Running a bitcoin node for the streets with Zelko from RoninDojo

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 ZELCO, the co-founder of Ronan Dojo. Ronan Dojo is my favorite Bitcoin node implementation, and it's my favorite for a reason. Ronan Dojo has been built with a focus on privacy and security.

No fluff, no bullshit, no pointless features, no height, just a really fucking well-built, stable, private, and secure node. And at the end of the day, that's why I'm here. I think for most of you people listening, that's why you're here as well.

But maybe it's not. Maybe you're new to the show. Maybe you're still here just for the Bitcoin price. Maybe you're still getting excited by the newest, shiniest features that are chilled on all the other platforms.

And if you are, that's all right. Hopefully this conversation will help make you think. Maybe it might change your perspective on things. And you will also be welcome to join us on the 15th at 20-hundred-eight o'clock London time to continue the discussion.

So if you have any questions at the end of this show, if you have any suggestions, or you just want to jump on and have a conversation, we'd love to hear from you. If after listening to this episode, you think, fuck, you know what?

I do want one of these things. I want to go and buy one of these tantos. I want to help support this team, as well as getting the nicest hardware out there. We don't really cover it too much in this episode, but these things are beautifully built.

They are milled out of a solid piece of aluminium. It's anodised. Everything about this is quality. It feels heavy. It's well-built. And it takes all the stress out of building on yourself.

There's no fans. It's passively cooled. I have one sat right next to me now. Can you hear it? No, didn't think so. It's fucking incredible. And if anyone has any questions, they can reach out to me.

If you fancy a discount, and let's face it, who doesn't? You can use the code "Ungovernable" at checkout, or you can use the links that's in the show notes, and that will take you straight to it.

It helps support this show, and it also gives you a discount. I'd like to thank everyone who joined us for the last spaces. It was really good to hear from you all. I really enjoyed that, and I'm looking forward to the next one.

I want to thank everyone who's reached out and who's been sharing the last episodes with friends and family, and I want to thank my sponsors. I want to thank SX6.store for making incredible seed plates for such good value.

If you are going to store your seed, I suggest you do it with steel. If you do it with steel and you want the best value out there, you can buy these for £16.99. They're marine-grade steel, so they will survive most fires, floods, and pretty much anything you can throw at these things.

Check them out at SX6.store. And finally, I'd like to thank Foundation Devices. They make my favourite hardware, and they've been supporting this show for a few years now. Not everyone listening to this will want to use hardware, and as we discussed on the last episode and spaces, you're pretty good if you're running graphene

on a dedicated pixel, especially if you're running this offline and using Sentinel, but not everyone wants to do that, and not everyone wants all their eggs in one basket. So if you're like me and you don't want all your eggs in one basket and you want something open source and you want something easy to use,

then I really strongly suggest Foundation Devices. If you have any questions, you can reach out to me or Bitcoin Q&A, and you can go to foundationdevices.com, use the code Ungovernable to get three months VPN with IVPM.

I really hope you enjoy the show. As I said, if anyone has any questions, please do join us on the 15th at eight o'clock London time. It'd be great to hear from you. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and family.

Every time you share it, it helps support the show. It brings more people in, and hopefully gets them using Bitcoin.

Here he is. Here I am, Max, how are you? I am fucking brilliant, mate, how are you? I'm doing good. You know, good complaints? I don't know why it always takes you longer than anyone else in the green room.

I don't know, it likes me. You're running some sort of clever setup. All right, fucking wish I was that smart. Good to have you back on the show. Thanks, man. If it is cool with you, we can do a little bit of a back to basics.

I have a lot of people reaching out to me and asking questions on the tanto and why should I run a node and why this one specifically? And should I have one that's a minor as well? And blah, blah, blah.

And as I said to your fair, I've been saying to people, listen, don't overcomplicate it. Have one thing that works. It does its job and it does it perfectly. But not everyone wants to listen to me 'cause I'm the village idiot.

That's why we have you to explain and to say why you guys at Ron and Dojo do what you do and why you do it, the way you do it. Yeah, no, let's break into it. I think it's best to probably start with like why running a Bitcoin node is important.

And I can clarify that because not all of the projects that people just say, you know, like, "Oh, I'm running a node." They don't even call themselves Bitcoin nodes. They call themselves sovereign, like servers or self-hosted servers.

