EP50 Bitcoin podcast with BTCxZelko

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Now what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. The greatest scam in history. Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.

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

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space, and deliver to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Welcome back to BitByBit everyone. Today I speak to BTCX ZELCO.

I really enjoyed this one, and I've been looking forward to having him on the show for quite some time now. Before we dive in, I just want to say thank you to Coin4UK for sponsoring the show.

Anyone who's looking to buy Bitcoin if they are looking for a KYC on RAM. Then do check in the show notes, and you can get a discount using my code. For anyone who's looking for non KYC, I suggest you use Bisk or Huddle Huddle.

We go into this sort of stuff in the show. And yeah, I just want to say thank you to everyone who's been supporting the show, everyone who's been reaching out, everyone who's written reviews and shared the show.

And obviously all the amazing guests have come on. So, here we go. Enjoy.

It shows that you talked, but I couldn't hear it for some reason. I'd be on my side. Testing, testing. Testing, testing. Oh, I can hear myself. What a horrible sound that is. [Laughs] Yeah, that's better now. Can you hear me okay?

Yeah, I can hear it again. Perfect. And let me know, is this too much? Yeah, no. No, that works great. Oh, well, it's great to finally speak to you. I've been looking forward to this for a while.

Oh, yeah. I'm super pumped. I loved the last couple ones that you did. They were super solid. Oh, thank you very much. Yeah, I really feel now sort of trying to take the podcast in a specific direction.

And I've been blessed with some unbelievable guests. And it's really starting to get to a point now where I'm really enjoying the conversations, not that I wasn't before, but it's getting to a point now where I'm learning and speaking to the people I want to be speaking to about the things I want to talk about.

And yeah, it's awesome. So, thanks for coming on and also thanks for building what you've built. It's incredible. I'm using it literally as we speak, just as we're having the technical issues.

I was just flicking across and just checking my world pool and having a look and seeing how things are going. And I'm obsessed with it now. Every few minutes, I just have to check and see how many remixes and have a play around with things.

And yeah, it's fucking awesome. So, thank you for doing that and taking the time to speak to me. Yeah, of course. It's always good when people come back and tell you, "Hey, I love what you guys did."

You know, it's fine. I mean, that's why we did it. You know, we did it for that reason. We want everybody to be doing this and for it to be easy, you know? So, we still got ways to go, but it's going to be -- we're on the right track, I think.

Yeah, well, it's sort of -- it's on the edge of being still accessible for non-technical people like me. Like, I'm doing my best to get better. But I was able to get through it. Granted, I had a little bit of help from Bitcoin Q&A, which was amazing.

But I was able to do it and it's only getting easier. The other nice thing that I thought with it as well, I set up this and I set up a mine node. And with mine node, like, yeah, it was maybe slightly easier to set it up.

But this felt so much more fun when I was doing it. I remember there was a point. I was sat at about three in the morning, like, cracking through a bottle of whiskey, just trying to get it done because there was loads of issues that I had with it.

But then once that IBD started and I got into that Ronan UI, that first bit where it has the picture of the sword going across and stuff, I literally thought I'd crack the matrix or something.

Like, I was fucking hyped. I was like, this is so cool, like, I'm fucking a developer. I know what I'm doing. And it was just like a really fun experience. So I liked how it felt setting it up.

Yeah. I mean, it brings me back to when I first started trying to set up Dojo, like, man, that must have been July last year. And I'm just sitting there like I would spend, I spent probably a couple of weeks just bashing my head against the keyboard and, you know, trying to figure this out.

And the moment that it happened and it was working, I was like, holy shit, like, this is the greatest thing ever. And it was, and that's how I learned, like, that's how I learned so much of this stuff was literally just trial and error, trial and error, trial and error and eventually, you know, you get it and it's a,

it's pretty fucking cool when it happens. Yeah. So you're not actually from a developer background, are you? You're someone who's come into this, not from this industry and created something pretty special here.

How did that come about? You know, you're saying you had that feeling of like, fuck, I've actually got this thing running. It must have been a serious learning curve for you. Oh, it was massive.

Yeah. I don't come from a computer background at all. I mean, I, I kind of, I mean, like all my computer stuff revolved around Bitcoin for sure. Like once, I don't think I even cared about running a node even a little bit until, until lightning came out because I thought lightning was cool.

Like I wouldn't first hit mainnet. I was using like Zapp because I had a MacBook and, and then I was, I wanted to like do it on mainnet, but none of the Zapp developers or Jack, like wanted to, you know, they were like, oh, well, if you're smart enough to figure it out, then, you know, you can go on mainnet,

but we don't want everybody to just get on mainnet. And I was like, okay, that's, that's fair. I'm definitely not smart enough to do it. So, but thankfully, like I followed some guides and I started playing with it.

And then I didn't really appreciate what like running a node meant. It wasn't, I ran, then I ran like Bitcoin core just to run it. And cause I followed some gods. And I was like, just running it.

I had no wallets connected to it. I had no use for it. It was just running. And, and I thought I was, I thought I was doing something cool. And then it wasn't until I ran dojo and I realized cause people are explaining what how important it was.

And that was kind of like when it clicked, I was like, why am I not doing that? And so that was kind of the journey. And there was some really awesome community members in the samurai community that just like kind of held my hand.

I have, I have some pretty, pretty funny kind of embarrassing, you know, messages that I still have on telegram of like, what, what is, how do I get tour going? Like, how do I, how do I, you know, install or how do I get to that directory and, you know, like just some stuff that like I look at

now and I'm like, wow, that's really, you know, basic stuff that I had no clue. But every time that people were helping me, it was, you know, I wanted, I didn't, I felt like I was burdening people.

So I, I wanted to try to like learn as much as I could from what they were giving me. And then once I like learned it and I started picking it up, I wanted to turn around and start helping people with like the same exact error that I had.

And that's kind of slowly just grew my skills and, you know, the more I was helping people, the more I was, you know, honing in my skills and mastering my skills. And then, then that's kind of when Gura, us two L one, that's when he, he was like, dude, we should just make a, we should just

start writing guides or we should start, just make it automated, make this easy for everybody. That was kind of how all this happened. But yeah, neither of us actually come from a programming background.

That's pretty incredible that you've got to a point where you've come from a non-technical background and built something like this. And to me, that kind of just shows the power of Bitcoin because in, I can't think of anything else that would, I mean, just from my own perspective, there's nothing else in the world that would have

made me sit in front of a computer all night trying to work something out many, many times just to increase my privacy or, you know, to increase the security or whatever it is that I'm trying to manage.

I fucking hated computers. Like I didn't play games. I didn't ever spend any time on them. They, they were really boring to me. And it just shows like the power of Bitcoin is that it's bringing people in and making them not only want to understand it, but actually build on top of it.

And once they've done that, then you want to actually help others do the same. And, and by trying to help others do the same, you realize the flaws in your own understanding, like when you're trying to teach something, you're like, fuck, maybe I didn't really understand that.

So yeah, it's amazing that it's pulling people in and getting people to do this kind of work. I imagine you've had some pretty crazy times along the way trying to get other people on board it.

Oh, yeah. I mean, Bitcoin in general. Yeah, I would definitely see Bitcoin in general. And then one of the things that the guy was helping me a lot is on Telegram, his name was just Nicholas.

But I'll never forget one of the things that he said because I kept, he kept like helping me and holding my hand. And because he was the one that first figured out how to get like what we needed to fix to get the Joe running on a, on a Raspberry Pi for.

And, which was kind of like cracking the code, you know, his way is super smart guy. And he, I never forget like I was kind of harassing him like quite a lot, just in personal messages. And he goes, I was like, hey, I'm really sorry for bothering you, man.

I really appreciate everything. And he goes, yeah, like how else are we, if I don't, if we don't help each other with Bitcoin, like how else are we going to get to use this magic internet money?

