Swaps, Signers and Sandbox Escapes

Hello, and welcome back to Freedom Tech Friday, a live and interactive show taking place every Friday at 9AM eastern and 2PM UK time across the ungovernable network. Each week, we dig into the latest in Freedom Tech, including Bitcoin, Monero, encrypted messengers, and privacy tools, and of course, everything in between.

Essentially, if there is a news item tool or topic that can help you take back some control in today's digital Panopticon, then we want to talk about it. This show and the topics that we cover are powered by freedom.tech, a daily news desk that uses

AI to monitor hundreds of sources so we can continue to bring you the signal each and every week. My name is Q and A. I'm head of customer experience at Foundation. And I, as always, I'm joined by Max, the head honcho of the ungovernable network. Seth, who's COO at CakeWallet, and we do have our favorite Canadian Jordan with us this week.

We do not have any guests. We're gonna be shooting the ship and we also don't have any top boosters for last week's show because Max, ladies and gentlemen, has been slacking and we haven't yet released it to the feed. So you haven't had chance to send us any of your stats. So I would just like to personally apologize for Max's behavior

and welcome everybody to the show. Gentlemen, it's been a wild week again, such as the course for twenty twenty six. How are we all doing?

I am doing well. Back from from world world tour. Just fantastic. Getting back on so many things. As always, work never stops, but the the travel doesn't either. So, yeah, doing well, though. Doing well, though. Bet Melo was an absolute blast. Great getting to catch up with you a bit at Amsterdam as well.

Yeah. Good to see Max still struggling with technical things while we're gone. So all is right with the world, honestly.

It wasn't just me. I I wasn't the only one contributing to our issues. Jordan, how are we doing, mate?

Oh. Oh, here we go. There we go. Oh, sorry. We did. I was just on mute there. Yeah. No. Everything's going well. Just a little heads up for everyone. I got an email today. Dojo will be...

A new Dojo version will be on Umbro right away. So that was some good morning news. So, yeah, all is well. Look at that. Zero small talk straight down to business.

Look at this absolute prick. My back is sore from carrying the show last week, says John. Thanks for carrying in, John. Apologies that you have to deal with that. Fucking hell. Yeah. My back is ten hours of editing to try and fucking sort that mess out. So we're on the same same level, aren't we?

Was John sat in the front of his car again? I wouldn't call it a car. It's a proper monster truck, isn't it? It's like Truck. Europeans can't imagine. Well, is it an f two fifty or something? It's an absolute, absolute monster.

So it's like having your own caravan in the front.

Seth, you touched on it briefly, but how is your... What's your thoughts on on Amsterdam? I know it's just one of your many, many locations on your world tour, but, obviously, I'm asking because I was there.

Need to hear your thoughts. You're just looking for a little praise for for your your numerous appearances on stage.

You're so good, buddy. Honestly, yes. I would say the the best person on stage, far better than Jack Mollers, was this this weird robot. It doesn't look as much like a robot in real life, but... I was I was so pleased that they put my talk into... Inside a sauna.

But for context, everybody else is, like, three or four different stages, and the one that they put me on to do my my human authority, like, workshop was

the hottest room I think I've ever been in outside of a sauna. You could feel the heat radiating outside of it as you walk past. I don't know what they were doing in there, but it was ridiculous.

Because you were on phone. Right? I I think they heat the entire massive, like, factory building from that one room. Because you would walk through the main hall, and you would walk past that room, and it was like a heater was blasting out through the through the door,

and that was what was warming the rest of the place. So, yeah, I guess that's maybe maybe that's how they test if you're human or a robot. Like, a robot would have shut down due to overheating and a human can just can just power through, I guess. I I don't know.

The most frustrating part of all of it was I got myself a nice new foundation hoodie thinking, yeah, November Amsterdam

can rep the the human authority hardware hoodie and and then walked... Got within 10 feet of the room. Was, like, immediately stripping off layers. So never got to showcase that. So maybe I'll do it in Manchester next weekend for Freedom Fest.

Was it cold as shit everywhere else in Amsterdam? I remember last time being there, and it was just raining nonstop and absolute misery. It it was actually really nice weather. It was... I mean, it was definitely cool. I will say the, the downside of going straight from

the South in The US where it's still hot to India where it's really hot to Amsterdam is that you forget to pack for the Amsterdam piece. Yeah. And so you have T shirts and jeans as your warmest outfits.

So it was too cold for the outfits I brought to India, but that's more more of my problem. It was actually quite nice weather. I'm sure you were given some free hoodies or something, weren't you?

Q didn't offer me the one off his back, which I, you know, I thought we were better friends than that. I I figured you wouldn't want it if it was drenched in sweat. Well, pre sweat. Pre sweat. It could have been a win win. You don't have to wear it in the sauna, and I get to stay warm throughout. There you go. Yep.

I I heard a story about Jordan turning up, to ice fishing, somewhere in the world, turning up in just a shirt, and everyone else thought that he was some sort of, freak Canadian turning up. Everyone else is in, like, 10 layers and thermals and, like, huddling up, and then he just turns up jeans and a shirt.

Is that true, Jordan?

And...

