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Show Notes
This episode marks the second of a new monthly series where QnA and I have a discussion about the last month in Bitcoin. We base our conversation on his website bitcoinmonthly.news which acts as an index for those that want to stay up to date with what really matters in the space.
This month we cover the latest software updated from the likes of Samourai + Blue wallet. We also delve into a new initiative called Gretas Fury and cover off some awesome educational resources from Ketan and Econoalchemist. We also answer some of your questions, so be sure to keep an eye on next month's release and get your questions in.
I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you enjoy listening.
Twitter - @bitcoinq_a
Website - https://bitcoiner.guide
As always please feel free to reach out and ask me any questions.
Website - https://www.bit-buy-bit.com
Twitter - @BitBuyBitPod
Email - bit-buy-bitpodcast@protonmail.com
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Now what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. Yeah! Oh. The greatest scam in history. Let's get it! Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.
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 this space and sliver to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.
Bitcoin Q&A. Welcome back, and thanks for joining me for our second show. We still haven't actually come up with a name for it, but sort of monthly update and knowing what's going on in Bitcoin show.
Maybe we should ask on Twitter for some name suggestions and give a little prize to the winner or something like that. The catchiest name. That's a good idea, except you're going to have to come up with a prize because I'm far too tight for all that.
I'll send them one sat on this thing we're going to discuss later. There we go. There we go. Better than nothing, better than nothing but answers on a postcard. Best name for whatever this show is.
Excellent, but yeah, thanks for joining me. And I look forward to it. I really enjoyed the last one. So what have we got? What's in store? What are we learning about from this month in Bitcoin land?
So, yeah, it seems like five minutes since we last recorded for January's edition. I don't know about you, but... Yes, February, a bit more of a quiet month. Obviously, we had back in January, we had the big Bitcoin call release, which took quite a lot of the last podcast.
So I picked out some of the sort of personal highlights in terms of software updates that I'll cover off first. First one, Samurai Wallet New Update 99. Fuck, I sound like Marty Bent now.
V zero point nine point nine point nine point six. Oh, whatever it is. They have released, well, there's a couple of updates in there, but the main one is the, there's a testnet version of the 100k SAPO, which is significant because obviously with the significant price increase that we've seen
in, well, for the last couple of months, really. The smallest pool currently is the 1 million SAPO, which the time of recording is probably, I'm going to butcher this now. Probably about 400 quid, is it something like that, Max, I think?
Three, four, eight, four hundred, yeah, that sort of sort of figure out a lot of money. It's not exactly small change anymore, is it? No. So the guys have released a testnet version of the much smaller pool 100k SAPO, which is obviously much more geared towards spending amounts of Sats.
You know, you can throw a small amount through Whirlpool and get some 100k SAP UTXOs ready for spending, which, and I think, you know, we might see that trend continuing in the future, you know, especially if the price still goes up because obviously the dollar value of, you know,
the purchasing power of that, the smaller amounts of Sats still goes a lot further, because I only in testnet at the moment, so I would imagine that'll be in a couple of months, probably released onto mainnet, but if you're interested in going and helping the guys out in
terms of testing and checking that, then, and you've got, actually got some testnet Bitcoin, then feel free to go and have a play around with that one. Yeah, that's really nice. It just makes it more accessible for people because not everyone can just chuck that through. It's a lot of money and it's only going one way,
so it's really good they're doing that. Definitely, definitely. Next one, Blockstream Green, latest update. They have now, I think this has been a crowd request for quite a while. When blockchain green connects to the blockchain green service, which is the default, any of your
metadata within the wallet, so say the notes for your UTXOs, let's say you received the transaction and you put a label on that to say that that was from Bitcoin Q&A, that would get shared with their servers, which is obviously really shit for privacy. They have now made that so that it's
encrypted with the password that you unlock the wallet with, so that obviously, you know, it's not sending any sensitive data back to their own servers, so, you know, a good privacy improvement and a longer overdue, in my opinion. Next one, Blue Wallet, another one of my favourites.
Quite a big update this one in terms of actual functionality. They've changed their fee estimation to be based on the memo. I think we might see that this is going to be an increasing trend, especially when we're in high fee environments, so every wallet that's out there uses their own
sort of, well, some use Bitcoin cores, fee estimation, some have got their own, they've rolled their own. I think generally speaking, it's kind of like based on a rolling average over a certain period of time, which, you know, is probably a fairly scientific way to do it, but it's no guarantee that
what's happened in the last 12 hours is going to happen in the next hour, if you like. So, increasingly, a couple of wallets now, including Blue Wallet, have come up with their base in their fees based on what's actually in the memo right now, so you're getting much more of a live picture,
so that there's less of a likelihood that you pick a fee based on, say, a rolling average of the last 24 hours, and then there's a fee spike just as you hit send, and then you've got a transaction stuck in the memo for days, and so I've not tried it out to be honest with you, but it can only be
a good thing that we're getting more accurate fee reporting. That's really clever. I wonder why was that not done before, then? Was it a difficult thing to implement? Yeah, I'm guessing it's probably not that high up on the priority list until now, because obviously,
you know, we're seeing slightly more sustained high fee pressure, whereas, you know, this time last year, and earlier than that, it was a case of, well, I'll just throw 10, 15 sets per byte, and I like the other days it's going to confirm in the next day, because that's what's always
happened. Obviously, we're moving into a much different fee climate now, aren't we, where it seems to be much more sustained, and I don't think the memo has cleared for a good few months now, was it?
No, it's been, I've been moving some bits around, and it's been quite painful. The fee is actually, it's been quite expensive. I think it can't really come as a surprise to most people, but it doesn't make it hurt any less, I suppose, when you do actually need to send some sets anywhere.
Definitely not, and actually, I'll tell you what, it has really hurt, and you just mentioned blue wallet, and I know you've got some more updates from them as well, but I'd said previously, I've never lost a set, and people say, oh, you haven't fucked around with things enough, then,
but I can now confirm that I have, and it was through blue wallet, and it was because I'd gone to a lightning dev meetup in London, like a maybe a year and a half, maybe two years ago, I was trialing, it was with Zebedee, and they said, oh, like, we've got this in-game thing where you can send
sets, and it will interact with the game, and I was like, that sounds cool, so I downloaded that, I didn't write down my 12 words, I just, I screenshot them, it was like, it was, I know, I know it's so bad, I chucked like a hundred quid on, I was like, look, at the end of the day, if I lose this,
I'll be annoyed, but like, it won't ruin me, so I chucked a hundred quid on, and then I realized, oh, I've done a screenshot, that was stupid, so I deleted it straight away, and thought I'll write them down later, never did, my phone died, fucking iPhone died, can't access it, can't do anything
with it, completely dead, and now that's like a grand, so there we are, that's my own fault, but it's just a warning for everyone, yeah, so blue wallet, it's not their fault, it's mine, but I sort of, I feel a bit sick when I look at the blue wallet thing on the screen, I haven't
set up a new one, yeah, it says start new wallet, and I'm like, ah fuck, any kind of a side note, yeah, that was a good learning experience to share for everybody else's listeners, as well, yes, staying with blue wallet, they have added the ability to import LND, which is the most
popular lightning implementation, they've added the ability to import the seeds that are generated by the LND protocol, now this is something I've not seen from any other mobile wallets, LND creates their own style of seed, it's still a 24-word seed, so that you know, if you've got a
lightning node, and when you're setting it up, you'll still spit out a 24-word seed, but it's kind of, to my knowledge, it's structured slightly differently than a general bit 39 seed would be, and you could only sort of, until now, import those into other LND nodes, now blue wallets added
the functionality to import that into their wallet, which is a pretty new feature that I've not seen before, and could be useful in terms of, let's say you close below the channels, because you're getting rid of your umbrella node or something like that, with lightning on it,
closer your channels, all of your funds go back onto that seed, you then, historically, you need to send that off to another wallet, blue wallet, samurai wallet, or anything like that, wherever you want to keep those funds, well now you can just import the seed directly into blue wallet,
and you're saving some transaction fees, which is good actually, I'm impressed with that one, and the last one from blue wallet, again, they've added in the functionality to import electron JSON style wallet files, and so I think with this one, again, not tried it, but I think