So it's important to really like understand what it means to be running a node and to kind of start, you know, running a node, at least like as you get those like introduction videos into Bitcoin and how the network works, Bitcoin relies on that peer-to-peer aspect of the actual network is peer-to-peer as well, right?

Not just like peer-to-peer buying stuff and cutting out middlemen, but also the network being decentralized and being a peer-to-peer networked in that aspect. So Bitcoin nodes are what help to push and validate transactions on, you know, whoever's using it, but it helps to keep the blockchain in sync, right?

So it's important for the aspect of, you know, when you really start to think about how do you use a Bitcoin node for yourself? I just know like when I first started, I was like, "Oh, like if I do it, I'm gonna be helping the network."

And so, you know, you run Bitcoin Core and then you think that you're doing something but you really have no idea. And then you realize as you kind of get some more time in that I just really need this, it's actually better for myself if I can actually connect this to my wallets.

So running a node in that aspect is extremely important because you're not gonna be relying on any other Bitcoin node to go through the blockchain and determine what your balance is. 'Cause really the whole purpose of the node is validating if the addresses, it goes through the whole blockchain to see,

has this been used, has it not been used, right? It's a public ledger. So it can go through and determine like, have these addresses been used, as they're still funds in them, et cetera. So what I try to tell people is that if it's not your node, if you aren't running a node at home, you're using someone else's node.

They might say that they connect randomly to a electrum public server somewhere and it's a one-time thing but you don't know who that person is and it's known that there are tons and tons of spun up electrum servers and Bitcoin nodes out there that are literally doing it just to be able to collect data on different wallets.

So it's important that you understand that there's a risk out there if you're not running a node. It's a risk, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily never one's threat model but knowing, I think it's personally better if running your node is the best case but otherwise it's better to at least know your,

like know who's node that you're connected to. - I never liked the term first class citizen or second class citizen, you know, that was banded around. I think by that fucking trace me guy, they always annoyed me a little bit.

I was like, I don't like that. Like if it feels a bit snobby but it kind of also makes sense. It's like as someone who runs a node, you have got more ability to keep yourself secure and private than somebody who's relying on someone else.

When you understand that and you get into Bitcoin, you think, well, I want to trust myself and only myself and have full control of everything that I do with my finances. If you really wanna actually take that seriously, this is the only way to do it.

That's kind of what the realization I came to and maybe a lot of people don't understand that fully in terms of like, you know, they go and buy some hardware and they'll link to the node.

Like my first interactions was Ledger and linking to their nodes. And I just didn't really get it. I was like, yeah, but it's the blockchain. That's like, I just didn't know what I was talking about.

I was like, it's the blockchain. And so like, this is Bitcoin and so it's private and it's this and it's, you know, I had all these assumptions that were totally wrong. And exactly what you said, it's like, I wasn't running VPNs.

So now they have my IP. They have every transaction that I've sent. They know the amount of Bitcoin that I have. They know who I'm sending it to. And you have to assume they are tracking this stuff.

And so that's a problem. Like that is a serious issue. And so the only way to do it properly and have control of over these things and to not be logged and not be spied on or have less risk is to run your own node.

- Absolutely. I mean, I try to tell people, you know, like Bitcoin is about being your own bank. The fiat bank is the one that decides whether, you know, they approve transactions, whether you can send money to this person or that person.

They know the actual balances that's in your bank account. They have all that information that you might not get to see, right? But that's what Bitcoin's supposed to be about where you get to decide what you set, like how much you send to someone and when you send it and what transactions you wanna pay for and what you wanna approve.

And that's what it's about, right? So running your node really, really does make you become your own bank. And that's the point, you know, be your own bank. Don't trust third parties. Like that's what this is supposed to be about.

It's cutting out third parties and doing this yourself. As far as like the first class citizen thing, I don't like that either because it kind of, it is snobby. It's 100% snobby. - Yes, gross.

- And it, I get like the intent of, if you've been in Bitcoin long enough, you should be running your own node. Like if you've been in long enough, that means you've probably accumulated enough that you should care, you know, who and what possibly knows how much that you have.

