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 talk about Bitcoin, privacy, open source, keeping your Bitcoin secure, and the news and software updates that matter. I just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who's been supporting Ungovernable Misfits, and a big thank you to Foundation

for supporting the show. If you haven't already checked them out, go to foundation.xyzed. They make cypherpunk tools for fuckwits, and anyone can use this, even me. If you have any questions or you want to reach out, feel free, and I'll be happy to go through things with you. For anything super technical,

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Download the APK or start using this today on Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, or, of course, your Android device. Enjoy the show.

Hello. Good morning, and welcome back to the coin brief, a live and interactive show taking place every Monday at 9AM eastern or 2PM UK time across the ungovernable network. Each week, we go through the news, the releases, and the developments that actually matter in Bitcoin.

This, of course, includes self custody, privacy, the tools you run yourself, and the people that are trying to make all of that more difficult. If it affects your ability to help, to hold, and spend your own money without asking permission, then we wanna talk about it.

This show and the topics we cover are powered by Freedom dot Tech, a daily news desk that uses AI to monitor hundreds of sources so we can continue to bring you the signal every single week.

As always, we'd love to have you help stay the conversation by commenting live, asking questions, boosting the show, or just sharing it with your friends. My name's Q and A. I'm head of customer experience at Foundation. And as always, I'm joined by my good friend Max, the head honcho of the Young Governable Network.

So without further ado, Max, happy Monday. It's time to the show. How are you doing? Happy Monday. Very good, mate. How are you? I am pretty good. Had a had a nice weekend. I got

down to... I had a bit of a daddy door day on Saturday. Just did loads of, like, you know, took her to the cinema and things like that.... Nails. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That sort of stuff. And then yesterday, went down to Santa Pod to a car show with a few friends.

And the weather was... I've I've never been... I've been to Santa Pod loads of times, but I've never been when it's not fucking freezing because basically, it's just like a massive airfield. So it's just like Yeah. Blustery. And obviously, it's in The UK, so it's wet. But now I went went in shorts and t shirt, and it was a glorious day.

Wow. What what sort of calm meet or show was it? It was a German car show. So just basically all German brands. There's like a like a show and shine type thing off to the side. And then obviously, it's a Santa pod, which for those of you that don't know is a drag... Like the the drag strip for The UK.

So there was all sorts of weird and wonderful things going going up and down the strip, doing some ridiculous times. Everything from...

They obviously bring out the the jet dragsters that do it in something stupid, like, five seconds that literally feel feel like they're gonna pierce a hole in your body that they're that loud and thunderous

all the way all the way to like bog standard diesel golfs where people are just turning up and going for a laugh and it takes them twenty seconds to get down the strip. And then you've got like...

There was a... I know it was a German car show, but there was a diesel Nissan Micra that I shit you not, when it went down the strip. It did a pretty quick time. It was like ten seconds, which is like, you know, you're talking Ferrari speeds, they're like new Ferrari speeds. And

the the cloud of black smoke it left behind it was Yeah. Yeah. Just absolutely comical. It was just like a steam train Rolling coal the indeed. Yeah. But it was fucking quick. I mean, it's basically just a crisp packet with a massive engine then, I guess. I like diesels.

I have a I have a thing for fast diesels. You wouldn't if you'd seen the price of diesel in The UK these days. Really? What's the price of diesel now? It's like £2.10 a liter. $2.10 a liter?

Yes. Oh, you cunt. I remember when it was, like, 85 p or something like that. Yep. Oh, you absolute cunt. And I also remember there was a time when everyone was switching to diesel because it's like, oh, diesel's cheaper than petrol, and you get much more to the gallon. So

Yeah. You know, they sound like shit and they smell, but, like, it's worth it. So everyone switched, and then they're like, right. Now you're in. We're gonna fuck you up, which is what they're doing with the electric cars as well. I remember, like, it was like no tax. You don't have to pay any tax.

And and then, like, you get the car and they go, did... Sorry. Did we say no tax? What we meant was it's sort of a bit less tax for for, like, a year, but then it's... We're gonna fucking tax the shit out of you.

The old bait and switch. The classic. Yeah. Yeah. So, yes, it was a good fun weekend. More VideCode and as always, continuing to work on my my mission control, is kinda like my personal everything app Mhmm. That controls Your Jarvis.

Yeah. Exactly. I've got Jarvis in there that I can talk to and basically controls my entire... As much as as of my entire life as possible. All my inboxes go into one place and control all the models, my notes, and the show planning that we got for today, and it's beautiful. Obviously,

does have all my personal stuff in there as well, so I can't ever really show it to anybody Yeah. Live on a podcast, unfortunately. But I'll I'll give you a show and tell at the time. Have you thought about what you might name it? Like, obviously, Jarvis is taken. Is it female or is it male? Is it a Janet? So so the app itself,

it's a it's a dedicated Mac app, and I've got an iOS version as well.

It's... So that app is called Mission Control because it is literally like the the... Oh, it's actually called Mission Control. It's the operating system that, like, runs my life, basically. And the the the guy that... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. From the guy... Yeah. Well, I say I say I did. Me and Claude did, obviously. He did all the way.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I say make do, he does. But, yeah, I I built it. It's it's signed by my developer key. Same with the iOS app. It's just on test flight assigned to, like, my my Apple account, so nobody else can can access it or anything.

So the app itself is Mission Control, and the the little clunker that lives in there is is called Jarvis. Yeah. I'm I'm living up to the stereotypes.

Fair enough, mate. I'd probably do the same if I had the ability. Yeah. I mean, there's no reason why I can't, like, strip out all the personal stuff and leave it as a shelf for you to just plug all your shit into.

Yeah. You you say these things, and then you... I think you sometimes forget just the the way I just devastate any technology.