the, well, I know, electron uses their own style of wallet derivation, they, it's not, basically, their wallets have been historically kind of incompatible with most other general style wallets that follow the bit 39 BIP, but obviously blue wallet now, I've added the functionality that
you can import them as well, so blue wallet's kind of like the catch all in terms of wallet imports now, you can pretty much throw anything at it in terms of seeds, derivation to things like that, in fact, no, I don't know, I don't know if you can change the derivation with blue wallet,
so scratch that one, but in terms of seeds, you can pretty much throw any format at it, and it's going to find what you need, so yeah, becoming quite usable at all. That's pretty cool. Next one, Sparrow wallet, the, well, for anybody listening before I get into
the notes on this one is going to listen to Citadel Dispatch, Craig Rowe was on it with, with the kind of alchemist, was it with the kind of alchemist or not? Yeah, it was a kind of alchemist. I'm halfway, I'm halfway through, really, really good episode,
and I can't believe he's not been on any before. Yeah, it was his first part, and they do a real deep dive on Sparrow, and Echo Matt's thoughts that it's a really underrated desktop wallet, so there, latest update, they've now got pre-configured election servers,
so obviously, election servers are kind of like a swear word in the Bitcoin community in terms of, especially the public ones I'm referring to, so it's commonly accepted that if you connect to a public election server for any length of time, the likelihood is that one of those, yeah, at least
one of those is going to be a chain surveillance firm, and that's why everybody warns you against it, and the reason that people do that is because it's, it's the default, you don't have to run your own node or anything like that, it's the lowest barrier to entry, obviously comes with some
significant trade off since then to privacy, so Sparrow have kind of sort of recognized this problem, but also understood that not everybody's going to be running their own node from day one, so what they've done is they've sort of picked out some known, and I'm using air quotes here,
trusted public figures, who run public election servers, and they've pre-configured those into the back end of the wallet, so that if you choose to not run your own election server, or to connect to your own Bitcoin core, back end, it will choose from these pre-configured lists of, again,
air quotes, trusted people, so that it's kind of like shielded. Who are the trusted people, we've got like trace, my people are like, pretty trusted people in this place. He's back as well, did you see that? I've heard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I echo that, but I'm not sure in terms of, oh,
the only person I know that runs one, I'm not sure if he's on the list, I would imagine he will be, but the only person I know of is Luke Childs, who's actually been a contributor in a number of projects, but Craig did allude to the fact, when he was on Citadel Dispatch, that there's a number of
them, and yeah, so it's kind of like a best of a bad situation, so to speak, you know, you're not just throwing some shit at the wall and hoping it doesn't stick, there are some known, semi-trusted people that you can connect to if you don't want to go through the pain of setting up your own
electron serve, which, again, it's getting easier. Most of these nodes now make it a sort of one-click in store, which is good, but I thought that was a nice little touch in terms of, it was a nice way to look at it in terms of affecting, accepting the fact that not everybody's going to have an
electron service, so this is a nice alternative. Yeah, sort of a middle ground, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. Next one, Umbrell, they've a big update a couple of weeks back now, this one, added some more apps, as they like to do the Umbrell team, they've added ln bits, which is like a
sub wallet structure, so you can have different accounts on your, on a single lightning node, and so you could sort of give your girlfriend some pocket money off your lightning node, and she'd only be able to spend that much you gave her, rather than draining all of your channels.
I have to actually get a girlfriend first, but yeah. As an app on there. Probably, the rate they're adding them, they might have one, so yeah. One, a bigger update, they've, they've also added what they're called in Samurai Server, which is a package containing Samurai dojo, which is the back end for your Samurai wallet,
you know, you can't use a Samurai wallet with your own node without a dojo. That's, it's kind of like the, the translator between Samurai wallet and Bitcoin core, if you like. So they've, they've added that and they've also added Whirlpool, so hopefully we should be seeing a nice little
bump in some Whirlpool liquidity off the back of it, because it seems like every day that I see somebody else tweeting that they've, they've downloaded an umbrella node. So hopefully more, more Whirlpool liquidity is good. I've, I've not tried that one again. I do have an umbrella,
but I've not installed the Samurai Server or anything like that. Yeah. They've also added lightning pool, which I think we're going to get into a bit more detail on a bit later on. So labor on that one. Cool. Yeah. Overall view on the humble thing, I've not yet run it, but the
feedback that I've had from sort of people close to me in this space that have run it have all just said like so far, no problems and really, really simple. What I found a lot of people have said, if someone's running their first node, this is the one. And I have got a few people like that who
are like, not that techie, but they're starting to get more into Bitcoin. You know, obviously, the price run has helped quite a lot. And they're like, yeah, I kind of, I kind of like the idea of running a node. And I would have always like in the past that have always said, well, maybe just
try like my node or something like that. That was my first one. And like, that was sort of relative. It was easy enough that I set it up. So, you know, that's big volumes. And I didn't even have to call you with problems like it. I actually managed it by myself as far as I remember. So I would
always do that. But it seems like umbrells really stepping into that place for me, it seems like everyone's just saying is pretty much like say one, one click install. And it remains to be seen whether everything works on it. But it certainly seems to be doing some great things.
Yeah, I think user experience has been something that's lacked quite significantly until fairly recently in terms of node implementations. And they seem to be doing a great job with it. So, yeah, let's, I'm keen to see how it pans out in terms of, you know, when when they can continue to
add more and more apps, I'm keen to see how it performs. Next one. And the last one from the software updates, Samurai Dojo, we've just touched on it with Umbrell. They have added the a couple of little nice features which are useful for me personally as a avid Samurai user, they've allowed
the ability to delete any ex-bubs that attract. So if you if you change a wallet or if you need a friend that connects to your wallet just temporarily to for whatever reason, you can you now have the ability to delete those, which again, I'll just kind of reduce some of the bloat and a load that's
that's on the node. Whenever you're rescanning any of those public keys, you now get a progress bar. And the last one, which is a really nifty little improvement. They've added Tor, both Tor V2 and Tor V3 onion connections. So if we were to see some attacks on the Tor network, which we saw
just a couple of weeks ago, that took pretty much all of the Tor V3 onion addresses down. They've now got a redundancy in terms of a Tor version two address. So if you're in dire need of connecting to your Dojo and there's an attack going on on the Tor network, which seems
to be primarily primarily focused on the V3 addresses, you're not going to lose that access, which I thought was really clever. Yeah, that is clever. And just going back to that to lead to tracked X pubs. So for example, my Dojo went down. I connected to my Mrs one. So I'm now on hers,
which means I could what you're saying is if I then get mine up and running again and connect back onto that, I'll be able to delete my X pubs off hers. Is that basically saying? Yeah, that's it. And does that mean that if say like I used my wallet on that one, deleted it,
and then I went back to my one and decided, you know what, I want to run a fresh wallet, I can then delete off mine as well, start a fresh wallet. And there's no way of that continuously being tracked or being stored anywhere. How do you know that's deleted, I guess is my
question. Yeah, I was thinking about this before, actually. I mean, because this is such a new update, and I run a running Dojo, I'm waiting for running Dojo to implement the upstream Dojo update, if you like the one we're talking about. So I haven't actually had a chance to use it, but
the way I see it working is basically, if you were to go down the route of deleting an X pub, so it's not being tracked anymore, you can the first step of if you actually want to track any X pub is you, as you know, I'm actually pasted it in and it says whether it is or it isn't tracked.
So my gut feeling is that you would delete it, and then if you just pasted one back in, it'll say it is or it isn't tracked, if you know what I mean, you'd have to see a balance there or you wouldn't.
Yeah, okay, got you. I will report back with some more authority once I've had a chance to give it a whirl. Cool. Was any of the software updates you wanted me to dive into or should we move on to the releases? I think they were the main ones. There was nothing like we want to keep it on
software. The other stuff, like I said, was more like macro stuff that we'd been talking about, but this is not for this show. So no, I think that was good. Cool. All right, releases just to this month. I'll touch on the lightning pool one first because I'll probably talk for a little bit longer
on the other one. Lightning Labs have released a graphical user interface, longer waited for lightning pool. Lightning pool basically is, for those that don't know, is basically a marketplace where you can buy inbound liquidity, or sorry, rent inbound liquidity from other people who have
got sort of sizable channels or sizable amounts of liquidity on the lightning network. So why would you want to do that? This is one of the main pitfalls when starting out in terms of lightning.
