Bitcoin monthly 0023

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.

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 send it to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Welcome back to Bitcoin Monthly. I think this is episode 23. We're just doing an update on the website because we had a couple of episodes missing. But I was joined by Bitcoin Q&A and Antimus.

It was a little light on the software update, so we went into more depth on the subjects we had and it was a really good one. I'm not going to go into all the topics now because you're going to hear them in a minute.

I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who's been boosting this show on Fountain, sending in questions. It's really cool to see it in the top 10 more and more regularly now. So I really do appreciate that.

If you're not already on Fountain, or you just don't have any stats to spare, that's absolutely fine. Any sort of sharing of the pod or liking of the pod, commenting on it on YouTube or any of the other platforms, it all helps to gain exposure and to get more people able to listen to the show.

So I really appreciate any of these sorts of efforts. I also want to say a big thank you to Mr. Crown who's been updating the website, keeping it beautiful, doing all the artwork and everything else, just making it fucking awesome.

And finally, a big thank you to my sponsors. First up, I'd like to thank Foundation Devices. Q&A actually gave a little bit of a teaser of something that might be coming to Foundation. And I have to say, I am very fucking excited if this does happen.

So listen through the episode and if you have any questions about when and how you can always reach out to me or Q&A, but yeah, very, very exciting stuff. If you haven't already checked out Foundation Devices, make sure to go to their website, foundationdevices.com.

They make the absolutely beautiful and fully open source passport. It's my favorite hardware wallet and any fuckwit can use it. It really is that simple. I will not have anybody say that you can't self custody or it's too hard and where, where, where.

It's not, I can do it, I'm a fucking idiot. And honestly, with the Foundation Devices passport, I could do it blindfolded. Check them out at foundationdevices.com and use the code bit by bit to get $10 off.

And finally, a big thank you to FastBitcoins. FastBitcoins have been supporting this show for some time now. I slack them off every week. I tell you not to buy KYC, but I know not all of you are gonna listen to me.

I know a lot of you are gonna go to an exchange regardless of how much I've worn you about the dangers and there are dangers and we talk about them in this episode. But if you are gonna use a KYC exchange, I can only suggest these guys not because they pay me, they pay me because I hounded them and pushed them

so that I had somebody that I could trust or have the most trust in possible with an exchange. They have a fucking awesome team that's based in the Isle of Man and although they have to jump through a lot of regulatory hoops being that they are a business and an exchange and they are regulated,

they do everything they can to keep you safe. They also don't want you to keep your sat on exchange so they push you to take them off. And if you do that and you want some help taking them off, you want some help getting forward looking privacy, you can reach out to me.

I will try and help any way I can. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show. - We're live. - Good morning, happy new year. - Good morning, guys. - How are we both doing? - Terrible. - I like I said to you before we started recording.

That's because you're not eating carbs, Matt. - I know. - How are you doing? How are you holding up? - Like I said to you, I would fuck a carb senseless. (laughing) Oh my god. God, they just look at me just teasing me every day.

It's so delicious. - So that's from the first. So you're over three weeks now, what? - Yeah, yeah, but I'm gonna do the full month. But I said to Q and A just before we jumped on, in two weeks and the first of January to the 14th, I lost 3.8 kilos and I did no exercise at all, nothing.

So it definitely works. - These types of very focused and somewhat extreme diets always intrigued me a little bit. So I'm really interested to talk to you like the highlights and the low lights.

I'd imagine that the first couple of days were probably the rough fish, were they? - Do you know why it wasn't even that rough? I haven't had that many cravings, but it's, I think it's that like how dull it becomes.

So I've only eaten meat, fish, eggs. That's it. And I've only had to drink black coffee and water. That's it. And so when you sort of are preparing a meal, like I'll do like a meal for my mrs.

And I like quite like cooking. So I'll do like a full roast dinner and a leg of lamb and I'll do all the roast potatoes and all the trimmings and all of that and like cooking it and smelling it and seeing it all on the table and the mint sauce and all that.

'Cause I don't even, like no, there's no sauces. There's no herbs. There's no spices. There's nothing. You just get a slab of meat. You cook that slab of meat and you consume that slab of meat and that is it.

So it's just the boredom mate. It's like, I don't know. Yeah, it is very dull. I don't think I could do this forever, but I was just becoming a bit of a fat bastard. So I was like, right, you need to sort this out mate.

I've also chucked in fasting. So like the most I'll do is 24 hours, but usually it's about 15, 16. I've chucked that in as well. You drink obscene amounts of water and piss just constantly.

So I think the first week I had to get up in the night, like two or three times, like I was an old man, just to go and take a piss. And through the day, I was probably drinking, I don't know, at least six liters a day.

Absolutely minimum. Yeah, I know. You just thirsty all the time. Just constantly thirsty. I don't know why that is, but yeah. Has your caffeine consumption gone through the roof as well? It already was.

There is, there's no way for it to go. It's pretty obscene, if I'm honest. How about like headaches and stuff at the beginning? Because I've heard like the switching and getting used to that.

Yeah, I had two or three days of like not great, like not my grain level, but not great headaches, but now I'm fine again. So yeah, I mean, I don't know whether I would suggest it if you'd like want to have the most enjoyable life and do it forever, but if you just want to lose some weight, yeah, it's definitely good.

So I'll see, I'll see how much further I can do. I'm just going to keep doing it until I'm not fat anymore. And that's it. Well, fair play for sticking to it. I'm impressed and sounds like it's working for you anyway.

Yeah, thank you, thank you. Any sort of weird stuff that you can talk about, any weird diets, anything non-Bitcoin related to waste everyone's time that you guys can chuck in, or is it just me?

No, fuck that. I like bread and pizza too much. And beer. Yeah, I gave up alcohol as well. See, I said I was going to do dry January, and I cracked, I think, on like the 12th. So I'm just a weak individual, basically.

I have heard. I blame the wife, actually. We said we're going to do it together. She cracked on like the third. I tried to stay strong for like, I tried to stay strong for like another week, just to prove a point.

And then, yeah, we had some friends over, and just, yeah, it all fell apart and fuck it. Yeah, news resolution's made for break anyway. Mm-hmm, yeah. How about you, Antomish? What have you given up?

No, I'm not really, I mean, I just like love food. I mean, I don't know, I can't like, there's nothing I can really long term like put down. I don't know, that's one of the tough things. Like what I have tried to do this year, which I've been trying to do the last few years, and that's like broken down at some point,

but I'm still going on this one is exclusively cold showers. And that's, like usually it breaks down around Christmas New Year. Like when you've been out partying or something, or you get sick or something, you know, you're just like cozy over Christmas, and then at some point you're just like, fuck it, like, no, I can't do this.

But yeah, I think they're the toughest points over now. Now I'll get warm again. Yeah, that's brutal. The showers were so I think even then like a cold plunge. Yeah, I mean, I think like the, the intensity is a, I mean, and like the effect is a lot better with like a plunge, because I mean, obviously like you've got a lot more

direct contact, but you've got like with the showers, you like, you've got the option to turn it off at any time. You've got the option to like put on the warm water at any time, like you can regulate the temperature.

Like you could, you know? And so that's the problem. Yeah, that's what I would do. I kept jumping out when I would do it, jump out the shower again, and then be like, ooh, and then jump in for a second, whereas like plan, just like what you're in now, mate.

So that's done. Yeah, yeah. But the thing is like, I mean, it's, and that's the difference to like, if you like stop eating a certain product or something or a certain range of products, it's kind of like the only satisfaction out of that is that you're like sticking to your word.

But like with the cold showers, like it's a pain beforehand, but every time it's absolutely amazing afterwards. So you get that like direct reward, which that kind of makes it a lot easier.

I think we should do next month's recording from a cold shower just to see what the vocals are like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll go in a cold plunge, you go in a cold shower and Q and A can just have beer and pizza lying on a sofa.

