EP104 Bitcoin show with @craigraw sparrow wallet

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. Today's episode is with Craig Raw. We featured him for Code Block 9 of 21ism. If you're using his software, you'll know why. If you're not, go and check it out. And I really hope you enjoy this episode.

Thank you to Coin Floor UK for sponsoring the show. If you're in the UK and you're looking to dollar-cost average, you can use the link in the show notes below and get 30% discount off your fees.

I'd also like to say thank you to Crypto Plokes. Crypto Plokes are my new sponsors. They are 3D printing. Everything you could possibly want or need for Bitcoin. Node cases, special holders for your cold card, hiding places for your hardware wallets, blockmits for stamping your seed.

They really do have everything on there. So check them out at CryptoClokes.com. Enjoy the show. Hey, Craig. How you doing? Hello, Max. Thank you for joining me so promptly. I was having some internet issues before you joined, so I'm just praying that I'm coming through OK on your end.

It all sounds fine here. But please, sounds good from mine as well. Yeah, it all sounds good. Well, yeah, thank you for joining me. We are very, very pleased at 21ism to have you featured for Code Block 9.

Really, really cool stuff that you're doing. And like I said, you're off air. This is just a chance to find out, you know, why you've done what you've done, why you've created this and what all of this means to you, why are you Bitcoin?

So I'm really looking forward to diving in with you. I've just opened myself a beer. Are you joining me for a drink or what are you having? I've actually haven't got anything in front of me right now just a glass of water, so maybe a little bit later on.

Very well behaved. And you're joining me from South Africa, right? I am, yes, from Cape Town. Very nice. I went a few years ago, actually. I absolutely loved it. And I think I'll be there for a couple of weeks did the whole safari thing and went around Cape Town a little bit as well.

Such a cool place, like so vibrant. And I had so many cool little restaurants and different places. And yeah, I absolutely loved it. Yeah, it's a great spot to live, I must say. I've got many advantages.

Hard to leave, actually. Have you been there all your life? No, actually, I grew up in a town on the eastern coast of South Africa called Durbin. But I've been here in Cape Town for the last 20 years or so.

So I'm pretty much feel at home here now. Yeah, it's got everything South Africa. It blew my mind when I went there. Obviously, I'm from England. We've got some nice sort of scenery. And you've got some nice countryside.

And then you go over there. And it's just so vast and just so beautiful. And you've got the mountain regions and the wine regions and all of it. And then the beaches and penguins on the beach.

And just all this crazy stuff, it just, yeah, it was mind-blowing. Yeah, absolutely. I certainly enjoy the mountains and the sea every day. So it's a great spot. We're in the UK, are you?

So near London, I don't want to dox myself too much, but not far from London. Great. Have you been before or? Yes, I've been a few times. It's been a few years now. But certainly, probably been to the UK more than anywhere else, I guess.

Many South, South, South Africans, as I'm sure you know, tend to make the journey over. Never lived there though, but have certainly spent a fair bit of time, particularly around the same area that you are in.

Nice. I'm trying to think where to start, really, here. We've not spoken before. I followed your project very closely. But it'd be cool to hear what led you down this path. And why you started being interested in Bitcoin and passed that, why you've actually decided to give back and create this software and create something

that is getting so much respect from so many Bitcoiners. I was just literally got off the phone to Bitcoin Q&A, and he was raving, just saying, oh, my god, just tell him that this is just incredible.

Just tell him how much I love it. I know the economy alchemist is a huge fan as well. So was it just something that you'd been Bitcoining for a while and then just thought, I want to do something?

Or is there something that is already a career? Well, you know, I first heard about Bitcoin. I'm not quite sure when, but it was around 2012. And I was just immediately fascinated by it. I've always kind of had this love for everything cryptographic, but I've always considered myself to be very much uneducated in that field.

So it's always been this sort of dream to kind of get more into it. And that was one of the things that drew it to me. And I just thought to myself, well, this just looks amazing. And it sounds too good to be true.

So rather than just dismiss it, I decided to try and prove why it would fail. Try and figure out what's the reason that's going to cause this thing to fail. And I literally spent the next six or seven years just sitting on our Bitcoin every day.

These days, there's so much great information for Bitcoiners to kind of learn and understand. But back in the day, there really wasn't a huge amount of great information. And it certainly wasn't very clear how you would get good information versus bad information.

So anyway, I just spent a huge amount of time just trying to read everything I could and trying to figure out why it might fail. And in the end, I just couldn't. I just couldn't do it. I could not figure out the reason.

I just answered every question that I could think of over many years and raised together. I started, well, there's no good reason why this thing should fail. Therefore, it must succeed. No, I can always be wrong.

But that's still what I feel today. And that's kind of what led me to just wanting to be more involved, just having spent so much time on it. And eventually, it just came to a point in my life where I could spend more time working on it.

And I was trying at the time to set up a multi-sig wallet, multi-vendor, multi-sig wallet wallets. I was using Electrum to do it. And it was just really hard. I was having to write little bits of code to do it.

I could manage it in the end. But I thought to myself, this is something that other Bitcoiners will need. So that's really where the journey with Sparrow began. And I just began building this tool.

And I was largely inspired by these modern programming IDEs that we get to use, which are really just amazing tools. So that was kind of where it sort of began. And I just really wanted to create-- when you have to interact with Bitcoin, it can be done down.

But ultimately, it's a fairly complex thing. It's not easy to be private. It's not easy to transact in a way that maximizes your sort of efficiency with fees. And Sparrow was just really there as a tool to be able to really save with Bitcoin and to do so in a way that allowed you to really understand the protocol

and the details of what was going on. So that was kind of the genesis of it, and thinking, how can I create a tool that is just going to be super easy to use. But at the same time, really give Bitcoin as the detail that I think that they need in order to get into it and to really do the job well.

And was this something you already had a background in, software development? Or was it just because you'd spent so much time sort of trying to break and work out how to break Bitcoin that you picked things up along the way?

No, I've pretty much been in the software development industry my whole career. In fact, my whole life. So I've done various things. I began actually in a digital marketing world back in the days when really nobody was buying anything on the internet.

And just spent many years believing that the internet was going to change the world, even though everyone we tried to sell things to just told us we were mad. But eventually, obviously, that paid off.

And we created a great agency. And that we managed to sell. And then I sort of moved on to a different business, which was-- and still is, in fact, really about trying to understand social media and using sort of microtasking with crowds, which we actually pay in Bitcoin and just kind of getting into that world.

And gradually, I sort of did what I wanted to in that space and eventually managed to sort of migrate myself out of there into what is really, I think, the first field that I just fully loved, I just love being in it every day.

It's very much a passionate thing for me, too. And I think an honor to be able to work in the space. It's very different social media and marketing and then coming to Bitcoin and privacy and all of this stuff.

It's pretty polar. Yeah, I mean, that's true, although if you really look at what's driving a lot of the kind of interest around Bitcoin, Twitter is a huge part of that. And I'm sure you, like everyone else, just loves plugging into their feed every day.

And you get all this interesting information. I'm sure not everyone does it that way, but certainly I do. And every big change in the world, people have to be able to communicate with each other.

So marketing certainly wasn't my love. I never wanted to really be in that field. Social media, also not really what I wanted to do, but I have to respect the fact that the communication, that these inventions allowed a really helping Bitcoin now.

So I have a respect for it, even though it's not necessarily what I love doing. Yeah, it's one of those things you have to sort of treat it with respect and work out what it is you want from it, because it's very easy to get wrapped up and people sort of get obsessed about using it.

I find it with myself just like using Twitter. I can sometimes find myself just scrolling aimlessly through the feed and you can get to like, it can be very say-me sort of Bitcoin-y stuff.

But then if you actually want to find something out and to get news and information quickly, if you use it properly, it really is, like you say, just such an incredible tool. Yeah, yeah, it's, I have the same experiences, and I'm sure everyone else does.

But every so often you just come across this little gem. And I guess it's all about just trying to be disciplined in order to be able to find those and not just waste time like we all do.

And, but it's so nice is because you get to meet people on there. I mean, I can only imagine, I mean, I came in 2017. It was a very lonely place for me because no one else cared or wanted to talk about Bitcoin.

And it was the only thing I wanted to talk about. And so it was very lonely until I found Bitcoin, Twitter, and then suddenly you've got all these friends and people you can speak to about what you're passionate around, and that's really cool.

But I wonder what it was like for you because 2012 was very early. Were you alone in this pursuit, trying to find a problem with Bitcoin, or did you have any other friends who were involved in it at that time?

- Yes, so I mean, my long-term business partner, we were both, in fact, the very early days, we were considering setting up sort of a South African Bitcoin exchange. We're trying to compete with what was then BitX, which is today, Luna.

I'm very glad we didn't do it because it's not a world that I particularly want to be in. And in addition to that, we had too much on anyway. So that would, you know, he was certainly keen on it.

I was keen on it, and we both still are. But I think my kind of journey into the depth of it was very much a solo pursuit, you know, as I say, I suspend hours on the Reddit forum are Bitcoin every day.