If you were to set up a node with lightning on it, Max, you could fund your lightning wallet, you could open a channel to me, and you would then only have the ability to spend away from you.
You'd only have the ability to spend. You wouldn't be able to receive because all of the stats that you open that channel with are on your side of the channel. But basically, you've got no room to receive. So that's what's called a lack of inbound liquidity. To get inbound liquidity, basically,
you either need somebody, you've got two main options. You can spend down some of your own balance from your side of the channel to the other side of the channel. That's like the rebalancing thing we did the other day, wasn't it? Yeah, basically. So you can spend some away, which would kind of
give you room to receive, if you like, or you can get somebody like me to open a channel to you. That's the sort of cleanest way to do it. However, obviously, that means that I have to lock up some stats onto the lightning network and I have to trust you. There's a certain level of
trust. It's very unlikely that you're actually able to steal from me if I was to do that. But there are some traders that it's worth considering. So there isn't exactly a rush of people at your door saying, I want to open a channel to you. So it's one of the hurdles that most people
sort of come to realize once they've got started with lightning. So lightning pool is kind of looking to sort of fix that problem by basically opening a marketplace, a decentralized marketplace where people can go on and they can sort of bid for somebody to open a channel to them,
basically for a predetermined length of time. The bit I struggle with at the moment is, and I know this is early days, so it's probably just because it's fresh out of the box. But I believe at the moment you can only rent a channel for a certain amount of time and I believe it's
two weeks, which I struggled to wrap my head around why somebody would just want a channel for two weeks, because most people don't open the, they don't open lightning channels for a short period of time. Well, I certainly don't anyway, you know, I'm thinking when I pick my peers
that I open channels to, I want somebody reliable, I want somebody trustworthy. I don't want somebody that's, you know, basically I just don't want the headache of opening and closing channels all the time. So, I'm just struggling to wrap my head around in terms of who the key marketplace is for
this. And I know that long term, the probably is going to be longer term contracts on there, where you can open channels for like a year or two years or something like that. And this might just be teething issues. Is it not a renewal option on it? Like, is it not that you could say,
well, I'll open it for two weeks, but then you can say, well, like auto renew, like this is, this person's uptime has been good, they haven't caused me any problems, so I'll renew. Or is it literally end of two weeks, that's then closed, I need to now find someone else or reopen with
that same person? Because if that is the case, which is what it sounds like, that's what you're saying. Yeah, that sounds a bit weird to me. Yeah, to my knowledge, to my knowledge, it's two weeks at the moment, and I'm open to somebody DM me telling them, telling me I'm a fuckwit and
I've got it wrong. But my knowledge is well, to my knowledge, it's two weeks. And they may have done that intentionally, because this is so new. But it's it's a novel way to to try and fix that inbound liquidity problem. And also another way for people who are more confident with this to
monetize, and in some fees, off people who they open channels with, because obviously there's fees involved with this. So you can almost trustlessly earn and hate the word that's banded around, but you can also almost earn a yield by locking up some sat in a channel that you you're not really
giving, giving up custody, those sats. Why is there, why is there, I'm going to push back, because I know all the hard cores, basically everyone I speak to will hate the world word yield.
Me too. Right. Okay. And I know you do. But coming from a property background and looking at yield, that's like what we would look for, especially in buy to let and that kind of stuff. Like, I completely get the kind of idea of, what are you doing fucking around with this asset,
because if we're all correct, then it's invaluable. Like, just don't fuck around, don't put anything at risk. And plus, with the annualized returns on these things, like, do you really want to be messing around with for a few percent? I get all that. But like,
if there really was a way to, as you said, trustlessly, have some sort of agreement that would help someone else and you do get some yield, and it really was trustless and you held your own keys.
I don't know if that's even possible. Yeah, that's the way it works, basically, yeah. Then I don't, I like, I personally don't see the issue. I'm sure I'll get some hate for it. But like, to earn some, like, again, from property, we would get, you'd be lucky, you'd be lucky when all
said and done, and you actually take all the costs into account and all the fuckery that actually happens to get 3%. And there's a lot of fuckery and a lot of stress, so much messing around and risk for that 3%, 4% maybe, that if you could do it in a trustless manner and you're,
you're putting sat on the line that you can guarantee are going to come back to you with things that you're locking up and you're not going to spend for 10 years, 20 years, or ever, where's the, like, what's the problem with it? Am I missing something?
No, no, no, not at all. But I think you hit the nail on the head when you use the analogy of the property and stuff like that is that there's a lot of fuckery with this as well in terms of you need to make sure your notes online all the time, you know, this is a point that's running
this shit on a Raspberry Pi that might go down tomorrow. There is a certain level of counterparty risk that in terms of you need to be online to make sure that your channel partner isn't trying to cheat you out of SATs, they aren't trying to close, force close the channel without you
seeing it and stealing all your funds. Isn't that what, isn't that what these watchtowers and? Yeah, yeah, there are tools being built and the two sort of to mitigate this. But again, if you're wanting to learn a sorry to earn a significant amount of SATs off this, you need
to put up significant amounts of liquidity. So you're basically holding all your funds in a hot wallet. So there's just a lot of potential risks. And I wouldn't say that this is something that beginners are going to be able to make a great deal of money out of. I just think it's certainly
a promise in development in terms of liquidity for the lightning pool by opening a decentralized marketplace. But I think there's just some trade offs to go with it, basically, in terms of the one that you choose. I guess I'm speaking theoretically. Firstly, I'm not suggesting I do this. I know
it's beyond my capabilities. I'm just speaking theoretically if it was that, and now you said, okay, it's on a hot wallet and actually you do need to make sure you have the uptime. So presumably then it can't run over tall because you don't necessarily have the uptime and that maybe these
watchtowers and things that I thought were sort of maybe more developed than they are aren't quite ready. But in theory, if it was secure and safe and that people could do it, then I could see that I could see the attraction is what I'm saying. I can see why people would be drawn to it if the
safety was there and maybe it's something that takes a long time. Maybe maybe we were years and years away. But I mean, it sounds interesting. Yeah, people are doing it right now and owning Alex Bosworth's been putting a couple of tweets out this week boasting about how much he's earning
fees. And he's got the fucking scary amount of stats on, you know, to provide liquidity, which is why he's earning a significant amount. But you know, he's obviously signature. You know, he's a thing or two. Yeah, you could say that. Yeah. Yeah.
So I think, like you say, early days, you need to know what you're doing. Don't jump in to with both feet. But it's good that they finally got a graphical user interface on this because obviously that's going to open this up to many, many more users and grow the ecosystem around it.
Cool. All right. Next one, Greta's Fury. I've been looking forward to talking about this one. Our main mum at Bitcoin enemies has created a campaign to pollute the Bitcoin transaction graph
through the use of increased pay join transactions. So just to sort of break that down a bit, a pay join transaction is a transaction. It's a form of two-person coin join that completely screws with the common import ownership heuristic. What that basically is to try and keep
it simple. It's an assumption that surveillance firms use to basically think that if there are more than one input into a transaction, it is assumed that both of those inputs belong to the same person. Now, pay join does quite the opposite to that. It uses one of my inputs and one of your
inputs on the input side of the transaction and we both get an output out of it. So if to anybody looking at that on the blockchain, the assumption is that it's one person paying to another person when in fact, that is the case. It's you paying me, for instance, Max, but they
couldn't tell. Number one, the amount being sent and they also can't tell who's input to who's and who's output to who's just because of the way that the transaction's structured. So to tie that back into what Greta Fury is, obviously, the Greta reference is about pollution
and the fact that some of the photos, by the way, that are on the website are fantastic and I'll send you the link, Max, so you can put it in the show notes. I'm on it now. So basically, it's a campaign to increase the use of pay join through the Samurai toolkit.
