Bitcoin monthly 0017 Living on bitcoin

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

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.

[ Laughs ]

All right, 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. Today's episode is the monthly update with Bitcoin Q&A and Antimas, as is probably to be expected at this point I had connection issues. But luckily, Bitcoin Q&A and Antimas are both professionals, so they carried the show.

I've edited out a few long gaps and pauses where we had a delay, so it should all make sense and be a little bit smoother. Before we start, I want to say thank you to everyone who's been streaming Sats, and sending me messages on the podcasting 2.0 apps.

It's really cool. I love to see it. I don't think that I can message back at the moment, so it'd be really nice to have that option. Maybe we could have something where people can do shout outs, or people can send messages into the show, and I can send some messages back from via the airways.

I don't know what the best way is. Any suggestions are welcome, but yeah. Just wanted to say thank you. I really do appreciate it. Thank you also to everyone who's been buying the clothing and giving feedback.

If you have bought some clothing, please do give feedback good or bad. I really want to know and make sure that we do the best quality products we can. I'd also like to thank the sponsors who allowed this show to continue.

Foundation devices are making my favorite hardware wallets. If you haven't checked out the passport already, you can check it out at foundation devices.com. They're beautifully designed. They're very easy to use, and it's fully open source.

They also have an incredible team. They even have the option for you to have your hand held by Bitcoin Q&A to set one of these up. It can be a little bit daunting if you've never done it before, or you're not that technically minded.

So this is an amazing option. If you do decide to buy one of these, you can use the code bit by bit to get an extra $10 off, and you can reach out to me and ask any questions before you buy one of these.

And finally, we have fast Bitcoins. If you are looking to stack Sats, and you don't know how to do this no KYC, or you just don't care, what I'd really urge you to do is use an exchange who have your best interests at heart.

Fast Bitcoins do everything they can to make you hold your own Sats and to keep your data as secure as possible. They were the first exchange to ever use lightning, and they are always a few steps ahead.

If anyone listening to this has any questions and they want to reach out to me or the team you can do, you can also check them out at fastbikcoins.com and take advantage of these low prices.

Enjoy the show. - Catan's no guide. Oh, you record it. You ninja launched me again. - Yeah, no, it's good, isn't it? (laughing) - Oh yeah. - What have we got on the show? - On my list, I've got Robosatz, Sea Tool, Clang, Self Shield, Sparrow Wallet, Bolt Card, Catan's node guide, the new one, Silent Payments and Fediments.

Don't know if you guys got anything to add, but I'm sure there's plenty to go off there. - Yeah, I've got a few, that sounds like a good list. So we're dive straight in. Nice to have you both back.

I've got some beautiful hardware set on my desk, Antimus. Thank you very much. It's gorgeous and Q and A, I've got yours as well. So I've sold that on. - Oh man, I was just glad it arrived.

(laughing) - I had some bad experiences on that front. - It's fucking heavy. - That's good to hear. - Like when it arrived, I sort of like went to pick it up and then like doubled to how heavy it is.

It's definitely solid. - Oh you're back. We lost you there. - Yeah, we lost you there. - Two to four. - Yeah, I don't think it was me. I think that was you. But yeah, I was just saying about this hardware that I've got from Antimus, it's really fucking nice.

I need to take some pictures actually, but I've got my bit by bit engraved into the front of it and then these seed plates and all of your stuff as well Q and A, it's really fucking nice quality.

- Nice, I look forward to receiving mine and having your name engraved on it, it's very bougie. I like that. (laughing) - Yeah, I'll take some pictures, but it's really, really nice. I think that was one of the ones that was done by hand, wasn't it?

- Yeah, Nick did that. No, it's not by hand. You mean the engraving, right? - No, the actual, like, putting the thing together and everything was one of the first things you guys did. - Exactly, yeah, yeah, it was sort of from last winter and that was one that Nick did in his shop.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's still done by it with the CNC machines, but he was the one operating it and putting it all together. Yeah, still left over from then. - Have you got any videos on the website yet Antimus?

I haven't looked recently of like the tool being used. I think it might be quite a good idea. - Exactly, I'm just working on that. I've got some videos already recorded. I'm just at the moment still working through getting everything set up locally as well, 'cause I've been shooting myself and the foot adapting things on the fly.

So I'm working through that, but I hope I'll get that all set up by the end of the week. So we'll have some videos also from the one video that went round on Twitter last week from Econo Alchemist, taking them for a burn.

That was pretty great to see that. - I love how he-- - So we'll have one up too. - Yeah, one of the previews that he put on Twitter is like sped up a little bit and you can like see the glow as he moves the flame around the item, you can see the glow moving, I was just finding it mesmerizing.

I watched it a few times. - Absolutely, he's a really good choice of music as well. It was perfect setting, it was wonderful. Do you want to kick off with what was on your list first, Max?

- Yeah, sounds good. I was just going to sober what I do. Antimus, is this a new mic? Because you sound really clear. - No. - And loud, 'cause normally I have to compress your volume like five times over to get it loud enough, but this is really, really clear.

- Wow, okay. It's the same browser, it's the same mic, it's the same set up. - That's weird. - It's a very good one. - Yeah, so much better. - Yeah, honestly it is completely different, but that's cool.

Yeah, so I mean, first on my list was this telegram room that I came across, it's like peer to peer, exchange of either SATs or goods and services. I did a tweet about it, maybe a week or so ago, the Bitcoin P2P marketplace, nobody knows who's behind it.

It's really fucking cool. And this is the sort of stuff that I think is really important for people who are living on a Bitcoin standard or thinking about trying to stack the right way and without KYC.

And I'd like to see more of it, basically. Most of the stuff on there is mainly in the US, but there's some stuff in Europe. And yeah, I wonder if you guys would check it out, yeah. - Yeah, I checked it out.

I've got a fair idea of who's behind it, but obviously, I won't say. - I don't like public, but yeah, it's a really great idea. Essentially, it's just like a telegram message board where you can go in and just post that the stuff that you've got for sale be that product from a company or just somebody that's selling an old pixel device

'cause you wanna get some SATs 'cause you're not using it. And then anywhere in between, so it's a really good idea. The only sort of caveat that we'll say, and this isn't trying to cast shade on the services that obviously it is just the telegram room.

