Bitcoin Monthly 0007 with Bitcoin Q+A.

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

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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.

Alright, you ungovernable misfits. I'm your host, Max. Everybody knows that Bitcoin is useless, worthless, and doomed to fail. But what if everyone's wrong? What if it's the system that is doomed to fail?

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space, and slither to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Welcome back, everyone. Today's episode is with Bitcoin Q&A. It is nice to have him back. He was away last month. I have open arms kindly step up to the plate and fill in for him. And, yeah, we're going to go through all of the Bitcoin monthly updates.

If you want to click on the link in the show notes, you can go through it with us. And we don't cover absolutely everything on there. We sort of cherry-pick a little bit. But yeah, great to have Bitcoin Q&A back.

I really enjoyed recording with him. I always learned something new. And I really hope you enjoy listening to it. I just wanted to say to everyone who's reaching out and trying to send me sats on Sphinx and all the other podcasting apps.

Please don't do it for now, because I cannot get any of those sats. I can't access any of it in none of it. The usual thing, none of it is working. I did spend a few days on it, and I just gave up in the end, because I've got so much other stuff to get on with.

Thank you so much for anyone who is sending them, but please don't save your sats for now. And I will get it up and running at some point, but I don't want you wasting them here. As usual, if anyone has any questions after the show, please do reach out.

Let me know and I'll help if I can. And yeah, let's just do a quick ad read. Thank you to Coin Floor for sponsoring the show. Anyone who is using Coin Floor now will also be able to use their new app.

And if you are new to Coin Floor, if you're in the UK and looking to stack sats, you can do it weekly, monthly, or daily. And if you use the code in the show notes, you get 30% off your fees.

I also want to say thank you to CryptoClokes. CryptoClokes are the new show sponsors. You probably already know them from Twitter. They make some amazing node cases that you can personalize, block mitts, and all kinds of special hiding places for hardware and bits and pieces like that.

They are growing at a rapid rate. They are just one of the greatest companies that I've seen in this space and a real pop of Bitcoin only team. If you haven't checked them out already, go to CryptoClokes.com.

Enjoy the show. (upbeat music) Welcome back, mate. Nice to speak to you again. You've been a little bit elusive, very, very busy man, it seems. Back after the hiatus, I hope my replacement that I sent him was okay.

Yeah, well, to be honest, I was going to keep him. He was much, much better, but he wasn't so much for a fan of me, so we put you back. No, it was a good day. I listened to it, it was a good rip, actually.

I think I've got some competition from a, I think I need to stay on my toes. Yeah, he's a really fucking good bloke, and it was nice 'cause I got to chat to him when we went away as well.

Got to know him a little bit more, and very, very down-to-earth man who is incredibly knowledgeable, and he's really started to push me towards looking at what he's doing with joining box and everything like that.

I know we've talked about it a few times, but have you actually jumped in and played with it at all yet? No, I haven't really got many issues other than time, to be honest with you, because I run a RASPY Blitz and it's all packaged in there.

Did he, was he given a, we should probably say who we're talking about, by the way, for everybody that doesn't know. Yeah, we're talking about open arms. Did he give a walk through when you went to the camping thing?

Yeah, so everyone else turns up to camping with tents, dogs, steaks, you know, the usual charcoal for the barbecue. Beers. Open, yeah, Beers. Open arms turns up with four fully synced RASPY Blitzes, a Bitcoin ATM that he's built himself, a little lightning Bitcoin ATM,

and a presentation ready to talk us through joining box. Really? So how was he, what was he powering them off? What were they connected to? I'm intrigued. God knows, that guy just works on a completely different frequency to me.

Did he ever tell you as a word? Like a generator in the back of his car or something? Probably. I mean, I don't know how he was doing it, but it worked. And yeah, he, you know, we all bought a few pennies worth of sat with his ATM that he'd set up.

He had the four RASPY Blitzes there, which we could all link up to. And then we worked on joining box and did a couple of trial runs and he showed us how it works. And, you know, I have to say, like, it's pretty slick.

It's pretty cool. It's definitely something I'd like to implement and using conjunction with my Samurai stuff. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of reasons that you would do it. And now that it's a bit more simple, like I was really, really nervous about it.

It just seemed like something that, I mean, you know how much I fuck up, even just Samurai, which is fairly, fairly simple and usable. And so I was thinking, well, if I can fuck that up, there's no point in me even trying this.

But it was, it was really good. He did a full walk through, basically just went through the trade offs and said, obviously you should start as a taker. And then once you've been a taker, move into being a maker, leave your UTXO there and just have it so that you're continuously mixing and joining with other people.

And you earn a few sats, but it's, you know, it's not like anything that you should really be doing as any sort of business model, but it's at least free. Yeah, it was pretty, pretty simple stuff.

And if you run a Raspberry Pi Blitz, it's all built in. So same as you like, time-wise, I just haven't actually got my ass into gear, but definitely worthwhile. Anyone who wants to check it out and they're running a Raspberry Pi Blitz is worth having a play with.

So the interface for joining box is that, does it look sort of similar to the like command line menus that you have for the Raspberry Blitz? Yeah, it's like identical. Cool. So what would you say, you know, estimated time from sort of, obviously you've got, you know, open running, you've installed, installed and joining box,

out how long before you sort of get from that to having your first mix done? Well, if you have open arms over your right shoulder, as I did, about 20 minutes. Okay. If you don't, I mean, I guess that varies, but it seems like unless you're a complete fuckwit, you'd have it up and running within at least an hour and you'd be mixing.

And there was load of liquidity on there. It was like, I was surprised, you know, there was people on there who had like four, 500 Bitcoin just sat there ready to mix. And I was like, 'cause I said to him, I was like, "Is that taking those off line?"

(laughs) No, we're talking about Bitcoin, not Sats. Okay. And I'm saving your offset there. But yeah, and I was surprised, Matt. I was like, I was like, "Oh, is there going to be a problem with liquidity?

Is it, you know, is this going to be an issue?" And he just showed me. I was like, "Oh fuck, this is more than enough, more than you could ever use." And there's people just sat there all the time.

So definitely worth trying. And for some of those like weird amounts, or like if, you know, if you have smaller amounts and you don't want to whack it through samurai, if it's a little bit costly, or even if you've already been through, and then it's like, what's it called the- - The change?

- Doxic change. Yeah, the toxic change and things like that. Like, I don't see why something like that couldn't be used. - Okay, interesting. You mentioned about his ATM, and I'm asking on behalf of everybody listening, 'cause I noticed that it's the question that's on everybody's lips.

Does open on require KYC for that ATM? - He did, yes. - He did, yeah. He had to show you driving license. - Driver's license, passport, home address. He needed retina scan. And I won't go into the other details, 'cause it gets a bit kinky, but yeah.

