Keep your Bitcoin transactions private with @SamouraiWallet

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

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

Yeah.

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

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space, and say that it's the deepest, darkest depth of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Welcome back, everyone. Today's episode is with Samurai Wallet. I really enjoy chatting to Samurai. It's been a while since he's been on the show, and we got into all things privacy. If, after listening to this podcast, anyone wants any help setting up a Samurai Wallet or need any guidance, then please do let me know,

and I'll either help myself or point you in the right direction. Before we start the show, I want to say thank you to everyone who's been screaming sats on the Fountain app and any other podcasting 2.0 apps.

It really is appreciated, and I love the personal messages that are coming in. I'd also like to say thank you to Casa. Casa have been supporting this show for a few months now, and I'm really pleased to have them on board.

Anyone who wants multi-six security and isn't a tech genius or just hasn't got the time to sit and work this stuff out, they have the best user experience I've come across. It took me about 15, 20 minutes to set up.

This was over a year ago now. In fact, today I've just renewed my membership. It was about $110 or something like that, which I thought was very reasonable. It gives me multi-six security.

It means that if I lose a device, then they've always got me as a backup. And yeah, it just makes me sleep sound right now. So if anyone wants any information or wants to sign up, it is keys.casa and you can get 10% discount if you use bit by bit 10 at the checkout.

Next up, we have FastBitcoins. I recently had the CEO, Danny Brewster on the show. If you missed that one, I suggest you go back so you can have a feel for what this business is about. And the man behind it, it really is a fantastic exchange.

And I like the fact that they do things differently. In this episode with Samurai, we go deep into why KYC can be an issue. And as I mentioned on every show, I really do suggest that people don't use KYC services.

But I know most of you will. And if you are going to, you really need to make sure that you are going to an exchange that is gonna keep your information safe. Also, you don't want to be leaving your sat on an exchange.

And this is something that FastBitcoins really push is that you take custody immediately. This is really important. And this is the ethos of Bitcoin. Do not leave your sat on exchange, get them straight off and into a hardware wallet.

Right, if you don't have a hardware wallet, or even if you do, if you haven't already checked out my last show sponsor, Foundation Devices, you really, really need to. They make the incredible passport.

It is fully open source and it's very, very simple to use. I love the fact that you can scan the QR codes. It has PSBT and all the things that you'd want for proper cypherpunk tools. But it dumbs it down enough that I can use it.

And this is the device that I'm suggesting now to all my friends and family. It really is beautifully designed. It's weighty, it's a quality build. You can link this with Spectre Wallet, Sparrow Wallet, or Blue Wallet on your phone.

It takes minutes and it's very, very slick. If you want any help or want any more information, you can always reach out to me or go to foundation devices.com. And you can use the code bit by bit to get $10 off your purchase.

Enjoy the show.

You know what, I just had it on mute, can you hear me? - I can hear you fine, can you hear me? - Yeah, I can hear you now. Can you hear a dog in the background snoring or is that not coming through?

- That's not coming through for me. - Excellent news. It's a bit of a makeshift office today, so yeah, hopefully the audio will be all right. But yeah, nice to have you back on. It's been way too long.

- Yes, yeah, I enjoyed my time last time and I'm happy to have got the invite again. So since we last spoke, a lot has gone on in the world. It seems that your constant need to improve privacy and build tools to make that possible for people definitely was worth doing because everything has gone crazy and more and more it's becoming clear

that governments are not our friends and we need to protect ourselves. So thanks for banging the drum, mate. You seem to be having lots of beef, lots of people attacking these ideas, but as far as I can see without them, we're pretty fucked.

- Yeah, I mean, that's the reason I got into Bitcoin originally. So I've been banging the drum, so to speak, for a long time. And the software saying, well, it was just the culmination of our team, myself, my co-founder, T-Dev, and the entire team being on the same page, knowing that the most oppressed minorities,

the individual, so let's build the tools that empowered the individual and make the warnings when we see culture in decline. - And is that how you feel now is the culture within Bitcoin or around Bitcoin, for the most part, has been in some way corrupted or in decline?

- Well, we've fought this way for a long time. It will be no surprise to any of our long time users or community members. We started samurai wallet in 2015 because we felt that the culture was turning rapidly away from the more libertarian in nature, maybe not in political ideology,

but at least in just general action aspects of Bitcoin, where the individual was sovereign and any tech that ensured that the individual remains sovereign was interesting and anything that took away from sovereignty was uninteresting.

We saw in 2015 the first wave of Wall Street entering and with them came a dilution of core values such as non-custodialism. So we are already worried all the way back then. That's why we started samurai wallet to serve as a counterweight.

And I think it's just continued. It's not surprising. As adoption grows, as usage grows, we're gonna have a dilution of the original kind of ethos. But we wanted to try to keep that ethos alignment.

We hope that we're doing that with samurai wallet. - Well, you're definitely doing it with samurai wallet. I've been using you guys for quite some time now. Not always completely successfully 'cause I have all sorts of problems with dojo and things, mainly because of my own failings as a man and as anyone technical.

But it's been great. It's been great when I do get it to work. And it makes me feel, when I've done it and I've mixed and I've got my sats as far away from being tractors, I personally know how to do it.

