EP68 Bitcoin podcast with Nicolas Dorier

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

Now, what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. Oh. 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, everyone. Today's episode is with Nicola Doriae. This was recorded for 21ism, and I had Bitcoin Q&A as my co-host. I really enjoyed this, and I thought it would be worth reposting.

If you haven't already checked out, code block three and four, and all the other amazing featured artists we've had for 21ism, go and check it out now. It's 21ism.com. I'd also like to say thanks again to Badders for doing my show music, and also the show music for 21ism.

I fucking love it, and that's why it's staying in here. So you have two show intros on this one. Enjoy.

♪ This is it, what ♪ ♪ Satoshi's pouring from the sky ♪ ♪ Stationship's up ♪ ♪ No fear of missing out on the different flip, what ♪ ♪ Now popping up a double up is what we hit, what, what, what ♪ ♪ This is it, what ♪ ♪ Satoshi's pouring from the sky ♪ ♪ Stationship's up ♪ ♪ No fear of missing out on the different flip, what ♪

♪ Now popping up a double up is what we hit, what, what, what ♪ ♪ What, what, what ♪ ♪ Satoshi's pouring from the sky ♪

-Welcome, Nikola Durye and Bitcoin Q&A to the latest block for 21ism. Nikola, you are our featured dev this month. You have built something that's absolutely incredible. So, yeah, welcome, welcome.

And really looking forward to digging in and learning a little bit more about the project and some more about you. -Thanks a lot for inviting me. -Absolutely pleasure. And Bitcoin Q&A, as always, is here to help with the more technical stuff.

Anyone who's listened a couple of times knows that I'm a fuckwit and don't know a lot of the technical side of things. So, all right, so, Nikola, you have built BTC pay and it's absolutely incredible.

It's allowing people to do what I think wasn't going to be possible otherwise. And we are using it, although we're using it wrong. And could you just do a little bit of an introduction on why you built it, what it is that really pushes you forward and what the vision is for this project?

-Well, like, well, there's not really a wrong to use a BTC server. But like, basically, the initial vision was that even if we have a base layer that is relatively well decentralized, we cannot properly take advantage of this decentralization if everybody is depending on third-party providers

or like infrastructure providers to do anything they want. So, if I take an example, for example, with Ethereum, like, even if Ethereum was decentralized, like, if everybody end up using, say, Ethereum, then you didn't achieve anything.

So, it has been kind of this early realization when the shit hits the funds that I really wanted to do something for Bitcoin. And, yeah, that's how BTC pay started. And from this, basically, just gathering the community together and, like, getting feedback, dev, feedback, dev, feedback, dev.

And here we are today. -So, obviously, this is where you're at now and you've built this. But there was, obviously, a reason that you wanted to defend Bitcoin and you wanted to create this.

How long were you involved before you started building? -So, I don't see... When the war was, it was in 2017 or 2018. Yes, I don't even remember. The Bitwex war was maybe two years ago. I don't know, but, like... -Yeah, 2017, it was...

-It was in 2017, and before this, basically, I was mainly active working on Bitcoin, which is from a library in a dotnet to use Bitcoin, basically, that I built initially to learn about Bitcoin.

But you learn a bit and then it grow and basically that's now a huge library. And so, that was my main contribution to Bitcoin before a BitCP server. I did some Bitcoin core stuff, but, like, very, very little.

-Okay. And before then, before Bitcoin, will you... I assume you were working as a dev at the time when you found it? Or, like, how did this all come about? -No, so, I was a Microsoft-certified trainer.

So, basically, I passed lots of professional certification in the Microsoft world, Microsoft development world, so, dotnet language, principally. And I was just going to companies teaching them how to use dotnet.

It was a pretty nice job. I really liked what I was doing, but when I discovered Bitcoin, basically, I was... So, what drove me into Bitcoin is basically just after MT Gox. Everybody lost their money.

And so, I was hanging around on Bitcoin talk, like, seeing all those losers were, like... Oh, couldn't be so stupid to lose this money to such a scam. And I go on the forum and say, "Oh, look at those losers."

And I see what they're saying, and basically, they were still believers of Bitcoin. Like, even they lost all their money on this exchange, and they were still believers of Bitcoin. And I thought, it's not...

I mean, I start thinking, if they are not pissed off about what happened, normally, when you get scammed, you get very angry towards someone or towards the head of the scam or something like this.

But here, it was not the case. People lost their money in the exchange, but they were still fun of Bitcoin, and they were still buying Bitcoin. So, I think it's kind of what, like, drove me to search a little bit more, and after, basically, I had my share of kind of banks' abuse.

So, a long time ago, I built a company and didn't work. After one year, we closed the company. And, basically, I was in a kind of blacklist. So, from this time, for, like, three years, I could not very easily open bank account in France.

I tried, like, seven different banks. And I needed to go to the central bank of France to force them to have me as a customer. And then they were basically giving me no service or whatsoever.

So, this is a combination of both things. Seeing people losing their money, but still believing into Bitcoin. And the fact that I've been abused by bank in the past, that kind of drive me to learn more technically about Bitcoin and how it works.

OK, these are the things that drew you in. Yeah, because it's not normal, is it, to see, like you say, if someone's been scammed, normally they're just going to be, like, fuck off. You know, they're so angry and to see that and to see that belief, even after losing their money is definitely weird.

And then, to not be allowed a bank account, especially in Europe, you know, it happens all over the world to many, many people who just don't have access, but it's not such a normal thing.

So, I assume, although it was such a pain in the ass at the time, I assume you were actually quite pleased that happened. Yes, yes. But basically, so here is the thing. So, right now I'm living in Japan.

In Japan, you can pay, for example, your taxes. You can pay your taxes in cash in Japan. But, like, in France, there is no such thing. So, imagine that you create a business and no banks want to accept you.

