Privacy improvements for bitcoin 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.

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 depth of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Welcome back, you ungovernable fucks. I've got a great one for you today. If you are looking to increase your privacy, I think there's no one better than Samurai Wallet. I had him on to discuss some of the hints him and T-Dev have been making about decentralizing whirlpool further.

And we talked about pain in payouts, bit 47, the new Scray Lite team announcement, and what this means for decentralizing whirlpool. It's always great to catch up with Samurai Wallet, and I love that there's a team out there who will not comply.

I won't go into too much more detail about what we discussed because you're gonna hear it anyway. Before we start the show, I wanna say a huge thank you to everyone who's been boosting on Fountain, streaming us sat.

I really do appreciate it, and it's so cool to see the show in the top 10 again. So thank you so much for that. If anyone has any more questions or questions about this show, you can reach out to me.

I know a lot of the people who are gonna listen to this a lot of the privacy guys you do not like lightning. So you're probably not gonna do it. If you like the show and you wanna stream me some sats, but you do not like lightning, well, guess what?

You can send some to my payment. It's max by bit. Any sats would be very much appreciated and they will go back into pushing this show out to more listeners trying to get people to care about their privacy and get them away from all the bullshit.

I'd also like to say a massive thank you to Foundation Devices. Foundation Devices have been sponsoring this show, allowing it to continue, and at the same time, making the most beautiful hardware out there.

Not only is it beautifully designed, but it's fully open source, and they are a team that really care about privacy and security. We might have dropped a couple of hints at things that may be to come in this episode.

So listen out for that. And if you haven't already checked them out, go to foundation devices.com and use the code bit by bit for a discount. Enjoy the show. Well, welcome back to the show, mate.

I feel this has been long overdue. - Absolutely, I'm very happy to be back. It's been what about a year? - A little bit longer. - I think so, yeah, it might even be longer. And I keep getting told off by all the listeners getting little messages saying, when privacy pod, you're talking too much about mining, so here we are.

- Oh, okay, my mining's a good thing to talk about though, and that's cool. - We've been leaning into it quite a lot, just trying to get more home miners and a lot of the privacy guys, there's like a overlap.

- Absolutely. - So we're trying to sort of fill that, and yeah, there's been a lot of focus on that, and we've got Medi from Lincoin Pool as a sponsor for one of the shows. No, he's been sort of leaning in and working on bit 47 and getting that integrated for people.

So it's definitely a crossover, which is cool. - Yeah, there's a huge crossover there. There was, I think, Diverter can be, from our community, can be kind of credited with bringing home mining back and vote with his guide that he wrote that inspired, Econo Alchemist, who then wrote his own guide, and it's kind of been like, you know,

just going from there, and it's great to see. - Yeah, it's massive. The only frustrating thing about running a mining pod when you live in the UK is a bit about the loop, because like 35 P, a kilowatt hour, you're like, fuck this, it's just makes a noise there.

- Yeah, that's not cheap at all. - So, yeah, lots to talk about Samurai-wise. There's a few tweets that have been coming out recently. I've had my eye on, both from you and from T-Dev, and some, yeah, it looks pretty exciting.

Like, the stray-light thing, the fact that potentially we're gonna have more coordinators coming online. It looks pretty interesting to me, but it'd be interesting to hear from your perspective, like, what's that process been like, and then how close are we to having more coordinators outside of Sparrow?

- Well, Sparrow isn't a coordinator. Sparrow is just a client, though we are working on-- - Thanks for clearing that up. - Yeah, no, no, we are working on multiple, but we're working on decentralizing the coordination.

Right now, one of the quote-unquote weak points of Whirlpool is that, you know, if something happens to us Samurai developers, if we get rated, if we don't pay our bills, if we, whatever the case, and our coordination server goes down, then Whirlpool kind of stops, and we view it as a risk, right?

There's no risk to funds, and there's no risk to you losing your Bitcoin, there's no risk to any of that, but the actual Whirlpool service, as itself, would be over if we didn't exist, and we want to get rid of that as a limitation, and one of the ways to do that is to decentralize the coordinator

so that it's not only relying on us Samurai developers to run this server, but anyone can run a server, and the trick is to do that in a way that doesn't split liquidity up, 'cause the most important part of a coin-join implementation is liquidity pool, and that's what Whirlpool has that really no other coin-join implementation has

is structured liquidity pool. So how do we decentralize without cannibalizing? It has been the name of the game for the last several months, we've made very good progress development-wise, and users should start seeing things that kind of move towards that end goal really soon.

The first thing that you'll note is Soribon is getting decentralized, and if your listeners don't know, Soribon is a communication layer that allows you to make collaborative transactions such as Stonewall X2 or Stowaway with another user without going through a coordination server like Whirlpool.

You can just do it peer to peer. Soribon is the encrypted kind of chat layer or communication layer that operates over. Again, currently there's one relay run by us, but really what we would like is thousands of relays run by everyone, so it's not relying on us.

So you'll see decentralized Soribon coming out really soon, and from there, following on, you'll see decentralized Whirlpool coordination coming out. - That's really interesting. Like you say, it's kind of like a pain point or like a central point where you could potentially have a problem, and the fact you have that one pull though

is the massive thing, that's why it's so exciting when you see like Craig jump on board, and I know I've had whispers from some other people, but I won't say until they go any further, but it's very exciting to see that because that really does decentralize things out, and I think a lot of the concerns

and the people who are screaming on Twitter, it's like, well, what's the fucking problem now then? - Oh, they'll figure out a new problem, but they don't have, you know, like the people screaming on Twitter live really sad lives, and they just simply don't matter.

They don't transact, they don't use our stuff, they're not going to, so it's not worth even thinking about them, they're concern trolls. We look at our, you know, our architecture, we look at our stack, and we look at ways to make it more robust, you know?

It's not gonna come out immacually conceived, so to speak, you know, perfect. We're gonna look at everything and say, well, here are the, you know, world pull, okay, it's great. You know, there is blinding on the server, there's all this stuff, makes it safe for you to use with or without a dojo.

However, what happens if we go down, right? What happens if the regulatory landscape changes and it's illegal for us to run a server? What happens if, like I said, we just forget to pay our bills?

What happens in all of these different circumstances? And we want to mitigate against us going down. We want world pull to still work if we have to stop developing it. We have no plans on stopping.

We are all in on this, you know? But making it more robust to those kinds of unforeseen events, I think, is the sign of a mature protocol, you know? And a protocol that's evolving and getting stronger.

We saw it with, as you mentioned, with Craig in Sparrow Wallet, implementing world pull into Sparrow Wallet, that was huge. Now he's not a coordinator, but he's a completely independent client accessing that coordinator, right?

And that is great for all world pull users because it introduces new liquidity into the pools that have nothing to do with Samurai. - So that I get my vernacular, right? So you've got, you're the coordinator currently, but you're looking at decentralizing that.