It makes me feel a lot more calm. It makes me feel also a lot more proud to be part of this movement. Because I think everyone in the world who's got their eyes open now can agree that having a money that is separate from government and having a fuck you money is more important now than it's probably ever been.

It's desperate now. Like it is getting to the point where we've got these CBDCs coming in. We've got these digital IDs and vaccine passes and all this crazy shit that's happening. Our freedoms are being taken at a rapid rate and it really surprises me that more people aren't awake to this idea of, yes, Bitcoin is a great technology.

It's fantastic and it's gonna become more and more valuable. But if you are thinking that way, if you're thinking, even if you're just in this for the money, even if you don't care about the freedom, you've got to see that one of the massive value propositions of this thing is that you can use it like a cash

and you're not gonna have some police officer or government agent turning up at your door to arrest you. And without these tools, that's exactly what's gonna happen. It's really scary. - Yeah, well, you hit the nail on the head.

It has to be like cash, like physical cash. That's the most important thing I think for people to take away is that Bitcoin shouldn't be operating as if it was just another digital rail, right?

Like it's like another way to pay for something online. Maybe a little bit more convenient than a credit card. Not the same convenience as a PayPal. That's not how to think about it. The way to think about it is a digital form of cash with the same properties and benefits that cash brings you.

And there's a reason why governments around the world have declared a war on cash and it's those same reasons why cash is so important to incorporate it into your life. And then Bitcoin has tremendous, tremendous upside than physical cash, right?

It's way more discreet, it's way more portable. There's way less risk of it being taken from you, or found that it's easier to hide. You know, so it's a really important way of looking at it and I'm glad that you see it that way.

And it's the same reason why we find it. You know, why we preach to our community that they should migrate away from KYC services in order to buy their Bitcoin to know KYC options because it strengthens the cash properties of Bitcoin.

That said, we do recognize that most people will come into the space at this point from a KYC perspective. And we offer tools such as World Pool Coin Join to help them mitigate that loss of privacy and reclaim their coins as a type of digital cash.

Yeah, there are certainly times with my technical capabilities, there are times where I prefer cash at this point in my life. I feel more comfortable with cash in certain situations than I do with Bitcoin, just simply because I don't fully understand exactly what I'm doing as deeply as other people.

So I know what I'm getting with cash, but I know that that option is not gonna be probably around for that long. And like you said, I mean, it's only useful if someone's local to you. If I want to send you some cash, well, I can't, you know, I have to send you some Bitcoin.

So these sort of problems with cash where it's not as good in Bitcoin in some ways, but then, you know, you're gonna feel more comfortable privacy-wise if you use it correctly with cash than you would with Bitcoin, unless you really know what you're doing or use the right tools.

So there is that trade-off, but when there isn't that option anymore, I think that's when people are gonna really seriously realize how fucked they are, because so much of the economy is cash.

So much of people's day-to-day lives is done in cash. And it's not that they're all fucking cartel members or anything like that. Some people need it to survive. Some people need it not just for privacy, but, you know, some people really actually need to just earn a bit of cash on the side 'cause they can't afford to live if they don't.

Most of the builders and tradespeople and all these sort of people, you know, most of that's all done in cash. So I keep thinking, well, when are they gonna switch over? When is that gonna happen?

Have you got any thoughts on that? Have you got any ideas on when people start to move across or do you literally think it's gonna be when they no longer can use it, then they're gonna have to think about this?

- Yeah, it's an interesting question. And it's largely cultural in the UK and in the US, cash is still King, so to speak. You know, you can go into most stores and pay with cash. And like you said, there's the trades that are largely cash-based.

And under the table work is known about. And as you said, it's necessary for some people. But if you go to the Nordic countries, you go to Sweden, for example, interacting with cash is very, very rare, they've successfully eradicated cash in most circumstances, to the point where even a homeless beggar on the streets of Stockholm

will have a phone with the payment system that's local to the area. So cash is very much gone out of fashion and it's very difficult to use cash. So I think culturally in the US and the UK, I think that if we were to see further clampdowns on cash, so let's say, you know, very small ATM or cashpoint withdrawals, you know,

from what's usually around 300 a day to something like 50-- - Dropped again. - Oh, it dropped again. - Yeah, it's 200 now. - Okay, so it's 200 now. - For the last year and a half or so in the UK.

And obviously that 200, the actual purchasing power is much less than it previously was as well. So what was 300, you know, maybe two, three years ago in real terms is like 150 today if that and it's only gonna drop more.

- Yeah, well, exactly. So I mean, as they turn up the pressure there and it's a, you know, the think tanks and the globalist institutions all recognize cash as an enemy, so to speak, 'cause it dilutes their control.

So you will see a war on cash and it will be ramped up eventually in your country wherever you are, if not, if it's not already there. And I think at that point is when you start to see everyday people who rely as you've stated on cash be forced into new options.

So it's not a novelty to them. It's, they were able to live one way and now they're not. So they need to figure out a new option. And, you know, ideally they would figure out that Bitcoin, for example, could be a good option and it's only a good option if the tools are there to make it as useful to them as cash is to them.

