Bitcoin News 0028 Government wants to ban encryption.

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.

Yeah.

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

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space and slither to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Welcome back to Bitcoin Monthly, a show where Bitcoin Q&A, Antimus and I go through all the month's news items and anything that we think is important in the Bitcoin and open source space.

It's almost impossible to keep up with all of this stuff unless you are working in this full time. Even then, it's difficult. So, I hope you find this useful. Anyone who's listening to this who has questions, you can reach out and ask questions on fountain.

Any sats and comments are much appreciated, and we're starting reading them from this show onwards. We cover updates from Blue Wallet, BitGo, Envoy, Nunchuck, Sparrow, PDK. We go through the HRF bounties, and we discuss Kraken being ordered to hand over all user data to the IRS.

This shouldn't surprise any of you, but it's happening. The UK government are also trying to ban all encryption, so now more than ever, it's really important for people to start learning to use the tools, start using open source software, and protect yourself and your families from the bullshit that's coming.

Before we start, I just wanna say a big thank you to my sponsors. Let's start with my newest sponsor, SX6 Metal Bitcoin Seed Phrase Backup Plates. Quite a mouthful, but very simple. You stamp your seed into steel, and you do this in case you had a fire or a flood,

or anything else that could fuck up those 12 or 24 words. You do not wanna lose these, you wanna keep them safe, and stamping them into steel is the best way you can do this. Black Coffee is the man behind SX6, so I know these things are quality, I've held them in my hand, I have felt them, and they really are amazing.

So if you're upgrading your setup or you still have your backup on paper, just do better. Go to SX6.store, you can use the code MAXBBB, that'll get you 10% off your order, and you can reach out and ask me if you have any questions, but these are great, and so is Black Coffee.

Go and buy some. Next up is Foundation Devices. Foundation Devices are making my favorite hardware. Not only is it the most beautifully designed, but it is fully open source, and they've just dropped the price to $199.

These things really are simple to use, any fuckwit can secure their SATs properly with one of these, and they have an amazing team. If you have any problems setting one of these up, you also have the option to have Bitcoin Q&A hold your hand through the process, but honestly, you're not gonna need that.

This is a cypherpunk tool for fuckwits, anyone can use it. Check them out at foundation devices.com, you can use the shill code bit by bit, and yeah, if you have any questions at all, you can reach out and ask me.

They are a sponsor because I chased them, because I think they are the best. If you haven't already got one of these, maybe it's time to upgrade your security. Go to foundation devices.com.

Last but not least, FastBitcoins. FastBitcoins are actually, I think sponsoring not just this show, but the Bitcoin beat retreat as well. FastBitcoins are a KYC exchange, so I do tell everyone if you can avoid it, avoid it.

Go and buy in cash, go in mine, go and buy off a friend, do it peer to peer, then you're not gonna be in the system, but I know not everyone is gonna listen to that advice. Or not all of you care, some of you want to have some KYC sat.

If that is the case, you really need to make sure that you go to the best people possible. You wanna make sure they do everything that they can to keep your data safe and to keep you secure.

FastBitcoins do not want to hold your sat, they push you to get your sat off exchange. Once you've done that, you can go and get a passport, you can go and get one of these plates from SX6, and then you are fully self-sovereign.

If you are gonna go and buy some Bitcoin and you're gonna use an exchange, please go to fastBitcoins.com. I don't think I have a shill code, but you can just mention me and I'm sure they'll look after you.

All right, on with the show. Just give me one sec, I'm just pouring my coffee. - Was that coffee number four of the day? Must be by now, it's like nine o'clock. - Genuinely, this is the first one.

- Oh, wow. - I've been brewing it and wait, it's probably cold actually by now, but I've been waiting so that I have my first, the enjoyable part of the morning starts with you two. Isn't that nice?

- That is wonderful. - You're flying through your fucking teeth. - Yeah, I actually have a bone to pick with Antimas, to be honest with you. I brought it up a little bit in the last recording.

You know, I said, you know, he was getting a bit big for his boots and no longer thinks he needs to respond to friends. - You've been ignoring me again. - Oh, Jesus Christ. - Yeah, I've been messaging him, actually trying to send him some business as well and nothing.

Just reads it and then goes, do you know what? I've got so many other things that are important and you are so low on my list that I can't even be bothered to respond. And then he just fucks around in the mountains.

I see little pictures of him hiking around and ignoring me and I just think he fucking horrible bastard. It makes me sad. We'll just get that out of the way to start. - Can see a trend forming here.

It's a poor behavior. I did notice in those pictures though, did you notice that he had his bone out with trading view open? Like, he wasn't letting those unicorn trades fall by the wayside.

- Yeah. (laughing) - Yeah, exactly. Priorities, isn't it? - Good morning, Ladsy. - Morning, Ladsy. - So, hey, how's it going? - Nice to hear from you, mate. - Yeah, I've been dead silence for a while.

(laughing) Shocked here. Man, have my star link with me to have a reception throughout the hike. - Where were you hiking? Is that public knowledge or is it? - Yeah, I was like in this north of Italy up in the Alps.

- Nice. - I don't know what you call it in English. It's like Zoot Tyrol, South Tyrol, I don't know what I do. (laughing) - Yeah, it's beautiful up there. Four days full on, four and a half thousand elevation meters.

So, I was pretty rough on my feet. So, it's been a rehab week. - Very nice. Yeah, picked just a lot of dorsal. - Oh, man, yeah. - Notice you were reppin' the seed sign of heart as well. - Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that's one he inadvertently gifted me last year when he came by. - No, he wasn't. - Yeah, just like I forgot he and the cart, dropped him off. - Oh, there we go. - Max, you're back, we can hear you now.

- Oh, you got us? - We can hear you now. Hello? (laughing) - We heard the sigh. - We heard the sigh and the telegram message saying, "Can you hear me?" (laughing) Good start. See, this is because you're not on coffee number four, Max.

- Not on your game. - Is that you making that scraper noise or is that Max? - That's not me. - Max, we can hear you. - Click in. - Can you hear that? As I'm speaking now, you can hear me.

- Yes. - Yeah. - I can't hear either of you at all. (laughing) - I might have to send a new link, sorry. - No worries. - No idea why. - Oh, good. I disconnected my VPN. I tried to change it.

Both of you are coming through like robots. And I was like, "Oh, that's weird." Maybe it's the connection. And then once I changed connections, it just, I couldn't hear you anymore. - I see.

More technical issues. Well, the, the Antimus ribbing is gonna be lost in the archives. The listeners are not gonna be able to hear that one. - No, no, I still got it. Don't you worry about that.

- Oh, you're gonna chop it all together. - Yeah, yeah. Everyone's gonna know that you've just ignored me. I feel your friends. - The joys of editing. - So what's your excuse then? - Well, brace yourselves.

None, obviously excuses. No excuses here. (laughing) - It's just your shit bloke and I don't like you, so I'm not gonna bother responding. It's fair enough at least, I'd like the honesty.

- No excuses, absolutely. No, I apologize for that. And I think, well, there's something we may have to discuss regarding the contents of that message later on. - Okay, very cryptic. - It's gonna say, "No, I'm intrigued."

- Yeah, it's very dull, I can assure you. - Yeah, hang around for afterwards. (laughing) - And what were you doing hiking in the mountains? Was there some sort of Pokemon Go contest? (laughing) - That would've been sweet.

No, no, no, no. Just getting mad free and just with a good mate for days from one little hut to the next. Having a whole bunch of canoodle, that's what I call it here. - What's that? - Canoodle, it's cuddles.

(laughing) They're like balls of food. - Okay. - And you're making it sound lovely. (laughing) - Yeah, and they put a whole bunch of different stuff in. So it's like a kind of grain mixture cooked up and then you could put like different vegetables inside

or like different meat stuff, like grained up and mashed it all together and have like sauce on top. And like everyone around there. - Yeah, but it's not just meat. So there's a whole bunch of like grain stuff inside.

- Right, right. - And then it's just like mixing and then you get like, there's some like beetroot and spinach and all that kind of stuff. - Okay. - And different sauces and everyone eats that down there.

So we had that for four days straight. (laughing) In the morning you get like sweet ones and then midday and in the evening. So I've had enough of them. (laughing) - Cleared your head, done some nice walking, feeling better.

- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Rejuvenated. - Good. What about you Q and A, you rejuvenated or still fucked? - Still fucked, always fucked. - Still fucked, always fucked. - Yeah, copy number seven for me so far.

- Keep it consistent. - No, 10 past nine. A.M., that is for the listeners. - No, all good, all good. - Yeah, just nothing really, no big news. I treat myself to a pixel tablet the other day.

- Oh, are you folded? - Well, I didn't get the fold. I got the tablet instead, but don't shh. - Yeah, that's nice. - Through graphene OS on it, immediately. And to my surprise, it works absolutely flawlessly.

I've been blown away by it, yeah. So I've been running Calix on my pixel phone for well over two years. I haven't touched anything graphene for a long time. And it's come on such a long way.

So stable, the granularity you get in terms of the settings and the fact that it works. So well, out with a box on a device, it's only been on the market for like a month or so. Absolutely blown away by it.

And yeah, it's a fantastic bit of kit. So really happy with that. And happy with how graphene is performing on it. And it has cemented the idea that the next pixel that I get because mine's gonna be running out of security updates in a couple of months, unfortunately, 'cause it's an older one.

I'll definitely be going for graphene on whichever new pixel I get for sure. Really, really impressed with it. So yeah, I think there's opportunity there for a guide as well as I'm gonna do what might update my phone.

So I've got one from Calix, but not for graphene. So I think I'll seize the opportunity and pump out a guide on doing that. 'Cause I think mobile privacy is an important one. You know, we use these devices literally every day, probably way too much most of us.

And just having the option to be able to opt out of the war gardens and the ecosystems that are literally collecting and selling your data is important today and becomes more important each and every day as we all had first into 1984.

So really happy to see how it's performing and was really shocked. I just thought the combination of an alternative to Google plus a brand new device. I thought it was gonna be a bit of a shit show and I was preparing myself for the worst, but I was absolutely pleasantly surprised.

- Good to hear. And was it as easy as people say to flash now, did you still do the command line stuff or did you just go on the website and flash it from there? - Yeah, the web installer makes it so easy.

Like it's almost not gonna be worth me doing it. Guide just on how to do it because it's so simple. I will do the guide because I'll sort of take people through on, you know, tips and tricks on getting the best out of it in settings and apps and open source alternatives to you.

So it will be benefit to it, but purely just installing it. Like it's so easy, even you could do it. - Really? - I'm confident that if I gave you a Pixel phone and a USB cable, you'd be able to do it.

- Wow. - Well, that is simple. - Really saying something. (laughing) - I remember I did graphene last time. - Yes. - I played graphene my fucking three years ago and it took me, in fact, in total, it was like weeks because I tried flashing it following one of Odell's guides he did on it.

And then I was like, oh, he's done it on Linux, they don't have a Linux machine. So I was like, oh, I know what I'll do. I'll put Linux on a Raspberry Pi. And then using that, I'll then flash it, da-da-da-da.

I kept trying to do it, it wasn't working. And then I asked Odell, I was like, why is it not working? He was like, oh, I'm not sure. Let me reach out to someone at arts 'cause it's not on x86, it's on such and such as that.

- I think it was far too, actually, that sounds familiar. - Yeah, probably. And then I was like, oh, okay, I found a guide where I could do it on a Mac, but it was in Chinese. And then there was someone who translated the Chinese.

Anyway, long story short, it took me in fucking days and days and days and days. And I finally did it. And now, however many years later, three years later, or whatever it sounds like, I could do that with a coffee in the morning and probably not even have to message you.

- It's not even a 15-minute job. - Wow. - Plug it into a laptop. Go to the WETD installer, which is like GrapheneOS.org/install. There's like three buttons to click on there with your mouse, a couple of taps on the tablet or the phone itself, and it just does it all for you.

It's so easy, yeah. - Nice. How's the guides going with the different ones that are up at the moment? - Yeah, so since we last recorded, I think there's three that have come out. The first one was a collaborative post that I did with a name called Xpatriotic.

That one was on Blickstwollett, which is a mobile first non-custodial lightning app that kind of somewhat similar to Phoenix where you run kind of a lightweight node on your phone and then you have the opportunity to either create your own channels with other nodes or you can use a lightning service provider to take the easy route

and just have them manage channels on your behalf. So he kind of got the ball rolling with that one and then just got a bit swamped with life so I kind of picked up the mantle and finished that one off.

So that was a fun one to write. And then the other two are from a guy's fast becoming a legend in my eyes. Once again, I missed a bit levi. He's done two more, no KOC guides. First one was on Agora desk, which is a peer-to-peer exchange and they also have a mobile application as well.

And more recently, just a couple of days ago in fact, he's done one on Azteco Bitcoin vouchers, which I know a lot of people are big fans off. They've been around for a long, long time. So that guide sits right at home within the OKOIC section of Bitcoin.guide.

So yeah, massive shout out to a bit like an expatriotic for getting involved and helping me pump out more great content. The guys are awesome, so thank you to them. - I had expatriotic on the show a few months ago.

It's a good guy. - He is, I enjoyed that one. Yeah, he's, I like some of his takes. - Cool. Well, what we got on the list looks like a relatively short one. - Yeah, not too many points, but I mean, definitely enough to chat about, to get started when we've got Blue Wallet, these 6.4.6, they've added some new languages

and also support for SAN, it's scanning CQR backups. This is definitely a cool step to see that being propagated throughout multiple projects. And obviously it went for people using Blue Wallet as a mobile hot wallet.

You kind of won't be using this in like everyday life, but as like a way to recover, at some point, that's a good option to have. It's a bit similar to the way that with Sparrow as well, you can import your CQRs there as well.

You could obviously also use your phone as like an offline device in a setting like that as well, instead of a hardware wallet. - What's your feeling on that? - Running through a scenario of someone has a passport, they flush it down the toilet or whatever, something goes wrong and they've got a backup plate

and they're like, fuck, I need to get my hands on these sets now. Do you have any worries about restoring into a mobile wallet? If that's, say that someone's life savings, what would be your advice?

Would you wait, get a new hardware wallet that you know is going to be offline, hasn't touched the internet just in case? Or would you be like, yeah, it's pretty secure? - Well, it kind of depends a bit on the amount you're talking about here.

- Life savings. - Life savings and like if you don't have, like if your time preference isn't that high and you have to like do a huge payment, then I'd always advise either just getting a new device and waiting for that to arrive again so you can recover that way.

If you're more pressed for time, you can wipe your phone and stay offline, just like install blue wallet and recover via that or use Sparrow on an offline laptop or something, wipe it beforehand and then that should work as well.

At the end of the day, I mean, those are security measures that are probably worth taking if there are really like life savings in there and then don't cut any corners. I mean, we haven't seen any actual funds lost through hacks on like blue wallet or something like that yet.

So, yeah, I don't know how dangerous that really would be but if it's life savings and you don't have to spend it directly, it's definitely worth the wait for just getting a new device set shipped or taking it more secure out.

- 'Cause I feel like there's a lot of scaremongering around this, like, you know, the, what's his name? That Ledger CEO, whatever his name is, he's always like just throwing around like, oh, if you have anything on a phone, it's gone.

And he's just like, well, I've never heard of that and I know loads of people, especially in the samurai community that like, I don't even use that a little bit while it ever, how much of a threat really is this?

But then I guess you still, if it's your life savings, just want to be 100% sure. Which all thoughts on that Q&A? - Yeah, pretty much. What's been said, I mean, it's very dependent on the situation but the likelihood of you, you know, losing a hardware wallet and then within the average timeframe of being able to obtain a new one,

what's that gonna be a week or two? Needing to spend from your deep cold storage is very, very slim. - Yeah. - If you were really in a pinch and the nature of why you need a new hardware wallet, let's say it got stolen and you genuinely think that your funds are at risk?

- Yeah. - Would I then throw that into a phone or a software wallet to sweep the funds? - Yeah, absolutely. If I deem that risk to be greater than the fact that I've lost my hardware wallet because I flushed it down the toilet and I know it's completely borked, then no, I probably just wait.

So it just depends on the situation. But yeah, completely agree, you know, I work for a hardware wallet company and I will openly agree that the mobile wallet risks are vastly overblown. With that said, you know, part of the Bitcoin ethos is that, you know, you prepare for the worst.