And that kind of just like stuck with me for a long time because I mean, not that it's just magic and it like magical internet money, but it's a, it kind of goes true with what Bitcoin's all about, you know, like if you don't, not that we need, I'm not a big believer necessarily needing this mass adoption of everything, but

the people that are there and the people who are here now and want it and want to use it, you know, you should be wanting to make everybody better. And I think that's kind of why we set up Ronin the way we did was because especially in the beginning, like we wanted it for people to, to be able to go back and like look at our code and then

understand everything, you know, or be, have that as an opportunity to learn. We didn't just want to make it, you know, write the code that we understood. And, you know, we can read our own code and it'd be no problem.

But for people that want to, they want to start like learning Linux or they want to start learning command line, we wanted to make it so, you know, hey, I'm curious, like how, what is happening in the background and they can go to the source code and they can, you know, look up what they can look at all the

comments and see what's going on. And then they can ask a bunch of questions because, you know, that's what we're here for. We try to always respond as much as we can and, you know, give people the resources to, to educate because, like I said, like Nicholas said, you know, how else are we going to get to spend

this magical internet money, right? Yeah. And I've experienced that first hand from everyone in, in both chats, the samurai and the Ronin chats, you know, I always have technical issues and I'm always having to ask for something.

I do my best, but basically I'm fucking useless at this sort of stuff. And I've been amazed with just how generous people are with their time, how helpful they are. And, you know, quite often, like you said earlier, you were like, oh, you know, I look back and the questions I was asking, I'm sort

of embarrassed by the fact that I asked them, but you have to start somewhere. But I feel like that. I ask these questions and I'm thinking, oh, they're probably thinking, fuck, you know, I could do that in my sleep, you would hear, but it's important because if, if you don't have these

communities and you don't have people open and willing to help, then, then there's just too much for a barrier. It really would be if I didn't have that chat room and I didn't have Bitcoin Q&A helping me through it.

You know, I don't know whether I'd have got through it. You know, people probably laugh at that. But we probably think, oh, well, you know, you don't deserve to use this sort of tech then.

But I desperately wanted to. And I'm so pleased that I actually managed to, and I'm now already at the stage where I'm trying to get my friends to do it as well and get them onboarded. And it's a kind of pay it forward kind of process, isn't it?

Absolutely. I mean, that was, I think that was one of the things that I found the most special about the samurai community, especially privacy activists in general, you know, not just strictly around Bitcoin, but the samurai group man, like they were, were very passionate about, you know, every user that steps in there, every

user that is trying to be more private because ultimately it's best for everybody. So the more private that everybody acts, the better it is for everybody that's a larger crowd that we're all hiding in.

And like you said, everyone starts from somewhere. Like there's, there's no one. I mean, yeah, you could be a programmer. You could be all that other stuff, but you don't know everything about privacy.

You don't know everything about security. You know, Edward Snowden had to start somewhere, right? But that community, there's so much knowledge. I mean, I even remember like going back and really wanting to set, like I set up L&D with the dojo when I was first doing it and looking back, I'm like, now, and no one, no one, like, we

tease people, you know, we tease about L&D and the lightning and the samurai chat just because we're very on chain focus group. And I definitely applaud all the developers that are doing that stuff because it's, you know, it's not there yet.

And anybody that's building should be, you know, applauded. But, you know, looking back, no, no, no one in the group was like, oh, you know, you're fucking stupid or don't, why are you doing that?

Or if I was trying to, you know, use, you know, whatever hardware wallet, no one cared, no one said you're, you're plead, like, why are you doing that? Everyone was there to help me with whatever my goal was.

People were there to help me. And then as I grew and I, you know, as I learned more and more and more from this wealth of knowledge, you know, I wanted to just start paying back and then, you know, help others get to my point.

And that's something that's pretty cool. That was something that even, you know, Q&A kind of, it kind of reminded me a couple of times. He's like, the podcast that I did with Steven Lavera or Stefan Lavera, sorry, he, he was like, yeah, dude, your story really like inspired me to like start, you know, start learning more

and paying it back and getting more involved and contributing to this, you know, Bitcoin community. And so hearing stuff like that is, is always really, really cool. And obviously Q&A is a superstar.

So he surpassed me, but it's, it's very cool though. No, it's interesting what you said about, you know, him being inspired by what you're doing and weirdly, I listened back to that episode with you and Stefan a couple of days ago, just like as I was preparing for this interview.

And then it reminded me, I was like, fuck, I remember actually listening to this. And I remember what I was doing. I was painting in my garden. And this is probably, I don't know when it was eight months a year ago, time sort of flown or the beginning of lockdown maybe.

I remember it was suddenly anyway. And I remember listening to it and I remember you guys talking about, you know, that you hadn't come from this tech background and how you were learning these different command line bits and all this sort of stuff.

And I had the same thought. I was like, obviously I haven't actually acted on it because Bitcoin Q&A understands this stuff. And I still really don't. But I remember thinking like, wow, like this is someone who hasn't come from this background.

He's really increases privacy. Working on the sort of stuff. He's now getting into Linux. And I was like, I want to be like that. I want to fucking do this. Like, surely if someone else can do this who hasn't come from this background, then maybe I can do this.

And you're absolutely right. It is inspiring. It's amazing to hear because there's that kind of barrier. Sometimes I listen to a podcast and it's someone who's been a developer their whole life.

And this is all they do and this all they've ever done. And I think, well, OK, well, I'm never going to be able to do it then. But hearing that people have taken the time like you have is really inspiring.

And now that I'm running this stuff, it's even more inspiring. And it is pushing me forward to making me think, OK, that's another step that I've taken. What's my next step? You know, is my next step that I do step away from Apple because I've always had Apple.

Like, am I going to go down that Linux route? And if so, who am I going to be following? And what am I going to be doing? And it's really exciting and fun to be pushing yourself and consistently getting better with this kind of stuff.

And having people who are willing to help and wanting everyone's privacy to increase just feels like it really feels like an unstoppable force to me. Yeah, 100%. I mean, and there's no one that's ever perfect.

You know, it's a continuum. It's a continuum. You know, I think even O'Dell says it really well, right? Privacy isn't about going from no privacy to perfection overnight. You know, it's taking those small steps.

And that's the same with whether it's Linux or command line or, you know, whatever it is. And no one says you have to switch over from Mac or, you know, be 100% Linux. Like, that's not, that's not a thing that you have to do.

As long as you're not running Windows. But the Windows is bad. Everyone says it. How bad is it? Like, is it, is it fucked? Like, really, really not good. No one should be running it. Yeah.

Not only is it not good. You just, it, obviously there's a ton of security holes and it's completely closed source and all that other stuff. But in addition, I mean, like, if you're just trying to run Bitcoin software, what, 90% of them is all set for, is all set for Linux at this point.

I mean, back in the day, it wasn't as much. But now you're looking at where everything is, it's either based on, you know, Ubuntu, which, you know, which is fun. Ubuntu's, you know, a good starting point.

It's a good way to start learning about Linux. But, you know, there's a ton of different operating systems that are all set in the Bitcoin world kind of, you know, revolves around, which is really, really cool.

It makes it more fun because you, you can be like, okay, like, I'll go and I'll, I'll start running, you know, Ubuntu or Arc Linux and I'm going to follow these couple different projects and try to implement what they're doing.

And then you can kind of learn that way. It definitely makes it more fun. There's always a bunch to learn. I recently just started running cubes OS because, you know, Gueira was, is all about it.

It's very hyped up on it. It's a, it's super security focused and privacy focused. And, but it's a huge, it was a huge learning curves. I'm still, I'm still learning on it. And, but it's cool.