The Samurai implementation of pay join is called Stowaway and the Stowaway, the Samurai infrastructure allows you to do this remotely in a matter of seconds using their paid him infrastructure. So I think what I'll also send you the link of a video recording of
one Max as well so people can kind of visualize it. It's a difficult one to explain on audio only, but basically what the case is is we have a torch and say you start with the torch, Max, and you send me a Stowaway. Then I get the torch and I send that Stowaway to somebody else
and basically what we're doing is we're passing one Satoshi around, which, yes, it is possible to do on chain with a Stowaway transaction. Of course, you've got minor fees on top of that, so it's actually costing you a fair bit more than one Satoshi, but the actual value transacted
from me to you is one Satoshi. And it's just, like you say, a tool to foot with chain analysis and also to get more people using the tools, which I think is probably, well, it's definitely an important one. And I vow that after this, Max, we'll do our first Stowaway and you can see it for real.
Just added your pain in before we caught on. So I'm ready to go with that. And then what we'll do is whoever comes up with the best name for the show, you'll get one Satoshi. All right, that's how we're going to do it.
Yeah, what we'll do is I'll store it to you once a Toshi and then whoever comes up with the best one will send it to them. And hopefully they can keep it going as well and contribute to this awesome little project that Bitcoin enemies has got going.
It is cool. So that I understand it because I had a quick skim through, but I spoke to Chris Belcher maybe it was a year ago now-ish. And he was talking about this. And what I got from it, a lot of it was sort of went a little bit over my head. But what I got from it was that this
means that it makes it difficult for any transaction, any normal transaction to it like it puts a question mark by it and it goes, well, could this actually be a page join? Like, could have this been a swap? It makes it more difficult for them to actually say, okay, well, no, this is definitely
this. It just pollutes it more. Is that basically what it's doing? Yeah, definitely. That's perfect way to put it. Basically, since page join has been a thing and has been available in wallets, albeit not many, the samurai is the main one, there's always that
element of doubt now that any air quotes again, normal transaction could be a page join. So you can now never ever say that a normal looking transaction is all of the inputs on the input side are one person because this shit exists. It's getting easier to use. And with sauroban,
the samurai guys are making this, you know, an absolute doddle to do. The more people that we can get using it, the more doubts the chain surveillance firms are going to have. And basically, we're just screwing with all of their heuristics and just making it harder to track for everybody.
So even if you're not using this, the more people are using it, you get a benefit from that. Yeah, that's really powerful. That's amazing. It benefits everyone from using this. So, yeah, no, as soon as we jump off the call, we'll do one and I'll sort of promote it as much as I
can, because that sounds fucking great. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not a big on memes, but there is one called make every spend the coin join. And I think the tools that are coming out now are making, or slowly sitting that into a reality that it's so easy to do now that there's almost not that,
you know, this there's no excuse now for most people with a semi decent wallet to not make every spend the coin join. I've got one question on that, right? So make every spend the coin join good. I love that. What if I think, I think I know the answer is that say I wanted to send,
I don't know, a million sats, and I wanted to do like a page join. And I said to you, look, can we do this page join? And I want to send here, how would that work? Would that mean that you'd have to have an equal amount? Or would that mean that you would only necessarily have to put one
Satoshi in, but it would still fuck with their heuristics anyway? Like, how does this work? In your, in your example, you pay a me, or are you paying to a third party? Say I'm paying a third party.
If you're paying to a third party, then, um, somewhere I actually offers a different piece of their post mix toolkit called Stonewall X2. That's basically where you are, you want to pay to a third party. You know me, you trust me enough that you want to share the fact that you own one or two
UTXOs. And you say, look Q&A, can I, can I use a couple of your UTXOs to mix with mine as I spend to this third party? The third party has no idea. All it means is that you get increased entropy when you spend to this third party. And so do I, I get a benefit from it as well. And we actually
share the, the minor fee for that because we're both getting a benefit from it. Okay. But so in that example of like, say I'm doing, let's just call it is 100 million sats I'm sending, but you're like, oh, my wallet balance is only, yeah, no, no, this is green stuff now. You know, just let me live
out my fantasy. Say I'm sending that. And for example, you go, oh, well, I've only got, I don't know, I've got 1000 sats in my Sam wrote wallet. That's all I've got in that situation. Is it still possible? And if so, that fee, presumably, you would want to pay a smaller percentage of that fee.
Like, I imagine it doesn't cut it down the middle. How would that work? Yeah, no. If, if I'm collaborating with you on your spend, I need the same amount in my wallet as you are spending at least fine. Fine. Yeah. Okay. Got you. But in practice, nobody, nobody's sending a
full Bitcoin and wanting to do a coin doing with it. It's generally smaller amounts, which is obviously a lot more accessible. Okay. Yeah. Which is, which again, will be helped by the smaller 100k sap pool that's coming. Just off that as well. It wasn't, it wasn't on the list. But since we were
talking about paging into storeways in the education section of this month's index, econ of alchemist has done a, as always, a very comprehensive guide on what store he is and how you do it within, within samurai. So I just thought I'd throw that in there as well. I liked his
mining thing that he'd done. He's, yeah. Yeah. His stuff, man. I know my thing is, is short, sharp, punchy. You know, this is how you do shit. His expertise, man, is, is, is in the detail.
His mining stuff. Yeah. It's linked again. It's in, it's in this month's index. I know most people don't have an appetite to go and crack a miner in their bedroom and get a divorce shortly after.
But the, the, the level of detail that this dude goes into when he does his guides when I'm just, I'm in, or I really am. Did you see the financial results that he released? I think it was yesterday, the day before for me for this month. I, I scanned my eyes across it. And I think he said he had it,
like 25% below the value you'd be buying or something like that. I don't know. 75. 75% below. Below market price. Yeah. I thought it was 75% of the price you know. No, no. The other way around.
Wow. And what's he using? Like S17s or something. He's got a, I don't know the model, but it's a watts miner. Okay. So he's got, he's from what, the little I know about mining, right? He's got the perfect storm, right? He's got a new miner or relatively new miner. He's got dirt cheap electricity.
How cheap? I, you're going to make me go and look at the guide now. I am because I'm, I'm sort of looking into this stuff myself now because I've tried it once. I ordered a S17s and I had them. I brought, I got them in from China and I sat and I was in a studio flat at the time. I was messing
around with them. I couldn't get the fucking things working, obviously, standard for me. And also I was in a studio flat with no aircon in the middle of summer and the noise was so fucking loud in the end. I just, I sold them on and I got my money back and I was just like,
I'm not visiting this again, but I can get cheap electric. So I would be interested how, how cheap it has to be. I'll, oh, he's got a watts miner M31S, if that means anything to anybody. That's like the newest model. Yeah. So, so like I say, he's, he's got the perfect storm. He's got
really cheap electricity. He's got the knowledge and expertise to make this palatable to have in his house in terms of noise management and heat management. He has got a new miner and he's also, you know, plugged this in at a time where the price is far outran the hash rate, which makes it
obviously 10 times more profitable. So he's in the perfect storm. So I dare say he's probably not going to get 75% discounted KYC free sat forever, but it just goes to show what's actually possible if you put your mind to it and, you know, you get your time and writing stuff.
But even if you flip that on its head, even if you went, okay, well, it's actually 25% more to actually mine. At least you're getting three sets. Yeah, still worth it. Like it really is. That's why I'd be interested to know what he's paying per kilowatt hour because, I mean,
I think here normally in the UK, you pay like 17 people kilowatt hour or so around that sort of figure. And I always hear it banded around. It's like, Oh, you need to be doing it sub five cent per kilowatt hour to make it profitable. So I just wonder what he's at because I've got a few people
I know in this energy sector. And there's a lot of stranded power. Say stranded. There's a lot of small solar and wind farms around the UK where people aren't actually having all their power bought from them. And so for those people, you can do deals. If you take that power off their hand,
you can actually get deals on it. And so and around that sort of figure like five kilowatt hour, that sort of thing. Yeah, I think this is a new emerging in obviously an industry that's never existed before. And I'm, you know, it's not something that I know a great deal about,
but I'm really, really excited to see what what it holds and the opportunities that it's going to open up. I'll I'll have to get back to you on his energy prices and shit. I'm all attached into it. I can't do both at the same time. At least you can single test. I haven't figured
all right. Education pieces. The main man, Katan from Ministry of Nodes has dropped his updated version of his Ubuntu node box guide. He did one a couple of years ago. And this is like the updated version, basically, where he runs you through literally every single step of installing Ubuntu,
setting up Bitcoin, sorry, a Bitcoin node, and installing all of the separate pieces yourself. So this is obviously not geared towards absolute beginners. It's geared towards people who have perhaps tried the Raspberry Pi dedicated node thing. And they want to sort of branch out and
perhaps run a node on some more robust hardware or they just a bit of a turbo nerd like me and just fancy giving it a go. And it's yeah, I had I had the pleasure of previewing this before you released it and I've watched every single video from start to finish is comprehensive as fuck.
