Paynym for bitcoin users with iPhone, open source code and more with Stack Wallet.

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.

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 slither to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Today's episode is with Diego from Stack Wallet. I wanted to get Diego on the show, because Stack Wallet is the first wallet that has managed to get paintings on iPhone.

There's been a lot of talk about it over the last few years, but no one's actually managed it. I don't know if this is because of politics. I don't know if it's because it's particularly difficult, but Stack Wallet's managed to do it.

And after this interview, I downloaded the wallet. I've tried it on my iPhone, and it's fucking brilliant. My Paynim is plus rapid silence 243. I've never received anything to a Paynim on an iPhone, so if anyone wants to support the show, please do send to rapid silence 243.

And a huge thank you to everyone who's been sending donations to Plus Max by Bit, and to everyone who's been boosting on Fountain. I really do appreciate it, and it's fucking awesome that Stack Wallet has now made it possible that people can set up on iPhone and have a Paynim.

I really like Diego, and I think the team are doing great things. So a big thank you to Diego and the team, also a massive thank you to my show sponsors, Foundation Devices, who make my favorite hardware.

It's fully open source, it is beautifully designed, it has a fucking amazing team behind it. Bitcoin Q&A, as we all know, is a bit of a pain in the ass, but the rest of the team are fantastic.

If you are a sadist and you do want some more pain, you can pay a little bit extra, and Bitcoin Q&A will hold your hand through the process of setting one of these up, and make sure that you are completely comfortable with the whole process.

It really is simple, though. You don't have to subject yourself to any extra time with him. You can do this very simply. Any idiot can do it, including me, and I feel completely comfortable telling friends and family to use this device.

Go to foundation devices.com and use the code bit by bit to get an extra $10 off. A big thank you, also, to FastBitcoins for supporting the show. I really don't know why they do it. I tell everyone in every episode to buy, peer to peer, to buy in cash, or to mine at home, but I know not everyone does that,

and some people want to use exchanges, you want to give all your details away and have them stored. I wouldn't suggest it, but I know some of you will, and if you are going to do it, go to FastBitcoins.

The team are absolutely brilliant. They'll do everything that they can to keep you safe. They'll do everything that they can as a regulated business to keep you safe. FastBitcoins has an absolutely world-class team, and if you are gonna give over all your sensitive information and banking details, please make sure it's a quality team.

You can reach them at fastbitcoins.com, and if you have any questions about the trade-offs when buying KYC versus non-KYC or anything else, you can reach out to me and I will be open and honest about it.

Thanks to everyone who's been supporting the show. Thank you to the sponsors, and I hope you enjoy it. - Diego, can you hear me? - Certainly can. - Welcome to the show. Nice to speak to you, mate.

- Thank you, you too. Thanks for having me. - Yeah, absolutely pleasure. Well, I'm pretty excited to see that somebody's pushing the ball forward. Stack Wallet, how long have you been working on this?

- Stack Wallet, I guess about a year now, we've been quote unquote launched in some capacity for, I guess, seven months or so. You know, time just flies by so fast, but we're actually probably approaching eight or nine months that we've been out in some capacity.

Yeah, it's just something I've always, always lamented the fact that there was not something like this out there, if I may. My primary job, you know, I own Cypher Stack, which is a blockchain development, infrastructure, design, and research, little doohickey that I've got going on, and you know,

I've got several people and different disciplines hired. We started out as a little design firm because I myself am a UX designer. My wife is a UI designer, so we, you know, we work on designs together and we're pretty dang good.

If I do, if I may say so myself. And cryptocurrency was kind of my first foray into open source as a whole. I knew it exists, you know, everyone knows that like you could download LibreOffice for free if you can't afford Microsoft Word, right?

So that, you know, I knew of its existence in that way. I knew that there was like free software that you could use that was never as good as the paid software, but you know, if you're poor, then that's what you gotta do.

So my college days, that's what I did. And that's the extent of my knowledge. And then, you know, I found actually Monero first. I didn't find Bitcoin first. I mean, my wife, we started a little design firm and we're like, well, design is a very crowded field.

You need a niche. And I had to remember hearing about cryptocurrency, you know, a year prior to that point. And I had clicked through some of the websites and I remember one website was just so particularly horrendous.

And I found it again, it was Monero's. It was really bad. Because, you know, open-source people kind of have this and this will play into a little bit what I'll talk about later on. You know, open-source people kind of have a bit of a read the fucking manual mentality and a bit of a, you know, a pride in being a power user

that can navigate through difficult interfaces, right? And that other people can't. And like, well, if you can't, then that just means that you haven't done enough research. You haven't put enough effort.

You don't really want it. You know, you don't deserve to be among our ranks of the open-source elite kind of thing. - I don't disagree with that. As a special needs type of bloke when it comes to anything techy, it has been an uphill struggle.

Using the tools that I need to use to do things properly has been particularly difficult. And yes, there are some really good projects out there like Samurai Wallet and Roland Dojo and some others, you know, the communities are really helpful with their time.

So it's been good. But there is certainly that element and I've come across it. It is that it's like, well, just fucking work it out. Just read through it. And I'm like, well, it doesn't make any sense to me.

You know, it's just not intuitive to me. Oh, well. - Right. And, you know, even worse in this, they do things like they put out guides and YouTube videos, which are all great. But the reality is that only a fraction of people are going to be looking at such resources.