You've then got Craig coming on as the first other client. - Yeah. - But you can have presumably an unlimited amount of clients who can come on the board. So it was maybe a bit of a hint in our Bitcoin monthly, but I know Q&A is looking at maybe a way to do something because of this straight, light, world pull client written in Rust.

And from my understanding, that could maybe me then that foundation could do something. - Yeah. - But obviously let him speak on that a bit more, but so in theory, you could have someone like foundation come in as well, and then you're all in the same pool, but you're still the coordinator.

But what you're saying is you could also make it that that coordination process is decentralized so that you're not the central point of failure. - Correct. - Which then is very interesting because it's like, it's harder than think of a way to attack it.

It becomes more and more difficult to attack it. And you've got more and more liquidity coming in. Is this something like when you sat down and you're sort of designing this right in the beginning?

Is this something you had planned for and thought out in terms of, right, this is what we can do today, but this is where we want to go? Or is it something that's kind of natural? It was, okay.

- Yeah, absolutely was. So when we started designing world pull in around 2015, basically when we started Samurai Wallet. And at that time, Join Market just came on the scene. So Join Market was brand new.

And what Join Market did, that was very clever and different, was decentralized coordination. However, the way it was done, just because of the time it was done, it was so early, was less than ideal that we could see, right?

So the way it was done in 2015 on Join Market was coordination via IRC server. And IRC server is, you know, none of your listeners unless they're really nerdyer, they didn't even know what that is.

It was a way of chatting on the internet back then. - So like in front of the server-- - So like internet relay something or-- - Yeah, internet relay chat. And if you were a nerd like I was, you spent a hell of a lot of time in IRC.

And using IRC as a coordination method while incredibly clever comes with its own challenges in terms of reliability and scalability. So we looked at that, said, damn, that's really clever.

However, it's not gonna scale and it's certainly not gonna scale on a mobile app in 2015. So we designed it more traditionally in terms of a client server approach, which is how samurai is built and designed because it's way more performant on mobile.

With the understanding that we need to find a way to blind the server so that the server doesn't know inputs to outputs, otherwise it'd be a pointless thing. And provided we can do that, which obviously we did.

We can put off the decentralization side of things, right? So we can bootstrap it as it is with a centralized coordinator because the coordinator doesn't know what it's, you know, doesn't read the messages that it's passing.

It can't read the messages that it's passing. So we're okay with that. And then figure out once we know this thing has legs, once we know it's gonna work, figure out how to de-risk and bring about the decentralization of the coordination.

So yeah, it was planned and we've been thinking about it for a long time. Then the tornado cache incident happened where the developer of tornado cache was arrested, T-dev and myself were talking and saying, look, this has been in the works for a while.

And I think we need to prioritize getting this out the door and ready 'cause the environment and the climate is shifting. As these protocols and these tools actually get use and become successful, a whole new level of scrutiny is gonna come down on you, you know?

And it's not gonna be the concerned trolls on Twitter. It's gonna be the people that can really ruin your life, you know, that can put you away for 100 years. That can, you know, they can really fuck you up.

So how do we de-risk and how do we make it? So, you know, we're just not massive targets. - Yeah, it's almost like now that it's becoming more successful and now that it's becoming more known.

It's awesome, but it's also can be seen as a problem. And I think you're right in terms of timing. Like it, even in the little time that I've been around, I feel a big change in just, I don't know, the sentiment out there in the world and what we've seen from people, how quickly they'll just nod along and do as they're told

and attack people, they're told to attack without thinking. And so... - Absolutely. - You can be logical about it and say, right, you and TDev have created a platform that people can use to protect their privacy and potentially save their lives because they don't then have people tracking them who could hurt them still from them or worse.

So you could look at it like that, and you could say that to somebody, but if they're told on BBC News, Orange Bad and Red Bad, they'll just sort of jump to it and be like, "Okay, these people are evil."

And nobody's saying anything about this, Dev, who's been caught up with all this tornado cash stuff. Nobody says anything really about Sarge or... - Yeah, he's being held in the Netherlands, you know, without charge for his been months now.

And it's terrible, it's a terrible, terrible thing. And you're right, exactly, no one's talking about a Sarge and, you know, he's one of the most important people of, you know, our generation.

And he's probably gonna get fucked. - Yep, almost certainly. - Yeah. - All right, so you're trying to preempt that, obviously. - Yep. - If/when you pull that off, is there a way that you can still collect fees, even though you're not that central point, because obviously you've got to have some funding to continue development.

This is like a plan you've put together from the beginning, it's something where it's like, well, obviously you've got to collect some fees, is that still possible or? - Yes, it's possible, though I will note that the Whirlpool fee primarily isn't for funding us, it's primarily used as spam prevention

and as a way to make attacking Whirlpool cost something. Right, so if you wanted to civil attack Whirlpool, you would have to pay multiple fees to enter, so it wouldn't be a free attack. So really, all CoinJoin has a fee associated to it, whether it be Joy Market, Wasabi Whirlpool or whatever, mostly because you have to implement

at least a small catch mechanism to stop spam. But yes, the idea of the Whirlpool decentralized coordinator is that there will be still one liquidity pool, so liquidity will not be split.

And this is a major difference between how Whirlpool works and how Wasabi currently works in terms of having multiple coordinators. You know, once Wasabi implemented the chain analysis and black lists, their go-to response was, well, don't use a default coordinator then, right?

That's the, you probably saw that all over the place. Yeah, don't use that. Well, if you don't use a default coordinator, you're not getting the same liquidity that you have in that Wasabi coordinator, you have to go to a different coordinator.

And there are no other coordinators that have that level of liquidity. And it would be the same thing with Whirlpool if we did it that way, right? Like Samurai would have the largest amount of liquidity and Joe Blow would have like 0.04 Bitcoin and three users.

So if you're gonna jump liquidity pools and you're now, you were mixing with, you know, hundreds of thousands and now you're mixing with three, that's a big privacy loss. So we don't wanna do that.

We need to do it in a way that there's one liquidity pool that doesn't change, that span prevention fees are still in place. And yes, yes, we can do that. Think of it like, you know, a Bitcoin Mempool, right?

There isn't one Bitcoin Mempool. Every node has its own Mempool, but they all agree on what's in the Mempool. Yeah, and there's only one blockchain, you know? So it kind of parallels to that.

There's gonna be multiple coordination pools, but they all agree and they all have the same rules. Okay. Yeah, it just, you know, looking at the trade-offs of having these multiple pools, it just seems completely illogical to me.

It's like, why would you go into a pool where you're hiding in a smaller crowd? No one's gonna do it. So the incentive isn't there for someone else to run one, which means you're always gonna have the same one, which means you're gonna be tracked and chain analysis and everything else.

Just like, it just doesn't make sense, and that's not coming from like, oh, I'm a dev and I can look into this and all the cryptography's this and that's just basic fucking obvious stuff of like, it just doesn't make sense.