Basically, it will mean that you cannot pay your taxes. So, that's pretty bad for the state. So, that's why you can go to the central bank of France and, like, force one of them to take you as a customer.

But, basically, if you do this, then they make you feel that you're not welcome. And, basically, you cannot do any operation on the internet and they make you come to the branch to do anything.

So, it was quite a pain in the ass at the time. So, was it that sort of prompted you to upstick and move and leave France? Oh, so, no, I left France a bit after Bitcoin, like, I think one year after I discovered Bitcoin, something like this.

And, no, it was just because I've been to Japan many times as tourists. And I really liked this country. I felt good living there. So, I wanted to experience more. And, basically, that's why I left France.

Now, I'm still in Japan and enjoying everything of it. I'm happy to not be in Europe anymore. Yeah, it sounds like you made a good move, to be honest with you, Nicola. So, are you living 100% on Bitcoin at the moment when you're out there?

No. So, yeah. So, after I left, so, after I discovered Bitcoin, I kind of stopped all my training jobs, basically. And I moved to Japan.

And the thing is that I could not reuse my code because it was kind of soon expiring. And, like, I got so many problems in the past where, by using my code, I got blocked in the middle of nowhere.

So, basically, when I arrived in Japan, I was using a local Bitcoin to pay for my day-to-day life. So, basically, I was kind of a market maker on local Bitcoin and people will find me and want to trade with me.

And I got enough people coming to me to survive in this country for, like, one year and a half. So, at this time, I was basically living on my Bitcoins. And it kind of gave me very lots of confidence about Bitcoin.

Yeah, that's quite a rare thing. I have heard that Japan, the usage of Bitcoin, is very different to what we experience here in the UK. But there's quite a big Bitcoin community out there.

Yeah, so, when I arrived, basically, there was not a lot of regulation or anything. So, like, I would say, the environment was more free than before.

I think it's after the ICO period where the regulation had been kind of defevorable for traders. So, in Japan, typically, the Bitcoin act as a source of income, basically. So, it means that it's taxed on the income, and which means in the higher tax rate,

it can reach 55%. So, yeah, it has been crushing for exchanging here. And right now, I would say, definitely, Japan is not the right place for selling your Bitcoin anymore. But it was at the time.

Yeah, well, these things change, and everyone has to sort of adapt with all these crazy, stupid regulations and all the stuff that's just constantly changing all the time. But what are your views on the future with this stuff?

Obviously, they're going to try and regulate it. Obviously, they're going to try and make things as difficult as possible for people. But with all the tools that we have and BTC pay being one of them, are you confident about the future?

Do you feel that we can have a circular economy and we can get round all the bullshit and in the end, we win? I think we already have the circular economy. I will say, you can do whatever you want by paying Bitcoin.

You just have to find the right people that might take small time that people are accepting fiat. But frankly speaking, right now, if I wanted to make a business, I'm quite 100% sure that I will always find somebody in the Bitcoin world willing to accept Bitcoin.

And I think the circular economy is already ready today. It's just a matter of being able to find the people. And I think it's possible right now. So I'm very confident. I'm very confident on this.

I don't think they will be able to regulate a lot because I think there will be lots of regulation arbitrage. You can imagine that a long time Bitcoin holder won't think twice before moving to a country that is more favorable to taxes.

More friendly to taxes. I'm kind of confident, but it always means that it's good if you have the option to move basically. Yeah, that's what I think. If you don't have option to move, it's more difficult.

Yeah, absolutely. But what's amazing about it is that, like you're saying, you can start a business now. You can accept your payments now. You can do it in a professional and quality way.

And you can do all of this over the internet using Bitcoin. And it doesn't really matter where you are, you can do it. And that's incredible. That's like just something that blows my mind every day is that we have these tools available.

And although I'm still getting to grips with a lot of them, it gives me so much hope for the future. And that's one of the reasons that we have you on today and that we're celebrating every month.

We celebrate our favorite dev, who's building something that we love and what you've built is incredible. It allows so many people to do what they couldn't otherwise do. You're giving freedom to people that wouldn't otherwise have it.

And I imagine your former self when you were going to the bank and pleading for them to help you and you're at their mercy. If you have these options available, maybe you wouldn't have to.

And yeah, it's well changing. It's really exciting. And I think that certainly for me, every month or couple of months, I see these developments happening and they become more accessible to people like me who aren't so technical.

And I sort of look out and just think, where are we going to be in a couple of years? Like, how good is this going to be for people who haven't maybe even had a bank account before?

Maybe they've not even, they can actually skip that step and they can set up a business and they can use BTC pay and run their own node and have their own hardware wallet and fuck everything else in all the bullshit in between.

Well, depending on where you come from, setting a BTC pay server is definitely more easier than opening a bank account. So typically in Japan, for example, it's very difficult to open a bank account when you are foreigner.

For example, if you are not employing a respectable company somewhere, they will just refuse to open a bank account to you. But for example, the problem with a BTC pay server foundation to receive the grants, where basically it has been very hard to find banks.

So I've been like three or four different banks. Nobody wanted to accept me. And luckily, like I got a friend in Japan called Jimmy Homa that's accepted to help me to open a bank account for the foundation.

And the process basically, it did like five trips to the bank branch to explain what we were doing. I needed to make a business plan in Japanese, this kind of thing.

Luckily, I had like a Jimmy Homa that was helping me on this, but without him, I will never have been able to open a bank account and defend a BTC pay server. It's like 100 times more easy and like less time consuming than this.

Yeah, it definitely feels that way. And yeah, so someone like someone who's coming into this space and maybe they might be listening to this and they know what BTC pay server is.

They get a basic understanding of it, but they're thinking, okay, I have a business, I have an idea or they're an artist or they're a musician and they want to accept payments. Like, what's your recommended flow for someone like that, where they're thinking, do you know what, this Bitcoin thing is all right.

