Bitcoin monthly news 0012

(upbeat music) - Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless. (tires screeching) - Let's go! (tires screeching) - 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. (tires screeching) (tires screeching) - 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 deliver to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

- Welcome back everyone. I hope you had a good new year and I hope you are ready for 2022. This year is gonna be incredible. I feel really hyped after talking to Antimas today for our Bitcoin monthly updates.

Unfortunately, we were not joined by Bitcoin Q&A today. He is sick, he is ill and he will be back soon. - I want to thank everyone who reached out to me over the holidays and I also want to say thank you to everyone who's been using the incredible Fountain app.

It's really cool. Oscar Merry was very kind and got me set up on the Fountain app. So anyone who's listening on that or any of the other podcasting 2.0 apps, they can stream Sats and they can send messages.

I've had some great messages from people and some also some donations which has been awesome to see. So thanks for everyone who's doing that and anyone who hasn't checked it out, go and have a look.

It's a really slick interface and I hope to have Oscar Merry on the pod very soon. Honestly, thanks to my show sponsors, starting with CASA, we discuss them during this podcast. When it comes to multi-six security, I really can't recommend anybody higher.

I've really enjoyed my conversations with Jameson and with Nick and these guys do things properly. They've been around for a long time for a reason. I've been using them for over a year now and I've had no problems whatsoever.

The UX is so simple and I do recommend this to all my friends and family. You can do these things by yourself and we discuss that during the podcast but for someone like me who's not so technical and would have sleepless nights without knowing that I have someone to back me up.

From $10 a month, I really do think that these guys provide an amazing service. They have other options as well but if you use the code bit by bit 10, you will get 10% off your annual subscription.

If you have any questions, you can reach out to either the team or me. Go to keys.casa for more info. Next up, we have FastBitcoins. If you're looking to stack Sats, you can use FastBitcoins at over 20,000 retailers and they are now providing a service all across South America.

They're expanding at a rapid rate and I love this team. They've always been one step ahead of the game. They were the first people to implement lightning and have a huge amount of respect for Danny, their CEO, who's been on the show very recently.

Go to fastbitcoins.com for more info. Finally, we have Foundation Devices. Foundation Devices make the incredible passport, which is my hardware wallet of choice. I pestered these guys for a long time to sponsor this show because I love the product so much.

It's something that I feel very comfortable my friends and family using because A is fully open source. B is so fucking simple to use that any network can use it and now they have just reduced the price by 33%.

On top of that, you'll get an additional $10 off your purchase if you use the code bit by bit and go to their website foundation devices.com. As always, if you have any questions, you can reach out to me or the team and I'll be happy to help.

Enjoy the show. - Hello, mate. Am I coming through all right? - You are. Good morning, man. - Morning. (laughs) It's another makeshift office today. I have microphones stacked on boxes, trying to balance them.

I have no screens, but as long as you can hear me and I can hear you and we're recording, we're all good. - Wonderful. Well, happy new year, my man. - Happy new year. - Good to hear you. - How was your Christmas and all of the festivities?

- Yeah, well, a lot to eat. It was wonderful with family and friends. Over Christmas, had a good time. And now the New Year's Eve was quite a trip. Now, back to Earth and recovering. So, so good set to go now.

- You went hard, did you on years? - Well, yeah. Oh, yeah, but it was good times. - Yeah, me too. We are really, really big night. I stayed in with my missus and her grandma watched a movie and we're in bed by about 12.30.

- That's a life, man. (laughs) - Crazy stuff, but yeah, no. Christmas was nice and loads and loads of food and drinking and everything else. And yeah, now back to the grind. So, I'm actually, I don't know if you feel the same, but like happy to be back, rebuild a bit 'cause you get to that period at the end where it's like, does this end?

Like, do you know what I mean? Like the festive period kind of can drag after a while. - Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like exactly the right length. And now I also felt like really happy to just and like relaxing to get away from Twitter as well just over the holidays and just get away from my phone

and just really like concentrate on a lot of people in my surroundings, kind of, yeah, especially 'cause I moved about half a year ago. So didn't have a lot of people around me for the last few months.

So it's good to catch up with everyone really, really like, yeah, like concentrate on the time we have together, but now also getting back here to our new place here and getting back to my desk and actually like setting up a plan for the coming month and so on, it feels really good, energized and vitalized on new motivation, feels good.

- Excellent. And we have a member missing today. Not so energized, not so revitalized. Q&A is a sick man today. - Yeah, sorry to hear, man. All the best to hear, to you if you're hearing this.