So just be careful who you're trading with and there's no, excuse me, there's no chargebacks in Bitcoin and just make sure you've got some level of due diligence as to who you're trading with because essentially, I'm sure you're gonna have to send the funds first and then hope that the item gets sent.

So just as you would with any peer-to-peer marketplace, just tread with caution a little bit and do some due diligence with who you're doing a trade with. - Yeah, also, there've been some really good offers in there from different people, but the one problem is that I see is really difficult to filter.

So if you're not like watching everything live, going through, like searching back through the content is not very intuitive. So like once something's buried a few days back, it's usually pretty much gone.

But they've been pretty cool offers in there. I haven't actually traded there yet, but I've kept an eye on it to see. There are a few interesting ones like miners being offered and stuff, but only shipping in the U.S.

So that was a bit of a bummer. But yeah, hopefully that'll grow a bit. - Anybody that wants to find this, it's t.me/Bitcoinp2p marketplace. That'll take you straight to the telegram room where all the listings are.

They've also got, I failed to mention a seller feedback separate room where people can go in and comment to say, "You know, I've just bought this pixel device from Max, "just vouching that, you know, he sent the device, "that's promised and everything was fine."

So you can, there's kind of like a separate sister room where you can go and have a lot of quick search for the person that you want to buy from, just to check whether they've got any reviews beforehand.

And that is @marketplacereviews. - Cool, yeah, I just thought I'd mention it. And also, while we're talking about that, I put my first advert in there for a Raspberry Pi 4, 4 gigabyte model.

If anyone would like to give me 85 slave notes worth of SATs, that is for sale. So anyone listening, his little advert, I would like to sell my brand new unused boxed Raspberry Pi 4. - You just give me an idea.

I've got two spare ones in the drawer. Thank you for that. - Don't put them on now, let me sell mine first, otherwise there's competition in the market. Let me sell mine first and then we'll do yours.

- I've got to go straight in, straight in, on the quick, yeah. - 'Cause apparently no one can get hold of them. And I bought this like a year ago, whatever it was. And it's just sat in the drawer.

And I've got four others that I've built, none of them are running anyway. And I just thought this is stupid, I should sell it. So, yeah, DM me. And then the other thing on my list, along these lines of a bit more living on a Bitcoin standard, I wanted to ask both of you, like your thoughts on using these cards, top up cards,

one use cards. I know Q and A you had tried. I think the coin corner one was it recently. And whether you have any feedback and ideas for, again, a little bit more for the EU and UK, because it seems it's a lot easier in the US than it is here.

And I just don't think everyone knows what is possible at this point, but it seems it feels like maybe it's getting a little bit easier. - Yeah, so there's kind of two ways we can talk about this.

I'll keep the coin corner bit slightly separate because it's kind of like a new piece in its own right. So I'll come on to that later on. But to your point about sort of spending Bitcoin in the EU and the UK and stuff like that, it is, yeah, you definitely right.

It is a lot more difficult. This side of the pond, unfortunately. But there's a couple of companies that you can use in various different ways. I suppose the main three that I'm aware of is a bit refill.

Obviously everybody's heard a bit refill essentially. You can go on, pay in Bitcoin and Lightning and buy a gift card for wherever you want to shop. Now, obviously, we're all well aware how gift cards work.

So they come with their limitations in the fact that obviously you're limited to where you can spend. And then if you've got some change on that card, you kind of need to manage that. And then if you're doing this regularly, then you're going to have lots of different cards with different amount to change on.

And you need to sort of check the balances them all and then combine them to afford something or expensive, et cetera, et cetera. So it's doable, but it has its limitations. The other one is a fairly new company called the BTC.

I think it's just called the Bitcoin Company, which has got the bends behind it. So Ben Karwin and Ben, I've forgotten his surname now. But the other Ben from, what's the open source dev funding thing? - Open Satch.

- Open Satch, yeah. He's also one of the guys behind that as well. Forget his surnames. I apologize if he ever does hear this. But they've created a company somewhat like BitRefill, where you can go and buy gift cards in Bitcoin.

But they also offer international and US Visa debit cards, where you can essentially spend Bitcoin or Lightning, top up a Visa debit card. I think they're virtual only at the moment, so you can add them to Google Pay or Apple Pay if you wanted to or just use them online, like you would any other credit card.

You can add up to $1,000 worth for each card. And in theory, spend anywhere that accepts Visa. Now, there have been some reports I've seen in their telegram room where they aren't quite as widely accepted as maybe you would think, 'cause if you think, where can I spend Visa?

Well, it's essentially anywhere with a card terminal. But I don't think it's quite as wide as that. There does seem to be certain merchants in certain jurisdictions that might not like these.

But on the most part, it seems to be pretty good feedback. And there's a lot of people, sort of, especially those that are living on Bitcoin, taking this approach. Like I said, the cards are $1,000 limit each, but you can buy as many as you want at any time, and then it's kind of once it's spent, you throw it away, you know, it's virtual,

and then you just buy a new one, and you can put any amount on it at any time. And the final one, which I've never used, and I'm not sure what jurisdiction it is, so when I pause for comments in a minute, I'm just gonna go and do some homework, but it's coincards.io, I think, which again, is a very similar service to BitRefill

and all the ones I've just mentioned, essentially. So there's three great options there. The UK one, or more specifically, Europe coincards are not actually live yet, so kind of a moot point for now, but the website does say coming soon, so if anybody wants to check those out, that's coincards.com.

So yeah, there's various different ways you can attack it. The one thing I will say with the BTC company, with the Visa cards, is probably the easiest way, because once you've got your Bitcoin coveted interfere on that card, which you can do with no KYC, by the way, which is the important piece here.

Once you've got it on there, yeah, you can go and spend that anywhere. My gut feeling tells me that it seems like a too good to be true loophole that is probably gonna be closed eventually, so this isn't a solution that I think is gonna stand the test of time.