- COVID test. There was, yeah, there was full KYC. - He's a bad man. - And he really enjoyed it. So, yeah, just probably stay away from that service. But I bought a few sats. I bought, like, £1.20 worth.

I had a shrapnel in my backpack, and sent that onto my wallet. Yeah, it was cool. - Well, we've been incredibly UK-centric. Did you see the news this week about the Azteco, the Bitcoin vouchers, like in Poundland, yeah.

- Yeah, tell me about it, 'cause I saw it on the Samurai UK Samurai group, and I haven't looked into it. So, what is the score with it? Like, how does it work, and is there any drawbacks?

- So, basically, Azteco is a company that offers people to, they partner with various different stores around the world, and what it means for the, you know, the end buyer, if you're like me or you, is you walk in, you can hand over some cash, or you can pay by card.

Obviously, I advise using cash, 'cause it's 10 times more private. And you can hand over and say, here's 100 quid. "How can you give me 100 pounds worth of Azteco vouchers?" They'll punch it into their till, and they'll give you just a little sheet of paper with a voucher code on it.

You punch that voucher code into their website, and then you can withdraw those sats to your own wallet, basically. So, it's a really sort of low friction way to get your hands on some Bitcoin.

And the kind of, the big news here is that, certainly for UK people, is that they've partnered with Poundland, which has a store, pretty much in every town and city in the UK. There's hundreds of them.

So, it's making no care where I see Bitcoin really accessible to most people in the UK now. I would use the quick caveat that the KYC implications are past Azteco passes them onto the merchant who's selling the vouchers.

So, well, I know that Poundland aren't asking for that at the moment, whether that changed in the future, I don't know. But yeah, if you were to walk into Poundland, make sure you're, you know, safety first, you've got your COVID mask on, which has the added benefit of masking your face.

You can walk into-- - COVID glasses as well, COVID cap. - Exactly. Yeah, definitely. And the face shield as well. So, you've got the door protection. Yeah, you can walk in with some cash and walk out with some stats that are not tied to your identity.

So, yeah, big win for the UK, definitely. - What's the limits on it? And is it in every store? Is it in every single Poundland across the UK? - Right. So, as far as I'm aware, there's no limits.

I think you have to buy in denominations of £25, but you can buy any number of those, basically. I've spoken to quite a few UK Bitcoiners and it seems to be about a 75% hit rate where they've walked in and gone to the Till and asked for an Aztec or Bitcoin voucher.

They've got a funny look and then the cashier's punched into the Till and gone, "Oh, yeah, we do do that." So about 75% of the people I've spoken to have been successful and then 25% of them have walked, basically been marched out of the place like they were a crazy person.

- And what's the spread on them? Is it different to like Bitcoin ATMs and normally pretty heavy, like eight to 15% in the UK on top of current market rate? - It's 10%, so it's slap bang in that range, basically.

- Which people who are used to buying on Coinbase or cash up or anything like that are gonna sit there in their cars, listen to this winter now, but that's the price that you're gonna have to pay for.

Well, easily accessible private shots, unfortunately. - Even if you go and you buy sort of semi KYC free, you go on like Bisk or something like that, you still probably wanna put that through coin join, you wanna use something like Samurai after that.

So once you've done that at four or 5%, and then you've gone through Samurai at whatever percentage that's gonna be, it's gonna be more if it's a smaller amount. And then you send that again, you have whatever network fees, you probably aren't far off that 10% anyway.

And when you're going in the cash with a face mask and you're making sure you're fully, fully COVID safe, then you probably are the best, most private you could possibly be. So 10%, I think you're gonna look back on that in years to come and go, fuck, I'm glad I did that.

- Yeah, without a doubt, I can foresee the vast majority of my purchase now being done through Poundland. I can't believe I've just said that to be honest with you. The vast mere year ago where I was gonna be buying like a bit of coming from, I probably would have laughed at you if you just said Poundland.

It's kind of a joke that I'm guessing only the UK people will is the shit as place you could possibly go to. But luckily, I already do all my shopping there anyway. So it actually is quite efficient for me.

- There you go. (laughing) - Cool. - Well, that's good. So anyone in the UK go and check that out. I will be for sure. And what have we got updates wise? We've got a long list here. I know that you've picked out a few that are particularly important.

- Yeah, I just run through the notable ones. It seems like, just wanna kick off. It always seems like we always start with Blue Wallet, but for those of you that haven't looked at the index, it's done in alphabetical order.

So it's obviously the A's and B's are first. So just in case, - It was sponsored by them. - Just in case Blue Wallet guys thought they were getting any preferential treatment. (laughing) I'm afraid not.

Yeah, so Blue Wallet, they're latest release. They've added support for adding a passphrase when you're importing a wallet. So it's been a bit of a gripe of mine and many of the Bitcoin is that if you use something like Samurai Wallet or any other wallet that you've added a passphrase to, you can't sort of import that into Blue Wallet,

but you couldn't until now. So let's say you were using Electron with a passphrase or something like that. And your Electron client died or your Samurai Wallet died or something like that, and you need a quick access to your stats, then now you can import that wallet and add the passphrase and be able to access your stats.

You know, if you're in a pinch and you need to send them off elsewhere. Key thing to note is it is for import only. So you can't download Blue Wallet, create a new wallet within that, the app and then add a passphrase to it for import only.

Next one, another cool one, actually I was playing with this yesterday, call card update, version 4.1.2. And they've added the ability to basically all of the information that it provides, all of the key bits of information, like transaction IDs or derived entropy from BIP-85, which we may have talked about before,

but if not, I'll go into that. - Maybe do a quick overview, I know you can touch. - Yeah, so BIP-85 is the ability for you to derive child seeds or basically extra seed raises from your master seed phrase.

So when you go, when you set up your call card, obviously it will generate a seed phrase for you or you can import your own or add your own via diatrol. So that's your master seed that you'll keep safe through the various methods that we've talked about, like encrypted backups or stamping it into metal, probably advise that you do both.

Where BIP-85 comes in is that you can go into your call card and say, "Right, I've got my master's secret now "and I want you to give me another one "that's deterministically linked to my master's secret, "but only in a way that I know how to access it."

So one of the good things, I'll use a sort of live example, is that if you've got a call card max and you've got a girlfriend that she wants to get into Bitcoin, you could derive her a seed and give her that to put into her wallet.

She could go and fill it with Bitcoin, be completely reckless, lose it or not back it up. She's gonna be crying that she's lost all of this after you go out, well, because I've derived your seed from my master's secret, I can recover that for you.

So it's great for the Uncle Jim model. And just to tie it back into where this latest call card updates, so when you derive the child's seed, it'll display it as a QR code now. So let's say using your girlfriend as an example, if she was, she had blue wallet and you wanted to generate a seed for her,

you could just display that as a QR code on your call card. She could scan it with blue wallet and it would just populate it all and do it all for her, basically, so. - That's very cool. - Yeah, pretty slick.