So unless you're really pushed for it, why even if there's a 0.1% chance that your phone could be remotely accessed and somebody can actually try to see it, then why would you take the risk?

- Yeah, I agree. - It's just, it's very dependent on your situation. And for most people, the short answer is just wait. - Yeah, why I always worry about things like that, then why I would always use hardware, specific hardware made for that job that's offline?

It's like, what if there's a bug or some way that someone can exploit and they're just sat on it and they're waiting and they're just thinking, well, when there's enough to take from enough people, that's when I'm gonna exploit this.

It's like an unknown issue which you could get away from for not a huge amount of money or effort. That's why I'm like, yeah, that's not for me. - Yeah, and that's especially true of completely closed source ecosystems like Apple and iOS, at least with Android and running an open source alternative, you've got a little bit more of a gaze

into what's kind of going on on that device. Not saying it's the holy grail 'cause it's certainly not and it's probably still vulnerable to certain attacks, remote attack, potentially, and that kind of thing.

Assessing that is way above my pay grade, but it just hacked back to the importance of open source software so that at least the few galaxy brains that can verify the code and to see what's going on are able to do that.

And then theory would raise a red flag for the normies like us to act upon. - Yeah, and either way, if you do import your cold storage seed with lifesavings on it onto an online device, for whatever reason, it's always best practice to sweep that and to set up a new wallet afterwards 'cause even if you delete the app on your phone

or on your desktop or whatever, you can never be sure really what data may have been. Either extracted or just is still stored somewhere to be extracted in the future. So it might as well take that route of setting up a new wallet then for that.

Good point. The next on the list is BitGo. They have now opened up the first music to implementation. Obviously BitGo is not the champion we wanted to see here. It's obviously a custodian, it's only for their hot wallets.

So this is not something that I'd advise to use. But generally, it's nice to see that like the incentives work of music. This is like the new multi-sig standard enabled by Taproot and Chanel signatures and local tree hashes.

So there are like fe-savings and also like privacy enhancements 'cause your single-seat transactions look exactly the same as your multi-sig transactions. That's a big one. Yeah, it's great to see like a custodian like that implement it just because it's cheaper and more secure even though the privacy enhancements

in a way 'cause you have zero privacy towards BitGo. That's maybe a bit overblown here, but yeah, it's a first mover and I'm really, really looking forward to seeing this grow throughout the ecosystem.

Yeah, I think it's like you said about incentives, especially with the fees for a company like this where they're doing larger transactions and they've got multiple signers. They're claiming that they're gonna save up to 30% on fees which hopefully they're gonna pass on to their customers as well when compared with native SegWit

which is kind of the default address format type. That's not always gonna be true for traditional users like us, they're saving to much more than that, but it does start to scale up once you kind of start using larger wallets and multiple signers and stuff.

So yeah, great to see incentives playing out and be interesting to see the feedback on this if any that there a quote unquote, shit-going company and they're one of the first out the gate to implement this showing the Bitcoin-only companies how to do it, so interesting.

Next is Envoy, the 1.3.0 big list. So included a few points here but Q you can definitely expand on that. But one thing that we already touched on beforehand was redeeming Azteko vouchers within the app.

Yeah, massive laundry list of kind of general quality of life improvements here. Azteko was the big one. So now literally with a scan of a QR code which is presented on the receipt of an Azteko voucher, you can claim that voucher and receive it directly into any account that you've got within Envoy.

So that could be a hot wallet. That could be any of your passport cold storage accounts as well so you can withdraw straight into your deep cold storage if you want to as well. So super happy about that one and kind of fits with our ethos of supporting no KYC alternatives.

So that was a big one. The other kind of headliners would be the ability to cycle through fiat BTC and SATs which is kind of a pretty standard in most wallets these days. So good to get that over the line.

And the OGs that have been rocking the founder's edition, passport devices can now complete their firmware updates within Envoy as well just like they can with the new one. Oh and by weirdly by popular request, the Malaysian Ringgit currency has been added to Envoy as well.

Oh, thank God. Didn't know there was that much demand for it but it turns out there is so high Malaysia. Just on the Azteko stuff. I remember a while ago where you could pretty sure it was like Poundland or something you could get them in the UK.

Is that back on? Is there anywhere in the UK where you can get these or is this more for the American market? It's for the global market but specifically the Poundland one that's dead in the water.

I don't think there was any cons to suggest why that was the case. My guess is they probably got spooked by the potential regulatory risk and it disappeared. But yeah, Azteko is technically a global company.

I mean, it does have vendors all over the world. The best thing to do is to go to their website and they have just got a map on there and you can zoom into your local area or wherever you are and see who's nearby and then you can go and check them out but yeah, it's not great in the UK at the moment unfortunately.

Okay. What's the premium you pay like on an Azteko voucher? Do you know? Good question. That is in the guide. That's a bit love he's just done on my website so I'll do a self-shield and say it's in there somewhere.

I feel like it was like 8% or something, wasn't it? Yeah, look at me just check and I'll pull it up now because he kindly included that. I think it's kind of split fees where Azteko takes a flat fee and then whoever the vendor is will add some on top of that based on whatever they want.

But let me just confirm that really quickly. What the fees? Individual retail seller and Azteko vouchers establish the commission fees. You can view the commission and network fee at the bottom of your voucher.

Okay, so it's up to the vendor basically and you may not be able to find that out beforehand because you have to hand over some cash to get hold of the voucher in the first place. It may be listed on their website, I'm not sure.

So you probably just can have to have a poke around just to see what that is. But I think the average is probably somewhere between five and 10%. Yeah, but I mean, that's definitely pretty stable for like having the option to pay in cash.

Absolutely now, yeah, still fine to walk around with a mask and some sunglasses, so it's wonderful. (laughing) Before we jump onto the next part, that's reminded me now we're talking about buying some SATs.

I have had some messages, found some messages from last month's episode and one of them was from 8 Mythrandir. He sent in 8,888 SATs and he just has a message saying, "Bisc has a cool software update, version 1.9.12.

"You can now clone offers. "That means you can take an existing offer "and copy it to different payment types and currencies." Example, a European could use the same escrow to represent an offer in Euro, Pounds and Franks, which is quite cool.

That's cool. Yes, it is quite cool. I missed that. Yeah, 'cause otherwise you need tons of liquidity if you wanna put up offers in different currencies, 'cause you have to put up escrow in all different currencies.

If you're using a Revolut or something like that, you can send and receive in different currencies anyway, so it just means that your offer is viewable by so many more people without having to have the liquidity.

So that's quite a useful thing. Absolutely. Do you wanna hear a few more messages? Let's go. Before you do, does this mean that you've got it working? Me? Yes. I haven't used Biscan Ages to it.

No, no, sorry. Fountain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So... And I fixed it myself. Wow. Okay, tells the story, yo. So, back and forth with Fountain team, they couldn't fix it, deleted the app, put it on again, deleted it, put it on again, kept sending all these requests, doing all these tests, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Wouldn't work. No emails would come through to me to sign in again, and in the end, I think they just probably had enough for me that I fucked this guy, like I'm not dealing with this anymore.

So I was like, fine, I have to fix this. So I sat and I got out one of my nymphones, deleted it off the other phone, set it up, and it just worked. So don't know how I fixed it, but I did fix it, and it's now up and running.

Beautiful. Sweet. You impressed? I am impressed. Yes. Very impressed. Right, not that impressed, but it's... (laughing) It's working. The only thing is now, this is a phone that just sits in my drawer, so I don't have access to it all the time.

It doesn't come out, out and about with me. But, I have it here. So, 8th Randir, that was his message. We also had from letter 6173, 7,777 sets. Every episode is based as fuck and full of insights.

Thank you for all the dedicated hours of content. Barn minor. Thank you. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You need to do the John Barn minor thing. I don't know if I do it justice. (laughing) Barn minor.

There we go. Thanks a lot. Thank you, cunts. Good stuff. Barn, 1337 sets. A pint and a bag of pork scratchings. What the fuck are pork scratchings? (laughing) These Canadians don't know how to live, do they?

Obviously not. I did not know that was just a British thing. Yeah, I think it is. I'm actually embarrassed to say that I don't actually know what's in them, or all I will admit openly before I Google what the contents of them are, is that they're probably not good for you.