If it's not immediately apparent to a person what to do, they will leave for the average person. The attention span is too small. And, you know, actually, I take that back. You know, this is something that people say to justify their bad design decisions.

They're like, well, these days the people's attention spans are too small, you know, and like they should put into a little bit of effort and stuff. Let me tell you, man, you know, on a bit of a personal level and I don't mind sharing this, my father passed recently and it's been a very hard time for me.

And it has really just highlighted how short life is. And if every second is a second that I'm not going to get back, then why am I wasting precious seconds of my life fighting with software?

But people don't realize about design, and this may sound way too grandiose and big for my british type thing, you know, but what people don't realize about design is when we make bad design that forces people to struggle with how to use things and how this thing works and how they can accomplish their goals.

We are stealing human life with our bad design decisions. Seconds that they're not going to get back, because they could have spent playing with their kids, you know, or spending time with loved ones or enjoying a good meal or doing whatever.

They are instead looking at their screens frustrated because they are trying to accomplish the task and we are making it difficult for them to do so. That may be a bit highbrow in terms of like, okay, designers are not that important, but, you know.

- This whole movement for a lot of people is about being able to keep your value, keep your time, and certainly with Bitcoin, it's a tool that you used to do that. You know, your savings don't get stolen from you, and time doesn't get stolen from you.

So if you care about that, then you should care about design, and you should care about the interface that you're using. - You know, that's actually a really good point. Yeah, that I hadn't considered like, you know, Bitcoin, is all about the fact that, well, we want a resource that nobody can take from you.

You know, it's unconfiscatable, only you decide how to use it. And yeah, you know, if you apply those same principles, not just to money, but to time, which is the other big valuable resource that we as humans have, you know, then I want my time to be, quote unquote, "unconfiscatable" in the sense that, you know,

I'm not just laying it bare for any app or, you know, whatever to play with as it pleases. So, you know, kind of pulling back just a little bit from there, like I take design very, very seriously.

And the unfortunate thing is that most people, not just most open source, you know, not just the fast crowd, but most people kind of see design as veneer, as wallpaper, right? You have a functioning product, and then you put a pretty coat of paint on it.

And that is, you know, so, and because of that, people think, you know, design is subjective. Well, I think this is a good design, and you may disagree, and, you know, that's fine, that's two different viewpoints, but that's not quite correct.

Design, particularly UI design, is, you know, somewhere in between science and art. There is an art portion to it, absolutely, but there is a science portion to it, because if a change, a color change of a button, let's say, if a color change from black to red or what have you, helps more users achieve their goal in less time

with less confusion than it is objectively better design. There's no subjectivity about it, you know, and it can be anything from placement of elements and color and, you know, all these different things.

If a small tweak, which some might say is subjective and just wall-papering, helps more users achieve their goal in less time with less confusion, it's objectively better design. There is objectivity to design.

We are moving, in the past decade, we are kind of moving to a place where design is of utmost importance, at the very least, all the Silicon Valley people of venture capitalists, you know, they try to make the most beautiful looking things ever, and we'll get to why I'm talking so much about design

and how it relates to Stackwall here pretty soon, but, you know, the opposite end of the spectrum that typically does happen, and you see this a lot in the crypto space, because, as I said, you know, open source kind of tends towards poor design choices.

If these people aren't trained, they don't understand design at a fundamental level. Well, as you and unfortunately many Bitcoiners are aware, cryptocurrency has attracted a certain overly-funded venture capitalist crowd, everything from shitcoins, NFTs, you know, all this stuff that kind of goes around

that most Bitcoiners don't care for, you end up with the opposite, where you end up with bloated, overdone, over-designed mess of software, where it's got a pretty coat of paint, but, you know, there's too many elements stuffed in.

You got too many either ads or you like use, you know, a good example. I don't like sitting on other products. I really don't, but one example of something that I think is generally over-designed and bloated is the multi-coin wallet exodus.

I don't know if you've ever used it, particularly on desktop. Yeah, it's just, it's just this, you know, just like this garish and nightmarish thing of options and, you know, buttons and, you know, the home screen is like, "Oh, here's these newses and these things, "and these, you know, here's these prices,

"and you could do these things with the wallet." And it's just, it's way too much. So, bringing all this back to stack wallet, I really lamented the fact that these were my options. I could either choose something that is at best passable, but usually not so much, you know, not so greatly designed by people who are clearly not designers.

And at worst, over-designed, bloated, because, you know, certain designers hired by people with venture capitalist money need to justify their existence by continuously and continuously designing more and more things.

And I said, "Man, there's gotta be a better way. "Somebody's gotta do this." And, you know, that somebody's me. Be the change you wanna see in the world, so they say. So, I took the resources that I made and am currently making with Cypher Stack, you know, working for various clients, particularly on privacy-focused projects.

Like I said, I found Monero first, and as I delved into it, you know, I really adopted that ethos of privacy. The funny thing is I had, you know, generally been privacy-conscious before then, but Monero really helped me put somewhat of a label, you know, it helped me kind of find an ideology,

a name for kind of my thinkings and leanings, I guess. And that kind of starts me down the privacy road and Stack Wallet and Stack Duo, which, you know, we'll discuss in just a minute, have kind of taken these two core things of high privacy user-respecting open-source wallet with good design.

