EP32 Bitcoin podcast with Openoms.

Welcome back everyone. Today I speak with Open Arms. For anyone who already follows him on Twitter you will know that he cares deeply about privacy and freedom. I thought it'd be great to get him on. I'm trying my very best to improve my privacy but to be honest with you I don't find it that easy. There's some

amazing resources out there and Open Arms is one of them. So for anyone who's looking to improve their privacy this is definitely a good one for you to listen through. We talk about join market, we talk about samurai and we get a little bit into the weeds on how the average person can improve their privacy and

the best ways to purchase Bitcoin. Now in an ideal world you would either mine it so that you have clean coins or you would buy from friends or families so there's no KYC. This is great in theory but it's not always the easiest thing.

If you are going to use a KYC exchange you better make sure that it's a good one. You are trusting these people with not only your funds but all your private information. There's only one exchange that I recommend to friends and family and that's coin floor. They have kindly sponsored the show but that's not the

only reason that I recommend them. I have done a recent episode with OB the CEO of coin floor. If you haven't already listened to that have a listen and by the end of it I'm pretty sure you will feel more than comfortable with them. Thanks again to OB and coin floor and thank you to Open Arms for recording with me

today. As always anyone who has any questions just reach out and ask me. I hope you enjoy the show. Okay so Open Arms thank you for joining me and welcome to the show. I've been looking through some of your Twitter posts and some of the things you've been doing. It looks very very interesting. Most of it goes well above my head but I

hope today you can talk a little bit about join market and some of the other privacy tools that you are working with and how it can help Bitcoiners get some privacy back. So if you could just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you're doing in the Bitcoin space please. Okay so hello Max

thanks for the invite. So I go by the pseudonym Open Arms and I've been around in the well on the Twitter space which was like the beginning of 2018. I think I was just lurking around before and you know it takes some time to kind of find this community. I'm not like going back very very far in in terms of Bitcoin I fear

first heard about it in 2013 but mainly looked up how could I get it and then it was technically very interesting but as I found out that I need to do like an international money transfer to Japan or like the US and things that it and so that was kind of you know wasn't comfortable enough with that and then

kind of looked into mining and then just seen that all the new generations of ASICs are coming in and then they are being deprecated in like half a year by the time you get them and so on. So basically they just put that in on the side and then again got interested in the mining aspect when the actual GPU

miners got kind of very popular in the kind of beginning first half of 2017 but this was but it was a good learning course because got me kind of looking to various alternative solutions to Bitcoin first which then I quite quickly

realized that you know what is the thing we are in here for but the miners actually you know they generate other things so it's kind of you know as the new come up comes in into the space you know it said there is this confusion you need to clear it up and it does I cannot say it was a waste of time but

you know kind of looks through the top 10 by market cap you know and then kind of realized that you know what is what is each and everyone is missing but from Bitcoin which is you know the only thing which has a chance to stand SMME yes and you know change the world in terms of taking over the central

banking system and be a worthy of currency and then I mean you know there goes the heavy toll as everyone says because it's just has so many aspects that you know you cannot be there's like everywhere you see everywhere you start to look is just infinite in terms of sources and discussions and kind of

approaches so so this cycle came into it and then you know once that's why kind of tell people to do as well that once you are in to the Bitcoin ecosystem in terms of owning some then I think that's probably during this like kind of time and day and price level is probably best to do before you would know much because

otherwise there is there is no such a point that you know enough so and then with the next thing is a self custody which is the special thing in Bitcoin that you can do that because anything else you won't let it be I mean you can own cash but that doesn't hold its value because it's not scarce so it's

doesn't really fulfill the money properties and you can maybe hold property but that again it's just a decree by by your government so I mean I'm not into gold at all and that's not any kind of practical so basically you can take these keys and just put them on the hardware wallet or or it doesn't

even need to be it could be just a dedicated kind of machine and then you get to research which wallet should I use and then the very quickly coming to the next level well at least that's how it was to start to run a node which is now everyone thinks that now you need to buy this and that to to do that but

actually now you just need to download Bitcoin core onto your laptop let it be let it run any kind of operating system and then you leave it to sync it takes with a good machine it takes only a couple of hours and you can prove it so it only takes a couple of gigabytes and there you have a Bitcoin node which you

can verify that you own Bitcoin and also you can verify the wall supply so you can make sure that there is only like 18 something million so far and there will be only I mean never more than 21 million or little less than that so and that is interesting and then so was running Windows at the time and then

looked into this wonderful tutorial of of Stadikus which is about the rest people which is running a Bitcoin node and a lighting node and Raspberry Pi the lighting at this stage just went basically mainnet so quite reckless so built this thing on Raspberry Pi 3 and I managed to lose some set of issues as

well because there is no proper backup and stuff like that just been changed since but you know learned a lot that learned a lot about hardware but during that and then started contributing to the Raspberry Blades project which is another kind of software package helping people to run their node mainly on the

Raspberry Pi but on other things as well and then I just picked up basically all the working components we were done implementing things like an electron server and then you know a lot of tools connected to lightning and then recently been working the most each one market which has been very interesting

did you have a background working with hardware or was that your first time releasing buildings no I mean I was like a tinkerer from you know young Gage since I got a computer I've kind of enjoyed building like a gaming rig which was a long long time ago but then always like you know installed my own

operating systems and and repaired my hardware you know changed hard drives SSDs things like that but then I didn't go with any so that's what I was very interested in it so I was like looking at when about to go to university I was almost kind of you know engaged to its computer science but wasn't but always

had this interest but then when I got interested in Bitcoin and I'm also seeing that I can control the whole thing from you know the actually use interface to down to the running code on the on the metal I was just you know it was so interesting it's felt so powerful that I needed to learn it so