Hope to have you back next month. - Yeah, we will do. I think it's been ill for a while. And then in typical Q&A style, didn't stop. I kept writing like rest, rest, rest. I was just thinking my head, this fuck is not gonna rest.

He's gonna be still working. - No matter how sick he is, he's gonna be working, putting out some sort of guide or in some telegram room, helping someone. So I think he got better and then sick again.

So I hope now he does rest and really rest. And yeah, we'll have him back soon, hopefully. - Yeah, so we'll see how we do without him today. - Yeah, we'll be fine, we'll be good. So you obviously have picked up the slack.

You put all of this list together and I guess done some extra bits so that when I ask stupid questions, you can hopefully answer them. But where do you wanna start? Is there anything before we jump into a list that you either want to go through that is particularly important from last year, from many of the conversations we've had

or anything that you wanted to revisit before we jump in? - Yeah, I think obviously the last few months we've had the ongoing topic of Compass Mining and our miners that we ordered there.

That was pretty detailed the last few months. I think that's something that we should revisit and keep people up to date on. From my side, I can say my miners have gone online and they have been running as well with very minor hiccups for a few hours here and there.

But on the whole they have been going for a few weeks now. Obviously that doesn't change anything that we, nor the I said the last few months. From my point, I still think that it was extremely poorly handled and at this point, I still would not recommend this service to anyone.

Time will tell, I think the last, as we said, the last month as well, the one year free hosting was a big step in the right direction. But I think just consistency and seeing how they handle future adversity will be the main criteria for me to judge.

Yeah, if they learn from this situation or not. Yeah, that was a sort point for me. I'm also online now, just so everyone knows I am online. I've also had no real issues since they've been running in all fairness.

Communication has still been terrible, but hopefully that change is in the new year. I'm happy to be hashing. I know there are still people who are not online. I've been chatting to a few of them in the background and that makes me very sad to hear people have been waiting basically a year now.

So yeah, the other good thing, and I'm really happy to see this is TFTC dropped them. I was very happy to see that they did that. It made a big difference for me because that's a show that I've been listening to the years now, I have a huge amount of respect for the two of them.

And yeah, it hurt to see the support there for me and knowing everyone else who was suffering. So I know Matt was pushing a lot in the background. And yeah, I'm happy to see that that's happened because it feels that that was necessary.

Wow, I missed that. That was now in the last month or the day now. Yeah, okay. Yeah, they did their last ad read and going forward. It's, they're not going to be sponsoring. So yeah, I have to say, I respect that.

I don't think any of the other shows actually did that. So, you know, credit where credit's due. Absolutely. And from my part as well, I called out the two on Twitter a few weeks back as well.

So definitely kudos to that. It was really good. And I chatted a little bit to Matt because we've just featured him on 21ism this month. We've done a privacy feature. Yeah, I mean, it was great to chat to him, but after I've been recording, we talked a little bit about the situation.

I know he was really cut up about it. He was very, very sad to see what had happened. So obviously in the background, things have changed and they've moved on. So anyway, so that was definitely a low point for 2021.

Do you have any favorite updates or implementations or anything that if you look back and you think, wow, that was a real high point? I think there were a few. One was definitely seeing the seed sign a project grow.

I'm not exactly 100% sure when it was announced. I don't know if it was at the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021. But definitely seeing the progress of the growth throughout the year. I know we shield them every month, but it was just so, so awesome to see that grow and everything that's coming out from that community.

It's wonderful. And then as well, the whole development on Sparrow with the implementation of Wellpool and all the collaboration with the Samurai guys and seeing them helping each other out.

And yeah, just growing that user base, it's wonderful to see. I think from the software side, those two were huge. Yeah, obviously the whole El Salvador news, it seems like it's been years and it's kind of died down by now, but it's actually, yeah, what's it?

Like seven, eight months ago, the announcement. That was huge. And it's so crazy how quickly things kind of normalize in this and how fast everything moves. And you sometimes have to take a step back and appreciate what has actually happened in the last few months.

- Yeah, it's easy to take that for granted, you're right. Like now if someone's like, oh El Salvador, they have Bitcoin as a currency. Like, yeah, obviously, like it's so, you feel like it's overplayed, but you forget quite how massive that is.

And I could sort of think back to when I started and these were just dreams. These were just things where it was like, I mean, maybe one day, like you believe that one day, but it's so far away.

And if it had happened in 2017, 2018, I think my head would have exploded. Like you say, now it's like normal. And we're just, all we're saying is, well, when's the next one? When's the next domino?