With the heating on full wack as well. (laughing) Do like a like a 10 minute rip out of a pluck cold plunge. And that'll be it. All right, so we've got any. Yeah, cool. Yeah. Just one tiny bit of how I was keeping before we get into the shorter than usual list.

Yesterday, I listened to the mining pod, the second one with John, which I just wanna say. Sorry about Max. This isn't premeditated. Max doesn't know, I'm gonna say it, but it was fucking fantastic.

Like laugh from start to finish. And informative as well. So just in case there's people that are listeners of your show that are only tuning for our monthly, maybe just a bit of a push to go and check that out.

Really fantastic podcasting. One of the best ones I've listened to for a while, both in terms of making me smile and laugh and also informing me on all stuff mining related. So I just wanted to give a shout out and point people that way because thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it.

Appreciate it mate. Yeah, I think it came out really well. It's obviously a fucking pain in the ass working with John, but the end product works. I think I've said it before, but John should have like a voiceover job of some sort.

He's wasted his talents there. You know, we did one. We did one for fixed, yeah, fixed rigs. Who's one of the new sponsors for that show? They sent, they were like, "Oh yeah, we've done this new advert."

And it had this just horrible voice. Like, love the guys, great team, but fucking hell, it was awful. So John, you do it. So he then did the voiceover for their advert. And now they've used that because it's much better.

So that's his first bit of voiceover work. Start slow, like it. Yeah, I see. This next year it'll be the voice of Bitcoin adverts or all the funds. Yeah, so shorter lists, obviously the last month was the Christmas holidays included in, so not as many software releases with deep diving in.

So slightly shorter list, but plenty for us to go on. The first one that I wanted to talk about is the release of, or soft release, of a Bitcoin Assistant tool called Gerti. I think I'm saying that right, by the guys at LMBit.

- Good for you, isn't it? - Gert, that could, yeah, they should add a H in there. I think that would add a bit of spice to it. (laughing) But yeah, so the guys at LMBit's have made what they call them a Bitcoin Assistant, which is essentially like a little clock type device that sits on your, well, wherever you want it to sit,

really, it reminds on my desk and just shows you loads of different Bitcoin-related stats. So if you're familiar with the concept of the block clock from Coinkite, then you'll kind of know what the, this is the same sort of principle, but I believe it's significantly cheaper and it's gonna be open sourced as well,

which obviously ticks all of my boxes. - I'm just looking at it, it's fucking cool, actually. - Yeah, so it's all pretty many cases. It runs on an e-ink display, and you can connect this to your own LMBit's instance so that you can basically configure it to show you whatever data that you want it to show, really.

So the available options are quotes from Satoshi, the fiat conversion price for Bitcoin, current block height, the balance of any of your LMBit's wallets, on chain stats such as Lockite, I'll wait for it to roll around and I'll walk you through.

And we've got mining stats, lightning stats. There's loads of different stuff on there and it just kind of sits there and iterates through all of your chosen stats to show you what's going on in the network at any given time and you can configure it to update as frequently or infrequently as you like.

Got its own internal battery, so because it's an e-ink display, it kind of just lasts for ages, so I've charged my wants since I've had it and it's kind of just sitting there, iterating through 24/7 now and just showing me all of my Bitcoin stats.

So really cool device, not expensive at all, it's like 150 quid. So not a lot of money considering what you get. So if you're a turbo Bitcoin nerd like we are and you like to stay up to date with the state of the memo or the state of hash rate or how many lightning nodes or what the state of the channels are,

all of that stuff you can have at a glance on your desk in your lounge wherever you want to put it for the sake of 150 quid. So yeah, I got one, black coffee doesn't know that I'm going to sort of mention this or shoot it.

Yeah, but I'm genuinely doing it because it's been massively impressed by the fact that this is, he was very clear that the fact that this is kind of an alpha product and I think I'm one of the first people's get my hands on one, but massively, massively impressed by it and it's nice to be able to configure it, connect it to my own node.

Yeah, just really cool. And I think they're going to be open source in the cases as well. So you can have different color cases on it and customize it as you would with, you know, the types of crypto cloak stuff that are also offered, you know, with, with making everything customizable and personal to you.

So while like the connection options, just like ethernet cable and that's it. Nope, all Wi-Fi. So the way that the setup works is you will power the device on, it will emit its own kind of mini Wi-Fi network.

You connect to that on your phone. So you connect to the, the Gertie Wi-Fi, that will automatically load you into like the configuration page basically where you tell it which L-embit instance you want it to talk to be that the default one that L-embit people run or you can connect it to your own node on your umbrella, Raspberry Blitz,

et cetera, whatever's got L-embit running on it. You just put the URL in there. Yeah, then obviously you would go to your L-embit instance and just configure what you want it to show from all the stuff that I mentioned earlier.

And that's it, you just let it go. And it just iterates through every 60 seconds or five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever you want it to set it up and shows you all the Bitcoin stats. So yeah, the on-chain data is just rolled around.

It shows you blocks till adjustment, progress through the current mining epoch. The estimated date and time of the next difficulty adjustment and obviously the current block height as well.

So really cool, probably a bit nerdy for the most people but if you like your Bitcoin stats then this is a really cool piece. I was supposed to tweet about it this weekend actually I completely forgot I've got some photos of it with all the different screens.

The mining data is really cool and probably worth mentioning on your next mining pod talking about hash rate and difficulty adjustments and whatnot. So yeah, cool, a little bit nerdy but pretty cool.

I'm going to get one and put it on my mantle piece. - Yeah, well, I was really surprised actually. I thought I was going to have to have it plugged in 24/7 and maybe even an ethernet like you said Antimus which obviously limits where you can put it but no, it's got Wi-Fi and it's got its own internal battery

so which lasts I believe Black Coffee said up to a week. So you could charge this like once a week overnight wherever you want and then just pop it on your bookshelf and your lounge or wherever you need to be as long as it's got Wi-Fi signal then you're good to go.

So I was really surprised by that bit but they've clearly put a lot of thought and effort into the design of it. So I did want him to change the name to Cockblock for obvious reasons but I think he thought, thought against that for obvious reasons didn't want to be too spicy, so.

- That's really good. He's missed two opportunities there. Black Coffee's all out, mate. - But did you get the domain? - Ooh, you have to go and do that now, aren't I? - Before we release this.

(laughing) - Good shout. Cockblock.com, somebody's band's have bought that already. In fact, I'm going to have to do it right now. (laughing) Cockblock.com. It looks like it might be a holding site but there's a link on there for casual set 'cause which I won't be clicking so.

(laughing) Moving on. Next thing on the list is the longer weighted return of stealth mode for Samurai Wallet. So, they're released on the 27th of December, so V0.99.98G. Get never so close to that version 1.0.

- Wonder. - Reintroduces stealth mode which was a feature that was in the wallet way back when I believe probably around the, when see, 17, 18 time, one of their earliest features where you can hide the fact that you've got a Bitcoin wallet on your phone behind another app if you like.

So, the features, the options that you've got is a calculator, a VPN, a QR code scanner, or a notepad. All of these are fully functioning apps in their own rights and they all have a specific way that once you open them, the calculator, for example, if I was to open the calculator app and tap the equals button five times,

the calculator at closes and then Samurai Wallet opens. So, it's a really great way to hide the fact that you've got a Bitcoin wallet with some funds in it from Prime and Ice and they all look like completely legit apps that work fully functioning on your phone.

So, you know, obviously this gives you plausible deniability from attackers that might want to steal your phone. Also, it gives you great plausible deniability. You know, if you're going through security and airport and US border force wants to have a quick peek in your phone, they're just going to see a calculator app

and even if they open it, they're still just going to see a calculator app. So, yeah, this has been long awaited and really long anticipated because it was removed in 2019, I believe, because Google changed their rules and said that, you know, any apps that had this feature, either remove the feature

or you were going to be removed from the app store. So, Samurai took the opportunity to remove it so that they could stay in the app store. Now, I don't know what's changed since then, but they've now got this feature back in and they are still in the app store.