And again, people need to really understand that risk factor of like, if you're not running your node, someone else's node has it. And they're the ones that have your expo. They're the one, and when you have an extended public key in the backend, they see everything past, present, future.

And that's for the entirety of the wallet. That's not like, you know, a hundred plus addresses. That's every address that that could ever make, which is, I don't even know the actual amount.

So it's really important for people to grasp that, that if you wanna take your data seriously and you wanna start taking those steps, the first step in Bitcoin is running your own node. You really need to run your own node and start to connect it to the wallets that use whatever wallet that is and get it right

and start doing all the right stuff. That's why I felt like it was so important when I first started. I realized how important it is to do this, especially in the SAMART group is when I really got into it 'cause the people that, and I was just like a new body just hanging around.

And with Whirlpool starting to come out of it, I was like, it's really important to run your own dojo before, you know, before you start mixing or you'll have to repair it, like make a new wallet and do all this other stuff.

And I didn't really understand until I started to dive into it. And that's how I know whenever people tell me try to argue about what SAMRISE recommended about using their server or using a dojo.

It's like since day one of doing all this stuff, all the cool privacy tools was run your own node. Running your own node was always the standard. So if you care about your data, you care about all that stuff, run your own node.

And then if you can't afford your own node, you can't build it, anything like that. You can't have the funds maybe necessarily right now, that's okay, right? Like just I would recommend at least knowing who's running the node.

Most wallets don't tell you who does that. And then you have to determine if you trust that source. Do you trust SAMRISE server? Do you trust Trezor? Do you trust Ledger? If you trust it and if you trust it enough, then yeah, like that's a trade off that you can make until you've come to that point

where you're like, okay, I'm gonna run my own node now. But it's trust, that's the key, you are trusting. And no matter how much you care about a project or like the people who are involved, you are trusting.

And this whole thing is like, don't trust verify. And the only way you can not trust and verify is to run your own node. Maybe people haven't listened to our first or early conversations, but I remember reaching out to you early days because I'd heard you.

I think it was, maybe it was either Odell or Lavera you were on. And I remember listening, I remember what I was doing. I was mowing a lawn. I remember listening and being like, hang on a minute.

This guy isn't a developer. He's got so into this stuff that he has taught himself, command line, and he started building a node implementation. And I remember blowing my mind 'cause I was like, this is a guy who's not fucking involved in this stuff.

He's like, he's not a developer, that's weird. Like, how the fuck are you doing this? And I remember it like giving me quite a big kick up the ass 'cause I was like, okay, maybe I'm not gonna take it as the extreme that this guy is, but I'm gonna do everything that I can to the best of my ability.

And I'm not gonna allow myself to be like, oh, well, I'm not a dev, so I can't do this. And it was like one of the biggest kick up the asses that I ever had. And that's why I reached out to you that first time.

It was like, maybe we need to have this conversation. And then to see where this has gone since then, A is impressive, but B like shows people, you're not just a nerdy dev who's done this all your life.

You're someone who's taught yourself, and it is possible. And if you can do that, and you can develop and create this project, then anyone listening to this, you can run a fucking node. You can just run the node that's been built.

It's not that hard. I do it. Many people who are not that technical do it. It's really not that difficult. And sometimes it can be like a little bit intimidating, but especially if you're running a Tanto, if something's already pre-built and with the UI, we'll get onto the UI stuff shortly.

But like, it's not that fucking hard. And most of the people who are like questioning me about it and going, oh, do I really need to run one? Like, I don't know that I need to. They'll say that.

And then like the next week, they'll go, oh, I'm just dropping another couple of thousand dollars on Bitcoin, like, oh, you know, I can see it pumping. I'm gonna throw some more money at it.

I'm like, hang on a minute. Don't throw thousands of dollars at Bitcoin and buying, you know, stacking Sats. And you're still not running a node. Like, and then complaining that, oh, it's a few hundred dollars to buy one of these things.

Like, it's fucking the first thing you should do. - It's funny that you mentioned the like, that start the starting point and kind of what like inspired you to do it, to do the podcast and everything else.

But it was like, just today, actually, someone reached out to me and asked, how did I get started? Like, they knew that I was self-started and I kind of taught myself, but they were just like, you know, they wanted to kind of follow the steps.