I hope it does, because it's fantastic for anybody who lives on Bitcoin, but I'm just a little bit skeptical that as to whether the regulators are gonna look kindly on this, given that it's essentially an OKYC off ramp, isn't it?

- Yeah, but it's, I mean, while it's available now, really should be taken advantage of. It's so fucking useful. Just the amount of privacy that gives you and the ability to interact with the traditional system where you have to is just, yeah, it was fucking amazing.

- Yeah, I was really excited to see, especially the offer from the Bitcoin company come out. I think first I really saw, saw about it, it was at the Bitcoin Conference. I had a talk on that, and I tried it out, and I got one of those Visa cards, topped it up with a bit, and I got access to it, that's all fine.

The only problem is that I tried to spend it on a few stuff here, but especially for online payments, a lot of shops want you to put in a name that's registered on the card, and the card that you get within the app only has like the card number, and then the expiry date and the VCV, but not a name.

So that's where I stumbled into, and I wasn't quite sure how to get around that, so I haven't actually been able to do the spend yet, but at least from the side of like in-app, that all works fine, so yeah, I'm still working on it.

- So have you actually tried to make a spend and just put, you know, job logs in there, just to see what happens? - No, I haven't. Maybe I'll just put whatever in. I thought it would be that it would just not register with the card, but that makes it whatever.

- I'm quite the confident it would probably work. - I've got a sort of company card link to work to buy sort of work-related stuff, and that's kind of a virtual card, and that's got Bitcoin Q&A on it, so, and it works just fine when I use it online to buy anything work-related, so.

I don't see why it wouldn't work. - Okay, well that'd be great. I'll definitely get back to you on that one, and report. - Have you tried in-store, Antimus? - No, not in- - Like tactic. - No, that would be something, I mean, I'm not quite sure how that would work, because you don't actually have a card, I mean, you don't have anything,

it's not like stored, like with NFC or something. - Can't you have it in your Apple wallet or your Google, so in theory you could go in and then tap with your phone and then pay, and what I was thinking is like, even if you're not really looking for an off-ramp, it's still just good for privacy,

because obviously all your spends are tracked, and unless you want to walk around with cash, which is fine for a lot of stuff, but some people don't really want to, if you could have that on your phone, then obviously your spending isn't tracked, because it's not linked to identity, and that's quite a big win.

- That's a very good point, okay. Yeah, I'll definitely do some more testing and report back next month, obviously. It's definitely, definitely wonderful, I hope this works out. - Shall we quickly mention the bulk card there, which probably makes sense to move on to that, shall we?

- Wonderful. - So the coin corner who are a Iron Man based Bitcoin only exchange have released a new product called the bulk card, which is essentially an NFC tap to pay card that in the default setting is linked to your coin corner account, which is obviously a KYC exchange, or be it a very reputable one.

So what this enables you to do is essentially, you can either spend lightning, or if you've got euros or pound sterling in your coin corner account, you can use it just like a debit card and you can set the card up so that it's debit to your coin corner account accordingly.

So obviously, that's cool, but it's not exactly groundbreaking, it's what we've already got. The cool thing is that it uses the lightning network, a little bit like strike does as it's sort of payment rails, which will incentivize a merchant to adopt this and who use their payment terminals to save on fees

and hopefully, you know, orange pill in the process. So you can go on and buy these cards and use them in that way as like a debit account, if you're a coin corner customer. The other way you can do it is you can buy these cards, I think they're on your hub look with each, and then you can use them as sort of gift cards.

So you can kind of load up say, 25 pounds worth of Bitcoin onto the card and then give it like you want the normal gift card for somebody's birthday. They can then download, you know, a compatible lightning wallet that's got NFC enabled, so there's quite a few breeze, wallets associated with obviously custodial, Zeus is working on it,

I've not been able to get that to work yet, and there's a couple of others eluding me at the moment. Tap the card on the back of their phone and basically withdraw those stats over lightning straight into their wallet.

So it's kind of a good little orange pill piece and a good little talking point where they've, you know, they've got something physical which I find sometimes when you're trying to orange pill people and explain how things work and stuff have, you know, just purely explaining it can be quite difficult.

Well, if you've got something physical and say, "Look, you know, the 25 because worth of Bitcoin on here," or technically speaking, might not be true 'cause it uses the lightning network and it's technically in your coin corner account.

Tap it on your phone and, you know, you'll get some stats down into your wallet that you control. So really interesting little piece and I think they seem to have been selling pretty well from what I can gather.

So have you guys had much chance of a look at this? - No, I haven't yet. But there's on my list to order one, especially like with the dual functionality of being able to use it directly with coin corner but also just with any other wallet as well, that's really interesting.

The only thing that I was thinking was like actually being able to use it for payments, this isn't something that has been integrated by any payment processor or anything like that, is it?

Or is it also related to what came out at the Bitcoin conference with Stripe? - I think it's only the coin and the terminal, isn't it? - Yeah, there's two ways you can do it. Number one is coin corner terminals.

And number two is it's been integrated into the latest version of BTC pay server as well. So if you've got a physical store with a BTC pay server, then it should work with this as well. Essentially under the hood, it's just LNUL withdraw, which is kind of like a lightning standard.

So which is technically speaking, it can be interoperable with anybody that kind of speaks that language. They just need to build the sort of the user interface around it. So yeah, at the moment, it's just the coin corner terminals and BTC pay server that I'm aware of other than any other lightning enabled mobile wallet

that supports NFC like Breeze. I know I've tested it with Breeze and it works really well. - It's just absolutely fascinating to see that over the last years that I come closer and closer to the way we've been interacting with payments anyway for the last decades is getting more and more seamless

than like things are getting abstracted away. And obviously we're not quite there yet, but seeing that being more and more approachable, but still like based on the fundamentals, it's just really fascinating to see this huge potential there.

- Yeah, so I thought this was really cool and I still do, but obviously spending from an exchange, even if it is with a fancy car that uses NFC over lightning is not really that much of an innovation because it's kind of a permissioned way to use Bitcoin, which is hopefully not why we're all here.