I believe in this, I want to accept this and I want to sell my services or products for Bitcoin. What's that flow look like for somebody and what would be your suggestion for like a small business?

So, so I'm always fun of finding the simplest solution that work for everybody. So, in some case, so for example, if somebody want to receive donation and don't have time to look too much into into a Bitcoin, one, one idea will be to have one single address and having the address you use.

I agree, it's not good for privacy. Personally, I will not donate to somebody that has address reuse because it's impacting my privacy as well. But in some case, you know, depending on where you come from or depending on the time that you have to do your own research, like it's definitely a way to go.

For people that have a business, this approach don't work at all because if you start having a single address for your customer, then it means that you will have to take lots of time to identify which payment is by which customer.

So, if you have very low volume, like maybe why not? But in this case, you can just ask people, you know, to contact you when they want to buy and then you credit your address when you get the contact and then you get you get them the address, you know, like without any software, you could do this.

But it's kind of tedious, you know, like if you have a like, I would say more like more than a few sell every month, it's become very quickly tedious. So that's when like the BTC server is shining is somebody that is interested to this, we have lots of video on our YouTube channel that explains step by step to set it up.

But basically, you don't have to be technical, you can only click, you know, it's only a click resort and you can very easily host it on some virtual private server somewhere and get it running very fast.

And then, so for example, if you're if you're a merchant that is selling things that have a web store, you can very easily integrate it into the whatever web store you're using or more popular is WooCommerce, for example.

And you really don't have to be technical for doing this, like we have lots of video on our on our YouTube channel. So the best way I guess it would be to check it, check that out, or just like coming on the chat, we have BTC server chat coming there and asking question like the community will help you.

Just on the virtual private server implementation that you touched on there. What what what if any would you say are some of the trade offs with doing that are there any sort of privacy implications of having it hosted somewhere that's not in your sort of immediate control.

So you have some so it depends what business you are in. So if I take an example imagine that you are in the sex industry business.

It's possible that even if you are doing nothing illegal, for example, your your provider or your VPS one they will call you and say, Oh, please, can you can you stop doing this because like we have visa or mastercard that called us and they don't like this.

So there is a kind of businesses that's where VPS does not work. So for them, yeah, it doesn't VPS doesn't work and they can still have their own server in their own business and run it from their own server. But the kind of business that has this kind of problem is quite small.

It's a big fan of trying the easiest thing that works first. There is also but there is also some danger where if you're hosting that somewhere somewhere else and this somewhere else like have some, you know, rich security

then it means that they have access to your BTC server and if they have access to your BTC server, then they can do things like, for example, changing the address of invoices. So the customer instead of paying you directly then they paid this, you know, this fraudulent address.

So there is this kind of privacy implication and risk. I will say that it's not

most business, it's not real, you'd risk. But I understand perfectly that why some business don't want to accept this kind of free can really host it on their own server and on their own, yeah, on their own infrastructure. So for example, name chip, for example, they definitely are hosting their server on their own

and for lots of different reasons, so not only privacy, but also they want the ability to be able to monitor it like to see if like there is nothing wrong on the server, like they have kind of a wall team behind in making sure that things are working.

So it really depends what kind of business you are. Yeah, I think, I think you're absolutely right there about sort of, it's quite a niche case where people might have issues using a virtual private server. I've recently gone through the Raspberry Blitz implementation.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with it using their IP to tour service. That works out to a total cost of about 8000 sat for a whole year. And what that does is sort of, obviously with the initial implementation you've only got a local, locally exposed in sorts of BTC pay. Sorry, cool.

So there is another risk actually I didn't mention with a virtual private server and I think that project like Raspberry Blitz. Actually, I'm working for in Visual Lab in Tokyo. I'm also working on a project to be like Raspberry Blitz called I had zero, but we didn't read it yet.

But there is another problem with virtual private server that those sort of project solve is or easy install of BTC server is mainly done on us provider that is called Luna node.

And Luna node is a, so it's a small companies, not digital ocean, you can set up BTC server on any VPS that you want, but the most easy for people that are not technically competent is the Luna node.

And basically by the fact that lots of people are hosting the recipe server on Luna node and they become a kind of systemic risk. If something bad happened to Luna node, then lots of merchants will get trouble and this can be a kind of systemic risk for Bitcoin.

That's a risk that I forgot to mention and I'm very fan of all those projects that that is that are in the industry so there is Raspberry Blitz, there is not only there is my node I think.

So the one we're working on hack zero. It's by making sure that merchants are hosting that by on their own servers.

It's maybe a bit more technically difficult. You, you might, you make an encoder, encoder some more problems but like, I would say nothing that cannot be solved just by jumping on the chat and asking to developers somehow.

So you could you tell us a little bit more about the hack zero project I've seen a couple of little bits and bobs about it on Twitter but obviously I know you said it's not quite released yet you're able to share any any more details on it.

Yeah, so we will soon like I think in January we announced it like we will sell a first batch but not a lot like maybe 20 or 30 something like this.

But the basic idea is like, for example, Raspberry Blitz or not all it or my node. The thing is that they have their own infrastructure. So when you set a BTC server normally you need lots of different software you need a BTC server, you need an explorer, you need a big console node, everything like this.

And, and like tying all those different pieces together is done differently by all those different projects or Raspberry Blitz is doing it differently. What we're doing with Luna node is doing it differently. What is what another lead is doing is different.

And it's a bit of problem because when when for BTC server when we are, for example, raising a new new versions, then people are that are using those software like recipe beats need to wait that recipe beats are also updating.

They might be able to update by themselves but it's kind of more risky and more difficult approach. If you're already used or Luna node deployment in BTC server like updating is like one command line, you type BTC update or like a directly in BTC server you have a button to push update and it will update to all your stacks.