And it'll show QR codes of transaction IDs and various other functions within the wallet, basically. So, and to be fair, we talked about them a lot, but that was Open Arms's idea. He's the reason it got merged into call card, actually, so shout out to him again.

- Very cool. And so, presumably, you can do this with as many as you want. So you could say, you know, if your entire family, right, jump onto blue wallet or one of these other ones, and you can derive the seed from your cold card and for yourself, presumably as well, so that whatever you, so you effectively just have one seed

and then you have all these, like, I don't know, what would you call them, then, like, child? - Child seed, yeah. And the only thing that, so let's say the family member that you gave it to completely lost it, all you need to remember is which index you used for your mom, your dad, your girlfriend, whoever.

Now, if you're savvy about it and you just start from zero and work your way up, then, you know, you'd only have to try a few before you got to the seed that you needed if you were in a dire situation if you get me.

- And so it would be just, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. - Yeah, you can set anywhere between zero and a thousand, I think, but if it was me personally, I would start from the beginning, just so that if I wasn't a pinch in 10 years time and I needed to recover a child seed using BIP-85,

then I'm gonna use my common sense of start from zero and it's not gonna take me 10 years to get to the end and find what I need. - Okay, yeah, that's really good. I mean, 'cause a minute you've talked about it before where you kind of, one of the things that I love about cold card is that I know I've done my dice roll,

I know that I've done my, you know, or added to the entropy, and that makes me feel much more secure. So if you then carried that forward and you then use that for your blue wallet or whatever else you use or for the rest of your family, you're gonna feel much more secure than trusting somebody else

or trusting that the entropy is sufficient rather than using your own. So I love that, I think it's really clever. - Yeah, absolutely. Like you say, the other bonus is that you don't have to trust a software wallet, so let's say you wanna use a mobile wallet like Samurai, then if you don't want to trust the seed that they give you,

you can give it your own and you can use the one that's, like you say, you've used your dice rolls and you've done it on a completely offline device. So you can be 99.9% certain that there's nothing sketchy going on there.

And rather than samurai telling you, these are your 12 words, you can go now, actually. I'll use these 12 words instead. And it just removes another attack vector. - Like a? - Really good.

So one we've not talked about before, Lily wallet, have you heard about this? - Yeah, I heard a lot about it. Like six months ago at the same time that Sparrow wallet was coming out. And there was a lot of talk about Lily and Sparrow.

And then I've heard nothing from Lily for a long time. - Yeah, so basically, he's been Kevin Mulkrone, his name is. He's been sort of really quietly in the background, building this out to build sort of a business model around it.

It's, for those that don't know, it's basically a multi-sig coordinate wallet, very similar to Sparrow or Spectre. But he's kind of built like a pricing model around it which comes with like various levels of support packages and things like that for those that don't want to fly solo with their own multi-sig basically.

So he's got sort of, he's got a free tier where you can just do single-sig. And then he goes up in steps and over two or three multi-sig, three or five or a completely custom one and the price increases with it.

I think that the main sort of selling point here is the support level because obviously, everything that I've just talked about, two or three, three or five or five or seven or anything, you can do that yourself for free on Spectre or Sparrow.

So the kicker here is that he's sort of selling support as well as the software. So I've just thought I'd include it in this as one of the lesser known options really. The pricing starts at $100 a year for the two or three multi-sig and then it goes right up to $1,000 a year for what they call the custom vault basically

which is up to anything up to 15 different keys in a multi-sig quorum. - All right, okay. - So yeah, you actually don't have to pay to do this yourself but obviously it's, this is geared towards those that fancy a little bit more support when they're doing it and don't want to go down the route of say, Casa or Unchained where you have to,

where you share a key with them, it's collaborative custody and they can sort of help you spend in the future. - So this is somewhere in the middle where there's no collaborative custody but you have your hand held a little bit.

- Exactly, yeah, it's, I think the way he's built it is that he knows nothing about you and knows nothing about your UTXO set which is obviously one of the trade offs of the collaborative custody model is that whilst you can sign up to, I know you can't in with Casa, you can sign up anonymously and they still,

because they're holding one of the keys in your multi-sig quorum, they can still see all of your UTXOs in the wallet and that's just the way that multi-sig works unfortunately. - They can, I guess the only thing is that you could do something like you send it in from post-mix and you use an anonymous email

and then when you've decided to come out 'cause a lot of people who are using that are gonna be for long-term hold. If say like two, three years down the road you go, oh actually now I feel comfortable enough to set up my own multi-sig, you could then send that straight back through Whirlpool and then on the other side you put it

into your own non-collaborative custody, one that you hold yourself. So in theory you can still do it privately as long as on the way out you make sure that you then break those links. - Yeah, it's absolutely possible to use, well certainly Casa, I'm not sure I'm on Jane to use it and pseudonymously from an identity perspective,

definitely not from an on Jane perspective. But I don't know about you Max, I'm thinking if I was to hazard a guess, I'd say probably 95% of customers of that type of product they're doing it.

- Oh don't do that. - Yeah, yeah, because they don't really care that much about their privacy and they just want to have their hand held because they don't have the time to understand this sort of shit, which is absolutely fine.

And there's definitely, you know, there's clearly a market for that type of product. - Yeah, I think I would agree. I think probably 95 or more percent of people will not do any of that. But then it's just good to have that option in people to know.

Like I feel pretty secure with my single SIG personally, but if someone wants multi-sig and it's someone like me who is inevitably gonna fuck it up, then, but they do care, like someone like me, like who cares about privacy, but it's just not very competent, then they can say, well, okay, well, I can manage to actually use this

and I can be comfortable in my security and I can be suit anonymous. There is a market for that kind of little niche area of people and then, you know, eventually will become competent enough that we'll be able to do it ourselves.

So it's just good for people to know that you can do that, I suppose. - Yeah, it's like we said before, a little bit of a middle ground where you are holding your keys or a majority of your keys.

So you are in custody of your SATs but you leave yourself vulnerable to... This is all hypothetical, obviously, but you leave yourself vulnerable to sort of 6102 attacks 'cause at the end of the day, it's a regulated company that can be subpoenaed.

Or, you know, unrealised capital gains tax, you know, you see we see that banded around quite a lot and if you've got your SATs with a regulated entity, then you're gonna be a bit of a sitting duck, really.

It's gonna happen, let's just be clear. - I think it's only a matter of time, especially with this, the infrastructure bill that they're debating at the moment, I've tried to stay out of it to be honest with you, but I think it's coming, you're right.