Yeah, it's how the world works. You know, like people converge on a standard, right? You know, VHS 1/beta max, for example. DVDs 1/mini disk. You know, people are gonna converge onto one thing and you're not gonna, you know, want to split liquidity and your anonymity amongst small coordinators, right?

Just like a production company's not gonna wanna make some DVDs, some VHS, some mini disk, some beta max, they're gonna wanna choose one, right? Because it's more cost-effective for them.

It's the same thing, it's just how it works in reality. You know, so figuring out a way to make sure that users aren't impacted, number one, right? Like users can have no idea about the coordination side whether it's, you know, one server or multiple servers.

They just open world pool and it works. So that has to be true. It also has to be true that users who do care can run a coordinator's server if they want to and do so in a way that they don't have to be a tech genius, right, basically turn it on, plug it in and it connects to the wider world pool network of other coordinators, you know,

and make it seamless and easy and without friction at all for a user to change coordinators. If they even have to make that decision, maybe it just happens automatically. You know, maybe it's like, again, like parallel to how Bitcoin works, right?

When you're connecting to a Bitcoin node in a, what's it called, a, well, light wallet, for example, you're not choosing which Bitcoin node to connect to, you're just, you know, listening for any Bitcoin degossip and taking that in and it could potentially work that way as well.

So it's going to be really simple, you know, it's going to be a change that most people don't notice, but the people who care about this type of stuff, the people who are looking are going to be able to run their own coordination server aid decentralization in that way and hell, you know, we might even make it part of the dojo package.

So when you get dojo, you just automatically get a world pool coordination server that runs over a torrid and service automatically. So I haven't made that decision yet, but you can, I could foresee that happening where you don't even have to know anything about it.

You know, it's just part of the stack. - Mm. So in theory, if you were to do it, if I'm running a run dojo Tanto, for example, I then would be my own client. Is that what you're saying? - You would be one of many world pool coordinators, right?

So you have your run dojo and then there's an update. And again, this is like we haven't really talked about distributing it this way, but I can foresee it as something like this happening, where we'd say, okay, as of this version of dojo, not only are you going to have a Bitcoin D, not only are you going to have a indexer, right?

Because that's part of what's packaged in dojo. Not only are you going to have a block explorer, we're also going to throw in a world pool coordinator, you know, and anyone who updates and has dojo passage version is also going to be a world pool coordinator, whether they know it or not.

They can turn it off, but my default is turned on. So then all of a sudden you go from having one coordinator to, you know, thousands. - That would be incredible. And you were talking earlier about the simple resistance aspect about having the fees and so people don't spam basically.

It was something I got caught out with very early days, 'cause I was fucking around with all this stuff and like had no idea what I was doing, still don't, but you know, maybe I understand it a bit more.

But I remember doing it and I was putting in a load of different UTXOs and I was like, ah, it's so much cheaper if I just put these all through as one. - Right. - And then I was like, oh, and it was like considerably cheaper, I think as well, 'cause the fees were quite high at the time and I was like, ah, this is a lot.

So anyway, so I did it. And then I was looking back through all my stuff and I was like, you silly cunt. What you've done here is you've just tied all of these together before going in. Literally like within the last couple of weeks, I was like, ah, fucking if I could go back in time, I would not have done that, so stupid.

So I was wondering, is there a way that, for example, if this is like the flow, you don't have Samurai Wallet, you then get it. You send a load of your UTXOs in there and that one might be from an exchange and one might be peer to peer and whatever ones from earnings and Bitcoin.

And then you say, right, now I'm going to enter the pool. The smart thing I should have done would have been send one single UTXO in. - Yeah, one at a time. - But my question is like, is there a way you could send them all in at the same time, but rather than it just being me sending, let's say,

three UTXOs, you could have a hundred people who will send all their UTXOs in one. So it saves on the fees. Is that possible? - Yeah, multi-party zero. - Okay, is that, you've done it already?

- Yes. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Okay. - Yeah, we have. - Nah. - Yes. So, yeah, in Samurai lingo internally, we call that multi-party TX0 and that's going to be huge because as you already kind of described to your listeners, you're going to be able to enter into a TX0 and to a pool with other people.

So the assumption right now is that TX0 that you make is one person, right? There's only one entity making a TX0 and whatever inputs belong to that TX0, belong to that entity. Now you're not going to be able to track those inputs going forward after Whirlpool, but as you noted, you'd be able to say, well, this person gambled at this place

and that's where he got this input from and he bought this input on Coinbase. So we know that this Coinbase user is this gambler and we can tie that together. Oh, and because we're chain analysis, we have contract with Coinbase where they have to share data with us.

So now we know exactly who this gambler is, right? - Yeah. - So that's the danger in merging inputs, whether it be a Whirlpool transaction or any transaction. That's just how the Bitcoin UTXO model is.

What the T, the multi-party TX0 does is breaks that assumption. You will no longer be able to look at a TX0 and say, that's one entity. That could be more than one entity. Yeah, so that's funny you bring that up.

Yeah, we have been working on it. In fact, it might actually be done just pending UI to be put into the wallet. - Yeah, that would be such a big one because I think because if you don't know, if you don't think that through, and I mean, just like a normal new user isn't probably gonna think that through.

And I mean, I'm evidence of that. And so what I actually did is I ended up hurting my privacy by trying to improve it because, although it's like really basic what I'd done before, what I had done is I had like separate wallets for different exchanges and different places.

And so I had actually just a shitload of ledgers where I would send anything from there that goes to that one. And then I labeled them. And then what I did is I combined them all. Right, right.

So what I did is I just fucked myself just because I didn't know what I was doing. So I think that would probably be a massive step because I'm probably not the only person who's dumb enough to do that.

- Yeah, no, no. And say it's something we get asked all the time, so of small percentage of people who use the wallet, who use the software, it's gonna question that, right? And say, well, actually, maybe I should find out whether I'm going to do something bad by merging all of these things together.

Most people aren't going to ask, and they're just gonna do it. Small percentage is gonna ask, and they do. And we always tell them, well, it's something that you have to think about for yourself that we can't give you a generic answer because it might be just fine for you to merge those inputs, right?

So here's an example. If you would've, the way you were doing things, right, as you described them was completely fine, right? You would have the different ledgers, and those ledgers essentially had their own identity, right?

'Cause all of the inputs were coming from similar or one source, right? So okay, all my Coinbase buys are going right to this wallet. So no matter what I do with this wallet, this is the Coinbase wallet, right?

And then this is my gambling wallet, right? So that's all good. The issue, of course, comes in when you then merge these separate identities into a new identity, one identity, and you're giving the world that information because it's on the blockchain saying that this identity has now been blended, merged, is the same

as this other identity. Here's a new one that we can track. - Yeah. - So the people that ask, they come in and we tell them, it really depends. If you were gonna merge all of the inputs from your Coinbase identity, it's not really a big deal.