Like you said, that's how you grow and that's how you get better. And, you know, whether it's, and it can go for learning new programming languages and ultimately, like, that's, that's what the community's here for.

And that's what, that's what, especially the samurai communities for, I mean, there's so many people that have a, it's a vast wealth of knowledge from people that have no programming experiences, but have a ton of real world experiences with using Bitcoin every day to people who are hardcore programmers and, you

know, Cypher Punks and all that other stuff. It's, it's super cool. I mean, like, Nick Ops is, is a fantastic dude who, who's been around forever and he's in that group and always helping people.

And, he's making some, some really cool stuff over there. So it's, that community is really what, I don't want to say kept me in Bitcoin, but it, it definitely changed my perspective. And it made me super dedicated to what I do today.

And it's 100% because of that community. Yeah, it's inspiring to see, see that kind of community and people helping and just the incredible things that are being built. It is inspiring. And I guess I think for a lot of people and it kind of happened to me for a while was you get into Bitcoin.

Maybe if you come from more the financial side of things and you're, you're looking at it from that side and not so interested in the privacy or feeling that it's, it's too difficult for you to get involved in.

You can kind of get to a point where you're like, okay, I understand why this thing is probably going to be more valuable and I understand this can make some changes to the world. But it almost gets a little bit stagnant or at least it did for me.

It was like, okay, I'm kind of listening to the same stuff over and over again. And I get that this is a fantastic investment and I get that this can bring freedom. But then when you actually start playing with the tools that make that possible, that's really, really interesting.

Like that's a completely different world. And it feels like a rabbit hole that will be never ending, which I guess can be daunting. But the other way of looking at it is, is really exciting.

And it's just like a challenge that you feel you have some camaraderie and people to help you. And yeah, it's, it's amazing for me to see like how quickly things are moving forward and how accessible things are.

And to know that there are people who are dedicating their lives to making Bitcoin better because without this privacy, what's the fucking point? Like why are we all here? Yeah, it's cool if it gets more valuable.

But really, what is the point? If it's all going to just be controlled by the governments and all going to be regulated and everything's going to be white list and black list and everything's going to be kept on exchanges, then we've just got the same system that we had before.

And that's not why I'm here. Like I'm here to see change. And that's why I'm trying to learn this stuff. And why I'm so excited to see that people like you are building this stuff and making it possible for people to do it.

So yeah, it's, it's, it's incredible. Oh, yeah. I mean, I actually, so getting into Bitcoin, it kind of brings me into that rabbit hole stuff. The getting into Bitcoin, I was all about the investment.

You know, my father-in-law was the one who told me about it back in, I mean, I knew about Bitcoin. Like, I knew about Silk Road and all that other fun stuff, but that wasn't really my thing at the time.

But my father-in-law was like, oh, like, you know, this is a really good investment. Watch this stuff. We're going to, we'll talk about it. And he did very well for himself. So I was like, okay, I'll definitely listen to you.

And, and so I was all about the investment. And then, you know, hit off the bull run. And when there's a bull run, the investment mindset is all you need because you can check the price every day.

And it, you know, was jumping, you know, a couple thousand dollars a day. So that was fun. But, you know, once you, once, especially with a bear market, that's when you get bored because the price is either going down or staying the same or going sideways.

So you're, you know, then you start building and then you get to a point where you don't, you don't even care about the price anymore. You're just like, well, you know, I care about these tools because these tools are really what matters, right?

And just like you were saying. And then it like hit me again recently because one of, you know, a financial advisor, a friend, family friend that we have, he's been like slowly kind of touching into Bitcoin and kind of, he wasn't like super, he like knew that it would be,

knew that it would be a good investment, but hadn't really like started diving in. And then with the whole lockdown stuff, he really started to do a lot of research and he was getting very excited.

But he like, he saw on, you know, he was reading and saw the stuff about privacy and different tools and coin joins. And he knew that I was into that. So he, we had this whole phone conversation and it was amazing to me.

And it's probably because he had a good understanding of Bitcoin general. But I explained how coin joins work. I explained how samurai works, the different tools and how the privacy works and why.

And then I explained the difference between like the KYC factor and no KYC factor and why that actually matters. And it clicked, I mean, maybe it's because he was already in financing, but that clicked in his head so quickly.

And I sent him a couple of your podcasts like right after that. And yeah, he's now, he's like hitting me up all the time about, you know, different privacy stuff and, you know, what he should be recommending to his, his clientele and stuff like that.

So it's, that's always really, really cool to me. And what I try to push to him now kind of goes with what you're saying, right? Like if we're just buying KYC, you know, Bitcoin all the time, you know, what's, what's the point, right?

I mean, if there's normally a, there should, in my opinion, and there should be this progression of growth and knowledge of Bitcoin, where you get in, you just buy some, you kind of get some skin in the game.

You know, maybe buy it with cash app or hopefully not Coinbase, but Coinbase or, you know, wherever it is that you buy. You just kind of get some, right? And then, you know, then you kind of learn, you start diving in, and then hopefully you go, oh, I should have been doing no KYC, and then you start doing no KYC.

How you, how you handle your new KYC and KYC is kind of up to you, but there's normally that progression. And what I told him was that what I like to push from the start, if I have a new person, like here, just buy some from me or, you know, buy some from this using Bisk or whatever, and I'll help you do it

because, you know, ultimately that's, that should be the goal. You know, having no one, Bitcoin was never meant to be KYC. That's why it's synonymous. Like, it was never meant to tie your identity to any amount of coin.

So if we, I like to make the analogy that if we were to go to the full extreme, right? And every Bitcoin was KYC, you know, you, then we just sold our soul to the devil, right? Like, what's the point if everyone, if every agency or all the governments know where all the Bitcoin are and who owns or how much everyone bought, you know,

if they know that I bought, you know, two Bitcoin from Coinbase, then they're going to expect that I have two Bitcoin and it's never been touched, otherwise they're coming for it, you know?

So that defeats the whole purpose of this sovereign, you know, uncomfortable, this currency that we're all pushing for that everyone wants, you know? Everyone says that that's what they want, but if you're just here for the investment, you might as well have just bought a stock.

Like, don't, don't come in the game if the only intention you have is to sell at the top. Like, there's no, like, there's no point in that. You know, like, the point is to be able to get to a point where we can start spending money the way that it was meant to be spent, you know, which is the same as cash, right?

You can give it to anybody. Anybody will accept it and it doesn't tie you directly to your identity. So you can do it privately or you can, you can do it non privately, but you can do it privately is the most important thing and no one can stop you.

So yeah, I'm 100% on that game and I loved what, what you and Q&A were talking about with the new KYC stuff. It needs to be a bigger talking point. And I think that, you know, the mainstream Twitter people and everyone else, you know, you're trying to buy in this hype of, you know, number going up and the moon.

That's great. You know, like, like most people say that have, are that aren't Bitcoin? Like, we all want the number to go up. But if we have the privacy and you can actually use this currency, this cryptocurrency, that number will go up.

Like that, that's inevitable. More people use it. If more people will buy it and more people will use it if we are actually in a system where people can do that rather than just buying it and then storing it on, you know, a hardware wallet and just throw it in their desk.

That doesn't really do us much good. That doesn't really do anything for adoption or use case. So, I mean, that's kind of my thought. There's nothing wrong with having savings. There's nothing wrong with holding.

There's nothing wrong with doing any other stuff. Bitcoin is, you know, you can do whatever you want with it. That's the beauty of it. But, you know, that's kind of been my perspective. No, I think it's absolutely right, but I think it takes time for people to get to that point.

So, like, if I'm completely honest with myself, I would say, right, when I first got in, completely it was just, I want to make some money. That's it. Nothing else. Didn't care about anything else, didn't know anything else, didn't understand it.

As you progress down the rabbit holes, you start learning more and more. You do get to a point or you should get to a point where you realize that if this isn't private money, there's no point.