So it's based on Docker compose I won't go too much into the details but updates in BTC server in BTC server that we are installing on Luna node are very easy. We call that the BTC server docker setup.

And the hack zero is basically the same Docker setup but on a rock pro 64. So this is nice because it means that the documentation that we have to host on your own VPS tools with BTC server on your own VPS on Luna node or on your rock 64 Raspberry Pi.

It's exactly the same documentation. It works the same everywhere. And so there is a way less knowledge specific specific knowledge to know about the box.

So basically, if you have the X zero and you want the documentation, you can just look the BTC server documentation or for normal VPS. It's exactly the same. So that's, that's, that's what is different.

Interesting. So basically, it's just removing another one of those threat models and making it easier for the end consumer to get up and running with with BTC pay. So that sounds great.

Yes. But basically or Docker setup, you know, like if you have a Raspberry Pi or if you have a rock pro 64 like by yourself, you can very much set up the BTC pay docker deployment just by following the dog.

But it's bit, there is some command line with a hack zero. Basically, everything is bundled inside it out of the box. So basically, you just have to take the box, put it into your local network and you're good, good to go.

You can hear me. Hello, I'm still here. I think we might have lost Max. I can hear you. I think he may have disappeared. I'm just going to drop him a message. Okay.

Just while Max is sorting out his technical issues, one thing that I wanted to touch on, and I'm sure you've covered this loads of times in different various podcasts. Obviously, we're all on Bitcoin Twitter for, you know, it's got its various positives and its various negatives.

For me, there's two very famous tweets that everybody knows about. Everybody's seen. One of them is from Hal Finney, the famous running Bitcoin. And the second one is yourself. Back in, I believe it was 2017, was it? The famous bit paid tweet.

You're able to sort of give us a bit of background to that tweet, you know, what sort of led you to say that to bit pay and just sort of paint that picture for us.

Yeah. So before this tweet, so before, so it was, it was during this B2X war where a bunch of big companies behind that, that have their business on Bitcoin came together and try to change the protocol.

When most of the, where it was, most of the users did not agree with, and it was very controversial. And, and basically before this time, I was a fan of what be pay was doing. Like, I, I advise lots of people to use bit pay.

And I also helped lots of people to integrate bit pay inside their own environment. So when this all, when I saw that they try to change Bitcoin in a way that will be bad for the future.

And at this time, on top of this, not only they wanted to change Bitcoin in a way that I consider bad for the future, but on top of this, they were sending the wrong message to their merchants instead of saying that there is some contentious

problem in the community. They were telling to their merchant that they will be a upgrade of the Bitcoin network and nothing else, basically. And on my side, it has been quite a, I felt really betrayed.

So I was quite angry about it. And, and on top of this, I, I, before this, I was convincing lots of people to use bit pay. And basically, they were using the power I gave to them in a way against me. So that's how I felt at this time.

So my, my, what, what I wanted to do at this time was, okay, every people that I convinced to use bit pay, they need something else to move to.

We, I need to get them out of this, of this business. And so that's why I started BTC server. So BTC server, like the first API. So the API that we, I did at the time, was exactly the same API as be pay.

So that people that was on bit pay, but did not agree with their politics. They called very easily switched to BTC server without recording anything. So basically, you just change one URL somewhere in your, in your environment and you could just use BTC, instead of big pay.

And it kind of helped me to gather lots of initial users. So right now we are, we are making a new, a new API that's called green field API.

But the idea at this time was really to, to, to get all people that were dissatisfied with the action of bit pay to make them switch to BTC pay and basically making big pay up solids. I think you've certainly made some good tracks into what's doing that.

So, so at the time of this tweet, the BTC pay, there was no BTC pay I'd take it and it was kind of born thereafter. Yep, yep. Like it, it was, it was just after this. I think if the war did not happen, I will not have done this.

What is that? Give me again. Yep, you're back. I have no idea what happened there. But that was brilliant. I was listening along and Bitcoin Q&A. I don't think I need to be here. That was, that was kind of questioning.

But yeah, that, that was, that was interesting stuff. It's good to hear about the history of, of how all this stuff started. And I love those sort of stories when someone stood up and had the bollocks just to say fuck off. This is not about you.

This is about change. And thanks for that, Nicola. Thanks for standing up. Thanks for having some bollocks. There's not many people on this planet who seem to have them. So I'm very pleased to do.

And thanks as well to the first users because like, if, so what's very important for a project more than starting it is having a, you know, flow of people that care about it.

And so the, the early users and the early devs as well. So I think the earliest would have was like, Rockstar Dev. Like has been very, and concord as well was one of the first user. There was also a, a, a, a long mining.

And those early users have been very, there was also Pavel Nex as well. That's really forgotten. But there was Pavel Nex. Those earlier users were very, you know, important for the success of this project because as a loan developer, you cannot go that far if what you're doing people are ignoring it.

So it's, it has been very important. Yeah. Um, so another question that I had, Nicola, was obviously one of them, one of the more recent, um, additions to, to BTC pay was, um, pay join.

Um, obviously, I'm a big, uh, sort of, uh, advocate for privacy and obviously pay join sort of, um, is it, is a great tool to have in your toolbox in that regard.

Um, would you able to sort of talk about, um, how difficult that was to implement, um, and sort of, uh, some of the challenges that that brought to the team when, when you were bringing that on board?

Yeah. So, um, pay join was started. Uh, so actually the first person that start working on pay join was a cooks. Uh, so pay join is, is it. So when the project started, actually, I thought it was a quite very easy protocol. Actually, normally it's very easy just like a coin join that, uh, happened between the merchant and the customer.

And I was thinking it was kind of easy to implement this, but while implementing it, uh, we found out that if not done correctly, there is lots of, um, uh,

there is lots of vulnerability that can, that, that can be done. So for example, if you have a malicious merchant, if not done correctly, the malicious merchant could steal some money from the, uh, from the clients.