So, clearly, maybe Google has relaxed their standards for what features wallets are allowed, but really great to see. And, yeah, I suppose the other benefit as well, for me personally, anyway, is that it allows you to declutter your screen a little bit more.

So, I don't need two calculator apps now because I can just have the one within Samurai wallet or I don't need two, you know, I don't need Samurai wallet and the QR code scanner. I can just have them all combined into one.

- Very true. - Yeah, really cool, this one. So, they've just built a calculator into the Samurai app, basically. It's not the actual calculator app that you've got on your phone that kind of links to the Samurai app.

It's actually the Samurai app that just looks different. It has a different landing page, basically. - Yeah, exactly, so when you're in there, you'll go into the settings, you can turn on self mode, choose which decoy app that you want to use, and then once you fully exit the app, the icon will change and it'll look like the,

whichever decoy app that you've chosen. Then, whenever, anytime you go into that decoy app, it functions as whatever that decoy app does, so it's a calculator, it'll do addition, multiplication, et cetera.

You have to know the specific trigger for that decoy app to then open the Samurai wallet app. So, for the calculator, which is the one that I've been playing with, is you just press the equals button five times in quick succession, calculator app shuts, opens up Samurai.

- Nice. I had a nerdy thought just taking it one step further. When I found out about this, I was thinking, well, what about then if you go through border patrol wherever you go, and then they know, okay, on the calculator app, you could press that equal button five times, whatever it is.

Could it be built in that you do something slightly different, like press it a fifth time, and it deletes the Samurai wallet running in the background? So even if they were then to try it, it wouldn't work.

Do you know what I mean? Is there anything where you can then erase that wallet if you're in a situation where it would be really bad if they found it? I know it's like proper out there stuff, but I suppose in theory, anything's possible.

Yeah, I guess the difficult bit or the bit that's worth considering is how many people are gonna actually be in that specific situation that you've just spelled out, and need to use that versus how many people are just gonna inadvertently delete their Samurai wallet app by pressing it too many times, and then not have sufficient backups

and then completely screw themselves over. My guess is the latter probably gonna happen far more often. To your point around that rough sort of feature set of having a quick delete of some specific apps, callics and graphing actually have a panic mode, which you can do, which will delete a predefined list

of applications if you do a specific key sequence. So that is possible, but just not kind of at a specific app level, but it's there for those people that maybe are at risk or that travel a lot that kind of don't want border force to be able to pry into specific wallet apps.

So it is possible, but not at the specific app level. Maybe that makes more sense. - Yeah, so you can configure it to like delete specific, you can have a list of apps that as soon as you enable panic mode, they all just disappear, and I think you might even be able to do it with files as well, I'm not entirely sure,

but definitely for application. - Q&A, you're so fucking aggressive on your mute button, so aggressive. (laughing) - I apologize, I've been pulled up for anybody listening to this. I've been pulled up on this loads of times as well, and it's like, I've got like a reflex that as soon as I do it, because I'm more paranoid

about like sniffs or cuffs that Max has got to edit out, but I then inadvertently cut myself short and then Max has to do some more editing anyway, so. - I have to find a point closer, like further back in the conversation where you're speaking, where it could potentially be an ending, rather than be like, yeah, so I was gonna...

(laughing) - I will, I'll take my hand off the mouse, and that will hopefully delay the mute time, yeah, apologies. - Thanks, Mike. - Answer me, what would you say? - Yeah, there's one question I had to the stealth mode.

Do you know if they somehow hide the naming of like the folder structure in the actual like, like if you go into your file manager? Because I mean, obviously it's one thing to like just, go into the search bar and search for apps, but if you like go into the file manager and search samurai, you'll still get the whole like list of folders

if that's not somehow masked as well. Do you know if they've done anything to do that? - Good question, not sure. My guess is probably not because of the likelihood of somebody actually being able to, I guess get a hold of your phone, but I suppose that's true of like the border force scenario.

I'll have to have a look, I'm honestly not sure. I do know that the backup file, the encrypted backup file that they offer, the samurai.txt, you can store that anywhere on your phone so you can kind of bury that in a really deep folder structure that's called like, I don't know, holiday pictures or something like that.

So you can move that, but in terms of the rest of the files, not entirely sure what else there is. I've only ever seen the backup file really, but I presume there must be more stuff buried somewhere.

So yeah, valid point, I'll have to kind of look into it. Next one on the list is BDK version 0.2.6. They've improved their fulcrum electron server compatibility, multiple enhancements and bug fixes.

And just wanted, I put this one in 'cause I just wanted to give Ego from our team at Foundation of Shao, 'cause he's got his first pull request merged into BDK. For those that have not heard of BDK, it's a library that aims to be the core sort of building block for many different Bitcoin wallets on many different platforms.

So you can think of it as sort of like a developers toolkit so that if they're building a new wallet, the BDK team have already done a lot of the heavy lifting and have a lot of the parts that you can quickly put together so that a lot of the backend stuff is already dealt with in a way that's got number one done by people

who know what they're talking about. And number two has had lots of peer code review as well so that people can come to market much quicker with their various different open source applications.

BDK is one that we use at Foundation for Envoy, but we're building on top of the great work that the guys at BDK have done as well. So good to see that they've improved their fulcrum server compatibility, particularly because what we've seen in the last sort of six months that fulcrums kind of burst onto the scene

from a Bitcoin perspective because, and it created some great benchmarking work over at Spyro to demonstrate the differences and the improvements here. So good to see that BDK are improving that one and it's particularly with fulcrum.

So I'm trying to think of some other BDK based wallets actually. I'm not sure on any that I've actually come to market other than Envoy just yet. I know there's a couple in the works that are at varying levels of their development progress, but nothing that's come out with a full release just yet.

But really good to see that developers and wallet makers have got sort of a good framework now that's getting some really good peer review and some good contributions from people of all walks of different backgrounds and whatnot.

They're getting eyes on the code and contributing to this, quite analogous to Bitcoin core, I guess. Didn't blue wallet implement all of that LDK that they implemented, do you know? That was LDK and I believe they're still kind of working on that that hasn't come to main release, but LDK Lightning Development Kit is essentially the same

as what I've just discussed, what BDK is, but LDK is that for lightning. So just a framework for wallet developers to kind of plug into and build on top of so that they don't have to do all the, build it from scratch from the ground up.

But yeah, they're using LDK for that one. And I think that's part of their move to making their lightning wallet by default non-custodial so that LDK would be doing the heavy lifting there because currently it's all custodial, isn't it?

Which, you know, we talked a lot about the risks of custodial wallets, particularly lightning wallets. So good to see that they're slowly making that shift over to LDK so that they can make non-custodial the default.

'Cause it's a very popular wallet, blue wallet and, you know, for good reason, cross-platform and lots of features and fairly simple UI. So the fact that they've recognized the risk that they could rug a hell of a lot of people, be nice to see them go to non-custodial by default for lightning.

- Yeah, I mean, also just like from a regulatory standpoint, I mean, that's a big burden that you, they're probably pretty happy to shed at some point. So I mean, that's definitely a good step to see.

- Yeah, gonna be interesting to see how they make that shift because presumably they're holding a lot of customer funds currently in the custodial bit. So whether they're gonna, I don't know, communicate like an end date and say get your funds off here by X date, otherwise they disappear

and what they do with it at that point, I don't know. - Couldn't they just send you an on-chain? 'Cause you have both. Couldn't they do like whatever, loop out or whatever? If they have your X pub anyway, can they just send you an on-chain payment with your balance?

- Possibly, I don't know how much information they have on their default customers and I don't know whether they, I don't think that you share X pubs. I think it might be a gap limit of addresses.

So I think it could still require some interaction between the user and the wallet providers that are running the custodial lightning network at the moment. - Right, okay. - Yeah, I don't think it would be as simple as that unfortunately.