- Yeah, I mean, this show, we don't go into all the macro stuff and all that kind of new stuff, but just logically, they're coming for your SATs. And so that's why we all bang on so much about privacy is that just, if you look at the trajectory that we're on, they're coming for your SATs, they're coming for your freedom.

And so, you know, if you can avoid using anything where you can be docked, avoid using anything where you can be 6102'd, do it. It doesn't mean that there isn't a time where there's this middle ground where things aren't quite perfect and you care about your security, because, you know, you might be in a place

where it is really important. You might get robbed, you might have a gun put your head and you think, well, multi-sig actually makes a lot of sense for me, then this is that middle ground.

But, you know, we haven't got long. That is why we have to all be ready and sort of learning all the time so that we get as much privacy as we can, as quickly as we can, and get them offline and then shut your mouth and just hide.

- So the TLDR for what Max has said then was, don't waste time calling your senator, focus on custody in your own SATs? - Yeah, but also understand, you know, understand your limits and don't push past them.

And, you know, it's very easy to just think, you listen to all the podcasts and, you know, when I speak to people like you or I speak to people who are really capable with this kind of stuff, it's very easy to be like, oh, well, I'm just gonna do a multi-sig setup and I'm gonna whack everything through Whirlpool

and then it's gonna go through other some other mixing service and then it's gonna do this. And you could so easily fuck yourself over. So, you know, I think it's more important to just make sure that you have custody of things and do things as privately as you can for now, but just never stop learning because,

I don't know, I feel like we've got maybe another year, but I don't think it's much longer than that. - Yeah, I think it's definitely coming. I don't do time or price predictions or anything like that, but yeah, I'm leaning towards it.

You've been banged on there, to be honest.

- Speaking of self custody, the next update from SeedSiner, I'm starting to really, really love this project. I know you had them on 21 is in July, was it? - It's just gone live on the 5th of this month.

- Yeah, so this project's been getting quite a lot of press lately and for good reason. For the uninitiated, it's essentially a DIY hardware, wallet, well, signing device that you can build from a Raspberry Pi Zero.

The update that these guys have just up released, sorry, is that they've now added single-sig wallet support and additionally bit 39 passphrase support as well. So when they first released it, it was just a multi-sig wallet signer and they've, I'm in the telegram chat there's people asking quite regularly for single-sig support.

So it's a really great way to sort of get your hands on some cold storage in a sort of, in a way that doesn't pose you, or sorry, doesn't expose you to risk from sort of supply chain attacks where, you know, if you're buying a known hardware wallet, like a cold card or a ledger or something like that,

if somebody sees that that's going to your house and obviously they're going to know that you're a Bitcoin and you know, that might sort of not be within your, your threat model if you're like, whereas devices like seed signer are built from unassuming hardware that has, you know, an unlimited amount of uses from anything from,

well, building your own mini-computer to hardware, wallet to a gaming device, anything like that. So yeah, this is definitely one to keep an eye on. What's your thoughts on it? Have you had a chance to build on it yet?

- No, but our mutual friend has just sent me the 3D printed case for it. So I have that that's arrived about five days ago. I'm yet to order the rest of the hardware, but I'm definitely going to.

In terms of the project, I love the direction that they're going. I've had the pleasure of speaking to seed signer a couple of times now, really, really switched on. I like the fact that there's less chance this man in the middle attack.

I like the fact that if anyone out there is listening now and they're smart and they haven't run around to all their friends talking about Bitcoin incessantly for like a year or two and docs themselves and then gone on Bitcoin, Twitter and started a podcast so that everyone knows who they are.

Then shut the fuck up and don't order anything with your name and address and build one of these things. I love that. I love that someone can just literally go to Poundland and every day go and buy sats and then build one of these things from parts that could be off the shelf.

No one knows what you're building and then just keep quiet and no one knows you have those sats. And to me, that is kind of, I feel like that's the future. I really feel like that's the future.

- Yeah, definitely, it's obviously not one for somebody who's just entering the space really because it's a little bit of a DIY build and you might get off put by the sort of parts list. It's nowhere near as hard as it looks.

But yeah, it's one to get your teeth into if you've got a weekend to yourself or something and you want to have a play around. - But you think it's that hard? Like I know when you're sort of coming in, you have the stress of, "Oh, what if I fuck something up?"

But with the quality of content and like the guides that you're doing and so many different people are just like piling in with videos and walkthroughs. And with Telegram channel being there, do you think that if someone said, "Oh, well, I'm just gonna stack as much as I can at Poundland for the next six months."

And then, you know, maybe they use Samurai Wallet on a Pixel 3 or something like that until then, which is fairly secure. And then once they get to this, you know, they're uncomfortable about the amount they have on there, then they could build one of these.

Do you think if someone, a normal person, cleared a full weekend that it's, that it's really gonna be that much of a challenge for them given the amount of content out there? - If they, as long as they know where to look and I think one thing that I try and remember is that not everybody, most people at the end to this,

you know, getting to Bitcoin are not on Bitcoin Twitter. So they don't see, you know, what we, we expose ourselves to every day and the content and the conversation and things like that. They don't see that.

And I'll give you an example. I had a bit of a, I was doing one of my sport calls last week and I had a bit of a slap in the face and a drop back down to reality. And obviously I'm not gonna name any names as to it was and this absolutely isn't to sort of throw any shade at them.

But it really made me realise how simple, simple things can trip people up and when you're entering the spaces. - Was it Katanya? - Was it Katanya? - It was Katanya. You know what? He's fucking useless.

- Such a basic bloke, isn't he? (laughing) - I was helping, as helping this person and we couldn't figure out why their node wasn't running and what they, rather than putting an ethernet cable into the back of their node, they'd put a phone cable in and just something that might seem really, really trivial

to you or I or to anybody that's familiar with computing or that's been in the space for a little bit of time. Well, you know, my laugh at that, but that's the level of knowledge that some people have when they come into the space and it's really, when you've been in for a year, two years, three years,

whatever, it's difficult to not get completely out of touch with how simple some things need to be and how much hand-holding people need when they're coming into the space. - That's true.

- So there's definitely a market for the DIY stuff. What is it gonna go mass adoption anytime soon? Definitely, definitely not. But that's just, you know, using the example that person I just said, a supply chain attack from a hardware wallet manufacturer isn't even on their radar is it, it's not even thinking about that sort of stuff.

- That's true. Yeah, very true. - I've skipped one on the list. I missed out the passport, you know, the foundation devices, passport device, another air-gapped hardware wallet and they've just fixed their integration with Blue Wallet to the new QR versions.

I was playing with this again last week, I think. It's a really, really slick pair in Blue Wallet and passport done with QR codes and just obviously your mobile phone. - There's a few good guides out there on this actually.

- Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think there's a couple in this month's index as well with jumping ahead a little bit but BTC sessions are obviously a great video guide and I've released a written one as well.