So for example, if you take out your 200 pounds from the ATM cash point, that's it. You know, the bank knows that you took it out but what you've spent it on is completely opaque to them.

They can't see, they have no idea. That's not true of Bitcoin. So your centralized exchange that knows your information, they know that you would do a Bitcoin. And if unless you take proactive measures to protect your privacy, they can watch what you do with that Bitcoin as you do it.

So it's fundamentally different than cash in that way. And that's why we've spent so much time building the tools that we've built is to mitigate the fact that Bitcoin has a public blockchain and anyone has the same amount of access to it.

What tools and what tech and what software can we build to mitigate the effects of the public blockchain? Because what Satoshi envisioned in his white paper was peer-to-peer electronic cash.

And he's not talking about the cash and the Bitcoin cash sense of the word or the S and E or Craig Wright sense of the word. He's talking about cash as a physical cash as we've been talking about on this podcast so far.

So we need to do everything that we can and ideally it would be done at a protocol level but that doesn't seem to be happening. So it has to be done at the application level and that's where it's right while it steps in.

I'm still there, right? - Well, can you hear me? - Of course. We see the loss map. Oh, there you are, okay. (laughing) I was about to take over the show there. - Fuck sake, it's a bit of a bad line as usual.

If it happens again, I will switch my wifi to the other one 'cause it's a bit shit. I was just about to say, I don't know how much of it you caught but it's a good analogy for people, I think.

This idea of taking your cash out of the cash point. So for people who are newer and they maybe haven't played around with Samurai Walleur or they haven't listened to our previous episode, if someone has bought their Bitcoin on a exchange, let's say and they've given all their identity,

they've given their address and photo and everything else and that exchange then knows that they have that much Bitcoin and then they're tracked, right? Just like they would be in the legacy financial system, they know how much you've got, they know where it is and they know where you're sending it.

If you're using any payment app in banking apps, they can track you, they can trace you and you're followed everywhere. And it's the same with Bitcoin, but what's quite nice is that in the legacy system and the banking system, like we're saying, you can pull out your cash.

Yeah, okay, it's restricted. If you go into the bank and ask for any sort of amount of cash, they're gonna ask you a million questions, look at you suspiciously, you know, they make it very difficult for you to do it.

And if you do it at the cash point, they limit you massively. But once it's been drawn out, you have that forward looking privacy. You have something in your hand that you can go and spend and from that point, they know you've drawn it out, but they don't know what happens after that point.

So it gives you plausible deniability and it stops you being tracked. And that's kind of how I'm looking at samurai wallet. Like it's the same thing just in a digital world. It's that I'm turning something that is completely traceable, completely trackable into something that isn't.

And that's incredibly powerful. It's something that's really, really necessary. And what's beautiful about it is you don't have to drive down to the fucking cash point. You don't have to be limited in any way.

You can put this straight into Whirlpool and you can do that in any amount. I think that's so important that this is usable for people. And it is really, to me, I feel it's almost at that stage where it is as easy as driving down to a cash point for most people and they can protect their privacy going forward.

- It's getting there. Usability and UX is always a challenge, especially with complex technology like we're dealing with with point join, especially when you have the self-imposed limitations that make it harder on yourself.

For example, at no point is Whirlpool Custodic, right? You always retain full custody and control of your private keys. Those properties create challenges for design and UX. But it gets better all the time.

We're constantly iterating on it, taking into account user feedback. We recently had a update to the mobile app, which I think dramatically improved. The UX in Whirlpool made it a lot clearer what's going on, especially for first-time users.

And it will only get better. These things will get better with time as it can come more robust. So, I kind of consider all of the Whirlpool guys today, early adopters. They figured out the tech they've overcome the hurdles.

They provided incredible feedback and based off of that actionable, be the protocol, the tools, the software. It just gets better and better. So, thank you for being one of those people. And you're exactly the type of person that we want to be able to use the tools.

We don't want just the technical guys. We want people who aren't as technical than able to use them and make use and get the same privacy that some are more experienced or a bit in the space longer we'll get.

- Well, I have to say, I mean, I've never, someone said to me the other day, I can't remember who, they were like, "Oh, fucking Samurai wallets, like unusable. "You can't get people on new users on."

I'm like, "That's actually bullshit." Everyone that I on board, I get straight onto using Samurai wallet as long as they've got an Android phone. And they don't seem to have any problems.

And I've never had any problems with it to be fair. The only thing I've ever had problems with is backing it to my node. That's where I've had issues. It's like, okay, now I need to link this to my Ronan Dojo, and that's where I was having problems, mainly because I was using the wrong hardware.

But now that you've got things like the Tanto coming out and things are getting more and more slick and more and more usable there, it's a long way further ahead than it was a couple of years ago.

And I think that that's pretty usable for literally anyone. But it's never been difficult, in my opinion, actually using Samurai, the wallet. That's always been pretty slick. - Yeah, I agree, and I think we spent a lot of time trying to make the wallet as simple as possible, really, for a new user who would come in pretty much blind.

We always try to think about that guy, because we don't, well, prior to this year, we didn't have much documentation. Now we do have a lot of documentation. But we didn't, historically, so we wanted to make it kind of foolproof, right?