I might be completely wrong. Even if it were, I mean, it would be a pretty bad look. I mean, if you're a custodian anyway, there's always that risk of them moving your funds and even if you are the recipient of that transaction, it's still kind of a bit of a tricky situation.

I don't know how good that publicity would be if they just say like, okay, you've got like two weeks to move it or it will all be like pushed to some address and we hope you have access to that.

I think it's the only option they have is to like slowly phase it out and just like promote the other option in their app and kind of hope that with time people just migrate over and then at some point just close the custodial channels and then that'd be it.

But yeah, I don't know if that will work out. But at least people have got the option. I mean, that's the biggest part. - Yeah, definitely. Cool. So next one, we have a new Whirlpool client has been released, written in the Rust language, which makes it compatible with BDK-based wallets because BDK is also written in Rust, I believe.

So there's a team that go by the name of Straylight that have released their own Whirlpool client which makes this the third Whirlpool client to be released. We've currently got obviously Samurai Wallet and we've got Sparrow Wallet, which I believe uses most of the code that Samurai does anyway 'cause it's written in Java.

But we now have an open source framework for any Bitcoin wallets that are compatible with Rust. So basically what this means is that anybody that's building a wallet using the BDK framework that we've just been talking about has now got almost a Whirlpool client ready to go to kind of plug into their wallet.

So what they would need to do then is kind of just build a UI user interface on top of it, which is absolutely massive from a perspective of getting people onboarded to Whirlpool because currently you either need an Android phone to use Samurai Wallet or you need to be comfortable using a desktop environment,

which we live in a mobile-first world. So not a lot of people or fewer people at least would be comfortable with interacting with something like Sparrow, which is absolutely fantastic and has blown us all away over the last couple of years since it's come onto the scene.

But more optionality is great, especially when it comes to Whirlpool. So keep your eyes on any BDK or Rust-based wallets that are currently on the scene. Well, I know of one that's very close to my heart called Envoy, built by the team at Foundation Devices.

So needless to say, we're incredibly excited about this one and looking forward to shoehorning this into Envoy this year. So hopefully we can bring Whirlpool to our customers and Envoy users, which is cross platform.

So hopefully if we can do what we need to do, that will mean that we'll have Whirlpool on iOS as well if we can get it into the app store. - That's massive. - Sweet. I don't know what you're doing on this pod then, you should fucking be working mate.

Go and get it done. - Well, I'll leave all of the technical stuff to the clever people, but yeah, I mean, I know there's another wallet. I'm not sure whether they use BDK, but I know that they're leveraging this straight like Whirlpool client to bring Whirlpool to their mobile app as well.

I believe they are cross platform. And I'm trying to think of the name of it now, it's really bad that I've already forgotten it, but I think it might be called Stack Wallet actually, which is a multi-coin wallet, but they are, I believe, going to be using this client to bring Whirlpool into their wallet.

And they also are working on Bit 47 support as well. So I think it's going to be an exciting year for Whirlpool clients. And I think we're going to see that post-mix liquidity continue to explode.

And I don't often make predictions, and I definitely don't make price predictions. But one thing I will happily go on record to say, I think we might hit 10,000 Bitcoin in post-mix liquidity this year.

- I can say that. - Yeah, and currently, especially if we get all these new clients on board, I think we're currently at what, 6,000 something? I'm just going to love it in Clark's dashboard while you guys riff on this.

- Yeah, well, it's massive, isn't it? Because you're going to get the liquidity up and also the fact that you got these different clients, I think puts to rest a lot of people's concerns about just having one client, then they still had concerns, oh, well, now there's any two, but as it opens up more,

I think the arguments against Whirlpool just become more and more stupid. - And I mean, now, especially with like a separate client that people can leverage. I mean, I don't know exactly how the mechanics work here.

If you can just like take that and then automatically connect to the liquidity pool or if you need some kind of interaction with Samurai there. There is quite a bit of like back and forth between different groups and like Samurai having a certain name for themselves.

I think there are some projects that are kind of do shy away from that bit and don't want to get caught up in that. And if there's like a separate client now that people can just take and plug in and don't really have to jump into the weeds, like Craig did and have to build everything from scratch and like need loads of info

and after I really dig in to get this thing to work, I think it's really great. Because I mean, we've been talking about this for years that it's such a great monetization avenue for open source projects that even, I mean, I've no idea like what the numbers actually are if it is meaningful or not,

but at least it is, there is potential there. And so I think it can only like benefit a project if they implement this. - Yeah, agreed. Current post-mix capacity is 6,721 Bitcoin. So I don't think Tanka is even that exuberant of a prediction by the end of the year, to be honest, particularly when these clients, yeah.

And that just means that anybody that's currently using world pool is gaining from that as well because the more people in that liquidity pool, the bigger the crowd that you're hiding in and everyone's a winner from it.

So yeah, just to come back on one of the points that you guys made around, whether or not you can do this without Samurai, yeah, absolutely, you can start running your own world pool client if you wanted to.

The difficulty there is that you're making your own liquidity pool ending, you're starting from scratch. So you need to build your own reputation and the users of that new client that don't plug into the existing liquidity pool aren't kind of able to leverage that existing pool to hide in.

So whilst I think maybe another coordinator and liquidity pool might be good from a diversification point and an image he loves company, I think is the term, I might have just butchered that.

But yeah, there's a lot to be said for not fracturing the current existing liquidity pool for the reasons that I've just stated around, you know, the more people that all look the same, then the better your privacy is.

So I would imagine that most clients, sorry, new clients, especially at start out, will plug into the existing pool and just work on a, presumably work on a revenue share with Samurai where they will get a share of whatever TX 0 fees come from, whatever new client comes on board.

- I was under the impression it had to join the same pool. So that different clients would all be, oh, I've completely got confused there because I was thinking, well, then that's really good because the more different clients you have all joining the same pool, I didn't know that you'd have separate pools running the same software.

- No, so you're writing the fact that if a new client comes online and it talks to the current coordinator that Samurai runs, then any liquidity that comes in through that coordinator adds to the existing liquidity pool, which is great.

I think the benefit that you're kind of eluding to is like the fact that obviously a coordinator learns about the inputs because it's coordinating the transaction. And if we've got that more distributed, that means we're not sort of concentrating that information in one single place.

So we've currently got two, and if you spread that across three, four, five different clients, then the typical for that, you know, Samurai can unwind mixes because default mobile users that don't use their own dojo are sharing their wallet information.

Well, it is true that they're sharing that information with Samurai. That's kind of how light well it's work. But the notion that Samurai can unwind mixes because a majority of those users are taking that practice becomes complete bullshit because we have Sparrow, because we have dojo users, because we have envoy users, et cetera.

And it just further dilutes that potential risk. - But if they're not in the same pool, then does it? - They are in the same pool. Yeah, if you connect to the Samurai coordinator, then you're joining the existing pools and you'll be mixing with Samurai users and Sparrow wallet users.

- Okay, so as it stands now, yeah, this is where I'm getting confused. So as it stands now, Sparrow and Samurai, they use the same pool. So whether you're-- - Correct. - Yeah, okay. So what you're saying is, someone doesn't have to use the same pool, but they have the option. - Absolutely.

- So for example, if Foundation said, "Right, we're gonna do it with envoy," you could and probably would, I'd imagine, join the same pool. So bring more liquidity and then, okay, fine, so I'm back to where I was at the beginning.

- Yeah, the point is that I could spin up a world pool coordinator today and anybody that is able to download a copy of Samurai wallet and know how to change which coordinator their wallet talks to.

They could do that and talk to my client, but the fact is there's no liquidity. So you have that bootstrapping issue where you need people to use it and gain a reputation and build up the liquidity before the masses will join.

So there's a lot to be said for not fracturing not liquidity pool because all users win at the end of the day. - I think that my original point that got you confused was that I said that this client gives people the option to not have as much communication with Samurai.