It was certainly, I think, better than it is today, it tends to be just a whole whole lot of memes. Although you still can get some, you know, unique information there. But, you know, that was really my primary source.

And I would just go there every day and, you know, spend lots of time, waste a whole lot of time, I'm sure. But, you know, you do gradually learn. And I just also got to see many of the kind of genesis events that happened in Bitcoin's life as they occurred, which was pretty cool.

Yeah, very cool. It's just such a fascinating space. And it's like, there's always room to learn something. And, you know, no matter how much time you dedicate to it, no matter how much time you spend speaking to people about it, there's always something around the corner.

And then you think, oh, you know, look at what's possible now. And then suddenly next week, there's something that blows out of the water. And it's just like, it's so fast moving. Maybe that's just for me not being from a software background.

So it's not something I've already experienced. But, you know, you said you were there sort of early days. With the internet, you were there with social media. You're there with the marketing side.

Is it something that still amazes you, the pace at which things are going, even though you've been involved in these sort of industries for a long time? You know, it's funny, it's true what they say.

We overestimate, you know, kind of what happens in a year and underestimate what happens in 10 years. And, you know, I find, you know, at times, from a macro point of view, I sort of think things kind of move along a day.

At a fairly slow rate, you know, we don't seeing Bitcoin adoption just growing up in a massive curve. Perhaps it is, we don't really know. But what I have found is in every sort of technical field I've ever been, and you just can't know everything about every area.

You have to decide the area that you want to be in, and kind of the others you can have a passing interest in. But, you know, no one's brain is big enough to be able to understand it all.

You know, I sit on the Bitcoin dev list, and I try my hardest to scan at least every mail that comes through, just so you at least get an idea of what's being talked about. But it's really hard to understand, you know, areas that are not the sort of wallets field that I'm actually working in.

So, yes, I mean, I think it moves very, very fast. But, again, from a macro point of view, I think we are seeing this kind of societal change, which does take some time. I mean, it just doesn't happen overnight.

- Is it sort of, has it met your expectations or exceeded them from when you got involved and you started thinking about the implications that this could have on the world? If you sort of remember what you were thinking then, and now sort of almost 10 years later, is it around where you thought it would be?

Or, well, actually, I can answer that because you said to me you were trying to break it and you sort of didn't believe it back then. But when you got to that point where you thought, no, I mean, this really is something special and dedicated your time.

Where are we on that line where you were expecting us to go? - You know, it's strange, but I'm not sure if I have a great answer to that. It's kind of like watching the price. I don't ever look at the price.

I literally never ever check the price. And I don't really think too much about the progress of Bitcoin on sort of an adoption timeline, all that much. For me, it's going to happen. It's busy happening.

I can see it in the number of users. I can see it in the sort of interest from around the world. All of the content that is created. I think it's just one of those things that is growing and much like the internet, just became this snowball, much like social media, just became this thing they just grew and grew.

And I think Bitcoin is very much the same. We're just kind of sitting here in these very early days still looking at it. One thing that I do think is that Bitcoin is going to change more than those previous two inventions, because it really has such an impact on people's perception of how to live your life.

And that's really just talking to the concepts of low time preference. It's just an amazing, it certainly changed my life in that way, and I think it will change many, many people's lives.

And as I say, I think it's just an honor to be able to work in a field which is going to have this kind of massive societal change, which I think will be for the good. - I agree with you.

I think that it's going to do an incredible amount of good. And it's so interesting to see when people do start falling down the rabbit hole and do start sort of working it out. And you see these light bulb moments.

And I've had so many myself and just the excitement that that gives. There's nothing else that really matches it. And I don't know if you'd find the same thing, but sometimes I wake up in the morning and I'm like genuinely excited and sort of eager to find out what's going on and what can be done and learn some more.

And I never really used to feel that before Bitcoin. I never really used to have that excitement because it really feels like this is going to change the world and change so many people's lives.

And I'm sure you must see it in South Africa a fair amount. Where people really need this technology. They really need something where they can store their value. They really need something where they can actually protect their wealth.

And I imagine that's probably where this multi-sig comes in a little bit. Because obviously this is a better asset. How do you view that being in South Africa? I know obviously there can be a lot of issues with break-ins and problems I've had a lot of friends have moved from there here because they've been

protecting their homes and how do you view that in terms of having a better asset. Yeah, I mean that's a really good question and point. Look, I personally have had my house burgled many times.

I've had all kinds of incidents in my life. It is a violent place to live. There's no doubt we have lots of alarm systems. We have lots of response. I'm always amazed when I watch an American film and they leave doors and windows unlocked.

It boggles my mind. I can't even imagine how one lives in that way because it's just so far from the reality in which I exist. So you sort of expect that you're going to get burgled at some point.

And it can be fairly light and they just sort of break in and run around and steal a few things that they can grab their hands on. But it can actually be quite serious in that they literally just back a van up and take everything, including perhaps that cold storage stash that you have.

So for me, multi-sig and being able to hide the fact that I am sitting with a multi-sig was really important. Obviously now saying it is kind of a sort of reveals that. But I guess in a sense, what I realized was if I can get more people doing multi-sig then it just becomes the norm.

And if it becomes the norm, then it just becomes much less of a favorable target to come and go after someone's cold storage. So I think that, for me, was really important. Just thinking about it in that way, just wanting to make sure that you don't have a hardware wallet sitting in one place that can be taken,

that having multiple hardware wallets in different locations, I think, is a very important thing to do. Really, it's just about peace of mind. Ultimately, you want to make sure that you can sleep at night, not worrying about if I'm away from my home and somebody breaks in and I at risk.

So trying to normalize multi-sig, I think, was a big goal before me to be able to just make it easy to do. And I think we're still on that part. I think it's still quite a ways to go. But hopefully, we will gradually get to it.

So yeah, that was part of it. The other side is really just around trying to hide your balance. And that's been a big thing for me. That, for me, was sort of a given that you must do that from the very start, that even if somebody was to steal your laptop and get full access to it,

that it should just be almost possible for them to be able to determine how much you have. So Sparrow's really been built around that. Just lots of things in there that you don't see that just makes it extremely hard to ever open your wallet so long as you use a half-decent password.

So that, I think, is the other half to it. Not only getting the multi-sig, but also making sure that your balance is really well hidden. It's such a good point. The security is so important, especially when the further you get into this and the more you understand that this is the place you should be storing your wealth,

then you're going to be fairly heavily weighted. And then if that's your life savings and you don't have multi-sig, and if you're living somewhere where break-ins do happen often, it's a pretty dangerous game to be playing.

It's pretty scary stuff, and I think people should have that view no matter where they are, but especially if it's going to be the norm that someone could break in, and especially if you've got a family to protect as well.

So, you know, the idea behind multi-sig and having things in different locations just makes so much sense. It really is such an incredible step up. I think the thing where I struggle is just, you know, that still technically I worry about making a mistake, and I know things are getting better,

but I think it's just a step-by-step approach. And like I said to you before the call as well, that's something that 21ism are trying to set up ourselves. We still haven't got around to it as things have just been absolutely crazy, and we need the time to do it properly.

But I wonder, is that something you're seeing on the rise that organizations are doing it as well as individuals? And how do you see that being managed, especially when you have people from different locations around the world, you know, setting these things up without a third party,

without using something like CASA and doing it yourself? Is that something you see as possible and attainable for most non-technical people at this stage? Or like, how would you sort of advise people, think about something like that?

- Sure, so I mean, I've certainly, you know, helped businesses that I'm involved, both, both, both with do-it. I wouldn't say they have massive treasuries, but they certainly have started to put cash into it.

And I've just generally advised them to go for a two of three, and, you know, you know, often I'm perhaps the third if I'm involved. But generally, I can step back pretty fast. I, you know, I've taken them through the basics.

I've said, you know, this is how we sort of do it. And everyone kind of, you know, sets it up. And everyone's a little bit scared at first, you know, am I doing this thing, thing, thing, right?

And then they get to the point where they sign their first multi-sick trans-out fraction. And it just goes very fast. And they kind of quite amazed at the end. And they say, well, was that it?

And I say, yes, that was it. It really wasn't that hard. So, you know, I think that it's, it has been in the past. And we're not even talking very long in the past. As I was saying earlier, you know, even just if you look two years back, it was really hard to do.

I mean, really, really hard. But things have moved a long way in these two years. Now we have, and it hasn't yet been adopted yet, but we have this new standard, this BIP-129, which, you know, hopefully is going to mean that people from anywhere in the world can set up a multi-sick wallet in a secure manner.

And, you know, it's all gonna be just, every hard, hard, hard wallet will comply with it, every software, you know, a coordinator will comply with it, and will just become a very standard sort of process.

The other thing that I think I'm really liking is the increasing adoption of QR codes, and not just any QR codes, but the particular animated ones that are using the UR specification that blockchain commons have come out with.

And, you know, everyone just is going towards that. I've talked to lots of hardware wallet manufacturer's every day, of course. And it's really great to see how, you know, all of these different manufacturer's have realized that using a common standard is just super important to get everyone doing things the same way.