I went to kind of looking into resources and ended up in a video boot camp of Justin which was yeah which was I mean it was fantastic it was a very lively kind of community had managed to have a lot of get a lot of friends there as well I mean you know we had the opportunities to meet physically like

conferences and that introduced me to the programming as well and mainly based on like Python but then I was more interested in or turned out to work more with like bash scripts which is like the Linux language but then I was so you know it's it's a learning process so I'm not very quick with it but I like to

get to know you know as many things as possible mostly interested in like you know the actual Linux environment and then Python things like Rust and things so it is just it's kind of a hobby of mine I have like a humble fiat job which I do you know do in my in full time but then when I have time I contribute to

this project it's and the tutorials you see and all the kind of contributions it's it's my way of learning I just kind of try to organize and write down what I know and then you know if I come back to it a year later I can do it again very easy and also I can tell people how to do it and since it is up on GitHub

you know anyone can benefit and it's great because also I have feedback on it so people do you know come and say that you could do better so why not and then you know that it's just this community you know it's very supportive to each other once you once you have a good intention then it's just you know

most of the people are contributing in a free time or doing what's just they want to do is not about trying to answer to a boss or making money really I mean interestingly it is well we are dealing with money but lots of people do it for free yeah definitely it's it's a lot of time you have to

invest in in doing all of this sort of stuff and education and certainly time wise you're you'd be better off doing it and like you say a normal fiat job but it's just so interesting that we get dragged in and once you're in I think I don't know anyone who's got so involved and so excited and then just gone I'm

not bothered anymore and walked away I've never seen that I think once it grabbed you you you're done yes yes usually that's what I see as well that the big opposites oppositions you know are usually broken when someone knows more about it and it's very difficult to not get sucked in I mean it's not I

mean it's not an aim of mine to to stay away right it is the opposite so yeah it's very fulfilling you know it leads to being in the company of very kind of clever and you know people who do contributes you feel that they contribute to the betterment of the world and you know society civilization of which we

are living in which are big words but you know that's how I feel I completely agree with you and it seems that you've sort of been dragged very much down this privacy from what I can see privacy seems to be very very important and it's something that I'm trying to work on myself like before Bitcoin I just didn't

even think about it to be honest like I just in my normal like physical world yeah cash I didn't sort of deal with too many people I would keep myself to myself I was private in that respect but when it came to using the internet or technology I had no idea so is that something that you always cared about

or is it something that once you've got into Bitcoin you've realized how important it is well you know I come from background which is where my kind of family or like kind of grandparents have seen you know much more difficult times where they were actually the state sees in their assets people were

taken just because of hearsay and you know got arrested and you know things like that which are not which have which weren't reality in in like most of the western countries in the past kind of you know after the word war really there wasn't such things so people like our age wasn't experiencing this unless they

were like living in Eastern Europe where I'm from or you know or other other areas where things are not stable so I have kind of an affinity towards these things that you would should be very cautious with authority and how power is building up in a centralized fashion so that's something which you know I was

very glad to find something which kind of keeps this in check which is which is Bitcoin itself and like this the touching separating the money from the state which gives it its power which then it abuses you know unavoidable but

that's kind of a kind of a global holistic view of the thing but from the terms of Bitcoin privacy you just realize if you learn enough that it is very different from from the fiat money so if you use fiat cash that is mostly fungible basically we can say it's perfectly fungible but from it has some

numbers written on it coins don't even have that right you get a bag of money and well if you comply with the you know capital control rules of your country then you can do whatever you want no one will ask that money is from since you have it and it's about it be a coin right so this the difference is that on the

Bitcoin chain the database that is history tied to all of the coins going back to the to their kind of origin which is the coin base transaction where they have been mined and then absolutely not clearly but you can see that you know who's been well not who but where if them being and what other addresses they

are associated with so this is very different but this is because it can be all audited and verified so that is in almost in exchange for the digital scarcity we have with every Bitcoin so we can always know that how much there is but you know that leaves us in a position where many more things can be

seen which cannot be seen in fiat money so in fiat money you do even with your bank account you can selectively so it's private in the terms of that you can selectively choose what the informations you are sharing with I mean it's not always you who is choosing is obviously because you have a third party included

but there is at least not everything out in the open like encryption cryptography right it's default in the banking system HTTPS you know all the database and things that are encrypted but in Bitcoin this is all out in a public ledger which is distributed for the security of the system so you know

no one can if everyone knows everything everyone knows everything no one can cheat right and that's the trade-off then is that you know we can't have perfect or we can't have perfect privacy out the box if we're gonna have this guaranteed that we can verify the supply and we have to make that trade-off

yes well I mean at the very final supply question comes in if you want to hide the amounts on this and this database or in the side of transactions so we can really hope we don't really know yet how to do it without sacrificing the verifiability of the supply but then so there is a thing which is I mean even

in the white paper you know Satoshi's writing about it that it is private because the addresses are anonymous so there is no identity tied to the addresses unless you know it there is it is associated or outside of this database like this is and this is metadata this is off-chain and that's

this is where the KYC comes in right the KYC and my regulations where you need to show your passport show your identity or proof of funds your place of residence the you know everything basically which makes you vulnerable in the physical world needs to be exposed if you want to comply to these

regulations and this comes from the fear to where money is completely fungible and where you know one bill is the same as the other so once you get it out of the ATM or from the bank then you can do whatever you want with it but because Bitcoin is different you don't need this store to stop kind of

fraud for example you know you don't want you want to check who is paying with a credit card because the transaction is irreversible right so in Bitcoin there is no way to reverse the transaction I mean you know realistically yeah there is it doesn't matter who pays for it right and then I mean you know people

like kind of bad people malicious people do use cash as well and that they have their base of you know laundering money and maybe they are not doing not even using cash but they are doing bar chair or anything else so you cannot really stop it with with KVAC either but what you what these thing achieves that you

are experts everyone to this insecurity of having their identity tied to their money and they're only going to shop for you pay but pay for something with Bitcoin all of your so by default if you have like your you know passport associated with that transaction output with that UTX so right so with

that piece of Bitcoin then everyone will be able to see that what you are doing when was it coming from where was it coming from and what you are doing with it and then also in the future if you buy this Bitcoin with your password the identity we show the password to can see or the entity can see what you are