I want to say like probably like six hours worth of videos, if not more. And it's got everything. Samurai BTC pay server, ride the lightning. It's got everything. Obviously, these videos are free. They're on YouTube or at ministry and knows.com/au or .au.com. And
they've also released a paid guide to go with it, which comes with every single command that you need to input to actually, you know, if you're following up following along with him and the videos, you can pay, I think it's only a small amount of stats to get all the commands that go
with it as well, which I thought was a nice little way to monetize what is quite frankly an awesome bit of content via chance to check it out. I think it's fine. I haven't. I did speak to him.
He came on the show recently. I did speak to him about it. And he was sort of shilling me the idea. And I was like, yeah, look, this is something I definitely want to give it a go and try. And I'll definitely fuck it up. But I think it's all this stuff you just learn. You learn from making
the mistakes and trying things. And it's definitely something I'd like to try. And my question on that would be, so I've now, because of you and self-banked and cation, just constantly banging on about Popper West, I've now installed that on an old laptop I had lying around. Still got a few issues
with it, which I'll work through. But so you're saying, obviously, this is for Ubuntu. Am I right in saying it was still work on pop because it's very similar. It's just like it's... I believe pop is a fork of Ubuntu. So all of the commands, again, correct me if I'm wrong, it could stand,
but all of the commands would work. Generally speaking, obviously, I'm speaking to you now through PopOS. If I ever look for any troubleshooting guides, if I'm trying to figure something out, I'll just search for Ubuntu stuff into the commands because it's a more commonly used
OS. And they always work. So yeah, I would imagine that'd be fine. Pop is like Ubuntu, just repackaged almost. It's just like almost like a different interface, but it's the same stuff in the background kind of, yeah, all right.
Yeah, no, that's cool. I'd like to give it a go. I'll put that on the list to go through. And so basically, what you're saying is, rather than having a node implementation, and you're just sort of taking something off the shelf, and then it just has all the applications
and stuff sort of already in there, you're actually pre-selecting what you want, and you're then loading that onto your laptop or whatever it is that you're using. Yeah, you start from scratch, you install a clean version of Ubuntu, you then install
Bitcoin Core, but only the command line version. He's in there in the command line with you in terms of running it, how to set it up, all the config files. And then he's like, "Okay, right, we've got that. Let's install BTC pay server." And then he runs you through the command line version
of installing that, how to connect to your Bitcoin, to your Bitcoin node that you just installed, and so on and so forth, for every single one. And obviously, you can install as few or as many as these as you like, basically. And it's just a very much a more sort of detailed, under-the-hood
version of it, obviously geared towards being ran on a bit more significant or robust hardware. And would you, for example, if you're going to run this stuff and you're going to go through and build something, would you have that on a separate device, or would you have that on a
device that you use other things on? It would it be safe to do that? For me, there's two ways to look at this. Number one is yes, run it on a separate device, keep it sandboxed, that's your Bitcoin machine, or you can run it as, let's say you've got your
main desktop, you can install a Ubuntu virtual machine within that, to sort of sandbox, but within that same machine, and then do everything within that virtual machine then. Okay, and so for you, if you're doing this and you're running pop, can you run a virtual machine
of the Ubuntu within pop, does that? Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, you could do. Okay, all right, cool. All right, way over my head, we'll move on, just interested. Yeah, I mean, that's the point of this guide, though, is it would be way over my head if I did
now, resources like that, to hold my hand and walk me through it. And like you said, this is, this is how you learn and take that next step, really, and I kind of welcome this mining guy, we've touched on that one. Last one for the resources, keep it simple Bitcoin, come out with
obviously another great video. This one's on CK Bunker. I don't know if you've had much deals with CK Bunker or know about it, Max. As far as I know, as I heard Rodolfo talking about it on a maybe over a year ago on TFTC, and I can't remember the ins and outs for it. I seem to remember
him saying something about it would be useful for like a small business or someone. I can't remember exactly why. So basically, my answer is I don't fucking know. I've heard of it. I don't really understand it at all. Right. It's, it's again, not used it yet, a home hands up, but it's essentially
a piece of software that interacts with your call card and puts it into what's known as HSM mode, which is hardcore. That's for a different show, mate. Yeah, that's the after hours one. Hardware security module. That's probably the beer talk and I apologize.
Which is basically a piece of software that allows you to pre-configure a cold card. You connect it to the internet, plug it into a device that's got an internet connection. You pre-configure it with as few or as many spending rules as you like, and you can also access it
remotely through the tour network. So some of the use cases, well, there's, there's quite a few, really. You can pre-configure it that it will only spend say a million sets a week. And if anybody was to try and sign off a transaction with your call card, more than that value or more frequently
than your predetermined parameters, it obviously wouldn't sign it off. You could also set it up to be a signer in a two of two multi-sig. So let's say you set up CK bunker, you've got your call card plugged in at home in CK bunker, HSM mode. You've also got, you've got blue wallet on your phone
and you want to make a spend when you're out and about. You can reach your call card and get a signature from that as well as using a key from your blue wallet to form part of a multi-sig core and it would automatically sign for you, providing that you met the parameters that you've
already defined that when you set it up, it's pretty early days. It's not seen widespread use yet, but my node has just implemented it on the platform. I think nodal are working on it as well. So I'd imagine we're probably going to see a lot more in terms of guides and use cases, in terms of setting
it up and the way, the different ways in which people can use this. But yeah, it's essentially your pluggy call card in, set some predefined parameters and then you can then access that remotely. That's pretty cool. I remember when I listened to the show thinking, that's cool.
That's all I remember was like, that's cool. That sounds interesting. But yeah, now you sort of drop my memory. That's really like, I love this idea of having limits and being able to adjust what is possible from a device. I was thinking, maybe this is possible. It's just not something I
know. I think like, you know, if you have a hardware wallet and you say, I don't want to spend this, I want to hold this for at least x amount of years, that somehow if something happened and someone got hold of your keys and someone tried to send something off there, that it would just say,
no, you can only send x amount per day for the next 10 years and there's nothing you can do. And I've sort of spoken about it or saying like, oh, is there a way of locking things up? And generally people don't know, that's a dumb idea. But I love that idea of it if it's technically
possible. And it sounds like maybe this makes it possible. Yeah, I think the little bit of nuance around that is that if you've got physical access to the call card, I believe you can just unplug it and take it out of hardware security mode as well. But there are on chain ways that
you can do what you said in terms of time locks and stuff like that. You can you can time lock. Everyone says it's bad idea. That that's exactly the wording that I use as well. I remember sending a tweet and because I'd heard it on some show and I was like, time locking sounds like a good idea. Like, I don't want to spend mine.
Surely that's what I do. And everyone's like, no, that's dumb. I know it's possible, but I don't know. I'm not sure I'd want to do it. You never know what's going to crop up in the future, dear. So I think at least having the ability to spend at will is something that is useful to me. Yeah, true. No, it's true.
All right. On to sort of articles and news articles, the big debate, Taproot, LOT, true or false, Max? I'll go for I've forgotten which ones, which I think it's false is the one that I went for, which is basically don't force anything unless you absolutely have to, like,
it just seems, is that right, false? Is the right one? Yeah. Well, obviously that's down to personal opinion. Is that what I mean? Yes. Yeah. False. Yeah. So I'm going to go ahead. No, I was just going to say, like, again, everyone knows. I don't really know what I'm talking about,
but to me, it seems that to change rules, especially when anything on the base layer, to do anything in a rush or a hurry, it doesn't seem right to push something through when it's not like life or death. I think it sets a lot of people who said this layer sets a bad precedent.
I think it is pretty dangerous to do something like that, and unless it was absolute life or death, like Bitcoin's going to die unless you do this thing, I would be against it from what I do.