Uh, once again, there is a baby that that is making noise. Once again. Okay. Uh, I do. Can you listen by the way when the baby is screaming or not? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's fine. It's fine. Okay. Sorry. So, uh, so where I was, yeah, I was, so I was thinking it was, it was quite easy, but why developing it.

I noticed there was lots of problems. And on top of this, like, it's very important. So it's, it's, it's a protocol. And it's very. The most important thing with a protocol is that it's well documented.

And because like you expect other implementation that people using BTC pay will implement into their code. And if there is not a proper clear specification and proper guidance to implement it.

Uh, in a, to, to make it easy for people to implement, then they won't implement it. And so that's when I opened, like, um, I created a big, uh, big con improvement proposal.

And, uh, that, that was describing this protocol. And I got lots of people joining, uh, the discussion and that tree helped getting that. So there's, I cannot thanks everyone, but like the, there was, um, there was, uh, people from blue wallets.

There was people from, was a big wallet. There was people from a coin, coin joint markets. Um, so that it was, it was a.

We got lots of feedback and where we started with a protocol that was quite complicated, I think. And by, by skimming and getting, gathering all the feedback, I think we ended up with something quite easy to implement with a good guidance.

And that's why now I think there is lots of implementation that that popped up. So it was, in summary, it was more difficult that I expected, but it turned out better that I thought so.

So, so in terms of actually, um, using that from, from both a merchant and a, um, a customer perspective, what does that look like if somebody, you know, if I wanted to buy a t-shirt from your store and I wanted to pay using pay join.

What, what does that look like? What would the sort of flow be? So, for example, it depends off the watch you're using. So if you're using, for example, a wasabi wallet, uh, when you try to give me a donation, for example, or like when you try to buy from the merchant, you need to go to the second tab.

And you, you can copy the payment link, uh, then you copy this payment leak, you copy paste into wasabi wallet, then you can pay. I think on blue wallet, you just have to scan the QR code. It should work.

Um, if you're, if you're paying from another BTC pay server, it's the same process as wasabi, you copy paste the payment URL inside BTC server, and then you, you make the payments.

Basically, the flow is quite similar to any other payments, except instead of copying, like, uh, the Bitcoin address and the, and the amount to just copy paste a Bitcoin URL.

So, so I put, I'm presuming as well from a merchant perspective, obviously, they're going to need some funds, some stats in their wallet. Um, it, and they're going to need to be obviously in a hot wallet to be able to contribute them.

Okay. Yeah, so yeah, that's one of the downsides of this protocol, though, as you said, is that the merchant need to accept the money inside the hot wallets. Yes. So typically more on my site, because I'm using a, I'm using page on on my donation donation

wallet, because anyway, there is not too much money on it. You know, if I, if I get hacked, like I will not, you know, it will, I will be able to sleep at night. But still it give a way for people that want to improve their privacy to, to conjoin with me and it also increased, increase my own privacy. So that's, that's win-win.

Yeah, that's, sorry, go on Bitcoin, Kona. Is there, so is there any functionality already in BT Pay or perhaps, if not on the, on the roadmap to say set sort of a threshold to say, you know, if you received a lot of donations and you would only have a risk tolerance to say,

okay, once he gets to say 10 million sat, siphon goes off into a cold storage wallet somewhere. So we don't have that specifically, but there is a one project that is mainly maintained by cooks that is called the BTC transmitter.

We don't, we don't talk a lot about it because we kind of experiment, it's still an experimental phase, even if it's maybe now two years, that's an experimental phase, but it's still being developed and people are using it and we gather feedback.

So the project BTC transmitter, it's basically a kind of plug-in to, to, to be a server, and you can make some rules. Like, if my wallet is above a certain amount of Bitcoin, then do a transaction that sent this money to a hardware wallet, for example, you can do this kind of rules like this.

You can also send to an exchange, you can also send to exchange and then play, play, so sell order. You can kind of automate, automate your money with this project. So it's already possible doing these kind of things.

That sounds amazing. What was the downside to that? Is it just that it's maybe tricky to use or is there any other reason that people wouldn't use that?

So, so, so I don't think, so on my side, I never used it myself because I never had the need to, but I think I, so it's, it's difficult. So one reason why we didn't implement it directly in BTC server is that it's very.

DTC server need to be easy enough for most of the merchants. And things. It's very, it's very difficult to come out with a user experience that is not confusing.

Lots of people. So like people that are hardcore Bitcoin, or they will definitely understand this kind of, you know, this kind of few acts of like you cannot automate your money, they will definitely get it.

But that's, I think that's not the majority of users. So it's kind of hard to come to an agreement on how to present it properly inside BTC server. So that's why basically it's kind of a side project.

And because it's a side project and that cooks is mentally maintaining it on people that only care about the core feature of BTC server. We don't have to spend time to review it. You know, we don't have to spend time arguing with it. Like cooks can experiments feature that you want to add on his own.

And people that are interested into this kind of feature, then the best is to come on the chat and we have, we have a channel for the BTC transmitter. And they try it and they give us feedback and we improve it like this. But at least it doesn't burden most users that don't really need it.

Yeah, it sounds like from what you're saying, it's probably quite niche, but it's incredible that it's available to have to have that control and be able to do that because from from the way I'm looking at it, it would mean that there's no real reason that anyone wouldn't do a page join.

You could easily set up or not easily necessarily, but you could set it up so that everything's a page join and you also don't risk having funds over a certain limit going missing, which seems to be the only drawback, which is incredible.

And like, the privacy stuff is something that concerns me, it concerns the Q&A and I think anyone who's really looking should be concerned about the privacy and these kind of tools, the more they use, the better it is for everybody.

Do you, sorry, go on. It's kind of interesting that page join is I always say that it's a protocol that basically also helping the privacy of people that don't use it.