And those are the two things I really don't want to compromise on in any capacity. And that does mean that, I mean, we are developing at a breakneck pace, and one of the compliments we constantly get is just like, "Wow, you guys put out stuff like super quick," which is cool, but there have been times where I'm like,

"Okay, you know, we're gonna try to get this out this week, "next week, and, you know, it just doesn't happen "because we spend a lot of time, "probably more than a lot of other wallets, "on the design stage where, you know, "we will make an iteration and we'll go, "no, this is not good enough.

"This is not intuitive enough." And there are still portions of my wallet. I'm not still 100% satisfied with it. I'm like, "Okay, we got to retweet this. "We got to retool this, you know, "a little bit down the line," because I adopt a definition of intuitive that is known somewhat in the design community

where there is a trial and error period of one time. Basically, a user wants to accomplish a goal. It's the first time they've seen the interface. Typically, how we'll do things is informed trial and error, right? You know, you look at the buttons, you look at the text, you look at the design,

you say, "Okay, this is probably what I want to do." If the user has to try more than once to accomplish their goal, then that's not intuitive. And it's a very strict definition. And once again, you know, it moves towards objectivity, from subjectivity, 'cause some people say, "Well, I think it's intuitive."

And I think, you know, whatever, if a user has to try more than once, if they have to guess more than once about how to accomplish their goal when using this app, then your app is not intuitive.

And we are really pushing for that because Bitcoin is a really powerful technology, man. Like, I don't have to preach the choir here, you know, either to yourself or probably to the people listening to this, but it's a tool that has extraordinary potential to enact social change and keep the powers that be in check

in a very real way that we haven't had before. And, you know, the coolest thing about it to me is like, in a very peaceful way, it's not a violent uprising. It's like, well, you know, I choose something different and you can't stop me. (laughs) And in that sense, you know, in that resistant sense,

you know, there could be the claim to violence, but it really is as simple as choosing, but we are making it incredibly difficult for people to choose. And we're making it incredibly difficult for people to join this quote unquote revolution.

And that's really sad, man. Like the traditional banking system already does a great job of gatekeeping and keeping certain people out and certain people in. And the people in Bitcoin like to think, "Oh, we're for everybody."

But if we kind of hold on to this whole read the fucking manual type ideals, then we're actually doing the same thing. Just technically gigantic air quotes here available for anyone to use.

But not everyone can use it. - Not everyone can use it the way it should. Well, you can't say should, but ideally privacy-wise, et cetera, people struggle. And like it's a lot better than it was a few years ago.

- Yeah. - Like sparrow makes things very easy and a lot of people are doing great work. But yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people do just get scared. They're like, "Oh fuck, I just keep it on exchange."

Or, you know, I'm too worried or, you know, they don't want to move. They don't want to take these steps because they get scared. And, you know, I've found that when I first started. I mean, I'd never fucked around with a command line.

I've never done anything with Linux. I've never fucked around with any of it. And, you know, typing in commands that I didn't know what they meant to try and run something was not comfortable experience when you have sats on the line.

And you're thinking, "Oh, if I make a mistake here, you know, I'm losing more than I'd be comfortable losing." So, yeah, you know, it is incredibly important. And I think the idea that you've got to have things clean and crisp and easy for people is, it's going to get more and more important

because you're going to get more and more normal people because more and more people need it because the world is on fire. - And if I may be so bold as to say an opinion I haven't heard before, but may or may not be unpopular, I don't know.

I think the fact that Bitcoin is so difficult to use in a safe way is one of the things that has bled users to the shitcoinery brigade, right? Because one of the big marketing points of a whole bunch of these coins is like super easy to use.

You know, you barely have to think about it, you know, especially the scams, you know, like will hold the coins for you, you know, you lock them up and you just make money, it's that easy, it's, you know, and the thing they really do try to invest in is pretty looking things and easy to use apps and stuff like that.

And I understand stupid people are going to do stupid people things, right? You can't save everyone. But, you know, kind of this ivory tower approach of like, well, we're working on the tech and very few resources are put into, you know, usable thing.

Like you said, it's gotten much better. The landscape has gotten much better this past few years. But for many of these people who tried Bitcoin and just found it too difficult, it's too little too late.

This is just always the case until somebody comes around that makes it simple, the masses are not going to use it. This is the reality. People talk about mass adoption, mass adoption, mass adoption, you know, never going to happen, man.

Even, even, even under tyranny. We think, oh, you know, when things start getting really bad with the government, when things start getting really bad with the banks, you know, more people will come.

Yeah, more people will come. But the majority won't, they won't, man. Like, and like, this is the truth that so many people just don't want to hear. They're not going to come if people are lazy.

They choose, they actively choose to let other people think for them on a consistent basis. Why do we think that they are suddenly going to come over if technology that allows them to free themselves is not easy to use?

People would choose their shackles if it means they get to sit in the couch a little while longer rather than learn something new. And some might argue, okay, well, we shouldn't try to cater those people.

They can't be saved. Well, I argue we look, if we lower the barrier to entry on a design perspective from a design level, as in you show the person the app and they go, oh, okay, this makes sense.

Yeah, sure, I could, you know, I could do that. You help them set something up in five minutes. And, you know, it's very intuitive how to stay private, you know, how to use the different tools.

They don't have to look up guys. They don't have to look up YouTube videos, right? Then that's going to get a whole lot more people than just, you know, the tyranny happening. One of my favorite stories that kind of proves this point, the creator of GPG, or is it PGP?