The anti clanker. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately. What about you, Will? Have been fighting any centipedes or anything lately? I actually did take one out yesterday. I moved a big oil barrel, and underneath, there was one. But it wasn't it wasn't the size of the... That other one was fucking...

For anyone who didn't catch our last show, I fought a... I'm not exaggerating. I think probably between thirty and forty centimeter centipede, and it was fucking hench as well. Like, really fucking hench and fast. It moved like a moved like a snake, like a snake on a mission that's angry.

And, yeah, even after cutting that in half. Because I cut it in half, and it was in, like, next to a load of undergrowth. And so I I cut the thing in half, and the back half was with me. And then I saw rustling through the undergrowth,

And I was like, what the fuck? And I'm chatting to my missus. I was like, get the spray. Get some... Get fucking get something. She runs out. And then the rustling stopped, and I was like, oh, where's the other half gone?

She's like, ah, there it is. And it was coming round the other side behind me. It's gone through all the bushes, and it was coming to attack me from behind. And I was like, ah, you can't, and then smashed it again.

And so, yeah, even when cut in half, it was still... It was a formidable opponent. They are terrifying. I wouldn't normally kill stuff. Like, I generally leave stuff alone, but I was like, you're too close to where I'm sleeping. We're in the jungle at the moment. And I was like,

when you... If you see someone who's been bitten by one of these things, it's fucking bad. Like, it proper... You'll swell up, and it, like, hurts like shit. They're very, very venomous. So...

Yeah. That was it, really. Killed a small one. It's probably it's missus or one of its little bitches or something, and she was probably angry at me as well. What else has happened? That's it, really.

We had a storm from Razer? Did... Do we know the result of that? Is it... It's finished now. Yeah? Oh, yeah. We do. Yeah. It finished on Friday. That was... I think it was 10,000,000 or just below. I did look at it, and now I've forgotten. I it think was just below 10,000,000.

We don't know who's won it. Someone's won it, but we don't know who they are yet. I was hoping it would be someone in the TSB group or someone we know because I thought, oh, they might actually donate the other half as well.

But that hasn't happened yet to my knowledge. But still, like, 5,000,000 ish stats is going to support the cause, so, that's a massive win. Yeah. Definitely. And thanks again to... For Richter for organizing that.

Fantastic job. That AI video that he he made to a company, it was just absolutely phenomenal. Yeah. Really, really, really good. Really good. We...

And thank you, Anonymous, for your 3,500 sub boost, whoever you are. We also have a fairly active Nosdah chat as well, because then it's Monday morning for most of our audience. Yeah. Expatriotic is in there posting like an absolute madman.

He said that a little over 10,000,000 was raised, 5,200,000 went to the winner. He also said that...

Didn't know there's a jungle in the North Pole, and he also said that hench must be an English colloquially ill ism. Yes. It is. Yes. It just means that you're big or brawny or massive. Yeah.

You're henched. Like, you struggle to get through normal doorways. You gotta go through sideways. Yep. That's right. So, yeah, good good result. Thank you for everybody getting involved, and special thanks to Rick as well. That's fantastic.

But sorry, I cut you off there. You were still talking about your your weekend fighting... Oh, no. That... That's all very dull. It's all very dull. What's not dull, though, is I've got Rick coming on for a confab this Thursday.

So first time actually chatting with them. I think we've exchanged a few messages here and there, but first time chatting with them. So looking forward to that. And, yeah, doing a doing a confab, which I haven't done for...

I think the last one I did was with Vic, and that was... It's gotta be a couple of months ago. So, yeah, been been a bit behind on them. So looking forward to that. Too busy doing weekly... Two weekly live shows instead. I know. It's crazy, isn't it? What what have we done?

Yeah. Made a rough bowling box here, but Oh, yes. The government all seem to love it. So who are we to to deny them? Exactly. So, yeah, that's it that's from me. Should we dive into the news, mate? I am on a bit of a hard spot, so we should be pretty good tracking.

Let's do it. Let me me bring up my screen share. There we go. Thank you, Clanker, for the slides. Okay. So let's hit the news. We have, as you've seen from the title, the cop who robbed Silk Road. This is an interesting story.

For those of you... Just to be clear here, I'm talking about Silk Road two point o, not not the original. The the... Well, because they also robbed the original. Well, that is also very true. So, know, that that... You can't accuse me of clickbait here because it is factual on both accounts. But

this one talks about Silk Road two point o which went live back in November 2013,

less than a month after the FBI had shut down the original Silk Road. Well, in The UK, the NCA, the National Crime Agency, working with the FBI managed to trace... Allegedly, this is by the way, managed to trace the founder and administrator to a Thomas White from Liverpool in The UK,

who went under the handle DPR two and also a separate handle Saint Exo or Stexo. He was arrested way back in November 2014, the same month that the the operation, Animas, took the site down.

And when they did that, the NCA c 97 bitcoin from him. He got five years and four months in 2019. Big gap there. Arrested in '14, and he didn't get he didn't get sentenced until 2019. So the good old justice system I don't think...

Also, I don't think anyone should go to prison for any of these sort of things, to be honest with you. But but five years, when you think that our good friends are doing Mhmm. Five years for nothing, like, literally following the fucking rules and, like, doing nothing other than helping people protect themselves.

Yeah. That's not bad. Like Yeah. I mean, I don't have the details. It's like... Because, obviously, with with the Silk Road, they they... The original Silk Road with Ross, they tried to pin... Well, they did pin, like, murder of hire, all sorts of shit on him. I'm not sure what what

they managed to pin on him because it's clearly less because he didn't get two life sentences and all that bullshit. Yeah. But anyways, like, none of that is the actual news. That was just set in the scene.