What's that? Here we are. Yeah. Okay. So for coffee... Just assume it's true. Just before just before we went live and and Seth and Max joined the call, Jordan did tell me that he spilled coffee all over his laptop, so forgive the...

Forgive his technical difficulties a little bit. Yeah. It's this pixel. It's brutal. Yeah. No. I did show up like that. So confirmed. Out of choice or necessity? Just such a hard... Just, you know, like, just used to it. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Hardcore, man. Hardcore. Yeah. So we don't have a guest for for this week's show. I have a couple of topical news items that I figured that we could just shoot the shit around. The first among which which seems to be... Have set the the entire world on fire somehow is

Jensen Huang and his Chinese models or or being a fan of Chinese models. I have to admit, this has pretty much passed me by until the team started talking about it on on the internal work chat yesterday.

So, Seth, I know you were keen to to kind of cover it off at least a little bit. Can you give us the background? Like, as far as I know, he has been... Or either forcibly or or, you know, had a a tap on the shoulder that he needs to step down. But what's been going on?

Yeah. This is... I mean, this is a weird one. The the surface level story is basically that Jensen, obviously, he's been the NVIDIA CEO for, what, thirty plus years now, has brought them from a very small niche company to essential to the future of, like, compute, which is absolutely wild.

Yeah. Especially in this AI paradigm, like, none of the AI that we're using really works as well. If it's not for NVIDIA. Obviously, AMD is getting there. There's other hardware that's

that's getting there to be usable for this kind of thing, but NVIDIA absolutely rules the world in those in those spaces as well as gaming and many other spaces as well. Absolutely awesome track record throughout the years. He's also been a very vocal advocate for open source AI.

NVIDIA is one of the few labs that's actually publishing, like, properly open source AI, not just open weight, but actually publishing the models with good licenses with the entire training data set that give you everything you need to see exactly how the model was created, how to tweak it yourself.

They encourage others to do so. They're constantly doing really the best quants of other open weight models, and they're optimizing those for their hardware as well and publishing all those in hugging face.

There's been a huge focus from them, and it seems like Jensen has been a big driver of that. Like, his his intro to Twitter when he joined Twitter three months ago, was basically a letter advocating for open source AI and the importance of it, and how vital that was.

So he's long been a very strong advocate for something that is is interesting and essential and useful to NVIDIA, obviously, because they don't want a duopoly controlling

who uses AI. They want it to be as free of a marketplace as possible for their own financial benefit. Like, there are financial incentives there, but it's not necessarily something they have to push short term.

But the crazy story that has been unfolding over this last week is that, essentially, there was a a classified memo within The US intelligence community that was, quote, unquote, leaked. And it claims that Jensen had had an affair with a Chinese businesswoman who's connected with a a company who

handles compute hardware and theoretically could be an importer of NVIDIA chips into China, and that the affair was not just romantic, but that it was also leading to an an attempt to circumvent export controls, which right now, there are bans on companies like NVIDIA being able to export chips to China,

for many reasons. That's probably too deep to get into, but there are many people who don't like that there are bans like that. Jensen is already one of them. He's vocally advocated against the export controls that are in place right now for, compute hardware from The US to countries like China.

But this leaked memo essentially claimed that this Chinese businesswoman who he had had an affair with was a a spy working for the CCP, not just a businesswoman, but was actually trying to actively work around export controls. And, like, this was a... An elaborate plot by the CCP to

get someone to sleep with Jensen and somehow make that end up in export controls being broken and NVIDIA chips landing in China and letting them use those to to try and catch up, or have an advantage in the the the AI race that we're in right now.

The last couple things I'll add, there's been literally zero substantiation of any of these claims outside of the leaked memo. A bunch of the US government has come out and said they have no evidence

that there is a, like, a CCP plot behind this, and it's not just a romantic affair. And, like, just to be clear, like, the guy's Jensen married.

He should not be having affairs. Like, from a from a moral perspective, like, obviously, this is really shitty for him to have done. And there have been leaks that apparently there are other affairs, but I don't know if I believe those really. None of them are very substantiated. But the bigger issue here was the potential.

Like, is this a spy who's embedded herself in NVIDIA and and working to enable the CCP to to build out their AI and better compete with US labs? Well, why don't you be a spy? Yeah. Just because she's Chinese and she's a woman doesn't mean she's a spy. Like, people people are gonna be attracted to this guy because he's extremely powerful.

Like, women will be crawling all over him for that reason. So, like, is there any actual evidence that she is a spy, or is it just like, she's Chinese. She's a fucking spy. It's from... Again, I mean, it's really hard to know for sure because, obviously, a lot of the stuff that supposedly claims that she's a spy is all classified,

like, US intel. Like, it's it's not something any of us have access to. Right. Right. Right. The memo itself is what implied that, but, like, we've had the attorney general say that they have no conclusions about it. The CIA has said they're not convinced, Like, a Democrat on on the House Intel Committee says there's nothing clear here,

tying that together. Obviously, a lot of it is hearsay, but it does kinda feel like that. Oh, we're spooked because China, and why would she why would she want to get with Jensen? But I don't know. We've all seen him in his his leather jackets. That could be an attractive thing for a a Chinese businesswoman. Pretty

handsome man. He's powerful. That's the most... That's that's the sweet, sweet nectar to these ladies. He has power. And he's loaded. That also probably helps. Yeah. That probably helps too.