So I actually, when I went to advancing Bitcoin last year or maybe this year, forget when it was, they were giving these cards out, the demo version of these cards preloaded it with some SATs.

So I actually had one that's been sat on my draw ever since. And I, when they did this announcement, I thought, okay, well that's a cool announcement, but I'm not a coin corner customer, I've got no desire to be one.

Can I still make use of this card and sort of link it to my own node and use Bitcoin, NFC and L and URL in a more sovereign way? So did a bit of digging and I actually did a tweet post about it as well.

Essentially what I did is just downloaded an app called NFC Tools onto my Android phone, generated an L and URL withdrawal link from my L and bits, which runs on my RASPY Blitz. And essentially just rewrote the NFC card, it's just we've got a little chip in it, rewrote the NFC card with the L and URL link to my own node onto the card

so that now when I tap that to any compatible wallet, yeah wallet on any phone, it could decipher what's on the card and it kind of gets redirected to my L and URL withdrawal link and sort of says, you know, here's 21 SATs, you're welcome.

And then they can withdraw that directly from my node in a completely nonco-soldial way. So definitely it is possible, obviously that's a kind of manual process for people who are interested in syncing a little bit but it's definitely possible and you don't necessarily to take that approach that I've just done,

you don't necessarily need a coin corner card, you can buy any NFC card or tag or anything like that and just write to it directly. So I think that's the bigger innovation here once we can sort of wrap some nice UX around that will be really cool.

The one thing worth mentioning is that obviously when you tap this card, say a payment terminal, the way that the coin corner have it set up from their account, you know, the custodial version, it's got like a rate limiter on it so that the merchant can't sort of charge you twice but with the way that I did it kind of the manual way

just to see if it worked. Once you've got that L and URL string, you can kind of milk that until it's dry if you're like, there's no sort of safeguard setting there. So it would work perfectly for, you know, a gift or something like that.

You can set it up as a one-time use or, you know, you'd have to sort of do some failing on the server side to kind of switch it on and off or, you know, restrict how much can be taken out of it, et cetera, et cetera.

So just be careful if you are doing that, that, you know, somebody doesn't milk you a no-dryer if you've not set it up properly. - Have we lost Max? - No, I was. (laughing) - I thought we were still in delay.

- Sorry, there was such a delay that I was like, I'm just gonna wait 'cause I don't wanna like keep talking over everyone. And then I kept working. I was like, someone's gonna go in a second.

(laughing) Yeah, that's really cool. That's really cool. I guess you could sort of use these as gifts. It's kind of like an open dime sort of idea, just a different design for it. It'd be nice for orange-pilling people, just a way to give them a bit of Bitcoin and get them to play with it.

But I mean, what you did and messing around and linking it to your own node and all that stuff, like I think that's probably above and beyond what most people are gonna be doing. Do you think we're gonna start seeing these available from other companies and start seeing this be like a way that people on board people?

- Yeah, definitely. Like I touched on earlier, it's an open standard. LN URL, anybody can run it. It took me 30 seconds to rewrite the NFC card. So I don't see why. It's certainly for the gift card use piece where you can set up a single use withdrawal link and say 100,000 sat on it and then give it to your friend.

It's a perfect use case for that. And the barrier to entry for somebody who's doing the gifting is not huge. If you're already running node, then there's not that much to it. So I think that use case is a really quick win and easy.

It will certainly be adding it to my sort of orange pill toolkit if you like, seems really easy. It's just, you know, going download Breeze or going download whatever wallet. And here you go, it's $25 with Bitcoin, just tap it on your phone and it's yours.

Job done, it seems really easy. And a damn sight cheaper than an open dime. - Yeah, someone should make like a sticker that goes across the front of it with like the 12 commandments of Bitcoin or like a link to resources where they need to go to like not fuck things up or like where to start learning or something like that.

So that you can make these cards like a cool, more individual, you know, with some art on it or something like that would be nice. - I've seen they do have different like prints on them. I just saw a few photos of like five, six different cards next to each other that have different prints on, but especially like geared towards onboarding

that would actually be quite cool. Especially with that limitation of the beginning that you, if you want to use it with your own node, you kind of have to, the only safe way to do it as Q&A just said is to just do like one time use and then just say a restriction, say, okay, max, whatever, 10, 10 euros, 20 euros, whatever, off.

And then then either rewrite the card or dispose the card afterwards. But for like long, for using it for more long term stuff and for multiple payments and that's a pretty big risk to trust the merchants.

You're using it with to just withdraw what they're supposed to charge you. So, I guess that is something that you can probably, yeah, work around as well. I think that's just probably just a matter of time until there's some solution of somehow iterating through different LN URL addresses, just for each payment or something like that.

That should be doable. - Yeah, CoinCorner does have sort of a limitation for the number of times or the number of payments emerging you take. But I don't know if, I don't think there's kind of a limit as to how much they can take, I don't think you can dictate that.

So they might overcharge you. I think that's the main risk in its current setup. But obviously, you know, it's a first release product. I'm sure they're gonna continue to improve on it as well.

- Okay, well, we've got another topic. I was really interested in talking about and that was the silent payments, especially 'cause I mean, there's been quite a bit of discussion about that and there's still a few open questions that I still have about silent payments.

But maybe I'll just give a quick outline and Q&A you can probably correct me on a few things. But silent payments are a variation of bit 47, which is the most people know it from the Samurai Stack, the Pay Nims, but also implemented out with Sparrow.

It is a way to have a permanent payment code that others can pay to, and the actual payments go to individual addresses. So especially for things like donations or if you wanna put up a payment link somewhere that's not accessible to you, you don't have to be online, you don't have to have a node running

that creates a new invoice or new address every time someone wants to pay. This is a huge advantage and it's great for privacy. The one disadvantage with bit 47 and Pay Nims was that you had to do a, I'm not forgetting the exact term, but it's like a registration transaction that you open up to link the two together

so you can pass information backwards or forwards where the payments go to. And as I understand, silent payments does not need this. So that would be a huge benefit over bit 47. Now, I'm not 100% sure where the downsides are.