The things that we've seen all around the world with people just starting to, I guess accept it. I guess it's a bit more of a, almost like a household name. I was literally sat for dinner with some family the other day.

And they were talking about it almost like, they were saying things like people are saying this could be the world reserve currency. They're saying that this could replace the dollar. And, you know, maybe they don't understand why, or definitely they don't understand why, but they're hearing these things and it's starting to creep into,

starting to creep into everyone's minds a little bit, not that it's inevitable, but that it's there and it's not going away. And yeah, they still in the same, in the same sentence said, oh yeah, but you know, tulip, mania, and you know, that happened.

And it was stupid shit like that and just like, oh God, okay, you still don't get it, but it's not like it wasn't 2017. Like, you can say things like world reserve currency. You can say this is gonna change the world.

And people don't sort of like, look at you like you're a complete fucking lunatic. And I think a lot of that happened in 2021. I think a lot of what happened with mask and with sailor and El Salvador and all this kind of stuff, which maybe is not gonna be that relevant to the more privacy focused people

or it might not be of interest so much, but it is massive and it does change the game. - Absolutely, yeah. I think for me as well, it's been now close to two years now running around, trying to orange pill people.

(laughing) And it's like kind of like a lot of people talk about like the three touches you need with people. And I'm now like coming to that point where especially like for friends and relatives, like people you don't see that often, that it's now like the third, fourth touch.

And it's crazy to see like the discussions evolve and actually people coming back with questions and actually opening up conversations. And especially now over the holidays and so on. Wonderful to see.

So yeah, we'll see what the coming year brings. - Well mate, next year, these people have had their third touch they'll be tuning into our Bitcoin monthly and waiting for the software updates.

That's where we'll be. (laughing) - That's it, wonderful in our dreams. So should we jump into some software updates? I assume you got your notes and everything in front of you. - Exactly, yeah, let's do it.

- This month, we've got a bit of a shorter list than the last months. A few people probably taking their time as well. Starting off with BISC V 1.8.0. That was a bigger update introducing BISC-U swaps.

And so BISC has their own token. Well, it's a colored Bitcoin that they use for their governance. And they've implemented a kind of atomic swap system for people trading between Bitcoin and BISC-U.

- And Monero, presumably as well. Or no? - No, I haven't read anything about that. I think at the moment, it's just between BISC-U and Bitcoin. So it's... - Oh no, no, you had to literally put a trade out and you had to buy the BISC-U.

Right, okay, I'm with you. And obviously that's why they're not doing Monero because it would be very different. - Yeah, yeah, I think at the moment, it was the same as doing it between Bitcoin and Euro or pound or dollar, whatever, that you had to have these three transactions with locking it up in a multi-seag and so on

until the trade's over. So now you can do it all in one transaction, all trustless, so you'll save a lot of fees on that. So that's good to see. And then of course, we've got a few new payment methods, ACH transfer, domestic wire transfer and transfer wise USD.

And then a few updates and improvements on the Dow protocol. So everything should go a bit faster and booting and shutting down and so on. They've got Blockstream Green, Android V3.7.7. They've also improved their automatic wallet restore process.

So now you can punch in pretty much any seed and passphrase combination and they'll should find more or less all wallets

behind that regardless on what wallet was created. They've also enhanced privacy options. So you've now got, you can't do any screenshots and if you do like miniature view of all your open apps on your phone, you can't see anything on there and so on.

So just minor privacy enhancements there. EDC RPC, Explorer V 3.3.0. They've updated a tool for viewing the UTXO set. I think that was an answer to a discussion on rabbit hole recap, I think, a month ago or a few weeks ago.

They were discussing that and we're looking for a tool to quickly find the order to verify the UTXO set and yeah, BTC RPC Explorer has now brought that out. So that's good to see. BTC peso for server V 1.3.7, it's got minor bug fixes,

hexa wallet V 2.0.65 has partnered with Swan Bitcoin. That's good to see as well. I think Matt Adele is also involved there. - Yeah. - So yeah, I guess that's good to see that they now have a direct partnership

and have a wallet interface there so you could do auto DCA and smash buys and so on and directly in your wallet and have it stored there. - Is it something to do with gifting as well, isn't it?

With the hexa wallet, it was like being able to gift people a certain amount and then they can download that wallet and then they have their funds on there. What am I making that up? - That could be, I remember hearing about that but I have not used hexa wallet yet so I don't know exactly how that works

but I remember hearing that there was some kind of yeah, system of onboarding new users and being able to gift small amounts but this partnership with Swan is definitely, yeah, either you directly have the opportunity to buy within the app.