And anytime I see someone do that, it's honestly really cool. 'Cause that's part of the story that I love is that our story is one of, you know, regular people. 'Cause so often the space, you know, they're people who have been developing and the, you know, in the outside world, I guess.

And then they decide to come into Bitcoin, right? So they were software developer for however long and then they came in afterwards. And not that that's bad. It's honestly how software gets developed a lot faster.

It doesn't have as many hiccups, but it's been such an amazing ride. Because of that, like, I loved it a lot. And that's kind of why I wanted to stick with it for so long. 'Cause I was like, despite how hard it was sometimes, I was determined to make sure that I could be a story that people could point to

and say, like, wait, I can do that too. 'Cause I know, like, a lot of times on our podcast, like I'll say, like, oh, I'm a knuckle-dragger or whatever. And people probably roll their eyes and think that I'm joking, that I'm, you know, I'm calling myself dumb.

And when it comes to like overly technical stuff, like I've gotten significantly better in the past year, but I'm definitely no expert. And I'm definitely a person who came from an outside, like zero tech stuff.

Like nothing I do outside of Bitcoin is anything to do with tech. So, you know, people can look at it and be like, look, if you're determined enough, if you really want to do something, just go after it.

Go after it, ask questions, and don't quit. 'Cause the amount of times that I could have quit in the beginning, like, just trying to run it on note, just trying to run dojo when it first came out.

And I like could have quit so many times. So sometimes I feel bad for users now and like they have a couple of issues and whatever. But then I go back and I think about my time. - That was a different world.

- 'Cause even dojo was new. So I just like, just go in and like keep trying, keep asking questions. If someone gives you a command, don't just like take that and then just forget about it.

Like if you want to learn how to program, you need to understand what the commands are and what the different things do so that you can start to understand what's going on. But ultimately, yeah, there really is not an excuse as far as skill gap goes.

Like the stuff that everyone has nowadays is honestly remarkable how far the space has come for whether it's node implementations or the self-hosted server stuff. It's come so far since when I started.

I think the only real option we had back then was nodal. And so like, yeah, the whole aim is to make it easier for everybody, but what I try to tell people when I'm troubleshooting with them, I'm like, hey, this might not feel fun right now, but like keep this stuff in mind.

Like learn these commands so that when you come back in the next time you have an issue. The next time, whatever, I'm like, you're learning how to be sovereign in that aspect of like, I know how to fix this.

That's kind of like the beauty of it. I'm really proud of how far that our project has come and being able to kind of like cut out all that. The backend stuff is almost entirely, I think after the next update, like it should be a rare, rare occurrence for people to even need to go into the back

and at all everything that they need to be able to do is gonna be in the front end. - It's a different fucking world. Honestly, like when I listened to that podcast, that was like early, early days.

And I remember thinking like, if this guy can fucking try and build this project and do all this stuff, then I can at least try and run a node. And like that was the push. And the difference between what I was trying to do then and what I'm doing now is fucking night and day.

And if it wasn't for listening to you on that podcast, the times when I'm trying to build nodes and fucking around with raspberry pies and late into the night, you know, like, ah, I've got work in a few hours and I'm still fucking working on this and it's crashing and it's not working.

And the support wasn't as good as it is now and nothing was as good as it is now. And I'm trying to fuck around and command line. And I would just think, well, okay, again, like this guy can do it.

I can at least run a node. And the difference now is like, you can fucking set one of these things up. I did it the other day. I said it in a podcast. I set up my tanto at about midnight after having a few drinks.

I came home and went, ah, fuck it. I'll just set it up now. I did what I needed to do half an hour, had a drink, morning I came down, everything was working. And I was like, oh, that's it.

Like, that's it? There's no more problems? No. - It's been a journey. Like I really do, like, I feel, and that's why sometimes like I don't normally do support, but like I occasionally jump in and help people 'cause I can see the frustration.

- 'Cause you've been there. - Yeah. Not everyone's built for the like, I'm gonna like sit down and get this done. A lot of people, especially like, and I get it on their side too. Like to an extent of being like, I paid a lot of money for this and I'm having issues.

Totally get it. So that's why I understand people want something. And if there's a hiccup and then, you know, they wanna get it fixed. Hey, I get that. But that like grit to like grind through your problems is an amazing character treat that I think more people need to have.