So, yeah, that... That's like... That's the... I mean, that wasn't much of a TLDR. That was pretty long, but that's the the shortest story I can give is there's this unsubstantiated claim.

A lot of people just ran with it, and the end result was that the NVIDIA board seemingly forced him to resign as CEO yesterday.

There's no public details on, like, why he hasn't said anything publicly that I know of, but obviously, it's... Mhmm. It comes down to this. Was it NVIDIA that bought Hugging Face? Yeah. It was. I've seen some... So I don't know whether these two things are linked or whether there was there was reports and people had this stance anyway.

But around, like, the potential threat of a centralized company now owning Hugging Face and what that could mean for the distribution of of open weights and clearly removal of Jensen who was publicly advocating for open weights,

you know, what that could mean given that they control the keys to to Hugging Face. Don't know if you got any take on that. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, they did acquire Hugging Face earlier this year.

It... So it is definitely a concern. Like, it was obviously already a concern, but NVIDIA had such a good track record under Jensen that it... I think everyone, including me, was

fine with it. It seemed like a good thing, and NVIDIA had already been putting a lot of money into them. And people within Hugging had seemed quite thrilled with the acquisition. Like, it would be really good.

I mean, it is a concern. I

I don't really understand why people are that worried. Like, Hugging Face is... Yes. It is a lot of really cool things.

Under the hood, it's also just file distribution. Like, we solved this decades ago. We can just use torrents. There's already a site called the Pirate Face, which is basically hugging face, but it's it's torrents where they try to mirror everything to magnet links so that you can

you can download weights in a more decentralized way. So I'm I'm not really at all concerned about the file distribution piece. It's more just that if that goes underground, it gets a little harder and less normalized for people to

to lean into this. But, I mean, if Hugging Face went down, how many competitors would be excited and willing to jump into that and able to fill that gap? I'm not super concerned about that,

but it will be interesting, and that'll be, I think, one of the signs that we should watch is what happens with hooking face now. Like, does it just continue as normal? Do they start cracking down on things like obliterated models? Like, does something shift there is definitely something to keep an eye on in the in the wake of this.

Yeah. Definitely. Have they appointed a replacement, or is he just... They just thrown somebody temporary on the... From the board, I guess, for now? They have. I haven't looked into it at all. I think it's the...

A woman who was the CFO, at NVIDIA is stepping into that into that role, immediately. I can't remember off the top of head if it was interim, if it was set in stone that she'll be the the CEO long term. But, yeah, they have already appointed someone.

Okay. Alright. Well, next on the list, this is pretty exciting. The Motorola signature 27 has arrived at $1,600, which is quite a higher price than I was certainly expecting. I'm I'm sure... Well, judging by Max's oof, I'm guessing than what he was expecting as well. It's about 0.5 a bitcoin by the time we order that.

Yeah. You're probably not wrong there, the way things are going. Preorders are opening next week on the November 19 with sales coming the week after. I'm trying not to focus too much on the price because this is, you know, the fact that GrapheneOS is available from, you know, a a quote, unquote, more partially flagship manufacturer

such as Motorola is obviously a positive thing, but, like, it's it's hard to look at price freedom, mate. And it's... Well, yeah. But the price of freedom is a, you know, a pixel for two for a $150

of graphene flash on it. But that's not the point. People like new flagship hardware that actually, you know, has a good camera or a somewhat decent camera. There's two things I can't look back... Look past here before I let the room chime in. The price tag, obviously, that is a pretty penny for, you know,

a phone that's arguably gonna be nowhere near the likes of the Pixel 10 or, you know, the the latest iPhone 18 Pro Max Duo widget y thing that we... Whatever... People nailed the official name. That was amazing.

Oh, I forgot I forgot Ultra, didn't I? And those cameras on the back, that that is one fugly rear end. Disagree. I think it's had a BBL. I think it's got more... I like big cameras, and I cannot lie.

It's packing.

I... So first off, the looks. I actually... Like, my favorite phone of all time in terms of design and feel was the Nexus six p, which had this similar vibe where it was slimmer and it, like, grew into a a camera bump at the end, and so it was, like, super, super thin where you held it.

I like the overall design. I think that's fine. Why why is it this much money, and why is someone gonna buy this for GrapheneOS? I I have no clue. Like, I I know everyone's always been freaking out about pixels. I know Google has been harder and harder on the Android side,

and I'm curious what exactly this opens up for GrapheneOS in terms of sustainability on the software side. But I I just... I can't fathom why you would buy this over any pixel if you're wanting to use GrapheneOS.

Yeah. Especially because... And, like, the hardest thing with GrapheneOS is that you are sacrificing some usability and performance necessarily to get the things that it brings. And if you're going to spend that much money, I would expect that the person who would spend that much money wants to maximize productivity

and would rather go with something like an iPhone, which would be cheaper, which is crazy, or an iPhone duo, which would be just a little bit more expensive, which is crazy. Yeah. I think so. That's what makes it really hard for me. Like, I think it's a fascinating idea. I'm I'm really shocked that the first one of these

is, like, ultra high end hardware and not cheaper. I'm very... Like, I I don't really understand the the decision here. Maybe it will. Maybe it will go on sale, like, three people will buy it, and then it will go on, like, Black Friday half price or something like that.