doing with it later on and then these are not secure databases and they are not only can be supported by any kind of government which want to maybe tax you or confiscated but also these will be leaking out and it will be in the hands of you know kind of black attackers and people who want to kind of steal it

extort you know and things like that also so this is like for the from personal point of view from point of view of a business you cannot just run the business by having all your expenses and income out in the open because you know that's like business security you cannot be efficiently you cannot

negotiate efficiently even as a person or as a company if you have you know everything as an open book and this is natural right and it's dangerous you know like you were saying when you have your passport tied to it if you have someone who's wealthy and they're not thinking and they buy a huge amount on

an exchange and they have their identity linked to it and it does get leaked like you're saying to a government or someone who you wouldn't want to have that information well they've got your address like they can come knocking so all this talk about it's it's you know KYC is there to protect is a nonsense

because it's actually putting people in real danger so I think that's why it's important to try and work out how normal people can get to a stage where they get some type of privacy and I know the you know the best thing that someone can do is buy in cash buy in person or mine it so that you don't have this

problem in the first place but a lot of people already have already have their coins they've already they've already tied their identity to them so what would be your suggestion you know for people to try and get some of that privacy back well so let's just say I mean you can always stop buying with KYC

right so you know you put some you could even you know send it back to where you got it from and then you know buy in a way which is not innovating your privacy which is I mean in person obviously it has these limitations in terms of like physical security and you know just coordinating the thing because there are

not you know not all of the world where Bitcoiners are living and you know really to kind of sell you some especially not to be the big you know premium so so you can go so you can go peer-to-peer which means that you leave out this middle one which is I mean in the tradition of financial system there

is this middleman every time you trade there is a bank in between there is visa there is musty card there is there is something which you need to get goes through if you are not like going through cash but then again you know cash needs to comes from somewhere so you can treat peer-to-peer and Bitcoin

which is a full point of it and you can do it online as well and peer-to-peer exchanges like this is a fantastic resource and you're getting better and better so quickly then it's it's actually always surprises me how easy it is to use once you once you take that first step that first step is that you need a

little bit of like you know 60 yeah 600000 satoshes I think it's like zero zero six Bitcoin on it to make your first trade because it's excess secreted opposite so that obviously deals with the scam which is you know not very it's quite a safe platform really I would really advise to kind of start it and

you cannot really you can only start it like small amounts which is yeah you know like 70 80 pounds and you can you build up confidence that we had done a couple of transactions so that's a very good way obviously there you cannot you still experience your you know bank account number or name or like handle

it depends on the payment trail or there is like the hoda hoda.com which is another thing which is like a peer-to-peer exchange which has like a central server where you put up an adverse and then you know it will be fueled by people and then it is all traded through like two to three escrow

a multi signature escrow which is protected by the Bitcoin security and then if there is any kind of unlikely debate then the hoda hoda can step in as a support it to decide right so it's a safe safe way and it's achievable it's available for us it's not available in the US because of

regulations but absolutely working well here in the UK and like anybody in Europe. So I've used this a fair amount and I'm really really like it and I find that the premium is usually between lowest I've seen is normally two percent and sometimes it runs up to like 10-12 percent and some people really take the

Pearson 130 and that kind of thing. So is hodel hodel similar? So I mean if you don't obviously you shouldn't rush these things so you know you're not you lose the opportunity to kind of market by these kind of things which is usually actually useful because you don't make mistakes that often either.

So it's great if you have this kind of DCA dollar cost averaging approach and what you can do is to put up an offer and just put up a zero percent slippage offer right and it will be filled if not within an hour it will be filled within a day and you probably will be able to get away without you know paying

any kind of premium apart from market but trading fee which is quite low and the actual own chain fees which you know can be higher depending on what's the activities. So yes you can look at what's an offer but it's best to just put your own offer up that you want to buy if you know if you want and then you know go

that way and then you know you're not need to. You will see if you are losing your patience then you can you know put some premium on it but yeah it's yeah I don't think it's necessary people do appreciate the other side of the trade as well so if they want to they take it quick.

Okay great so yeah that's that's the alternative to buying and buying online rather than using these exchanges. Specialists yeah so there is no in this case there is no central database where your trades or where your where the trade is recorded but it's not it's only the Bitcoin side right the actual fiat side

is not recorded anywhere and it's not connected to the Bitcoin trade and even your identity is not really appearing here apart from maybe your account number or name but for example in the case of UK FASTA payments most banks don't even check for a name there. So you can just use the number which is I mean you know

it's much better than giving everything. Yeah yeah yeah it's trade-offs isn't there it's much better. And then obviously yes mining is a it's a way which I'm not I mean bit combining is mining is quite competitive if you have kind of resources and a good deal on energy price then certainly should look into it

it might be just maybe a bigger investment to start that is difficult to start with like just a hundred pounds right you can eat that like a couple of thousand maybe. But then you can actually earn it or sell things you know let it be services let it be I mean if you have trade on eBay then you can trade on that

for example there is like open buzzer as well which is you know I mean it's a bit of a kind of deranged team which has behind it but you know that is that is Bitcoin there which is again looking which is working with a you know two to three escrow as well so it's quite safe and then you can you can

especially if you're selling it is it is quite safe and I mean whatever you would think getting money for you can just offer to have it for Bitcoin if you have a pub or you know you're selling something selling be it or you know just going into some kind of conference maybe and handing out stuff

you can always just spin up a you know a BTC pay server or or even something custodial like an open node account or things like that where you can just receive Bitcoin too. Yeah that's my next project actually is to is to get BTC pay server running and start accepting Bitcoin on my website because yeah

donations like that. Well I don't think I warrant donations at this point to be honest it's it's more so I actually work as an artist as my fiat job okay so I've got my art on the website so it's now once I get that set up it will only be available for Bitcoin and I will not accept pounds anymore so that is my