Then joining box V 0.6.5 bug fixes and UX improvements, minor updates there. Ellen bits V 0.4.0, Ellen URL point of sale compatibility.

That was good to see over the last few months the point of sale being improved and also out in the wild in El Salvador. So called to see Ellen bits also integrate that as well. Then we have my node V 0.2.49.

I think yesterday they released the V 0.2.5 as well. So in both they just have software updates for all their applications on the platform. Next Bitcoin V 0.0.60. Also software updates for their applications.

Russ lightning V 0.0.104. A whole bunch of API updates I'll be far too much to go into here and bug fixes. And then from Samurai dojo, just generally from the Samurai stack they brought our old bunch this month.

It was wonderful to see Samurai dojo V 0, V 1.13.0. Support for paid to tapro output outputs. And also they fixed a bug where you sometimes had missing transactions after a ZPOP rescan or import.

- I asked Q&A last night but he was gonna look into it but he's obviously sick. I was asking with this new pay to tap group support it's nothing to do with this rescanning because the rescanning was a problem that I've had so many times.

I was wondering is that like two separate things or is it that something they've done to get what I'm asking like it's two? - I think it's completely separate from each other. I think the one, just the new pay to tapro supporting new output types, I think that has nothing to do with the bug fix.

- Yeah. - 'Cause I've had that issue as well in the past as well having to rescan, like rescanning itself has actually usually worked. I'm not quite sure if that is the same bug. But yeah, let's hope that we won't have to do that too often.

- Well, I'm gonna have mine up and running soon. When I finally get moved, which is still about a month or three weeks away, but when I do, I'm gonna get my run and doge up and running again.

And this time I'm gonna have a Rock Pro and upgrading my hardware and all that sort of stuff. So I'm hoping this time and with this fix when I do the rescan that I do get all my funds this time and that things run smoothly.

- Wonderful. Then we have Samurai Wallet V0.99.98. Also pay to tapro support and brand new world pool UI which is fucking fantastic. Yeah, they teased a few screenshots over the last few months on Twitter, but now actually seeing the whole design how it all fits together.

They've put in a whole bunch of new improvements here and there. The UI and the whole flow feels a lot better, especially when you're using it for the first time in world pool. It's a lot more intuitive.

So hoping that they can, yeah, lower the barrier bit for new users. I think it's still got a kind of a reputation of being pretty technical and difficult to understand. So I hope this brings them a step towards being more user-friendly and a lot more new users onboarding.

- I'm sure with these changes it's gonna be easy enough because that's never been, even for me, it's not been that difficult using Samurai. Like I always thought it was pretty slick to be honest.

Like there was, sometimes it was glitch and I had problems linking to the dojo, but in terms of the actual UX, I never thought it was bad to be honest with you. It's not blue wallet slick, but it is a very different animal and I've onboarded quite a few people.

In fact, everyone that I've onboarded, I just make them download Samurai if they have Android, I don't give them an option. - Yeah, I mean, it was the first wallet I had and I'm definitely happy for that.

The one issue I've always had with the whole stack is with like the interaction between the wallet on my phone and the desktop world port GUI. So having the, not having the full control on my phone and having to switch backwards and forwards and then do something from your phone, have to do some things on the desktop GUI.

And that was a bit counter-intuitive. So I'm really, really happy to see a lot more control options now on the app on my phone. So I can actually pretty much do everything from there and just use the GUI for a larger overview

and just have that on my desktop while I'm working. Yeah, so looking forward to playing around with that more. Then we have Sparrow V1.5.5, also a bunch of new updates there. Most notably, pay to pay them, so stow away, as a samurai guys call it,

also remove dust limits when paying to pay names. So that's nice as well. You can just send your last crumbs over as donations to different pay names, that's great. And also they added seed tool as an air-gapped hardware wallet.

So another option there. Can you explain that? I have to say, I'm ignorant to this. I don't know what seed tool is. - As far as I understand, seed tool is a software that you can use to generate your 24th word so that you can like put all your, like the whole word list, cut it up and put it in a hat

and pull 23 words and then generate your 24th word. So that you can do that completely. The actual picking of seed words, you can do that offline. And then you just need a device that can generate the check sum and your 24th word.

I think that was recommended by Michael Flaxman in his, I might be wrong on this. This is what I remember, so don't quote me, but think that was the tool that Michael Flaxman recommended in his multi-sig guide, which was about a year ago or maybe even a bit further back.

And that was, I think, one of the starting points for seed signers as well. That they then jumped and built on that idea of having just a small general purpose hardware device that can generate the 24th word, yeah.