I mean, I know there's the difference there, but the creator of GPG, he has his key. And somebody, like these days, I don't know if this is a true story, it's just one that I heard, you know, somebody sent him an email and, you know, it was encrypted with GPG.

And he asked, hey, I'm on mobile, can you resend this plain text? I don't want to go dig out my key, right? Even the creator, even the people who know, even the people who understand, even me, man, like I said, life is too short, right?

And if things are like super difficult for me, and I got to send out a Bitcoin transaction, 'cause I got to pay, you know, an employee, yeah, I got to pay us something, I'm like, you know what?

You know, I'm busy, you know, my baby's crying, whatever. Okay, boom, send a transaction to the address that they gave me last month, right? Like, I've got life to live, man. And if so many Bitcoiners are out here thinking that we should, like, structure our entire lives and our entire brain spaces to this thing

that they have devoted their life to, like, I mean, they got another thing coming, man. Like, I mean, I understand that you're single alone and living in the basement, and it can devote all this time here, but some of us got lives that we got to live, so.

- Yeah, I mean, the other thing where people say, like, oh, well, if they're not smart enough to work it out, then fuck them, basically. - Right, you don't want these people up against you.

You don't want to be the haves, you know, have not society. - Right. - You really, really don't. So, yeah, if you're private enough and you don't tell anyone you have Bitcoin, yeah, you might be all right.

You know, realistically, you don't want to live in that society, so you do want to onboard these people. And also, you want to be able to spend your Bitcoin and have a circular economy, so you do want people to be able to use it.

And like we said, you know, things are getting more simple, but, you know, a big thing for me as well. And the reason I reached out to you originally, there was a lot of chat in the Southern Bitcoin group, which is one of the best groups out there, really.

And there was a lot of talk on there with Whirlpool and making that more accessible because, you know, that's something I push on this show a lot is for people to, even if they haven't had good privacy in the past, to get that forward-looking privacy.

And there's this huge gaping hole where no one who's using iPhone have the ability to use it. And so I see that you guys are working on that. And again, sometimes the response is, oh, we're just fucking use Android.

It's like, well, yeah, okay, just cut off like half the world who use iPhone then. So, you know, it would be very exciting if that happens. I know it's something you've been looking into, which would be massive.

- Yeah, so Whirlpool for us is a multi-step process. You need to be able to support a bunch of different things. Like, you know, obviously, coin control is important. You got to be able to choose which outputs go, which outputs stay.

So that way you can, you know, sort them into the denominations that they need to be. So if we had to implement that first, we're looking at the tour issue because, you know, Samurai's implementation uses tour and tour works great on Android, but tour has significant challenges on iOS.

So we are trying to figure out how to navigate that. And we may even come to the conclusion that, you know, Whirlpool without tour is better than No Whirlpool. So, you know, we're launching that.

- Is it Apple doing something that makes it difficult to run tour programming? - Yes. - 'Cause it runs beautifully on my Mac. Never have any fucking issues on the Mac at all. - Sure. So iOS does something where they don't allow background processes and they do this for the user's safety because, in theory, a background process

can be reading the RAM and, if you're on a completely different app, you know, a banking app and you're, you know, putting in details and looking at stuff, in theory, some background process can be reading that data and you don't want it to.

So Apple has chosen to not allow background processes on iOS, which means stuff like Orbot doesn't work. As soon as you put an app into the background, it stops all processes there, right?

So, how Orbot works on Android, as I'm sure you know, you know, you turn on the Orbot app and there's a service running in the background, then you switch the app that you actually want to use and now, about it being about a boom, you know, everything's going through Tor.

Doesn't work like that on iOS. In addition, you know, they've upgraded frameworks and using Socks proxies is no longer supported in the traditional sense, which is how Tor connects to things.

There are workarounds, but they are subpar or sometimes not workable. You know, obviously met when you say it works on your Mac, that's because computers have like desktops and laptops have a little bit different of a threat model and an understanding of what the user wants to be able to do than with mobile.

So yeah, those kinds of things are allowed on a desktop experience, but are not on a mobile experience. And the Tor project and people who love Tor have been banging their heads against this wall for years.

And there have been some breakthroughs. Tor put out a blog post that, you know, talks about the issues with iOS and talks about some of their successes. So we're kind of looking at that, but it is not an easy problem.

And especially, especially when you consider that we don't hear at Stack Wallet have the resources to kind of maintain putting Tor into the wallet and having to update every time Tor updates and all these, there's a lot that goes along with that.

It's not quite so simple. - I'm sure you've thought of this, but is there not a way of like building in some type of VPN service so that if somebody is using it and they can't use Tor, that at least they have that, is that not better?

- Well, I mean VPNs are kind of the same thing. They're something working in the background to route your network traffic to a different network. And Apple is being very strict around VPNs as well, not nearly as strict.

We are looking to VPN route. Yes, there are similar, but not necessarily equivalent challenges. We're just kind of, I don't know, man, I don't like to do things halfway. So like I'm trying to explore every option where I'm like, okay, I want Tor on here.

How can you make it happen, right? Because otherwise, it may just be a thing of Apple is stupid, but what I don't want is Apple people going into this, because all of the guides, all of the verbiage, surrounding Whirlpool and stuff are kind of written with the understanding that you're using Tor.