If this isn't out of the hands of authoritarian regimes and governments who are trying to surveil people and censor people and restrict people and have more and more control over people, there isn't much point.

Okay, great. Bitcoin moons, it goes to a million. You've made some money. People will say, "Oh, well, I'm going to go and sip a Mai Tai on a beach." No, you fucking won't because they're not going to allow you to move because you've now allowed them to take control.

And what are you going to do? You think you're going to get through an airport? They know you own it. They know everything about you. You've given all your information. And they now have full control because you've been so blasey about your privacy and so confident that everything is just going to be fine.

You haven't thought about things. You can't fucking spend it anyway. So what's the point? And that million pounds is worth nothing because everything's inflated. All the prices have gone mad and the world's gone to shit.

So yes, it's fine. Yes, it's good for the number to go up. But it's much more important that we actually sought some of the problems that we have that are going on on the planet. The world is just crazy at the moment.

And also along with that, if you have the privacy, if this money is more private, it is worth more. Whatever way you look at it, this money is more valuable if it's private. So if you want the number to go up, then fucking coin join and stop using KYC services if you can.

I don't even understand why there's... I don't even understand why there's a question in anyone's mind that there's any other way to do this. Yeah, I think that it really shows the difference in people's overall mindset and people's, like, why they got into it.

And I used to say that when you get a lot of people who... that initial education, someone... they know a buddy, a friend, a relative is like, "Oh, you're in Bitcoin. What's that about?" And if your initial pitch to them as to why they should get into it is, "Oh, well, it's a great investment, right?

Best asset over the past 10 years, whatever, all the fun numbers that you can throw at them, right? And they're only going to be in it, you know, for that reason. Maybe, hopefully, their mindset changes once they kind of hit a rabbit hole, but who says that that happens, you know? No one.

So they could just be, "Yup, I'm going to just number goes up." And then they can be like, "Oh, I'll get on Twitter and it'll be fun." And see all these people talking about number go up and, you know, the S2F and all these things. Yeah, that's awesome.

But if you change that narrative from the beginning, right, not that it's a completely alternative narrative, they can go hand in hand, but like you're saying, but if I start out, my buddy says, "Oh, well, what about Bitcoin?

Tell me about that." I'm like, "Hey, you know, this is money. This is fuck you money. This is money that you can send anybody around the world. No one can stop you." And it's a great way to stay private and to not have the government track what you're doing all the time.

If you get into it, especially if you're buying it, no KYC, buy it in person, use cash, you know, use no KYC services, you're already starting at a point where the government can't touch you.

So if you're doing that, they're going to have a completely different mindset as to what Bitcoin is and what that starting point is totally skewed and totally different than, "Hey, the number is going to go up, so you should buy."

And that was a mistake that I definitely made in the beginning, and I got tired of doing that because obviously I got in for number go up, but when I was doing that, doing the bull run, you know, someone would buy, you know, at like $13,000 and then it would drop, and then they'd be like,

"Oh my God, I just lost all this money," or, you know, whatever. And I'm like, "Dude, it's not about..." And then that's when I tried to, you know, be like, "Well, it's not about that. It's not. It's about the future."

And just hang on to it and try to learn more. And I learned that, I learned very quickly that if they got in that way, the majority of the time that they're not going to, you know, educate themselves.

They have no real interest in, you know, censorship resistance and privacy. They're not going to do it, you know? And I think it's easier now to make the case. I think the way that the world is right now with, I mean, like, I'm from America, especially with all these people getting canceled or people being censored all over the place,

conservatives being censored, people losing jobs, people losing their patron accounts, and all these different like crazy things, things that are crazy to me. I'm like, "Look, we're one step away from, you know, you telling someone, are you, you know, putting the okay symbol outside the window?"

And then the, you know, the far left and teeth of people are sitting there saying that you need to lose your job and you have no way of making money. Like, that's censorship resistance. All it takes is one more step where they say, "Oh, he needs, he's racist.

You need to shut down his bank account. He doesn't deserve money." Right? Now what? That's where things like Bitcoin, that's where our ethos come into play, right? It's censorship resistance. You can't tell me what to do with my money.

You can't stop me. I am my own bank. That's where all this comes in. And that's where, you know, I make those analogies and people are like, that seems extreme. I'm like, it's, we're one step away.

Like, we're already shutting down patron accounts. We're one step away from someone telling, like, calling my bank and telling my bank to get shut down. My bank account gets shut down. That's it.

And they can do it right now if they wanted to anyways. So, you know, what's the difference? Absolutely. That's why I think that FU money is the perfect description. On so many different levels, it's such a good description of this thing.

I can actually, I can hear myself in the background. It's horrible. It's only just, yeah. No, no, it's all right. It's fixed now. But yeah, it's, it's such a good description. And I think, like you said, if you come in framing this as, okay, you can make a load of money out of this.

They've already got that in their head. That's already the goal. So, it's very difficult for them then to break out of that. But I think you're right in saying, if we just reframe it and say, you know, this is a hedge, not just against inflation and not just against the crazy monetary policies,

but also a hedge against this council culture and this sort of weird, weird feeling that I've got. And I think a lot of people have got that the control structures are really tightening their grip. And we are going towards this sort of 1984 style world.

And having this is that FU money. It's giving you the ability to reach out and say, no, I'm not happy with that or I don't want to do that. And I'll do what I please with my money and with my speech.

They can cancel you and like I keep getting cancelled on Twitter. I think like four times in the last couple of months, literally for disagreeing with the ECB about their monetary policy and like very nicely pointing out some flaws in what they're saying.

And I get cancelled for that. And like, it does make you think, well, if someone's getting cancelled just for pointing something out that may be wrong, using no swear words, not attacking anyone, not being racist, not being sexist, and they're getting cancelled for that. Where does this end up?

And I think if you frame it like that, any logical person would say, yeah, it's probably worth me having a little bit of this just in case, just in case. And with what they're seeing going on with COVID and all the crazy shit that's going on in the world, like you'd be mad not to say like, oh, I've got a family and I want to protect them.

Maybe it's worth me having a little bit of this coin joining it and having some private money that I can do what I need to with. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's, I don't want to say it's been like a blessing, but I do think that overall privacy overall, I think there's going to be a tipping point.

I think that between COVID, these tracker apps, like people kind of opening their eyes, I think more and more people in general, just like normal, everyday people that I've talked to, get more and more freaked out by things like when, you know, they're just talking about, you know,

trampoline, they're like, oh, it would be cool if I had a trampoline in the backyard, and the next thing you know, they're on Instagram and they get ads for trampolines, you know, like, they know this thing, they're freaking out, or, but they don't do, like, either they don't do anything about it,

but they're like, they really don't like it, and they don't know what to do, or they see all these pop-up ads, they see all these things, and they're starting to click in their head, like, why does it happen like this? Like, why am I just getting these ads that are directed, targeted at me?

And it's, I think there's going to be that eventual click where they go, oh shit, like, I am the product. Like, they're selling my data, like, I'm getting this quote unquote free app, but I'm getting, like, I'm the product, they're selling me.

And once, I think, I think the normal everyday person, there's going to be a transition, you're going to see, I'm hoping, really hoping, that one day we're going to see more companies that do this.

No, we're not selling any, like, you can verify our open source, you know, code base, like, we don't touch your data, we don't touch your information, we don't even connect it to your identity, and there's no targeting, there's no apps that are coming out to you.

I think when we get more and stuff like that, more ad blockers, and privacy becomes a part of, like, what companies have to do, rather than, you know, that we're just going to sell your data.

I think that we're going to, you're going to see more people transition to stuff like Bitcoin when they realize money is no different, you know, money's no different than them just selling you anyways.