It's not as big of a deal, let's put it that way. Coinbase already knows. So if you're hiding from Coinbase, they know. You may not want it on the blockchain, but it may not be a big deal for you, and it will save you on fees.

So if you're one identity going all in, okay, but you really don't wanna do it with multiple identity. So I don't want to mix the coin that I earn through camhoring, and I don't wanna merge that with the coin that I'm donating to my church, right?

- Yeah, they don't mix. - They don't mix, you don't wanna do that. So this will help the majority of people, this multi-party TX0 will help the majority of people who don't know one that complexity of Bitcoin UTXO model, which most people don't, and aren't going to ask about it.

So it's gonna help the most amount of people we think. I think so, if I could go back in time, if someone said, "Here's a time machine," you can do one thing. I wouldn't go and look at the lottery numbers, I wouldn't go back and kill Hitler, I'd go back and I'd punch myself in the face

so fucking hard for what I did with merging all of those. That'd be my first thing to do, but now it's good to hear that that's gonna change. How does that actually look in like a technical sense?

If I'm creating that transaction with my three UTXOs, and then someone else is doing it, and someone else is doing it, how is that coordinated? Does that just become one huge transaction that you guys have to put together with all the inputs that everyone puts in?

- Right, right, I think the way it works is you are telling, so in the wallet, you're saying, "Hey, I want to do a multi-party TX0, "first of all, 'cause you may not want to do that." And when you do that, when you say you wanna do one of those, instead of your transaction being broadcast and TX0'd immediately, it goes into a queue,

like a waiting pool. And then at some interval, again, I don't know the exact details of the implementation that we have, 'cause I haven't put it into UI yet, but at some point, the pool participants are chosen from that pool, and a TX0 is constructed.

Like yes, with the signed inputs that have been provided, I believe it's the last person to enter that actually broadcast it or something like that, I would have to go back and check, but what's really cool is even if you don't participate in a multi-party TX0-- - Throws question.

- If you wanna do regular ones, it looks, both of them look exactly the same, that both the multi-party TX0 and the non-multi-party TX0 are gonna look the same. So you won't actually be able to tell from the blockchain if this was a multi-party or single-party.

So the figure print of the TX0 is gonna be changing slightly, so it matches. And that's an important privacy tool, effective privacy tool as well, and it kind of works in like Stonewall works, right?

So Stonewall has a specific fingerprint, that's exactly the same as two-party Stonewall. Therefore, any one-party Stonewall could theoretically be a two-party Stonewall, and without any further information, you have to assume it is.

- Yeah, so these assumptions that chain analysis would make just become harder and harder, because-- - Correct. - They're guessing anyway, but the percentage chance that being right just continues to go down, and so at some point, they then can't really use that as a heuristic, or if they do,

it's just like, it's complete fucking guess block, it doesn't make any sense. - Yeah, it's a flawed heuristic then at that point. And that's a lot, you know, what we do is breaking heuristics, you know, and undermining heuristics.

- How much do you think they care about that? Someone like you and T. Devon and people who are like really deep in this stuff, you really care about breaking these links and thinking these things through.

And obviously, the chain analysis people who are on the other side of it, I assume they do as well, but how much do they actually care if they're right? Because they're probably gonna get paid anyway, because not many people know what the fuck they're talking about.

So if they just say, yeah, well, you know, we can assume this, and they're saying to a company, we can assume this or a government, or whoever they're being paid by, they can assume that this is just one person, the person isn't gonna go, oh, well, actually, it might not be, because it could be a multi-party payment.

No one's gonna fucking say that. So are they just gonna carry on shilling something that doesn't work? Or will they just at some point, do you think, go, do you know what, we're just fucked?

Like, we don't know what's going on. Yes and no, to some degree, you're right in terms of, they don't care whether they're right or wrong, largely one because they operate a black box, right?

They don't have to ever show their work. They just, they say, this is this, and that's that. So no one is really scrutinizing how they come to their decisions, 'cause they don't show their work.

Like, OXT research shows its work, right? It says, this is exactly how we analyze this. Chain analysis doesn't do that. So there's that, however, they have real contracts with real businesses, right?

Chain analysis doesn't provide any value to anyone. They provide a regulatory service that a real business that provides value has to engage in, okay? So, I'm using Coinbase as my exchange of example for this podcast.

So Coinbase engages with Chain analysis, for example. Not because they really want to, but because they have to. Coinbase are in the business of making money, right? And in order to make money as an exchange, you have to offer your services to the widest net of people possible, right?

You don't want to just have a small niche, you want everyone. What Chain analysis, the information that Chain analysis provides results directly in one, them losing customers, because they have to get rid of people they have to do risk, and two, refusing new customers, saying, we can't have you because of whatever.

With an error rate on Chain analysis side of their heuristics of, you know, 1%, maybe it doesn't really impact Coinbase very much, you know? They're not losing that much business. The results aren't wrong.

Joe Blow isn't getting flagged for something because, you know, whatever, at an error rate of 10%, now that starts to magnify. Now, it's not only, you know, wrong at the person that should be targeted or, you know, is going to be targeted, but it's like three rings back, three hops back.

So Joe Blow now is impacted, right? And as that starts to gnaw away at what the business can earn, they're going to have a problem with it. And they're going to say, hey, we think that these, you know, the CEO's girlfriend's daughter got flagged, you know, there's obviously something wrong with your heuristics.

Fix them, you know, we're turning way too much business. So yes, I think ultimately it will have an impact whether you care about heuristics or not, because the heuristics that we're talking about are the fundamental, you know, they're providing the fundamental business that Chanelis has provided.

And if they're flawed, that's going to affect, you know, the data that they're providing and the information they're providing. So that's on the business side. Now, what's really more important to me than that side is, you know, this stuff is going to and has been used in a court of law and has been used as evidence

against people that has resulted in them going to jail, going to prison, and the level of the court, people do care about the nitty gritty details. You better believe it, you know, both attorneys are going to have their own expert witnesses, their own expert blockchain analysts, and they're going to fight over the, you know,

the probabilities of this heuristic versus this heuristic and why this one is flawed and, you know, you better freaking believe it. So not giving, you know, not seeding that line and saying, yeah, yeah, the heuristic is the heuristic and that's just how it is, but actively working to build tools that undermine it

and make it questionable, seriously questionable to be used are going to have profound impacts in courts of law and will hopefully save innocent people from being thrown behind bars because of these these pathetic heuristics that chain analysis, you know, relies on and has built a business on.

Yeah, and it's so important. I think like it just doesn't get enough coverage or maybe it's not understood quite how easy it is to be tripped up and how, um, cunty for lack of a better word, these chain analysis people are and how the courts are going to be and everyone else because Bitcoin is sold as this like freedom tool

and it definitely has the possibility to do that, but also can fuck you up badly and it's there forever. And so without these sort of steps forward, I think, you know, we go forward and we sort of look at the trajectory we're on and it's really worrying to see what are we going to be pulled up in court for

that we did five years ago or we're doing today? You're then in front of a judge and they're saying, right, well, chain analysis has said they think that this is linked to this. Therefore, you bought this online and that's now illegal and punishable by fuck knows what.