Because, because you cannot know which transaction or coin join or not, it's kind of very powerful because even if somebody don't use it, like there is always a doubt or maybe actually to coin join and like it completely poison all chain analysis.

So that's basically the powerful idea of poisoning analysis, because when they start taking a wrong assumption, it poison everything, every conclusion they might reach it. And I think it's very, even if not a lot of people are using it, it's very powerful. Having this doubt is very powerful.

Yeah, it gives everyone plausible deniability and like you say, it's everything that these chains of valence companies are doing is a guesswork to some extent, like it's they're working on like a probability of things and the more we can pollute that, the more we can make their guesses

less reasonable than it makes it better for everybody. And yeah, it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on the privacy stuff because, you know, you touched on it earlier that you got into Bitcoin.

One of the reasons was because of what the banks were doing and making your life harder. But I can tell just from speaking to you today and it seems to me that you want to see a change, you want to see a more free and open society and like, is there something before Bitcoin that has made you this way that's made you so

basically to dedicate your life to Bitcoin and pushing the development forward? Were you always questioning the way that things were? Were you always looking for something different or was it Bitcoin that changed you?

That's definitely Bitcoin that changed me. So, I, before Bitcoin, I had very little understanding on what money is. One of the source of understanding I had actually was very fully, I read some books of Robert Kiyosaki.

Actually, so it was Richard Poordad, a very good book. And actually, it's kind of one of the first that kind of educated me on the nature of fiat currencies.

And it kind of changed my outlook, but like even I was reading it like, what can you do except not being an employee and understanding that investment is better than selling your time.

But like, when I discovered Bitcoin, so after I validated the fact that Bitcoin was working as intended, I always wonder about why Satoshi did it.

And it's basically what drove me to read lots of book about Austrian economics, libertarianism, and like authors that I had no idea about before.

For example, in France, there is Frederick Bastia, like I had no idea which it was before, I had no idea. And reading all of those people like kind of change your perspective on lots of things.

And it's definitely thanks to Bitcoin that I discovered all of this. Yeah. And so now that it's changed your view of the world and as you go down this rabbit hole and you see what's behind the curtain and you see how all of these moving parts control us and the banking system.

And like you're saying, the investment is better than selling your time and how effectively it enslaves humanity in a very, very clever, but unseen way. Like, do you view the world differently?

It's a bit difficult to maybe communicate with people who don't have that view or what you're seeing at the moment with all this coronavirus stuff and all the lockdowns and all the changes that seem to be happening so swiftly that impinge are rights basically.

How do you cope with that? Well, on my side, I find it very frustrating sometimes because like what I see that lots of people see the misery coming, they are angry, but they don't know why.

Like you could suggest them that the system is kind of corrupt because of the how money is produced. But if you tell them this, they just, you know, they just come back to their to the politician talking point.

You could try to try to convince them and to argue with them that they are so conditioned to believe that by voting one politician or another, it would change things. And that's just a matter of policy that we should find the right policy to change things.

There are so certain of it that it's kind of, I would not say depressing, like a bit frustrating, you know, a frustrating is the word I would say.

But what can you do? I think I'm not good enough writer to convince them to have a different view on what are the real problem of society.

It's frustrating to see that sometimes they try to defend the very next, so for example, an easy example is for example free money, you know, like you ask them everybody is for free money everybody want to free money.

Do you want 1000 dollar for free? Yes, everybody is for it. But like, but then you ask them, okay, do you, do you dislike that price are rising and there's a gap between rich and poor, poor like increase. And they say, yes, I hate this.

And then you try to explain them, then that that's for the same thing that they are, they are enjoying, like the same thing that they're celebrating is the war reason why they are enslaved, they just don't see it.

And I don't know if they will ever sing it and I am a bit worried that in the future, not only they don't see it, but people that saw it, and that use Bitcoin to save themselves will be kind of demonized and, you know, they will have some kind of witch hunt against us.

Yeah, it definitely feels that way. It feels as though it's very, very easy to control the narrative and the Bitcoiners could very quickly become the bad guy, you know, this whole tax the rich, you know, this whole movement against the billionaires and all this kind of stuff.

We call it the planet planet, for example, they can say this. Yeah, they can easily say it.

And people will go will go against us and it is frustrating because at the end of the day, you're talking about someone saying, Oh, well, if I just vote for this politician, I go Red vs Blue, it's going to make all the changes and we all know that's stupid that we all know that they're all on the same team

and the fact is that I feel anyway that Bitcoiners are the only people who are really presenting an alternative. We're saying, OK, we don't like the current system. We're creating an alternative. It's what you've done. You've said, I don't like the way the system's built.

I'm going to fucking make something better. And if someone want to use it, then they can use it. And no one else is doing that. But we are going to become demonized. We are going to be the bad people. We are going to destroy the planet and the world and the economies will fall because of us.

But did you have any thoughts on what happens then? Do you are you concerned about that or are you thinking maybe we'll have this citadel world and that Bitcoiners will just separate themselves and go, we'll just do our own thing.

You fucking you do what you want. That's a good question because it's kind of I cannot find any example in the history of what happened to those kind of people.

So on my side, I think that's the fact that it's so difficult to seize Bitcoin. I think it's so difficult. That's the best way.

So I think they will so I'm kind of inspired by the book sovereign individual by saying this. But I think that this war between countries to get the money of the Bitcoiners will end up kicking on.

So like that you will have some rich countries like like a US, Europe, maybe Japan, we will who will take a stance of trying to demonize Bitcoiners and try to seize their money.

But like Bitcoiners because Bitcoin they just have, you know, to take the plane to another place that is more that is more welcoming them and pay their taxes there. And there is nothing they can do to stop this.

So I think it's a phase. I think it will be a temporary phase. If it happened, I think we will have to move somewhere. But I'm kind of on the long term and I'm optimistic because because of the fact that they cannot seize the money. So maybe they would try to make a KYC coin and non KYC coins.