It's pork fat. Is that literally all it is? I think so. They probably have some sort of preservative, sort of things to dry it out, some sort of shit in there as well. But I think it's just, yeah, like pork crackling, basically.

Isn't that right? I presume so. I mean, all you need to know is they taste good after a few pints. Oh, they're fucking amazing. What you wanna do is, when you go to the pub, get a few pints, get a thing of pork scratchings, and then just open it up in the middle of the table, and you can just have a few sips and a bit of that,

a bit of that. Oh, it's fucking delicious. Really salty, crunchy. You need some in your life. Yeah, the contents have just had a look for some pork grind, yes, a pork fat. Salt, flavour enhancer.

Okay. Monosodium glutamate, which sounds healthy. Oh, lovely. And hydrolyzed soya protein, oof. Very nice. It's delicious, and it's under the carnival umbrella for anyone who's on that train.

There you go. I'm sure the eight pints that accompany it are probably not, though. (both laughing) Piers, 1000 sat, the signal is strong. This is the way. Mr. Mr. 138 sat, mining mafia, user 303134060964, giving back what I earned this week.

Zeus Moose, 100 sat, ditch Umbral, long live Citadel OS, and then in brackets made by the OG creator of Umbral, and check out Geyser podcast for page of the qubit node box, which will run Citadel, looking super clean.

And then Mr. Mr. replied, boo, minus one points. He didn't like that comment. (both laughing) Lots of Umbral fan boys out there. Mm. It does work, but it's not open source, is it? No. So this Citadel one, is that open source?

Yes. I think they go through a rebrand at the moment, but yeah, essentially it's an open source for Covumbral. I did run it when they first came out, and it essentially looked exactly the same, just with some rebranding.

Okay. Did have some stability issues. It was, I think they've just got less kind of depth eyes on it, or they did at the time at least, but they're going through a rebrand and sounds as though they're looking to do a plug and play box as well, which is good to see.

Okay. Yeah, maybe once it's kind of, they finish their rebrand and they finish polishing if they're not, but I'll give that one another go, 'cause I always like to support the open source alternatives.

There we are. Well, that's all the messages. I'm going to try and weasel them into the show now. I've got my phone up and running, because I am so shadowy. Nice. Next on the list, Nunchuck Android V1.9.33.

They've got now support for tap signer and software keys for Bit48, which is definitely cool. I have not used Bit48 on Nunchuck myself, so I don't know exactly how the integration is in the workflow, but seeing that, getting more adoption is cool, especially for software keys in the tap signer.

What is Bit48? Bit48 is Painems. No, it's not. No. Bit47, that is. That's Bit47, I'm sorry. Bit48 is just the standard multi-sick. Oh. Kind of derivation parts, I think. I think previously Nunchuck was kind of doing their own thing.

Not sure why. My understanding is that this brings them kind of in line with the way that all the other kind of software designers do. So, sorry, software coordinators do multi-sick, so just kind of, I would presume it makes, you know, going from one to another far easier.

Okay, cool. I get confused with my bibs. There's a lot of them. I absolutely like, completely misread like the content of that update. I was like, man, this is cool. Okay. There we go. Okay, so it's not that impressive.

There we go. Yeah. Then they've also got export raw hex transactions, so you can broadcast them in a different way. So there are multiple services where you can broadcast these as well. So you can export that directly as a raw hex from Nunchuck.

And then also allow mobile to trigger adding cold card treasure ledger via USB on desktop. I don't understand that bit. I've sat there, I've read that sentence three times over and I don't understand what they've done there.

Allow mobile to trigger adding cold card ledger. So allow a mobile that isn't a cold card treasure or a ledger to do something via USB, which you probably don't want to be doing anyway. Well, what the way I think it might be is that Nunchuck has a desktop client.

So I think it might be something to do with having the Android client, which that is the client that was talking about with the release notes here. Maybe like if you've already got one of those hardware, well, it's added to the mobile client, you can kind of add it to the desktop version of it.

I'm guessing, I don't know. I've just been going over and over in my head. I can't wrap my head around it. 'Cause the notes were reading off or the Android version of Nunchuck, but then it's talking about desktop.

So maybe one of the listeners can, who's a Nunchuck user can enlighten us. Oh, or maybe it means that you can add one of those as a signer, but using the USB into your phone rather than onto a desktop.

I don't think that's possible because you need HWI and I don't think HWI works on mobiles at the moment. Okay, Nunchuck has done stuff that are things. So there you are. Yeah, unfortunately, just check the release notes again.

There's no additional info there. Someone can let us know. There we go. Sparrow wallet, V1.7.8. And this was quite a few cool points here. We've got BIP 322, message signing for single-sig addresses, including tapering.

So the ordinals people will be very happy about that. (laughs) Exactly, that's about the same. So I haven't dug in too far there, but apparently this is with message signing, there have been multiple different standards and different implementations, and this is an attempt with BIP 322 to bring them all together

and to make all the other implementations obsolete, the message signing, and it's been around for a while. As far as I know, Colecard has got it implemented and how Sparrow wallet is well.

So we'll see if this one catches on. The standout one for me in this release was the second one blind. Add Z bar QR reader for all QR code scans, which basically means he's, I think he's like changed the QR library that Sparrow uses so that when you're connecting an air gap hardware wallet,

like a C time or a passport or your signing transactions with those types of devices, the performance of your laptop or computer scanning that device is drastically improved. I've given it a test on one of my laptops and it is a noticeable difference in speed and that the laptop is now able to read the QR codes

on the most dense setting, which it never was able to before. And obviously there's been no change to my personal hardware. It's just that this update to the library within Sparrow is just more efficient at passing those QR codes.

So anybody that's using an air gap hardware wallet that interacts with coordinators via QR codes, make sure you install this update because there is a marked improvement there. And a quick public service announcement, this release did introduce a bug in importing compact seed QRs as a hot wallet to Sparrow.

There's been some chatter in the Sparrow wallet telegram. A few people have replicated this. So Craig knows about it and he said it's gonna be fixed in the next release. So knowing Craig, that will probably be released before Max gets his ass in skin and it's his podcast anyway.

So almost definitely. - Yeah, if you're reading this, it's probably fixed. If you're reading it, if you're listening to this. - Could be reading this transcript. - Yeah, do you know what?

That's funny you mentioned that actually. I was reading something about people like optimizing podcast transcripts and I was thinking to myself, who's reading a podcast transcript? - There's gotta be someone out there.

- But why? Like, I can't. - Just like proper artists who are gonna be like, I don't know, they're listening to another thing and then they're reading that at the same time just to be more efficient with their time.

I don't know. Someone like that went there. - Yeah, all people reading translations of transcripts. - Mm, that's true. Yeah, that's true. - That's fair. If it's in a different language than the podcast itself, I can understand that one.

Yeah, okay. - I think the transcripts struggle. I pay for a service where I can get transcripts from what we're recording on here. But then for me to edit it, I think it might because we're British, but it's just like it just spazzes out with a lot of stuff.

You know, like, whatever, like, you know, we're talking about pork scratchings in a pint. It will just come up with something completely fucking different to that. So I need another right AI to fix that or something, but it's all a bit above my head at the moment.

- You can now also rename your wallets. I was not aware that that was something that you couldn't do up till now. - Yeah, so previous to this release, you had to go into the Sparrow folder on your computer's file system and then rename the wallet file that ends in MVDB, I think.

And then the next time you open Sparrow, it would replicate the name of that file. Now you can do it within the UI. - Okay, cool. And there's also the set initial fee for proposed RBF transactions.

So there's like a minimum relay requirements. So like a minimum fee that you have to set to broadcast the first transaction. And then also to bump it if you want to use RBF. And this is like apparently set to the absolute minimum so that you don't have to kind of choose your fee settings when you're using RBF.

They will do this automatically at the lowest minimum. Next on the list is PDK. So this is the pay join development kit. This is, I don't know, but first of all, that I've heard of it like a couple of weeks ago.

So obviously pay join is like a collaborative transaction between the sender and the receiver of a payment of a transaction where the receiver also provides some inputs. And there's been some push over the last couple of years for wallets to implement this, but apparently there's been some difficulty getting this done.