The the officer who cracked this Thomas White's device and extracted the crypto from them was known as Paul Charles. And on the sixth or seventh of May twenty seventeen, he moved 50 Bitcoin out of White's so named retirement wallet into transactions,

split it into smaller amounts, and ran it through the Bitcoin fog mixer and sent it on to people their addresses. Over the next few years, he spent it a bit at a time through CryptoPay and Wirex debit cards and cash withdrawals.

The CryptoPay card alone shows 279 transactions totaling about £23,000. Nobody inside the agency suspected him. The NCA assumed that White had moved the coins himself, and by late twenty twenty one, it had written off the 50 Bitcoin as untraceable.

White kept saying it had to be somebody inside the NCA because they were the ones holding the private keys. After White was released on license in early twenty twenty two, Merseyside Police, who were supervising him, heard about the missing coins at a meeting with the NCA.

Charles, the police officer, was in that meeting. They then opened an investigation and arrested him in May 2022 and found an iPhone linking him to a transfer account and notebooks in his office with white usernames and passwords.

Oh, you fucking moron. The police officer pled guilty to theft and two money laundering offenses in May 2025. And in July 2025, Liverpool Crown Court jailed him for five and a half years.

The 50 bitcoin was worth about £59,000 when he took it and more than 4,400,000 by the time he was sentenced. Holy shit. On the thirtieth of September this year, the Crown Prosecution Service got a confiscation order against him for £1,810,678 and 93 p.

His benefit from the crime was assessed at about 1,970,000, and 1,810,000 is what he has available, which includes the full value of 30 bitcoin that they've already recovered from him. But here is the twist.

Just over 1,000,000 of it goes to clear Thomas White's own unpaid confiscation order. The cop who robbed the dark web admin ends up paying off the dark web admin's debt to the state.

Yeah. That's a nice twist. Pretty wild timeline, a book, you know, a nice ending for a bent copper. Yeah. That is... That's a nice twist. I like that. But not surprising as as per usual. They got their fingers in the pie.

Yes. It does make you wonder how often is this happening because it's like it's All the time. Perfect for it, isn't it? Like, it's Bitcoin and crypto, I mean, for, like, dirty coppers to get their hands on and just be like, oh, I'll snaffle off five percent and nobody's ever gonna I

wouldn't say it's perfect. I'd say cash is more perfect, and that's still what most things run on. And that's the perfect for bank ops. It's like, oh, yeah. You know, we kicked the door in, and we we found £50,000.

Did you, or did you find a 100 and the rest went in your fucking pocket? Yeah. I think I think that is very, very common. Yep. Slightly Have you seen... Sorry. Before we go on, have you seen the film The Departed?

It rings a bell, but, like, unless you tell me the the plot, I I I couldn't tell you what it was about. Two bent cops who are in working under one crime boss. It's got, like, Jack Nicholson in there. It's got DiCaprio in there. It's got Think I have.

Excellent. It's very it's very good. Anyway, that was it. Oh, okay. Cool. Next on the list, South Africa's bank, Absa, is the first American bank to officially custody Bitcoin, mainly for its institutional clients, which was reported this week.

Rob Downs, head of digital assets at Absa corporate and investment banks say Bitcoin will be the largest asset the bank custodies with other digital assets to follow. This also follows Deutsche Bank's custody launch in... Back in September now. So bank custody has officially reached Africa,

specifically South Africa. And South Africa's, you know, a pretty serious market for it. Yeah. Chainalysis' twenty twenty five index put the country second in Sub Saharan Africa by value received in terms of, you know, Bitcoin transactions. They reckon $36,000,000,000 worth, which is interesting.

Yeah. So... Yeah. I mean, obviously, we are champions here of self custody in your own coins. But, you know, when we see more positive adoption in general, I, you know, I I think this isn't a terrible thing.

Mhmm. Yeah. Alright. Not so positive news. Blink, the custodial lightning wallet has published its post mortem of the attack that they sustained on the September 19. Quick recap, basically, a permissions floor in their admin tools, which was open since October 2023, let the attacker grant themselves admin rights,

which was through their OAuth consent page. The attacker took over 35 custodial accounts by changing the email or phone that was on file and withdrew 6.61 b t c from 24 of those accounts.

Nine of the targeted accounts had two f a turned on, and the attacker logged into all nine, but the attempts to actually use them were refused, obviously, because the attacker didn't have the two f a, which is obviously, you know, a good thing to

to drive home here. And none of those nine accounts lost anything because they couldn't get in. Blink, obviously, you know, they saw it eventually. They shut the service down and shareholders advanced the full amount as in... As an interest free loan. So every balance was restored by...

I think it was like a week late. Yeah. September 24 with the fees refunded. The attacker also read details on 3,817 other accounts and tried to extort Blink by threatening to publish the user data.

Blink refused and the admin tools are now reachable only over VPN. Blink has also put up a recovery bounty. Anybody who's got information that leads to getting the stolen Bitcoin back gets 20 per... Sorry, 25% of what was recovered, which can be anywhere up to 1.65 Bitcoin, assuming that the full amount was was able to be recovered.

Yeah. And another 25% of that goes to... As a donation if they get it back to circular economies like Bitcoin Beach, Bitcoin Akazi, AfriBit, Kibera, and so on. Obviously, they're all big communities in and around the Blink ecosystem.

Yeah. They've said that you don't have to identify the attacker. Partial recoveries count and there is no end date. As of the October 1, 0.87 Bitcoin has not moved. Most of what went through NEAR, which is an acronym, n e a r, which I think is where they tried to to launder it. I'm not sure what that stands for. Right.