But I don't see that happening because this will require international agreements and like the countries never like it's very hard to get agreements on a such a big scale.

Like even Europe, they cannot agree between each other nations. So can you imagine like Russia agreeing on something with Europe and agreeing something with China and like it won't happen there will always be one, you know, it's kind of prisoner dilemma.

You know, if all agree together, then they all win. But if one defect, then you win more than everybody else. And I cannot solve this. Yes, they are all greedy bastards. Yes.

I think the game theory doesn't work on their way. And I think on the long term, Bitcoiners will win. I am quite confident about this.

It's good to hear and I completely agree. I think that whether it was intended from the beginning, obviously, whoever Satoshi was or whatever group they were or whatever were incredible genius.

But I don't necessarily think that they had intended all of these all of these extra little wins. Obviously, the game theory is there. But whatever way you look at it, because of the greed and because of the disorganization between these countries and because they are all run at the end of the day by sociopaths

it works so beautifully in our favor. And the same with all the energy stuff, you know, they can bash Bitcoin. They can say that it's going to consume all the energy and all that what they want. But at the end of the day, it's provably wrong.

So, do you have any view on that? Like, do you think that some of this stuff was pre-planned and that it was thought out to the extent that it's not just about creating freedom money. It's not just about stopping the slave owners from controlling us through the money.

Actually, maybe it's about a bigger societal change and it's about trying to go further into the future and actually, yeah.

I don't know. Like, I don't know the mind of Satoshi once in a time when he created Bitcoin. But I will say that if I was something that spread the sovereign individual, like in 2009,

I would understand the implication of having a free money like this, but I will not create Bitcoin by thinking it will work. Basically, I will do it in a way of kind of interesting thought experiments

and like develop that in my garage and then post it somewhere. Maybe some people will get interested in jumping. I don't think, maybe understood, like, if that happened, then there is lots of implication that the sovereign individual is talking about.

But I don't really believe that from day one, he thought that Bitcoin will actually achieve this amount of results. Yeah, I think that's probably reasonable unless Satoshi is an alien and I don't think that would be the only way I think they could look that far into the future.

Yeah, it's fascinating for me. I spend a lot of my days thinking into the future and thinking about how this will change everything, but without what you have built and without the help of everyone who is dedicating their lives to push this movement forward.

It wouldn't have happened, and Satoshi has done what they've done, and now it's on to everybody else to man up to accept that we're going to have a contrarian view, ignore the mainstream media, create these circular economies and use the tools like you're building to make that possible.

That's really why 21ism was so excited to have you on, because what you've built is allowing that, what you've built is making this dream possible.

And we can only say thank you for doing that, and also apologies for running it incorrectly. We are going to try and do better and make sure that we do it in a self sovereign and better way.

Why do you say incorrectly? Because you put me up on it before the interview. Yeah, that is naughty from us. All of us, we need to slap them to sort ourselves out.

Yeah, I'm convinced that the OpenNote guy paid Pavel next to delete or documentation repository like one years ago, Pavel next deleted the repository by mistake, and just months before he was drinking with the OpenNote that guy.

Ah, I didn't know this. Can you give me a quick summary? So he's deleted documentation and that has caused issues. Yeah, yeah, so Pavel next, there was a kind of conference, I think it was in Berlin, like in, I don't know, one years ago or two years ago, I don't remember.

He enjoyed lots of time with OpenNote guy, he drank, he exchanged T-shirt with them, you know, BTC pay T-shirt against OpenNote T-shirt and like two weeks later, by mistake, Pavel next deleted the BTC pay documentation repository, I needed to write to get up to get it back.

That's right. Don't bug those guys. Suspicious. Okay, if that's true, if that's what's happened, fuck you both. And we're not going to be using that anymore. That is very, very dirty. I didn't know that.

Let me know. I will help you fixing this problem. Thank you. Thank you very much. Bitcoin Q&A, I know you had a couple of questions about people doing things properly and newcomers coming in and after hearing that, yeah, definitely we need to make sure that people do this the right way, so I'll pass it over to you.

Yeah, definitely. Obviously, something that has got a hell of a lot better definitely within the last 12 months is the abundance of education in the space and, you know, there's never been an easier time for people to get started in Bitcoin.

I'm always curious when I speak to people who've been around as long as yourself as to what the tools that they use, you know, if you were to meet somebody in a bar who, you know, they might be a 30 something that's relatively tech savvy.

What's your go to resources or methodology to sort of help them understand why Bitcoin's important. And what route would you take?

So, that's a good question. So, first, for motivating them, like about what Bitcoin is about, I think like Andreas Antonopoulos did a fantastic job. So, I will, I will have to dig in the history of video as he did and like, you know, like send those people looking those videos.

So, it's very important that they understand, you know, that they'd be motivated by Bitcoin that they understand the potential and I think that Andreas Antonopoulos did a great job.

Depending on the people, for example, if it's a CEO, I will definitely give the video of Michael Siller doing also awesome job at explaining from his point of view.

So, once they understand it, once they're motivated, then I will guide them to more technical videos. And so, if he is interested, for example, by BTC server and installing it, I would just for watching the YouTube channel that we have.

And I call to install BTC server in five clicks. And so they can start playing with it. Interesting. Yeah, I think I don't think there's a single Bitcoin right there that doesn't have Antonopoulos as part of their back story or onboarding story seems to come up quite a lot.

And I've certainly watched loads of his videos and it's just a bit of a shame that he seems to have gone down the pension coin path at the moment, which is a shame, which is a shame button.

A lot of people, lots of people are saying, don't hesitate to send to Andreas Antonopoulos because now he's into shit coin, but like, we agree, oh, but he did great video and I don't see you to send noobs other than his video and the way explain it's fantastic.