So there's now this development kit, but similar to like the lightning development kit or Bitcoin development kit. So it's basically just like a toolbox for different projects to easily implement all the functionalities and not having to rewrite all the functions and so on.

Yeah, very good to see pay join has been with the exception of a couple of wallets has been lacking in adoption, probably because it's difficult to implement. Obviously the exceptions are Spyro and Samurai who have kind of got their own version of pay join, looks exactly the same on chain.

The kind of bit 78, I think, version of it, which is the one that BTC pay survey uses is pretty much not implemented anywhere other than I think Wasabi might do it and Blue Wallet, but the massive sticking point is to receive you need basically a web server need to be always online, which most people are not.

I've got one, mate. You've got one? Yeah, I've got one for Uncoverable misfits. Ah yeah, yeah, so perfect example of where it makes sense because you've got a storefront and a behind that is a BTC pay server that's always online waiting to take payments.

That's the perfect opportunity and I would urge anybody that is in that similar situation that's running BTC pay to switch that on or you need to turn the toggle on and have a hot wallet on your server.

Obviously you need to be mindful of managing funds on a server, but in terms of end user applications, it's been few and far between, apart from the exceptions I've already mentioned. So hopefully having a development kit, this one's called PDK is gonna make it slightly easier for wallet developers to have more of a turnkey approach

to lower the barrier to entry for them, to be able to at very least be able to support paying to merchants like Max who's got a web server that's running and always listening for a pay join payment.

- Since we've switched it on probably about a year ago, maybe 18 months ago, something like that. - We have been literally inundated. We have had maybe one. - I think at foundation we've had the same staggering numbers.

(laughing) - It was probably you buying something from me and me buying something from you as well. - There you go. What are like your views on this like in general? Like do you see a future for it?

- I like pay join. I did one yesterday with Brother Rabbit, sat in the park. - Yeah, I think it's proven that it can be done. It requires interactivity between the two participants. The Samurai and Sparrow ecosystem have demonstrated that that is possible easily over tour.

You know, Max, how long did that pay join take you, about 30 seconds? - Well, we were recording a podcast to talk people through it. So it took a minute. - Oh, I see, I think. - But yeah, we did two.

We did one where we were sat next to each other. This was on Samurai's, so a different implementation. But we were doing it where we were passing QR codes back and forth. I think it was four or five steps to it.

He sent me one sat and then we did it over. So our band does it for you as if you're not next to each other, even though we were. And that, yeah, took about 30 seconds as well. And I sent him one sat back, it was pretty cool.

- Yeah, so it's possible. I think, is there a desire for it in the wider ecosystem outside the privacy circles? Definitely not right now. But I think, you know, we need to have the tools in place to make that more approachable.

And if we can make it the default that, you know, if I'm a Sparrow or Samurai wallet user and I wanna pay Max, right now I'd need to send him a telegram message or a text to say, you know, I'm gonna, I wanna pay you for whatever it is.

Can you make, can you wake up your wallet and put it into listening mode? If we could do that in such a way where it's sort of just wakes your phone up and sends you a push notification to say, you know, Q&A wants to pay you, do you wanna accept yes or no?

And then with a single tap, your wallet's then ready to go. It removes that little bit of friction that is left, so to speak, which I think would be great for. Lowering the barrier to entry and making this feel more like a normal payment.

The closer we can get it to that, the better and that would be cool to see. Yeah, I mean, definitely like with the HRF bounties now, that's the next point on the list. That's a pretty good segue now.

Is they, they see that similarly and one of their bounties is a serverless pay join. So. - Doesn't that exist or it? - No. - Well, at the moment, well, doesn't it in Samurai, isn't that so?

- Well, yeah, I was, that was the point I was gonna raise. Technically speaking, I don't think the serverless pay join is possible because you need two wallets to communicate. The Samurai/Sparo ecosystem does that through Soroban, which is a Tor-based communications layer, which is running on a server somewhere.

I guess you could make the argument that doing it via the OG method, the QR codes. - Yeah, that's serverless. Whether that fits the bill for the bounty, I have no idea. I'm not sure what their intentions are there, but technically speaking, yeah, I suppose you could make that argument, absolutely.

Is it possible to do it remotely, you know, from me at my house and you at your house, Max, without a server? I don't know if it is and it certainly doesn't exist right now. - I think like the intention here was to have something where the receiver does not have to be online at all.

And I mean, I've heard one suggestion which kind of fits, but doesn't really fit, which is to have a server that just stores the messages encrypted so that the other part, so once the side initiates and then at some point, when the other side comes online, they can bounce it back.

And then so there'd just be like a time delay between two can do this over like a longer period of time, but they don't, both parties don't have to be online at the same time when doing the payment.

But I don't know if this would suffice for this bounty. Maybe going a bit further for the HRF bounties. This is a couple of weeks ago. They announced that they'll be putting up bounties for a total of 20 Bitcoin or actually it's 22 Bitcoin for 11 different bounties.

And there's still running at the moment. I think it will be over in 516 days. These are different requests that they've gathered out of their like large community and the activists, they're working with and their needs and requests.

So they've put out 11 total bounties with two Bitcoin each. And this is pretty big. I mean, that's a lot of cash going around. I can just like quickly run through the list of bounties and then you can choose what you find most interesting.

It's the open sourcing and the design guide, serverless pay join, end-to-end encrypted, noster group chats, silent payments, human readable offers, self custodial, mobile, lightning address.

- That one is interesting to me. Again, I don't know if that's possible. I mean, I guess that's kind of the point of the bounty is to explore somebody to some clever person to explore that, but again, lightning address is the concept of, you know, you have something that looks like an email address like max@bitbybit.com

that compatible lightning wallets can kind of use as a wayfinder to get to your node and ping it for an invoice to send you subsets. The nature of that is that you need a web server to do that.

So this bounty is self custodial, mobile, lightning address. So if it's mobile only, how are you going to, mobile's not online all the time. So how are you going to be, how are you going to have that kind of quote unquote email address online available for people to kind of ping to be able to get invoices from your wallet?

I can't wrap my head around how anybody would be able to achieve that given the current kind of mobile ecosystem and the way that they work. Like, that's just not how it goes. - Could it not be one of these?

I'm probably gonna talk absolutely to you here, but could it not be one of these like progressive web apps that's running on your phone all the time? And then because your phone is on all the time, then you can receive the payments and because they're probably not going to be large payments even though it's not as secure as other options.

Maybe it doesn't matter because it's a tip or something. - No, so progressive web apps are just like you visiting a website that is made to look connected to a server. - Yeah, that is made to look like an application.

That's kind of like the receiving end of it, not the kind of always on and listening bit. So I mean, you know, if somebody can achieve this, I think it'd be fantastic because right now one of the main reasons that 99.99% of people on NOSDA that have their ZAP set up are all using lightning address which is backed by a custodial solution,

like wallets, Satoshi, et cetera. - Yeah, 'cause it's the only option because I tried to do it with Phoenix. I set up Phoenix finally. And then I was like, oh, I'm going to switch across to this and you can't fucking do it.

So I've still got to use my, I just use my fountain one because I've already got it being used. I've put that on to receive, but then I send from Phoenix which just seems a bit, I don't know, odd.

- Yeah, so here's a bit of homework for your Mac because you've got an always on server. You've got your BTC pay server running. - There we go. - With your nice pay join. They've got a plugin in there that's called lightning address.

So it would be easy for you to do that. - Okay. - You should be able to do that with the click of a button, basically. So what's the domain that your BTC pay is running at? Is it like, ungovernablemisfits.com?

- Probably. This is Mr. Crowns. - Yeah, see, you could have Macs at ungovernablemisfits.com. You just need to configure that in your BTC pay server. And then because that's always online, it's a web server.

It's listening all the time, waiting for payments, et cetera. When I go into my Phoenix or my Zeus and I say, you know, pay to Macs at ungovernablemisfits, it's already there. It's available waiting and my wallet will be able to ping it for an invoice and I can tell you, there's no kind of direct interactivity between you

and I required to kind of manually share lightning invoices. - That's on the list. - That's what I did. And it actually works pretty well with the BTC pay server. The one thing I can definitely recommend is setting up a new store for it within BTC pay server because it's like absolutely swamped like my invoices page in the shop.