What I have heard is that it is a bit more tricky for like like clients, there's a bit more like computational work being done because you have to check every transaction in every block. But if that's the only downside, I do see a big benefit in silent payments, but maybe I'm missing something.

- Yeah, so I think that was a pretty good summary to be honest with you. I've got a massive amount to add to that. And I don't disagree with any of the points that you raised. I think, so silent payments to my understanding, they kind of substitute the notification transaction was called in bit 47,

where they kind of encumber it with the actual initial payment itself. So they kind of do the, I don't want to call it a notification transaction, but when they do the first payment or donation, it's probably a good example of why you would use silent payment or bit 47.

It's kind of all in that one initial transaction. So you're kind of reducing the need or the on J footprint by a whole transaction. This doesn't sound like a lot, but in times of high fee environments, then not having to do an extra transaction could be beneficial.

You correctly said about the scanning overhead, which kind of makes this really quite difficult for light clients. But I suppose the one sort of thing I would come back to say to that is that, well, number one, we should always be striving to have people connected to their own node.

It's the most private way to use Bitcoin. The, I did see a couple of comments around, you know, the scanning overhead might be a little bit overstated because it would be overstated if you could have like a birth date of the wallet, so that you're not necessarily, you know, if I know that I created my brand new wallet today,

I know that there's no transactions in it. And I know that I don't need, there's going to be no history in that wallet. So anything that happened previously today, I'm not interested in at all, aside from the whole sort of consensus, you know, of, you know, what's the current UTXO set, et cetera,

et cetera, but that's no change from, you know, just a standard wallet and payment today. So I think it could be reduced by that or by using that sort of protocol. Aside from that, there's a lot of more, a lot of nuances that are kind of, I'm still trying to wrap my head around between specifically this and the other proposals.

But yeah, I think you gave a pretty good summary and it's one I'm going to be sort of keeping an eye on. I know that there's an active, an active demo of this on Signet for those technical users that want to go and try this out.

But yeah, it does seem fairly similar to bit 47, but this, I'm just trying to work out the full implications of it at the moment. But I suppose the only thing you didn't mention is that it leverages default to taproot addresses, not that that's a massive, you know, game change or anything like that, but just worth mentioning.

- Yeah, 'cause like for quite a while, I've been like wondering as I think many others have to, like why so few projects have implemented bit 47, it seems like such a slam dunk. I don't know, maybe it's just also something to do with the whole like issues going on

between different projects and so on. But I don't know, it's such a useful tool, but it only really comes with full potential if you can actually use it with lots of different implementations and people can, and it's not really fixed to one ecosystem.

So I was really looking forward to more projects implementing that, it was great to see Sparrow do that, but obviously that's still just a small area of the whole space. So just seeing new implementations of that on new ideas coming out to get this more broadly accepted is great and I really hope that,

yeah, the different projects can come together and work on some kind of standard to get this working 'cause I think especially in the like space of donations, people who are on the move or just don't have the opportunity to have a node running the whole time or a server somewhere, this is just a massive win

and one of the most private ways we can do this. And so it'd be great to see people working together there to come to a solution. - Yeah, there's a couple of things that just pop back in my head on the previous sort of, I guess research I've done on this proposal.

One of the main complaints I saw about it is that when you're making the silent payment, you have to, because of the way that it's structured, obviously it's way above my head and it's not worth me even attempting to try and explain it, but because of the way the transaction is structured, you have to kind of confirm to the recipient

that the input that you're using to donate to them or send to them using this protocol, you have to sort of reveal that to them, which might sound like not an issue because that's kind of how Bitcoin payments work is that there's inputs and outputs and you can cast assumptions on where they're coming from and where they're going to.

But the difference with Bit47 is that you can do that with the coin join and you can do that with things like Stonewall X2 where you can have a collaborator and you can pay to a pay name so that you can cast some doubt and the recipient will obviously be able to see the transaction, but they won't know.

The Q&A sent me from this UTXO definitely and I'm 100% sure you can cast some doubt over that. I don't think that's possible or if it is that it adds a lot of complexity with silent payments as to whether you can actually make them as part of a coin join to give yourself some privacy from the receiver that you're sending to.

The just touching on the light client bit again just to pad it out a bit 'cause I know I mumbled a bit. Even using the kind of birth date for the wallet to kind of minimize the transaction, the scanning overhead, the light client would need to still scan every transaction in every single block to compute the combinations of the inputs

that are used to kind of again, getting technical now but to create that silent payment address that the receiver would have to look at every single transaction in every block which is, you know, for a full node user that's not really an issue because full nodes do that anyway.

But in terms of a light wallet that's gonna become quite sort of expensive if you're just running a mobile phone wallet that's not running 24/7. So there have been some benchmarks done on this admittedly on quite powerful computers and not phones.

So I'm just not convinced yet given that so early days that this is gonna be sort of a big hit for the light client ecosystem which whether we like it or not is, you know, the vast majority of Bitcoin users, you know, not, I'd say a small proportion of Bitcoin is actually run their own node unfortunately.

So yeah, I'm gonna be obviously watching how this unfolds but there's, as with everything, there seems to be a fair few trade-offs and, you know, bit 47 isn't without its trade-off as well as much of, you know, I am a big fan of it.

So yeah, I'll be keeping an eye on it but we'll see how it goes. I just wanted to make a quick mention to Katan who's done an update to his Ubuntu node, no box guide for 2022. So for those of you who haven't heard us talk about this, Katan is one half of Ministry of Nodes which is a website slash, you know, educational resource

mainly geared around running your own node and custody in your own Bitcoin. So Katan is not a lover of Raspberry Pi's. Some might say for good reason and he's a big fan of kind of rolling your own node on some more powerful hardware, be that, you know, a laptop or desktop or maybe like a mini desktop

that's got like an i5 or an i7 processor in it that's significantly more powerful than a Raspberry Pi. So this video guide is, oh God, it's got 16 videos in it in total, broken down. So that he essentially takes you from having a blank install of Ubuntu which is a Linux distribution and he takes you through everything from, you know,

installing Bitcoin Core, installing your own Electrum server, Mempool Space, et cetera, et cetera, Dojo, BTPase server. So all of the critical apps that you would see on most of these node packages like Umbrell, Citadel, Rona, Dojo, et cetera, he walks you through installing those manually onto some more powerful hardware

which understandably is not for the beginner but it's an absolutely fantastic way to, I guess customize your own node first and foremost, but I think more importantly is to learn how things work under the hood.