next project and it'd be nice because yeah then then it sort of kills two birds with one stone it hopefully on board some new people and it also gets me some KYC free Bitcoin. Yeah exactly exactly so and as it comes people will as more and more people recognize it you will probably be able to get things

cheaper for Bitcoin because there will be because of the premium which is that basically not as well that actually you would pay more to get it get it clean I said this is clean because I feel that the fiat the KYC side is dirty right yeah but the taint is the other way around the taint is what is hurting you and not

what makes you safe right in any way didn't really like mentioning taint you know that something is just completely subjective there is no taint on the on the Bitcoin blockchain or lightning protocol you know there is no such thing as taint this is something which the which the server and companies are

selling marketing as their product to you know which they say out to them compliant to regulations they made to exist so it is something which comes off often but yeah it doesn't exist so once you got it yes but then you want to maybe use it or want to or you have like KYC Bitcoin and you want to this

is a bit of an interesting idea if do you want to to do anything with it once it's you know you bought it from somewhere and it's sitting there I mean you cannot under it you cannot do it you cannot unmake the fact that it's been already reported as that you have bought that asset so what do you do with it

you know you can't delete that entry into the database and they have actually like legal necessity to keep it even if you delete your account and things like that so the next step is when you would spend it right or when you would would send it for other things I mean I wouldn't you know at the moment

looking at the upside and looking at what you are you know what we are up to up to it's not doesn't really make sense to spend it unless that's the only thing you have right so but in any case if you if you want to transact then you know there are a couple of rules she she's best at her too I mean first of all just

the privacy kind of main thing that you shouldn't expose anyone that if you are owning Bitcoin and especially for self-custering you shouldn't go and like brag about it right or even even to share as it's not a useful information for anyone and it can be dangerous and even can be dangerous for someone else to

know about it because you know it's situations and I mean times can change very quickly and then a couple of rules of thumbs is that don't post address is publicly either so if you have for example you take payments or you take donations then you shouldn't put like an address there that is this is this is

mine and you know have your name with it because it's just you know it's they'll turn up in the Google searches it will certainly get into the databases any kind of you know servants company or agency which could cause a problem later and then don't do not reuse the addresses again every so because once

you spend from an address that thing is is tied to you probably expose something because you went into a shop and you paid for something or you went into an exchange and you gave your passport or something like that and then that is tied to you so again if you would use that address then that would be completely

clear cut that is something which you own the private keys for so that is there's a there's a food gun basically a mistake it's not as bad if you didn't spend from it yet but again it's just best best not to use it that's why for example B disciplines over is great we're using X-pop's bit exchanges is great

I'm a bit nervous doing this that you could give them an X-pop and they didn't even send to the same address twice right and then you would want to look up a wallet which exposes you the actual coins the actual UTX's which is which are in there this code coin control so as you probably know we are not dealing

with account balances as you do it on your bank account or as you would do it in Ethereum for example but you have unspent parts of Bitcoin which is will be signed and spent separately and then met all up in the transaction and we come out as a completely new fresh UTX so on the on the other side of the

transaction obviously if you know who was putting in the amounts of the piece of Bitcoin then you will now know who got them so there will be a clear trace so you can do a couple of things to break this chain of like this is kind of a surveillance chain right and that's where the coin join question comes in

but also there is things where you can transact of chain which means that your payment doesn't show you know it doesn't leave any trace on the chain which is an on-cost to do your way to do it and the proper kind of cryptographic the secure ways to do it with lightning obviously if you are not worried about

your exchange knowing everything about you then if you send coins within the exchange that would be an off-chain application as well and you would be private from everyone else who doesn't know the data which the exchange holds but unfortunately they will sell it, leak it and give it to the government

at any point so that's why lightning is a great way because when you receive a lightning payment I mean there are a couple of attacks and you know this is not kind of a hundred percent ami-percent there it's all like a big experiment much much more than the base layer but the payment privacy sort of

privacy of the payer is quite good because you cannot really see you can only see the last hop of the payment but you cannot see where it was coming from before that so once the payment is includes two nodes I mean three nodes one who is paying one in between and one who's receiving the payment the receiver

wouldn't say say wouldn't see where that money was coming from and meaning that he wouldn't say which on-chain address it is tied to right so if you spend that way it is it is very private the other side receiving the lightning payments well that's a bit more problematic because you need to be online

or so and you need to share your public key which is the identification of the lightning node and then also to be able to connect to this node you need to share a point on the internet where other nodes can connect to which is either an IP address which has these problems because it's tied to your physical

location or physical location of the server you registered or I mean you know you can make believe that's it's some other server because you've done some tunnels and you know other complicated ways of dealing with it but it's probably the best and easiest way is just to use the door the the onion router

kind of network which is made to hide the physical location of the of the participants it's like it's like a multiple it's like using multiple VPNs wrapped into each other and the same way as with the lightning payments the tool network works that is only on routing both called only on routing for

the reason because it's a peeling thing that you have something encrypted your data encrypted and on the top layer there is only the thing which needs to be known by the next hope and then once this feels away that encryption there is the player in below which is the information for the next stop and so on

so the one hope doesn't see the layer on top or below so you can only see that where the data package or payment was coming from and where does it go to if you know it's not the destination so once you have like three four five seven hops like in its own network it's usually like with the three and five

hops did the destination of the data package woman be able to see you know where is coming from and the other way around so that's how it is obfuscates your physical location your IP address so using any kind of Bitcoin service is actually advised to do this because I mean the way I usually say that oh okay

why wouldn't I want to have your IP address I mean I think you understand already but I just usually say that well if you have money it's okay that you know you have it with you but you don't want to plaster it out on the window right for everyone to see that look here I live in this address and then I have

a thousand two thousand you know how many March bitcoins you have there in this address on the IP address and then the same thing you don't want to leak information information when you're looking up addresses like you want to look up your balance you want to look up the transaction in a block explorer

there is there are block explorers I mean every one of them you can open in the tour browser but for example if you go to block stream.info which is one of the best kind of one of the best block explorers there will be an only an address on the lower right corner and you can open that in the in the tour