Yeah. And it's there forever and it's kind of, I maybe, I think maybe people are overlooking how bad governments can be and just how many mistakes people are making and then sort of they're not extrapolating that out and thinking, oh, it could be in a fucking jail cell.

Yeah, no, I don't think people really, really think about it as a possibility, you know, just like the whole COVID thing came. Everyone was, oh, I can't believe governments did that. You know, I can't believe that we all walked down.

I can't, you know, well, why not? Like look at the trajectory of everything. Yeah, it was unprecedented, but it was definitely gonna happen and things are gonna continue to escalate. And you know, this is, you know, what you said that Bitcoin can be dangerous.

It's true and it wasn't really as true early on in Bitcoin's life because there was really no KYC services that were, you know, that you used to get Bitcoin, right? You get an exchange was, you know, not regulated to put it lightly.

And it was easy to acquire Bitcoin from ATMs, from whatever, you know, there was no KYC record. So you had the same on-chain privacy issues, the same UTXO model, but you were synonymous, right?

Like no one knew that this Bitcoin address was associated with you as a person. Now the whole, that's, that fundamentally is gone in Bitcoin. Almost all Bitcoin, you know, that people are using come from a KYC regulated service and they know exactly where to start and who's legal identity owns what.

And using that same, the same privacy issues in the UTXO model, they're able to, and the same heuristics and the same assumptions, they're able to follow forward through, you know, with great, great confidence.

The life of those Bitcoins, you know, and that's really one of the reasons why we're so adamant on rejecting KYC sources of Bitcoin 'cause it's truly, it's truly dangerous. It really is, it's creating like a panopticon of surveillance.

- And it's recent, like you're saying, that's the thing in it. - Yeah. It's the real taint, you might know, okay, this entity is associated with these other payments, but you didn't know who that entity was 'cause there's nothing tiring.

It's like, no one's writing my name's Max on it. You know, it's just, no one fucking knows who you are. But like you say now, it's the norm. And when you're entering, I mean, when I was first told about Bitcoin, it was like, right, goes to this exchange, this is how you buy it, blah, blah, blah.

And it's only after being involved for a certain amount of time, we were like, ah, that was stupid, but you don't know. And so that is the normal way people are coming in. So it is happening more and more.

I wonder whether you can tell me if I'm wrong here, but I think someone had said, it may have even been you, if you're doing like a pay join, fees-wise, it can actually be cheaper to make that payment, is that right?

'Cause what I'm wondering is, the current model is, you make a payment, it's one UTXO or many UTXOs that you own, which are then being broken down, you have your change, and then you're paying for a service or product online.

If you had it so that every payment was a pay join, or something similar, would that not break all heuristics, like so that every single payment between different people is always a question mark of, well, how many people were involved in this, and how quickly would that then melt down this possibility

for them to be like, okay, we can track this person, because it would make everything a question mark. And the reason I'm asking about fees is, if it was made that it was more efficient to do that, that's gonna be what's gonna make people start adopting it, because unfortunately, like we just said,

most people either don't think about the privacy at this point, 'cause they're just looking at Bitcoin as an investment, or they just don't care enough, and there may be a little bit arrogant about how safe they're gonna be in the future.

Most people just don't care, but if you say to them, well, you know, it's 10% cheaper, and it's just then put into the flow of most wallets, then wouldn't that really quickly start to muddy the waters and make it to a point where not it's impossible, but it's much harder for everybody to be tracked?

- Yeah, so, yeah, I understand the question. So, pay join is a powerful tool, so it's called Stowaway and Samurai, and pay join and BTC pay server is the only other kind of place that is implemented currently.

- It would fundamentally undermine the common ownership heuristic, which is a big one. So, the common ownership heuristic says, you know, the person that's making the transaction own all of the inputs on the left, right?

All of the source inputs used to make the transaction. Pay join undermines this by using inputs from multiple parties in the transaction. So, yes, it would undermine that heuristic, and it would be an effective undermining of that heuristic.

However, I don't think we can truly make every pay join because it's interactive, you need the other person involved to say, these are the inputs that I can contribute to this transaction.

- But do you, because if a large proportion of payments are pay joins, then I always forget what things are called, but you know the one where you can do it yourself in Samurai, it looks the same as a pay join.

- That's a stone wall. - Okay. - Well, a pay join that's a fake pay join just looks like, it should look just like a simple spend transaction. So, what most transactions on the blockchain look like.

That, I mean, that's where the power is. I mean, the power is the fact that pay join exists at all, and so it exists at all, means that really any of those simple spend transactions, so transactions that have two outputs, right?

A presumably a destination output and a change output. Any transaction that has two outputs could theoretically be a stone wall, sorry, a stowaway or a pay join. That's already true, but you know, making all transactions a pay join, I don't think is necessarily feasible because there has to be coordination involved, right?

Like if I wanna make a pay join to you, we have to communicate in some way, whether it be through Sorbonne, that's how it works in Samurai, or whether it be you communicating with a server, which is how it works with BTC pay server.

There has to be some way for you to communicate and say, look, these are the inputs that I have, what are your inputs, and this is what I want to make as an output, and we need to make a transaction together and sign it together in order for it to be broadcast.

So, there's too much interactivity between it as opposed to me just sending to an address of yours, or me sending to your payment. There's no interactivity there, but I think increasing pay join would be great.

It would be very good. When we implemented Stowaway, before pay join was implemented anywhere, and our kind of model and thinking about it was, it's a peer-to-peer tool. As opposed to a tool that's gonna be used by merchants or whatever, it would be nice if they did, but we don't think so.

So, as a peer-to-peer tool, most peers, or Samurai Wall peers, aren't gonna be running a BTC pay server, because there's a lot of technical requirements involved. So, how do we do it? Where they can use their wallet to make these transactions happen with each other, as opposed to using a web server and while they're paying a merchant.

So, the fundamental difference between Stowaway is that it's peer-to-peer, it's with you, and friend, you, and me, and we use our wallet to do it, versus the BTC pay server version, which is really, a merchant has enabled it on their BTC pay server, and you're gonna pay join with that merchant.

That's how they both work right now. I believe, like Blue Wallet, for example, has the ability to pay join in Blue Wallet, but it's not like, it's not how it works in Samurai. It's not like, as a Blue Wallet user, you can pay join to another Blue Wallet user.

No, it's, they can read the BTC pay server QR code that says it's a pay join. So, it's, you know, and as we've seen, unfortunately, it's been very little uptake on BTC pay server users' side, right, at merchants, I mean.

And I've used many, I transact all the time, and I use BTC pay server all the time, and I've never seen even the option to enable a pay join with any of the merchants that I've tried. So, it's just that the adoption isn't there on that end.