There's gonna be, you need to be prepared for some command line here. Obviously the videos he tells you, every single command that you need to import and you can pick and choose which services that you add, you know, you don't necessarily need to add, write the lightning or BTPase server if you don't want to.

The video series is modular so that you can just kind of install the bits that you want and need or want to learn about. So I would say there's probably a good, you know, 10 to 15 hours worth of content there.

So if you're interested in sort of learning Linux Ubuntu or building your node, this is a top notch, a bit of resource. I think it's the third iteration he's done with this. He tends to do an update every year as Ubuntu and there's, well, and all the Bitcoin software around it tends to be updated.

He tries to keep up to date with that and puts out a new series each year. - Yeah, this is one that's been on my list for years. Man, it's like when I set up my first node, it was with Kitan's tutorial on my node and at that point, I already, as shortly after that, though, the first series came out, put that aside

and it's been on my to-do list ever since. I've watched the whole series twice but I haven't actually done it. So they're still out there to do, but I'd love to. And it's a great way because there are a lot of node implementations now that are out but they're all on similar platforms between the Pi and the Rock Pro.

So this is, yeah, a great alternative for anyone who's either using their node for more powerful stuff or they just want to have it on a more reliable base. And yeah, it's great to see. I haven't looked into this new one.

So I'll be looking forward to seeing what it's implemented in the new one. - Yeah, so I actually followed his previous version of the 2021 version. And to be fair, the actual implementation is really easy.

Like I said, he gives you every single step so you can kind of just follow along, have him open up one screen and have your terminal open on the other screen and it's just copying, pasting the stuff across basically.

That bit's really easy. The bit that I found with it when I did it is that once you've got it all set up and it works, it's fine, it's great. When you're like two or three months down the line and five or six of those pieces of software have all been updated and you've got to do them manually versus kind of opening your running dojo

and pressing update and having it all done for you, that's the bit where I felt short and I noticed that my software was just getting too behind and then that's when you kind of start to, things start to get a little bit buggy.

So you're just worth bearing in mind that it's not just setting it up. You've got to be comfortable with maintaining it and doing the updates to each of the various bits of software independently to make sure that everything's sinking and working properly.

But if you do that, the very nature that you're running it on a far more robust hardware, like say a mini desktop or a laptop or whatever, the reliability is so much better than a Raspberry Pi.

It's untrue. - Do you not think, or is it not possible that like Ronan Dojo or Raspberry Blitz or whoever could make it so that you could download this and not use a Rock Pro or Raspberry and have it on Ubuntu and they still do the same like update process or is it just that that's not possible for some reason on Ubuntu?

Just seems like it should be. I don't understand why it can be on a shitty little Raspberry but it can't be on, do you know what I mean? Like what's the reason for that? - No, it is definitely possible.

Raspberry Blitz, it's coming. I believe that the guys are working on it. Umbrell already offers it and so does Citadel, which is kind of the open source fork of Umbrell and I've actually got Citadel running on a mini desktop here next to me.

So yeah, it's definitely possible. I think the problem with speaking on behalf of the node teams is that it's just a different infrastructure and environment that you also need to support as well as Rock Pro 64, Raspberry Pi's and stuff.

So each time you add a different operating system or sort of hardware underneath that, then you're kind of adding something else that you need to support and you know, don't forget most of these guys ain't being paid so they're doing it for a little bit.

So yeah, it's just, yeah, it's definitely possible and I think more people are trending that way but it's just, you know, I completely understand why some of the node implementations don't currently offer it.

- Yeah, it seems like you can get some pretty good hardware used hardware and run Ubuntu on it for not a lot of money and it's gonna be so much more powerful and more reliable. It's just not something like when I set up my first node, that was the same thing.

It was like, oh, I watched a Tans video. He says, put it on a Pi. Everyone seems to be doing it. Everyone's doing it and posting pictures on Twitter of their node running and I was like, fuck, I'm gonna try that.

It didn't even occur to me. Oh, I can do this in an old laptop or old PC or anything. So just maybe that shifts across time. People started to do that for, it's a similar sort of money anyway, probably.

- Yeah, the interesting dynamic is like you say, you know, a couple of years ago, every pies were all the raids, they were dirt cheap. You can find them anywhere. That was the attraction, you know.

That's not really the case now. They're really hard to get hold of. They're not that cheap anymore. So the lure of, you know, just using some old hardware, you know, it might be, I don't know, a five or six year old laptop or it's probably got an i5 or i7 processor in there and a sizable hard drive.

Why would you not use it? Just plug it in in the corner and forget about it and just access it via terminal if you wanted to. And it'll definitely be more robust than a Raspberry Pi. So I think we'll probably continue to see a shift towards that.

- Any updates on your seat tool? - Okay, so we've also got one thing that I started playing around with for the first time now was... - I think we've got a massive delay on your end, Mac.

So I'm just going for it. - That was a fucking... - Yeah, that was a fucking huge. - Yeah, one thing I started playing around with was... - Sweet. - I'm going to shut up. I'm not going to say anything.

I'm muting myself now. I'm muting. - Go for it, Antimus.

- Okay, so yeah, we've got robo-sats, which is kind of a new interpretation of the concept of BISC as well, like a decentralized exchange, but running on Lightning, which has been pretty amazing.

So, and it's all browser-based, which obviously means that in contrast to BISC, you are querying bare servers. So it's not a decentralized. So you don't have your client server on your computer, but this does mean that you can have offers up, even if you're not logged in.

And yeah, and then the actual trading is a lot faster, a lot cheaper, 'cause you don't need to do multiple transactions on chain. You can do this all on Lightning, which is a major benefit, but the liquidity is just still pretty low at the moment.

