okay.

Okay. The only way to test if that is the problem is to turn it off and just see if it connects just once. Yeah. But the thing is I have my node connected and bits connected, and I didn't wanna, like, expose that. I guess I could just shut down that mini PC,

which is the only other thing on the network, and then turn it off and then try. Or I could make a guest network maybe for it. Just because you I think you only need it just for the setup.

Yeah. Just try the guest network because presumably, you can tell the traffic going through that guest network doesn't have to be routed through the VPN. Right? You should be able to split tunnel it. I would imagine so. Okay. I'll try that. But Give that a whirl. I mean, I've never fought with router level VPNs

just because I just know it'll cause headaches with my missus watching Netflix or my kid watching Disney or something on the TV, and I just can't be bothered with the hassle. So Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. Alright. I'll have a I'll have a go. I only originally did it just because I was downloading the Bitcoin blockchain,

and I wanted to do that behind the VPN, which obviously I couldn't do unless it's a router level. So that was the reason for that. When you do it at all Good point. I know it's slower, obviously.

Good point. But, yeah, you wouldn't have to dick about. Okay. Well, there we are. It's another pointless thing I've done. Well done, mate.

Outside of that, no. Nothing my end. What about you, mate? No. Big week for us, like I say, for for all the the Prime related stuff. So, yeah, I'll be rushing off to to carry on last minute testing straight after this.

Nice. Alright. Well, I'm gonna go and put my laptop somewhere warm, try and dry this out Yeah. On the Oh, yeah. I think that can actually work or in the dryer room or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good idea. Okay.

Alright, mate. Well, you have a good one. You're gonna how am I gonna stop this? I'm gonna have to flip the lap laptop now. Let me just flip it without it frying. Right. One, two, 3, and stop.

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