So hopefully that helps. But yeah, we're trying to get rid of any of those issues. And I'm excited for what we have coming up. But yeah, really people should not be intimidated. They should go for it.

I think we just pushed out the announcement, you know, like the Santos with the one terabyte, our prices decrease now. You know, you can even get it precinct if you don't wanna have to wait.

Again, it comes to the level of trust from us. Or you can get the two terabyte, but the whole goal is to get you guys the products that will help you, you know what I mean? I mean, we're not trying to price gouge or anything like that.

So yeah, I'm really excited for everybody. They have a really good opportunity to start to dive in. And just know, as far as a price goes, like when people are like, oh, it's a lot of money.

Understand that like what we're doing is definitely different than a lot of these other companies. Not many of them are self-funded, a couple of them are, but most of them have VC backing.

They have their money. They're just basically trying to pay off their loan. And not that that's a, I guess a bad thing. It's not what I would, it's obviously not what I did. You know, buying the Santos is giving the support to the, to the false team, you know, to the community.

I don't even see it like that. I understand that view of like, if you're looking at this space and you're going, right, who is doing things the way that I want them to do? Who do I have respect for?

Okay, this team are fucking not pulling any punches. They're doing things the right way and they're keeping their users secure and private. That's fucking amazing. And if you think, okay, well, I want to support them, that's great.

And you should. But outside of that, like genuinely, I'm not just saying this 'cause we're friends, what you've built is fucking brilliant. The user interface is brilliant. The quality of the actual design and the feel and everything.

And you don't see that in Bitcoin. And I don't mean to slag it off 'cause I love a lot of the companies that are out there and I respect anyone who builds anything and tries anything and puts their work and heart and soul into it.

But it's a cut above, it's really fucking good. I don't think people should look at it as like, I'm buying this thing because I want to support. No, no, no, buy the thing because it's the best thing out there.

And it really is. And then you've got the added benefit of like, it also supports a team who are doing things properly. I don't think people until they have it in their hands and they have that set up experience, especially if you've set these things up on Raspberry Pi's and fucked around all night

for many days and have them crashing and everything else. I would pay it 10 times over to just plug it in. I see that little red light go, log in, and it's done. Like that is compared to four years ago.

We're light years ahead. - Yeah, no for sure. And I appreciate all that, man. I know you didn't meant it for the whole team, but I'm gonna re-emphasize that 'cause honestly, the team, it's all the teams effort, man.

We've been really, really fortunate to have an amazing group of guys come together with the same value set, the same work ethic. And, you know, I don't think people really understand we have two guys, well, really one guy, one guy full-time on running.

And then one guy who's part-time on running and part-time on another project. So both the developers are technically split-time and then I'm still part-time or I still at least have a second job.

So just to clarify, that means that like our guys are pretty much working, like working on something and either job or whatever, almost all the time. Like it's work and sleep. And we do this shit 'cause we love it.

You know, we do this shit because even when we're tired, even when we have other things that we could probably do or whatever, you know, we're putting that sacrifice in because we really give a shit about what we're doing.

We really want people to have the best experience. We really want people to take that leap into, you know, the sovereign Bitcoin world. And so without my team, you know, obviously I can't do all this shit myself.

You know, Pavl did an amazing job on the UI. Damn has been crushing it on the back end. And what we have coming up is even better. And so I just wanna give them a shout-out because really without the team, none of this is where it's at.

So yeah, four years, four years, a lot has happened. But without the community coming together and contributing to a false project. And I am able to pay them, but it's not what they deserve.

Unfortunately, it's less than what they should be making, what I think they should be making. But we're all okay with that. We all know that we're working for well under budget, well under what we should make.

And if we had VC funding, we'd probably double or triple what we're getting paid. But it's a sacrifice that we make because privacy fucking matters. And if we're in it for money and we're in it for greed.

Go and do something else. We're no better than anybody else. Well, you can go and do a million other jobs in this world and go and make much more money, much easier, much less stress, much less of a target on your back, all the rest of it.

I think that shines through, not I think it shines through. It does shine through. Like I've met most of your team. I've spoken to most of your team. I've seen this project grow over the last four years and you can tell.

This is a labor of love and it will come. Yeah, you could go and get VC backing and you could go and do the shilling and you could have all the million other features and blah, blah, blah.