'Cause like every time someone clicks on Zap but doesn't it actually Zap you, there's still a new invoice created. - Yeah, mine's exactly the same. - Like pages and pages of this stuff. - Which you can filter out by the way to only look at the paid stuff, but yeah, I get I know where you coming from.

- Yeah. - There we go, that was number six. And then we've got seven is mobile border wallets. - Yeah, our friends, Mr. Superfaro and the MTC behind this one be interested to see this implemented in a mobile solution.

I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Superfaro takes that bounty himself. - What's the bounty? - Two Bitcoin. There we go. - Ooh. - Yeah. - Get on that, mate. - Yeah. - Off I can do it myself otherwise.

- I mean, this is like one of the bounties that seems a bit more, it's a lot of work obviously implementing it, but like from a technical standpoint in contrast to what we were just speaking about with like self custodial mobile lightning address.

I mean, that's like conceptually huge hurdle, but here this is like just getting an app running and figuring out the user experience, but the actual like setup is already done. This could be a sweet one.

- Yeah, the some weird or probably selective language that's been used in some of these bounties where the specified it's got to be for a popular iOS or Android wallet. So, you know, somebody like Superfaro couldn't kind of go out and make his own, you know, fork off from, I don't know, blue wallet and make his own Mr. Faro wallet

and then add border wallets. Their specified has got to be added to a popular wallet, but like who defines-- - Let's get it and I'm following, mate. - Yeah, but who defines what popular it is like, who's making that decision?

- It seems a bit-- - We do. - It seems a bit strange language to do that. And who gets out of the, if like Superfaro does like a pull request to blue wallet with this, would he get it or would like, do they have like a development fund?

- I think it would be him. If he's the one kind of making the pull request and you know, the beauty of GitHub is you can see who's done all the work. So I would imagine it would go to the person making the pull request.

- It is fake, but I guess maybe there's some sort of community involvement. Like if we all see that he puts a load of effort into it and puts it up there and then they say, "Oh, that's not what we want."

Then surely we can give some pushback. I don't know how these things work. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, the next on the list is pretty ambiguous as well with easy mobile policy. - Like we already-- - Yeah.

- We have this already in two mobile wallets. - Yeah, I mean, well, the only caveat there is that they're not fully open source on all platforms. So maybe that's the only thing that they'd have to do.

- Blue wallet is. But ah, I was thinking of Keeper. - Oh, and you've got Nunchuk as well. - Yeah, Nunchuk and Keeper. And Nunchuk, I mean, is not open source on iOS. - Ah, yeah, good point.

- Oh, actually, no, didn't they? I think that might have changed recently. Keep talking, I'm just gonna double check on that one. - Yeah, 'cause I mean, that would obviously be a slam dunk.

I mean, especially for Keeper. I mean, they've got a pretty nice setup, but still close source. I mean, it's still, it's on their roadmap. So I don't know if like the timing is here, like if it's just the first one to do it, or if they just wait for the 150 days to be up, or no, 500 days to be up and then see what's happened

and pick and choose. I'm not quite sure of how they're gonna go along with that, but yeah. - Are each of these the same bounty? Are they all too Bitcoin, or are they? - Yeah, they're all too Bitcoin.

The only one that's a bit more complicated is, well, number nine versus frost, multi-sig wallet, and then number 10 is cashew. And that is split up into like four different points with point five Bitcoin each.

So they've got like point five Bitcoin for a fully functional iOS cashew app, and then another point five for fully functional Android cashew app and so on. - What's your thoughts on that cashew one?

- Because it's custodial. It's not federated, is it? So do you not see that as like, easily attackable or more easily attackable, compared to like the federated stuff. I know Q and A is gonna be like, "Ah, you better shut down my neck."

But like, I know it's not perfect, but I look at the federated one and be like, if there was a federation and like Q and A was one of the signers and there was like five or six other people that I loosely trusted enough that I was like, okay, if one of these tries to coordinate with someone else and say, "Oh, yes, we rug everyone."

If I was one of them and I said to Q and A, "Oh, shall we rug everyone?" He'd be like, "Fuck off, you can." And then he'd go on Twitter and he'd say, "Max was trying to do this, fuck him.

"This is what happened, but then I ruined my reputation." So it feels like there's more, it's safer. I know you're still not in control completely and it's not perfect, but it's better. Whereas Cashew, I'm like, well, it's kind of wallets that Toshi was in privacy.

- Yeah. - Maybe that's mean, I don't know. - The main benefit of Cashew is just that it's a lot simpler. Like the federated one is really complex. I mean, that's why it's taken them like years to develop and like Cashew was built on a weekend.

The way I kind of see the use case is more in a smaller group so that if you're like kind of the uncle Jim or just in your family or like just smaller groups of people who come together, but still want to have privacy, but you kind of either know the person who's behind it or there's more of an accountability there.

- I see what you mean. So it's not just like there's one, there's like a honeypot where everyone who uses Cashew, it's all the sets are stored in the same place. It's like you could run one and then I could be like, "Oh mate, do you mind?"

- Okay. I mean, there probably will be larger ones as well. And I mean, the people who come together there. And obviously you do need a certain amount of people 'cause otherwise, I mean, if there's only one user, there's no privacy for that person either.

You do need kind of a certain amount of people, but I don't, it's still a better trade-off in my view than something like Wallops Satoshi, exactly. - Agreed, yeah. - If you don't have any privacy at all.

So if you have a company running one of these services with Cashew, you at least don't give up your privacy and your risk of losing your funds is identical with Wallops Satoshi. And you'd have the same convenience benefits.

So it is a step up from that. And if we can push like the tons of users of Wallops Satoshi, at least one step closer to the ideal setup, that's a win in my eyes, but it's definitely far from perfect.

- Yeah, agree on all points, marginally better than something like Wallops Satoshi from a privacy perspective. But the points that I cannot get over with this sort of stuff is that you just like Wallops Satoshi don't know if they're kind of artificially inflating their own supply because you can't verify that.

The comparison between like the Cashew, which is like the single custodian versus the federated one are pretty similar. I mean, if this is a known entity or group of entities that are running either the single one or the federated version, they're a regulatory target 'cause they're a money transmitter and they're a custodian

and they're gonna get taken down. And if they are a Nim, then how do you trust them? They could run off at any point. - Do you see that there is a small carve out? I agree with what you're saying.

Do you see that there's a small carve out for specific cases? Like I'll give you an example. If you have like the Pledminer Monthly Group where we've got like 100 people in there, we've got probably 60 of them in NIMS.

Maybe there could be a carve out where you say, right, 10 of those NIMS where you would call each other out if anyone tried to rug people. So you have that lot of reputation for small amounts.

For using it for lightning and interacting and sending each other payments where the amount is small enough that the reputational cost would be greater than the rug. - Well, from a technical perspective, yes, I see the very niche carve out from a, I guess, human perspective.

What is the, what's the market for that? Who's gonna wanna do that? Who's gonna wanna? - Kindly, yeah. - So yeah, in theory, I, in principle, I agree with, you know, potentially, there are some very niche use cases where that could be useful and an unacceptable trade-off.

But equally, like, I don't wanna beat, so I think in, you know, that you mentioned there about of just running your own lightning though, like, that's a horrible experience for 99% of the, of the, of the, of the population.

It's not the holy grail. So, you know, more options are better. Is it, are these sorts of things of interest to me personally know? But I could see some niche use cases where they kind of make sense.

I think, like, you know, like conferences or like, you know, sometimes you go to festivals and you have to buy their stupid fucking tokens to buy the beer and the food and stuff. Like, that might, this might be like a good drop-in for that where you can, you know, deposit some stats and then you get these, these e-cash tokens.

They can't see where you spend them. You know, it's still a trusted relationship. Like, can you redeem, you know, if you've got five tokens left at the end of the festival, you're still trusting that they're gonna give you your cash back.

And this is just a more modern version of this with some improved privacy. So, that's true. Stuff like that. Yeah, I see it makes sense where you don't necessarily need the same sort of censorship resistance.

There are some of these use cases, yeah, for sure. That's fair. And the last on the list of bounties here is the 11th, which is a bit 47. Here we go. And expansion. So, yeah, they're gonna award one Bitcoin each to the first two implementations of a bit 47 in, once again, popular open source,

self custodial iOS or Android wallets. That'll be good to see. Presumably not those that are already done so. So, they're probably writing their sales in the ass that they put it out too early.