Yeah. So I've read multiple articles, and this one's trying to wrap my head around, is that there's a lot of ifs ands buts and nuance with this one that I'll try and do my best to break it down. So what we're referring to is lots or lock in on timeout. It's kind of like a signal
of an activation mechanism for taproot in Bitcoin core, and there's a little bit of debate going around as to if the new release of Bitcoin core should be released with lots equals false or lot equals true. Lot equals false. I believe basically means the default is we give the miners opportunity
to signal within a predefined time period. And if they don't signal, if we don't reach the threshold of miners signaling for this, which I believe is 95%, then nothing happens. Basically, we stay as we are. There's no change. Lot equals true, essentially means that if the miners don't signal for it,
at a predetermined block height, anybody with lot equals true in running that flag on their node, basically what that means is after the timeout period, they will only accept blocks that have taproot activated, which basically you can look at it as node use is holding a gun to the miner's
head. So the criticism of lot, lot equals true is basically saying, well, we're not giving miners a choice anyway, we're just giving them a case of you can, you can agree with us or we're going to do it anyway, which is why it seems to appear that lot equals false is the popular move here.
The other thing with lot, lot equals true as well is that that a couple of people have raised is it sets a precedent that if the people who are behind the release, the devs that are behind the release of Bitcoin core are setting that as the default, it's basically like they've decided
what's going to happen, which again, like I say, it sets a bit of a precedent and don't be wrong, the devs obviously have a large influence on the path that Bitcoin takes, but if we're to keep up the decentralization of the network and the inclusiveness of it's not just there's no one
powerful entity, I personally believe lot equals false is the way to go. The thing that's not clear to me at the moment is how that's going to be shipped, is it going to be like, how do we turn on if we want to, is it just a config file, is it going to be something in the GUI that we can just
tick a box or so that's what I'm going to be doing my homework on next to see how it what sort of shape that's going to take. Yeah, it's an interesting one. I think, firstly, I can't really see the downside of it. I don't know that there's any downside for miners and if so, why would they
be against it? But I guess it's like whether they, if you need 95% of them to agree for it to go through, then maybe, I don't know, maybe some just won't be bothered or I don't know, I don't understand why they wouldn't go for it. But definitely to force something like this, it sounds very non-Bitcoin
to me. Yeah, I agree. Bitcoin's known for being conservative, it's known for being very critical of any new changes, any implementations and for good reason. And I think lot equals false is the option that kind of stays true to that in my personal opinion. Yeah, agreed. Right, last one,
very last one. There has been an update to Bit-47, I'm sorry, an updated proposal to Bit-47. Bit-47 is probably more commonly known as the Paynim Bip. Paynim's are, or the Bip defines reusable payment codes. It's only currently used by Samurai Wallet and basically it enables recurring on-chain
payments in a private manner without the need for a server, like BT pay server, or without the need to share a static donation address, which we know is obviously terrible for privacy. The main update, the reason I wanted to cover it is one of the main criticisms of the current implementation
is that if you wanted to send me, let's say I work for UMAX and you wanted to pay me each month via Paynim, the first time that we sort of set that up, we would need to do an on-chain transaction to kind of just basically set everything up, which until now has been fairly insignificant
inconvenience, basically. Obviously, as chain fees rise, if you're doing quite a few of these, setting up an on-chain transaction with everybody that you wanted to do repeat payments for might get a bit of a pain in the backside and start getting expensive. So the main change to the Bip,
and it's not the only one, but the main one I wanted to highlight, was that the version three, the new version basically removes that need. So basically, you can start recurring private payments to my Paynim without the need for that on-chain transaction. It's all kind of tied into the very
first transaction that you make as a payment. So again, just smoothing out that UX and improving the approachability of the Bip. So I'm hopeful this might be one more hurdle that increases the adoption of it because I love Bip 47, I love what it enables, and not everybody's going to run a
BTC pay server. And I think this is potentially a viable alternative if it was to get widespread adoption in terms of recurring payments. Very cool. Is that all of the list? That's it, man. We hit it with only just over an hour as well.
That's not bad. It was, like you said, it was a short list, but it was good to go into a little bit more detail on some of those, actually. Yeah. Yeah, that was good. Okay. And so we got some questions. Well, before we start, I just want to say, I don't know if you're listening,
I'm disappointed, man. Yeah, I am as well. Because they were quite interesting questions before. He did nothing. I've heard nothing from that bloke. He got banned on Twitter again, didn't he?
Did you see that? I didn't see that because I'd written to him after that. We'd had a long chat, and then I'd actually invited him on the pod because I don't think he's done a pod that I've heard of. No. And I said, look, if you want to use a voice changer or something, I'd like to have you
on, and I might have to bleep some of it out because that guy, I mean, he's just that guy. What did he say? Was he up for it? No, he didn't get back to me. I've just had a bit, they're all unread. Maybe it's because he got banned. He's got a new account. I'll send it to you
later. Yeah. Well, Elmo, if you're listening, I want you on the show. You can have a voice changer. You can say whatever you want. There's no horse bar. I might have read that, but I want you on the show, mate. I want you on the show. You're a weird guy, but I have a lot of love for you.
Let's make it happen. I'm going to be on the show after this. OK, cool. So shall I jump into these questions? Yeah. Yeah, go for it, man. There was only a couple this week, so thank you to the three of you that got involved.
OK, so we've got at either arkentos or a cantos. I don't know how you pronounce that arkentos, a cantos. A cantos. What are the best practices to maximize privacy on the lightning node? OK, lightning node. This kind of ties in with self-bank as well.
Do you want to ask his question? I'll hopefully do my best to somewhat eloquently tie them together. Yeah, so self-anks question is lightning withdrawal from a Bitcoin exchange is a slash significant privacy gain or insignificant privacy gain.
Right. OK, so what I will say before I attempt to answer this is that open arms was on Citadel dispatch with Matt a couple of weeks ago and he delved into the privacy nuances of lightning far more eloquently than I'm about to. So I'd like to just sign
closer there before I make a hash of this for two headlines. Number one, sending on lightning is pretty private. It's hard to trace the transactions. Receiving on lightning is fairly unprivate because you have to share your nodes public key. So even if you're running it over
tall, you start to share that node public key. And the likelihood is that your node public key is tied with an identity. Now that identity might be max bit by bit or it might be your real name depending on how that is my real name, how good or bad you've been with your privacy in the past.
So yeah, I think just to keep it very simply, if you work on a provider that receiving on lightning is not private, sending lightning is private. That's a good start. So let's go into the nuance of what self bank dask is withdrawing from an exchange on lightning, a privacy improvement.
So obviously the first one comes down to KFC. Jesus. Wow.
Let's be here for me next time. KYC. If you've given your KYC information to an exchange, which most of them require, it's going to be assumed that wherever you withdraw to is going to be assumed to be your address, bit if it's on chain or your nodes public key if it's off chain.
So it's you're not really gaining anything in that respect because the next hop from the exchange is assumed to be you anyway. Now, obviously, if it's on chain, you can then go into coin join and get some forward looking privacy. Of course, that's not going to erase your KYC record,
but it might give you some forward looking privacy so that you cannot be traced from then onwards. If you have to do that on lightning, once you've received to your to your nodes public key effectively, your payments then on would be significantly more difficult to track. However, obviously,
ultimately, everybody settles on chain, even if it's in one month or even if it's in five years. So there are some very nuanced conversations to be had around. You've withdrawn from the exchange, withdrawn a million sets, you might have sent say a couple hundred thousand sets worth of payments
to various different vendors. Then you want to close that channel. What you do then after you've closed that channel to that on chain address is obviously quite important in terms of because effectively those are that on chain address is visible from your channel. So what you do from
then onwards is obviously also important and put simply, I would advise to coin join it as well. Am I making sense at this point? Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think the reason he was asking actually was he mentioned bottle pay and I think that you can withdraw and have it on lightning.