And separately, Blink has opened a proper bug bounty for the first time, paying up to 0.1 b t c for any critical findings with safe harbor and good faith research for a floor that sat open for over three years. I think this is a good move for them.

There's a couple of standouts here. The the two... Well, yeah, two standouts here. Number one, reminder, 2FA your shit, all of it, without fail. Yes, it's a pain in the ass, but if you were a Blink user and you had 2FA enabled, this would have saved you.

The other one is only 24 accounts of this custodial wallet Blink had six... Over 6.5 Bitcoin in it. Like, that that is fucking wild to me. Is it? Yeah. Like, who's... Why are you keeping that much in a custodial account, people? Well, most people do. I don't... Like, I don't think we're in a tiny little bubble.

You know? I I can't fully math that, but it's, like, a 0.25 of a coin or a third of a coin average, like, which is what? $20? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So what what I'm say... Yeah. It is. But what I'm saying is, like, I reckon most people who invest in or hold Bitcoin are

more wealthy than the average person. I think it's almost like a like a bit of a luxury item the way that it's, like, invested in or traded and people are using these exchanges. It's not people who don't have any money as a general rule, I think. I think that's more like XRP and, like, you know,

some of the, like, shitcoin, meme coins where people are like, oh, if I put £20 in, I'm gonna fucking be a billionaire, that kind of stuff. So I think, a, they're already, like, part of the more wealthy groups,

and, b, most people use Bitcoin like morons. They use it like a savings account. They don't distinguish this in any way that it's different from any other financial instrument. So I'm not surprised by that.

Yeah. I suppose that's fair. Good morning to you, BTC Wrestle. Nice to see you in the chat, mate. Hope you're well. Good morning, mate. Next on the list, Tether. Says that USDT is coming to Bitcoin this month as well. And they're gonna do so through the RGB protocol and issued by UT XO whose co founder Victor...

And he's got a surname that I'm not gonna try and pronounce begins with an I and ends in a k. He said the company holds a commercial license to issue USDT on Bitcoin. Utechxo plans client side validated transfers which keep transfer data off chain between the parties.

BTC to USDT swaps and BTC backed lending with lightning support to follow shortly after. That's fine. Paulo of... Well, the boss of Tether posted, it's coming home the week before. Obviously,

leaning into the fact that he is a Bitcoiner at heart, and and he's happy the fact that Tether is now finally gonna be coming to to Bitcoin rather than being I don't understand. Sat on top of, you know, Tron and all the other crap.

I don't really understand. Does it make any difference? Because isn't it still centralized and just can be frozen and, like,

am I missing something here? Like, what's what's the difference gonna be? Well, I'm glad you asked that question, Max. And listen, as I promise you that wasn't prime, but the rest of my notes go on to say, RGB does give better privacy than USDT on Tron or Ethereum,

but UTXO cannot freeze RGB addresses the way that Tether freezes Ethereum ones. So instead, it will keep a blacklist of UTXOs that become unredeemable at bridges or minting tools. So they'll close off the exits instead.

The the centralized exits, by the way. Like, that you you'd still be... Like, can't freeze an address and say, no, you can't even transact. So in theory, you could, like, do a p two p swap or something like that with somebody if you wanted to. Right. You couldn't prevent that.

Okay. Yeah. So so the coins keep moving. It just kinda be cashed out. USDT lived on Bitcoin once before. Oh, I didn't know that. Through Omni back in 2014. Interesting. Wasn't aware of that one, but...

Yeah. I mean, you know... Okay. So it's better? Yeah. Better. You know, I'd rather it be on Bitcoin than on Tron because, well, like, why not? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. It's better. Still probably don't use it if you can avoid it, but better.

Yeah. Definitely. Okay. A federal court has blocked a Utah anti VPN age verification law. This is an interesting one, not strictly Bitcoin, but it is pertinent to everybody that listens to to this show.

A federal judge in Utah has blocked the first US state law to penalize VPN use. Judge Barlow granted a preliminary injunction halting the VPN provisions of Utah's s b 73, which required adult sites to either block VPN users outright or locate every visitor.

The case was brought by ALO, which apparently is Pornhub's parent company. And the court found the law likely burdens people and businesses outside Utah and demands that something technically impossible.

Sorry, demands that it is something technically impossible. A site simply cannot know where a VPN user really is. Ding, ding, ding. Thank you for some common sense. Obviously, this finding is specific to Utah, but it matters beyond Utah because as we've seen, age verification is ramping up everywhere as a reason to basically identify

everybody online. And a VPN is obviously a way to to try and skirt around that, which is gonna make VPNs naturally the the next target. You know, we've seen that already.

One part of this law is not challenging, though stay in force. It does remain illegal in Utah for covered site to explain how to use VPN, so they can't tell you how to circumvent these stupid laws.

K. Next on, the list, Core Lightning warns of active attacks on unpatched nodes and to upgrade to 26 o 6.8 ASAP. They're basically... Yeah. Warning operators to upgrade now after reports of nodes being drained through an active attack.

On the September 28, an operator running 26 o 6.7 filed an issue describing it. The attacking peer opens a splice, routes a small key send of about a thousand sats, and then sends an error.

The node goes on chain and its own output gets swept through the revocation path as if it had cheated. A Core Lightning collaborator confirmed the path was already fixed in a later version, which was released on the September 22 and told people to upgrade.

By the October 1, Stack News operators were reporting around 0.2 BTC loss between them, with one GitHub user reporting 4,880,000 sats across five separate incidents. And another star OS user reporting another 3,000,000 sats loss.

On the October 2, the official core Lightning account did post an urgent update reminding people to upgrade. And the same attack has failed against nodes that are already dated. So the fix is working.