The aim is to control you. The aim is to control what you think and what you do with your money and what you can't do with your money. I think we're going to see a shift in people's mindset, hopefully.

Hopefully there's enough of us that are willing to help people walk through it and, you know, get them on the right path. Yeah, I hope so too, and it feels like that to me, and I'm a pretty pessimistic guy, like, I have a pretty dark idea of the future most of the time, but I am starting to see that.

And projects like yours help me with this. It really does make me think, yeah, we do have these tools that are being built. We do have people starting to wake up, and maybe this dark future that I'm imagining can be avoided, and I am getting sort of slightly more confident.

I hope that confidence isn't misplaced, but I do think that more people are waking up to it, and like you said, that actually this year, and these sort of things like people discussing things in private, and then immediately having advertising from that random thing that they've talked about right in their face,

and it's happening more and more, it is making people wake up, and, you know, I'm just very pleased that there are projects like yours, and that we do have Bitcoin, so that people who do wake up can actually improve on this, and they can actually get out from under this sort of creeping KYC and control that's going on,

and that's exciting to me. And I was wondering your father-in-law, like, he sounds like a fucking legend, he's got you into Bitcoin, so that's absolute quality. Like, is he someone who's come into this, and he's already, like, a toxic maxi, or is he just somebody who has said to you, like, look, this is going to increase in value,

you need to buy, like, I'd love to know what his journey's been like. Is he now down the rabbit hole with you on privacy stuff, or was he already? Yeah, no, so he's definitely part of that, I don't want to say that I call him old on the podcast, because I know he's going to listen to that.

You've got to slap. Oh, he's definitely part of that generation where they understand and appreciate, you know, I mean, he had the money to put into it, but also, he got in very early, he started kind of digging in, and immediately just got sucked in, and started doing the rabbit hole stuff, and learning about, you know, sound money.

And so, like, that was more his journey, was the financial side, and he was, like, a, get my money off coin, as soon as he, like, realized, again, I'm getting my money off coin base, a treasure guy.

But that first, it was just very funny to me, because it's very vivid in my mind how the first conversation went, because they came over to our house, and, yeah, we were living on the East Coast at the time, and they came over, and all of a sudden, he's like, "Oh, yeah, like, hey, let's watch this documentary."

And I can't remember which one it was at the time right now, but we watched a Bitcoin documentary, and the way to get us to watch it, because, you know, my wife's not into tech as much as I am, and, or interested in the idea, but he's like, "Oh, let's watch the documentary, and I'll give you a Bitcoin." And I was like, "Yeah."

I was like, "Well, it was like $200 at the time, you know, like, we were both kind of like, sure, I guess we could sell it, there's 200 bucks right there, if we really wanted it." And so we watched it, and it was, I was like, hooked, I was like, "This is awesome."

You know, I didn't know the whole journey, I thought Satoshi was a super cool story, and what they're, what they were trying to do was awesome, and just kind of the whole backstory from, like, 2009 to 2012.

I think we watched this in 2014, and immediately, like, as soon as it was done, I was like, told my wife, I was like, "Hey, we need to, like, buy something like right now." And at the time, I was like, in debt, I got college loans and all this stuff, and she was like, "Uh, no, we need to do, we need to take care of ourselves."

And I was like, "Yeah, but like, we should do it. Your dad thinks it's a great idea." And the whole time, she was like, "My dad's crazy. This is not going to work." He's being a psycho, like, "Don't worry about it. It'll be fine."

And I was like, "Okay, okay." And then a couple years later, we moved to the West Coast, and, you know, that was like the start, like, right when it broke a thousand, I was like, "We just missed out." Like, it was $200, and it just hit, you know, a thousand.

Like, what are we doing, you know? Like, she was, and she was like, "Eh, I don't know. Like, we don't, it's too late now or whatever." And that's when I was just, I said, "No." I just started buying it, and just started going on my own, and started my own path, and that's when I really started digging my heels in.

And ever since then, it was, it was obviously a bull run, makes it more advantageous to start just buying more. But, yeah, his whole thing, he was very much into, you know, that concept of, you know, censorship resistance, and it was obviously a great store of value.

He's not as, he's nowhere near, and to, like, the super, super deep tech side of things. He understands, like, he appreciates it, and he knows what I do, and, like, the benefits of the project, and, and coin-join, and samurai wallet.

He definitely understands all that. It's not something that he's super keen on jumping into at the moment, and, and that's fine. He's, like, a sit back and relax kind of, kind of guy, which is good.

It, it helps base me a little bit, because when I try to have conversations about it, and I'm, like, attacking all the people that he likes, I, I get to listen to his side, and he's very, he's very wise, so, it's a good base, because sometimes I'll go far into the right with, you know,

the anti-toxic, maximalist culture, so, yeah, but it's, it's been very, very fun journey to say the least. It's, yeah, I mean, it's a fascinating way to come in from family, you know, saying to you, "Watch this, I'll give you a Bitcoin," and, and it's, you know, it's a feeling that we've all had anyone who's really hyped about this stuff,

and sort of it clicks, and you're just like, "Fuck, this thing's amazing. Like, everyone needs to know about this," and it's great to have a family member approach you and do that, because normally it's the other way around for people.

Normally it's like, "Okay, you learn this through whoever, friends and whatever," and then you try and explain it to your family, and they're just like, you know, you're a crazy, you're a lunatic, like you were saying, like, this is the reaction that your father-in-law had, and it's nice to have someone

within the family who appreciates it, albeit from a different aspect of, albeit from a store of value aspect, but it's nice, I imagine, to have someone to bounce ideas off or chat to occasionally.

Oh, yeah, and it definitely, it definitely got me more excited about things, because, you know, I get the benefit of both worlds, where, you know, I get to go to their house and talk about Bitcoin and, you know, all the great progress and stuff that's going on, and then on the other side,

I, you know, was trying to get my parents into it, and, you know, the whole conversation was like, "Oh, well, like, so it's like stock." And I'm like, "No, it's not." And I was like, "It's currency."

And I was like, "Well, it sounds like stock." And I was like, "It's not, it's not stock." And it would just be this, like, back and forth, trying to explain, like, mining and how it protected, like, the protection aspect and security, and it was, like, it didn't collect, so it's harder, you know?

And then at the same time, it was, I sold them on the wrong aspects, right? Like, the same type of thing where, you know, getting people involved when it's for an investment, you know, when the price goes down, they're not normally happy with you as the one that gave them, quote unquote, financial advice.

So, you know, going back, and then even more recently since a lot of the stuff that I've been doing, I went back and, like, had a conversation about, you know, that censorship-resistant aspect, and it started to click a little bit more, but it's definitely more fun to be able to, you know, go to a family dinner

and just be able to talk Bitcoin casually, like, it's no big deal. It's definitely a lot of fun. And the more that I got involved with some of the local stuff with the OC Bitcoin network and Stephen Cole, like, that's super fun.

Like, I hadn't gotten the opportunity to go actually hang out with Bitcoiners and doing that stuff is super fun. Because there's, you don't really appreciate it as much when you're talking online and everything else, but man, when you get to actually, like, have conversations,

even just like this, like, have conversations about Bitcoin, you're like, "Oh, this is fucking cool. Like, this is way more fun than, you know, just hitting people on Telegram, so, yeah, it's a lot of fun."

The OC Bitcoin scene, I spoke to Brian Harrington. I'm pretty sure he's part of that as well. Is that right? Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's a big guy. Yeah, so he was telling me about it. He was like, "Oh, mate, you just can't, you can't imagine how good this is just to be in person with other Bitcoiners."

And I was like, "Do you know what? Like, I'm ashamed to say it. I've never had it." Like, I've just never had it because I'm still trying to keep some privacy. I'm still trying to mask my identity to some degree.