We do know that it's used in Samurai. We don't know how much it's used, but there is a good following for people who are making STO away payments, but it's a pretty limited or narrow use case, right?

I have to want to send you, Max, in particular Bitcoin, in order to do a pay join with you, in order to do a STO away with you. - Yeah, no, that makes sense. Is there any other stuff that you think about and outside of, like, Samurai?

Is there any other, like, tips that you have for anyone who's listening outside of just don't fucking go to Coinbase? Anything is that you think people miss a lot and, like, simple things that they can do to improve their privacy?

- Well, honestly, I think if you're new into space or maybe you've been here for a while and you just haven't taken the time to do this yet, really learning at a basic level how the UTXO model for Bitcoin works is really the first fundamental step you can take to improving your privacy, because you'll really understand,

it's like this set up for everything that we're doing. If you understand the basic fundamentals of the UTXO model, you understand why the transactions work the way they work in Samurai implicitly because you see it, it's very clear.

And you start to really understand that I shouldn't be mixing sources here or how this transaction is going to look after I make it on the blockchain and what that's gonna tell anyone who might be looking.

So really learning that. And we put a YouTube video. I think it's, like, nine or 10 minutes long about the UTXO model and how UTXOs work on our YouTube. I think it's called the Bitcoin privacy series.

It's the first video, video number zero. And I recommend just starting there. The whole privacy series is X on a, you know, they're short videos, but they really, by the end of it, you'll have a really solid understanding of basic Bitcoin privacy and how to obtain basic Bitcoin privacy and how to read a blockchain,

use OXT and all this stuff. They're short 10 minute videos, but I highly recommend that. And then, yeah, you know, just treasure your private data and don't be so willing to give it up without a fight.

You know, if you really wanna get Bitcoin, you might be thinking, well, maybe it's worth it. I'm just gonna upload my ID, upload my passport, upload my selfie, whatever else you have to send them.

It's worth it in the end, you know, whatever. Really think long and hard about that and fight for a better way and try to find a better way. Because one of the single most powerful thing that they have is your identity attached to your spending habits.

It's really unprecedented in the scope of that kind of data and that kind of surveillance and the fact that it's all entirely public. Really understand that and understand the implications of that and I think that's a good place to begin on your privacy journey.

Because it's not just like, you know, an ideological thing, it's a real practical thing. And you can see the real practical benefits of it. And it's a normal thing. - Yeah, and just like having those habits where you're not tripping yourself up is important.

What do you think about some of the moves in the peer-to-peer space? Like, are you seeing anything that you think's promising? When I say peer-to-peer, I mean, peer-to-peer trading, Bisc or Peach or Robosats or any of these things or any projects that you look at and you think, well, that's pretty promising.

- I think I haven't used any of the ones that you mentioned. I've heard of Peach coming out. I think they're primarily Europe-based. - You can use them in America. - Right, right. But they themselves are based, I believe in Switzerland or they're essentially relying on Swiss law to deal with non-KYC trades under 1,000 Swiss francs,

I believe, something along those lines. And you see that a lot with the Swiss companies because that's, again, that's what their law says. You can do these non-KYC trades under 1,000. And that's cool.

But it wasn't long ago that it was 10,000, you know? So it's not unreasonable to think that, you know, in the next few years, it's gonna be 500 and then maybe it's gonna be 250. And then maybe it's gonna be 50, right?

So, you know, my point is, if you're relying on law, you know, the Swiss law to provide, like, you know, to make your business model work, you can't, you have to expect it's gonna, it's not gonna work as long as I hope it's going to.

- Right. Robostats is really interesting. I haven't played with it myself only because I believe you need the lightning. I like to deal with it, right? So I haven't taken the time to do that yet.

But I've been through the website. I think the way that that setup is a lot more robust and resilient, it's not reliant on a single, jurisdictions legal code. It's truly peer to peer. So I think that's cool.

But yeah, I haven't tried them all out. You know, once you've been in the space for a while, you build your own little networks for dealing with trading and having access to fiat when you need it and your own little systems.

And you don't talk about them for fear that they might go away, which they often do. (laughing) - Yeah, you're exactly right. This is the thing. It's like, when you've exactly what you said, after you've been here for a while, you have people who want to buy and sell and you've got friends and people you trust and there's ways.

And so these problems go away, but when you're getting new people involved, it's like, well, how do I buy some? And it's like, yeah, that's not so simple. - Well, the trick is turning them into what part of your network.

Oh, you want to buy some? Well, I have some to sell. (laughing) - Yeah, that's very true. - Yeah, I mean, if you're onboarding someone to Bitcoin and you're not willing to sell them some Bitcoin, you shouldn't be onboarding them, you know?

Like, if you're going to onboard somebody, sell them some. - I agree. Sometimes though, I onboard people who they want to buy amounts that I can only dream of. And so then it makes it very difficult.

And then even with the piz, piz stuff, it's like, well, listen, like you can't buy that much today. - Yeah, I think, you know, if it's like a friend and they're like, oh, I want to buy $100 or whatever.

I'd be like, yeah, sure, look, I'll see, you see. And I think that's the best way in and then teach them. But yeah, I had one more nerdy technical question that's been running through my head and hopefully you can answer.

I've been meaning to put my pain in online so people can send donations for the show. In the back of my head, there's just been this little nagging. I've been like, hmm, but if I post that up, will that not, because it's a very old wallet.

I've had it for a long time. Will that not somehow trip me up and somehow link my previous transactions or will I put in or out of world pool or anything like that? And I keep thinking, well, would I not be better to have a separate pain in with a separate wallet which is just for the show?

Am I just being paranoid or is there some way that I could fuck myself there? - No with an asterisk, right? So no, just based on pay them, no. You're not gonna fuck yourself up and you won't link anything to anyone by just receiving donations through your payment.

Does it make sense to create a new payment or a new wallet for a separate payment for the show? Yeah, maybe it might just from an organizational standpoint and the fact that you might not want to use at an old wallet anymore, but the issue will come down at time of spend, but it's not specific to a payment,

it's just specific to any time you make a Bitcoin transaction, right, you have to consider where the inputs are coming from and it doesn't have to screw you up. A payment UTXO is no different from any other UTXO in your wallet other than the fact that it's derived from the payment instead of from the wallet seat.

So you can use it in the exact same way as any other UTXO in your wallet. It will just say this UTXO is from a payment and you can decide how you want to use it in your wallet. But it will not reveal Whirlpool, you know, TXO's unless you merge it with a toxic change output from Whirlpool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. At time of spend. Yeah, that makes sense. So it's just like any other transaction you'd receive. It doesn't make any difference. They don't reveal anything. It's only if you then merge all those together to put through Whirlpool that then that person who sent you that transaction could be like,

"Ah, he's also put this, this, this, and this through." And then they could start. Precisely. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. That's cool because people are. But it's true of any transaction.