And you could do all that and you might grow quicker. But it's not the same project. It's not the same product. It's not for the same group of people. And that group of people right now is a little bit smaller.

But over time, I genuinely believe that people will go, hang on a minute. Why am I running a node? The reasons that we've just talked about, okay. And if it's the reasons that we've just talked about, then what's the best one out there and why?

Do I really need my node to store dick pics or whatever fucking stupid shit, you know, 10,000 apps? No, not really. What do I need from it? Well, I want it to be stable. I want it to be well-built.

I want it to connect over tour. I want it to have a nice user interface. I want it to be easy to set up. Okay, what more do I want other than that? Not much. That's really the most important stuff.

And so what does it well? Well, this does it fucking well. That's kind of what I'm trying to get over to people. It's like, I've run, I think I've run most node packages now. And this is the one I've settled on.

And especially now we can get into now this update. Did it drop today or was it yesterday? Yesterday. And I just wonder, before we jump into it, I just want to add, 'cause I'm sure people have this question, you know, like, well, what about those other ones?

Why not use those? Just something to consider, right? Like, I guess when you are thinking about what you want out of your Bitcoin node, right? Like, you want it to work and you want it to be secure, right?

And this, it's like a known thing that most of these guys have at least acknowledged the more apps and the more like a sovereign hosting system where you add the larger the attack surface, right?

And the more ports that get opened and everything else. It's not that it's necessarily bad in the use case of a sovereign server. But when you're trying to talk about securing your Bitcoin, like you want your Bitcoin stuff to be Bitcoin stuff, that's at least my philosophy.

Because I do host my own data and I do all the same things, but it's separate from my node, 'cause I want that to be different. So that's just something for people to keep in mind. But yeah, we can talk about the update.

- Yeah, just to tie a bow in that, it's not a bad thing to do all of the things that some of these other packages can do. In fact, it's a great thing to do your own storage and hosting and everything else, it's brilliant.

And no one should ever be deterred from doing that. But exactly what you said, it's like if you're taking this thing seriously, if you really are trying to move yourself out of the fiat world and you're trying to move yourself into this Bitcoin world, the most important thing is your privacy and security.

So if you have to be running two things separately, I really don't think that as much for a problem. Especially when you understand how much more attackable you are if you start to, like we said, like I was taking the piss when I said dick pics, but like seriously, some of the things that these have one is like it's your password manager,

it's your photo storage, it's your node, it's like 20 different things and really you should be doing that as just two separate things. Anyone who has any questions on it can reach out to me and we can go through it, but that is what I've settled on personally and don't overcomplicate things.

I think really is just like, keep it simple, find something that does the job really well and that's what this does. - Not for sure. - So the update, I said it on a tweet today, Pavel is one of the worst blokes I've ever met in my life.

We've not met in person yet, but he's such a shit bloke, but he has done a fucking beautiful job on this. I updated it this morning, rabbit reached out to me and I said, "Oh, have you seen this new thing?"

And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll check it out. "I'm speaking to Zelko tomorrow, but I'll do it before then." He said, "Honestly, it's really good that you should do it." So I set my alarm five o'clock this morning, came down, made a coffee.

I thought, "This is a little bit of peace and quiet "and I'm gonna sit and I'm gonna set this up." And he's knocked it out of the park with this. It is the one thing in this whole samurai road and dojo stack, which I've been pretty open about, I thought was quite shit, is this GUI.

Every time I had to use it, I'd be like, "Oh, everything else is so nice." Every time I use run and dojo, it's so slick and samurai wallet, so slick. I keep having to sign into this fucking GUI and it just feels like a completely, it feels like that's like three years ago and then everything else is in the future.

And every time I used it, I was like, "Ah, this just doesn't fit quite right." And so what did you drop yesterday and how does this change my life? - Yeah. Well, we released yesterday the 2.4.0 UI, which has been an amazing update.

So it took the samurai Whirlpool GUI, desktop app that has been around since the beginning, since Whirlpool came out. And yeah, we took that and integrated it into the UI. So you can now pair your wallet, which that was probably one of the biggest headaches.

Pair your wallet with your, with Roman, which is the cool part with that is that you can even do it straight on your phone. You can open up your samurai wallet, get the pairing code, and then open up Tor browser, whatever.