And so when they talk about the privacy guarantees that you can expect, those are kind of coupled in there. And I don't want an iOS user reading such guides and saying, okay, then this is the kind of privacy that I can expect, but it's actually less than they can expect.

This is another important thing, and it's something I got from the Monero community because they're really, really strict about this kind of stuff. Is this understanding that people's freedoms and lives may be at stake here?

Right? And it's such a heavy burden to carry. You can't carry this lightly. Like, yeah, well, people's money, people's lives, people's freedom are at stake here. And yes, you've got the tech savvy people like the Edward Snowden's of the world who are able to cover their tracks.

But you've also got the reporters and the dissidents who can be average everyday people who have chosen the mantle of heroically resisting against tyrannical governments or what have you.

And they're not necessarily the most tech savvy people. They just have an ideology that they want to push and they want to resist. And I don't want them installing XYZ and thinking that they're safe when they're not.

So these are things that I'm weighing quite heavily. It's not just effective, like, oh, you know, the backlash, the media backlash, oh, Stackwall, it doesn't support tours. So, you know, like, there are real human consequences here that need to be considered.

- No, that's totally fair. And obviously, in an ideal world, told to be best. But like you said before, it's like, as long as it's made clear, if it's just for whatever reason, just, it's not possible.

I mean, hopefully it is, but, you know, if it isn't, then to my mind, if someone was to use something like a Mulvad or something where you can pay with Sats and have a VPN running, okay, you're still trusting in that VPN provider and it's not perfect, but it's like, it's better than nothing.

It's a lot better than nothing. It's just not perfect. But as long as someone knows that, I think that would be the thing, wouldn't it? You'd have to just be very clear on, look, we do things very well.

If you want to tour, you're gonna have to use Android and we'll provide the best service we possibly can, which is still very good, but. - Well, hopefully you managed to do it. I have faith.

- Yeah, and, you know, there's a part of me that's like, Diego, you're overthinking this. I mean, because, you know, even if we don't launch with tour on iOS, you know, a lot of people, most people have some sort of laptop, desktop, well, most first one people, you know, so they'd be able to hop on there and use tour there.

So maybe that's okay. You know, it's just, you know, I wake up each day and think something slightly different. In my pros and cons weighing of this. But yes, you know, going back to Whirlpool, that's a huge thing that we're trying to get out.

We actually may not be the first iOS. There was a tweet about some other Bitcoin wallet that is also on iOS. - It's a foundation, I think. - Oh, it's key something. If they have a key as a logo, I don't recall their name.

Sorry, creators of that. Good, good on the guys, keep going. I mean, it'd be cool to be first, obviously, but like I said earlier, you know, in our talk here, we can sometimes move a little slow and this is one of the things we're moving quite slow at.

And the reason is the design is really, really hard to get right. I really, you know, I appreciate Sam and I, I appreciate Sparrow. I feel that they have subpar. Remember, I think design is objective, not subjective.

I think that they have some subpar, user flows, information architecture and things that enable a power user to use it, but don't bring it to the masses. And again, I would like intuitiveness.

I would like trial and error of one. I would like people to open it up and go, okay, this is what I need to do. You know, you're not going to get that for everyone, but I would like, I would like to achieve that.

And I think it is an achievable goal, but that comes at the cost of like, okay, build, build, build, get it out, right? There's nothing so permanent as a temporary solution. So I don't want to like throw something together, put it out there and say, okay, we'll fix this later.

You know, that's not really the way we do things from design, from the design perspective anyway. So we're taking our time, looking at the different implementations, looking at how people do these things.

And as an example, I'm really, really proud of our coin control, the way that we do it. I think that coin control is something that can easily be very overwhelming, you know, especially for people who use cryptocurrency constantly.

If you've got like two outputs, okay, you know, nobody cares. But you know, if you've got a lot of different outputs, it can be unwieldy and difficult to use. And you know, the user interfaces can be quite intimidating.

And you know, all of the, you know, this output has, you know, these six different parameters about it. And you know, just tons and tons of information. And I'm really proud of how we were able to distill all of the, what I considered to be important information into a user flow that makes sense and is easy to use.

And I feel like, I feel like, you know, people agree with me when we're talking in, you know, different telegram groups or something, you know, people are like, you know, hey, you know, thanks for putting this out.

And you know, thanks for the coin control. Like it looks really great. And it's the best UI that I've seen. So if I could do my own horn here, we did really good there. And I would like to do the same for world pool.

I'd like to do the same for people, you know, try different implementations, try hours and goes, this is a breath of fresh air, right? This feels like I know what I'm doing and it's super easy.

And I'm not scared, 'cause especially when you're dealing with money, what happens if I send it and it goes to the wrong place and I don't get it back, right? You know, there's always, even for us experienced people, there's always a 60 second heart attack when we are sending large amounts to somebody

and we're waiting back and there's kind of a 60 seconds of grinding your teeth and they go, okay, I see it receiving it. And you're like, so if even us, you know, users who have done this a long time, even though we know the tech works and that if they sent us the address and it's the correct

and we just pasted it in, like we didn't edit it at all, like there's no chance of failure here, right? But like what if somebody, and you check the address, right? So, you know, nobody swapped it out, you know, like there's no chance of failure, but there's still that, you know, what if tech fails (laughs) and if that's the case for us,

how much more is it for a complicated technology like Whirlpool for a person who hasn't been using Bitcoin a long time, right? They would literally rather be like, I'll look at this feature later.