You've got a passport on your max. Is this gonna be one of them things that you say, yeah, I haven't got around to it yet. - I honestly genuinely was reading through your guide last night and it came out the box for the first time last night.

It sat for about two and a half weeks on my bedside table and literally not even been opened but I took it out the box yesterday. A few things to note were firstly, it's really, really fucking nice.

- Isn't it just? - Oh my God, I was really actually down 'cause I took it out, I was playing with it and I was like blown away by this thing and I passed it over to my Mrs and I went, "Oh my God, feel this, this is amazing."

We're going places now. Bitcoin's taking off, this is fucking unreal and she went to the top heavy, it's not that good and I was like, oh, that's like a normies view but to me, if I compare that to any other hardware that is out at the moment, it looks like it was weighty.

It had that magnetic back that just like clicks into place. - I'm playing with it right now. I've got one of mine. It's really satisfying just clipping that back on, isn't it? - It's really nice and I like that it has the AAA batteries.

Once I fired it up, 'cause I was expecting as well, I was expecting it to be bigger than it is 'cause I was like, I had my head on Nokia phone, you're thinking of like a 3310 or whatever but it's actually pretty small.

And yeah, it just, it feels quality in your hand and no, I haven't set it up here because I'm just, well, I don't wanna dox myself but as you know, I'm all over the place at the moment. But it does feel like that.

It feels like it would be the one that I'd want to reach for my everyday use, if that makes sense. Like maybe it doesn't have the full functionality that the cold card has and or yet anyway and maybe I'd have that as my like proper deep cold storage but then this maybe I'd use as my everyday device just 'cause I want to use it everyday

'cause it's really, really fucking nice. - Yeah, it's just a nice device to sort of have in your hand and play around with. I've been really, really impressed with that actually. I also think I've seen on Twitter over the last course, the course of the last few weeks as well, the guys are crypto cloaks, sponsor of the pod.

They're, I think they're creating some cases for the back as well. - Oh really? - Yeah, but I'm sure I've seen that somewhere. I'll try and find the tweet and send it you afterwards, but I'm pretty sure that they're working on replaceable cases.

It's like you're back to the 90s when you've got your, you're not, you're breaking your, you're going out to the phone shop on this Saturday afternoon. - I love it. Yeah, it is a lovely device.

And like I said, I was going through your guide. So I've only got as far as like checking the full words as you scan a QR code and then it will come up with full words and you just basically make sure that it hasn't been intercepted and played around with so that you make sure that you're not getting fished or hacked or whatever.

But yeah, I think this is something that I could realistically give to almost anyone and they'd work out, they'd have your guide and that. And within an afternoon, they'd be up and running.

I can't see any reason why they wouldn't. - No, I agree. I tell you one feature that's really nice on it as well is that when you obviously you go through the usual process, you set up your seed phrase and then you've got the wallet set up, you're ready to go.

When you then sort of, let's say you want to export the watch-only version so you can sort of use blue wallet as an interface. You do it all through QR code, it's really slick. After it's imported into blue wallet, it'll tell you to go onto blue wallet and generate a receive address for it and then it wants to scan it itself

with the camera that's on the device so that it can verify that blue wallet is acting in good faith and doing what it should be. - Ah. - Really cool. It's really easy, let's say it's got a camera on board and obviously blue wallet just displays a QR code for a receiving address and it just lets me scan that

just to check that everything's going okay and I presume it does exactly the same thing with Sparrow Inspector as well. - Yeah, I like it. It seems as though it sort of fits in a little part of the market that just wasn't filled here.

There just was nothing that was quite up there in terms of product design and quality feel and usability and this kind of just fits there. You know, you can imagine. You speak to some of these people who are from legacy banking or they're like chucking fortunes in here and you're like, oh yeah, I'm going to use this.

We're not that you'd ever suggest a ledger but you're like, okay, you know, go and use this cold card and they're like, as great as it is, it doesn't have that quality feel and it's not that usable and they'll pick this thing up and they'll just go, yeah, no, this is cool.

This is like part of the future. It's got that, not in terms of looks but in terms of like feel and usability, it's got that iPhone feel to it, I think. - Yeah, yeah, it does. It's got, and also the packaging and everything when you open it up and the waiting and it's not-- - That's very iPhone, isn't it?

- It's, yeah, it's Apple. - Very much. - You actually Apple, yeah, yeah. - But yeah, I know I haven't said it up and it's the answer and also the bitbox which I've been sent out kindly. I haven't said that up either or anything that I was supposed to do or I haven't said up the Inspector DIY.

I haven't built that either. - Oh, you've got one of that? - I've got the case, which I've been sent out but I haven't got any of the other parts and yeah, basically I've broken my, all my nodes again.

Can't get any of my funds off Samurai again. New laptop hasn't arrived and yeah, just in a typical mess and not that many-- - I think you need to lock yourself in your bedroom for a couple of weeks.

- I don't know what I need, mate, I need to find people in my bedroom. (laughing) - Well, what else have we got on the list? - Yeah, so we were talking earlier about leaking privacy, if you're using a collaborative custody with like CASA or on chain or something like that.

Michael Flaxman, who did that really epic 10x security guide,

which is basically at the DIY multisig guide, way back when and what I think it was over a year ago now. He's come up with a new proposal, I think, or a new sort of scheme. Basically, it's called Blind X-Pop and it's really quite technical.

So as I always say, I'm not going to get too much into the weeds because I'll just make myself so I could complete oath. But essentially, it's a way that you can give a custodian one of your keys, but with the key that you give them, they cannot see all of the funds that are controlled by that two or three or that three or five wallet.

So if this is widely implemented, especially in like the collaborative custody space, this could be quite big for privacy. The bit of this basically sort of an additional secret that you don't give the custodian that.

So they have the ability to spend, but only if you give them this extra little secret, if you like. So the way it would work is you could say, give Casa your third key, but not tell them this little extra secret that's defined in a flatulence sort of proposal.

You could give the extra little secret to a lawyer and then the two would have to collude to just to be able to get to the position that we're in now in terms of collaborative custody so that they could see all of your funds, if that makes sense.

- That's really cool. - And I believe it doesn't require any, this isn't sort of a change to anything at the protocol level. You know, this is live and usable now if people have the sort of know how to do it.

- Okay. - That would be a big one in terms of privacy for multi-sig definitely. Right, next one is Bolt 12. Have you heard much about Bolt 12? - No. (laughing) It's essentially a proposal from Rusty Russell who works for-- - Oh, hold on, sorry.

I think I have. Is this the thing where you can get sent tips and it's kind of semi-anonymous and you can do it. So like if you'd have a QR code that's like static but it changes, it's like not static sort of.