I I mean... Yeah. Because who's buying that? Yeah. I find it doubtful, but I'll Don't I? Well, yeah, at that price, not many people, I'm gonna guess. I do have an open question here. Do you... Like, let's say I I am wealthy enough to actually... Or stupid enough to to wanna buy one of these at that price.

Is it a case of, like, you go into the store and you say, want the Motorola, the one with all the cameras. Oh, and give me the Graphene OS version. Or, like... Because presumably, there's gonna be versions of this that don't come with GrapheneOS, that'll come with

whatever flavor of Android. None of them come with Graphene. Like, how does that... I don't think they come with Graphene on them.

And I wouldn't trust it if it does. Yeah. But that's what I mean, like, it... Is it just that it's the hardware compatible with it and you have to still go through the flashing process itself?... Understanding. Yeah.

Yeah. It's just supported. So it's... It has all of the security pieces that GrapheneOS requires that no other manufacturer was willing to do outside of pixels, but you're still gonna have to do everything. And

there's the... An interesting line in there that says more detail will come in the coming months, and that timeline runs well past the sales window. Like, I I... Will this have support day one? I don't I don't really know.

So, basically, buy a Pixel 10.

Yeah. Like, what does a Pixel 10 go for in The US these days, Seth? $45.56, 7,000 or something? Let me see if I can double check. It's a five No. Because there's an 11 now, isn't there? It'd be like a thousand dollars now, isn't there?

I think so. I think of Pixel 10 is like 5 or 600 or like Pixel. There or thereabout. I could be completely wrong. Okay. I can't keep up. Yeah. So like a... I mean, a 10 pro XL in, like, new condition used is $450.

So 25% of the price. Obviously, that's not new. So I I don't know. You... There's always deals on those, so I'm sure you can get it for half the price at the most.

Yeah. But, I mean, it's... Again, it's GrapheneOS, and I I mean, the vast majority of people I know aren't buying a brand new Pixel from Google for this. They're going and buying a good secondhand one with cash or something like that. And so they're gonna be getting it even cheaper. So... Yeah.

£539 I'm I'm seeing, which is... And everything's always cheaper in America, so somewhere somewhere in that range. Significantly. Yeah.

Tam Tam Bam on Nostice said go for the more money than send crew first. Yeah. That's what they're doing. But but that's, like... That's what I don't understand. It's like... That feels like the opposite of the GrapheneOS community.

Like, the GrapheneOS community is not a bunch of uber rich guys who all want to just buy the phone because it's fun, and they wanna support GraphiteOS. Like, that seems like...

I don't know. It seems like someone was not thinking through product market fit at all here. And we're just like, hey, Motorola. Let's do this. Motorola's like, yeah. We'll give you our most expensive phone.

Oh, well. Yeah. Indeed. Continuing with the mobile OS stuff, I saw you commenting briefly on this recently this week, Seth, around Binance giving out a warning around an iOS floor that could expose what it see phrases.

And... Cakewallet's not safe. Cakewallet's not safe even though they're a sponsor. They're very unsafe. Everyone just knows that. Well, I I I think I saw Seth saying update your iPhone,

because it's fixed, and then there was a a raft of comments underneath saying, actually, no. Not yet. So is that still the case? Like, what's the what's the Yeah. So there's there's multiple iOS, vulnerabilities that have happened lately. So it's not just one at this point, because that's important to break out. There's

there's two main ones that are BadQuery and WorseQuery, which are essentially someone can... Through a malicious app that you install, which theoretically can be from the App Store. I think one of these has been demonstrated through an App Store app, not just a sideloaded IPA or something.

It's able to lie and get the keys to other apps' files on system despite app sandboxing.

That one, as I understand it, is still unpatched. Twenty seven dot two dot one patched other vulnerabilities that were major, including one that was an exploit that worked around lockdown mode even.

So that one fixed other vulnerabilities. My... I I misunderstood, and I thought that also was fixing worse query. It did not. So as far as I know, there is still no release out for worse query at this point.

Yeah. I mean, it's it's a major issue because a lot of the trust assumptions that people build apps around is that I... My app lives in an app sandbox, and I trust that no other app can access this. So I'm okay with storing some secrets or whatever

on the file system, or I'm okay with storing sensitive data on the file system, settings on the file system, whatever. So I think that's the biggest concern. There's a lot of overblown comments about this.

Like, there's no there's no known exploit of this in the wild that is being used against, like, Bitcoin or cryptocurrency wallets right now.

For some reason, there are are people that are saying that there is. There just isn't at this point. No one has reported anything like that right now. And the one... The issues that we have seen that, like, think Trust Wallet had some breach were not related to this, as far as I can tell and as far as everything that's been released says.

But it it is... It's... Obviously, it's a critical vulnerability. It's one that will be patched, but it isn't patched yet. So the the key thing is just make sure you don't install apps that you don't trust.