And I think we are seeing, you know, the rise almost sort of a new dawn here of just lots of very capable hardware wallets on the market, which all functioned by QR codes in the same way.

And that's very cool to see. - Yeah, I love that idea, actually. I love the idea of having different hardware wallets from different manufacturers or home builds, like the seed signer or specter, and being able to not rely on just one, because as much as I use cold card, and as much as I love my cold card, I can't review the code myself.

So I am still trusting. I am still like, if something was, if there was to be an issue, I would be fucked, basically. Whereas if you had seed signer and a cold card or stand to Trezor or whatever someone chooses to use and then they're having that in a multi-sig, it just feels as though the attack vectors are so much harder,

like it's so much more difficult for there to be an issue. And if you have these standards where people have to work with them and you are using QR as well, it just seems as though like it's such a massive step up that like if someone's gonna consider attacking someone or $5 wrench attacking someone,

they have to really think carefully about that, especially as more and more people start to use multi-sig, because they're gonna think, well, is it worth the hassle? Because the likelihood is, even if someone wants to give me the money, they can't.

And even if there is a bug in, or someone introduces a bug into one wallet, or order a wallet, then they're still not gonna be able to get anything because they'd have to attack the others as well.

So it seems as though it's almost not gonna be worth their while, which is brilliant. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't have said that better. That's absolutely right. Every additional hot, hot, hot wallet that you add to a multi-sig, even if it's relatively insecure in some way, it is still adding another order of magnitude

of difficulty to be able to hack that. And that's just an amazing kind of free lunch that we get with multi-sig. It's just such a powerful tool in the Bitcoin as toolbox when one is trying to save.

And as you were saying, trying to save perhaps your kind of life earnings. That I think is, it just really can't be under-estimated or kind of under-praised. Especially when, you know, many of us have this multi-generational idea and wanting to be able to pass this onto our children.

I mean, it would be so scary and so horrible to lose your life savings. But even worse than that is if you were to lose something that you were planning to give to your children and planning to hold so that you have strong hands, you know you're gonna hold it, you know it's not gonna go into the hands of these fucking finance bros

and everyone else who's getting into the space and messing around to lose that is not just losing money, it's losing the whole dream. And so the value, no matter what the price is, you know, the value is, you can't put a price on it basically.

So it has to be protected at all costs and there really is nothing more important and it's the reason I guess we all just try and get better and better is with me like security-wise, I'll just make little improvements all the time and I'm still not there with multi-sig but it is next on my list.

And yeah, there seems to be, it seems to be that it's just so much better than single-sig security-wise. It's, for me it is just literally risk of loss through my own stupidity. That's the thing that holds me back.

But it seems like it's getting more and more simple every day, I've just been reading through Bitcoin Q&A's, 101 on it and that kind of alchemist has a good one. There's so many good guides.

Yeah, it seems as though it's basically there even for somebody like me who's not that technical but I wondered your thoughts like, you know, say someone does have their life savings in it and they're currently using single-sig and they're not that technical.

What would you advise? Would you just say start with a little bit, test it, test it, test it and just add a little bit as your confidence grows or is there sort of a resource you particularly like or what would you say to someone who's thinking about it?

Yeah, look, I mean, I think it's important to kind of grow your knowledge over time, as you say, you know, as you are doing. I think it's very important not to make too big a leap at one time and that's the right way to do it and the good way to do it.

But, you know, as you're also doing, try to increase your abilities all the time, trying to understand a little bit more all the time and kind of be driven by the sort of macro sense of where we're going.

You know, if Bitcoin goes to where we all believe it will go, then the amount that you're holding now is gonna be potentially worth a great deal of war and, you know, you as a target is, you know, you are going to become a bigger target.

That's just the reality of it. You know, it's not a good nor bad. It's just the truth or the matter. So, you know, it's important to think in the sort of adversarial manner that I think we all do and to just try and get closer to the point of where you say, okay, let's get ahead and kind of get ahead of things

and set up my first multi-sig wallet. And then the thing that I always advise, you know, is don't ever put significant funds into any wallet that you haven't tested sending out from, you know, make sure you can send out from the sort of wallet.

And then perhaps once you've set up the wallet, you've put a small amount in, you've tested sending out, leave it for a while, and then come back to it after a few weeks and make sure that you can send a game because, you know, we humans tend to forget things over a short period of time and you don't want to kind of

get to a point where you knew everything two weeks ago or a month ago and now you've just forgotten how to do it. So it's that sort of practice that I think really makes it easy. It was unfamiliar to everyone at the start, you know, everyone's sort of battled and how do I do it?

But if you just practice it and you just kind of get into it, it soon becomes really as easy as single single say, I really, you know, in my own brain, I certainly don't see any difference in terms of difficulty between the two.

And that's just because I've done it many, many, many times over. So again, it's just a matter of kind of easing yourself into it and then, you know, gentle practice as you, as you, you know, you gradually increase the amount of funds that you hold there.

- Yeah. And it's also alien, isn't it? Whether it's going from single sick to multi-sick or whether it's going from being a no-coiner to setting these things up, it's such a, it's a leap and it's things that we're not used to doing.

And it's just a thing of practice. I mean, I remember sending my first transaction. I literally shit myself, like I was, I was thinking, I was sent to my friend, oh, well, what happens if I get one digit wrong?

What if one thing is wrong? He's like, well, you lose everything. I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, yeah, everything's gone. That's it, you're finished. And that, I remember being just so scary, even for a smaller man, I was like, oh my God, I could lose everything here.

And then you sort of just do it enough times that you go, okay, this is, you know, this is just how it works. I understand it, I'm comfortable with it. The same with setting up these hardware wallets.

And so I imagine it's probably the same. It's just another stepping stone and just getting yourself comfortable because half the time that we worry about things, it's really just because we're being hyper paranoid, which is not a bad thing.

But I think it sometimes gets in the way of progress because we're so scared about making a mistake. - Yeah, and I mean, you know, it's difficult to know whether to recommend this or not.

But, you know, if you're prepared to kind of invest the additional time to set up a testnet wallet, which is really, you know, easy to do, you know, if you can run Sparrow off the command line, you just literally add a dash in testnet string, you know, just a few extra characters on, you know,

and then you can run and create a testnet wallet. You can get free Bitcoins, free testnet Bitcoins from a force it online. They arrive in your wallet within minutes. And then you can just send and test and create whatever crazy wallets you want to.

And it really just, it gives you the chance to get familiar with things without having any risk at all, without just being completely. And, you know, for us devs, we're so used to it that it's kind of, you know, part and parcel.

I mean, I'm sending testnet transactions every day of my life. And I think I underestimate just how much I have benefited from just not needing to worry about am I making a mistake? You know, you can just go ahead and press that button without having to think too much about it and see what happens.

And then, oh, okay, I did make a mistake. Oh, that was interesting. Let me learn, you know. So it's just such an incredible resource. And it's just sitting there and it works. Testnet just works day off today, sins, receives, and you never have to pay for anything.

- Yeah, it's a good point. I've never done it, I've never tried it. I've always just done small amounts and just sort of hoped for the best. But like you said, if you're doing these things and there's no risk, then you're probably gonna push a little bit further, you're probably gonna try things

that are maybe slightly outside of your comfort zone because the fear of loss is gone. So I think maybe that's something I should try. - Yeah, I mean, I think the major advantage is that you just go faster.

You know, everything just happens faster because you're not so worried about it all. You kind of, you just, that's, I think the easiest thing is that you suddenly, the whole journey becomes a whole lot quicker as a result.

- And so you were saying earlier, you don't watch the price. And a lot of people say this and don't really mean it, they're bullshitting, I believe you, but I wondered what it was that makes it so special to you.

And, you know, a lot of people are in here literally for number go up and a lot of us come in, I was one of them for number go up and then things change and you realize what this can do. What was your views coming in and how have they changed - Yeah, I mean, sure, I mean, I was definitely a number go up man at the sort of early days.

You know, I sort of bought in and then I was trying to figure out, you know, as I was saying, kind of the reasons that I shouldn't stay, you know, how do I hang on during these? Doc, their days during 2014 and 2015 where it's just the price just doesn't move, you know, it just sits there and no one's really talking about it

and just seems like it's a backwater, you know, so I was certainly very interested in the prices price then and I would watch it every day. I've certainly been in that space. But as you know, time goes on and I'm sure this has happened to you as well and you kind of, you start to realize that this is really just about freedom, you know,

it's about inducing a new kind of element almost into human society, this just ability to exchange value using a measuring stick that doesn't change and once you start to grasp that, I think it's hard to ever fully grasp it.

But once you start to kind of realize the immense potential of a sound money, a permissionless sound money, then I think it just becomes, you know, really just you can see that this is an idea whose time has come, you know, it's needed, it's, you can't save in the world today in fear, you just can't do it, you can take risky bets,

but you cannot save and we need this thing now because if we don't get it, then the alternative is very dark indeed, we're looking at money controlled by governments and corporate rate rates, rate rates in a privacy invasive way that we can, we can't even really imagine, I think it's very hard for us to even imagine what it would be like

for a government to be able to control our money to the extent that they can arbitrarily withhold it, track everything that we spend or we're interested in them, it's just, and that is the truth, it's the technology for it exists today.