And so you can use the wallet as a brand new user and really not be overwhelmed the stuff you can receive and you can send. And as you start to get more confident and explore the wallet further, it kind of opens up into this really powerful toolset, right?

A lot of stuff is happening by default under the hood and you don't have to worry about it. But then when you start to explore the settings, you see these features and explanations, you go, "Oh, wow."

And you start to learn, "Oh, I can actually view my wallet by UTXOs "and I can manage my wallet by on a UTXO basis." And, "Oh, there's just pain and pain." "Oh, there's all these tools and functions left."

I think and I hope none of it is too overwhelming and at the start, you know? And I think we've been relatively successful in that considering how much is in the wallet and how feature-packed and powerful it is.

It could be a lot worse in terms of UI and UX. No, I've always found it to be pretty clean. It sort of holds your hand. It has some rails up to stop you doing stupid shit, which I think is really nice to have.

Like I say, I haven't had the issues with it and it's nice to see now that you've got the option with like what Craig Raw's doing with Sparrow wallet. You've now just opened up this whole new world for non-Android users and it really feels like things are moving forward.

You know, I had a conversation with him. I don't know, whatever it was like a year ago or something. And I mentioned, 'cause Q&A was like writing, "Oh, when you speak to Craig, "asking them about pay names and asking about this "and asking about that."

So I was like, asking about it. He said, "Yeah, I'm looking into it. "You know, I'm gonna try and make it happen." And it felt like a blinked and then it's in. And so, what's your thoughts on that?

Like how does it feel having other people now onboarding more people into Whirlpool? - Oh, it's fantastic. And working with Craig has been a pleasure. Our teams have collaborated extensively both him and him submitting pull requests to our project and us submitting pull requests to his project.

And he implemented Whirlpool very quickly, very efficiently and very well done fashion. He kept the conventions of the premix and the post-mix, the segregation, making it so that the footprint of the transaction did not differ in any way versus a samurai wallet created transactions.

So they're identical on the blockchain. All the things that you would hope that your wallet developers are talking about were talked about. So it was a great collaboration. We're really happy to see Whirlpool in Sparrow Wallet and we hope other wallets will see what's possible and implement it for their users as well.

The most important thing about another wallet implementing Whirlpool is for the health of the pool. It makes the pool far more robust when you have multiple wallets, softwares are talking to that someone pool.

Each one of those Sparrow Wallet peers is unknown by the samurai note, right? So I think as most of your users understand, unless you connect to your own node to samurai, your own dojo node to samurai, you're using samurai's nodes.

So the number of peers within the Whirlpool that samurai nodes know about has dropped, even more so since Whirlpool has been on Sparrow Wallet. So it increases the diversity of the peers available at the pool.

So more is better. And any projects that hear this are more than welcome to contact us and talk about implementing Whirlpool in their project. Yeah, the more the merrier, it really is incredible.

I mean, craze and absolute beast. I can't believe, I don't know if it's still the case, but when I last spoke to him, it was just a one man band, which I was like, you know, it's just you.

That's the case, yeah. It's fucking incredible. But yeah, it's great to see that there are projects out there that are starting to take notice and pushing towards making things more private.

Are there any other trends that you're seeing at the moment or things that you're looking to implement that are exciting you privacy-wise? We're working on a number of these areas, one flagship headline that we're hoping to announce in April.

I can't give many more details on that. But the progress continues. We've been hard at work over the last year. And I think that this year is going to pay off with what we're putting up and out.

One thing I can talk about is the-- we'll be launching what we call a Stonewall as a service, which if you've used cahoots in the wallet, you'll see when you go to do a Stonewall, you could choose one of your payment followers.

You can do it manually. Or there's a grayed-out option right now to use one of our post-mixing TXO album books. We're going to enable that option, which is currently disabled. And what we're hoping with that is that we're going to give people who maybe don't quite have friends on Samurai Wallet yet the ability to access Stonewall X2.

So we think it will increase the knowledge of that feature given their first taste and then get them-- hopefully get them hooked in and find the collaborators of their own. So with that match peers, it would match two separate users together, or would that be with one of your UTXOs as Samurai Wallet?

Yeah, it would be with one of our UTXOs as a Samurai Wallet. So we'll have a small amount of UTXOs ready to go. They'll all be post-mix UTXOs, so they'll all become a world pool output. And users will choose, and they'll be warned saying, hey, you're using Samurai Wallet to construct this transaction.

And it's better if you use an unknown collaborator or someone that you know that a friend or contact. But if you can't have that, which are the majority of people currently, if you don't have a friend, check this feature out.

And you're still benefiting. You're still getting a Stonewall X2. You're still doing a mix. It's just the participant is with us, as opposed to one of your opinion. Yeah, interesting feature.

The other one that a lot of people-- it can be quite controversial, but whatever way I try and wrap my head around it, it seems to make sense. And maybe this makes me a complete fucking shit coiner.

But this doxic change atomic swaps to Monero. A lot of people seem to have a problem with it. It seems to me to make sense. What was the thinking there? Is it just that it's the most efficient way to get that moved out of the wallet because you can't do anything else with it?