You're not leaning on random random apps. You're not sideloading things that you don't trust either on iOS if you're in a place where you can do that. Rip them out. Just just thinking here, does this mean that, like, if you are running a phone rather than hardware, we're pushing more into the world of

think about using Cupcake or Sentinel or something on your phone, like, having a spare phone for that kind of signing? Are we getting to that point

is somewhere in this industry and, like, it would be wise to have a a cheap phone to have maybe both of those on there as an option. Yeah. I mean, the thing here is, like, obviously, this this would affect that specific setup if you were, like, using cupcake on an iPhone and

we're installing other apps. The really, really important thing to note here, though, is that any app that's doing things properly, even if this exploit is... If this vulnerability exploited,

it won't actually lead to loss of funds. Like, for instance, obviously, when this happened, I mean, it looked looked into it to double check what the vulnerability could mean for Cake Wallet. We already do everything correctly. All of the secrets are stored encrypted on the file system,

with a key that lives in key... In Keychain. So unless this was layered with another zero day that also could breach into Keychain and get secrets that are for an app that's not the same as the malicious app, like, even in that worst case where your device is pwned with this specific vulnerability,

you can actually recover any seed or anything from Cakewallet, Cupcake, etcetera. But it is, I think, maybe a reminder that even if mobile devices these days are very, very secure, they're not perfect. Like, there there are vulnerabilities that are discovered. And this is one of the reasons why I would recommend people,

like, if you are using an old phone for Cupcake or something like it, to keep the OS up to date. Like, yes, you don't have to install a ton of other apps. You don't even necessarily need to sign into iCloud or anything like that.

But, I think it is worth it to make sure that you're protected against this type of thing, but more importantly, that you stay up to date and are protected against potential physical attacks. Because we do occasionally... I haven't heard about one in a long time, especially in iOS, but we do occasionally see, like, a system pin bypass

zero days or something that come out where only an OS update could fix that. So I think that is something for people to to keep in mind.

Okay. Jordan, I wanna bring you in, mate. You've you've been cooking lately.

Atomic swaps, Ashigar desktop. What's what's going on? This is very exciting. So I think there is like an Ashigar. It's like... Somebody emailed Ashigar or something. They outlined a bunch of stuff, and one of them was, like, swaps.

And so I was pretty much, like, updating the application, you know, besides, like, security updates and whatnot.

Like, I take time doing stuff. And then when I saw that, was like, okay. Cool then. Right?

So now we're here. Like, obviously... And it's just, like, so easy now. Like, I just pointed it at the Eigen Wallet project, and I said, hey. Can we just, like, put a swap engine in... Into the application? And it was, like, bing, bang, boom.

Like, no problem. In there now, we have five, six so far, among myself and other testers. So it's obviously not

like, the biggest hurdle right now is... Or just like with drop offs like that and itself is running Tor, and I've kinda made it in in a certain way where... Like outbound application, any communication...

Or based. Obviously, that kinda... When it comes to reliability,

proper...

And, you know, why there might...

Think it shouldn't be an issue.

So I... Like, I kinda told Hugh offline there. Well, not offline, but on Telegram, I got no offers. Like, I was hoping to kinda go... Mhmm. So, you know, selecting a maker so that... I think, but I have not...

Show the app... Cool. Show the engine, and then I can...

Deeper to swap screen mock ups. Yeah. That's it.... Kinda outlaws the whole process. Yeah. Definitely. I I think, also, when you walk through it as well, just, like, address some of the common questions that people are gonna have about this. Like, what are the risks? You know, can somebody steal from you, etcetera, etcetera.

I was also gonna say as well what... Why would you do it with this particular UTXO? What's the what's the reason for the swaps? Because people were doing it without this built in previously, but maybe newer people don't understand that.

Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. So cute. I just realized... I'm ready for your screen share if you wanna...

Oh. Because I'm connected to the phone. Oh, no worries. Darn it. No worries. Oh, can I send you? Here. I can send you the link because it's a public link. Oh, okay. Yeah. I'll just bring it up in... Is it a browser link? Can do it in the browser. Okay. Let's do that. For sure. K.

And then I can just... Oh,

Here we go.

K.

Give me one sec here. Bitcoin Beach, I've seen your comment. I love it. Sorry. Bitcoin Beach, I've seen your comment. I don't know whether you're the only one. I did hear Jordan kinda dropping in about a little bit. Yeah. Seth just confirmed. Yeah. It... It's just Jordan's audio, so you just have to bear with us. He... He's dealing with a

laptop that's been filled with espresso, so bear with us. Carry

on, Jordan. Okay.

So what we have here... So

we're on offers.

I think we're losing him now. Anybody else hear him? Or he's just he's just thinking? No. He's I think he's just he's quite slow. No. He's he's just that Canadian way they sort of speak, and then their cadence is strange. They have to have a few seconds.... Still what? Hello?

Sup? I think he's gone. Alrighty. We can fill in. Let me... We can fill in. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna take over and and talk about a a taboo subject amongst many people listening to this just by the comments.

Shit corners. Passport Prime, for for those of you that don't know, is what we build at at Foundation. It's our open hardware, open app platform ships with five default apps, files app, security keys, two FA codes, bitcoin app, and a vault so you can store all of your seeds and your passwords, etcetera, etcetera.

The whole point of us building this platform and this hardware is that, obviously, it's open source and you can build... Anybody can build and install any app that they want to. Shock horror. That means that sometimes people might build non Bitcoin apps, which seems to upset a lot of people, unfortunately.