- Yeah, it's, think of it like lightning invoices version two where you can do a lot more with them. Things like streaming stats. Now I know you can do that now but the way it currently works is with key send and that's a bit of a sort of hacky roundabout way to do it.

This is sort of at the protocol level so you could stream stats or you could offer a business that runs on a subscription model and people could use, you could use a Bolt 12 invoice to sort of debit their account, you know, 10,000 stats every week or every month or whatever.

That's one of the sort of things that Bolt 12 implements as loads of other things as well but the sort of recurring payments piece is one of the bigger ones. They also propose what's called blinded paths.

So this is where the sender doesn't know where a message or, you know, in terms of lightning, a payment is going. So a good bit of increase from a privacy perspective on the lightning front.

This, the Bolt 12 is currently at proposal stage. So I think, yeah, it was first posted September last year but it's only implemented into sea lightning at the moment. So if you, well, all of the common lightning packages umbrella, my node, et cetera, they all run on L&D so they won't have access to this yet.

So essentially it's not been sort of widely implemented across the whole of the lightning network if you like but definitely want to keep an eye on. Yeah, sort of lightning invoices 2.0 if you like.

But the sort of use cases that it could, you know, could create are quite massive to be honest. Yeah, that's really cool. Next one, new release. This isn't a software update. This one is green light by block stream.

The sort of TLDR on this is it's a lightning network in the cloud which isn't really sort of, when I say it in the cloud, it's, you know, it's hosted by block stream. The sort of interesting part here is that normally if you've got, let's say you spin up a lightning node on a virtual private server, the keys for that lightning node

and consequently the ability to spend from using that lightning node are, you know, you might have access to them on your phone but the key is also held on that virtual private server. So whoever's hosting that in theory, depending on the level of security that you've got might be able to access those keys and, you know,

you've got hot funds at risk, if that makes sense. And what block stream have done with this new proposal is that the keys are only on the end user's phone. So that it's kind of the best of both worlds for somebody who's, say, living a nomadic lifestyle who wants to use lightning.

They could use green light from block stream where the node is ran on their behalf so they don't have to worry about uptime. They don't have to worry about those horrible little raspberry pies that cause you a lot of pain, Max.

(laughing) But they're always in control of the keys and that would ordinarily be on the server itself that they're not in control of. Obviously, 'cause this is so new, they're not, I think they're rolling out as a, you know, a bit of a beta and that they're not actually charging for it at first.

They will be obviously charging long term. They haven't eluded to how much it's gonna be. But it's kind of a nice proposal. We'll see how it sort of pans out in terms of usability. But it's nice to, you know, a nice option that you can have, you know, reliable uptime from a server that you don't control, but the keys and the spend

ability remains to yours and yours only. - Nice. I've never used Phoenix much, Max, the wallet. - I've not, no, I've never used Phoenix. I've gone more for Zeus. It's either Zeus or Blue or Satoshi wallet.

Wallet of Satoshi. They're the three that I've really used. But I know a lot of people-- - I can hear nobody gasping their custodial, Max. - Well, not all of them. - Zoosie. - I know Zeus is enough, I apologize.

- Zeus isn't. - And I know Blue, but I only ever do tiny amounts. And I know it's bad, but the thing is that I do break nodes, you know, like, and you know how much time I've wasted. It's like the reason that I don't get any life is just 'cause I constantly fucking break these things and trying to fix these things.

And, you know, if I'm spending $10 or $20 here and there and just fucking around with it, I know it's custodial. I know that, but really, if like, if I lose it, I'm probably not gonna have a specific-- - It's not gonna change your life, is it?

- No, it's not. But I tell you what does change my life. What does change my life is wasting like 10 to 20 hours fucking around with a node that's gone down for the 10th time and I can't fix.

And I just wanna throw myself out of a window and I'm thinking, or I could just have this $10 on a custodial wallet and I'll do that. And I know it's not like the perfect thing to do, but life's not always perfect.

But if I did anything serious, I'd use Zeus, you know, if I had any like serious funds on there, I'd use Zeus. - Yeah, I completely agree. If it's small amounts, it's not gonna change your life and your value of time more than why not.

But yeah, going back to Phoenix, they have released a Apple version of iOS version story of the wallet, so previously, well, until last month, it's been Android only. So all of you Apple fanboys can now have access to Phoenix wallet.

- Did you just roll now then, mate? - Say again. - You can run it as well now then. - Don't tell me with that brush, mate. Going on to some education pieces to cap it off. Diverter, the main influencer in the space, he's come up with, he's created a mix, let's mix and chill, it's called,

which is a guide for the Samurai wallet guy's new tool that basically is mixed to X-PUB, or essentially send straight to Call Storage from Whirlpool. So to break that down a little bit, the Samurai team have implemented this tool called mixed to X-PUB, where you can go into the command line

only at the moment, as is always the way with new software, they sort of, they build out for the tech savvy first, and then they build a graphical user interface around it. So you can go into the command line tool and say, okay, here's my post-mix wallet, this is where I want to do all my remixing, but after this many remixes,

I want you to start siphoning those post-mix UTXOs off to the addresses controlled by this X-PUB, and that could be an X-PUB from your call card, your passport, your seat signer, or an offline Samurai wallet, you know, a separate wallet.

So essentially, once you've sort of set it up, it'll do that on your behalf, basically, so it'll know that after a predetermined amount of remixes, I need to send that UTXO, the next mix it does, rather than going back into my post-mix wallet, I'm gonna send it to that address, which is controlled by Max's call card or whatever.

Which, number one, is less gonna cost you less in transaction fees, because remixes are free, so if you can remix and then send to cold storage, then you're saving on fees. The main benefit is that currently, if you want to mix, then get some remixes and then send off to cold storage.

If you're doing single UTXO spends, rather than it being a one million sat UTXO, which is sat in your post-mix wallet, 'cause they're all equal outputs, that's the whole point of the coin-join process, it then becomes just slightly less than one million, because of the minor fees

that are taken out of that transaction, if that makes sense. So you don't lose that round amount. Anybody looking on chain at that UTXO that's just landed into your cold card or your cold storage, it's still identical to every other post-mix UTXO, so you are still hiding in that massive crowd of, in fact, we didn't talk about it,

we should talk about it. Have you seen the unspent worldport, unspent capacity? - It's really fucking growing. - I'm just gonna check it now. - It's like 4,000 and something. - 4,048 Bitcoin or $177 million of equal outputs that are sat there on the blockchain, all looking identical.

Yeah, really, really, really good to see. - That's great. - Yeah, any questions on that piece that Diverta did or did I sort of cover it off? - Okay. - My only question on that would be, does it take fees into consideration for sending off, can you set like a sapper by limit so that you're not suddenly going into a high fee environment

when things are coming off? - When it's doing the automatic send to cold storage. - Yeah. - You don't pay any fees. - Oh, okay. - So because you pay for your initial mix and then you're remixing, so let's say I go into this tool and I say, right, after seven remixes sent to this expo.