- But so with seed signer, you would, well, they either do it from scanning a picture using the camera and then it generates from that random picture, random 24 words, or you can do it through, like cutting up pieces of paper and then scrambling them and taking them out.

When you're talking about the seed tool, you're saying that you would download this bit of software and then you would run it, like it's a program that you'd run and it would randomly generate a seed for you using that software rather than, you know, paper.

- I think that as far as I understood it, the seed tool itself was meant to just do the 24th word. But I might be wrong on that. I think it was, so you could basically install it on, like a Tails OS or something, like on a flash drive operating system that you just boot up for that and then wipe afterwards again,

or you have an air gap laptop or something and you can run that program just to get your check sum 24th word.

But it may have more and more capabilities as well, and I'm not 100% sure, but that's what I had in the back of my mind. - So when you're running something like Tails, here we are, these are sort of stupid questions I ask because they're not obvious to me.

So if I'm running this on Tails, on like a little USB drive, and I plug that into a normal laptop, if I was just to flick off my internet connection, does that mean that it's air gapped, or does it not really mean that it's air gapped because it's still plugged into a computer that has the internet accessibility or previously has,

and that even though it's running on a separate operating system on a separate little USB drive within that computer, it's technically, there could be some information passed between the two, which could somehow cause you to get fucked over.

That sort of thing scares me, and I think, well, for the sake of whatever it costs to build or buy some hardware, I would always be worried. I'd always think, well, this is not sort of purpose built, whereas a seed sign there, or a passport, or a coal card, or whatever else.

Like, I'd always feel safer with that. - Yeah, I think Tails is, I mean, there might be some really high-level, or a sophisticated attack that you could do, but in general, the operating system is on the flash drive,

and it only uses your ram on your laptop. So as soon as you boot from the flash drive, and as soon as you pull out the flash drive again, either during use or after you've shut down, it automatically wipes everything from the flash drive, apart from the OS itself,

and also from the ram on your laptop. There is a time period of about 30 seconds to 40 seconds where the information is still stored on the ram on your computer. So there is a short window of time where you can freeze the ram,

and therefore freeze the data, so that you can access it later on. There have been attacks, or raids, where police come in and freeze, literally with a freezing cam, actually freeze the ram.

- Oh, really? That's how they do it? - Yeah, they literally freeze it. - Fuck, when someone says freeze, I just think of when my laptop just fucks up, and it just like nothing happens, I get the will of death or whatever, you mean they literally take a can of whatever it is?

- Yeah, yeah. So it's like, that's, I think, also when you boot down your seed signup, it recommends to keep the power in for something like 30 seconds. That's the same thing, 'cause as long as it's got the power, it can, it's actively deleting all information on there.

If you just pull it out, it does also degrade after a while. It takes longer, so also in that scenario, it is possible if you are raided, people are actually breaking into your house, and you have the device on, you rip out all the cables, they can tear theoretically, yeah, freeze it within 30, 40 seconds,

but that's pretty high level, sort of. - Yeah, otherwise, no, otherwise if you don't have any internet connection on the device, it's perfectly safe to use TailsOS for something like that.

So then we've got Spectre V1.6.2, multi-script bug fix, and Tresosu V2.1.2.2, also paid to tap root support, it's wonderful to see all the implementations support that. One after the other, that's cool, and also lower fees 'cause they've improved their algorithm for calculating the fees,

and improved UX. Umbrell V0.4.10, and that's actually pretty cool. They've got a new app on their app store, which is called Uptime Kuma, and I don't have an Umbrell running at the moment by a checked Uptime Kuma.

They've got a demo version you can run in the browser. It's actually quite cool, you can just enter a URL for pretty much any website, and it checks in predetermined intervals. Like, if it's online, if it's reachable, what the ping is, and so on.

So that you can actually chart that out and have your node monitor different servers you might have running or different services. So you can actually, yeah, you don't have to monitor yourself every now and again.

You really have a chart running back. And the last on the list is Zap Android V0.5.4, better. Just a minor fix for a bug that crashed on Android 12. Yeah, so that was it for the software updates.

We've got a few releases as well in the last month. One of them was brilliant to see. It's the Ronin Dojo Tanto, which is the standalone plug-and-play node box. Fucking gorgeous, looking good.

- So nice. - Yeah. They've still got a presale special offer, I think until the 5th of January, which is tomorrow. So depending on when you're listening to this, you might be-- - Yeah, it's not going to be out, I don't think.