Unfortunately, it goes without saying that upgrading will not recover any funds that have already been stolen. But... And if you cannot upgrade right away, restart your node with that offline flag that we talked about last time when we mentioned that the... That this was initially unfolding.

So, yeah, again, just a quick reminder, like, guys, if you are using any form of hot wallet, then you need to be, you know, severe risk mitigation. That comes from two FA. It comes from fund management. Like, don't have a lot on the lightning node at the moment because we know there's active attacks going on on all of the implementations.

So just take what you can offline. Just, you know, keep an appropriate amount of funds in a hot wallet. Yep. Okay.

Next on the list, the Dutch cabinet has moved shares to realize gains tax in 2028, but leaves Bitcoin and crypto unclear at the moment. Right now, the The Netherlands, they don't tax what your Bitcoin kind of earns or appreciates under what they call box three.

The tax office takes the value of your assets on January 1, assumes they made a fixed return and the taxes... And taxes the assumed return at 36%. For 2026, savings are assumed to earn 1.28%, and investments and other assets, which is where crypto currently sits, are assumed to earn 6%.

So that roughly works out at 2% of your Bitcoin's value every single year, whether or not it actually went up or down.

So in 2021, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that taxing made up returns breach human rights law. Yeah. No shit. And since 2025... Since the 2025 tax return, people can prove they actually made less and pay on that instead. Okay. So it's a case of

do nothing and get battered or you have to let do the legwork and prove that look, number go sideways or number go down, so please don't steal some of my wealth. Mental that you have to do that. But anyway...

But you... That's... That said realized is that's unrealized because you're not actually selling. It's Yes. It's, yeah, it's an unrealized... Correct. So that's the current state, but here comes the news bit. On the September 29, the cabinet told parliament it is changing course for for part of that.

From 2028, shares, bonds, and options will be taxed only on realized gains when you actually sell. Hey, common sense. Well, it's not common sense. Mean, taxation is Yeah. Still Yeah. Every other asset follows in 2030.

Before that in 2027, the tax free allowance falls back to €30,000 and the assumed return on other assets goes up by another 1.5. Fuck me. These people are maniacs.

Crypto is not explicitly mentioned, but if Bitcoin counts as one of the quote, other assets, then Dutch holders could keep paying tax on gains they have not cashed out for two years longer than shareholders, which can force people to sell just to pay this, you know, unrealized bill. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, completely bonkers.

They force you to sell the... For the unrealized bill, and then because you've sold for the unrealized, you've now actually got pay another. It's so fucked, isn't it? It's so fucked. Yeah. That's a way to describe it really. Yeah. Completely crazy.

Next one, liquid as ordered or the liquid network is ordering an external audit of its fix and peg... Moved peg out and keys to cold storage. So the liquid federation has said on the September 20 that an independent external audit of the element software is underway.

Probably a little bit too late now guys, but yeah, progress nonetheless. Focused on safely restoring peg outs on the side chain which has still not happened yet. It's replace... It's also replacing entries on the peg out authorization key list and moving peg out keys to cold storage.

Changing who can authorize withdrawals, which is a good thing. Peg outs are, as I said, still paused. The banner on liquid.net today reads, LBTC Pega operations remain paused and there is no restore date.

Nearly a month after the exploit where an attacker managed to steal 4,000 Bitcoin or 3,996 to be precise. They have since got 3,400 back and there's no update on the outstanding 600. You might have seen Aqua posting about raising its limits for its own swap service which is called Indra, but that turns

LBTC into lightning pay... Payments. Their per swap limit went from 70,000 sats to a 100,000 sats. And on the September 17, it's up to... Sorry, on the September 29, it's now up to a 125,000 sats. So you can get back out onto to onto Lightning through Aqua if you do have some funds stuck in in...

Stuck on liquid. Right. Which is fine for like everyday spending a smaller amounts. Side swap also reopened peg ins and its markets, but not peg outs. And what have we also got? Bolt is obviously shut down.

Bull and the Blockstream app, they're all still off for peg outs. Okay.

Whistling through this nicely. Next on the list, the cold card exploit victim managed to get 20 BTC back in through the recovery trust. Oh. So, yes. We we talked a little bit about this Yeah.

Last week. So I won't go into the details of cold card stuff. Obviously, everybody knows like the the contagion that went on. But on the September 21, Galaxy's Alex Thorne reported 52.37 c sitting in an address belonging to the Crypto Recovery Trust, a Wyoming statutory trust settled to hand coins back to their owners,

which equates to about 2.8% of everything that was taken in the whole, you know, hack across all people.

If... What else we got here?

The first payout has now happened. UK law firm, Edmunds Marshall McMahon, says that it recovered 20 BTC, which is about $1,750,000 for one client on the September 23 in full and with no deduction about seven weeks after the theft.

It says the claim rested on blockchain forensics, the client's historical exchange records, signed message challenges, and checks on wallet derivation path judged to be clear... Quote, clear and convincing standard with more than one independent source.

Interesting. I'm I'm pleasantly surprised by this. I was... Well, we... People can listen to what we what we thought from last week's, but pleasantly surprised. Yeah. What... What's still open to me is we don't know who the call card attacker is. So how have those 50 BTC or 52 BTC got back into that recovery trust in the first place?

Maybe they've been caught in exchanges or something? No. I would think that somebody has set this up, and what they did is they swept. They used whatever tools were being used to sweep people, but sweep them to somewhere that's safe, and they could then send them back Yeah.

To stop someone else. That would be my guess. You know what I mean? Like, the window's open. You steal the TV of your neighbor so that someone else doesn't in in the riots, and then you you give it back and you go, you know, it's like I've... I skipped a part in my notes.

So it says, in August, White Hat researchers raced the thieves and moved about 50 BTC out first from a certain wallet coordinated by a group called DART, d a r t, which again is an acronym that I don't know what it stands for. So that's how it got in there.