I'll just send, I'll just send normally, or, you know, I'll just keep my money on an exchange or what have you, like, no, like, you know, we got to do better. - Even just the, you know, the labeling, it's such an easy thing to do, but it's such a massive step up for your privacy if it's done right.

And so many people just, they just don't bother with it 'cause they don't understand the need. They're just like, well, it's Bitcoin, it's coming in, it's Bitcoin, I've just got more, I've got a lesson and a really fucking matter.

And then when they work out, ah, it does matter 'cause if I merge these, it's going to dox me. So it does matter, but then you try and think, well, ah, where did that payment come from again?

Was that from an exchange? Was that when I accepted SATs for goods or services? Well, what was it? So then trying to go back and remember everything is a pain. So if you've got a wallet flow that makes that easier, it puts people in a way better position.

- Right. And if I may ruffle a few feathers here. - I go on. - This is what Monero does extraordinarily well is you don't have to worry about that stuff. You just send, you receive and it works.

Like there are some privacy considerations, but there's, it is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what you have to consider for Bitcoin. And that's, I mean, obviously because of the underlying technology, it can never reach that level, but that's kind of what I aspire to, if that makes sense.

Like that's kind of like, I'm not satisfied until I push that boundary on Bitcoin and get as close to that as I can. So we've got cool features in the works for that. Like we do have labels in the wallet now where you can label and some things are automatically labeled and stuff like that.

But we've also got in the works a tagging system where you can categorically tag things and make tags and delete tags. And not, you can tag addresses, you can tag outputs. That should be out, hopefully sometimes soon we're finishing up.

The tagging implementation is done on mobile. The design is being finished up for desktop and it shouldn't be that much harder to put it there because the backend for that is already all done.

For those of you who don't know, Stack Wallet is not just iOS and Android. We also have a Linux and M1 Mac desktop flow that you can use. - Oh, I didn't know that. - You should. I'm actually more proud of our desktop UI than I am of our mobile UI.

And our mobile UI is excellent. But like our desktop UI, I'm like, dude, every time I look at it, I go, how? How is this this good? It's so good. (laughs) It's beautiful. - I'm gonna have to check that out.

Can I have like watch only wallets and all that kind of stuff? - No, yeah, those are coming. We are actually adding expubs and stuff as we speak. So that has been worked on this past couple of days.

Hopefully that'll be out in a couple of weeks. But for Linux, you would go to our GitHub and there's an app image that you can download. For M1 Macs, you can just download it from the app store and it will display, even though it's like, okay, it's running an iPad compatibility mode, it will display as desktop stuff.

Give it a go, tell us what you think. It's really pretty. I would like to, as well, we've been looking at various open source technologies like sync thing and stuff that would allow synchronization between a desktop wallet and a mobile wallet.

So, you know, you make a transaction on one or you label an address on one and it transfers over to the other one. So you don't have to do everything twice. I think that'd be pretty super cool.

- But, yeah, man, we're out here working, we're out here building, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of money. This is Stack Wallet is currently funded basically out of pocket for maybe did not go the traditional venture capitalist route.

So, you know, my clients on CypherStack, you know, I make a certain profit off of those and some of my employees are working for those things and basically I'm funneling those profits into Stack Wallet.

Stack Wallet does have a, what is the word, a way to generate income. We do have, you know, built in swaps using swap services like ChangeNow, MajesticBank, that, you know, you utilize them and we get a commission for every trade, you know, a certain percentage.

We also have buying in the app, but, you know, as with most buying, there is KYC involved. So for those that are considering their privacy, we recommend, you know, going P2P exchanges, BIS, local, Monero, Agora desk, any of these kinds of things.

But for people who it's not as big a consideration, then that may be a way to go. And then obviously, you know, once we get Whirlpool in there, there is a- - A classic change. - Yeah. - I was just thinking for the swaps, Doxic Change into Monero and back out again, is what a lot of people do, which would be quite handy

if you got those swapping services. - And that's the cool thing is there is ways, especially when atomic swaps comes around, which we do plan to support, which would not be good for a business model, 'cause they're not going through the swaps, but like, that's the thing, you know, I'm a pretty hardcore idealist.

I want these things to be available. Then even if you were to get some KYC funds, it's not perfect, it's great, it's preferable if it wasn't that way, but, you know, doing atomic swaps and things like that would really help you get those, get that privacy back.

- So the one that you sort of touched on earlier, duo, I think you've called it. - Yes. - That is gonna be, or is Bitcoin and Monero owned it? Is that right? - Right, right. So Stack Wallet is a multi-coin wallet.

We support Bitcoin, Monero, Litecoin, Dogecoin, you know, if you're- - It's true how much abuse I'm gonna be getting from people going, "Ah, you got so many supporting shit coins." - Yeah, but you know the funny thing is all these people who are whining, like, we are currently the first and only people who have Paynims, Bit.47, on iOS.

Nobody else has that yet, right? So like this shit coin wallet, this multi-coin wallet, like, "Oh man, you know, is building things for Bitcoin." Sorry, not Monero. Is building things for Bitcoin that other people are, as of yet, not building.

To me that says, you Bitcoiners who are whining and bitching about this, you guys need to step up your game, man. - That's why I have you here, because A, I don't give a fuck. And B, I know that there is a huge amount of Bitcoiners, even ones that won't omit it openly, that also use Monero.

