Bitesize Bitcoin - Coinjoin.

To begin with, what is Bitcoin? When bit 47? A lot of people are familiar with lightning and liquid is effectively layer two. That one, two, nine. What is taproot? For in taproot, that's the first new protocol upgrade since Zagwet.

Difficulty adjustments. How do mnemonic seed words work? UTXO management.

Hey Max, it's Q&A. Just thought I'd stop by and explain what a coin join is. Coin join, sometimes referred to as mixing, is a privacy solution for Bitcoin designed to combat chain surveillance firm's abilities to track the flow of funds across the network.

The Bitcoin blockchain is completely public and 100% permanent. The transactions you made today will be visible in another hundred years, if of course the network is still running. Anyone with enough time and resources can use this public data to look back at any transaction that's taking place since Bitcoin's inception.

Using this public data, sophisticated actors such as chain surveillance firms can track the flow of funds and use this data to de-anonymise network participants. This problem is compounded by the fact that most Bitcoiners provide their personal information when purchasing Bitcoin from regulated exchanges,

some of which work directly with these chain surveillance firms to satisfy their compliance departments. Due to the public nature of the Bitcoin blockchain, anyone who sends you Bitcoin, or people that you send Bitcoin to, can use that opportunity to try and follow the source of your funds.

Your boss doesn't know where you spend your fiat paycheck today, and your friend doesn't know where the $20 you paid him back for dinner came from either. Why should that be the case with Bitcoin?

Coin join is a collaborative Bitcoin transaction where two or more users combine their funds into a transaction that pays both parties back what is rightfully theirs, minus any fees. The transaction is constructed in such a way that provides many interpretations

on the true flow of funds. These transactions can be constructed in a peer-to-peer fashion between just two users, or between many more participants via the use of a central coordinator that helps construct the transaction. Both of these approaches are non-custodial,

meaning that the users participating in the transaction are always in control of their own funds. The result of these coin joins, or collaborative transactions, is to put a barrier between the coin's history, which may or may not be easy to track, and their post-coin join destinations. Anyone looking at public blockchain data

cannot save with any degree of certainty who the true owner of the funds are after the coin join. In summary, coin joins are an effective tool to maintain and improve user privacy, whilst transacting on a completely transparent and public ledger.

If you want to learn about Bitcoin and any other open source technologies, it's important to me that you have everything that you need, so I've got articles, the main podcast, a shop, and much more. If you have any questions and want to reach out, I'd be happy to help.