And then you just sign in and paste the pairing payload in there. And now you've paired your samurai wallet that's backed by your node straight on your phone. And it takes all four seconds.

So that part's pretty amazing. That was my favorite part so far. So yeah, now you get to visualize, you can see all your mixes. You can see what's queued up. If there's any issues or anything that you see, you know, you can always let us know or reach out to samurai, samurai chat.

Like I'm looking at one on mine right now. I had an input rejected which happens sometimes just with Tor and some other stuff, but it's awesome because I can, I can actually control everything.

And then what we recommend is people to, and this is most, this is twofold. It's not, we don't have it in here to be able to initiate a TX0. So you should do that via, if you just wanna get rid of the desktop app, use the mobile wallet to do your TX0s.

One, it's a better interface for it anyways, 'cause you can select different addresses to be the input. You know, you have a little bit more control over everything. So I've always found it to be a better experience on the mobile app.

But yeah, you can control, stop, start. You can do everything. You can change the configuration with that. Like you can re-sync all your post-mix counters. And yeah, it's pretty amazing. So that was one of our big goals.

And ironically, brother Rabbit, I think, has been asking for this since probably three years now. (laughing) And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll get there, we get there, we gotta get this, we gotta get that.

And he's like, yeah, but like, I think the update before this, where you could unlock, like say you were already paired, and then you needed to restart your dojo. And now you're your world post-locked, you could unlock it from the UI.

That was one that he was like very adamant about for a very long time. And this was, I was like, we're not gonna do any middle grounds. And Pavel was super excited to knock out the whole thing.

So, you know, we still have some more goodies in the back pocket for our next release, but it's got everything that you need. The only thing missing, to be honest, is mixed to Xbox. Which is written.

- I annoy him and you and Pavel often about this. I am looking forward to it, but I also respect that one step at a time, and like I say, this update has made a big difference to my life already.

Like I had to go in yesterday into the GUI, and use that because I had an issue and things to stop and not to restart and whatever else. And just having everything in one place, in one user interface is a massive leap for me.

It's like, just slicker, breaking it down for people who may be listening to this, and maybe some of the terms are a little bit, I don't know. Maybe if you're not already using this, you'll listen to the terminology and be like, I don't really know what you're talking about.

The basics are like, if you're running Samurai Wallet, and you're running any other desktop wallet that's linked to any cold storage or anything else, say you're running Sparrow, you can link your Sparrow to Ronan Dojo in, I don't know, 30 seconds, I think it took me, not even that.

And then you wanna link it to your Samurai Wallet, and have all your mixing happening continuously, 30 seconds. And if you wanna monitor everything and see all of your mixes going on, you can see I'm literally looking at it now.

I'm looking at my activity when my last mixes had happened, how many mixes, what's mixing at the moment, the percentage of the mix that's completed, in what pools, everything is in one place.

And then for any pairing, it's in one place. And it's just easy. Once you have this thing running, like you had it after anything else. - Yeah, it's honestly just, he knocked it out of the park.

I was, I got to see like the very early, 'cause I was like, oh, come on, man, let me start like teasing it. So I got to see it, I got to see it. And even from the early iterations, he crushed it, man.

The really cool part that I think it's, so it's a low key, it's a low key thing. And I'm still trying to opt for some other cool stuff like it. But when you go into, and you click like the under apps, you click on Whirlpool, the actual Whirlpool logo spins, which I thought was cool.

So what I want, what are my feature requests? - Oh, just to do it now, that's nice. - I wanna see it spin every time that I get a mix done. So when it gets to 100%, it spins, or I get some sort of like confetti pop off, or what, I don't know, just something.

(laughing) I don't know if people do it, but it's, I just like, it was little things. You know, the, it's all the little details that is amazing. And, you know, it's awesome. And I set this in our Telegram group, what I told people is that, you know, I set out probably shortly after end of October.

I was like, I'm gonna make it so people don't have to use. I like Sparrow, but I'm gonna make it so people don't have to, right? A lot of people, a lot of our users use it so that they can mix to Xbub, or they can, they can use, you know, hardware wallets and stuff like that.

But unless you're using your hardware wallets by connecting them into the interface, I wanna make it so you don't have to do that. I wanna make it so that between Ronin, Samurai, and Sentinel, you can do it all.