Yesterday, BTC Chip, who is Nicholas, who's one of the cofounders of Ledger, came out and he's been working with the Ethereum Foundation to build basically the very first official third... Well, I say official. It's a third party application built by a third party app developer, one of the ledger cofounders to enable people to,

shock, do non Bitcoin stuff.

And I just wanna, like, again, this is not for me. People have... You know, I've been doing podcasts for many, many years. People know I'm probably have zero interest in this and and it's not for me. But the whole point of this is that I'm very happy to see it. Not because I love Ethereum, but because I see people building on our hardware

platform, for our open hardware. I think it's great, and I will continue to support people who do that. And the fact that this is a shock to people is just a little bit bit

silly to me. Like, this is... People are are saying that we've been pivoting and yada yada yada. Like, this was the point from day one. We've we've not hidden from it. The... Our day one announcement was we are working with the k quality team to build an app for our hardware.

And the fact that people are shocked by this is is is somewhat amusing, if a little frustrating. So, yeah, if you are an Ethereum enjoyer, there is now an official third party app that you can choose to install on your hardware if you want to. If it doesn't pass you a bit of compurity tests, then don't install it, and have a nice day.

It would be a bit like someone being very upset if I used mine as a paperweight. That's the kind of thing. It's like how...

Just, you know, anyone can buy the device and use the device however they want, and so can you, and that's freedom. So don't don't get your knickers in a twist. Yeah. Exactly. And and brace yourselves because there's gonna be many, many more apps like this that people are doing as we intended, and they are building on the platform.

That is the entire point, and I'm... I... You know, I'm sorry if you don't like that. I'm looking forward to some some Monero, shitcoin stuff coming onto it soon. That's why I'm waiting. Yes. Yeah. Lots of stuff. Lots of shit. I let Jordan

should I let Jordan back in, or has he disgraced himself? Let's do it. Let me bring up his his thing again. And Okay. And also just to just to not that I'm trying to appease people, but, like, we are still working on loads of cool Bitcoin shit as well. 1.5 is gonna be a bit of a banger release.

People keep asking me when it's due. The answer as always with software is when it's ready. If I give you a date, it will inevitably wrong... Be wrong, so I just... I don't do dates anymore. It'll be ready when it's ready. We'll work in as fast as we can.

Jordan. Are you there?

Oh, boy. While he's fucking around, this, for anyone who's sort of new to this ecosystem is... Originally, I think, was designed so that if you have bad bank or something after going into Whirlpool, you'd have something that you'd like markers do not spend or toxic change.

And what a lot of people would do is then manually send that as a swap into Monero because if you spent it, it would unwind the privacy gains that you'd you'd gone through. So having this built into the ecosystem is a really, really nice thing that I think has been missing. It's like a a very important part of the toolkit.

Yeah. Definitely. It... It's always been like the thorn in the side of Bitcoin coin joint services, especially equal output ones. It's like you always have that annoying bit of change left over that once you've mixed it down into the smallest possible pool, there's there's kind of not all else that you can

do with it that's useful. Depending on where it's come from, obviously, are some caveats to that. But being being able to to do this swap natively within that is is is pretty cool.

Did he did he allude to, like, how far off we are in terms of, like, is this in open public beta? Can people test around and help give feedback on this yet, or is it still in in much earlier stages?

I should know this because he would have told me. I know it's working. It's been tested and working. I know Eigen is

very, very slick and and works very, very nicely. So that's what it's using on the back end. I think the tweet you were showing at the post said that he's looking for other people to jump in and test. So I think it's at least to that stage. Tested instead.

It's being tested. You are correct. Very observant of yourself. Thank you for paying attention to what's on my screen as I should be hearing. Somebody's got to. Somebody's got to. Yeah. Yeah. This is this is very cool.

I... This this has been teased since, you know, the the the golden era of the... Of Samurai Wallet. Right? Like, this is... You know, they were they were actively working with... I can't remember who it was now, but that this was kind of gonna be one of the next flagship features before everything went down. Right? So

the fact that this is, you know, the the legacy is living on and and being added to Ashikoto desktop is is pretty cool. Yeah. I will also add like I Very think much more than just for the Bad Bank. Like, obviously, one of the biggest problems that Monero has faced is it's hard to get on most centralized exchanges.

So normally, you're having to go through some other path. A lot of times, that's instance swap providers, which there are some really good ones. Like, obviously, we we work with those and have gone through a lot and had to remove some. And, like, it's a it's an... It's a hard space to find reliable

ones in, even though there are some bright ones like Change Now and, Trogador, etcetera, but that's still centralized. There's still entities that could be pressured into delisting Monero, even if that's much less likely than the centralized fiat exchanges.

And so having atomic swaps as the ultimate, like, you literally cannot stop someone swapping Bitcoin to Monero and vice versa. Through atomic swaps means that literally no matter what happens with the regulatory landscape, two individuals will be able to swap peer to peer between Bitcoin and Monero trustlessly,

which is really, really important to make sure that as long as we need Monero as a tool, which it looks like we will, as far as I can see Mhmm. This will ensure that we have access to that. So it's it's awesome to see this continue going. Aigen Aigen have been doing great work on the... More on the Monero side has been their focus,

keeping that open. But it's cool to see that happen here, and I think something that's really important too is that as different entities implement atomic swaps,

it would be very much ideal if they all share a liquidity pool. They have some way to be able to all find each other because that's always the hardest part of atomic swaps is can you find someone who wants to swap the amount that you need to you need to swap at that time?