Or what's the thinking with it? Well, first of all, I wouldn't say a lot of people were unhappy. I think you have a small minority of people on Twitter who go around calling people shit coiner for fun and took issue with it.

But I don't think that-- I think the majority of our users will get use out of it. The idea of a atomic swap to Monero came, really, from users. And their habits and how they interacted with the toxic change that they got from world politics.

But what they were doing was-- for your listeners, it's important to realize that these are small amounts of Bitcoin. These are less than 0.001 Bitcoin. So the smallest pool. So what they were doing was they couldn't add those value tips of the world pool, so they would use a centralized swap or fixed float

or change me or one of those to move it into Monero. And they would do that on a transaction by transaction basis with their toxic change until they had built up some amount of Monero that could be swapped back to a mixable amount of it.

So that's really how we noticed a lot of users were for handling the toxic change. Just so happened at the same time development of atomic swap, the protocol level in Monero started to be talked about.

Two projects came up. And two competing products came up that were competing in terms of how we protocol would work. We've engaged one of them to do the Bitcoin side of the swap as you obviously need for atomic swapping to assets.

And we're going to continue work on that as the protocol develops on the Monero side. We'll be able to do more. And we're going to build in the functionality for users who want to do it to take that toxic change.

Instead of just marking it as do not spend, marking it as swappable going into their Monero wallet. There won't be a Monero wallet in Sam Ryan. They'll have to have an actual Monero wallet.

But the idea being that they can build up some balance before they can swap it back to Bitcoin and then export it out. Yeah, see, this is the thing. Whatever way I look at it, I can't understand the issue with it because the way I'm thinking about it is you've got small amounts of Bitcoin that aren't really usable.

You can't put them back through the pool. Your transaction fees are going to be really high if you send each individual one off. And then what do you do with it? You're going to have to combine them at some point, which then is going to dox you.

So from a privacy standpoint, it wouldn't be smart to do anything with them like generally. I think they just be sat there. The whole reason for using Sam Ryan wallet is to get your privacy.

So why then fuck it up by trying to just do something with these tiny bits of toxic change? So I can't see any other logical way that you would use these. And then to me, that just seems like waste.

And then to say, well, OK, because it's a coin that isn't Bitcoin, then it's a shit coin and everyone's shit coiners. It just doesn't seem logical. I use the Great British Pound a lot in my day to day life.

That's a shit coin. People aren't attacking me because I'm using that. The fact that someone might want to swap out into Monero and then back into Bitcoin where they have no other option, then I just see it as like, it's a tool.

It doesn't mean that that person is necessarily wanting to actually hold Monero or that they believe that that's going to be the future or whatever, like label people want to put on someone.

It's just that they go, that's a tool that's useful for me. Yeah, exactly. And people should use tools at work and that are useful for that. So we noticed that people were doing it already, but they were using centralized services to do it.

Now, you know, fixed flow and the others, they have a pretty long-term history and reputation of doing good services. But that doesn't change the fact that you were taking your risk, that they could run off of your funds, or that they could be malicious and walking, doing all sorts of stuff.

So what the thought was is that if users are going to use that, let's give them an option to avoid those risks. And you know, so we think it's a positive thing overall. I mean, there are other strategies to dealing with toxic exchange.

You know, one of the guys in the Telegram used to save them up in a custodial bit refill wallet. And so he had enough to buy a gift card for something. And then he would buy a gift card and buy groceries, or whatever he would buy.

So all of that, but that's another option that introduces custodial risks, right? So everything that we're about is not custodial. The user must keep it, the complete custody at all times.

Neither us or other services that we promote can take custody for our users' funds. So we have to come up with something that's going to be usable for a large amount of people. And we think this is currently the best solution.

And it's used, like, I speak to a lot of people who do use Monero and there are certain things where it's, you know, certain darknet markets and things you have to use Monero. So it's like, well, if you need to use it, then it's not a bad option to have.

I don't really understand where that issue comes in. To me, sometimes it feels like the type of person who makes that argument or gets really annoyed by it is maybe concerned about what the future is of Bitcoin.

They're not confident enough to just be like, well, different people are going to do different things. Just don't fucking worry about this. There's none of your business, like, it doesn't matter.

And I think maybe that's it. Maybe they're worried that, oh, well, the privacy on Bitcoin isn't that good. And then maybe people are going to move across. And then it's like, well, if you think like that, then you should fucking be working on privacy tech and you should be working on improving the privacy.

So do one or the other. Like don't bitch about it because someone's trying to find a workaround to make people more private and be able to live their lives. And if you are going to bitch about it, then come up with a better option yourself because otherwise it's just a waste of breath.

- Yeah, yeah. I mean, like I said, it's a very, very small minority of people who feel this way. And I think a lot of it is concerned trolls. I think a lot of it is, you know, they attach this identity to themselves of, you know, a toxic pleb, or a toxic Bitcoin maximalist or something like that.

And they feel that what that means is they have to be, you know, I mean, taller and asshole and go out there and spread the word of Bitcoin through any means necessary. You would believe a better insult someone.

You know, the amount of times I've been called a shick corner in the last six months, which is really a six, you know, it is unbelievable considering that the same rise is a completely Bitcoin-only wallet.