browser and then you won't even exit the tour network so you know there will be Lexis closure less kind of attack surface there either to de-anonymize the source presumably if you're searching an address these surveillance companies they would assume that if you're searching this address it probably belongs to you

or you're associated with it. Exactly or if you're from from your iPad again if you're not using Toria looking it up with your IP address and then you look up you know by the end of the month you looked up a hundred addresses then it's pretty much clear that those are in the same wallet and

then you know and then that wallet has been going to you and then every spend from that wallet will be you know be able to track and then if some some in a transaction there will be another coin merging with these addresses then you know even those and the source of those and the future history of those will be

exposed so yes it is like sharing your IP address it's like K by C right? You do the same. Yeah okay so if you ideally want to make sure that you keep as private as possible like we said you want to try and buy with cash or on Biska one of these then you can either use the Lightning Network because you

have the onion route taking it it's easier to disguise what you're doing and then it's less easy to track and obviously I know that you are involved in join market now that looks like it's another option for people to use and I know I mean I haven't actually used it yet I was a little bit scared off from it to be

honest just just because a lot of the people who talk about it are very very technical and like I'm not so I've gone down the whirlpool samurai route and I'm you know trying that out but I think it sounds pretty amazing what you guys have there so could you explain how it works and and how people can use that?

So right so there are so what is coin drawing first of all right so it is when so it is used to obfuscate the source and the back to the destination of course but coins basically the detach the iron entities from from the addresses from the from the UTXs and it is a batch transaction so one transaction where

there's multiple things happening at the same time with multiple inputs and multiple outputs from multiple participants so pieces of money from separate people going in and then pieces of money to these group of people going out but because there was a bit transaction in between and the things

which are coming out a completely new UTXs the straightforward connection between them is broken and the way to help this is that all the outputs which have which are coin-joined in the equal outputs coin-joined method all of them are the same size so there will be the same for example in the example of

Verpool that would be there like one million five million or 50 million UTXs and so this is kind of you know how you predict that you have a huge transaction which is very obvious that it is a coin drawing and then whoever looking at the chain sees that this transaction was a coin drawing so you

know whoever was involved with it then you know opted for it that wanted to you know get rid of this race which is I think it's your you know kind of right similar absolutely similar item it's a necessity for your protection so there is nothing wrong with it but still it is obvious and it's slightly

expensive as well so obviously you feel you pay a fee and before I would kind of delve into the coin drawing stuff I just would like to like tell about the other things we have there I mean we have other kinds of coin drawings which are not equal outputs which are called page-oins right or in the in the case of

Samurai it is called stonewalled stowaway I think stowaway yes right right so that's when you actually send money to someone but the seller so the receiver does contribute a UTX a piece of Bitcoin to the input as well so there were multiple inputs some of them coming from this

buyer and one or more is coming from the sender coming from the receiver right so there are multiple inputs from multiple people and then it's going out to obviously the receiver will get more than what he put in because that's where the payment will realize so we will get a bigger amount and then there will be

because it won't it will never be exact because you won't be able to find just you know matching UTXs with the right amounts in their wallets then will be some change going back to the to the receiver to the to the buyer right so again the outputs are going to the receiver so who actually sold something

the seller and then also change goes back to the to the sender or the buyer so even both the outputs and inputs are from from multiple participants which is not the basic assumption so there's this thing which is called the common ownership heuristic which is the most basic thing this is even like you know

written down in the in the as one of the privacy problems or possible privacy problems in the Bitcoin whitepaper that when you send the transaction when there is a transaction you would buy the photo with presume that every input was belonging to the sender to you know be able to fulfill that amount he wants to

send and then the changes come comes back but you can absolutely model this assumption break this he looks yeah by involving an input from the receiver as well so this is called a page on or starway if I mean I think 90% right anyway it is implemented in all three kind of it's implementing three ways which is

first was I mean it's all coming from like 2013 the first was join market which implemented it so you can do this between two join market wallets the special thing is that obviously because there is an input from the receiver there is some communication needs to go in between so it's a bit special so that's

why only set wallets can do it at the moment but then so your market can do this some right wallet can do this between some right wallets only and then there is like BTC server which is implemented this as well which again can only be filled so far with another BTC server wallet but that is being

really done that it will be compatible with your market in a further release and it will be probably supported by blockchain green which is a very popular kind of mobile wallet and things like that so you know this basic heuristic will will be broken if enough people do this it's not only do not only good for

the people who actually exercise this but for the others as well because they just can't rely on those options anymore the server and companies does there come a point where there's enough of there's a enough of these heuristics broken and there's been enough coin joins and and there comes to a point

where they can't assume anymore logically all of their tools become useless because we reach a certain threshold where enough people have done it and do we know what that threshold is well I mean no no absolutely we don't know it would be an individual case like think of a case where you know

someone is you know in a courtroom and there will be some experts coming in analyzing blockchain and saying that you know how how much certainty I can put down that this amount went from here to here right even now because of the

soda minute soda minimity and you know the multiple kind of inputs and outputs merging together all the time you cannot put like a clear certainty on anything really but you have obvious advanced algorithms you have some things which people can do which makes it much easier like the address reuse or when the

apostated address is public but publicly or for example the coin join the funds and that it makes the change together which is not mixed so as toxic changes this toxic change this is how exactly it's a mixed change or toxic change which is again a problem if it mixed together with the cleaned coin joint money then

it all ties back together to the original transaction and resources of funds so you know these things make it easy but then things like page on all the other things which we'll be talking about is not you know it makes it makes this certainty you know lower than 100% if five you know five percent of the

transactions of page joints then the serveristic would at best work as 95 percent right but if it's wasn't 100% to start with but it was only 70 then you know we are closing down to you know when it becomes 50 50 and then your expert is not useful anymore right so it is a very individual case in a very