And whether that is for Doxic Change only, or whether it's to use on certain websites, for certain substances, it's just a fact that it is used. And in a lot of places, it has to be used.

And as you touched on earlier, sometimes it is a matter of life or death. And you can use Bitcoin privately, but it's pretty fucking hard, it is hard. And anyone who says that it isn't, and there aren't ways to trip yourself up is wrong.

You know, it takes a lot of practice, it takes a lot of time. I'm all for people having options. And for me, this whole movement is about freedom. So if we start attacking people for making choices that they think is best for them, I think that's a little bit silly, not something that I use myself, but people are free

to fucking use what they want. - Yeah, and you know what? The reality is that the shit coins and stack wallet, once again, we'll get to do one just a second, are to help us make money and generate income so that we can keep working on the cool things like Monero and Whirlpool and stuff like that.

I mean, unless anyone hearing this episode wants to come over and donate large swaths of money, so we can just focus on Bitcoin things. I'm totally fine with that, right? But the reality is, the reality is I've got a family to feed and there is a lot of dumb money in shit coins, so we use that money generated from the shit coins

to work on cool things and beat other people to the punch on cool technologies for Bitcoin. So you guys can rest easy, Bitcoin is out there, that the funds are flowing towards a good cause by and large, so hooray.

But, yeah, duo, basically after a lot of, especially after the pay name was released for iOS, a fair amount of Bitcoiners took notice of stack wallet, realized it was really good, not just because we had, you know, we're the only people with pay names in iOS, but it's a great wallet with a great interface.

They're like, can we have Bitcoin Monero only? I actually got requests specifically for Bitcoin Monero only. I also got requests for Bitcoin only. And, you know, the cool thing is, it's open source, you know, you guys can fork it and just put whichever coins you want, you know, whichever configuration of coins, even Bitcoin only.

I currently have no plans to do Bitcoin only. Why? Because there's a million and one Bitcoin wallets out there, Bitcoin only wallets out there, but there are currently zero Bitcoin Monero wallets and Bitcoin Monero, Bitcoin and Monero, what I consider kind of, you know, OG cryptocurrencies, cypherpunk to the core.

So, you know, if you don't like Monero, that's totally fine. You can use Duo and not put on a Monero wallet, but it's actually pretty funny because in these groups, you know, people were like, well, you know, I'm Bitcoin only, but I, and I installed Duo.

And, you know, I thought while I was here, I'd make a Monero wallet just to try it out. (both laughing) You know, like I said, a lot of people, especially like in Southern Bitcoin or et cetera, most people who do take their privacy seriously and do really use this stuff, do fuck around occasionally with Monero.

- Yeah. - And it's really demented, man, because I, you know, there was a conversation going on in the, the Sovereign Bitcoin Telegram where, you know, one Bitcoin laser eyes guy was talking about how, you know, Bitcoin is good for all privacy threat models and Monero has no use and stuff.

I mean, obviously I don't agree with that, but it really highlighted to me how little people understand about privacy, even if you are an economics expert, even if you are a blockchain expert, even if you are a Bitcoin expert, right?

You know, 'cause the thing about blockchain is it takes a whole bunch of disciplines, game theory, math, cryptography, you know, technology, economics, and it merges them all into one. And you have to have a solid understanding of each of them to really understand how they all marry together.

The thing is privacy is an entirely separate discipline, but you've got these people who understand the economics and understand blockchain and Bitcoin to a high degree, they think, well obviously, obviously my knowledge should carry over in terms of privacy.

You know, I've read a couple of threads on Twitter, you know, I've read, you know, I'm informed. No, it is a completely separate discipline. Tour is not an all-in-one privacy tool. I2P is not an all-in-one privacy tool.

You know, Veracrypt is not an all-in-one privacy tool. There is no one-stop shop for privacy. So when some people come on and say things like this is a tool that applies to all threat models universally, and it is the only tool you will ever need, every person who takes privacy seriously knows that person is a charlatan

and has zero idea of what they're talking about. And there are threat models where Monero is going to be the tool to use. There are threat models where Bitcoin with, you know, mixing and post-mixing tools is going to be sufficient.

There are threat models where none of that is going to be needed. Just using Bitcoin normally would be fine. It really depends who's your adversary. You've got to threat model this out. You know, what are their resources, which most people don't do?

I've had this argument with people where I've said I don't care if people use Monero or not, just for the reasons we've just said, and people have attacked me on it. And I've said, do you know what?

There are times when I use cash instead of Bitcoin, and I like to think I'm relatively good with my Bitcoin privacy. But there are times when I use cash, is that a shitcoin? Is every time that you do anything that isn't incorporating Bitcoin into your life the you shitcoin thing?

At the end of the day, like, if someone needs to use a tool, let them fucking use it, it doesn't really matter. - Sure, I like to take, I sometimes naively like to look at the best in people and look at the more charitable reasons why people might think such things.

And I know many Bitcoin only, there is no second best type people, often think that way because they legitimately believe, whether this is true or not, they legitimately believe that Bitcoin is our really only chance, are one shot at kind of this alternative money thing.

And money anywhere else, development resources, anywhere else is really just stealing resources and time and money from our only real good shot. These people deeply care about freedom. These people are deeply worried about our world today, and the steady march towards totalitarianism.