- Okay, but yeah, it will still be available after that for about, I think, it's just over $700, but it's fucking great. - I've got ZellCo on in a couple of days to chat about this and some of the updates, which I'm looking forward to.

And I just desperately want one of these things. It's a little bit out of my budget right now, especially 'cause I've already got my rock pro and all my bits ready to go and a case for it anyway.

So it feels a bit excessive right now, but I would love one of these things on my desk. It's so fucking nice. And as far as I understand, it's milled out of solid aluminium, which is pretty fucking cool.

No fans, yeah, it's gorgeous. - Absolutely, I mean, on their web shop, they've got a few pictures of their housing, the case, how it's milled from the inside. They'll set up, that's pretty cool, sorry.

Yeah, we're wonderful to see them out in the wild soon. Then we've also got lightning labs. They've introduced blips, which is the equivalent to the BIP process for Bitcoin, but this is for lightning.

So Bitcoin lightning implementation proposals. And they've started that a few weeks back and are hoping to further innovation there and concentrate the discussion in a more efficient way.

So good to see that as well. And then I think there, yeah, two more things I'd like to highlight. One of them was from Unchained Capital, written by Porter, I'm not quite sure who that is.

It's one of their writers who did a short write up on multisig wallet configuration files and the importance of them, which is great for anyone, especially now over the last year, there've been a lot of software solutions that now make multisig incredibly easy,

like Sparrow Spectre and a lot more. So you definitely need all your keys, that should be self-explanatory, but you also need this multisig configuration file, which contains all the information to your multisig quorum, like your ex-pubs and yeah, the script type and the quorum itself,

so if it's two or three or three or five or seven or 10 or whatever. So you need all of that to restore. So if you have a two or three, you'd need two keys of your three plus all three, all information you have on your multisig wallet.

So you need this configuration file. So the best thing is to store this configuration file on an SD card with every seed. So you have that put up multiple times. And there's no loss of funds or risk of lost funds if someone gains access to this file.

So it's really just the privacy risk. So you can even, depending on your threat model, you can save it in a password manager or in multiple places as well that may not be as secure as your seeds themselves, but you definitely do not want to lose that.

- What data would it leak? Let's say, like you said, they can't get access to the funds but someone gets access to one of these micro SD cards. What can they do? Is it like effectively like an ex-pub or they can see all your addresses or they can see how much funds you have or what are they seeing when they open this up?

- Exactly. It's like the equivalent for a single-sig wallet would be the ex-pub, but here you also have additional information such as like the amount of keys in the core room, then also a dress type, then the actual derivation paths of each key, master fingerprint and so on.

So at the end of the day, they can just import that file to Sparrow or Spectre and have the entire overview over your wallet, your multi-sig wallet. - They would be able to watch everything and monitor everything, but they wouldn't access the funds.

- Exactly. - And so presumably then in that case, if that was to happen and you were aware that it happened, you would then set up a new multi-sig, send funds out of that one into something like Whirlpool, mix them and then go back into something new, would that be the way to deal with something like that?

- Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that way you'd break all links looking back 'cause anyone who has access to this file would have forward looking, but also backward looking, insight to all of your activity.

So obviously you can't change your past, but you can set up a new wallet, jump through Whirlpool and cut that link and then start fresh. - Can this information be so that when you insert this microSD card, you need like it's encrypted so that if someone, even if they got hold of it, they couldn't just plug it in and use it

without having to know another password? - Yes, you could. I mean, you can either encrypt it yourself. I mean, there are a lot of different programs that allow you to encrypt any kind of file.

With Sparrow, you have all your wallets password protected anyway. So there, all your wallet files are encrypted on your hard drive, on your computer. So if you export your multi-sig configuration file, that will also be encrypted with your wallet password.

If you, yeah, that's definitely good. If you, the thing to watch out for is that Sparrow also lets you export it for Spectre or for Caravan or for all the other different implementations and they are not encrypted.

The thing is, it's a bit of a, obviously it's nice to have it encrypted when it's on your computer. So that you can just have it lying around on your downloads folder. And you have the password for that wallet in your password manager, whatever.

But if you're actually storing an SD card with your seed in your safe location, I don't really see the benefit because if someone actually gains access to that spot, you'd need to then back up your password to encrypt it again.

And it's just another level of complexity and not really any more meaningful security. So I wouldn't, unless you're actually storing it in a location which is really accessible, I would not recommend encrypting it a second time.

- Okay, oh yeah, it's just that's something I thought that people maybe would be doing. Let's say, for example, you've got a three of five multi-sig and you're just a normal person with a normal amount of funds and you set something like this up.