It's not specific to Pay&M. It's just how, again, how Bitcoin works, right? So it's, yeah. So it's completely safe to share the payment code publicly. I mean, that is the reason it was designed.

Like that's why Bit47 was built. Was for static donation addresses. So it's really the ideal use case. Yeah, I think it was just me overthinking it and being like, "Ah, I constantly trip myself up with stuff."

And I was like, "Well, I'm just gonna ask anyway." So that's fine. I'm gonna post that up then. 'Cause it just does make it so much more simple. And especially with like what's happening with Linko and Paul and a lot of the guys who are in our groups are starting to use Pay&M literally from that.

They're like, "Oh, I'm moving over to Linko and Paul." 'Cause we like what they're doing. And, "Oh, yeah, they use Pay&M." So now they're starting to use those as well, which I still can't believe no one else has jumped on board with that.

It seems so fucking obvious to have that as a payout. I know. (laughs) I know. If you're doing any sort of regular payouts the same person, it's like, it's a no-brainer. It's such a no-brainer.

We're just saved so much time as well. Like going in and having to manually change it. And I can't tell you how many people I know who mine and they're like into their privacy. And then I'm like, "So how'd you deal with this?"

And they're like, "Ah, it's too much effort. "I just use the same address. "I'll just leave it in there." I'm like, "You fucking rate hard." (laughs) How hard would it be for you to just use Linko and do that?

Like it's not. Do you think others will jump on board? Is it just like they can't be asked or is there a legitimate reason? 'Cause Meddy seemed to think it was easy. He was like, I said, "Oh, did you speak to Samurai?"

And he was like, "No, no, I just looked "through all that documentation. "It was very well organized and we just did it." And I was like, "Oh, okay." Yeah, I mean, if you would've asked me like a few years ago, I would've said, "Yeah, it's kind of a challenge to implement Bit47.

"It's not really easy stuff. "There's a lot of cryptography." But these days, we have libraries out there that we've put out. There's libraries out there that other people have made in JavaScript and Flutter and everything.

So yeah, I mean, it's easy now. There's really no excuse not to do it. I don't know, maybe they looked at it a few years ago and said, "It's too much work." And I never thought of it doing it again.

I'm not sure, but they're definitely missing a trick. It's a fantastic implementation of stealth addresses for Bitcoin. It's a huge UX win whenever you're dealing with regular and repeat payouts.

It's a UX win when dealing with donations and just not having to interact and ask someone for an address and not having to provide a service and XPub in order for them to generate fresh addresses.

It's just a great feature. And Sparrow implemented it, which was nice to see. For a very long time, we were the only one we implemented in 2016 for reference, you know? So it's been a few years where it's the only one.

But hopefully the newer WoW and Stack Wallet, which is a new multi-coin wallet on the scene, have implemented it and I think they're in testing right now and should be out fairly soon with paying them support.

And that's gonna be available on iOS as well. So they'll be the only on iOS. - Yeah, Q&A mentioned this in our monthly call. He said, "I think he said Stack Wallet are using BDK "and because this new stray light thing is written in rust, "it means they can also implement.

"They could also have Whirlpool as well as foundation, "possibly. "I think that's what he said, "but I may be getting confused." - Yeah, I think they're looking at it. The Stack Wallet guys are cool.

They're nice guys. And they basically came to us and said, look, we want to implement Paynims and possibly Whirlpool. So we said, okay, well, whatever you need, if you need any help, I think you just let us know.

I mean, good luck. So yeah, they're building, I think they're a pretty small team, but they're building and that's cool. I have doubts that they'll be able to release Whirlpool on iOS, personally.

But if they do, that'll be huge. They'll be Whirlpool on iOS, it will be massive. So good luck to them. But all that said, it's growing and the new wallets that are coming on the scene, I think are recognizing the importance of Paynims, of Bit.47, and they're looking at what we've done because we did it first.

And they're looking at the Paynim directory, which is what gives you the bot image and the bot name. And it's useful to have a public directory of these things because they're designed to be shared publicly.

One, and two, they're kind of long and unwieldy by themselves. So being able to shorten that and look up and whatever is useful, so they're tying into that. So it's really, the ecosystem is being built out.

- Yeah, it's really good to see. If it becomes possible for iOS users to have Whirlpool, it's gonna be pretty fucking massive. Given, I seem to think he seemed pretty confident, more confident than new sound on it happening.

I don't know why he wanted to bet that Whirlpool capacity is gonna be at least 10,000 by the end of the year. Do you think that's overly bullish or do you feel the same?

- What's Whirlpool capacity yet now? - Like 6,000 in something? - Yeah, we didn't. Yeah, 6,000, right, 6,000 something. - Ish. - Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be that surprised if we continue at the trajectory that we ended the year on, 10,000's easily in the cards, whether without iPhone, I think.

I'm more bearish on the prospects of getting Whirlpool into the Apple store. I would very happily be wrong on that. I would like to be wrong on that. I just, I don't know. I think that they're gonna have a problem with it, but if they don't, I think it's gonna be huge.

There's plenty of iOS users out there who have been asking for access to these types of features. We're obviously an Android only wallet, so we can't serve them. Someone has to, many of them have gotten themselves a dedicated Android phone in desperation and use our, you know, use Samsung stuff,

but having something native is gonna be great. - I think so. I've been so many people that I try and get using Samurai and they're using iOS. They will get another phone and they will do it if they're really interested, but it's just that one extra hurdle.

- Yeah. - A lot of people, myself included, kind of just use one NEM phone and one more doxxed phone because it just makes things a bit more simple. I like to have that separation and just like have Kalex running or graphene running on one of these de-googled things and yeah, separate things out and just,

I don't know, it makes it a little bit easier to think through having it on one device would be useful for most people who aren't maybe quite so deep into it and don't wanna have multiple devices.

- Yeah, or just, you know, need to put their toe in the water before they can even start thinking about that, right? Like, you know, maybe they will become one of those people that have multiple devices, but they won't know it until they dip their toe in the water by trying it out, you know, on their main device

and saying, oh, okay, I can get behind this. I need to hold it from them, you know? - Stealth mode, very cool. We were just talking about that yesterday. Nice to see that coming back. - Yes.

- Very happy for that to be back. - It's very cool. I had a question on it that came up from Antimus. He was saying, obviously, if you got the stealth mode on there and you're going through a border, for example, what about your files, like your backup files, et cetera?

If you say using the calculator one, you've got to press equals equals equals whatever it is and then open samurai. What if that border patrol person is like a little bit savvy? Could they, you're still gonna be able to see that your files are on there and therefore be like, oh, okay, there's obviously something here.

They're gonna have to delete before going through or like, how does that stuff work? - Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, it's from the first version of stealth mode, which was in 2015.