Okay. Well, whoever DART is, well done. That's that's very good of you. And the temptation, like, you have 50 Bitcoins out there. Like, I don't care who you are. That's a fucking lot of money. Like, it would be hard to not be like,

yeah. This guy could spend this on x y and zed, but they haven't. They sent it back. So, you know, Restekpah. R e s t e c p. Do you even know what that spells?

Shout out to you. Restrepo. So good. Alright. Next on the list, Breeze SDK is adding stable coin receives for USDT, USDT from 30 plus chains, which land as Bitcoin. So apps that build on the Breeze SDK, which is the tool kit behind self custodial lightning wallets, such as the BitBox app,

can now accept USDT or USDC from more than 30 separate networks including Ethereum, Base, Solana, and Tron. FlashNet, which I don't know what that is, converts the payment in the background Yeah. And it lands in the receiver's own wallet as Bitcoin or as dollars if the app uses the stable balance feature.

Sending stable coins through the SDK shipped way back in June, so the flow now works both ways. This is a developer feature, not something that Breeze's own wallet does. So whether any given app turns it on is obviously up to that app based on how they leverage the Breeze SDK.

So the the practical result is that, you know, anybody that's paid in dollars on Tron can end up holding Bitcoin in their own wallet, which again is a good thing. Thoughts?

Fine.

Right. Not something I'm gonna use personally. Fine. A bit like the other Tether news. It's like, yeah. Okay. Next on the list, this is a cool one. Block has launched a campaign to get people spending Bitcoin.

Square checkout still trips up. So on October 1, Block launched its first big consumer ad campaign for Bitcoin. Quote, some things don't make sense. Bitcoin does. Which they've been running on YouTube, X, Meta, Fox Sports, and in cinemas until the December 31.

Miles Suter from Block says that it shows a... What a Bitcoin centric financial system could look like. The company spending real money to sell Bitcoin as something you spend, not just what you hold.

On the October 4, Stacker News user described a failing for the second time in two weeks. They tried to buy pumpkins, aren't you a bit early for that? With bitcoin at a Square terminal. I mean, hats off to you whoever you are for spending bitcoin. Nice.

The cashier couldn't find the option because merchants have to switch it on in the Square dashboard first. And it's a merchant setting problem, not a technology one. The option exists, but it's off by default.

We knew this, though. We we knew this. We talked about it being off by default when they first rolled them out. We did.

Okay. Next up on the list. Well, no. I was just saying, like, it... I thought that was, like, a shock thing. But but my next question would be, can they not do, like, every device ever constantly just ask you for, please update software. Would you like to update now? Blah blah blah. Like, do these things not have the option where

they could just roll out an update, and from that update, it would then just auto be on, like, surely? I don't see why not. The problem is that there would be implications for the for the merchant, wouldn't there? Because, like, I know they've got the the introductory offer on where I think there's zero fees or something, but end state,

if the user uses this, there's gonna be, like, some form of conversion fee or something that they they need to be aware of. Well, just then then switch it on. What... So there's no fees at all.

And then say, right, in twenty four months, you know, we're gonna start putting warnings. Just so you know, in six months, if you wanna keep this on, it's gonna be x amount. You know, the fee is gonna be this. Otherwise, it would be auto switch off if you don't opt in. And it can just put it in front of their face. Like, it's not...

I can't think that it's a massive problem to solve if they really wanna solve it is what I'm saying. Yeah. No. I agree. I agree. Oh, BTC Wrestle. Thank you, sir, for chiming in. He said, in the newest POS devices, it's on by default with a dollar and a Bitcoin toggle. Oh, okay.

There we go. So they have solved it. But then he said, but the older point of sales don't have that, so it requires the merchants to turn it on. Well, that makes a lot more sense. And Yeah. Yeah. Once again, hats off to to the block team for for making it easy and seamless. That's that's very cool.

Yeah. It's like the... It's the biggest thing that I've heard as a change to people being able to spend Bitcoin. It's it's a fucking huge, huge change. Yeah. Absolutely. Last one on the...

Oh, here we go. Sorry. Final piece from BT Wrestle on this. The new point of sale have the customer facing screen where you can toggle it yourself and you don't even have to even bother the person. That is the ultimate, right, where you can just stealthily pay with Bitcoin and the cashier, like Mhmm.

I'm sure they can probably see it afterwards, but all they see is probably a big green check mark that's like balance paid, let them leave the store. Yeah. So that's the ultimate. So it's it's very, you know, happy to hear that that's how it actually works, which is awesome. Very nice.

Alright. Last one. Bit... An update on the Bitget stuff. They have reopened Bitcoin withdrawals on the September 20 after their hack, and they had fear and p two p trading back by the October 2.

Bitcoin Magazine reported that more than 4,000 Bitcoin was withdrawn within a single hour on the September 29, which is obviously what happens when people have been locked out of their own money for for four days.

On on the October 2, CEO, Gracie Chan, told CNBC that only about 1,100,000 of the roughly 388,000,000 stolen had been frozen. And she is, quote, not expecting to recover a lot, which is... So that equates to under no point 3% of the

of the theft. So not a lot has come back, but, you know, hopefully, their insurance is gonna cover this. I think that's what we covered off last week. Yeah. Yeah. So... Yeah. I mean, good that the, you know, that the creditors aren't well, that they've reopened it basically and people can get their get their money back.

Yeah. Okay. Right. Let's do some boost highlights and then finish off with some releases, shall we, mate? I'll I'll let you I'll let you kick us off. We'll do the top three. Do I even need this separate browser open with the show notes,

or should I just do it from the screen like everyone else sees? It's so good. It's going for the same. There you go. It's the same thing, so go for it. Well, it's even better because it just looks nicer on the screen. So... Okay. I'm gonna do it here.