What I was trying to say was that all my question actually was if you want to hook up to the same liquidity pool and you've implemented this in your wallet, like how much permission do you need or how much like interaction do you need now with Samurai to do that?

Is it like a kind of open system and you just pray a button and you never have to talk to them? Or is it kind of a negotiation thing of like how's the split and like kind of they like each time you have to go through the whole process?

- Yeah, so the way I understand it is obviously Samurai's running the coordinator so the fees will be collected by them. So there's going to have to be some interaction between the new client and Samurai to deal with the revenue share, I don't know what that looks like.

Obviously that's something that would be between the new client and the Samurai team. There's going to be some sort of interaction there but it's kind of a range for that and get visibility of what fees have come in through Sparrow wallet or what fees have come in through Envoy, et cetera.

So there will be need to be some dialogue there. - Okay, so it's not like an open protocol kind of system where people can just like hook up and jump back out again as they choose and please like kind of it's like more of a gated thing.

- Okay, okay. Okay, next on the list, the Nunchuk team have released a suite of collaborative custody subscription plans which give a particular focus on inheritance planning. So Nunchuk is a mobile wallet coordinator while they actually have a desktop app as well but I think they're best known for their mobile option

where you can do single-sig and multi-sig and they've also now started to presumably look for a monetization solution so they can continue developing their really cool wallet. So they come out with a couple of plans of collaborative or assisted custody.

The first one's called the Iron Hand Plan. It costs $120 a year and it's basically a two or three multi-sig where Nunchuk holds one key. So very similar to what CASA currently offer and I think on chain have a similar offering as well.

They also have the Honey Badger Plan which costs $450 per year and is a two or four multi-sig where Nunchuk holds one key and there's a dedicated time-locked inheritance key that's held on a tap signer which is one of these credit card type signing devices without a screen, et cetera, like an open dime, if you like.

In the current version of the Honey Badger Plan, the time lock is enforced off-chain by the Nunchuk platform. An alternative is to use an on-chain time-lock via a check-locked time verify.

However, due to the lack of hardware support such a solution is currently not production ready. So a couple of different options there. Good to see that they're exploring monetization options so that they can continue their development and good to see that there's some more competition jumping into the market with CASA and on-chain

to have pretty much gotten monopoly at the moment. So good on all fronts. I believe you can also do this anonymously as well where you don't need to provide any personal information and you can pay for it in Bitcoin as well.

So that's also good to see that there's more anonymous or pseudonymous ways of approaching this as well. So what you guys thought on this one? - This is absolutely amazing. I'm so happy to see this announcement.

Yeah, 'cause as you mentioned, I mean, they're the two players currently and just having more options there is great. I mean, like we've been hearing about like the app and the desktop version like for the last couple of years and they've been really pushing in the right direction with user experience,

but also with like now open sourcing the mobile app and like it seems like these are, they're in this for the right reasons. But it's still been kind of, I've had the feeling maybe it's just me, but it's like more about like the software itself and it didn't seem like a proper company like behind it like with like CASA or on-chain.

And now obviously they're pushing into that market which is really great to see. And especially with the focus on hidden inheritance that's been one of the points that I've been trying to emphasize on like meetups and stuff, 'cause that's just, I think one of the areas where like the tools that we have are still lacking.

So I'm really happy to see this. Obviously with the time lock thing that they've now decided on, I think that's, that can be a bit tricky, especially like how it's implemented now if it's just on their platform.

Is that just like a variable basic? Yeah, or like can they open up that lock time at any time? Like how locked is that really? Like how is that based and all that kind of stuff? So it would obviously be nice to have it actually on-chain.

Yeah, well, I think the thing that's worth remembering here is that because this is collaborative custody or assisted custody, if you like, that it's built in such a way that the user, the end user always has provided they haven't lost anything.

They always have the majority key set. So, you know, if you decided that you didn't want to use the Nutrux platform, you've still got the majority key set that you can recreate the wallet elsewhere, you know, in Spyro or anything like that if you want to be more self-soffing.

So you're, to my understanding, you're not kind of locked in, but obviously as soon as you move out of that ecosystem, then you lose the benefits of, that they're sort of selling you here in terms of support and time locks and inheritance, assisted inheritance and things like that.

The nice thing about this like two or four model is that even if Nunchuck is shut down or they just go away or whatever, you've effectively still got a two or three multi-sick. So that's quite nice, even if you lose the fourth key from Nunchuck.

The problem is if they've got like a native solution for the time lock, then your third key is time lock by their system. So at the end of the day, you've only got your two keys. So if you've lost one of your keys, one of the two that you're holding yourself, you can't use the inheritance key

even if the time has passed if Nunchuck is out business. So if it were on chain, then it wouldn't matter. And at some point in the future, you'd be able to use the inheritance keys, your second key to access your funds again.

Yeah, well, to my understanding that time lock in that scenario is only enforced by the Nunchuck platform. So if they're not around, if Nunchuck doesn't exist and they can't enforce that time lock, so you should be free to use that key, is my understanding of it.

Ah, okay, okay. Which adds to the fact that you're not kind of, you're even less locked in if you like. Well, then why have the time lock at all? Because I mean, then at any time Nunchuck could collaborate with your inheritance counterpart to access the funds.

Like, I mean, there's no point in having the time lock then. Just trying to think that through. So Nunchuck are holding a key that is time locked by them. I suppose it depends where the inheritance key is, doesn't it? Yeah.

Yeah, if like your, I mean, obviously this is, would be a pretty extreme case, but if your inheritance counterpart were to somehow collude with Nunchuck, then they could just bypass the time lock.

They'd still only have two keys though, but that's all they need. It's a two, it's a two or four. Yeah, presumably, again, this is a paid service, I haven't tested it, but presumably Nunchuck will have some form of like in-app authorization.

So, you know, the other person will need some piece of information or be access to the application or something like that to authorize, which presumably you're going to have yourself. So it's not just a case of grab hold of the, grab hold of the tap sign of key and email and Nunchuck and say, can we send the Bitcoin transaction?

Did it bound to be something else? Yeah. Some other form of like notification or authorization or something like that. So at the end of the day, it's not like some kind of cryptographic time lock.

It's just like a note. Like we're not going to collaborate with you before this and this date. Yeah, essentially, that's the way I understand it. Okay. I don't think anybody else has took this approach with a two or four.

I certainly don't think Casa do it and I'm pretty sure on Jane don't do it as well. So good to see all the options coming out. You know, like we've mentioned before that there's no one size fits all in terms of security, procedure for your Bitcoin.

Everybody's got different situations and different requirements for their inheritance and their heirs and whatnot. So good to see more options coming on the market. One downside that I had forgotten about but I've just noticed from their website that reminded me again.

So the cheaper plan, the two or three that I in hand plan requires two tap signers. So those are the two keys, which is a bit, well, you're locked in basically. You can't use your call card or your passport or your ledger or a treasure or anything like that with that plan currently.

You have to use two tap signers. Which I wonder why. Yeah, well, I presume there's probably been some deal done somewhere along the line to restrict this. You know, I get the, I understand why people like tap signers but one of the domains how to benefit is a use in multi-sig and hardware.

While it's the hardware, while it's have a screen and you can verify what's going on on a secure offline device, which obviously you can't do with a credit card NFC device. So something worth considering.

Again, not trying to throw any shade anybody but just with noting that this isn't like cash run unchanged where you can just bring your treasure and your passport with you and stuff like that.

Yeah, I mean, especially with multi-sig, like we'd talk a lot about like multi-vendor setups. And then it's not even here like just restricted to coin kite but it's also just the tap signer.

It's not like a call card and a tap signer. So yeah, I mean, that would be nice to see them open that up. I mean, I mean, if they really have done a deal, I mean, hopefully it's just for a certain period of time to get this bootstrap so that they can use their following kind of, but it'd be nice to see them open that up.