So, you know, for me, it's an empiric perspective, it's really, you know, the alternative is so dark and the future with Bitcoin is so bright that there are the two polar opposites and that really drives me, it really makes me get up every day and want to get involved to the extent that I spend too much time on it, to be very honest,

but you know, it's, as I said, it's just an honor to be able to work on something which to be in the right place in the right time, to be able to work on this. Did you have these sort of concerns prior to Bitcoin?

Did you feel like you were primed for this in a sense that you were freedom loving or didn't like authority or felt that there were issues with hierarchical systems or like, do you know what I'm saying?

Like were you already thinking along these lines or was it that whilst going down the rabbit hole, you started to click and think, oh fuck yeah, this isn't very good. I don't like that this group of people have control.

This certainly isn't working out very fairly and that it came that way or were you always that sort of defiant person who saw issues? - So I think growing up in Africa gives one a certain view on the world which you don't necessarily get growing up in a first world country.

You know, Africa is in many ways a lawless place. I mean, I say that time and cheek almost, you know, obviously we have laws and we have police and that but you know, in many ways you get away with things here that you're just not gonna get away with in the UK or the U.S., you know, it's just not gonna happen.

And when I travel, I really appreciate the fact that I have that kind of freedom here. It is a little bit wilds Western away and that has its drawbacks for sure as we were talking about earlier.

But it also there's a freedom of living here in some ways and others not that kind of gives you a viewpoint that you're not prepared to give up, you're not prepared to give up those freedoms that you've enjoyed your entire life to be able to, you know, think the way you wanna think and, you know, just kind of live your life

in the way that you want to do it. So I think I was to a certain extent prime for it. I don't think I've necessarily been a sort of activist in any way before this, this sort of point. But certainly being involved in the marketing space for as long as I have and just ultimately just being really,

you know, uninspired as too weak a word, you know, it's just, it's just really pushed me away. I just have no real interest, no love for it. It's, you know, it's a huge amount of human effort has gone into trying to track and recommend and do all these marketing things that I just think there's such, such a waste

we could have spent that on, you know, that kind of those great minds on just better things. And, you know, those are the sort of push and pull forces that I guess I've had coming into this.

Yeah, it always, it always seems like it's like a broken incentives. It's like the governments and the people who are supposed to be there and protect and serve you. It's not really in their best interest to do that.

And it's always seemed like it's unfairly weighted and that things are sliding further away from freedom at all times. Certainly here it seems that way. And it's really shown like the last sort of, well, since February, March last year with all this Corona hysteria, the fact that people can literally at this point

tell you what you can and can't have in your body, what you can and can't say, that you have to have something covering your face when you go into a shop, whether your business is allowed to be open and all this kind of stuff.

And it's something I often play forward and think, well, if this is to the trajectory that we're on, you said earlier, like, oh, one, one possible future is very, very dark and the other is Bitcoin and that's hope.

Is it similar there? Are you saying that things are sliding more towards an authoritarian kind of nightmare? Or is it more lawless in that sense as well where people are still kind of doing what they want?

- You know, yeah, it's really more that the government is in general just to enact to contemplate the kind of authoritarian rule that I think is very possible in places like the UK and sort of, we're seeing it in many other places as well.

We have a government here that is often trips over themselves so much that it's difficult to see how they could ever enforce on a largely uncontrolled sort of, population, the kind of rigor that I think would be required.

But ultimately these things will come to us. You know, no kind of country is an island. And if the technology exists and becomes commonplace in the first world eventually, it forces down to the third world as well.

So, you know, I don't think South Africa's next on the list to become the sort of China of the world. But I certainly don't think that it's not gonna happen. You know, definitely if we go towards the darker future, it will eventually happen everywhere because, you know, power is something that human beings love, they just want more of it.

And we've seen that time and time again. So, if you give them the technology and the ability to track everyone and to control everyone, that might not be taken up by every ruler. But gradually, as a ruler becomes into power, who can be moved towards that end, I think you will see countries fall

and become that kind of controlled space that we all don't want. So, yeah, you know, I think it just varies. It varies from different place, but it will eventually happen unless we have some kind of alternative.

- Does that impact the decisions that you're making when creating this software and like the plans for moving it forward, are you sort of considering not only $5 wrench attacks, but 6102s and the kind of the idea of, well, I often think like it would be logical if Bitcoin does as well as I think it's gonna do

that governments either 6102 it, or we become the terrorists and pedophiles and whatever else when we get labeled as the bad guys and persecuted for it. Do you think about those sort of things when you're creating the software to think, well, how do we combat that?

Because it's quite possible that there are biggest opponents in a few years. They're the ones who are gonna come and try and ruin this dream. And how do you go about securing your coins in a way that they can't take them from you and they can't apply the force that they wanna apply?

- Yeah, I mean, it has a very large effect, you know? So I think, you know, the idea of trying to have a geo graphically distributed multi-sig is very important, you know, and, you know, doing that in a sort of a multi-country way.

So if you can imagine, I don't know, a five of 10 and you have to fly around in order to get them, well, you can have five of those countries become inaccessible to you for whatever reason, but so long as you can access the other five, then you'll be okay.

So I think that, you know, it's, that's an amazing tool right there. And then I think, as I was saying earlier, the sort of idea of being able to protect how much you have is just a crucial tool because the reality is, you know, if you are a big enough target, you know, the stakes against you are just gonna get higher and hunt higher.

So the job number one is really making sure that you don't become that target in the first place, you know, never allow anyone to know how much you have by not only not talking about it, but also making sure that the wallet software that you use, obviously that's my job, is just ensuring

that the absolute minimum amount of risk is sort of there. So I would advise people, you know, don't open your cold storage wallet for too long, you know, don't kind of leave it open. You should get in there, you should check, you should get a new sort of address if you need, but then close it and make sure that it's, you know,

sitting on and, you know, it's just not in a place that is easy to find. That's, you know, that's definitely drives the way that I sort of sort of think. That said, I'm actually don't believe that it's all that likely we're gonna see a dystopia where, you know, most of the governments around the world are banning Bitcoin.

I definitely think it can happen, but it doesn't look like that's the trend, you know, you don't regulate something that you're trying to ban, and certainly the former is the way we seem to be going.

- I agree with you, I think the incentives are there for them to come and play the game, aren't they? So they'll obviously be a few, but I suppose it comes down to a sort of alluded to is like UTXO management, using tools that can help stop people knowing your balances, using things like Samurai, just making sure

that you're thinking about what you're doing, because the mistakes that we make now are gonna be there forever, so it's just so important. And I think the difficulty is when you're first coming into the space, like there's just too much information, there's just an overload of information,

and, you know, it took a long time to even start thinking about these things or understanding what they mean. And I guess that's the thing is with software like your building is like, it makes it more accessible, and it doesn't hide these things, like a lot of the wallet software hides this stuff away,

and it's so important that people understand it, because otherwise they're gonna come unstuck. - Yeah, I mean, what sort of my job is, is to try and give all of that detail, but do so in a gradual way, you know, to try and present it so somebody can use...

Sparro and just say, listen, I just want to receive some Bitcoin to it, I need to know how to get an address, and that's all that I'm doing, right? So, you know, doing those first early steps shouldn't be too hard, but then as you get more into it, the tools should allow you to dig in, and to kind of say, well, what's actually going on

underneath, hood hood here, that UTXO that I received, what does it look like, and how does it work when I try and send it back out to UTXO again? What is it change, output? So those kind of ideas are things that the UX should, you know, reveal to you in a gradual way, and allow you to kind of learn, and I think that that's a huge aspect

of what I'm trying to do here. A sort of private goal of mine is that Sparro becomes the tool in some kind of university, or online sort of course, that for me would be really great. I think there's a lot of potential for, you know, the kind of Bitcoin wallet to serve as the educational tool, and that for me is a big goal as I build.

- Yeah, that would be really cool. So that people can wrap their head around, like, what's really happening under the hood, but without being overfaced. - Yeah, that's it. - And is there any, well, not is there any reason, but like, what was your thinking for having this as a desktop rather than a web app?

Is there any sort of security reasons for doing that? Or what was what was the thinking there? - Yeah, so I mean, look, the first thing is, you know, if you're going to have your life savings in a wallet, right?

This is your cold storage wallet. You're going to use the most powerful device that you have. Now, I've got nothing against mobile phones, and I totally believe and agree that most of the world will access Bitcoin using a mobile phone because that's what they'll have, right?

So it's great, and we have great mobile phone wallets. But, you know, I'm trying to build a desktop wallet. That's my particular goal, because that's what I need. You know, I'm not going to interact with my cold storage on my phone.

That's just madness. So, you know, for me, that's the first thing. But then there's also a particular technical reason actually why a mobile phone isn't necessarily the greatest, right? So if you're trying to target a wide range of, say, Android devices, you need to target ones that have relatively low power.

And there's a key step in trying to encrypt a wallet, which is called the key derivation, which is where you take the password that somebody gives you, and you translate it into what is a key, which is a whole series of bits.