And I think that was kind of his question, but I think you've answered that in terms of it will be KYC. Therefore, you can get the forward looking privacy, but you're always going to have that forever, I think is what you're saying. Yeah, so open arms actually responded to his
tweet today with an interesting thought process of let's say you receive to a phoenix or a breeze wallet where they manage the channels for you. It's not custodial, you hold the keys. But if you receive to a lightning invoice that is managed by breeze or phoenix and then settled
to an on chain address from there, you're effectively, how can I put it? You're sort of losing the KYC trail with breeze or phoenix because they then send you to an on chain address. If that makes that via a submarine swap. Yes. So that could be an option for people. Again, it's not going to
raise that KYC information on yourself, but in terms of a privacy perspective on chain and losing that tie to your address, something worth considering and it's not something that I had thought of before because I manage my own lightning channels and don't really use breeze or don't
have a need to use breeze or phoenix. But yeah, good little thought process, I thought. Okay, cool. So did that answer both those questions we've got? What's the best practices to maximize privacy on a lightning node? Yeah, so to answer Arkansas's question.
Basically, private channels, don't open public channels is number one. And when you open any channels privately, do so with coin joined funds. Don't go and buy on Coinbase, send them to your on chain lightning wallet and then open a lightning channel. Do it from post mix and open private
channels. Most people don't really need public channels. One, you know, a couple of fairly well sized private channels are going to be more than enough to route most payments across the lightning network, especially as the infrastructure is growing as well. And payment failures are becoming
less frequent. I think that's about all I've got in terms of lightning. It's kind of a little bit out of my wheelhouse in terms of the nuances around the privacy open arms as you man for that. And again, I'll signpost people. So that's it. I'll this batch. It was a very good, good rip.
Yeah. Well, I think I think that was what you said made sense there anyway. I think that was good. And like you say, if people want to dig more in, then they can go there. All right. So we have got Daddy Warbits. If you have, yeah, it is a good name. If you have an old paper wallet and you
don't want to move the funds out of the address, what is the best way to import the wallet into something that you could use to spend? And that is secure and private? Good question. Yeah. I think this one, and because I came didn't come into the space until like 2018 when
mobile and hardware wallets were the standard, I haven't really fucked about with paper wallets all that much. My gut feeling to answer this one is, well, first and foremost, it depends what format the key, the private key is in on that paper wallet. But again, we touched on it
at length earlier, but I would probably say just throw it into blue wallet because it seems to accept pretty much any type of key format in terms of, again, security and privacy. Make sure you've got blue wallet backed by your own node, blue wallet talks to election servers. So make sure you're
running a node with an election server on it. And you've got blue wallet connected to that. And then you should just be able to import the private key into that off the paper wallet and then use that to spend as you see fit. So that's actually importing and not sending or spending.
So to sort of hijack this question, would there be a way to do that with samurai, even if it is a spend to actually scan QR code on them? Sorry, just can you read just sort of jig the question?
Are you asking if you can import samurai wallet into blue wallet? No, no, no. So like, so what I think that he orbits is asking is like, you know, can you import that without actually spending from it? Yes, yes. Which is what you're saying. So do that in blue
wallet. What I'm asking is, is there a way to do it in samurai forgetting about the importing and just saying actually using it as a spend. So you're taking it from a paper wallet, you're scanning the QR code on the paper wallet and sending to your samurai is like, is there a scan function?
Yeah, I believe you can import. You can. I don't know if actually, no, you can't import private keys because you're effectively starting a new wallet and samurai doesn't support multiple wallets.
So yeah, in terms of samurai, you would have to sweep those funds, which is, which is an unchanged transaction. You have to sweep it. Yeah, sweep it, whereas blue wallet supports multiple wallets and should provided that the format's correct. I'll allow you to import that.
Okay. All right. Cool. What else we got? Okay. All right. What's the best way to self-host everything, sir? Again, Ark and Toss. I would say follow Katana and just do everything that he does.
He's the self-host king and the reason that I spend far too much time on my laptop. He's got some really cool guides and some sign posts, basically two tools that he uses. It's actually linked in this month's index as well under self-hosting as well. Yeah,
it's linked under self-hosting info. Diverter has also got some great guides. I'll put them in the show notes for you, Max. All I'll say is it's a very, very deep rabbit hole. I would start fairly basic, have a read through, diverter's guides, have a read through, Katana's guides.
And the bit that I found really useful because I've been diving feet first down into the self-hosting rabbit hole, the bit I found really useful is getting a spare virtual private server and just fuck around on that because if you break something, all you need to do is reinstall it,
take 10 minutes and then you can start again. It's just like having a throwaway PC. These virtual private servers cost literally like five, six pound a month next to nothing. Now, I'm absolutely well aware that a virtual private server is not self-hosting,
but in terms of the ability to try out things, test things, install shit that you don't know how safe it is and just use it as a bit of a sandbox to get comfortable in a command line to just see how different pieces of software work together and get used to
not having a shiny graphical user interface to install stuff with. That's been a bit of a big learning experience for me and has really helped me along the way so that there's probably three tips there. Read Katana's stuff, read that vertice stuff, get yourself a virtual private server and
just start playing about. This has been like for you because I know you've been diving down this for some time and I get the old message going, "Can you just click this link, just see if this works?"
Then you'll be like, "No, mate, it doesn't work." Okay, and then like two hours later, "Do you try this?" "No, that doesn't work." "Oh, fuck." And then I get the third one. "Does this work?" "Yes, it does." "Ah, yes, right. I'm moving on to the next."
What have you, what's this process been like? What have you done? What are you self-hosting? Okay, so I, the first website I built was BitcoinQ&A.com funny enough and that was last May, so not even a year ago yet. That was built and hosted with a service called Wix,
which is something that it's basically like my first website builder. If you like it's got all the guide rails on, you do everything through a shiny graphical user interface because I had, you know, zero technical experience before and it allows you to build a website with
lots of shiny, easy tools and allows you to build a website that looks semi-decent. You basically just sort of throw your content in there, you know, tell it what color you want it to be and what color you want the text to be and all the really basic stuff like that and
at the end of it, it spits out a website for you, which is great. I didn't know any different back then. The problem with that is that it occurred to me that I didn't really own any of the content that was on that website. I couldn't move if I wanted to unless I wanted to manually copy everything
off there. That could be taken down at any point if they disagreed with anything that was on that website and that sort of scared the shit out of me really. The fact that I had put loads and loads of hours into this and I thought, you know, and the content that I produced isn't exactly
very disagreeable in terms of, you know, it's not exactly like I'm posting about 3D printed guns or anything like that. But the fact that I could be deplatform at any point kind of scared me a little bit. So the subsequent websites that I built were all done on GitHub, which was kind
of like the next step for me in terms of being less reliant on third party. So home hands up, never built a website on GitHub before. So I just, what's called forked somebody else's repo repository, which is basically like I downloaded a copy of their website and then I just sort of
changed all the bits that I wanted to change and put my content in there and hosted it on GitHub for free, pointed one of my many, many domains at it and I had a website. So which is kind of like, and what that enabled me to do then because it was on GitHub was I could download a local copy of
that so that if GitHub ever disagreed with whatever I was hosting with them, yes, they could still take me offline, but I had a local copy of that now and I could sort of pop up elsewhere. So it's kind of, you know, a nice little trade off. It didn't cost me anything. The hosting was free.
Also cost was my time to sort of build all that stuff. But then I thought, well, and again, got Katan to thank for this, but then I thought, well, GitHub can still, you know, I'm a little bit better off than I used to be in terms of hosting on Wix. But GitHub can still deplatform me whenever
they want. Yes, I can pop up elsewhere. But I still got that little bit of worry that they could kick me off whenever they wanted and they're like, you know, this is very slim, of course.
So I thought, okay, well, I'm going to look into proper self-hosting. I want this on my own hardware. So I started to mess about with virtual private servers, again, not my own hardware and decided I got all of my content off GitHub. So I had a local copies up all on my laptop,
downloaded a, sorry, set up a virtual private server, which is essentially somebody else's computer that you connect to. I bought mine through a company called Namecheap and they sell them, you can pay in Bitcoin, which obviously has some nice privacy benefits. And so I started just
downloading these, so I connect into these virtual private servers and sort of working out how I could upload my content onto these virtual private servers to basically self-host my, sorry, host my own content on a, on some rented sort of virtual computer at somewhere in, in cyberspace.