kind of unclear situation but every kind of transaction helps which is not like the default and especially the ones which are not very clear so there is this thing called stegonography which is the fact that it is hidden so a page join for example you look at it and it just looks like a normal payment but as

a coin join so it is stegonographic like stegonographic is something when you encode a text in a picture I send over the picture to you and you know no one else will see that there is a text in there but if you have a key and you you know decode it there will be cryptography hidden there will be the text which is

just was within the picture so things like that so we can hide this special behavior inside the transaction as well with this and and there is a new or but not that new but there is a thing which is worked on by especially Chris Belcher but there's been work on it's by like Adam Gibson the majority

join market developers right and talked about again since like 2015 or even before which is called a coin swap where where you would pay someone and the actual payment wouldn't come from you but would come from a completely unrelated person who then would be reimbursed either with an auto transaction which is a

coin swap as well or would be reimbursed through lightning for example or off chain in any any way right you could have you know you could give someone an open dime transfer the private key to them in a physical form and then have them pay for the thing you wanted wanted to pay for and that would be a coin swap as

well and also a coin swap is a submarine swap where you when you exchange between different layers or chains even so like if you've been playing about the lightning and the loop service or the thing what the board exchange is doing

coming to the new electric wallet is a submarine swap which means that you can pay a base layer on chain Bitcoin address with through lightning by paying a server which then pays you pays the the UTXO on chain right so again this breaks the that assumption that the payment on the chain was actually coming from the

person who sent it in the in like in reality right so that that is a swap and that has you know a lot of kind of practicality so it is it is an efficient thing you can batch these transactions as well and you can make it cheaper you can incentivize people to do this and also it is very good thing to

kind of gain kind of receiving incoming liquidity on the lightning network for example if you send out push out says from your channel then you will have space for others to pay you right and you can do it this way and you can pay any kind of traditional base layer address or service with these kind of

services so this is another kind of very good tool which is again that's all done done through Electrum well Electrum is just one wallet which is capable of doing it now with the new kind of 4.0 which is just upcoming it's very experimental I just played it today and you know what's very kind of I had

really goosebumps you know seeing this working right it is it is very very impressive but anyway we order to do this on the island E there is this lightning group service which is just the same or very similar and you can do you can use the boards exchange actually if you go to the website where you pay a lightning invoice

and they pay to an on-chain address which you provide and then obviously you can set the amounts and you know this is very good way to kind of deal with on exchange toxic change or change you don't want to be tied with yourself or you know which has some history which you wouldn't want to share with yourself

you know together with your thing because you are here with yourself yeah it's so bad you don't even want to share it with yourself well that's that's difficult to do right if you don't if you don't have the keys then it's done amazing so it sounds like there are many many options for

people and there's a huge amount of development in the space and you know the privacy is definitely getting better what would you say for you know just a normal person who is fairly new and just wants to take just one step towards privacy what would you say is the the easiest system to be using right now for

a normal person right so I mean we could go into the needs of you know what's different a difference in the implementations of you know the coin joins in like wasabi join market and some right wallet but I mean to say really for like someone who is new to it and wants to have the best kind of

guidance and the less or what least opportunity to kind of mess it up it's probably some right wallet did a beautiful UX user experience and they do have the right way of separating the funds to different accounts so with the one seed you can have basically an infinite amounts of of derivation

paths which means that you have from the same seed you have different accounts which are completely unrelated they have a different expop they have a different different addresses and they'll never kind of collide and what is done in summary wallet is that you have like a premix wallet a premix account and then

you fund this virtual which is then you know mixes your coins which that in the technical part is that it does like a TX0 a zero transaction when you pay the fees entering which is like you know 0.5% of the of the denomination of the pool you are entering so for example for a one million Satoshi pool you even if you

put in a little bit coin which is hundred million institutions you would only pay 250,000 sets right no no even less 25,000 sets which is 0.5% right so you would pay 250 for the 50 million Satoshi thing no no actually right I

need to get the calculations right so you know 0.5% would be 250 for the for the 5 million right 5 millions Satoshi's pool anyway it they take away from this is that the more you take and put in the cheaper it gets proportionally

and it is I mean you know let's say quite affordable if you put Iron Man there and then you keep it mixing I mean here it's I mean it depends on like opinions of people but you know I came under the assumption that once we get to a level where someone is thinking about coin joining they all would order the

self-cost to be obviously and then would order the runner node so yeah I wouldn't even consider doing a coin join I mean it's not even possible I mean yeah it is possible actually possible to to a coin join with Samurai wallet without running a node but that would be something which expose you to you know

potential danger of sharing this data with the Samurai server which is I mean you know almost says they are malicious but they are not invincible right so they can be hacked again it can be leaked so let's just not do that so would you run a Ronan dojo or one of those yeah I think I'm quite like I don't want

actually because it's just easy you know you have the hardware it takes you know to 250 maybe pounds or less to get like a terabyte SSD and the recipe by 4 or if that's your choice of hardware but again you can just run it on a desktop as well a bit more technical but can be done and then this Ronan dojo project is

quite quite helpful in that and then they are working very closely together with the Samurai team so you know the kind of support and you know technical problems if they arise then you know you can solve it so with them and I think that's great and also they advise on on what to really do in practice so and

that's that's a good thing and then once you okay you didn't let's say you mixed your funds but I mean you know some people do say that if you have like a dedicated the googled graphene us you know phone that you might just use it as a hardware well it's alternative basically so you don't walk around with it

but you can keep it safe and secure which is yeah it makes it it is okay makes sense it's I wouldn't do it if you would have hundred other applications on your phone and you would just you know walk around with it all the time and that is it's not much you can keep in checking a

any mobile phone it's not you know you cannot really look into it and they cannot put your own custom operating system which is very lean because it just wouldn't work that's right so yeah so you might want to put it into a harder wallet and then when that's when these so-called post-next tools come in ready

to do your coin join like an equal amount coin join this would be the stone wall which you can do alone which is actually only a well only it is a simulated coin join so again it's something which like medals the both mothers the waters but it's not really a coin join right but you do kind of any