It's getting harder and harder as the podcast grows. But I've only ever been to one conference and it was a fucking shit coin conference shilling XRP and whatever, denta coin and what other bollocks there was going on.

And like, it was just a load of wankers standing around just selling bullshit. And it was no fun at all. It really was no fun. And I've not yet got to a, like, a proper Bitcoin conference.

And I can't wait to do it. I just did a HCCP, parallel new police, a hacker conference. I spoke to a few of the speakers and hosted some of that. And that was amazing. But again, it was digital.

I wasn't there in person. So, yeah, I can't wait to do that. Like, just have a couple of beers and just chat to some people about some of the ideas that swim around in our heads and seem crazy to a lot of people.

But it is exciting and it is, I truly believe it is potentially creating a parallel society, like parallel new police. It is creating a completely separate world with people who are passionate about what they're doing and truly believe in making a change to this world.

And we've got some incredible minds. We've got some incredible people in this space. And I can't help but be bullish on that. Like, I can't help but think every time I speak to people like you and people like Brian Harrington and everyone that I get to chat to and everyone who's

building the stuff in this space, I step out of this Bitcoin world. I go into normal everyday life and it's fucking dull. And it's so backwards and frustrating. And just uninspiring, I think, is the best way that I can explain it.

It is two completely separate worlds. And if I just look at it in literally from that perspective of look at it as these are the people on the right side, these are the people on the left side.

Who's winning? I can't help but be bullish on the future of Bitcoin and everything that people are building. So what do you, obviously you've built this. It's incredible, Samurai just moving forward with, again, just like amazing privacy tech.

What are you looking at? Like, what's, if you've got anything that's on your mind that you think could come in the future or anything that, even if it's a pipe dream, anything that you're looking out and thinking, okay, this is the next thing for me.

This is the next step. So for me in general, I'm not going to sit here and say that I'm like super keen on the actual core foundation stuff. I think adding privacy into the core elements of Bitcoin.

I don't know if that'll happen, but I'm definitely super bullish. I'm like, what we can do from the wallet level and being as involved with Samurai Wallet and like help, whether it's, you know, QA or whether it's just like and testing out new stuff, like their Sorbon, the new Sorbon stuff that

they're going to release for doing peer-to-peer coin joins. Like, that stuff's super, super awesome. So I'm super bullish on like what we're doing from the wallet level. I think that there's really just so much space for us to continue to grow.

Obviously I'm more on like the node side and seeing the development of the node sphere has been amazing over the last year. I mean, you look at all the different wallets now and then allow you to actually, you know, they were a light wallet before and now, you know, or SPV wallet.

And now they're like, oh, yeah, you can actually connect your own node to it. And people are like, oh, like, they either they didn't know what that was and they clicked on the little button and it says like run your own full node.

And they're doing it or, you know, they see, you know, projects either like ours or mine node, you know, Raspberry Blitz, you know, static is kind of starting it all with a, with a Raspberry Bolt.

I wouldn't say started it, but he definitely was a big aspect of people learning how to do it themselves. Notal has been one of the OGs and all that. So, and there's, and there's plenty more out there.

I mean, Umbrella just started, it's super, it's super cool. You know, I was excited to be able to do that node breakdown kind of hitting some of the bigger, the bigger guys and because I really do, even if I disagree with people or, or if they're competition or whatever.

Like I said, if you're, even if you're a lightning developer and I don't think lightning is a solution, I respect anybody that's building because man, like, if you're building on Bitcoin, that means that you care.

That means that you want this to work. You know, it's a different means to the same, you know, different means the same goal. We all want this thing to work. We all want this thing to be better.

And, and I think that we're just continuing to get better and people are like that push for self sovereignty and people running their own, their own hardware and their own software. Like that's becoming, that's becoming like the new norm.

It feels like at least. And, you know, so that's one thing that I love. And, you know, despite all the, all the attacks or, you know, privacy wars, I guess I'm doing that in quotations. Privacy wars, the same right wallet and anybody else.

You're mean though. Everyone to do with samurai is mean. They mean big pennies. Yeah, you know, we're all assholes. And that's okay. I'm very comfortable with just being an asshole. There's just, I wish more people just took back and appreciated what people were building.

I think that, especially with samurai wallet, you know, you might not agree with them. You might not like them by you. I mean, obviously like the people listening. The fact is, is that, you know, we need people who are going to be assholes.

We need people who are going to do something different, right? We need those people because, you know, who do you want to be working in Bitcoin? Do you want someone that is, you know, polite, is going to, you know, like appeal to authority and is going to like, you know, if the mob starts to push them to change something,

they're going to say, okay, okay, we'll do it. Or do you want someone that is, you know, they're the privacy wallet, wallet team, wallet team. And they're like, no, we're not going to fucking do that.

We're doing this because we think it's better. And we know privacy because that's what we do, right? And we're going to do everything we can to fight anything that's anti privacy. Like, we are going to make this wallet.

We're going to be three steps ahead of everybody else. I mean, like the chain analysis, we're going to be three steps ahead. We're always going to be fighting, thinking about what's the next step.

And if that's, that's who I want. And I want people that aren't going to sit there and back down. Or if you attack them, they're not going to be like, okay, okay, we'll change. No, I want, I want someone that's, you know, that's the way I always tell them, like, you guys are hard motherfuckers.

Like, that's what I want. I want someone that's, you know, like a nerd at the table. I want someone that goes hard. I want someone that is passionate and gives a shit. So, like I said, you might not agree with it.

You might sit there and say, oh, like a bunch of the FUD is just, is just really easy to, to counter, you know, like, oh, like the, and the goal posts always change. So the first was, oh, well, you know, your ex pubs, right?

Like, you know, they have all your ex pubs. And it's like, okay, well, you don't trust it. Like, run, run dojo. Run dojo. Start a brand new wallet. That was the, when dojo first came out, that was, you couldn't even, it wasn't supported to import your old wallet.

So you couldn't, you had to start a fresh wallet. And that's always been the recommendation. And anybody that starts like, well, the only time I tell people to recover their seeds, if they're importing a new wallet is like, hey, is this a dojo?

Like, you're transferring from another dojo? Like, no, I'm like, okay, just start fresh and transfer the funds. Because yeah, that's an easy one to counter. Okay. So now you have dojo, right?

Then the counters will, okay, well, whirlpool, right? You're coin joining and they can eliminate all the, all the other people because they see the outputs, right? They can tell which ones are in their, are in their server.

And if it's not in the server, then we know that that address is a dojo user. Okay. Cool. So all you have to do, like, there are more dojo users than there are non-dojo users. And the reason we know this is because you have multiple, you have my node run in, nodal,

and you have, and you have, like, just straight vanilla dojo that you can just download and run on Ubuntu. And they have, and Nick Ops is, you know, Cypherpunk Labs lets you run dojo. You can buy a node, spend it up and have it running today.

So you have all these different options to run dojo, and then you're talking about a privacy focus community that cares about, that cares about privacy and self sovereignty. And majority of people are trying to run their own node.

They obviously don't want to give up any privacy in any way, even if it is exposed. So, okay, now we have more people running dojo. That means you remix a couple of times. Now we have to stop and go, okay, well, hold on, how do we know that, you know, more people are remixing.

If you're remixing it with Whirlpool, right, the easiest and the most recommended way is to run it on a, you know, on a dedicated device, right? Majority of users do that through dojo, which is 1.8, 1.7, released it within dojo.

So your Whirlpool back end is already in dojo. So now you're spending remixing all the time. Because if you try to do this from your phone, yeah, like you can get a couple remixes, but it's, it's obviously more difficult, right?

So we, so we know, we know that the remixers, you have at least a 90, 90 percent chance that all the remixes in that pool are dojo users. So the, the goal post continues to change, right?