I would think that the average person would probably struggle to have five separate locations that are really secure, that have a safe. I know I would. So then I would be thinking, well, okay, if someone has to gain access to three of my five, then why couldn't I have a seed, like stamped seed with one of these micro SD cards

in five locations of trust that may be not ultra secure, but with the understanding that either these five people that I have entrusted with one of them don't know each other or that I know they will, I feel confident they won't collude or that two of them are hard to gain access to and safe.

But the others aren't. Do you see where I'm getting at? Where it's like maybe some of the places wouldn't actually be that secure and then you might not have enough trust in that person. You probably shouldn't have enough trust in that person that they might gain access to the file to track you

because how would you know if they're tracking you? You'd know if they'd gained access to one of the seeds, but you wouldn't know if they were tracking you with the information on the SD card.

And so then someone like me would always be ultra paranoid thinking, oh, who's watching me? 'Cause I don't know. Does that make sense? - Absolutely, I mean, it does. And I've had that thought myself.

I think that's exactly what's preventing me from going from a two or three to a three or five. - Right. - Is there that additional amount of safe spaces? And if they're not really secure locations, then I don't see a huge benefit of actually doing that 'cause the complexity does rise quite a bit.

I can see the advantage of, let's say, if you're keeping this with maybe a trusted friend is not, maybe it's still be someone due to trust your privacy with, but maybe with a lawyer or, - I wouldn't trust them. - Maybe someone else.

(laughing) Or you just have some kind of setup also for inheritance and so on that you actually store a key with the wallet file with someone you trust to hand over the information, but you don't necessarily trust them to not look into the information.

The problem is then you've still got the same issue of, how do I pass on the encryption key to my heirs? Maybe I can pass that on beforehand. And so they know, okay, I have an encryption key for NSD card and information that I will receive then from this trusted person.

That can all work. I think it's just very important to think it through and also have it documented. So literally write down the entire process and how people can restore it and how you would restore it yourself.

Doing documentation is hugely important because all of these processes of securing your funds and your seed set up, your security set up, these are all things that are supposed to be in place for a long period of time and you're only supposed to actually go through all these steps and use these fail-safes in an emergency situation

and hopefully quite a far way down along the road. So if you're in a stressful situation, you won't have access to all your memory of 10 years ago, how you set all of this up. So if I can give one recommendation to anyone is do really detailed documentation of every step along the way and have that accessible.

And obviously that is another factor that someone can gain access to that and then have additional information. But I think the benefit of having that for yourself is a lot larger and hopefully you have steps along the way that even someone who knows where the keys are still cannot access them and only you can.

It's such a stressful and complex thing that constantly I feel needs updating and rethinking as more options become available and as powerful as it is to hold your keys and as important as it is, it's something that shouldn't be taken lightly and the approach that I've taken as someone slightly less technical is, you know,

like I still keep majority of funds sink or sink 'cause it's something that I understand better. I have a pretty good setup and then I spread some risk with the fact that nobody can access or nobody has the information to access even if I'm hit by a bus tomorrow.

But then I have a separate option with CASA where my loved ones would be looked after if I got hit by a bus. So it's certainly not a perfect setup. But I think I don't know that there is, I don't know that there is a perfect setup unless you have the ability to have different safes in different countries and, you know, to that level.

My bit of advice from when I've had stressful times where I think I've fucked up and like really, really panicked is just keep it as simple as you can and feel as comfortable as you can because like everyone says, like there's more chance of losing your funds from over-complicating things than there is with actually someone

breaking into a safe or wherever you keep your seats and then knowing what they are and how to use them and it's more likely you're going to shoot yourself on the foot. - Absolutely, one on percent.

The last on the list I wanted to touch on is a new guide from Icono Alchemist as a beauty again on home mining network privacy. Obviously focus on home mining but a pretty general guide as well on setting up your home network.

Something I've been looking into as well since I moved a few months back and it's a pretty long-form detailed guide on using PfSense and Mulvad as a VPN and a whole bunch of different things set up on firewalls and ad blockers and separating your traffic over different tunnels

and different Wi-Fi access points so that you can separate all your traffic between your guests and your family and your miners or wherever you're doing. Yeah, there's wonderfully comprehensive, well written and detailed so anyone who's mining at home but also anyone who's got a large setup at home

should look into this, it's wonderful. - I'm going to have a read through, add a chat with open arms about this on a previous episode and I have to say, I think a lot of people probably underestimate how important this is and also how simple it can be.

It's just that it sounds really complicated when you don't have any sort of knowledge on networks but you can spend not a lot of money and not a huge amount of time to get quite a lot more privacy and for the whole family as well without having networked down and all sorts of problems.