And I've never worked on any other, any other tech I've ever worked on, on many other altcoins or the narrow anything like that. You know, in fact, my understanding of those networks and those coins are very limited.

You know, I have a good indication that the narrow works on a technical level and I'm pretty confident in its privacy points. But besides that, I mean, it's not something I interact with on a daily basis like I do with Bitcoin, you know, where I know Bitcoin inside and out.

Maybe I use it every single day, multiple times a day, and I've been doing so since, since, you know, 2013 or the 2015, you know, so, so I take what those people have, their criticism and audience very, I don't take much attention, I don't pay much attention to that.

What I listen to are users and our users specifically. And I know I see what they're doing and what they're asking for and what they, you know, what they want and we're gonna build the tools to further that as long as we can make sure that it retains on custodian.

So that's, that's that, you know, and we'll let the products be for itself. - Mm. Samurai, if you don't mind, I'm just gonna switch my Wi-Fi because I'm just getting really, really broken up.

Do you mind if I just literally stop it and I'll send you a new link in like 30 seconds? - No problem. - Cool, all right, just give me a sec. Sorry, it was just, I was missing like every other word towards the end there, which is really fucking irritating, but it should, it should be better now.

So, so yeah, I mean, if you've got any thoughts on the improvements of Bitcoin privacy going forward, getting to a point without any changes at the protocol level, like with what you're doing and what others are doing, do we get to a point where dark net markets are using Bitcoin again?

Or do you feel like that is a lost cause now? - Well, I think the majority still are using Bitcoin. What we've seen is new markets joining that shoes ago, Monero, only. But the big established guys, I believe all still accept Bitcoin, but they do almost all of them accept Monero and prefer and suggest Monero.

I don't think that we see a

return to Bitcoin glory days, dark net markets. I think that Monero is king in that space going forward. - Okay, and do you think that that is something that could change, say, in five years, 10 years, if we do get a lot more adoption and we continue on the path we're on,

or do you think that you almost see it as a layer that sits to the side of Bitcoin that people can just use? They can store their value in Bitcoin and then swap in and out. Is that the way you're sort of viewing it?

- I'm not, I wouldn't go that far is to say that's the way I'm viewing it. I think it's too difficult to make a prediction of 12 months into the future, this industry led about five years.

- That's fair. But just to further from my last point, Monero being the king of that market, the dark net market space, going forward, while I believe that to be true, that's only at the transactional level as the currency of choice in the shops and the markets, but ultimately those guys end up going into Bitcoin.

And I believe that will continue to be true because if you want to go into Fiat or the USD pound, whatever, which ultimately they do, these guys aren't like holding all their Bitcoin, not holders, they're economic participants and they need Fiat in the real world.

The best way to go from, it's a Fiat, it's by a Bitcoin, not by an American. So, and I think that's only gonna become more and more true in the future. So, there will need to be privacy improvements in Bitcoin.

I doubt we'll see them on the protocol level and on the application level, hopefully we'll start to see things, more things. But ultimately, you can only go so far on the application level and the protocol level is really where you need to focus the privacy developments.

Really, it can't be, it's very unfortunate that the privacy emphasis dropped off in core development and it went, it pivoted towards mass adoption and it was all predicated on the mistaken assumption that all these users were gonna flood in all at once and the blockchain would be unusable.

That was propagated by the likes of Roger Deere during the Fourth Wars. You know, so attention got diverted, it all became about scaling and less about privacy and I think that happened too soon.

It needed to go to scaling at some point but I think that privacy got pushed to the wayside way too early. - As a non-dev that sort of understands a little bit to roughly piece bits together, is there anything that you think could be done now that's realistic on the protocol level that isn't

or are you saying that things could have been done but because of the decisions that were made then it's now not so possible? Like, do you see what I mean? Like, is there stuff that can be done now that you think is unreasonable that it's not and that they're on trade-offs big enough to say, oh no, well it's not worth doing?

- Well, the biggest thing would be signature aggregation which was originally part of the tap rate upgrade. It was taken out pretty much only because people thought that it was gonna be too contentious and it might lead to a situation where we don't get activation attack groups.

So the maintainers decided to separate it out and that was literally the only real privacy improvement in the tap rate upgrade and it was stripped out. So, I think that could have happened and it should have happened but it didn't.

And I think from anyone who watched the tap rate upgrade, it was very contentious in terms of the emails going back and forth on the developer list and some participants weren't happy and there was the thought that there might be a user-activated soft fork of the situation to resolve the situation

and others thought that that was ridiculous. It was such a dramatic issue for months and months and months over something that no one disagreed about. Like everyone wanted tap root. There was really no contention at all.

The contention came down to how it was activated. So I think that that is a good indication that any change is going forward, is going to get more and more tough to get merged into Bitcoin and that's why they designed somewhat.

That's a good thing but it's the reality. And that's why I say it was sidelined to privacy, it was sidelined too early because it would have been easier to get support for these privacy upgrades earlier in the development cycle rather than now

where Bitcoin is now. So I just don't see those things happening broadly because it'd be contentious, especially with regulators and those who wish to appease regulators. If you had true, let's say it doesn't even matter.