Like we can post, you know, numbers and calculate numbers. But the number will always, those goal posts are always going to change. The reality is that anybody that's in the samurai community that's in telegram, that's active and talks to people, the biggest questions are, you know, how do I run dojo and, you know,

how, and then you get all the questions about privacy. Like how do I best spend, you know, what's the easiest way to move my coins or, and not, how do I deal with toxic change? Like all these different factors.

And the, the reality that I realized with all the FUD, you know, is not once, not once in any other arguments, do they say anything about the actual protocol of Whirlpool? Do they say anything about their, you know, post-mix spending tools?

There's nothing that says these tools aren't good. It's, well, they shouldn't even allow, you know, they shouldn't even allow a non-dojo user. And that's like the most unfair argument for any, any wallet developer at all.

Right? Because now you just took away a choice for somebody that lives, you know, maybe they live in Venezuela or maybe they live in another country where they don't have that option. They don't have the money or the means or the ability to run a full node all the time.

So why should they have to appeal to, you know, the Twitter mob to make it a dojo-only wallet? Like, once I realized that a lot of these attacks on, on like Samurai Wallet or, um, and they, they strike back and they hit hard too.

So they're not, they're not innocent by any means, but, um, ultimately, like, they know, they know that they're going to be, uh, taking away powerful tools from people who might otherwise trust Samurai Wallet with their information.

And that's really what it comes down to is that threat model. So a lot of this fun is, uh, it's fun for me to go on Twitter and to just debunk it. Um, but at the same time, it gets very tiring.

It gets very, uh, exhausting for sure. I don't know, it looks like your internet broke up for a minute. Yeah, I'm still here. We're back. No, no, I, I got the last little bit there. It just, it just, uh, it just, uh, it just, uh, was just cutting out every sort of five minutes, but I think I got, I got the majority of that.

And I agree with you. Like, I'll, I'll put it this way. Like, I don't want to be in the middle of a warfare here, but at the end of the day, Samurai is an implementation of coin join that the people that I respect in the space trust, whether they like what arguments go on or any of the rest of it.

Doesn't really matter to me. The fact is that I believe that my privacy gets better while using this tech. So I'm going to use it. And I've had a really good experience with everyone who's been involved in all the, in all the chat rooms and everyone's been very helpful to me.

And I've had a conversation with Samurai and it was a fucking lovely guy. Like he was a great interview and so have you been. And at the end of the day, like people can argue as much as they want and get as emotional as they want.

But all we really actually care about is are we increasing our privacy? And I believe we are. So all the rest of it is noise in my opinion. Like I'm not a developer. I don't know the intricacies of things.

Some of it I have to go on trust. I have to trust people like Matt O'Dell or I have to trust people like Bitcoin Q&A or like yourself. I have to because I can't review the code. But the people who have consistently been right and consistently led me down the right path.

Other people that I'm following and they seem to believe that this is the best option. So the best I can do is to follow that. And all the bullshit in between is irrelevant. It's irrelevant.

Are we getting better privacy? And I believe we are. Exactly. And normally when what I tell people is like once you, if you're really, really unsure, right? If you're really like someone hits me on Twitter and like I don't know which one's best.

I don't really know what to do. You know, just hey, if you have the time and you're really this interested and passionate about figuring out which one's best, just run them all. Run them all and then go use the tools that are out there to actually figure out how private that was.

You know, use whether it's KYCP or you can use the Boltzmann calculator that it's been reviewed by other people. It's all open source. Like KYCP, sorry, the Boltzmann calculator which is what's in KYCP is, you know, that's open source Laurent is the one that developed that.

And that's a fantastic tool. So, you know, just run the stuff yourself and it'll tell you how, you know, how private that transaction was. You know, was there any address reuse? Was there anything?

You know, that's what you can do. And those are the things that you want to see, you know, you can go in, you can read the, you know, research. But ultimately, like, I'm going to tell people after a while and they say, hey, like, I, you know, I still want to use this wallet.

And it's like, okay, like, at the end of the day, you, I'm not here to, you know, to tell you that you're a fucking idiot or whatever. If you've tried the different wallets and you figured out which one you like the best, like, hey, man, like, good on you, you know, keep doing you.

Because we, we know, like, I know what, what's going to end up, but the reality is that, that people are going to do what they want to do. And most of the people that have tried, at least tried all three, they end up staying with Samurai and using Whirlpool. And, and I think that's great.

Because the more people that are in there, the more people that are, that are coin joining, you know, the bigger are, you know, our anonymity set gets. And the bigger that crowd gets, the easier it is to hide.

And I think someone recently posted, I think it's on Clark Moody's dash dashboard. I think the unspent want to say I might be wrong, I can look up in a second, but the unspent Whirlpool liquidity is greater than what's in lightning right now.

Yeah, it is. And channels and like, fucking wild, considering that coin joining is like Whirlpool has been out since July last year, a thing, or maybe might have been a little early in April, I think I started in July, April.

So what a little over a year and a half. And we have more people using coin joining like that should, that should make you bullish on at least privacy, right? Like, that should be making you bullish.

And if you're not bullish on samurai, you know, you might want to take a look at those numbers and think about it. Yeah, it's been increasing sort of month on month. It's looking better and better. And yeah, I mean, I've been playing around with it and I love it. I think it's brilliant.

And I think that the fact that it's accessible to more people is amazing. And all the rest of it is noise. I'm just looking at it now. Unspent capacity compared to lightning. Yeah, we are.

So lightning total capacity, like 30% down. Yeah, it's wild. Yeah, I mean, and that's been out longer. I mean, either way, I mean, like I said, I don't bash people that want to play around with lightning.

You know, if it becomes super successful, because we get asked that question as far as like, Oh, are you going to make put in lightning and to run in. And, you know, I'm like, right now, like we are, we are the node for samurai users. We're samurai users, you know, for samurai users by samurai users.

So the moment that the samurai wallet implements lightning into their wallet. Yeah, we'll 100% have it. But I don't, I don't see that happening anytime soon. We know what works, right? Like we've, we've had 11 years now of proof of concept for on chain. So, you know, maybe it'll get there one day.

But it is very cool to see that coin join has gotten that many people excited that we have this type of liquidity. This is incredible. 1,693.68 BTC is incredible. It really is. And I think that it's nice that you have just, you're doing one thing and, you know, we're talking about my node earlier.

First people that I ever used are the first node that I ever ran. And, and they do a lot. And, and that's great. And it's got a lot of people sort of talk about it as the Swiss Army knife of nodes.

But the reason I actually first set up my Ronan was because I couldn't get the world pool to work properly. I had had an issue, couldn't reconnect it. Bitcoin Q&A said to me, look, just run a separate, just just run something separate and just use it for this.

Ever since I've done that, it works. And I've had no problems. So, I completely agree. I think you should just do what you know how to do and what you know works and concentrate on that and make it the best that it can be.

And I think it is. I think it's brilliant. The only thing that, like, from my, like, the way that I'm thinking about nodes, and like, you can tell me, you can say, this is a stupid fucking idea.

I don't even think about it anymore. But one thing that I think is really cool is when we were talking about Soroban. And I know that's just in testing at the moment.

And it's meant to make things a little bit easier for communications when you're doing these sort of peer to peer coin Jones. And just remind me what, what you would actually call them when you're doing over Soroban.

So when you're doing those, you presumably have some kind of communication channel, because otherwise it was scanning QR codes back and forward. Is that right?

Correct. Yeah. It's either sending payloads back and forth, or you're sending, or you're scanning those QR codes. That's the current setup for until Soroban is released.

Okay, so one of my, like, I've got a really, really long list of techie stuff that I've got to get on top of the, you know, I'm struggling with. And one of those things is understanding PGP and getting on top of that and having secure communications.