And if that process is done without too many iterations, if you will, then, you know, it's relatively easy for someone to come along with a really powerful computer and, in effect, brute force force that.

But if you are using your laptop, you can use sort of half a seconds worth of computing power and effectively get a key derivation, which is so hard to break that it's just, even if you were to put millions of dollars behind it, you would never break it.

And that's what Sparrow does. So, you know, if you're using the event, but if you like the vector and wallet, it runs on mobile phones. And as a result, it's forced to choose a key derivation algorithm that is relatively weak because it's just, you know, the thing will never complete if you are trying to use it on a phone.

But if you're using it on your desktop, then I can just tweak that sitting right up and make sure that that cold storage wallet just cannot be broken into. So, once that Sparrow wallet is sitting there on your hard drive, it doesn't matter if the FBI has access to that drive, I very much doubt that they can break it

because it's just sitting there with this extremely difficult-to-break setup part of the encryption phase at the front. - Okay, and so is that sort of similar to like 256-bit encryption or something like that where it's like similar to a Bitcoin private key where you basically just forget it, you're not gonna crack it,

is it a similar sort of thing? - Yeah, I mean, as I say, the process is really just about taking a password. And you should use a, if you use a password, which is like 30 characters long, you have an effect done the same thing, right?

But, you know, now you have to walk around and remember a password, which is 30 characters long. So, it's really about trying to take a, what is a human password generally 18, 12 characters long and translate that into a key, which is effectively, you know, adding this sort of additional information, if you will, that makes it much longer

and makes it into this 30 character password. And the algorithm that does that, they have different strengths. So, whether you can brute force it is really about how many times you can run that thing to get the same key.

And if you can get the same key, of course, then you can decrypt whatever wallet it is. - I've found when I use software on my laptop, I sometimes wonder, well, what if, obviously, if I was to leave my laptop open and then I have my ex-pubs in there so that I can view what's on my cold storage,

even though they might not be able to access it, it does concern me, well, then they could view it. Like, if there was an issue and sometimes, yeah, it got stolen or something like that, then obviously they'd be able to view it.

What would be your suggestion on that? Would you just say, well, password protect it? Don't leave the laptop open, have that encrypted or is there any other things that can be done to sort of get rid of that risk?

- Yeah, I mean, I think the main things are, you know, use a decent password on your wallet. As I say, Sparrow uses this very intense, you know, you'll see the little progress by the bottom that goes on and kind of it does this sort of work, which makes it that far very hard to crack.

And then once you, you know, when you're using the wallet, do whatever you're doing and then close the wallet, don't leave your cold storage wallet open. But all means have a day-to-day wallet, which you leave open and that's fine, you know, if you lose everything in it, you'll be bleak, but you won't be too upset.

But your cold storage wallet is really, should be accessed, you know, think like, you know, 10 to 20 times a year, you know, that's kind of the sort of order which I would think about it.

You shouldn't really need to get into it much more than that. And make sure that you just minimize the amount of time that you spend in it, you know, just that's the honesty, the best thing because once you decrypt that wallet, you know, Sparrow does its best to try and hide, hide everything and store things in funny, you know,

bikes and, you know, ultimately a good enough tool will always be able to figure it out because of the software that you're running can understand the wallet will soak in anything else. I think that the easiest way to defend against that is just to make sure that the wallet isn't open for a long period of time.

- Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And the other thing that I've heard discussed and I've not yet done is to have two different implementations running and then have your cold storage, have your ex-pubs on both.

So if you're doing PSBT, you can just shuffle across but you have both to just check and double check that when you are sending, that's always been a concern of mine is like, when I'm using this software or somehow someone had hacked and then replaced my address that I'm sending to or receiving to with their own,

then if I was running the two different bits of software, I could check against each other. Is there any sort of downside to doing that or do you have any thoughts around doing that? - I guess, you know, look, it is a good practice to do for sure.

The downsides could be that, you know, depending on the software that you're using, once you obviously have those ex-pubs out there, then, you know, somebody can see the balance that stands behind them.

Now, for example, if you're using Bitcoin Core as the backend, as Spectre desktop does, then, you know, that Bitcoin Core node, it stores those ex-pubs, all of those addresses in clear text.

So if that Bitcoin Core node, for example, is running on your laptop and somebody gets access to your laptop, it's very easy for them to get the addresses and from there to get the balance that you have.

So, you know, my kind of warning is just, you know, think about the kind of security implications of having multiple wallets open. If they are using good encryption, then great, you know, then it's absolutely the right thing to sort of do.

The other thing that I'll add to that is, you know, we have this wonderful tool which exists in Bitcoin called RDF, replaced by fee. And what it allows us to do when fee rates are a bit higher than they are today is send a transaction with just a really low fee rate that's not going to confirm the next block.

And we can then call up whoever it is that we're sending the Bitcoins to and say, well, did you see it? Is it sitting on your side? You know, are you able to see whether this transaction has come through to you, even though it hasn't confirmed yet?

And if it has, then you can be reasonably sure that you've got the right address. But what you can then do is then send an RDF, right? Then replace by fee. So increase the fee on the same transaction and it will then just go through and it will immediately replace the one with the lower fee and everything works fine.

And that's just an amazing tool that we have and I think is very underused. It just kind of gives us this ability to almost do sort of a test-net send, if you will, on a mainnet kind of transaction.

So that's something that I've built into the kind of fee rate slider in the sparrow wallet, just to be able to do this kind of try then replace fee choice. Yeah, it's pretty incredible that it's something that I haven't yet used, but from my understanding of it,

just it's kind of like having postage, you do the lowest postage as well, and then you could suddenly, if you want something to go through faster, you can then change it after posting it almost, which is pretty clever.

Yeah, that's it. And the most amazing thing is that, you know, we think of the Bitcoin network as, you know, not the fastest, you know, transactions confirm every 10 minutes, but the replace by fee is immediate.

You know, when you broadcast that replaced transaction, it will be replaced on the network within a second all over the world. I mean, it's just incredibly fast. So you get this kind of, this real live-ness to it, which is a unique thing.

And I just, I think it isn't used enough.

Yeah, very cool. I'm gonna have to have a play around with it. My plan was to download Sparrow and have a proper play around with it, but I'm moving house and things have just been fucking crazy.

And I just, I don't, I hate doing this sort of stuff under pressure and especially when there are funds at risk. So I've put it off, but it's, it's something that I really want to have a play with and go through all these guides and everything.

That's definitely something that I'll try. So is it, once I've got it set up, presumably, 'cause I'm currently running Spectre, presumably there's a way that I can export the wallets that I have attached to that and run it in parallel.

Is there some kind of feature I can do? Or will it be like from scratch, the same thing, like exporting from my cold card, shuffling it across and then adding those wallets on and then trying these features?

Or is there some sort of clever way that they can mirror each other? - No, actually there is a very easy way to do it. You can just use the, in the file menu, there's a wallet import, which pops up a little dialogue and you'll see the Spectre desktop option there.

And then you just, it's, you know, if you click on it, it gives you the kind of directions on where you get the expert file from the Spectre wallet and you just bring that file in and it will, it should just work, you know, everything, your wallet should pop up in the sparrow, sparrow, and it should download everything

and it should just work from there. - Very slick. Can you just put that on like a USB or micro SD or something, do you? - Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you need to transfer it from one sort of computer to another, it should be a very small file.

In fact, I actually saw that just a few hours ago, there was an improvement to Spectre's export file, which is gonna make this even better. So I'm glad to say that, yeah, I think from now your labels and things actually get transferred as well and in terms of what you've called your various and hardware wallets.

- Ah, that's really cool. And will that do that for the UTXOs as well, for the management side, like I'll be able to see, I'll receive from or, you know, whatever. - Unfortunately, no, that's something which isn't in the Spectre export file right now.

You can get that if you have an electrum wallet, then the labels do get transferred across into sparrow. But unfortunately, the Spectre export file is really just a description of the wallet itself.

It's not really the labels on the transact sections and those kind of details. - Okay, so that would be a manual thing that we'd have to do. - Yeah, I'm afraid so for now, yeah. - Okay, is it possible though, like it's a thing that could be done, it's just not yet done?

- Yes, for sure, it can absolutely be done. As I say, I think we're just kind of all working away at trying to make these things easier. What we don't have is a standard format for being able to transfer labels across the sort of electrum wallet file is probably the closest to that than I've ever seen.

And it certainly by no means a standard way of doing things. In fact, I'm always finding new ways in which the electrum stores labels and odd places that I wouldn't have considered in its wallet file that would now reach the point where I think I'm getting all of the labels when you import your electrum wallet into a spare spare

and I think all of the label labels now come across. - That's cool. And so with all this stuff that you're doing and constantly improving, do you get time to do things outside of Bitcoin?

You're obviously in such a beautiful country that's surfing, there's wildlife, there's all sorts going on. You finally, you're sort of glued to the computer all the time or do you have other hobbies outside of Bitcoin?

- Yeah, I mean, look, to be honest, I do spend a bit too much time on it. I'm not on bike as well and I can't. - What about now? - Yes. - Am I coming through? - Whoa. - There we are. (laughing) - That's fantastic. - Ah.