But, yeah, definitely a gig in the tea for stock wallet that's literally just done it. Yeah. When was that four months ago or something like that? Yeah, so, I noticed there's a carve out there for basically four blue wallet, because it says if a wallet has only send or receive functionality as of July 28th,

the team can claim half a Bitcoin credit for adding the other half of the functionality, which is basically blue wallet, isn't it? Right. Okay. Which, don't be wrong, you know, it sounds like a mone in here.

That would be a win because blue wallet's a very popular wallet. So, getting the full functionality in there would be great. And if we can get two other wallets to claim this, you know, that would total then what we got, samurai, sparrow, stack wallet, blue wallet, potentially plus another two.

That's sick wallet. That's a big part of the ecosystem that's kind of on board on this. So, yeah, love to see it. And hopefully somebody's gonna jump up and grab this. I was pretty shocked to see like how short some of these descriptions were.

So, it's, I mean, it must be quite a pain to go through at the end like of like who got like to the, to that hurdle of passing to get the bounty and to deciding of like who's worthy of receiving the bounty.

Like usually the bounties I've seen up till now have been like a lot more elaborative of exactly or the declarative after, yeah, to meet. There we go. Yeah, I mean, in general it's like this is really, really cool.

I mean, there are a few like bounty programs around, but like, and this scale of like 22 Bitcoin in total, that's pretty nice. Cool. Then we've got another point here on our list, which is that the exchange Kraken was ordered to hand over data to the IRS and this is personal user data

for every user that had like a transaction history of more than $20,000. Lovely. Hell yeah. And this is names, date of birth, tax, information or like tax numbers, identifies addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses and unspecified other documents.

Whatever that is. Passport photo scan. Probably, yeah, yeah, probably. That's exactly what you want to see. Experience money. There we go. I mean, to be fair to Kraken, they did push back and tried to fight it in court, but that was rejected.

There's one thing that was not specified is if this is US customers or global and if it's just like private customers or also business customers, no idea. But yeah, I mean, this is absolutely to be expected that this will happen.

Well, that will happen to your data if you do this. I mean, that's why we keep iterating on no KYC, but yeah. You have to assume every single exchange and every single person will go into a database at some point.

Unless Bitcoin goes away, which we don't think it will, you can pretty much guarantee that. And those numbers will keep changing. It's $20,000 worth today. We want to watch them, but they're going to be looking at every single person, even if you've bought a couple of hundred quids worth.

They can be like that. Okay, we're going to want some money out of you, mate. So stop using KYC services. You can't. Yeah, it's horrible. Yeah, don't use them. (laughing) Yeah, I mean, there's not much else to say.

At the end of the day, I'm actually kind of surprised that this is still like, goes through courts. Like, I'm at like a point where I like expect that like, everyone just like, yeah, and all the exchanges just hand over all information like in real time.

Anyway, that's what I kind of probably do. This is probably just theater. Yeah. Yeah, he knows. I mean, it's kind of similar. I mean, we definitely have that here with like different services, like non-Bitcoin related, if you like, using Airbnb or something.

Like all that information goes to the tax authorities, automatically. And so like at the end of the year, you just get your pre-filled in tax form and it's all already there. Just as your employer would do too.

So yeah, I'm definitely operating under the assumption that all activity that you do on like a KYC exchange is knowledge that the tax authorities and the government has. Cool. Something more upbeat.

Phoenix is really fucking nice. I know Q&A, you've been shilling it for the last few months. So I thought, right, I'm gonna try it. I was impressed. It was really simple and it works and it's nice.

And yeah, I like it a lot. Yeah, fantastic alternative for the people that don't want to have to go through the hellscape of running their own lightning node. There are awesome caveats to that.

I mean, as I'm sure you're aware, Max, like Phoenix, you just kind of deposit some Bitcoin. It'll do all the channel management bullshit in the background for you and it just magically works.

You can send and receive on or off chain. You pay a small fee, which is very reasonable, in my opinion. It won't present, isn't it, or something? There's a flat fee for opening a channel and then obviously the lightning, generic lightning fees that anybody would incur thereafter.

Yeah. So it just works and it's by far the best option for those that don't want to run their own nodes. The caveat, of course, is that whilst it is non-custodial in the sense that you're in control of the keys, Phoenix cannot easily steal from you.

You are a massive denial of service risk. The only channels that you have between your phone and the wider lightning network are directly through Phoenix. Quite hastening. Yeah, it's async, yeah, who are the company behind the Phoenix wallet.

That's why it's so magic because they do all the heavy lifting for you and you just have like a direct private channel with them. So if they, for whatever reason, and this has never happened, we'll caveat that to say, you know, if they somehow decide that they don't want you as a customer anymore,

they can just say, no, you're not saying any more lightning payments and Phoenix is useless to you at that point. Yes, your funds are not going to go missing. So, you know, you're not going to be stolen from, but you are putting all of your eggs in one basket in terms of like everything is going through them.

That's both a pro and a con. Obviously it's a pro that everything kind of just works and it's really fucking easy. But it's a con that, you know, if they decide that they don't like you, they could in theory just say, no, we're not round your payments anymore.

One question I have there. They also do the verification, right? So at the end of the day, you're not doing any transaction verification on your phone. So they could give you wrong information that way too, right?

No, so there's a lightweight node on your phone that has a, and that lightweight node has a direct private channel to the beefy kind of async node. But they're the ones that are doing all of the heavy lifting in terms of like finding routes for your payments and stuff.

So it's not a private option. They can see where all your payments are going. Okay. Does that answer your question or why? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Well, I mean, if the only connection is to their node, then you're still relying on the information that you're getting from them, like your verification of a transaction.

So if there's an on-chain or also incoming lightning transactions, the only information source is directly from their node, right? No, because the, I don't know on the specifics of that actually, because it depends what functionality the quote unquote lightweight node on your phone has.

Like, is that plugged into the gossip network? And is it kind of, I don't know to what extent that's being offloaded? Yeah, that's an interesting point. I assume it is because there's a little option here where you can run it over tour.

So if it's not part of that network, why would you need that? Or is that so that you're protecting your IP from Athena? Yes, yeah, it'll be that. That's why that's okay, fine. But regardless, it's, there's no excuse for someone running Waller of Satoshi anymore because this is so fucking simple.

Maybe it's not absolutely perfect and there's ways that you can improve all ways, but it's a hell of a lot better than that and you have less rug risk. And it's just got even better, actually, in the last couple of weeks, they've released a beta version of the updated version of the app.

That introduces a technology called Splicing, which is basically the ability to change the size of your lightning channels. So in the currently current version of Phoenix that's out right now, that's not the beta one, basically, when you receive for the first time, Phoenix will open a channel,

roughly equivalent to how large that receive is. If you then try and receive, let's say that was 200,000 SATs and then you then try to receive a further 500,000 SATs, it would work, but Phoenix will open the second channel large enough to compensate for the second amount, the larger amount and you would pay a subsequent fee

for that as well. So you could get into a situation where if you're receiving a lot of larger growing amounts, you might have lots of channels and incur more fees than is necessary there and those channels sitting limbo, basically, you might use them once or twice and then they're just sitting there, which makes Phoenix not very scalable

because obviously they're doing all of that and passing the fees on to you. So if the fees skyrocket, then you're gonna be paying more and Phoenix has a hard time dealing with this because they're doing all of the heavy lifting.

With the new beta, what they do now, they've implemented and they are the first ones to do this, they've implemented splicing, which given the scenario I've just talked about, instead of creating an additional channel, what they'll do is they'll use this splicing technology to basically move your channel,

the original, let's say 200,000 SAT channel and they will upgrade that to be large enough to take the larger amount. You will pay a fee for that but it means that you only ever have one channel with Phoenix.

So it makes everything more efficient, you will save slightly on fees and it does give you the opportunity then to kind of you can, what they call splice in and splice out. So it's not just kind of sizing up the channels, if you wanna kind of take some funds out of whitening and put them back into cold storage,

you can do a splice out and take some funds on chain and that will reduce the size of the channel by I'm not sure how it works but yeah, so they've got a really in-depth blog post that explains much more eloquently than I did about how all this works but this has been a longer weighted lightning technology

that kind of streamlines things from a user perspective and definitely streamlines things from an LSP, like the server provider perspective, meaning that they've only got one channel per customer and I think it also is far more chain efficient.