I've actually been chatting with the Nutroutine quite a lot been working on some passport related stuff in the last couple of weeks. Really great guys to deal with and really responsive and they shipped stuff incredibly quick.

One of the first things I said to them when this was announced, I said that if I was a betting man, you're going to be met with a raft of support tickets requesting that you open up the iron hand plan for other hardware devices.

So watch this space but yeah, if I was a betting man, I'd imagine that's going to change in the near future because people are going to see this benefit and want to use that product. But with the existing hardware that they've already got for the additional security benefits that we've kind of touched on.

But outside of all the collaborative stuff, Nutrux compatible with pretty much every single hardware wallet. So if you want to roll your own DIY single or multi-sig, it's a great platform to explore that.

Yeah, works with C, Tanaki, Stone, Colkog, Passport, Jade, everything. So yeah, really good platform. Good to see that they're looking to the future and trying to get some monetization so that they can live through bear markets and whatnot.

So good on them. On a side note, did you see on their advertising image or like explainer, they put in a price prediction? I mean, obviously no date, but 2.5 million fucking bears. 2024. Exactly.

Not really. That old man is actually me. That's when that's going to happen. Yeah, that's a long time through. So what have we got next on the list? We have got-- oh, yeah, Coinbase. This is pretty crazy.

They came to terms with what was it? New York Department of Justice or something? State Department, financial services. And they had been having a court case regarding like KYC, all the way users were being KYC, on their platform like the KYC AML regulations.

And apparently they had not been doing this to the standards that they were supposed to. So they were in a dispute there. And now they've come to a settlement of 50 million paid in fines as well as 50 million to strengthen their surveillance program.

So this is a perfect example, again, of how the whole KYC, or KYC industry is now being pushed further and further to crack down on their users. And even a company like Coinbase that we'd probably presume were doing this pretty rigorously the whole time,

apparently, had not been doing so. Probably not out of moral reasons, but probably more out of incompetence. But at the end of the day, they have to now invest another 50 million to crack down on that.

So it's just going to get worse from here. Awesome. Quite ironic, really. They've been in bed with chain analysis firms for a good few years now, clearly surveilling their users already, but the regulator's going to regulate them, and they want more, one thing that wasn't clear, the article just says that it wasn't completing

the required checks. But from what I've heard about Coinbase is that they do a hell of a lot of checks anyway. So what were they doing that wasn't enough, and what are they going to do that is going to be enough in the future?

It just seemed like a clown world merry-go-round, doesn't it? Yep. Oh, here we go. In one instance, Coinbase unwittingly helped the digital thief steal 150 million from an unnamed company by claiming to be an employee of that company when opened in a Coinbase account.

So it just goes to show that the KYC works, folks. Oh, wow. Jesus Christ. Safe and effective. Were there any dates on this? So when this was supposed to have happened? I'm just looking now.

Yeah, it's mentioned 2021 a couple of times. They found problems with the exchange anti-money laundering controls going as far back as 2018. So it looks like they've looked back through the books and decided to pillage Coinbase for a bit.

I mean, they've got plenty of money, so fuck 'em. Hell yeah. Next one, this one is, I'm sure, going to excite Max quite a lot. So BIP 329 from Arman Craigoror has been merged into the BIP list.

So BIP 329 is a standard for wallet label exports and imports between wallets. BIP 329 is set to new standard that will make it easy for wallets to allow users to back up various types of wallet labels and import them into other compatible wallets.

So what we currently have is a complete shit show of everybody doing their own form of backups and export formats and labeling formats, et cetera, which basically means for the end user that if you use Spectre desktop for a year, got 100 GTX in there, you've been doing loads of sending

receiving, you've been really diligent with your backups and with your labeling, so that you've got what each transaction is for, you know what you can and can't merge in the future to preserve your privacy, et cetera.

And then you decide that you want to migrate to Spyro wallet or to Blue wallet or, you know, into any other wallet here, you basically can't take those labels with you, which can be quite detrimental to people's privacy if they kind of just forget about the labels and then start merging UTXOs, depending on their spending

habits, that could be, you know, quite a dire situation, particularly if you've been buying things off the internet that the government wouldn't want you to buy. So Craig has had enough of this and probably had enough of the support to kick it around wallet imports and labels, et cetera.

So decided to propose a new standard, which basically dictates what information wallet should be able to save in terms of wallet labels and the format that they should be saved in, such that, you know, you can take your Spyro wallet labels and import them into any other BIP 329 compatible wallet and have all of your fancy labels

and notes, et cetera, all fully restored alongside what you would expect to see with all your transaction lists, et cetera. So if we can get this one as a standard that is widely adopted, which I see no reason why not, because it's not kind of, this isn't affecting consensus.

This is just a wallet standard that everybody benefits from. It's not really going to be a contentious issue to my knowledge apart from, you know, there might be some wallets that have additional data structures that they might want to include, which may sort of prolong the adoption of this a little bit.

It just seems like a win-win and I can't believe, really, that nobody's kind of come up with this until now, because it seems like something such that so core to using Bitcoin privately and in a sovereign way that, yeah, it's baffling that nobody's kind of come up with it till now, but our man, Mr. Raw, has took the mantle

and come up with a standard and proposed a standard. It's an open discussion at the moment. In his spare time, you know. Yeah, well, I wonder, you know, last month we were talking about how many wallets actually had the ability to use labeling, and it was far fewer than we'd hoped.

So I wonder whether some of it comes down to, there just wasn't that many people actually using Bitcoin that way and actually labeling. And so then maybe it just wasn't such a huge issue for people, but yeah, it's been a huge issue for me, which I'm still battling on with.

So I'm very, very happy to see this. I think it's fucking stressful, like if you pull that work in and then you can't get hold of your labels. If you've been using Bitcoin for a while and you actually make payments and you've taken the time, it's fucking frustrating.

Yeah, and I definitely want to like also advocate for the way that Sparrow goes about this whole thing with labeling that they force you to do labels before sending transactions. This is, I mean, I think every wallet should do this.

There's like hardly any friction or time consumed to just punch in a word or two or whatever. And it's such a huge benefit afterwards. So I mean, that would be something that I love to see with Nunchuck as well as we just spoke about them.

Yeah, I mean, it's such a small amount of time that you have to invest and can help you out so much in the future. That should be like one of the wallet best practices of just like forcing us to put in some kind of label.

Yeah, I think that it is a growing trend and hopefully, something that this bit will help continue to grow as well. In terms of for wallet developers, it's the proposed file format is super simple.

It's just the JSON sort of text. So I don't really, if you've already got a wallet software that enables you to use labels or memos or notes, whatever you want to call them, then just being able to format a JSON file dump from that shouldn't.

In my mind, from obviously an idiot's perspective, be that much of a stretch to implement, considering what somebody's wallet can do these days. So as always, Craig's put a lot of thought to this, kept it very simple and just kept it to the core of what's actually required.

So I want to watch and I'm sure there'll be some extensive discussion around it in the coming months, but definitely a win for users. If this was already implemented with my situation, I could have just taken one of my many backups that I had from Spectre, and then I could have just imported that into Sparrow,

and I would not have lost any sleep, and I wouldn't have sat for days fucking around with no joy. So hopefully people don't have to go through that, but just an update for people, 'cause I know I'm not the only person who's dealing with this at the moment, still can't get my labels back.

I still can't import that file into Spectre. I've tried, there was a load of people in the forums saying, "Oh, I had the same problem. "I had my backups, but then I couldn't actually get it "working with Spectre anymore."

Someone said, "Oh, why don't you try it? "Get Umbral running on a node and then get Spectre running "on the Umbral, and then try importing into there, "which I tried," and they just said it was doing it for like a day, and then failed, and then said it was doing it for another day, and then failed, no balances, no nothing.

And then someone else said, "Oh, do it on the desktop." So I wiped the old desktop one, tried it on another laptop. That failed, and then someone else said, "Oh, if you wanna download Core onto a separate laptop "and then run Spectre desktop, the newest version, "that will work."