And I was wondering, is there any way that on a node that is specifically built for privacy? Is there a way of having some kind of communication channel that runs through that node, where I can be confident that when I send a message, no one spying on me, because, you know, in my everyday life, most people insist on WhatsApp.

And outside of that, I use Telegram and, you know, signal a few people use, but very, very few. You know, this is privacy tech. Is there a way that we can have a communication channel that runs through a node that I can access?

Because it's running all the time anyway, that I can access from my phone or from my laptop anywhere in the world and communicate through it. Or is that like a stupid idea that can't work for some technical reason?

No, I mean, you can. It's not a stupid question. It's actually like, I never actually thought about that until you said it. You can definitely send messages back and forth via PGP. And it's essentially just using encryption and signing like public keys, private keys, just like Bitcoin does.

That's kind of where Bitcoin derived from. But so you can definitely use it to communicate. And I'm always trying to come back and say that I'm not the smartest person in the room ever. You are in this room.

I'm not. No, no. There's always more to learn. And regardless, I'm definitely always have something to learn. But I never thought about that. I'm sure there's definitely a way to do it. I mean, there are PGP apps, like communication apps, being able to run that in correlation with a node.

I mean, I mean, you're already running a dedicated device. I don't see why that's not. That wouldn't be an option. That's something that we'll look into if you will use it. I think the only hard part is that whoever else is trying to use that you would communicate with, they would need to be downloading it.

So I think that they would need to run their own or at least be knowledgeable enough to be able to communicate via PGP. So I think that's where messaging comes into a weird tradeoff of what is most accessible and easy for people to do.

And what is also still has some security options. You could do encryption. You know, key base used to be pretty good. Definitely haven't been on there nearly as much anymore since they were acquired by zoom.

But yeah, that's a good question. I definitely want to look into that because I think some having secure communications with other people would be pretty cool. But PGP is a beast of like, if you don't know anything about tech, like learning that.

Number one, the starting point should always be learning how to verify signatures and stuff like that because that's always very cool. And then from there, it's like, okay, how do I sign things? And how do I sign a message and send it to someone else that only they can read?

There's so much you can do that is very cool. I think it's a very underutilized tech for sure. Nick Ops would be very upset at me if you're not being well versed on that answer. Yeah. The only reason I, the only reason it just popped into my head was I was thinking I've got one node that is for everything else.

And then I've got this one node and all it does is mixing and that's linked to my wallet, which is on my separate phone. You know, I've got a Google Pixel phone, which is running graphino s and it's like, I look at that and I'm like, okay, that's my secure and private part of my stack, if that makes sense.

And I'm just thinking like, if I could now have something like PGP that would run on my node and that I could communicate with people on that phone.

Effectively, if I'm running that and something like HODL, HODL and BISK, I've got like full stack. I can trade with people. I can communicate with people. I can mix my coins. I can send my coins.

It's like, in my head, I'm looking at that. I'm thinking, that's so powerful. Like, that would be amazing. And if it would be accessible to people like me, wow, things could move quickly.

But I'm sure there's crazy technical issues of why you can't do it and why it would take a long time. I think we can do it. I think we could definitely do it. That would be a really cool stack to add into it.

I'm definitely going to look into it because there are a few like, you know, phone apps that you can use and connect to it. And Tox is one. That's actually one that a couple of the privacy guys recommended me. So I definitely look into it because I do agree.

Like, that was kind of our intention. Once we started building it out, we wanted it to be. I mean, we don't want to throw the kitchen sink at it. But at the same time, like, what would make people more private and self-sovereign? Like, how can we do that without spreading ourselves too thin?

Because ultimately, like, I do really like our approach of staying focused and staying true to what we're trying to do. You know, with some of the other things that we're adding, you know, we always try to add what is going to be directly impacting a samurai user.

And I think this would be would be something to look at for sure. But, like, you know, adding, like, coming up, we're going to be adding an actual, like, Boltzmann calculator. You can just paste in the transaction.

And it'll tell you, you know, just like KYC or OXT or OXT does, where it'll tell you your entropy and, you know, deterministic links and all that fun stuff. Or, you know, we're all saying adding a private mempool space that utilizes your custom.

It'll utilize your dojo RPC Explorer. So it'll link directly to there. We're going to be doing some cool stuff. And then, eventually, we're doing the hardware wallet integration once we get to that point and in a web UI.

So we got a lot of big things. And I do, I'm always looking at, like, what can we add that users will get a major benefit from, you know, without having too much extra work on their side for adding.

And the other big thing that I recently started talking to some of the people on Twitter from Hodl Hodl was implementing their API so that we'll have within our web UI, you'll have an option to just go in and buy.

Go in and buy KYC free and know KYC Bitcoin. So I think that'll be a huge step if we can just have an easy way to go buy Bitcoin.

These sort of ideas are, I'm sure, going to play out, I'm going to happen and like you're saying, working with Hodl Hodl would be fucking awesome, like I would be using that straight away if you can manage to do that.

So, yeah, I'm excited to see what happens down the line and I'm already hyped with just using the features that you've put out there and being able to have the power to do this kind of stuff.

So, I've said it before, but seriously, thank you so much for taking your time to do this and build this stuff and thank you for taking the time for sitting down with me and running through some of my crazy stupid ideas and

crazy stupid ideas. Yeah, no, it's been an awesome talk and it's been really, the whole journey in general has been really fun and I can't stop and say it enough, but I appreciate the community.

I appreciate anybody that has actually come up and messaged me and said, "Thanks so much for everything you did." And because of you now, I'm running my own dojo and I got all my wallets hooked up and I'm coin joining all the time.

I really like, I can't say thank you enough. Hearing is really, really cool, but it's been really cool to see people get inspired and start to want to give back as well.

Obviously, I mentioned Q&A. Another big one that we recently started working with was, I got to look at what his number was, but D.C., one of the Samurai community members, D.C., he started helping us out and he wanted to, he's going to run his own little business out of it, but started making

like, node cases, I wouldn't say similar to crypto cloaks, but they're going to be, they're super, super cool. So we're going to have, we're going to have a new node case coming out that looks just like a dojo and it's built and designed for the Rock Pro 64.

It's going to have, it's all enclosed, so there's no wires hanging out other than the power cable and it has dual SSD capabilities, so you can run that, you'll have the RAID option, it'll all be encrypted.

And it's very cool because he just wanted to get back to the community. And so seeing people who want to start to pay it forward is always really, really cool.

So, and I appreciate you being able to do that as well, like we kind of talked about it offline, but, you know, starting a podcast to be able to reach out and have conversations with people to hopefully inspire them as well.

It doesn't, like I like these conversations in your podcast because none of it feels like you're trying to influence anybody or do anything like that. You're just, we just sat here for like an hour and a half and just talked.

And it's a, it's a really big thing. And I think that people are almost into a point they're tired of hearing influencers, and they're kind of tired of, you know, having people tell them what to think.

So, the way you set this up is fantastic and I really did appreciate being on here so. Thank you very much.

That's really nice to hear and yeah, it does, it literally comes from a place of me wanting to speak to other people who want to make the world a better place and want more freedom and it gives me a chance to learn and speak to like minded people so selfishly.

I just literally make these shows myself now. And if people enjoy it, they enjoy it. And if they don't, well, there's a million other influencers they can listen to and get back to them. So, yeah, seriously, thank you so much.

And if you ever do find yourself in London, we have to catch up and go for a beer or something. If there's any updates or anything happening, you know, let me know. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you. I've really, really enjoyed it. And yeah, I'd love to do it again sometime.

For sure. Yeah, no. Any time I'm in London, I got a couple other people, we can all meet up and have our own little Bitcoin pug meet up and it'll be fucking great. It sounds good. Sounds good. All right. Well, nice to speak to him. We'll speak again soon. Sounds good. Thanks, man. Cheers.