So you're never gonna have, when this is rolled out, you're never gonna have Phoenix users with like five, six, seven, eight channels, which are all taking up space in the blocks that other people could be using.

Now it's just a case of you use lightning, you keep using that same channel and as and when you need to receive a larger amount, if it's too big, then we'll upgrade your channel and it's still only one channel on chain.

So that's the kind of big update here and really cool to see. I have actually got the beta on my, one of my Android phones, they just haven't got round to test it at the moment. But from what I've seen on social media, everybody seems to be getting on with it really well and it seems to be, as always with Phoenix and async,

they seem to have done things the right way and have got a really slick implementation. So hopefully if the beta continues to go well based on what I'm seeing on Twitter, et cetera, then this should be coming to a main release somewhere near you soon.

So if I understand correctly, it's now reduced from two transactions down to one, right? So before I end, you'd have to close the channel and reopen a new channel with the right size to have the same result.

- Well, no, what you can just do it with one transaction. - What Phoenix would do is they wouldn't close the original channel, they'd leave it open 'cause obviously they think they don't know whether you're gonna use that in the future.

They just open an additional one and now you've got two to manage, which isn't very chain efficient. - Sure. - So if I, if like I have splicing like on my own node and can use this in the future at some point, if I always wanna have one channel open, if I don't have splicing, then I'd have to close and reopen, right?

- If you only wanna have one channel to manage it, absolutely. - Yeah, and here I could only do it with one transaction. So I'm always saving that one transaction as well as the time of having to confirm both.

- That's right. - Okay, cool. - Slick. - Hell yeah. - I wanted to mention, oh, just moan about basically, something I saw in the no bullshit Bitcoin yesterday, I think, the UK government is dangerously close to eroding encryption and normalizing mass surveillance.

So there's an, have you guys heard about this one or not, or is this news to you? - I'm sure this has been talked about for fucking ages, hasn't it? - Well, yeah. - So the headline is, the online safety bill, what a fucking stupid name, is now at the final stage before passage in the House of Lords,

and it gives the British government the ability to force back doors into messaging services. No amendments have been accepted that would mitigate the bill's most dangerous elements. - Wow.

- There's a quote from the electronic freedom foundation, I think the EFF stands for. "If it passes, the online safety bill will be a huge set backwards for global privacy and democracy itself, requiring government-approved software in people's messaging services is an awful precedent."

So this will affect everybody, because normies that use WhatsApp, which is everybody, that's end-to-end encrypted, that would mean that WhatsApp or Facebook or Meta that's behind WhatsApp would have to install back door to be able to operate in the UK.

And that's true of, well, most things are end-to-end encrypted these days, even if they're closed source. So like Apple's, I message, end-to-end encrypted. So Apple would have to do the same.

And most of these companies are said, "We're not gonna do it, we're just gonna pull out." So it does-- - Well, that's something. - Yeah, yeah. Hats off, whether they actually follow through with it, who knows, because although, you know, WhatsApp isn't technically a money-making thing to my knowledge from Meta,

like why would they go through the hardship of doing all this and violating their users' privacy just to operate, like, and I'm sure, I think Apple have gone on record to say that iChat is only a, iChat, iMessage is only a cost to them.

Like they don't, because of the nature's end-to-end encrypted in theory, it's just a cost burden for them that they give to the users. Why would they go through all of this rigmarole to make it, you know, UK compliant if this bill passes?

So, just absolutely ridiculous. And, you know, I'm looking forward to being a criminal by sending nasty DMs and whatnot that are end-to-end encrypted because, obviously, nobody's gonna backfill then.

So, just, yeah, how that, this is ever gonna be enforced, I don't know. I mean, obviously, the large companies, like WhatsApp and Apple are gonna have to do something. Well, that is, we will have to wait and see, but.

- They should just have it so that when you open iMessage or you open any of the apps and you're in the UK, it just comes up with your government of criminals, we can't operate here anymore, move.

- Yeah, the biggest thing that they can give that these big companies is to pull out. I'd much rather they did that because there'd be so much more uproar from the NPCs of the world. Whereas if they just, you know, they rolled over and they put the back door in, people aren't gonna care,

even if they tell them in the app, they don't give a fuck. - They don't care. - If they opened iMessage and it said that or it just doesn't work anymore, they'd be fucking spewing and they'd go to the Apple store and they'd be like, "Why doesn't it work?

"Why doesn't it work?" And they'd be like, "Oh yeah, we pulled out "because of your government." - That would be far more impactful. - Oh yeah. And then people might actually run, I mean, you could do something like Noster or that simplex thing.

- Simplex, three more. - Yeah, all that sort of stuff. There's so many good options out there these days. - Oh, it's disgusting though, isn't it? So it's just the UK, the world just the worst.

- Yep, well, I mean, it's coming up here in the U2. It's been discussed as well to basically ban encryption as well. Again, I mean, it's like in the EU Parliament, but obviously there's a long ways to go until it's actually implemented or even passed.

But regarding like the of how to enforce that, I mean, I presume it'll be like predominantly via the app stores, right? So just say like you can't have a certain app in the app store or Google Play or something like that if it doesn't comply.

So you'd only be able to do it, like install these apps on devices where you can sideload. - But maybe the iPhone Maxis in the UK might finally capitulate. - No, 'cause when Apple going to allow sideloading, didn't we talk about that a few months ago?

Maybe this is why they're doing that 'cause they've seen this coming. - Possibly, possibly, yeah. - 'Cause they probably know UK is not that big a share, but UK and EU, if they see this coming and they're obviously not stupid, if they're like, right, this is the way they're gonna go and there will be probably a large proportion of people

who would just fuck them off if it went into mainstream news and if they had to just pull out completely and it became a talking point. And so they're like, okay, well, this would be the way around it is to allow the sideloading, which means that people still be able to use their products and they'll be able to run the apps

and they still have the market share that they had before that would be the only way that they win in that situation. So maybe that's why. - Yeah, but would the next step be to just have it as a requirement that all operating systems have a backdoor all the way?

- You can't do that with the open source stuff. And so, I don't know, I don't know. Probably and everyone's gonna have to have a camera in their fucking bedroom and some people do already, but that would be linked up to the government, so.

Fight back. - Oh yeah, use open source software. - Yeah, just one final, final thing from me. You remember last month we talked about, I was asking you about, come on Max. - I haven't done my homework on start nine, if that's what you're gonna say.

- Yeah, so I have, 'cause I knew you would have, I asked on Twitter and start nine basically didn't know what I was talking about. I don't know if it was an intern or what it was on their Twitter, but I was basically asking like, if I run this on a laptop as my operating system, will I be able to use Sparrow?

What I got out of them was it is your main operating system. So you wouldn't be running Linux and then have this within it. This would be the whole thing. And so, you can't run anything that's outside of that app store.

- I see. - I can't remember exactly, but basically they said, someone would have to make this into a file that can be read by us, which Sparrow isn't at the moment, someone could do that.

And I was like, would you not think you should do it? 'Cause it's best desktop, wallet out there. Do you not think that would be useful? And basically they didn't think so. And then a load of people jumped in basically saying, and they're not open source.

So why are you even thinking about it? And I was like, fine, good point. I just wanted something easy that I could run on that laptop just for my Bitcoin stuff. So that idea is now out the window because of that.

- Oh, well, you tried. - I tried. One day I'll get there. - Today you're fixing fountain app tomorrow. You're a Bitcoin Cordev. (laughing) - There we go. - Right. Anything from you, Antimas, oh good, oh good.

- Okay. - Yeah, cool. Well, I'll keep you on the line because I'll never be able to speak to you otherwise, but we'll close this out. And then if you don't mind if you can just spare a few seconds for me, I would really appreciate that.

I know you're busy. - Oh man, sorry. There we go. - See you guys, bye. - See you. Catch you next month. - I hope you enjoyed that and found it useful. If you have any questions for next month's show, you can reach out on fountain, send us a boost and we'll make sure to read it out and answer anything we can in the next episode.

If you did enjoy the show and you wanna help support it and keep it running, the best thing that you can do is to like, subscribe, follow the show, share it with any friends and family who might find it useful and stay ungovernable.