Whatever it would be, anything that would improve privacy fundamentally for users would be opposed by regulators and those looking to appease them as well as those who believe it will undermine the value of the asset and they're all about the value of the asset.

So I think it'd be a very tough sell these days. - It's really frustrating. When you're talking about the value of the asset, is it because people are thinking, well, whatever privacy changes could possibly be made at the protocol level would take away from the verifiability of the supply and therefore they don't want to go ahead?

Because if it was that, I have to say for me, I'd be like, yeah, I agree with that. Like it's pretty important to have that. If we don't have that, it would be a massive blow. Or is it that you could still have that but you could do something else and it would piss off regulators?

Because if that's the case, I just think it's really short-sighted. I think all this pussy-footing around and trying to suck all the regulators' dicks to try and get this thing to be more valuable is really, really short-sighted because we all know they're gonna fuck us in the end or at least try to.

And if Bitcoin is as stable and unfuckable as we think it is, then what are we doing? They're obviously not here to protect us. You can see that from the last couple of years. Is that the game you think they're playing?

- So I think most Bitcoiners would agree that being able to audit the emission schedule and that the emission schedule's being respected is fundamental to Bitcoin and it wouldn't be accepted to sacrifice that.

So I think most people are in agreement there. I think the largest amount of dissent will come from those who look at Bitcoin as an investment.

Like a financial asset, like an ETF or something like that. And if number's not going up, they're not happy. And I think they would see adding a significant privacy enhancement on the Bitcoin as risking the price of Bitcoin because it might become more also to regulators.

It might be outright banned. It's basically adding a lot of uncertainty to their investment and they don't want any change like that to the current. It might be, we might not agree, but I think there is a large contingent of people like that.

Especially, I would argue, I don't know the guy, I can't speak for the guy, but I would argue that Michael Saylor would be one of those people who would be opposed to a true significant fundamental privacy improvement on Bitcoin.

- Yeah, I would think so, for sure. - Yeah, I see needs to protect his investment. And he's made a big investment. So I think that's a big challenge. I mean, there would be, I think, if there was a feature proposed that would mystify the emission schedule and make it unauditable without there being a crap proof,

that's something that's true. So let's just say that that would be possible. I think though, everyone would be in agreement that we would be willing to sacrifice that aspect of Bitcoin for privacy, we'd need to find a better way.

- Yeah, sure. So it does come down to cozying up to regulators and appeasing them, which I guess then I start to understand more when people say, oh, I wish this thing would just fucking drop because it shakes those sorts of people out.

I start to understand more, especially when people have been in this for a long time and caring about privacy. They start to get really frustrated with it because yeah, maybe it's just not, not everyone's thinking this way, but if we do believe this is our last chance of having something that's real property

that can't be taken and that we can use and use to fight this oppression, then having a dollar value against it really is irrelevant, you know, it doesn't matter long term. If all the people who are on Twitter, everyone who's saying, I'm never fucking selling, this is going to my descendants,

this is going to my great, great, great grandchildren, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff that they say on Twitter. And it's like, so then why do you care about the value of it now, if that's really true, why do you care and why don't you care about preserving the privacy because without that, we're going to have a real clusterfuck.

Like I do think in the future, but you know, it's very likely that all these people who have got their KYC coins and they haven't cared about their privacy whatsoever and just think that after hyper-bit colonization, it's not going to matter because governments are going to dissolve and they're just going to be left alone.

I think they're dreaming, like, that's never fucking happening. That is never going to go down without a serious fight and they've got all the guns. Yeah, no, no, no, no, it's a fantasy. Like the Bitcoin fix is this fantasy.

Well, you know, Bitcoin's been around for more than 10 years now and we didn't have lockdowns and this and that Bitcoin started and now Bitcoin's 10 years old and look at the world today.

Bitcoin did not fix anything. It's not magical, you know, it's software and it's about what we do as users. It's the essential thing. It's not a magic. It's not a magic bill. Yeah, look, I'm going to say every one of us likes when the number goes up, right?

No one dislikes that. It's great. But, you know, I think if you're like the majority of our community use and interact with Bitcoin and spend Bitcoin in a way because they have to, because they're off of the fiat system, they have more Bitcoin than they do dollars than they need to spend it.

A lot of our users are like this and when you're using Bitcoin in that way, whether it be, you know, the white markets, the gray markets or the dark markets, the price of Bitcoin itself, of the asset doesn't necessarily matter.

Just that it has a price, right? That's all it needs to be usable as a medium exchange in our world, right? As long as there's a price, Bitcoin was used at $1 and it's used at $60,000, it's used at $30,000.

So a lot of us don't think of Bitcoin, like you explained, as an investment meant to go up over time and provide a return later in life, it needs to be usable now. We earn it, we mine it, we buy it in OKRIC, it needs to be usable for our needs today.

And if the price goes up, that's just about like that's a bonus. Yeah, well, I mean, the number go up technology is in some ways very, very useful for freedom. So like as an example, for me, I'm much more able to not comply with any stupid rules and regulations because I don't have to say, yes or no to anyone, like I do my own stuff,

like I don't have to, if someone says, oh, you're going to have a jab, you do that or you lose your job, I can just say, fuck off, I don't care, because I've got my savings in Bitcoin and I have a bit of a cushion.