Because the liquidity is usually quite poor if if everything gets very segmented out. So, hopefully, we'll all be combined as they go. It's it's pretty it's pretty good from what I've seen.

Maybe not on the really, like, much smaller side, but there's generally, you know, five, 10, 15 different offers on there. And, normally, it's sort of, like, two percent ish, one and a half percent ish on the swap.

And risk wise, very low. The only small bit of risk is depending on how much they keep. There's, like, either a 100% refund guarantee or a lot of them are 98%. So they could, in theory, keep 2% of the swap including... And the fees that it would cost you if they thought that you were

causing them issues. But but there's no sort of, like... What I'm trying to say? There's no, like, control over that. So they could take that 2% in theory even if you've not done anything wrong. And I don't know how they fixed that issue, but

I've heard of very, very few issues. Basically, no issues with it. It's just like a theoretical problem.

I like this. Jordan, I think your client has done a great job of the the user interface as well. I like it. It's it's very on brand but functional as well. Yeah. It's good. Alright. The last one I had on my list that we wanted to cover off, Maple had a had a nice big release this week. They've announced their

their work feature. I mean, they've just been cooking in general over the last couple of weeks. They... Well, month or so, they've they've kind of shipped quite a few different features. Big fan of, like, their trajectory and and where they're heading.

And, yeah, yesterday, they have announced their their work feature, the tagline, the AI agent, you don't have to second guess. And this is basically, you know, edging them closer to what you can do in the frontier models with, you know, Claude desktop... Sorry, Claude code and ChatGPT desktop application.

But obviously, using open source models inside the private kind of enclave or the the TEE, I think, is the correct terminology. So that you, you know, you can more confidently do stuff like your own taxes without having to self host your own your own models.

So this was very exciting for me to see and yeah, it's it's a good tag. I'm gonna read it out for the audio listeners in case people are catching up after the fact.

Maple Work is a private AI agent for Mac, Windows, and Linux from Maple AI. You can point it at a project folder and it reads files, runs commands, and finishes the task. It runs open models like DeepSeek, Kymi, GLM, and Gemma inside secure enclaves, so Maple cannot see your chats and can check... You can check that for yourself.

The requirements are a pro max or a team plan. This is this is very cool. It's... They they strike a really good balance between, you know, not having to buy a a max studio or 19,000 d g x sparks like Seth to to kind of host your own models.

But it's like a a good way to get in at the Ground Floor without shelling out loads of of money to have some proper true private AI compute. Guys, what's your thoughts, Seth? I know you'll have some hot takes on this one.

Go for it, Max. I'll round it out. I feel like I've been talking the whole time. So... Yeah. I'll get... I'll I'll just go in with the basic stuff then. If you're using this, I assume you have to have this on your desktop and give it, like, access to your files.

Correct. What what is it... What about it is then worse than running your own hardware outside of presumably the type of models. No. Because you'd run the same open models on your hardware. So you you... You're basically gonna have more cost to actually use it over time rather than buying the hardware outright.

Like, what's the downside of it? Well, more cost over time is... Depends on what hardware you buy and how long you use it for. But, like, you you could use this for a long time Yeah. Before you equal...

You know, you break even on a DGX Spark or even a single one or a Yeah. Yeah. Or a Mac Studio or something like that. Now, you know, you can see the plans on screen here. Again, it's usage dependent.

So if you're a very heavy user, then you you may even the max tier might not be enough for you. I'd... Again, it's it's very dependent. But, like, I wouldn't automatically assume that doing it this way is is more expensive because, to be honest, for most people, the opposite is probably true.

So it's so it's... Tell me when I'm wrong. It's as fast or faster than having your own hardware. True or false? Depends what hardware you have. So let's say you have, like, the the 20,000 fucking quid Mac studio big balls, $5.12 thingy majiggy sat on your desk versus this, like, wise.

Yeah. I mean, there's still a lot of variables, like, what model you have, etcetera, etcetera.

So it... It's not, you know, it's it's not an equal comparison because there's there's way too many buttons. You're... Okay. Alright. Let me answer. You're running I can answer a little bit. So Let me just get one more Okay. One more question, then I promise I'll I'll shut up. So I order one of these machines. I have it on my desk.

The first thing I do is I message you and Seth, and I say, what model should I have on this thing? What do I do? And you'll go... I'd I'd like Kimmy k something is the one that I love. Do that. Whatever. And then I'll put that on there.

What's the difference between me having that with the suggestion from you and Seth versus running this speed wise? Any difference? Yeah. So, generally, what you would expect is for the same model,

your local hardware would probably be faster. If you were to have something that's, like, in that tier as the the Mac five twelve gig or two fifty six gig, you would have that. It would be faster if you're using it locally.

But the main difference is that you would not be able to run, like, a Kimi k 3.1 pro or a full GLM 5.3 without serious, like, serious loss in accuracy due to using a a crazy quant of it. So I think the big difference here is that you get the latest and greatest and largest models even if they are...