So on the seventh mix, it's still a remix, so I'm not paying anything. The fees are covered by new people entering the pool. Rather than that mix, the address on the output side of that mix going into post mix, it just goes to my cold storage wallet instead, so I'm not paying anything.

- Right. Right. Ah, okay, I'm with you. Yeah, that's really fucking cool. And so do we have any sort of timeline? You know, you said this is more for the tech savvy and it's come online. Any sort of vague timeline of when this might be implemented so that normal people can use it?

- None whatsoever. I'm afraid there's no sort of inkling. I would imagine you're looking at a good couple of months at least, generally, like I say, these things are thrown into the command line first for people to test out, and then they'll go into sort of building the graphical user interface around it,

which I'm sure is obviously the more technical bit of it. So, and then you've got to test it in quality, assure it, so I wouldn't hold you breath for anything, you know, in the next month or two, to be honest.

- But that's brilliant. I know I really, really like that because it takes away a lot of that stress and it's what, you know, most people are going to be doing anyway is they'll have a certain number in mind of, I want this amount of remixes, and then I want to send to cold storage and to have that automated and to save that extra hop.

- That's really cool. - Yeah. - Yeah, really, really cool. - And that on-spent capacity, when this tool is implemented, you know, as an easy to access graphical tool, that on-spent capacity is just going to explode because, you know, I'm going to go out on a limit to say that 90% of people are probably doing like three

or four mixes and then they're sending to cold storage, which you find, you know, I get that, but when they're doing that, they're losing that round amount so that they're sending off different amounts.

So, that sort of isn't additive to the unspent capacity because it doesn't look the same as all of the one within the exact UTXOs or the five million in the exact UTXOs, et cetera. If people are using this tool and they send it straight to cold storage, we don't know that they're not, we have no idea

where they are, are they in post mix, are they in maxes? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Call card, that number's just going to explode. - And it's UTXO by UTXO, which is all equal output. So, when they send, it will be, whatever it is, 0.05 or whatever the amounts are, it will then send directly to the cold storage

as that rather than you're combining the UTXOs to send out as one payment to your cold storage, which is then obvious on-chain. - Yep, absolutely. - Yeah, that's massive. - Huge, yeah, I mean, you've still got to worry about you're spending habits further down the line as well.

You know, if you're sending off using this tool to send off a load of 1 million sat UTXOs one by one to new addresses, obviously they can't be tied together. But if in 12 months, five years, 10 years time, you need to make a big purchase and then you merge and then you're showing common ownership.

So it's kind of something to consider. - But with labeling and all that kind of stuff. - Yeah, definitely. - You know, definitely. - Yeah, that's really cool. I look forward to playing with that in sort of six months or whenever it's sort of a bit more available for someone like me.

- Right, last two pieces. I think we touched on this early, but Ben from BTC Sessions has done a full, I've just seen how long it is. It's an hour long guide on using the passport device.

So we even run through everything from setting it up to using it offline. Yeah, really, well, top-notch quality video, but as is always the case with Ben's. But yeah, it's, if you've got a spare hour to sit down and watch that one, probably worth checking out.

And last but not least, it kind of alchemist, the guide king, has written a piece called bullish on Bitcoin Home Miners that I just wanted to highlight to everyone, really. And obviously he's well known for him and divers are well known for the mine at home guides and how you can get started with getting a miner plugged in at home.

Icono has done a sort of now that he's sort of done it for 12 months or so. He's done a bit of a drains up approach of why this is a good thing. And he's also done some modeling on how profitable it can be at various kilowatt hour rates and also compares it to various DCA strategies as well.

So just one worth checking out. As is always the case with diverter stuff, it's very comprehensive. You're looking at a 10, 15 minute read at least, but really, really in depth and really valuable for somebody who's on the fence about plugging in a miner.

There seems to be, again, a bit of an explosion of Home Miners. It feels like every day, I've logged into Twitter and there's a new NIM there that's just plugged in a few S9s and stuff. It's really, really, really good to see.

- Yeah, it's really exciting. I don't know whether some of it was because of this exodus from China or what it is really, but it feels like the tides are shifting a little bit. And I don't know if you listened to Citadel Dispatch with the quantum alchemist and diverter and who was the other guy they had on there?

- It was Ronin Miner. - That's it, Ronin Miner. That was really interesting. And they went into a lot of real detail on what their setups are and where they're getting the miners from and all that kind of stuff.

And yeah, it's just nice to see more people starting to mine at home. And in terms of DCA, it does seem this is a much, much better strategy. It decentralises things more. It's KYC free, like properly KYC free done correctly.

There's a lot to be said for it. I haven't read through the icon alchemist's guide yet, but it still feels like in the UK with the amount that we're paying for our energy unless you're nicking it.

It doesn't really seem, it doesn't seem viable. - I wonder if Panland sell electricity, that'd be good. (laughing) But yeah, completely agree. I was looking at my electricity bill either day and thinking there's absolutely no way that those sort of electricity prices I would even come close to.

'Cause I would do it at a loss if it meant I could get some privates out. I would do it up to like a 10, 50, 20% loss, but I did some very quick five packet math and it's not even, I wouldn't even get close to that.

- No, it's way too far away for people in the UK or Europe, it's just not possible. And then if you can go to Panland for 10%, you also don't have the added stress of getting a certified electrician in to make sure that you don't blow yourself up.

I've run an S17 in a studio flat and I can tell you that that will break any relationship and it will break your soul. It is so loud and it is so hot. And that was an S17, I'm sure the '19s and the M32s and all those things that are even louder and even hotter.

And why are you gonna have a 30% loss and have all of that stress when you can have fit for 10% and buying cash? Like it, as nice as it sounds, it just doesn't quite make sense yet. But I'm sure there's a workaround.

I'm sure that like Brits can band together and we can find cheap energy, like stranded energy from solar where they're paying back into the grid and they get very, very shitty rates in the UK.

And that's bought up, but you'd need to sort of band in together and get a shipping container or something like that. There'll be a way around it, but just plugging them in at home, I think it's not possible here.

- Yeah, when you started to say before about needing to get a electrician, I thought you were gonna say needing to get a divorce 'cause I think that'd be exactly what would happen to me if I pulled one.

- Have you been up close to one? - Never, never, not once. - Fuck me. - So I bought two, about two and a half years ago or something like that, whenever the S17 pros came out and I was like, oh, I'll just give this a go and plug them in, had them wearing away standard stuff.

I couldn't join onto Antpool, couldn't get anything to work and fuck around for about a month, didn't work, sent them back in the end. It was, honestly, I was thinking, oh, this is gonna be like a fan on full, you know?