So I downloaded Core onto another laptop. That didn't work, but without Slagmim off too much, there is one person who has been really helpful, K9 Earth, who I think is one of their devs. He has, in all fairness, sent me loads of information on a potential workaround, but I haven't had time to do it yet.

It seems quite complicated, I'm an idiot, and I need to do it, so I'll update people if it's possible. But then even if I get it back, I then have to manually write down all my labels before moving over to Sparrow and just do it manually.

But that's fine, if I can do that, that'd be great. - Yeah, plus one on the dude. I mean, he gave me a lift last year to a conference, like a meetup, so he's definitely a quality dude. - Yeah, he's been really helpful.

- Good stuff. Shall we finish on a really bright note? Talk about some colossal data breaches. - Yes. - So, first one, this one came out December 26th. Twitter data breach, private data for 400 million users, posted for sale, which includes email addresses, names, usernames, number followers,

profile creation date, and phone numbers as well. So, thank you Twitter for leaking people's phone numbers. So, I guess, just kind of hark back to the fact that if you're gonna sign up for centralized services, maybe consider doing so under a pseudonym, use a burner email.

If you have to use a phone number, consider using something like a service like Text Verified, where you can pay in Bitcoin to get a temporary phone number to allow you to sign up to a service so that when these inevitable data breaches do happen, your full name, email address, maxbitbybit@gmail.com along with your phone number

isn't all leaked for anybody who, you know, available to anybody with access to the door browser. So, yeah, it's sad to see, unfortunately, it's not even surprising anymore. These breaches kind of come quite frequently at the moment.

So, just act under caution, and, you know, pseudonyms are a great tool when interacting on the internet, particularly if you're talking regularly about Bitcoin, the last thing you want is people to know your full name, address and phone number to come and pay you a visit at three o'clock in the morning.

- Yeah, and to be clear, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but there were no, like, password information or something included in this data set, right? - Yeah, I think you're right there, yeah.

It's just the information sets that I mentioned. So, ironically, and this might make a few people smile in a sarcastic manner, that Twitter one was the lighter of the two data breaches that I'm gonna talk about.

So, the next one is a company called LastPass, and some hackers have stole their customer vault data. So, LastPass is a password manager, quite analogous to BitOne, where people will have, will use a service like LastPass to generate and manage all of their passwords for all of their various online

or offline accounts that are secured by a single master password. So, the idea being that, you know, you might have a hundred accounts on the internet, which is a nightmare to, you know, if you're managing your passwords correctly to have a different password, for all of those, managing that can be quite difficult.

So, password managers manage all of that in an encrypted fashion and store it all behind a single master password that you type in to access and, you know, retrieve whichever password for whichever account you need.

So, just before Christmas, customer account information and related metadata, including company names, end user names, billing addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, and IP addresses, were all compromised.

The hackers also got access to the vault data, which is encrypted, but as we know with most humans, we tend to use shit passwords. So, the attacker will have an encrypted blob, they might know which account it was assigned to.

So, they can then, they're free at their own will now, that they've got this data to try and brute force your master password. If you've used the shit master password and they have an easy time in accessing your LastPass encrypted data, then they then have access to however many passwords you had in your account as well.

So, basically, they could own your online life, which is quite scary, well, not quite scary, it's incredibly scary. And, again, harked back to the fact that, be careful what information you store in these password managers, I'm not trying to scare people away from it, I use Bitwarden, I think it's fantastic,

and I will continue to use Bitwarden, but just make sure that your master password, which is the key to your online kingdom, is a secure one, and something that you've got backed up somewhere secure, because the ramifications and the fallout from a hack like this, mean that somebody could just take over your online life

and access your exchange accounts, your emails, anything, and basically cause you hell of a lot of misery. So, this was a huge one. - Yeah, I mean, a few points here, I mean, that's like the one concern with these centralized password managers is that you've got this one password, and if that is somehow compromised,

they have access to absolutely everything. So, I mean, obviously, there are some people who segregate this, depending on different use cases, two different password managers, but most people just have it all in one, and have one password, as you mentioned.

So, obviously, I think this will be kind of a low hanging fruit thing, that they'll have like a certain time, that they'll try and brute force each data set, and then just jump to the next.

So, if you, I mean, there are some sites, I mean, I don't have any like on the top of my head, but like if you're using a password manager anyway, like a bit more than something, they also tell you like if, like how strong your password is.

So, definitely be careful where you test that, but there are options to do that offline and stuff. So that you know like how secure your password is, and if you have any concerns that your password may be not secure enough, definitely go through all of your accounts, and just change the password there.

Obviously one good thing to have anyway, which would guard in this situation is like two factor authentication. If you have that and don't have your authentication key, also stored in your password manager, then you'll definitely have another barrier of security there.

So, definitely, yeah, if you are in this situation, you'll be on the safe side to just make a whole bunch of new passwords. The problem is obviously because they've got these data sets, just changing your master password won't help you here.

So you definitely have to change the actual account passwords. And last point also with Bitwarden, especially, and I don't know if this is possible with others as well, you can use this or host this yourself.

So, especially with some of the like no boxes now as well, like with the start nine embassy, and I'm not quite sure with like Umbral, if that's possible or not. But you can host this yourself, even if you're like technically savvy enough, you can also just get like a VPS or set up a server at home and just host this standalone.

But then you'll be divorced from this whole situation as well, if this should happen to Bitwarden as well. - Yeah, good summary. I think the self-hosting bit is an important one, particularly if you already run one of these node boxes.

I think it's on Umbral as well, maybe even my node. But yeah, you can at the click of a button, host your own instance. And once you connect all of your different Bitwarden clients, so there might be a browser plug-in, that might be the app on your phone, each one of those will store like an offline encrypted version as well.

So if your node that's hosting your server was to ship the bed, then you've got some, you know, all those clients have an offline encrypted version of all your data as well. So long as you've still got that master password, the risk of self-hosting, this sort of stuff can be mitigated.

Yes, it's going to be a pain of the ass to move, but you're not going to kind of lose all of that data instantly. You can kind of back up from either of the various clients that you've got as well.

So a great alternative and nowhere near as scary as it sounds. The all important bit here is that master password, just make sure it's something that's secure and that's something that you've got backed up securely somewhere.

You know, a lot of shade gets thrown at the old fashioned methods, like a paper notebook, but you know, if you've got a super secure master password, then it's going to be something that's going to be hard to remember.

So having that backed up somewhere should be, should be also be a priority. Yeah, that's a good point with the additional backups if you have these apps that connect to that, because I didn't know that, because that was one of the things that, I mean, obviously doing regular backups of all your data is important, but especially here,

that's really important data to have that backed up. I mean, that's great. If you have like a laptop and a desktop and a phone or whatever, and you've got it hooked up on each of these, then you'll be quite a catastrophe if you lose all of that.

So that's great. Yeah, so the final bit I wanted to cover was the attack or hack. I don't know what we want to classify it as, because the details of which have been fairly guarded thus far, correct me if I'm wrong, guys.

But Bitcoin core developer Luke Dash, Jr. I think I'm saying that right. I think it might have been at the end of November, maybe. 200 Bitcoin. Yeah, it was hacked or had 200 Bitcoin around about that.

Stolen from him. There's been a lot of theories on how this has happened. Various different bits of information has kind of come out in jibs and drabs since the hack has happened, nothing concrete.

So a lot of this is kind of take it with a pinch of salt, and it's kind of various tweets and what not these put out. But I think the top and bottom of it was that he had his Bitcoin wallet stored in an encrypted fashion on a server somewhere, which was encrypted by his PGPK, which got compromised somehow.

And that allowed whoever was going after his Bitcoin to access his wallet and drain the whole lot. So he's had roughly, I believe, the public figure is 200 Bitcoin stolen from him. The OXTT team have done a bit of tracking.

It looks like he's gone into a mix of called chip mixer. Yeah, so there's been, like I say, a lot of the information here is kind of woolly, because Luke's not been very clear about his exact setup.