Got that figured out after many messages to you saying, does this link work or not? So that was kind of a trial process really for me to know that I could do it and safe in the fact that if I thought this virtual private server up, then I could just reinstall it in 10 minutes
and start again. And so once I knew that I could do that, I wanted to do it on my own hardware. So I bought a Raspberry Pi number five. And I don't even know they had a five yet. No, no, number five as in my fifth one.
Oh, number five. Okay, I thought you meant like they had a new number. It was four. Yeah, the fastest one. Yeah, that's right. And so I bought the fifth one. And because I knew I'd basically already done this process on the virtual private server,
that was like my test bed. Basically just got this Raspberry Pi plugged into my router plugged into power. I already had all my static website files on my laptop. Basically just dropped them, dragging, well, not dragging drop, but transferred them onto this Raspberry Pi.
And now I've got my own self hosted tool version of my website. It's dead. They're simple to set up. It took me like 45 minutes, basically, because I'd already been practicing on this virtual private server in terms of the steps I was going to take and
where I needed to put the files. So yeah, I think quite a powerful thing that I've got all of the content that I've ever produced on a £50 computer set next to me now in my office. Nobody can, nobody can deplatform me. They might be able to, the clearnet version of my website,
so the, you know, the sort of normal internet version, if you like, that's still hosted on a virtual private server. So yes, there's a risk that I could get deplatform there anytime, but the, I've got a redundant copy now available via the tool network that anybody can visit on my own
hardware. So it's just that little bit of redundancy. Obviously, I know if people have got the choice, they're going to go to the clearnet version, because it's faster, it's easier, and nobody uses tool browser all the time, but it's just nice to have that little bit of redundancy that knowing
that I can't be completely deplatformed at the click of a button. I went on your, tool one you sent, was it yesterday, and worked absolutely fine. It looked great, and it worked absolutely fine. So what's the reason for not having the clearnet one hosted on there? Why are you
using a private server? Yes, so that, the clearnet bit is kind of like the next step, the next piece in the puzzle for me, which I haven't got to yet is, if I want to host it over clearnet out to the world, obviously, there's a risk, and this is what this is my weak point really in terms
of networking, there's a risk that I don't want to dox my IP address. Yeah, which obviously it is the default with Tor is that there is no IPs, so it kind of makes it really easy. It's absolutely possible to self-host at home and to not dox your IP. There's multiple ways to do it in different
trade-offs with each, so I will be sending some more DMs to far clever people and I to figure out the best way to approach it, but that is the end goal, is to get it completely self-hosted, but for the time being, like I say, I've got that redundancy at the moment, but
yeah, end goal, it will be self-hosted through clearnet on my own hardware. That's very cool. I look forward to sort of tracking the progress of this. It's not something I'm going to attempt myself for now, but fast too much on and I know I'll fuck it up, but I love
the idea of it. It feels like what the internet's supposed to be for me, like it's really, really cool and I'm sure they'll come a time where it becomes a bit easier and like someone like me will be able to do it and I'd be well up for it because it's awesome. You know you've got your
own stuff there, as long as you're not doxing your IP, you're in control of everything, you're in control of your money, you're in control of your data and your sites and everything you put all this time and energy into. It definitely seems like the way forward, so I look forward
to hearing more as you progress. Yeah, I think it just is quite a powerful thing just to just look at that Raspberry Pi and just think shit, everything that I've ever produced is being hosted out to the world on that and that cost me like a 50 quid and an hour of my time,
you know, well fair bit more than an hour of my time, obviously. It's going to say actually, in terms of actually, you know, doing it once I'd done all the homework, it was literally about an hour to get it set up. The other thing that I've been doing as well, while I've been
messing with all the virtual private service is self-hosting stuff. I'm not sorry, I keep saying self-hosting individual private service, not quite that, but hosting my own Mastodon server, which is a Twitter clone. I don't think I've seen you on Mastodon yet, Max, are you over there?
Oh, you can shame me now. I'm not on Mastodon. I'm also not on this matrix thing you've told me about and I keep saying I'm going to do and I'm not on Club House. I barely use Twitter anymore.
Yeah, Twitter seems to be enough for me. It's so much, and telegram and stuff like, but I like the idea of Mastodon. I do get the concept. I do get the idea and it's cool. It's just been a time thing for me. So you've actually hosted your own one, have you?
Yeah, look, I'm not going to sit here and say that Twitter and telegram aren't the absolute kings. They've got the network effect and until such a time as they start, well, Twitter already has, but until such a time as they start centering people significantly or, you know, centering me,
I'll be precise. I don't think these more federated models are going to see as much traction, but yeah, I felt it prudent to start using these tools before I really needed them, if you like. So yeah, Mastodon, for those that don't know, is kind of like a federated version
of Twitter, basically. So anybody can run their own version of it and connect to other instances. So basically what that means is that I could still go on and block you from contacting me, but if you were running your own server or your own instance, Max, I wouldn't be able to kick you
off the platform, which obviously can be done on Twitter in at the click of a button if Jack doesn't really like you. And matrix, again, the best analogy I can come up with, with matrix is, matrix is to telegram what Mastodon is to Twitter, basically, it's a federated version of it.
So again, you can set up your own server, you can connect to every, you know, you could have everybody you know could be running their own server, which is kind of like the utopia, if you like, so that nobody can be deplatformed. Everybody can still talk to one another, but everybody's
responsible for their own data. And the deplatforming just can't happen, basically, like say, you can still block individual users, but you cannot kick somebody off the platform. And I think like we, you know, you talk heavily about censorship on when you've got your guests on the podcast and stuff,
and it's only going one way for me. And so I think I think being able to use these tools and be fluent in them before it's too late is quite a powerful thing. And yes, I'm running mine on virtual private servers. So it's they're not on my own hardware. So that still does come with a risk,
but compared to just logging into Twitter, which is owned by Jack, basically, who can deplatform me tomorrow. And it's a step in the right direction. Yeah, and it happens all the time. And yeah, absolutely. If fucking pisses me off, I've had my accounts closed before for for wrong thing. And
I've been shadow banned and all sorts of things, you know, and it's like you say, it's only going to get worse. And I'm completely on board with the idea. I just need to pull my finger out my ass and actually get on and do something with it. But yeah, you're absolutely right. And I hope that
it becomes I think it will become, it will become used by more and more people just because they have to, like you're ahead of the curve, you're like, this is going to happen. I'm just getting ready for when it does. Whereas I think for the majority of people, they'll go,
Oh, fuck, I've lost my account. Like, I can't, I've been completely blocked. I can't speak anymore. What do I do now? And then they'll find these things and then they'll become more popular is probably how it'll go as far as I can see it. Yeah, the good thing is with Mastodon and Matrix is
that you can you can still sign up on somebody else's server. It's not an absolute requirement to use your own. So if you wanted to just sign up and try it and see if you're like the ecosystem, you can just sign up and use the default servers, but just be just know that if you do that, then
you're kind of just moving the problem. The whole point of this is that end state is that you run your own instance to prevent that deep platforming. And while I've got that while I've got the the mic, if you like, I'll use the opportunity to show that if anybody wants to come and join
us over on Matrix, if you go to join.bitcoiner.chat, that'll take you to the room that I host on there. Again, you don't have to sign up on my server at all. You can use whatever server you like, but feel free to come and join us. We've got a very similar conversation to the one we've just
had for the past 90 minutes, Max. So yeah, it's been good. And then it's good to see that the user base is increasing as well. Very cool. Any other shills we can do, any other things we want to cover, or are we sort of ready to wrap this up? Yeah, I think I'm done, man, if you are.
Yeah, I think that was a good one. I think we covered everything there. As usual, you sort of spurred me on to do something with my life and actually stop saying when I do things and actually do them. So maybe that's next on my list. I'll look forward to when we record next month and
you tell me that you've got your own virtual private server running all this shit. Yeah, I look forward to next month when I tell you exactly the same as I do every fucking month to have them since we met, which is I've run out of time. I haven't done it,
but I aim to do it at some point. Well, you know where to go, man, if you need any help. Yeah, cool. All right, mate. Well, yeah, thanks for today and enjoy the rest of your evening, get on the rest of the beers, and I'm going to go and enjoy my bottle of wine as well.
Pleasure. Cheers, man. Cheers, mate. Speak soon.
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