It was designed as a casual kind of protection, right? So a protection from casual searches, not even really a border guard, more like a significant other or, you know, your kid or, you know, someone who you just don't want to know that you have a Bitcoin wallet on your phone.

It will not hide the files. So if someone is gonna be going through your phone and looking at, you know, the file system, they'll still see the samurai.txt backup. If your intention is to cross the border and you suspect that the border patrol is gonna force you to unlock your phone and give it to them,

I would suggest on installing at the very least, but really I would wipe the entire phone and just cross with a completely wiped phone. Personally, if you suspect that there's really not, you have to be in a pretty hostile country if you suspect that they're gonna take your phone from you for no reason whatsoever, right?

And force you to unlock it in front of them. If that is a concern, though, I would take it seriously and I would not cross the border with anything on the phone because they're gonna clone it.

They're gonna clone it and then give you back your phone and then go through it at their leisure. So yeah, if that's your concern, you have deeper issues than just your samurai wallet. You know, everything on there needs to be gone.

- Yeah, I think it's not for most people to worry about. I just always like to think about those extreme cases and what actually came up from that conversation was, well, you can just wipe everything on the phone if you are using graphene or calyx.

You can use like this panic mode. So you can like set it up. It deletes certain apps or files or whatever. So you could do the panic mode. But then like you said, if you just take it off the phone anyway, if you're preempting it, but you know, these are extreme cases.

And just for the normal user, for example, someone wants to rob you and they like, suspect, oh, you might have some Bitcoin or whatever. And then it's like, oh, well, I don't have any app on my phone.

They just see a calculator or a VPN. I think that's really, it's my news, isn't it? - Exactly. It's for people who, it's not a sophisticated protection, hiding protection, right? It's from casual searches, you know, so someone flipping through your apps, basically, looking through and saying, okay, what do you have here?

I have nothing of interest. - Now, the first version of stealth mode was actually paired with a second removed functionality, sadly removed functionality called remote wipe. The use case of this was closer to the robbing situation that you just suggested, where your phone is stolen from you.

You realize it. One protection is that it's in stealth mode, so you know, they can't see it easily, but you want to get rid of that wallet. You don't have the phone in your possession anymore, but you don't want that wallet on that device anymore, right?

You could send a remote SMS command to your phone that would actually delete the wallet. - That's really cool. - Yeah, it was an awesome feature. Again, it kind of paired really nicely with stealth mode.

- Who fucked that up then, Google? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, Google. - Fucks sake. This is too cool when it needs to be taken out. - That was in the first version, man. That was in the first version of Samurai.

And it was there for a while, until I think like 2018 or something. - So with features like that, I'm probably ignorant here, but, so Google say, "It's too cool, it's too James Bondy." Like, you can't have that.

So you've got to take it out so you can still be in the play store. - That's right. - If you're downloading an APK directly from your site, could you not have it so that there's like the APK version, the non-Google fucked side, and that being separate?

So that if someone wants these cool features, you could still have them, but you just can't if you want to be kept by Google. Is that possible or is it just too much work? - So, well, it's kind of complicated.

At the time, the decision came down from the Google Play Store that said, if you want to be listed in the place or you have to get rid of these features, it wasn't just our state target. I mean, there was a lot of apps that had to change.

Yes, you could do that, and we did do that. We had the Google Band version of the APK. And you could get that from the website or the GitHub at the time. The issue came one into maintenance.

So, maintaining two separate, you know, how to code base as branches of the code, one that's Play Store and one that's directly APK. When they differ, it makes, it's an added challenge, especially when you have a really small team.

So, we did it, but it wasn't particularly fun to do, and it didn't stay up to date with the Google version. So, we kind of stopped doing that. But later, like, maybe a year after, we got the memo from Google Play.

Android was changed at the, you know, changes were made at the fundamental Android layer that made it impossible to do it anyway. So, we wouldn't be able to do it even by providing an APK.

And it just kind of shows you how much influence Google really has in Android development. You know, it's their separate project. It's owned by Google, but they're separate projects. But, you know, what Google wants Google is going to get.

So, what we see happening in the Play Store, policy-wise, will eventually, you know, trickle its way down into the base Android layer itself to enforce Google's will. - Okay. Final nerdy sort of tangent for you, before I let you go and get on with important things.

If that was the case, and so, Google becomes more and more of a pain in the ass, they keep making it more and more difficult for privacy and freedom. Do you think there's going to be a point where, rather than just having, like, de-googled phones that maybe that's not going to be possible, or that a new handset provider comes out

to serve the people who want privacy? - Well, there, there haven't been attempts that handheld providers coming out for people that want privacy. It's always niche. The privacy kind of phone aspect is a niche thing.

I think what's likely to happen, more so than a new handset provider, is a new, you know, a fork of Android that has, you know, backing behind it. You know, if maybe Google goes a bit too far, a fork of Android with competitors, corporate competitors behind it, might have, you know, have legs.

And we'll see. But, you know, as long as some options out there exist in terms of de-googled, you know, Android phones, for example, you know, a opportunity to exist for those who are seeking privacy.

You know, as long as you can still, you know, flash the phone with a different operating system, there's a hope for you. And it might be niche, it might not be accepted, you know, in the mainstream.

But that's okay, you know, you have to do. I hope it doesn't go that way or that far. I think what Google decides, you know, policy-wise in terms of censorship in this and that won't impact the Android itself specifically.

Like I said before, it will trickle down. But I think that if Android were to the Android project were to overstep and just do something really egregious, a competing fork would show up because that's just how things have gone in the world of software for, you know, an eternity.

That's just how, you know, the greatest projects are like kind of made in spite. - Like BTC pay. - Right, you know, the greatest projects often are, you know, really, you know, have contentious births, you know, and are made out of spite and a way to prove something wrong.

And, you know, so I think that's the most likely thing to happen and maybe a handset provider comes out, but that's such an expensive business. You have to have some serious, serious capital, you know, so you have to be a big, big company to really compete with Apple and Google, you know.

- Yeah, well, Sam Rye, thanks so much again for answering my stupid questions and coming on the show. Really appreciate it and everything you guys are doing. - Oh, not stupid at all, it's been a good shot.

- It's been good to catch up. And yeah, some of these features that we've talked about today, the ones that are already out and the ones that are hopefully coming soon, it's pretty exciting.

So thanks for all you guys are doing. It's pretty much the only thing that gives me hope out there. And when people are saying, oh, you can't use Bitcoin privately, don't even bother, then I just can say, well, look at what Sam Rye are doing.

So yeah, I appreciate it. - Definitely man, it's been a pleasure to chat with you. Nice to talk to you again and good to be here. - Cool, well, we'll do it again soon. - Absolutely. - Thanks for listening.

I really hope you enjoyed that. And if you have any questions at all, you can reach out to me. I'll try and help in any way I can. You can find us at ungovernable misfits.com. If you haven't already checked out the website, we have loads of other podcasts, episodes, shorts and much, much more.

Stay ungovernable.