kind of transaction which has two equal amount inputs and then or no not necessarily it has at least two inputs but then has two equal amounts outputs at least two and that would look like it exactly like coin join or you can coordinate it someone else to share your transactions and batch it together and

then it will be a real coin join where it would be you know coming from multiple parties or you can do a pay join as well if you pay for something or you could again coordinate it someone or with another wallet of yours right and then I mean this would make sense if you I'm not happy to keep it on the on the

mobile phone or you would want to pay for something right but I mean you know here is it is a thing what you're going for you can use join market as well it is more technical although that's what I was partially working on to give it a little user interface so you can have actually a menu and the options can be

pre-selected and it gives you the syntax so you don't need to look up the comments which you actually need to type in it which can be something probably quite offensive if you are not used to the command line but also using the command line gives you a very good control and kind of granular details

control of the things you do so I feel more comfortable with that so that's why it was taking and that's why it was taking so long to have any kind of graphical interface and don't get me wrong join market actually it has a a pro-progographical interface like like electron wallet has through which you

can coin-join and like around the tumbler kind of algorithm but yes it is more difficult to use and it has you know certain things which it does differently from some right wallet and the main difference is that you don't need to choose any of these pools you are going into and your your UTXs for

example if you have like you know like let's say one-and-a-half Bitcoin and you don't need to break it up at all but you can coin-join it with others who have this amount of offer in this in this offer book which join market has because I mean from kind of like biscuit in that in that sense where you're it's

peer-to-peer yes exactly exactly so the biggest difference is in in the architecture is just it's just so very different but it's it's you know so many things to describe but first of all you get a you have this maker and take model and there are makers market makers who are have these have their coins on

offer who can who are already there with a hot with a hot wallet to participate in a coin-join with their coins which are made available and they you know they put an arbitrary fee on it they put an arbitrary amount everything is kind of randomized and they have every time to start it every time they

started every maker has a random kind of nickname and then these nicknames communicate through an IRC like you know this one of these archaic chat servers actually more than one at a time in an encrypted fashion which where this automatized that kind of coordination of of this offer book is happening and then

when someone wants to do a coin-join they pick that pick their amount you can even pick the coins so proper coin control like you can pick the individual UTxO so you see you have like you know 2.3 million satoshis you want to open a

lighting channel for example you can go into join market and either open the wallet there or send it to it and then you can coin-join it with like nine different peers in a transaction and you know pay the fee to each one of them and they pay the on-chain fee as well this all is typically working out quite cheap

because people are happy to take part of these coin-join so the makers actually don't take a high amount of fees we're talking about four zeros before the percentage they take right so it is much more cheap than wasabi and it's a different fee model from sunrise so it can be cheaper or it can be more

expensive depends and the chain fees are in the takers control as well so if you want to set one set per bite then you will not you know you will only pay like a couple of thousand satoshis for the chain fees whereas if you put it obviously to a hundred and you know it will be a significant part it depends again how

much you're sending or how quick you need it yeah so if it's like in theory someone wants wants to go on there and let's just say you're a maker and you said okay I'm I'm gonna accept a one Bitcoin and the fee is very very low and someone says well I don't this is just cold storage long term I don't care how

long it takes so I'll put it at one sat per bite what if they put it at one sat per bite and it's very low but you happen to be a chain analysis weasel on the other end is there any way of stopping that from happening where they're just can sit there for very very low fees and gather data on people or is

there a way around that I mean that is so this is about like the security under privacy aspect of it right it is so it doesn't matter if it's a chain analysis you want someone malicious right so so the very coin germs work that when you take an offer or when you just send a coin to let it be you know in

the similar I want or in the possible wallet you only sign a transaction by the algorithm which gives you back the same amount which you put in I mean minus the fees or plus the fees in terms are in in the case of the makers but this is algorithmically enforced and it's not a very difficult math right so

this is not something which can be realistically broken and once that transaction is signed you gather the signature for all from all the other participants let's say you are conjuring it there are nine others so you will it would develop the takers wallet with with communicate in this encrypted IRC

chat it's you know it's like machine machines talking to each other it's quite nice to see you can kind of you know see this all on the screen if you like and they basically sign their bids making sure that they don't get less spec than they sent in and then they put these signatures together and the

taker constructs the transaction or in the case of some regular or wasabi is the coordinator server is constructing the transaction and then this transaction is broadcasted to the network and then obviously depending on the fee if you have two weeks or two months or five fees and it never goes down to the level

which it took in this example one set provide then it would just sit there right and I mean if it falls out of the memo then you can be broadcasted at the taker can be broadcasted obviously the sources will be on this spent if they are confirmed so if it falls out of the memo you can send it to another

transaction but you know not until then because the the note the notes wouldn't accept the UTXO which is spent in another transaction so that you cannot send just a new one which is spending the same thing again right so it's you know it never should say something is impossible but it is not a concern of anyone

losing money in this way right obviously there is a risk of having a hot wallet on an internet-connected machine which I mean it needs to be secured reasonably like you know again use store don't expose your IP address you know have your ports closed don't do port forwarding don't run anything else like if you have

run in dojo for example you know don't watch Netflix on it like you know these kind of things and that's why I also like to for example from personal computer I'd rather like to use Linux rather than you know windows or I mean Mac OS is a bit better but that's you know you can you are not in control what

is running on there so I mean that's that's the more that's the risk which is more of a concern or I mean it depends on you know it depends on the strategy right also you have like a wallet backup what do you do with that obviously you know you never ever type it into a computer but then in in a

case of a hot wallet is already in a computer so that's why you need to keep it safe so the maker effectively can earn interest it's actually like DeFi that works as far as I can understand it but but there must be there there's just that little bit of risk in terms of like you're saying they have to have it

online they have to have it on a hot wallet and presumably it's not massive it's not they're not gonna be earning a massive amount on it it's more a sort of it's something and it's helping others and mixing their own I guess yes so so it's not the case that you are not gaining privacy from it obviously the