Lonely Pumpkins sent 10,000 sats. Thank you, Lonely Pumpkins. Absolute baller booster. Really appreciate you, mate. The experience Max had with his shitcoin a friend and the unmentionable token, x r p, regrettably seems to be perennial frustration for Bitcoin as well as the DDOS of our time.

It's much easier to scam someone than to convince that same person that they've been scammed. Ego defends too hard. PS. If you're a Bitcoiner and an agnostic or atheist, you're not alone.

Don't trust, verify can dovetail into one's rabbit hole journey in many ways. Cheers, gents. Thank you, Lonely Pumpkins. And, yeah, it is a DDOS on our time. That is too fucking true. Do you think Lonely Pumpkins was the person that was mentioned in the block story?

Where they tried to buy... They were trying to buy pumpkins from a square terminal, and it fell down. Maybe he's really lonely. He's a lonely little pumpkin, and he thought, well, if I go and buy some friends, I'll be less lonely. And then he was even denied that pleasure.

And and if so, lonely pumpkins, you've you've boosted us a lot and helped us a lot. If you wanna send an address or, you know, like a PO box or something where we can safely send you a pumpkin, I'll send you some pumpkins.

Oakley dokley. BC wrestle senior comment. I got you. Don't worry. Next on the list, expatriotic with 0.01 XMR, and he just said XRP army arise.

Late stage huddle sent 6,006 sats and said, Max did his best to live up to John's voice impressions this week. I certainly enjoyed it. Did I? I can't remember doing an impression. I'm terrible at impressions. Probably It's the... It was probably the soundboard or something like that.

But thanks anyway. Yeah. And the best of the rest, BTC Wrestle, the reason yours wasn't in the original shortlist is because it didn't name it didn't name a show. But as you can see here, name no show. In the best of the rest, BTC Wrestle sent... Holy shit. 50,000 sets.

Oh, you legend. What a guy. Yeah. We we we we don't... We're not ignoring you on purpose. It's just because it didn't tag a specific show. But here we are. Thank you, ungovernable crew. Been a bit since I boosted. I think the last time I may have sent a pain in boost into the abyss.

Max, you're the one with control of that wallet. Thank you for continuing... Theory. Oh, god. Thank you for continuing to be among

the very few to discuss real privacy tools. Well, that's a lot of dough, mate. Thank you very much for your support. Yeah. And we we genuinely appreciate it. Next time, just just tag a specific show just so it doesn't fall by the wayside.

Yeah. Wow. Right. Thank you for the love. Yeah. What a guy. And thank you everybody else. So a quick shout out for the rest of... Best of the rest. Rev Hoddle, Reed, Nosdagang, user one one six nine four four seven two, Brocket, Mutem, and Mutem again.

Did you see Nosdagang's boost there? Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. What... Like, I I just don't think it can be said enough. The sociopathic way that it is going about its life is unbearable to watch.

It... Like... And it just needs to be called out every single day so it doesn't slither back because I haven't seen apologies. I haven't seen any... Anything from that creature to to apologize to the people's lives that it's destroyed. It's just still living its life just completely oblivious to what a counter is. So fuck you out. Okay?

Yep. Also on the the cold card thread, I saw over the weekend that Dee, their their support guy, has Oh, yeah. I saw this. I... I'm not sure under under the circumstances to why he's left, but just wanted to wish him well. Again, we've mentioned this on show before. Is one of the good guys. Not everybody over there is a bell end.

I hope you... Well, just good luck for for whatever's next, man. Hope you can find something that you enjoy doing. And any Bitcoin companies that are looking for an excellent support guy gets... Get out of the... As a good guy.

Oh, fuck it. I mean, if you've just lived through that and stayed on through that as support, like, you can get through anything. So... Yeah. I I don't know him from Adam, but the fact that he stayed on and helped people when he... I mean, I would have fucking walked like that if that was a a clusterfuck.

So respect to you and and hope you do well. Absolutely. Alright. Let's whistle through these releases. We're coming up on my hard cap. This first one is one that you tagged me in, I believe.

Ghostly. This is a new release. It's an MIT licensed messenger by Miguel Medeiros, who we have had on Freedom Tech Friday, have we not? I'm pretty sure we have. Yeah. What was the name of his project? It's, it's lost on me right now. It's on the tip of my tongue. Should I search it in our, you know Yeah. There you go. Let's do it. Miguel.

Miguel. I wanna say it was some privacy thing. Is it m... How do I spell the the last name? M I r e d. M e d. Hold on. We're joined... Phoenix D. Fucking idiot. Oh, yes. Of course, he made that beautiful user interface for for the Phoenix demon. Yeah. Phoenix He's been coding again.

He is doing an MIT open source messenger that finds its contact over mainline DHT and talks over direct encrypted connections with no servers or accounts. Browsers go through PKARR relays instead. Fuck knows what that means.

I wanna say that that is... This is similar to how...

Keith or... Keith. Yes. Keith. Thank you. I wanna say it's similar to how how that works with kind of direct p two p connections. He's learned... Launched version one on October 2, and he's done five updates in the following four days.

He... So basically, with with no account, no company server, there's nothing to kind of subpoena or or kind of hack here. It has built in payments over Cashew, Lightning through... It's got Nostal Wallet Connect, LND, CLN, Web Lightning, and Breeze plus Arc, Spediment Spediment,

Spark Spediment. Spediment and On Chain. So it's like, it it got straight to it pretty quickly. That's right. It handles groups, calls, file sharing, and optional identity proof using NOSTA, PGP, or Bitconkeys with messages vanishing by default and groups running up to 32 people privately or 256

as a community. Presumably, they are public. Fuck. I'm gonna have to give that one a go. He's... Well, this is... Well, the... I saw it. I saw the post, and I was like, this looks fucking awesome. And then I was like, I don't understand how.