So it's been fun playing around with a bit and seeing and watching it grow. I do know, Q&A, have you been able to play around with it? - Yeah, I've done one trade on it, and to be fair, it works flawlessly, absolutely no complaint.

So do keep me into it to try again. I keep my eye on the liquidity. But yeah, the first time I used it, I did the, I think one thing worth noting is that you've got to be careful with the type of Lightning wallet that you do kind of the, it's called the HODL invoice, but it's kind of like the equivalent to the escrow in BISC or HODL HODL,

where you sort of deposit a special type of Lightning invoice where you send to it and it's kind of put on hold and held in escrow as, you know, you're sort of part of the bargain. So that incentivizes you not to run off because if you do run off, you're going to lose that deposit.

It's only small, but there's only certain wallets, Lightning wallets that are compatible with this. I used Phoenix to do the deposit and it worked fine. But interestingly, I have seen some people talking on Twitter to say that Phoenix didn't actually work for them.

So I think probably just comes back to the whole piece of the, you know, especially in terms of Lightning, we're still quite early in terms of the standards that have been hashed out. No pun intended to get some sort of agreement on, you know, what's going to emerge as the popular standards

that we're going to implement into these Lightning wallets. All I can say is in my own personal experience, Phoenix worked fine for that, that hodling voice for Robosatz and the trade went through really smoothly.

The update this month with Robosatz is that they've just introduced PGP chat between buyer and seller. So when you open the Robosatz page on the tour browser, you're automatically generated like a private key, which from that you can see your own kind of robot avatar sent to name Robosatz and these are very similar

to the paintings that you'll find with Inspiro and Samurai. What they can also do from that private key that's generated automatically in the browser for you is kind of use it to encrypt messages between the buyer and the seller.

So it's just that extra level of peace of mind, really, that when you're chatting to the buyer or the seller, depending on which end of the trade that you're on through the tour browser, everything's end to end encrypted.

So that in the unlikely scenario that somebody was to kind of intercept your communications, which I don't know how they quite do that with tour, then this chat is end to end encrypted using the PGP standard or open PGP standard.

So you can be pretty sure that nobody's gonna sort of decipher the communications because obviously, depending on the payment method that you use, you may be required to send the seller or the buyer, your, let's say, your revenue payment address, which obviously can be linked back to you.

So having that encrypted by default is obviously a good thing. - Yeah, and especially being able to verify it, that's great. Because, I mean, this is, obviously, you're running the communication via their servers.

So this is a great feature and saying that I'd like to see with other messengers as well, but unfortunately that isn't too popular from their side. Yeah, we've got, the other update we had last month was Sparrow V1.6.4.

That was a pretty big update. They had quite a few cool new features. One of them was M1 support for Mac. I mean, I'm not a Mac user, so I didn't know that it was a pain beforehand. - But from all I've heard, it's been an absolutely, well, since I've played into that, if you're using a Mac M1.

I don't know, is that you using one? - No, not yet. So M1 is kind of like the new flagship processor that Apple uses in their new laptops and desktops. Absolutely lightning fast, I believe, like nothing we've ever seen before.

But it has, even outside of the Bitcoin space, it's posed some sort of compatibility issues where certain pieces of software don't play very nicely with it. So might be great that you've got this shiny new $2000 laptop that's lightning quick that might do the Bitcoin initial block download in a couple of hours.

But if it doesn't work with your favorite piece of software, then you're up shit Creek. So anyway, to talk about the Sparrow, yeah, Craig's sort of updated his end so that it does play nicely with these new processors.

So good for the Apple fanboys out there. The other Sparrow updates in this one, he's added support for Blockstream J, the hardware wallet from the guys at Blockstream. He's updated, so the latest HWI, which is hardware wallet interface, kind of like the Bitcoin core standard hardware wallet interface, so that certain hardware wallets

that have already sort of made compatible with taproot signatures, namely Ledger and Trezor, that you can now use that functionality within Sparrow as well. One thing I was expecting you to mention, which you haven't, and I'm not going to see if this is going to your baby, but they've added support for scanning in the CQRs

that Seed Tiny uses. - Yeah, man, that was a big one. I didn't actually see that one coming, so that was great to see. It's obviously a completely different trade off than we're using Seed Sino.

So we spoke about this the last few months as well. I mean, it's the CQR templates that you can use to store your private keys originally used with Seed Sino. And obviously the Seed Sino is a signing device that is air-gapped, never collected to the internet.

It's something that is a lot more safe to scan in your private keys. Here with Sparrow, it is mainly used as a desktop wallet on a desktop that is connected to the internet. So be aware of that if you are using this.

Sparrow has implemented a few safeguards, so it will delete and erase your private key after use. But obviously if you have some kind of malicious software on your computer while you're running it, that won't help you much.

So either use it on a machine that is connected to the internet in emergency situations, just to recover if you don't have a Seed Sino hand. The other option is to, if you have an old laptop or an old PC, you can use that as an air-gapped signing device and just install Sparrow on that.

And then maybe use Blue Wallet on your phone as a coordinator to pass on the signed transactions. So it just brings a lot of optionality to the whole space that you don't have to rely on Seed Sino 100% that you can recover without using your QR scanner on your phone.

So for anyone who's just been using the Seed Sino up till now, I think it's a big benefit to have that in your back pocket. And for those who don't have access to getting a Seed Sino, they can use Sparrow directly.

Really looking forward to more, maybe implementing that to get it to a bit more of a standard over the time. - Yeah, I think the obvious use case that I can see here is that it's probably quite apt for the current climate that we're in.

Let's say that you set up a cold storage wallet with Seed Sino and then you back up using one of your beautiful Seed Steel QRs from your shop. And can you still hear me? I just had a message for Max.

I'm just checking in at me. - Yeah, I can hear you cool. I'll carry on. So yeah, so you set up your new cold storage wallet and then let's say you fry your recipe pie board and then as with we are in the current climate, you can't get hold of a new one, but you need to spend some Bitcoin.