I I I don't even wanna say they're relatively slow. I don't know exactly what speed they're serving these at. But generally, those larger models are not blazing fast, especially when running in the TEE.

But, yeah, that's that's the main difference. Like, I I I couldn't run Kimi k 3.1 pro on all the hardware we have combined. It's a massive Oh, fuck. Yeah. But but when you're talking something like what I think most people need, which is like a Deepsea 4.1 flash,

which you can't use through Maple, or you could run on that tier of local hardware that you mentioned. So, like, that would generally be faster on local hardware. But we're also talking 20 k. Like, this is, what, $1,200 a year

for the the max plan. And, again, it all depends on your usage. If this is something that you are just hammering billions of tokens every week, it might be cheaper in even just a couple years to have the hardware yourself plus the flexibility and the autonomy that the hardware gives you.

But for most people, you said, yeah. This would this would be, honestly, a better fit. Like, that... That's one of the really nice things here is, like, Local AI doesn't need to be everything as long as we have good providers like Maple that are serving these things in a privacy preserving way. And Maple goes way beyond

most of the other end to end encrypted providers by doing really good proper attestation so that you are are you you are insured and guaranteed that their promises are being held. Whereas a lot of the other providers that provide end to end, encrypted

models technically are doing that, but a lot of times they're not doing attestation or they're not doing it well or the harnesses you would use them in don't do any of the attestation. So that's a very important piece as well here is that you're getting that end to end attestation directly

and a really nice package in the specific app that this comes in that gives you the majority of the Claude code codex experience, but with these proper end to end encrypted open weight models.

Very nice. Yeah. Huge fan of of what they're doing, and the the closer that they can get to the the frontier, like, experience with things like, you know, the work tools and the the desktop application.

Hopefully, they continue to, you know, gain notoriety and and, you know, customers and... Because I really wanna see see them succeed, should I say.

So, yeah, I'm I'm I'm back channeling with Mark's actually to get him back on. As soon as I saw this, I dropped him a message to see whether he was available to come on. But as as you can imagine, he's already got pre booked tours

and and to to go on various podcast chat about this. So we're we're gonna try and make that happen over the course of the next couple of weeks because we've got some availability. I just need to tie up some, you know, tie up some dates with him.

I... While I store, we got like seven minutes left, guys. So just... Let's just open it for questions. I did see one come in through Noster for you, Seth, from somebody that goes by guest two d b two. And they said, if using Cupcake on an always offline phone, then why does it need to be up to date?

Presumably, it needs to go online to get updates. Yeah. It's up to your specific threat model, obviously. There are some threats that come with bringing the device online, even though I think those are quite minimal. But to me, I think the ideal for most people is bring it online to do OS updates.

For most people, honestly, bring it online to update the app itself as well when everyone is available. It doesn't need to be online all the time to do that. If you are an Android, you can sideload it over, like, USB or something if you're more hardcore. But, again, the focus of Cupcake is not necessarily just for the hardcore user.

And I think the the mix of having the OS up to date to make sure you're you're as protected as possible against potential physical attacks, especially,

And simplifying updating the app are more important than the other things. I mean, if you're not installing other things on the phone, if you're not side loading other things on the phone, I I honestly don't think you should be that concerned about bringing the device online. There's a lot of unnecessary

fears around that that come from the initial air gapped marketing push in the Bitcoin space over the years, and a lot of those are really overblown. But, yeah, that's that's kind of my general thesis, is I think it's more important to have the OS up to date than it is to keep the device offline all the time.

Sounds good. Alright. Well, guys, if if there's no more questions coming through, just throw it back to you too quickly if there's anything else you wanna talk about, any news items, anything you've got personally coming up, anything to do with K Quala, anything... Any showstoppers with Ungovernable,

any recent shows, Max, that you wanna show case people? Yeah. I do wanna just let everyone know that I did a confab with Lauren Rodriguez. I went out a couple of days ago. We talked about notes from the inside, obviously, Keoni and Bill and

all the goings on. But it was it was more of a confab than, like, interview style, getting to know her a little bit. And, yeah, just a hat tip. She's an incredible lady, and everyone should go and check that one.

Yeah. 100%. I hope you're doing well, Lauren, if you're listening to this. But, yeah, the the the topic bank for Freemtech Friday is dwindling somewhat, guys. So if you listen to this, you're catching up, throw some suggestions.

Be that people, companies, topics, this is your opportunity to kind of, you know, have your saying, get us to to talk about them. I quite enjoy these these random kind of... I do. I won't even call them new shit. Call ones where we just kinda shoot the shit for an hour.

So if, you know, if you have any topics, guys, and you listen to this, feel free to drop them into the mailbag, and we we love to use it as jumping off point to to get things going. But Seth, quickly just hand it over to you if there's any... Anything else in your world that you wanna share?

Nothing crazy right now. No. Nice that we wrapped up most of the events for the year, so we'll be able to hunker down and get a lot more more code out to y'all through all the cakewalk stuff. So excited about that, but no, nothing too crazy.

Alright. Well, in that case, I will bid everybody a fantastic weekend. Happy Friday once again, and we'll catch you on Monday for the Bitcoin brief. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and your... Guys.

Stay on a couple of call.

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