Evan is into shit coin and it's too bad, but, well, for motivating to Bitcoin, I think it's still great. Oh, for sure. Yeah, I think the way that he puts stuff across is fantastic, especially for people at the new to the space.

He's got a real knack for breaking things down quite well. For the more somebody who's more technically capable, if they wanted to contribute to BTC pay, where would you advise that they go and have a lot?

Oh, so we have, so actually we have videos to set up a development environment. We also have a very good documentation how to get your development environment done. So one interesting thing with BTC pay is that setting up your development environment is quite easy.

You don't have lots of tools to install. You can do it on whichever operating system you are familiar with. So I will definitely either send them on a video on all to get the development set up done, or just directly to the documentation, like you just have to follow it.

I think for somebody that knows.net, it takes maybe 10 minutes for somebody that never used.net. It may take maybe one hour, but it's really easy compared to most projects. So just a quick overview of all we are doing, because I think there is no project that are doing like us.

So when you develop things on Bitcoin, the main difficult things when you try to development set up is to have all the different components connected together. Bitcoin core, Lightning node, and BXplorer and BTC pay server. So like you have like five or six different pieces of software that need to be correctly configured together.

And the way we solve this problem with BTC pay server is that we have a Docker compose environments that developer can just run. So they just run the Docker compose environment. Then when they run it, then they can instantly run all the tests or run BTC pay server on a rec test.

So rec test is like, you know, you can mine your own block or things like this. So it makes it very easy for developer to jump in. I think it's very interesting for developers.

That's great. That's great. I mean, for me, obviously, I'm not a merchant. I have got a local instance of BTC pay set up for anybody to send me a couple of satas donations. But I mean, it absolutely worked perfectly as it is. But I'm interested to know what's next on the roadmap for the BTC pay team.

So this year, basically, we have been quite busy to try to. So basically, we don't want BTC pay server to be a kind of wall garden.

We try to. So the more the project grow, the more all there is, the more idea of feature they are. But like, it's very difficult to add feature because when you add feature, basically, you make user experience harder.

And you have more decision making to do. And like when there is lots of the decision making, it means that the project as a whole is taking longer and longer to develop. So it's kind of a problem that we identified earlier this year.

And what we are pushing forward this year is more exposing the internals of the internals of BTC pay servers such that people can build more easily on top of it.

So, for example, the BTC, the BTC transmute that Cooks is doing is one example, you know, Cooks can do that without asking us to review things. Or like, there is also Red BTC, the Red BTC project that allows you as well to have a kind of rule-based BTC servers.

For example, when you receive a tweet, I think you can post a comment on GitHub or things like this. No, when you, sorry, when you receive a donation, you can automatically post a comment on a GitHub issue or something like this.

Like, we want people to create their own project on top of BTC pay server and not stay, you know, world garden. We just want people to build on top of it a bit like WordPress, you know, WordPress is not great because there is lots of feature into WordPress, but it's more because it's open.

People are building on top of it. And because lots of people are building on top of it, then you can do many things very easily. And it's kind of the approach that we try to take. So, yeah, we develop, we try to develop a lot internal API. So everything you do in the UI, we want you to be able to do it in API.

And there is also, we have a cook that is experimenting with plug-in system as well so that you can, yeah, directly, like, have your own plug-in BTC pay server. And also, our Docker Compose setup, the Docker Compose deployments actually allow as well to add plug-in in their own Docker container.

So that's all, for example, we, so for example, when we started doing BTC pay server, there was only BTC pay server and on-chain transactions.

But with this way of adding plug-in to BTC pay server, we like, we could add LND or like other software, like P-hole, for example, if you're hosting BTC pay server on a Raspberry Pi, you can put P-hole at home.

Or like, yeah, so, yeah, we try to attract people to build on top of it, basically. That's basically the setup Bitcoin is taking as well, have something very, very solid at the base and then people can build on top.

And it seems like a logical way to build things and just some of the things that you were reeling off there that are in development sound incredible. Yep. It amazes me all the time, just this stuff being built and just don't forget to sleep, mate.

Make sure you make sure you get some sleep. I don't know how you managed to get all this stuff done. It's incredible and I thank you. I'm the developer. No, I know, I know, but all of you guys building this stuff.

We wouldn't be able to do what we can do without it. And, you know, I really do thank you for it. And it's why we've got you on 21ism today. And it's been incredible. I've really enjoyed learning a little bit more and digging into the weeds about why you're doing it and what's to come.

So, yeah, thanks for joining us. It's been amazing. And if you ever find yourself in the UK, come and have a beer or a whiskey with me and Bitcoin Q&A, we'd love to meet in person. And it's been great. But before we close out, before we close out, sorry, go on.

Actually, I've been to, you were in advancing Bitcoin, like a beginning of this year, it was an advancing Bitcoin conference. I was there. Yes. Oh, are you? Okay, I only went to the very end. I snuck in just to the dev meeting at the end.

But I didn't go to the rest because I think it was quite expensive and I'm a cheap, cheap bastard who was that. But yeah, if you find yourself here again, it would be great. Steve, once again, proof that you want to crush the economy. You don't want to spend your money.

I don't. I just stack sats. I stack sats. No chairs, no shoes. But yeah, is there anything else that we haven't covered that you wanted to go through? Hi. Thank you. I think we covered pretty much everything right now.

Okay. And Bitcoin Q&A, anything you wanted to go through? No, no, I've ticked off my list. I just want to say thank you for everything that you do, Nicholas. It's been a pleasure chatting with you.

Yeah, me too. Thanks a lot. Okay. Awesome. Well, yeah. Thanks again. And that offer of a whiskey or a beer is open whenever. It'd be great. It'd be great to see any person. And thanks again, really, from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you.

I'm honored that you will spend some sats for paying me a beer. All right. Take care. Speak soon.

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