I was pulling my hair out there. I was thinking, what is going on? I thought I'd try everything, but yeah, thanks for joining me again today. And I'm so sorry about the last time and today, I don't know what the hell is going on, but-- - Yeah, I think it was a Zen caster issue that that's my guess anyway.

- Yeah, it seems like here, I might have to try something different going forward, but yeah, it's never been quite that bad. But yeah, I can't remember where we left off yesterday. I think we were talking about mountain biking and what you were doing outside of Bitcoin a little bit, but I think we lost all of that audio.

I had the other hour. So do you get a lot of time still with everything that you're doing in Bitcoin? I can imagine it's incredibly busy working on a project like this. And am I right in thinking it's just you working on it or do you have anyone else working with you?

- It's pretty much just me. So I do get a bit of help from time to time, people drop in and sort of add a PR or help me clean up issues, which is great. And I certainly appreciate all of that.

But for the most part, Sparrow is a solo effort at this point. And you know, that has sort of its pros and cons, you know, obviously on the sort of downside maybe, there's just more on one sort of person.

But on the plus side, you get this sort of, this real control of making a product which is cohesive in terms of the UX and also cohesive in terms of the code that sort of underlies it. And I think that with open source, it can be that if you get a bunch of people who are kind of just working on whatever they want to work on,

it can get quite difficult to maintain that sort of cohesiveness over time. And I think a few open source devs I've heard have mentioned this. So yeah, so I mean, it's got its pros and cons and I don't think that necessarily it'll be that way forever, but that's the way it is for now.

- Yeah, I can imagine that if you have a sort of vision of what you want and it can get a little bit more messy, but does it get sort of, do you ever feel like it's the lonely existence doing that and working alone all the time?

Or do you enjoy doing a project by yourself? - Yeah, I mean, I think a bit of both, to be honest. There are definitely times when it feels like you just wish you could balance ideas of people and kind of just like, am I thinking about this right?

Those kind of moments do happen and there are a few people I can reach out to. But yeah, it is pretty lonely at times. I won't say it isn't. It would be great if we could travel more right to, I think, you know, where the world is.

It's just, you know, I would have loved to go to the Bitcoin conference and I mean, I'm sure you would have to, but I mean, you know, you just can't right. So those things will come. So, you know, I'm just going to have to be patient.

- Yeah, what happened? The idea of that just sounded so good, though. So many Bitcoiners all meeting together and having some drinks. And yeah, I can't think of anything better because a lot of the time we're all, I mean, all doing different things, some of them more useful than others, but, you know, we're all basically

behind a computer talking, talking, but not seeing each other. And it's so different being in person with a Bitcoiner. I really, really look forward to a time when that can happen. - Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, hopefully soon.

- And any future plans for Sparrow? Anything that's sort of in the works that you might be able to share or anything that you are dreaming up that might be a while away, but you'd really like to add in?

- Yeah, I mean, you know, there's quite a few things that are kind of on the horizon, but I'm quite careful with trying to plan too far in advance, something that I've just put in now, which hasn't been released yet, is kind of persisting your wallet as a database rather than just as a file.

And that's been quite a big sort of internal change that's taken quite a long time, but it's gonna enable many other things to kind of be built on it. So, you know, you can't, for example, have a lightning wallet which, you know, writes to this file and you have to rewrite the file every time you get a new, you know, transaction to it.

And if you're getting many of them in a short space of time, that's not gonna work. So, at other databases, kind of a requirement for that kind of thing. And then there are other nice, you know, nice to haves that you can put in like sort of multiple accounts in one database.

And I'm thinking about those and trying to decide the right way to do it, because I think it's important to maintain the simplicity of the wallet at the same time. You don't wanna just keep on adding features.

And then in the end, it just gets too hard to use. So, I think it's, you know, I would like to take my time and just kind of think about it. For me, the most important thing is that it remains an easy to use wallet that allows Bitcoin is to really understand what's going on.

And that's the goal. And hopefully it won't add features that detract from that goal. So, yeah, beyond that, it's difficult to say, you know, I think it's been quite a long journey to where we are today.

And I think the wallet is well rounded in terms of what it can do. So, I'm kind of almost taking a bit of a step back just to kind of survey and see what does the world need? What is sort of next at this time?

- And when you're making these decisions, would you say that generally it's, right, what do I want? What do I see missing and I want to improve on? Or would you say like a lot of it is use a feedback?

How do you decide what you're going to go to next? - Yeah, I mean, I think user feedback has certainly been the driving force for the last, you know, six months or so. And it's been great, you know, I've just had an amazing amount of feedback saying, you know, can you add this, what about this?

And, you know, I think to quite a large extent is actually around being kind of reaching feature parity with the electric spectrum wallet, which I would say Sparrow is the closest to in terms of the functions that it has.

And, you know, people kind of wanting to move across have asked for this and that that they are used to using. So, it's certainly been a lot of user feedback that's driven things. But, you know, one also has to look to the future and kind of see what is the next wave of Bitcoin going to require.

You know, is it time to build layer two in? Should I be focusing on tap root now? You know, those are the kind of thoughts that I'm having. So, yeah. And I always just love to hear what people want.

You know, that's always interesting. - Oh, I've got one for you then, as you've just said it. One bit, 47. - Yeah, so I'm really glad that you asked that because it's been something I've put a lot of time into doing research on.

I was actually doing research on it again today. And in fact, I was listening to rabbit hole recap earlier and they were talking about it. And, you know, it's just this thing which everyone wonders why don't more wallets have it.

And, you know, I don't prefer to be an expert in it. But I have spent some time looking at the spec and trying to understand what's going on. It's really difficult to build it into wallets in the sense that it's quite a different setup than most wallets have.

You know, most wallets have this very well-defined kind of hierarchy where you have your master private key and you just derive your sort of chain. And that 47 just follows a completely, not a completely, but certainly a somewhat different set of rules.

And you have these, what are called, if ephemeral keys that you then build out. And you develop this kind of a dress book, if you will. So that's just a very different thing. And trying to build that into Sparrow's UI where my goal will always be to display everything to the user, right?

So I'm not just going to show you a balance and a list of transactions that build up that balance. I'm always going to say, well, you know, what are the UTXOs and allow you to kind of drill into it.

So having such a different setup, particularly for a wallet like I have here is just a very different thing. And it's quite a challenge to look at that and to say, well, how are we going to build that in?

So that's one of the concerns. The other one that, and this is actually something that I need to confirm, but you know, if you're looking at where the 47 spec is going, it's moving beyond kind of the kind of where it's been for the last, you know, five or six years and moving into what is called version three.

And it looks like the sort of address-based indexes, for example, Bitcoin Core uses an address-based index and Electrum Server also does, but it looks like version three is not going to be supportable with an address-based index, right?

So now we have a whole problem on the server side, you know, that I can't necessarily solve. So I might be wrong about these things, or at least about that last point, and I'm actually asking about it now, but it is a question of, you know, if it's going to be this hard for me to build it in,

then it's going to be this hard for everyone else to build, and what is the adoption rate going to look like? Because it's no point in, you know, one or two wallets having it. If we don't have general broad use, then it's just not ever going to make much of an impact.

And, you know, under those conditions, it would be better if I went and spent my efforts elsewhere, right? So those are concerns that I have. You know, there is, I think, real reasons why there has been such poor adoption of it to date, and I don't think it's all about the fact that the Bitcoin Core devs decided

that it wasn't a good thing to have. That's often touted as the reason. I don't think that that actually is the cause. I think that most wallets would like the kind of user praise and the user adoption, that building Bitcoin, you know, building for 47 in would have.

The reality is that it's just a long walk to get to that point. And if a lot of other wallets don't do it, then you're going to build it, and no one's really going to use it much. So that's kind of my long spiel about it.

As I say, it's still something that I'm interested in. It's still something I'm looking at, but I do have some concerns because I don't want to go and spend time building things into Sparro Sparro that are just not useful to most users.

- That's interesting. Obviously from a non-dev, non-techy person, it's like, to me, I'm like, oh, it seems like a cool thing. It's something that would be nice, but now that you've explained it that way, I would sort of wondering off the top of my head, maybe there's a way that multiple wallets can work together

to create something that could be implemented, or is that something that, because they're all so specific and built differently, that it's almost like you couldn't have a standard and a way that it could be implemented across all of them.

- Look, I mean, you can do it. I think that if we're looking at the version one, which has been up for many years, that's something that most wallets can build. It would, I think it's quite a bit of work.

It's certainly not a simple feature to add, but then if you stuck with version one, you stuck with the old-style addresses that begin with a one, right, which are not the most fee-efficient way to do it.

Now, version three moves on to the new VC1 addresses, but as I say, then if my reading of the spec is correct, we are unable to migrate easily to all the Electrum-based wallets and all the Bitcoin core-based wallets, and that's a lot of wallets, right?

So now you have basically everyone kind of stuck going back to the old tech of the addresses that start with the one, and that just doesn't seem great to me. That doesn't seem like we're moving forward.