So I thought, oh, I know who I'll tag. So, yeah, I just thought it looked fucking cool. If if all that is right and it can do all that stuff and it can do it safely, that's amazing. Just gonna switch Freedom Tech Friday.

Here we go. I'm just gonna switch tabs now and play this video just so people can see it. Oh, yeah. Somebody's got a cloud subscription.

Is it gonna show the UI or not? Oh, open it in your browser. Okay. Let me see this. Because I I I just know it's gonna look great if Phoenix d was anything to go by. Okay. Here we go.

Wallets, identity, services, settings. Reminds me this space.... That little ghost. Oh, yeah. This. Come on. USD has got Tether. It's got Lightning. Fucking hell. You can choose your mints.

You can do lightning presumably by LDK. Oh, man. This is very cool. Mainnet, testnet. Oh, very nice. I wonder, has it got applications as well, or is it just web based?

Installation. Every platform, every step. Oh, here we go. Okay. Android, web browser, browser extension, desktop apps, CLI. Miguel doesn't fuck about, does he? He's not fucking about. I mean, this feels like another Freedom Tech Friday to me. I think so.

I think so. Miguel, if you're listening, get in touch. We want you on. And if you don't get in touch, we're gonna hound you. So Yeah. Choice is yours. Like, hound us or you'll be hounded.

Yep. Next on the list, LDK version 0.27. LDK, for those of who don't know, is the Lightning development kit that sits inside a lot of mobile wallets and Lightning service providers. They've shipped a security release on the October 1, fixing two fund theft bugs and two denial of service bugs.

In the first, a malicious channel pair could reconnect, claim a missed state update, and get the notes to sign a second commitment state at the same index. And in the second one, a client could lie about an intercepted hashed time lock contract amount so that the lightning service provider forwards more than it received.

So if you are building an LDK wallet or running an LDK based wallet, make sure that you are updated to 0.27 to protect yourselves. One from... Was it foundation Envoy two three five, short release geared towards fixing larger screens, tablets.

Although we don't explicitly support tablets, but we see more and more people using Envoy on tablets, which I find a little bit bizarre. Anyway, we've we've made some fixes there to make it look look much better.

Fixes to price loading graphs on passport prime, and just removing some dead code as well where from our old buy bitcoin feature as well. Mhmm. Pretty small release. Next one, Nunchuk Android version 2.9.

This one was released on the September 30 five days ago, and they have added inheritance without handing a key to a third party. No, they haven't. I read my note wrong. What it says is inheritance without handing a key to a third party is one of the hardest problems of self custody, and this release...

Needle a little bit. Users can now set their own hardware signing device as the inheritance key in off chain time lock inheritance plans. So this means that the key that unlocks your inheritance plan can live on hardware that you control not on a phone or with their service.

And because it is time locked and off chain, the plan itself is not visible on the blockchain until it is actually leveraged. So this gives nothing away in advance and the same releases also got loads of different general bug fixes as well.

But I thought that's pretty cool because it's kind of just the the vendor lock in. Yeah. Blockstream Green, their update has added manual coin selection for both Bitcoin and Liquid. I think we covered the Android version last week, but this one gives iOS version... IOS uses the same coin control features.

It's also restored the creation of two f a protected and two of three multi sig accounts. Yeah. So it's the same as the Android one we talked about last week, but for Apple enjoyers.

Am I exposed version 0.37? It has a redesigned interface. Also has light mode for psychopaths. What else got... Yeah. It's mainly just the UI update. Next one, Seth being back at it again.

Flint version 1.21. For those that don't know, this is the nodeless lightning plug in for BTC pay server that lets merchants take lightning payments without running a node themselves. It's based on Spark's infrastructure under the hood.

Version 1.21 turns on unilateral exit every server, which is the store's ability to take its balance on chain without Spark's operators. And it also adds automatic backups of the exit state as well.

And then finally, a project I haven't heard heard talked about and since its original release was the start WRT, which is the start nine. It's the router... Software. Yeah. So this version one point two point one fixes a security flow in the router's management interface.

Request from loopback used to skip sign in, which meant that some settings changes needed no authentication at all. So obviously, anybody running this should update pretty soon.

Yeah. That brings me to the end of the list, mate. Oh, we have a quick question in chat. Comes from Troy James. Does Foundation Passport sport dice rolls? We... Not yet is the short answer. We... We're already building. In fact, one of my to do items today is to go through the user interface of exactly this feature and

give some feedback to the designer. So we are literally building it as we speak, and it will be coming out to passport prime in a subsequent update. But no no hard time scales, but yes, we are building it.

Very good. If you want to bring your own entry, you can already do that right now. The import flow allows you to import your own 11 or 23 seed words that you can pick randomly from a hat from the bit 39 list, and the device will calculate the the final word for you, needs some computation.

So you can bring your own entry, just not via dice rolls natively yet. I guess what you can also do is obviously dice rolls outside of the... Of Passport Prime, generate the seed, and then import it that way. But obviously, on device dice roll entries is coming. We are building it right now. Yeah.

Very good. Okay, mate. Anything else to sign us off, or are we we good to go on our merry way? I think we're good to go on our merry way. Yeah. Just another thank you to everyone who's boosted. Very generous boost there. And

sounds like we've got a new Freedom Tech Friday to cover. So, Miguel, if you are listening, please get in touch. And that's it, mate. I look forward to catching up with you on Friday. Alright, mate. Have a good week, and I'll catch you Friday. Thanks, everybody. Have a good week.