So from this lofty height, you can see the empathy that they have for humanity and that they are just, they say, well, you know, if we really have only one good tool or the best tool to use against this, you know, march towards totalitarianism, then I think anything else is a waste of time and I'm only gonna get people on board with that.

So from that perspective, I can see where they're coming from. I don't necessarily agree and because our ideals don't align in this sense, we'll never really see eye to eye. But to those people, I'm not gonna try to convince you of Monero or shit coins or anything.

To those people, I say, you are more than welcome to use, you know, Stack Duo. Again, you don't have to install the Monero wallet. And if my background in Monero does anything for you, I would hope that it convinces you that I'm very serious about privacy, very serious about privacy on Bitcoin.

You know, I want people to have access to private money. So in supporting me, you're not necessarily supporting Monero, you maybe you are, you know, but you are supporting people who are trying to bring privacy to Bitcoin in a way that is usable with stellar UX, not good, stellar, usable, intuitive.

So that way everyone can use it. And, you know, if I accomplish that goal and people are like, great, now we're gonna fork Stack Duo and make a Bitcoin only version of that, that's okay, totally okay.

And I get to go to sleep knowing, those are my designs out there, you know. I made a mark, I love to mark on this world. And that's ultimately, you know what, what cryptocurrency started out as, trying to make a mark on this world.

And that's why I made Stack Wallet, because I wanted to leave my mark and I felt like I could do so with design. And that's where we are, that's what we're doing. And I'm really proud of the work that we've done.

I'm really proud of the team. I say I allot, you know, a shorthand, but I've got brilliant people behind me. And, you know, my developers and my internal cryptographer who looks over a lot of our, our stuff that we put out there to make sure that it's usable and it's safe.

And, you know, my designers and illustrators and all these things. We're just a really fun group and team and I'm really proud of everything we've accomplished. It's not just me. I'm just the brains, you know, I'm just, I'm just the will and the design, but.

- Was it like working and designing with your wife, is that fun or does it get? I can imagine if I was working with my missus, we might be each other's necks a little bit. - Yeah, so 80% of the time, it's a pleasure.

The other 20% has arms crossed and some slightly heated discussions of, no, this needs to be this way. So she, having designed with me in the cryptocurrency sphere, sphere for many, many years, she is very understanding of blockchain technology.

That said, my understanding of blockchain tech and stuff is greater than hers. So sometimes I'm gonna say, you know, I need to put my foot down because this is the way it needs to work. But man, like I plot out UX with her.

Like I just want to brag. I don't get to brag about to her to anyone. She's probably in the other room right now with, you know, with her baby listening to this and thinking what is he even saying about me?

But like I plot out the UX with her and say this needs to go here, this needs to go here and I leave it in her hands and I come back and I'm just amazed. She's, she's, she's, I think she's the best in the space.

It's incredible what she can do. - That's awesome. That's really cool to be able to like build something together that you'd be proud of. I don't think many couples get to do something like that.

And, you know, if it does manage to do what you hope it to do and on board loads of people and help them with their privacy and everything else, then yeah, it's pretty fucking awesome. - She designed it top to bottom guys.

So everyone who likes, you know, Stack UX, give her a round of applause, I get to take all the credit because I'm the face of the company. - All right, well, shout out to your wife and yeah, I'll have a play around probably on my Mac actually.

I have a little go over there. But yeah, I said to you before this, I'm such a cheap bastard that we only have 58 minutes 'cause I just refuse to pay for extra credits and we're sort of coming up to that time.

- Sure. - It's been really good to talk to you. I think what you guys are doing is really cool. I'm sure we get a little bit of backlash but it is what it is from the sounds of it. It sounds certainly like you're doing your best to help people with their privacy and that's what we care about on this show.

So yeah, massive thank you for that. - Yep, thank you very much. Thanks for having me, man, it's been fun. - Yeah, well, a little bit further down the line, we can always do it again. Before we do jump off, do you wanna just tell everyone where they can go and download Stack Wallet?

- Yeah, go to our website, StackWallet.com. Obviously, we're on the app store, obviously, we're on the Google Play Store. You can go to our GitHub and we put out all of our little releases there.

We're also on fjoyed, not fjoyedproper. You go to fjoyed.stackwallet.com and you scan it and add a repository and everything like that, so. - Twitter. - Yeah, we are Stack_Wallet. We're not just Stack Wallet 'cause it was already taken by somebody who's not using it, which was a little strange.

But yeah, Stack_Wallet. We're also on Mastodon, for those of you who use Mastodon, @stackwallet@stack.black. (laughs) And lastly, I just yesterday spun up a noster 'cause I know a lot of Bitcoiners like a noster.

And I'm gonna be getting that ready to go. So be on the lookout for that, I guess. - You can always send me whatever they call it. Send me that and I'll put it in the show notes. - Sure thing, sounds good.

- Cool. All right, mate. Well, yeah, stay on the line and I'll close the interview out. But yeah, thanks again and we'll catch up soon. - Thanks for listening. I really hope you enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed recording it.

If you haven't already, check out the weekly update show that I do with John. It's 10 minutes, it's mining news and because I fucking hate reading articles so much, I read them so you don't have to 'cause I hope it's useful for you.

So some feedback would be great. Let us know if you like it, let us know if it's shit. Especially if it's shit because it's John's problem and then ideally what you wanna be doing is send some abuse his way.

I'll put links to his Twitter in the show notes so that you can do that. All right, thanks again for listening and I'll catch you on the next one.