So, you know, these are things that need to be talked about, and maybe there are answers, but it's not a slam dunk to get this thing done. - And you mentioned Taproot earlier, is that one of the main things that's exciting, you're going forward, or is there anything else that's developing at the moment that you've really got your eye on

that, yeah, there's exciting you right now? - Yeah, so I mean, I'm certainly very excited about what Taproot can bring. You know, one of the goals that I had when I first began this thing was not just to have, you know, multi-sig as the only kind of script type that you could have, right?

That you would be able to build your own custom ones. Like for example, you decide that, you know, you want to give your kids some Bitcoin, but you don't want to have them to have it and it's all to a certain time, right?

So you want to kind of time-block things, things, things. And now you can do that in Sparrow today, but the creation of kind of relative time-locks and those sort of things, which are powerful features that the Bitcoin protocol supports are not generally in wallets.

And they're not in wallets because it's quite difficult to build a consistent UI around those sort of ideas. So, you know, it's kind of been left as this kind of to-be-solve thing. And Taproot just allows us to build, you know, so much in that sort of sphere.

So, I'm excited to kind of try and get back into that and try and understand how can we solve that and how can we find script types that go beyond multi-sig because multi-sig is really just one, you know, Bitcoin script itself allows you to create all kinds of things.

And it just feels like we don't use that enough. - Yeah, that'd be so cool. I've spoken to a few people about this and every time I talk about time-locks, I'm like, "Oh, you know, I think it'd be a good idea for me to do a time-lock."

Like, it would be an idea for someone who wants to hold for, you know, 10, 20, 30 years or for their children or grandchildren. But everyone's always said, "Oh, don't be so stupid, that's a stupid idea.

It's dangerous, don't do that. What if you suddenly need it? Like, don't do that." But it's always appealed to me because I genuinely don't want to move them. Like, I genuinely, this is my pension or for children.

So it's something that's always appealed. But yeah, I've never seen sort of the ability to do it in any wallet software or it really be talked about by too many people. Is that literally just because currently it is too difficult to use or there is some risk of loss or not ever being it

that it doesn't actually ever come out of that time-lock? - So you can actually do a time-lock in Sparrow today and probably in other wallets too. You basically, there's a field called Absolute Time-Lock, which is there whenever you sign the transaction, it's a little bit higher up.

And you can set that to be either a time or set that to be a certain block height. And then your transaction just isn't valid until that time. In fact, I think you can't actually post it.

So you can do it today. But what Taproot allows us to do is to construct these script parts that say, listen, it's fine if this guy with this private key comes along and signs signs that that's okay.

But if he isn't around or he doesn't do it for whatever reason, let's have a time-lock so that there's an alternative part that allows us to spend these coins with a different private key after a certain period of time.

And that's a very cool thing to have because it kind of takes that you can kind of now introduce this variability into things. So I think time-locks themselves can be done today and I think it's an interesting use case.

But I think you can actually de-risk it and you can certainly introduce a lot more use cases if you start to introduce these kind of additional options to it. So that's, I guess, what I'm kind of moving towards in terms of thinking about how can we adopt and use Taproot in interesting ways.

- Yeah, 'cause it seems like it would be brilliant. We were talking about someone coming $5 wrench and you have the multi-sec, you're so much more protected than you would be otherwise. But I suppose if you had something that was time-locked and provably time-locked, just like worst case scenario

in my head is that you have this multi-sec setup, someone comes and they batter the shit out of you and torture you until even if you are telling the truth and you literally cannot send Bitcoin to them, if you had some sort of provable way, like, look, it's time-locked, there's nothing gonna happen for 10 years,

like there is nothing that I can do to allow you to have these coins. I wonder whether that might be something that could really help people in the future because I guess the thing is everyone's gonna tell a thief that actually, no, I can't access it, but whether they believe that is another thing, isn't it?

- Yeah, I mean, one thought that I've had is what if you split your overall Bitcoin stash up and to say 10 blocks and then you time-locked them for different periods of time, right? So you had some that weren't time-locked in case you really needed the cash and then some that you just couldn't access.

So there are different sort of ways to do it, I think, that are interesting. And certainly you're right, you know, if you get here and you say, listen, it's in a time-lock, there really isn't anything anyone can do, it's just literally you have to wait until that time.

So yeah, so I think that there-- - See you in 10 years. - Yeah, I'll be back. - We're sure. - Well, that'd be interesting to see that develop. And I know these things take some time, but it's just great to have more options all the time and to create more and more difficult, sort of elaborate ways of protecting yourself

because it's gonna be so important going forward. Like I said to you in the first part of the episode, as 21ism, there's six of us involved, we're all in different parts of the world, we're looking to set this thing up.

Is there some risk in us setting something up when we can't sit with each other? Because if we were all to run, for example, if we were running Sparrow and we all have different hardware wallets and we set one of these things up, are we having to share information between one another that could be intercepted and we could be hacked?

Or is there like a, is that just a non-issue that I'm making up in my head? 'Cause it's, as someone who hasn't set it up and none of us have, we're all like, this is something that we wanna do, it's important just so that we don't actually mug each other off because we've never even met in real life.

But at the same time, we don't wanna have lots of funds. So I was wondering like, are we over-complicating things in our head, or is that a real concern? - Look, I wouldn't necessarily say it's a good reason to delay doing it, because I think so long as you're using relatively secure channels and maybe two of them,

then there is a chance that information can be attacked with a sort of man-in-the-middle attack, as you say. So you will be sharing your ex-pipe information around so you can all reconstruct the multi-sig wallet.

I would be remiss at this point not to mention the recently approved or published book 129, which is really designed for this exact reason, right? So what it does is it kind of, you have this shared secret word between the six of you, and it's basically this encrypted file that gets transferred around,

and then you decrypt it with this word, and that allows you to then build up the multi-sig over time. So it's really has been designed for this exact use case. But that's not something that I think is really usable today.

It might be, but I'm not sure that any wallets have actually built it in yet. So I think it's really just comes down to making sure that you have multiple communication channels open when you share the information, and obviously then you cross check it against those and just make sure that it's the sort of same.

So that's the way that I would do it today. - And maybe use something like PGP or something like that just to be secure rather than just doing it on Telegram or something like that. - Sure, yes, for sure.

- Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, we will be giving that a go then. And any other sort of tips, because my thought is we're not gonna be the only people and certainly going forward. There's this new kind of almost like Nim economy and Bitcoin as a meeting online and building projects and working together.

And I feel like this is gonna become more and more important because you need to have quite often some funds that are either coming in from donations or that need to go out to purchase equipment or whatever else is that you need.

And then there's also always that worry that you have someone in the group who's gonna try and rip the others off or something goes wrong. So I can only see this growing and becoming more and more necessary.

So are there any tips for anyone listening who might be involved in something like that and thinking, right, I need to set this up and I don't wanna make a mistake? - Sure, so I mean, I guess the easiest way to do it is to have one of the group kind of gather all of the information and then set the whole thing up

and then share the kind of up with the descriptor or the kind of description of the wallet with everyone, right? And then the standard advice of test your, test a small amount into the wallet and then being able to send up from the wallet first, right?

So then just make sure that everybody sees the same thing. Everybody can sign, everybody has that kind of experience with the wallet before you commit any really, you know, real amount to it.

That's I think the main kind of thing. As I say, I've done this before in a remote way and it's worked well. It's really not that hard. It's particularly easy, of course, if everyone's, for example, using a cold cloud, then it's, you know, the same format

and, you know, the whole thing just kind of is quite smooth. If you're using QR codes, I could see that it would become a bit more tricky. It could still be done, but it might involve, you know, holding up phones to screens and things.

But, you know, I guess, yeah, it just kind of depends on what hardware wallets are in play. And in time, hopefully we'll all have this but one to nine, which will make it easier. - Yeah, it's interesting you say, like, do we all have cold cards?

I think actually we all do. But what we discussed earlier was, you know, this idea of having different hardware wallet manufacturers or home-built ones, DIY builds, just so that you have that a little bit less worry in case Rodolfo goes rogue and none of us know, you know.

- Yeah. - Would there be other hardware wallets that would have the same standard so that it would work in the same way, but they're not all cold card, if that makes sense? - Yeah, so I mean, you can pretty much use, I think Ledger is not great with North East Egg, but they don't send hardware wallets to dev, so I don't own one.

So I can't actually really say all that much about it. But that's one that I'm not too sure of. However, you know, if you're looking at a Trezil, Trezil doesn't save the multi-sig wallet to the actual device, so it can't really check the addresses or anything.

So it's not so great in that point of view, but certainly it can be used. I would say the keystone, which is a new one, that's just, you know, the cobra vault guides have kind of left that firm and created what is a keystone.

I actually have one here. It's a really great little device that I think is a very good option. And the awesome, you know, there's just these two really great DIY ones, the Spectre and the Seed Signer, both of which I think are good options as well.