taker is doing is knowing all the inputs of the of the maker so you know you don't get so to make the taker who constructs and pays the fees does have the most privacy out of this thing but the maker does some as well and then there is also some added complexity in in join market that it's not as straightforward because

it has it has this account concept which Samurai World has as well and join market has five accounts where through which the funds basically tumbling over and so you have like one account addresses second account addresses you know third force and fifths and once if you go through a coin join that coin

join UTX sir goes to the next level and the change which is not mixed is staying back and then the next round you know it the next round either will be taken from that first funded level or from the next one but again if it's going during this goes further and if not then it stays back where it is so it only

goes further if it is going to end so there is a separation of the change address from the coin joint so the um exchange is separated from the coin joint funds although although that is a possibility through you know several rounds that they come back together in the same mix that once they you know

went through all the five for example but there is you know there is a coin picking algorithm which is can be set in different ways I mean the defaults are obviously there to kind of do the reasonably best but there is no guarantee that everyone is doing the same and there is no nothing stopping you to change

it yourself either so this kind of flexibility which is you know obviously it's a trade-off between the UX that you can do a lot of things but it's not that easy to kind of be aware of how to how to do it the best way and then also it is it is makes it possible to even like draw market is a is a kind of

a nonprofit project in terms of its only getting donations and it's not generating income in terms of fees it's not going to the coordinator can be anyone or the taker the coordinator can be anyone so and the makers take the fees so which again can be anyone permission the system in a free market of fees

even then the kind of development of it is quite you know like breathtaking that new features and all these kind of experiments are going into it but the thing is you know it cannot get rid of the fact that it is an obvious going join right and then and then also you do I mean you cannot be perfect with it all right

and especially I mean there's been these reports it should be discussed extensively and I don't have the kind of depth of knowledge to go in to do this but for example when they were the OST research team has kind of tracked through this UTXO from like 2015 which has been like what not even one UTXO got

45 445 Bitcoin from 2015 has been kind of went through join market and then you know also went through address reuse and deposit to exchanges and stuff like that and then they were kind of you know employing quite spectacular techniques to kind of you know unfold these kind of things and yeah so you know you can

gain insights and it all depends on you know obviously a very big pile of money is much more difficult to be hidden than than just a regular thing which everyone else does right yeah I forgot I sent that actually I'll be knocking at my door it's a it's a pretty bad upset if you just admitted this I wish I wish I'd

be I'd be sat on a beach somewhere if that was true yeah well maybe you would have things to worry about that's it no that's really interesting and it's definitely I want to I want to have a go and and get on join market is I've got a couple of things I've got to try first but yeah it sounds really interesting

it sounds like a it sounds like a great option for someone who's a little bit more technical and like you say there are the trade-offs but it sounds it sounds like a really good option I mean it's best to combine this this techniques as everything and even I would say it is it is nothing wrong with combining the

different coin drill methods as well right so as I said you know there are a couple of things which you can do with your market which you cannot do it was with samurai this samurai wallet but at the same time the world who has it this kind of unique quite elegant way of breaking up the UTX is making breaking up

the funds and to make a coin join which is actually has it not only equal outputs but it has equal inputs as well so when you go into a pool we will have these things which are just you know keep kind of toppling through and after a couple of rounds they you know they build up a quite high level of

obfuscation which is you know very interesting and very elegant but you have you're presented with the problem again if you want to spend it then you know you need to coordinate with someone well you can do that to join market or you can pay it on lightning and you know I mean I'm not I feel it too much of a

high risk to go into other chains because you just they are not safe technically and they are you know the user base and the network effect is just so small that you actually lose a lot of ability to hide in the crowd as what you have in Bitcoin so but you know that's I mean there are opportunities to do

that as well but yeah it's probably probably just staying on lightning obviously that's to be off spending anyway that makes sense all right well listen thank you so much for joining me today and and going through all of this it's been it's been really useful for me actually to learn a little bit more

because as I say I'm not particularly technical and it's all stuff that I think is very important is there anything else that you know we haven't covered that you're working on though or wanted to talk about right I mean you know I think you know wins through a lot really and I mean

there is there is infinite amount of things to learn about this as much as to speak about so you know I would just say if you follow me on Twitter I usually happy to share stuff I've done or I feel that I would want to feed back on what their feedback on or you know there is the link to my GitHub which

people can't scroll through there is a lot of things about how to there is a repo called lightning node management which is like the first steps of getting into the lighting network and you know get some sophistication on there obviously most of the things that you scripted so which is actually a code is

being merged into the rest of its projects so you know if you want to try the join market or this join market menu which is the join inbox you can build it yourself but if you're on a grasp list then you will be able to what's it is just full of I lost you I lost you there for a second can you

hear me yes yes I'm back for some reason the network has dropped it's on my side I think it's only dropped out for a second I think you cut out at if you want to try join market I think that's as far as it got oh yeah so so you can build it yourself and you can try this join inbox repository already but if you are if

you are running the rest of its opening to try then it will be in there as well so you know it will be just a click of a button you don't need to run code that's the I mean you don't code but you don't need to type code yeah the differences so there is this other thing called Bitcoin tutorials that's

again something which is you know which is otherwise just scripted and run it's a click of a button at some point but if you want to see how it is working we want to do it yourself or a bit different than they're there to you know learn from or fork and you know turn it to anything else so yeah and and you're

at open arms on Twitter at open arms yes and then most of the as and at or slash get up a dot com slash open arms and I mean I'm actually on keybase which is probably the best source because they're unpointing to most of my kind of pseudonymous accounts including the Bitcoin hackers the dog

messed it on and I think that's yeah pretty much it so I mean oh telegram is usually yeah so yeah all right perfect well thanks again it's been there it's been really nice chatting to you and hopefully I'll see you at the meetups when things calm down a little bit and we can all the be out and meet space

again yeah absolutely I look forward to that to happen again all right cheers thanks so much and have a good evening yeah thanks a lot you too cheers