And the same for self-bank to a really good friend of mine, a doctor here in the UK who is just about to not be able to work anymore. They're just about to say, no, you can't work here because you haven't had your vaccine.

And again, he can say, well, if I didn't have Bitcoin, if I didn't have my savings in this and if it hadn't gone up in value so much, then I'd probably have to comply because I need to feed my family and that comes first.

So I'd comply. But because I have got my Bitcoin, I can say, fuck you and I can go. And so I do see it as something that is freedom enabling to a lot of people, the number go up. But I think that, yeah, maybe too much emphasis is put on that and not enough on looking into the future.

Yeah, well, what you're describing, though, ultimately is having a cushion, having savings, having capital. It's not necessarily about Bitcoin. It's just Bitcoin has appreciated in value, you know, rapidly over the last year.

But so has the stock market, right? So you could have done the exact same thing, investing in the hot stock at the beginning of the year and seen great returns, right? That's obviously going to come crashing down and people who realize that.

The reason why they didn't do that and they bought Bitcoin instead is because they see that. But my point is that it's not necessarily property of Bitcoin yet, that freedom. It's the, that's a property of having capital.

That's what opens up the freedom. And so, I mean, I agree, the number go up has been great for everyone. But I've also seen the number go down tremendously. And, you know, I'm not an ultra bear.

I don't think it's going to zero or going to even 1000 or 4000. But I could foresee it a further drop from here. And I think a lot of people would be spooked and a lot of people would leave the space.

Yeah, it would just be too dramatic of a shock to them. This relatively minor correction that we just saw from 60,000 or so, to see whatever was enough to spook a lot of people. You know, a further drop would just, I think, decimate background.

And, you know, but likewise, people have lost a lot in the stock market, right? Because you saw it started to see a correction. And that's what the ultimately, and the reason I keep bringing up the stock market is because when you look at a Bitcoin like that, that's all it becomes.

It becomes an asset that adds to your net worth. And that's how you think about it. That's completely fine. We can all use Bitcoin in our own way. It's just not the true promise of Bitcoin isn't as solely an appreciating asset, right?

The true value is the sovereignty and the true freedom that it affords. And if it came down to it, it came a time where you needed to access goods that your government made illegal, that were previously illegal, you want to be able to use your Bitcoin to buy those, right?

That's the world that you, you know, that's free. Being able to transact freely is freedom. And that's really what it's about. Yeah, no, I agree. When we're thinking about that, and we're thinking where the world looks to be going, obviously Bitcoin is a tool, and being able to use it privately is really important.

Are there any other tools that you're thinking about that you think are going to be really useful if the world goes to shit? Like if we go to this Mad Max situation, are there any things that you're thinking about mesh networks or, you know, any sort of communications that you think are really important for people to be considering now?

Yeah, you know, I mean, we've been thinking about mesh networks for a long time. You know, we were the first wallet to incorporate with a mesh network to allow you to broadcast your transactions over Gotana mesh network.

You know, any, any technology that disintermediates a centralized party is something to look into. Any application that is encrypted by default is something that you want to look into. Maybe, you know, free the printed guns is a technology that you want to look into.

You know, depending on where you are in the world. And, you know, anything that maximizes your freedom is about, you know, as much as I can, I can say for at least the software side of things.

Maximizes your freedom in terms of sovereignty and in terms of privacy to our linked. And do you have any views on where we're going? Not on the software side, not on Bitcoin side, but, you know, from since we last spoke to now, just having a general view of like the macro stuff

that's going on and everything that's going on around the world. How are you feeling about it all? Well, it's not good, is it? It's not a good situation. Yeah, that's true. Things haven't improved.

Let's put it that way. No, I mean, I think things. 2020, 2019, 2020, and 2021 should have been a huge wake up call to people. And, you know, to go from one way of life to an extremely different way of life very rapidly and basically globally was unprecedented.

And the willingness of vast majority of the citizenry of countries around the world to go along with or radically endorse the change has been startling. So I think anyone who's been paying attention, and I think that's a lot of people, I think have started to really think about the role that that government plays in their lives,

should play in their lives and the freedoms that they once had that they no longer have. And I hope that those people begin to look into, you know, freedom tech in order to maximize the freedom that their families can't afford.

Very well said. Samurai, I know you are a busy man. You have privacy tech to build to keep us all safe. So I thank you for that and for your time. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you particularly wanted to go through?

No, Max, it was great to be here. I could be covering everything. I like the fluid conversation on your show, so I could be the good there. Excellent. Well, as you know, you're welcome here anytime.

Always great to chat to you. And yeah, thanks for everything you do. I really mean that it's fucking amazing to have these tools at my fingertips as someone so non-technical. Yeah, without you guys doing this, you know, it just wouldn't be possible for me.

So I really do appreciate it and urge anyone who is running Android and new to Bitcoin listening to this. Maybe you've got some KYC stats. Check it out. And if they have any questions, you can reach out to me.

And when I can't help you, I'll pass you on to Bitcoin Q&A. All right, mate. Thanks for having me, Max. It's been great to be here. Speak soon. Take care. - See you soon.