So, you know, there's probably more as well. I'm going to miss a few art. I'm just checking my desk here to see what else I have. - Past school, you tried that one, yeah? - So that's in the mail, very keen to try it, but can't really say too much about it yet, but yeah, that's certainly one of the newer ones

that's looking like it has decent support. - Interesting, and do you have a favorite hardware wallet? - You know, my favorite might not be everyone else's favorite. You know, I quite like my little old Trezil one, just because it's pretty fast.

And, you know, I need to sign many, many, many, you know, things a day. So, you know, whereas I'm actually using an old mark to cold card sometimes, which is a bit slower. So it just varies, you know.

I think in terms of a cold storage wallet, I think the cold card's still pretty hard to beat. No QR codes really are great from a user, you know, point of view, they just make life easy. However, the one nice thing about using an SD card is that you can, for example, go to your bank bolts

with only your little power pack and your cold card and you can sign there, right? You don't need to take a computer, you don't need to take anything else. I think that that's quite a nice little ability to sort of have.

And that's, you know, in terms of the kind of, you know, that's, I don't know, that's just one of the little areas that I quite like of it. But, you know, ultimately, I think, you know, the best way to go is, as we've said, with multi-vendor, multi-sig.

That's the, you know, try not to become wedded to any one hardware wallet, try to use a few because your security will be that much better if you do. - Yeah, definitely. We can sort of, because people say, oh, well, let's open source software and you're using something like a cold card and everyone's reviewing it.

And that is true. But then there is still that element of trust, you know, someone like me who can't actually review the code. I mean, I could go and have a look at it, but it wouldn't mean much to me.

I am trusting others. I am trusting that other people's eyes have gone across here and that everything's okay. And like you say, once you have these other hardware manufacturers involved as well, it just becomes so much less likely that you're gonna have an issue.

No matter how much I like the cold card and like Rodolfo, you know, you just never, never know. And when you're talking about these things, you just wanna be as safe as possible. So yeah, that's where this multi-sick stuff just really.

I mean, do you think that when this becomes accessible, really accessible to the average person, which doesn't feel like it's a million miles off, to be honest, do you think that there'll be any legitimate reason to have single-sick?

- Oh, yes. I mean, I think certainly if you have a fairly small amount, you know, you don't wanna have to go and run around and sign with three different wallets just to, you know, get your kind of payment made.

But I think for cold storage, you know, I think it will certainly get to the point where, you know, if you are saving your kind of family's wealth or your life earnings in it and you're not using multi-sick, you know, it'll be, well, why?

You know, why are you so sure that you're not gonna have any issues? Yeah, I just, you know, for me, it's just the sort of peace of mind that it brings for relatively little additional cost and sort of effort is just huge.

You know, it's just a really fantastic thing to have just to know that the chances of anyone doing anything are basically so low that you don't need to worry about it. Hmm. Okay, well, look, Craig, thank you so much for joining me the last couple of days.

And like I said to you before, I really do apologize for all the technical issues we've had. I really enjoyed getting to know you a little bit. And as I say, I'm really looking forward to setting something up and getting something set up for 21ism.

After we got off the call yesterday, I did just have one more question that I put on my list, which was after you'd said how you had started with Bitcoin and having that adversarial mindset.

I wondered if there's anything now that you're looking out at and it could be technical or it could be social. Is there anything that worries you about Bitcoin at the moment? Is there anything that you're looking at and just keeping a marker there and it concerns you slightly?

Or are you fairly comfortable with the way that things are going? Yeah, I mean, the thing that really worries me the most is that we won't get enough people to self custody their own Bitcoin.

That just worries me much more than a ban, to be honest, because if we have too many banks and large players holding Bitcoin, then the risk for them to re-hypoticate it just drops. They'll always be risk, right?

They can't print it, but the risk certainly drops if 95% of people are not holding it themselves. And if they just regard the chance of a bank run to be pretty low, and then they're just going to say, right, well, we'll just invent something, right?

As they do with fiat today. And if they start doing that, it is going to affect how scarce it is and it is going to affect ultimately Bitcoin's impact on the world and whether it can actually be what it was meant to be.

So I really worry about that. That's for me part of the mission of what I'm on, is just to make self custody really easy. But I think that if we don't watch out and we don't spend the time trying to educate people on why you need to take your coins off the exchange, why holding them in an EFT or a bank or whatever it is

is a bad idea, then I think we might very well end up in a place where, as I say, the risk of re-harpification is just too low and we might end up actually seeing it, which they're going to try, right?

They're going to try and do it. But what we hope and what we believe is that they're going to come short when they do it, right? And that needs to actually happen. So I look forward to the day when there is a major kind of institutionalization that is caught with it passed, passed down.

I think that that's an important lesson that the world needs to learn. And somebody's going to have to pay it, right? But it's never going to happen unless we have enough people who are out there and saying, I need to hold my own keys.

It's such a good point. It's one of my concerns as well. And the only thing that I can say that sort of makes me sleep a bit sounder is that if they do try and re-hypothecate, which they will because they're greedy stupid bastards, but if they do that and then we have almost like a bifurcation of this network,

do you not think that anyone with half a brain would say, prove that you have it, send it to me? Like, if someone's just saying, oh, we hold this balance and here's a number on a screen, the people who do hold their keys will just not almost interact with that separate system whatsoever.

And then when it all eventually would come crumbling down when, like you say, someone gets caught with their pants down and it may have some sort of cascading effect where people actually start checking or actually start trying to withdraw, then it would be a complete disaster for that system,

but everybody else who actually hold their keys and actually use it properly would be fine. And then it would sort itself out or do you think that it would cause so many issues in terms of people who would then say, oh, well, you know, we don't trust Bitcoin anymore and it would take a long time for people to gain trust again.

- Yeah, I think it's hard to know which way of those two, it would go, you know, if, as I say, I mean, if you, as I'm sure you've kind of experienced when you try and onboard people and you say, well, you need to take your coins off the exchange, they kind of, you know, they're kind of looking at trends saying, well, why, you know,

you have to try and explain to them. But, you know, people have become so used to the fact that, you know, you don't hold your own money yourself, you know, and taking that responsibility on is obviously a sort of a line that we will cross, but requires some degree of courage, I guess.

- So, you know, are we going to convince enough people, I think is ultimately gets what's gonna decide which way of those two things. I mean, if less than 5% of people in, of Bitcoin is, you know, people who hold Bitcoin in some 10 to 20 years from now are actually holding the keys themselves,

then that's probably not an economic significant, you know, portion to actually create any kind of issue. And then, you know, things will just go on and they'll kind of print it in, you know, at least say that they have more than they have.

So, you know, it's largely gonna come down to how much real use it gets, you know, how much we actually use the tools that we are given versus just regarding this thing as a unit of account, right?

We need to actually hold it and interact with it and use the protocol. That's, I think, very important. - Absolutely, I completely agree. And on behalf of 21ism, I would like to say, thank you so much for what you're doing, and making this dream of self custody for the masses of reality.

It really is appreciated. It all goes very much above my head, but I understand what you are doing, even if I don't understand how you are doing it. And, yeah, just massive respect for what you're putting out and the time that you're taking to do this.

And I really hope that at some point, we are allowed to travel. We can see each other for a beer or a whiskey. And, yeah, just massive respect. And thank you so much for what you're doing.

I really look forward to having a play with the software and setting us all up on it. - Great stuff, Max. Yeah, if you have any issues, please let me know. And thank you for all that you do, you know?

I've certainly spent some time now on the site and listened to the part, so it's been good just to kind of see the life that you shine on many of the different projects out there and people that are busy on them.

So, yeah. - Thank you very much. - Really, correct, yeah. - Thank you very much, Paul. - Yeah, as I say, I hope we meet soon and keep doing what you're doing. And, yeah, massive respect. We'll speak soon, I'm sure.

- Excellent. Cheers, take care, Craig. - Cheers, Max. (upbeat music)

♪ You can go walk too well ♪ ♪ It don't come anything ♪ ♪ The chains of the world ♪ ♪ They seem to move in tight ♪ ♪ I try to walk around ♪ ♪ In the stumbling ♪ ♪ So don't feel the air ♪ ♪ Try not to get up ♪

♪ But the doubt is so strong ♪ ♪ I've got a feeling in my bones ♪ ♪ I'm looking for freedom ♪ ♪ Looking for freedom ♪ ♪ And the fun that comes the average thing I have ♪ ♪ Well, I'm looking for freedom ♪

♪ I'm looking for freedom ♪ ♪ And the fun that makes me take everything I have ♪ ♪ Oh, not giving up has always been on ♪ ♪ So hard ♪ ♪ But in fact, you'll say ♪ ♪ These ways are a good part ♪ ♪ Mm, my passion been very kind ♪

♪ To me lately ♪ ♪ Well ♪ ♪ But I suppose it's a bush for moving on ♪ ♪ And time, the sun's gonna shine ♪ ♪ On me nicely ♪ ♪ One day, yeah ♪ ♪ Sun tells me good things are coming ♪

♪ And I ain't gonna not believe ♪ ♪ I am looking for freedom ♪ ♪ And the fun that comes the average thing I have ♪ ♪ Well, I'm looking for freedom ♪

♪ And the fun that makes me take everything I have ♪

- Mm.