It does seem that there are lots of options out there now all that they've always been there but it's becoming easier with these sort of guides. - Absolutely, I think it's one of these things I had the same thing with Divert's guide on setting up a self-hosted server with Unohost.

It all works fine with the guide itself and as soon as something goes wrong you sit there and you don't have a clue 'cause if you don't really understand what's going on in the background you're always pretty stuck as soon as something goes south but the great thing is is that all of these guys

if it's Econo Alchemist or Divert or also Kitan who's also on this topic as well they're incredibly approachable, really helpful to take their time to answer questions to anyone. So really don't hesitate to reach out.

Obviously I don't wanna speak for them but in my experience-- - You just have my-- (laughing) - They've been absolutely wonderful and so yeah, just generally in the whole community there are loads of chat groups around all of this and there are always people willing to help.

So yeah, do you still have to invest some time into understanding the basics but there are always people there to help out. - Can confirm. - Cool, well we got through our list there I think.

- Hell yeah. - That was very good into the new year and I'm really excited to see what's coming if last year was anything to go by. I think we're gonna be pleasantly surprised this year. I really do.

- Yeah, I'm really bullish on this year. I mean just not, I mean I think that's one of the biggest things that happened like in the last half year for me personally was just getting away from the price getting deeper into the community and all the developments behind that

and seeing being more optimistic on everything that's going on in the community, all the developments and moving in the right direction and not putting so much emphasis on price movements.

That was wonderful for me personally so I'm looking forward to everything that's coming in the next months and years. It makes me a lot more calm in myself when I start to understand what's going on and how things are progressing.

This is a technology and it's a technology that's becoming easier to use more privately, more securely, the amount of different projects that are cropping up everywhere and the amount of diversity in terms of these projects is mind-blowing and it makes you sort of think, well, whatever happens with price, whatever happens

when you're sat next Christmas, even if the price was to drop in half, you're still gonna feel comfortable because you know this thing's not going anywhere. Like there are some fucking amazing things happening and the pace at which it's all happening is, I don't know, it may just be the amount of time that I've been fucking around with it

but it just seems like I can never keep up anymore and the amount of bullish stuff going on is just like pretty much unthinkable. It really does feel like it's gave us a velocity and I can't imagine this turning back and fading away again.

That is, I think we've come too far for that. It certainly feels that way and also just like with everything that's going on in the world today, it's like the best marketing that we could ever ask for.

You know, you've got the clown world meme. Proper normies are starting to question a few things and then you just have this complete counterculture. This is like the antithesis of clown world, which is something that is rock solid and people are starting to wake up to it and then we have the tools they're ready.

It's like, I feel pretty comfortable on boarding any boomer now. Like it may not be the perfect stack. It may not be the perfect privacy. You know, people need to build up to that, but it's pretty fucking easy to use now and it's pretty fucking easy to use very securely and the UX on a lot of this stuff is really nice.

The hardware is really nice and I just, I can't imagine where we're going to be in a year. (laughs) - That's a pretty, pretty nice thought. I mean, just, yeah, to think about where we were a year ago, I could not have imagined the developments over the last year.

So great to see what would come out now in the next few months. One thing I would really like to see next to other implementations getting on board with Wellpool, Next to Sparrow and Samurai.

One thing I think is really important, especially for privacy, but also usability and just generally for onboarding a lot more people and giving a lot more people confidence is automated or more intelligent or more accessible ways of UTXO management.

I think that is still one thing, which is still pretty tough to understand.

For many people and also the tools available. Well, Samurai, they have obviously their algorithm that selects UTXOs from post-mix and combines them in different ways to obfuscate their payment routes and which outputs were actually the payment in which would change and so on.

And I think that is something that has to be built on and implemented in more wallets. 'Cause I see that is still a major risk to privacy long term. And the faster we build on that and get that down and have a bigger emphasis also for newcomers and users in general, one education there, I think for better.

So yeah, really hope to see that in the coming year. I think we will, I feel confident. All right, mate, well, thanks for today. It's been really good to catch up with you. Happy new year.

Hopefully we have Q&A back and all and well next month. But yeah, thanks for putting this list together as always. And I feel like I learned something today, which is good. - Wonderful, no, it was a blast.

And thanks for having me on. All the best to you for the next weeks. Hope to see you soon. And also to Q&A, if you're listening, get better soon, I hope to have you back next time. It'd be wonderful looking forward to it.

- Nice one, mate. - Cheers, man, bye.