If your only backup is say a compact CQR that you've stamped into metal from one of the pieces of metal from Antimacy's shop, then if you've got nowhere else to kind of import that and you've got no manual seed backup, then you're kind of screwed essentially.

Until now, obviously, where you can scan that into Sparrow and use that if you need to spend in a pinch, obviously that's gonna make this fun's hot, as you correctly said, Antimers. But I think that's kind of an obvious use case where just having one other piece of software other than seed signer that supports this

is a massive win and I dare say, it probably won't be the last either. The other two bits of info on Sparrow is that he's also introduced the dust to tap warning. So this, those Samurai users that are listening to this will be familiar with this.

They'll probably see some problems from time to time where if they receive a really small UTXO into their wallet, sometimes known as a dust tap that can be used by sort of chain surveillance firms to try and de-anonymize people on the blockchain.

Samurai will warn you of this. It'll detect it and say, "Oh, somebody's just sent you 500 sats. "This looks a bit suspicious. "Do you wanna block it so that you can't inadvertently spend it?"

So obviously, Greg's added this feature into Sparrow as well, which is great to see certainly from a privacy perspective. And the last one, I'm only mentioning it because I was sort of marginally involved in it, but he's added a restarting testnet menu command.

So previously with Sparrow, if you wanted to use it in testnet mode, you had to hop into the command line and just run a command to say, "I wanna open Sparrow, but I wanna open it in testnet mode," which wasn't too difficult, but generally speaking, the most users that wanna use testnet are kind of beginners that wanna practice,

so they might not be familiar with the command line. So I requested from Lord Almighty Craig that we could add that as a GUI option. So you just click on tools and then click on restarting testnet and Sparrow will automatically just reopen in testnet mode and then you can do that back the other way into mainnet.

So really great sort of just something. It's not a massive improvement, but just the quick click of a button, you can just restart into testnet mode and just go and play to your heart content without sort of worrying about losing any funds or breaking anything important.

So again, we talk about free and open source software all the time, but that's another perfect example of, you won't be able to do that with Apple and just drop going to GitHub and dropped him Apple a message and say, can you stop doing this on my iPhone?

So yeah. Try that one.

Yeah, and then we've got the C tool update as well with selecting last word generator. That was cool to play around with too. So probably dive into that bit. Yeah, so there's been a couple of updates to C tool and since the last time we spoke, the first one and probably the biggest one, to be honest is like you say, last word generator.

So what this portion of the tool I like enabled you to do essentially is pick seed words out of a hat. The problem with the way that seeds are constructive is not necessarily a problem, it's by design.

But let's typical seed the 12 and 24 words long, but you couldn't just pick out 12 random words because that wouldn't be a valid seed. The final word, and this is true of a 24 word seed as well as known as a check, so when it has to be kind of calculated for you.

So that's always been the stumbling block for people that say wanted to print off the list of bit 39 words and just pick them out of a hat and just do it in a sealed bunker underground and property and foil hat stuff and so they don't have to trust any software.

Even if they picked the first 11 or the first 23, they still need to do some form of computation to calculate the checksum word, the final word. So we've at all will now sort of do that for you.

So you can go through that process and pick the words out of the hat and then be presented with the final word. The interesting piece to add is that there's more than one valid final word for any combination of first 11 or 23 words.

And the reason that there is multiple possible final words is because of the makeup of how, I don't wanna get too technical, but the sort of the final bits, bits of information, the binary ones and zeroes as to the order of them.

And we'll actually let you manually change the order of them in the tool. And each different iteration of that will give you a different final word. So you can actually kind of choose the one that you want if you so desire.

Obviously within reason, there's only certain possible ones. You can't just literally choose the word, but you can flip those bits as we call it and pick one that you like out of the possible ones.

Outside of that, the other main update from this week was that we added Bit86 taproot address generation. So let's say you're using spiral wallet and you've got a taproot wallet in there.

If you wanted to check that spiral walls, giving you the correct addresses, you can replicate the wallet in the seed tool and just check that the address generation is the same and just check that, you know, spiral is being open and honest.

So just a good sort of offline check tool if you like that you could previously do with all the other address types, but now you can do that with taproot as well. Oh, and finally, Max and I did a deep dive podcast on seed tool as well.

So if this is the first time that anybody's hearing about it, then, you know, scroll back through his podcast feed and you'll see us having a deep dive. And as always shout out to Super Fataro who's the brains behind seed tool.

I'm just kind of the robot face of it. He's the brains behind it. So all of the stuff I've just mentioned that much, much more is his kind of brain child essentially. So big thank you to him once again.

- Absolutely, I was about to say that was a fun one to listen to. The discussion you two had, that's definitely a cool one to go back to. - Okay, I think we've gone through the list, right?

Or is there anything else you want to touch on? - No, I've got to turn this and ask guys. - Yeah, one more thing from me. - I've got five, ten minutes. - If anybody's got anything else. - I'll stop the list.

- Fucking hell. Can you hear me or not? Oh, fuck me. - You're going to ask some editing to do here, Max. - Can anyone hear me? - Yeah. Yeah, can you hear me? - Okay. I don't know what's going on.

Yeah, just a random thought. I've had signal for ages, but I've always used. - So can I? - Such a big delay. I've had signal for ages, but I've never really used it. - Can you just not hear us?

Testing, testing, Max, can you hear us? - Okay. - Yeah, I think we're having technical issues. So shall we wrap it up and he's going mental in the telegram chat here. So we'll wrap it up.

I'll play host. I don't even know what he says to end the podcast normally, but yeah, thanks for listening. And we will see you next month. And hopefully, Max is going to edit out all of the, all of the silences, thanks to his delay.

I think he's having some technical issues shockingly, but yeah, nice to speak to you on to us again. And hopefully we'll, there'll be three of us again, next year, next year, next month. - Next one.

All right, man. - Yeah. - Okay. And if we don't edit it out, then it will be a fun one. - Yeah. There'll be like seven minutes of dead air. Cheers. - All right. See you. - Bye. - I can't stop the recording either.