There's just been, there's people been making assumptions based on some of the things that he said. The thing that I found ironic, and this is a horrible situation. And if what he said is true and somebody has stole 200 Bitcoin from him, then I really feel for him.

But he was, is clearly a very clever guy. He's been around in Bitcoin for most of its existence, if not all of it. The fact that he had the keys to 200 Bitcoin stored on a device that is connected to the internet is quite frankly horrifying and ridiculous.

And I just, I can't wrap my head around why somebody that's that clever would do that when we have devices that you can buy for $100 with a secure element or $200 that would have mitigated this attack absolutely entirely and you'd still have all of his funds.

I have three theories on this. OK, I'd love to hear it. I hope they're tin foil hat, because I like tin foil hat theories. They're not, I don't think they're that out there. I think one maybe is a very elaborate boating accident for whatever reason.

And he actually wouldn't have done that. And he stored it on there and he's made it sort of sound like it was a very weird peculiar thing that only like a proper devi dev might do from the beginning because that's how they've always done it.

And then it would give cover for the fact that that can go. And then it goes through chip mixer and blubber blower. And then it goes back to him. That's one. Two is he is very smart. He has been around Bitcoin for such a long time that maybe he just thought he was better than any other hacker

and that he doesn't need to follow the advice of anybody else and use a hardware wallet or an air gaps computer or anything else because he's too smart for it. I can't remember what my third one was just now.

No props. And the kind of, I suppose, the annoying thing out of this is that various talking heads on Twitter have seen this as an opportunity to say that self custody is a bad idea and that centralized exchanges.

Oh, if Luke would have had all of his coins on an exchange, this wouldn't have happened, which I don't even know where to start with addressing a statement like that. And it's clearly ridiculous.

And yeah, so it makes for a great headline, doesn't it? A core developer loses 200 Bitcoin blah, blah, blah. But yeah, the reason that I brought this up and I put it on the list is that it's, again, the details are woolly.

But the fact of the matter is, if he'd have had his C generated on an offline hardware wallet and made sure that those keys had never touched the internet, he'd still have all his Bitcoin.

That's not a difficult thing to do. It's not an expensive thing to do. And it's probably a good idea if you've got half a Bitcoin, let alone 200 of the fuckers. So yeah, this is the bit that I just can't wrap my head around.

The third one has just come back to me. The third one is, I would keep $100 or $200 on a wallet that has touched the internet because I'm like, it's not going to destroy my life. It could also be that he's been around long enough that 200 Bitcoin to him is like 200,000 cents to me.

Could be. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, we may never know, like he's not been forthcoming with the details, which he's completely up to him. He's not obliged to tell anybody this. But yeah, just one that I wanted to make people aware of.

And the fact that we're talking about a lot of money, we're in a heavy bear market at the moment. And even at the time, the value of what was nicked off in was like over $3 million. So yeah, easily to mitigate against, you don't need to be a super hacker to stop this attack.

So as is always the case, keep it simple. Generally, the simple security methods are one of the most secure for most people. Yeah, like two thoughts on your three theories. I think, especially with the last, like if he's got a absolutely massive stash next to those 200,

they may have been in a similar security setup. So maybe he's trying to kind of secure these before he's bringing out any additional information. So maybe if at some point in the future, he actually does go more into detail how this happened.

Maybe that would speak to that theory. If not, then obviously, I mean, the boating accident situation is always on the table. I mean, I find it hard to believe that that was everything and secured in that way.

I don't know, obviously, people do become kind of complacent if they've put in absolute loads of time 10 years ago and all their network security and these were the best options at the time.

And like kind of you, there's a certain like hurdle to take to actually like redo your whole setup if you put a lot of time into it. So maybe at some point he was just like, yeah, I mean, this on the list of things I've got to do.

But kind of I've actually did the best I could at the time. And now there are better solutions. And I'll do this at some point. And he just like the years went by. But I don't know, I think if this is your like net worth, like if this is everything that you've like accumulated since you started and you don't get around to doing this,

I don't know, I think that's quite stretch. I think it's unlikely that that's everything. I think it's unlikely you'd keep everything in one place that's not completely secure. You wouldn't want to have all your eggs in one basket.

You probably wouldn't even speak publicly about it if it was everything and you couldn't get it back because it's just so, it would just fucking destroy you. Regardless, like I don't know the bloke or really anything about him, but you know, even if it's not everything, it's still fucking horrible.

So yeah, it's not nice for him. - And to be clear, I mean, most people listening to this, I mean, they should, they'll probably know. But I mean, this hack did not have anything to do with Bitcoin, like the actual network security.

So Bitcoin has not been hacked. This was just his setup. It was a very targeted attack towards him. Obviously, because he's a prominent Bitcoiner. And so he had, I mean, obviously a lot of prominent visible Bitcoiners do kind of have a target on their back, especially they've been around for long enough.

So yeah, this is just, I mean, not, I mean, I'm quite glad that we didn't get all the headlines again if Bitcoin's been hacked. But yeah, we've been there before. - All right, guys, that's the end of my list.

Anybody got any housekeeping announcements or other news talking about diets or beer or bread? - Nothing from me. - Here in Germany, that was pretty cool. Like at the beginning of the year on the third, January, there was a huge campaign in Germany.

And it's not quite sure exactly who was actually behind it, but like just like all the different small Bitcoin communities from each town kind of got together and coordinated a huge campaign.

So that is in like all major cities and even like smaller villages and stuff. They just booked billboards, like running the hashtag goods on the scared, which means like healthy money and a few info's on Bitcoin and stuff.

And that was pretty spectacular to see like all the pictures coming out from everywhere. People just being completely surprised and overrun by this. It was really amazing. Like it was like on all of these electronic billboards.

So like in every train station and like from like shops and outside like on the big billboards and building walls and stuff. So that was pretty amazing. So hats off. - I saw you were on that.

- Yeah, well, we had, I mean, we were part of the group that did it here in around Schuttgart, where we're based and we just collaborated with a few other companies who sit like in this region of Germany.

And we did like a bit of additional advertisement for those few companies, so it's like a Bitcoin hotel called Princess. And then Koppiara, which is like a online shop for Bitcoin related stuff.

And then two other German podcasts, it was the Sound Money podcast and the Shield of Satoshi podcast, both like German educational podcasts and all from this region. And then together with Vulcan, we put up like one additional advertising name after this.

'Cause on the scale campaign and then just ran through our companies and just to make your like a raise awareness for the companies here around Schuttgart. But I mean, the larger campaign and we definitely cannot take credit for that.

That was a huge group effort. And obviously someone came up with the idea, but it's not quite sure or quite clear who it was. But that was pretty, pretty massive on a pretty big day. - Love to hear it.

Nice to see more normies getting exposed to what we're about. - 100%. - How about you? Anything to add? - No, nothing major for me. Still a little drinky beer, still eating bread. Will not be going on any fad diets any time soon.

Looking forward to hearing from Max next time when he's half the money is today. - Let's see some pics of those abs, man. - Come back looking like that Chad figure with a massive chin. - And a 10-pack.

- No, 'cause you've got to actually go to the gym for that as well. - That's true. - I just feel like fucking skin and bone. Well, I'll work on that. And yeah, Q and A, next time we sit down for this.

So you've got a month. I want to see Whirlpool in Envoy. - Hell yeah. We'll do inverted X, ego. Hope you're listening. Take note. All right, cheers guys. - All right. - Bye. - Thanks for listening.

I really hope you enjoyed that. And if you have any questions about the things we discussed in this podcast or need some help, you can reach out to me on Twitter or by email. If you enjoy the show, I'd like to ask you a favor, please.

If you haven't already, if you could like, subscribe and review the podcast on any app that you use, it goes a really long way to help other people find this content. I like to think that we're providing signal here and stopping people having to listen to the bullshit they normally get wrapped up in

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