I was like, that's gonna be, that's what it's gonna be like. It's gonna be really loud and annoying, but you know, I can cope with that. It was like, it was unbearable, actually. It was unbearable, you could not operate, you could not think, certainly couldn't sleep.

I mean, we were in the studio flat at the time, but fuck me, it would definitely cause a divorce, even in a house, like, if you had that in, you know, a spare bedroom and you're downstairs or even in the garden, you're still hearing it.

- Really? - Yeah, yeah, it's like, it's like someone screaming, just nonstop, like, right into your ears, that loud. - Do you, obviously, don't give any names with it. Do you know anybody that minds in the UK?

- I know a few people who mind, but it's like shit coins and Monero and all that stuff. - Oh, really? - Yeah. - It's a GPU stuff, not basic stuff. - No, I don't know anyone who minds in the UK.

I know people who are in the UK and they mind, but they have their miners hosted abroad. - I was just about to say, what do you think about these companies, like Compass Mining and things like that?

- Yeah, I bought a couple, if I'm honest. - Oh, really? - I know it's not ideal. - Yeah, I know it's not ideal. - Right, let's walk us through it then. Tell us what you can. - You can buy at the moment, S19 Pro's 100 terawatt hours for about $7,300.

- So for the Lehman, is that like the latest model, or is that a company or something like that? - No, no, it's like the latest 100 terawatt hours. So it's like the most powerful, or at least I believe to be the most powerful ones on the market, they will in like today's term mine you about $25 to $30 worth of Bitcoin a day.

You can buy them for about $7,300 and you will pay, I think it's like 60 cents a kilowatt hour. - Six, you mean, not 60, hopefully, so you won't be as profitable if it's 60. (all laughing) - I've just done a big pub lunch in the bottle of wine.

Yeah, it's six cents a kilowatt hour, which in comparison to the UK, I don't know what we paid, they're like 20 pence or something like that. So it's, you know, you're talking about a quarter, and that's it, you literally just, you have them set up, you have them hosted, there's a few different hosting facilities.

You can either do it on credit card, so if you can get cheap credit or loans, then you can do that, and you're sort of speculative attacking, but on a much smaller level than someone like Seder's doing, you get your zero percent for 24 months, put one of these online, and then, yeah, you pay about $150 a month to host it,

and the stats just stream into whichever wallet you give them, and that's it, you don't have to do anything. I mean, it's not, the trade-off is, it's not fully KYC free, obviously, because you can give a fake name, and you can do all that sort of stuff, or you could do it through like, you could do a separate company,

like an FX company that you use who will then pay them, and it will be that FX company as they're like the intermediary, and they don't actually then have all your details, but if there's any sort of subpoena, or any sort of reason why any agency wants anything, they will get it, so they're gonna get your name,

if they want your name, they're getting it, that's just to be realistic. - So, do you actually own the hardware then? - Yes. - So if they go on the, or if you decide that you don't want your minor with them, what happens then, how do you approach that?

- You can move them, so you're basically, you buy the hardware, you get all of the serial number, and all that kind of stuff, of the hardware, they host it for you, and if for any reason you say, "Do you know what, I want to move it "to another hosting facility, "or I want to do this myself,"

because suddenly, you get access to cheap electric, you can do that, you contact them, you have to pay for the shipping, and all that sort of stuff, obviously, but yeah, you own the hardware.

And are you tied into sort of jaffter-like rent space for like a minimum amount of time as well? - I think I signed for a year, and then it just rolls. But it's not perfect, and there's probably, there are probably better ways to do it.

You can probably reach out to someone in the Bitcoin community who has access to cheaper electric, and you can probably host with them, and maybe you could get it slightly cheaper per kilowatt hour possibly, and maybe it would be a little bit less KYC, because you could pay them in Bitcoin,

and you could use a NIMM, and all this kind of stuff, but at the end of the day, it's probably not gonna be a lot cheaper, and you don't have so much security, because someone can go away very quickly, or go under very quickly, whereas one of these bigger things, like Compass, it's probably a bit less likely, so it's all trade-offs.

The reason I did it is I just wanted to fuck around with it. I just wanna sort of give it a go, 'cause I tried with those S17s, and like I say, as usual, just wasted a load of time, and just fucked it up, and sent them back.

But what was interesting was that the miners that I bought then, the S17s, like two and a half years ago, I paid about 1,500 quid a miner or something. They're worth more than that now. And yeah, yeah, I mean, some of these things, they go up with the value of Bitcoin, so some of these miners, you could pick up

for nothing, and now they're worth a few hundred quid, or you could pick them up, 1,500 quid, and now they're worth 5,000. And so the value of these things can go up. So when the value of the miners dropped in half, or close to it, I thought, well, why don't I buy one, and just give it a go,

and just see, and it's a way of me just stacking stats daily. - Can you choose what pool you point your hash out as well, or do you have to go with whatever they can choose? - Oh, right, okay.

- Who are you mining with? - Yeah, you can choose. - I haven't started yet, I have to-- - Oh, yeah, okay. - It's like another month, or like 20 days, or something like that. That's one of the things that they get you on, is like, you pay upfront, but you wait a little bit.

- Right. - So, I don't know whether it's that they're actually waiting for the shipping, or is it actually that they're plucking it in, and they're not telling you, I mean, I'm not sort of like saying that they're doing that, I'm just saying I don't know, but you have to take these trade-offs, so I'm just giving it a go.

You can choose, like you say, you own the hardware, you can choose where you mine, and it's not the perfect setup by any means, but for people in the UK, it's not the worst. It's better than, I think it's better than like a lot of these dollar-cost averaging services, or things that a lot of people will say,

"Oh, that's the best way to do it," because it's a little bit less KYC, and it's cheaper, like just as long as the hash rate doesn't go absolutely fucking crazy in the next year, which it could do, you're gonna be buying your Bitcoin a lot cheaper.

- Interesting, okay. Actually, the insight there, just before we wrap up, I just wanted to give a shout out to a couple of Bitcoiners that have translated my Q&A page, Bitcoiner.guide/Q&A, @MagnificentBTC, did it in Italian for me, and at Arabic, HODL did it in,

well, you can guess, yeah, exactly. Just, yeah, obviously there's like 10 pages just to that sort of section of the website, so they've clearly spent a lot of time to do that, so just wanted to publicly say thank you to the both of them.

- Cool, very nice. Any other mentions before we wrap it up, anything else? - I think we've covered everything on my short list, Max. - Cool, all right, mate. Well, always a pleasure speaking to you, and I look forward to next month, hopefully you join me for that one, to anyone listening who has any questions about anything

we talked about, you can always reach out, and I will try and answer as best I can, and yeah, speak to you next month, mate. see you next time much!