And so that's kind of where I'm at. - You're very close. - We are, we are really close. And then, you know, once people realize that they can have a full set stack ready to go between basically three applications, I mean, that doesn't get much easier.

- 'Cause who wants to manage other than Max Tanohill? Who wants to manage like 60 bullets and X, you know? - Other than Max Tanohill? - Yeah, no, I agree though. Huge respect for Craig Raw, fucking loved the guy and what he's built is incredible.

- Of course, yeah, amazing, amazing role here. - But the fact is, and I said this, I think on the last podcast was I have this dedicated Linux-only laptop that I use only for Bitcoin stuff, and it keeps dwindling down.

It's like less and less things that I need to use it for. And so now, it is just running Sparrow, and that's it. Like I have no other need for anything else. I feel like, you know, when I'm running Sparrow and when I'm into, especially when I'm interacting with hardware and I'm scanning back and forth

and I'm signing a PSBTs and QR codes and stuff, the difference between signing a PSBT with this laptop, which has like a bit of a shitty webcam, but it's a fucking pain in the ass to use.

It's like really annoying, whereas if I'm using Sentinel and I'm using that on an old Pixel, it's like one second to scan back and forth. It's instant compared to using the laptop that honestly can take like 10 minutes.

It's for fucking nightmare. It's like, I hate using it. - I don't like people realize how hard it is when you have to use like a camera that's facing you to try to-- - Oh, horrendous. - To try to capture more.

- You know, I guess because you're going left and it's going right and you're trying to tilt the screen and then you're turning off the lights in the room and dimming the brightness and fucking around and-- - Literally every time.

Like, I cannot figure out for a life for me. I feel so dumb. I would rather like find it better, like be a PGP, which I hate doing. I would rather do it that way than try to do it. And if it's so stupid, it's a very humble moment for me.

- It is, but that's the thing. It's like, you know, you compare that to the simplicity of using Sentinel and it's like, whoa. Okay, now this is really slick. So I feel a bit shadowy and cool when I have my Linux laptop and it's all blacked out and it's cool and separate and whatever.

But it's like we're one step away from that being sold, back and fuck off and I'm literally doing everything from two phones running graphene and a hardware wallet and like, that is it. And obviously my node running.

And the experience for me is so much more enjoyable and fast and actually, as we've discussed on the last conversation, like secure as well. So all these steps, like to someone listening, they might think, oh, you know, it's not that different.

I can access it from a mobile. Yeah, okay, you know, I can run Sentinel. It's just this watch only wallet. It's not that different. It's like, no, trust me, if you start using this stuff on a daily basis, it's very different.

It makes a big difference to your life. - It's one of the things that I try to let people, you know, make their own, I don't like the idea of being a thought leader or anything like that.

People should use what they want and not give a fuck about what anybody else really tells them to. We can give you advice, we can give you our opinion and everything else. But otherwise, use what tools best fit for you based on the research that you do, right?

Like, you know, there's all that on Pixel phones and all that fun stuff. But it's ultimately, fuck it, just do what you want. Do what you need to, you know, we laid out why the why behind doing what we think is best, right?

So using a dedicated hardware to be your node, right? Try to consolidate services if you can, right? Like sparrow versus whatever or having, you know, four different hardware wallets if you don't necessarily get them and all that kind of stuff.

Like, do what makes sense for you. And really, like, that's what it's all about. - Afraid to move them. - Yeah, and, you know, if you're trying to take privacy seriously, like, ask questions, get in there.

Like, don't be afraid. I have plenty of people that hit me up and ask, what's the best steps to buying no KYC? Or what are things that I need to consider when I'm doing that? And any of those things are great questions.

And that's, it gets me excited because it's telling me that people are starting to wake up. People are starting to understand what this movement is going to be like in the future. Like, it's before privacy felt like privacy and Bitcoin seemed to be an afterthought, right?

So many people wanted to just, you know, get rich quick and have all that fun stuff. And all those people are turning around and starting to be thinking, oh, well, if I have a lot of money, I'm going to be at Target soon, right?

So you might want to start taking your privacy seriously, right? It's funny how it comes full circle back to privacy. You have people who don't have a lot, but they know privacy support because they live in countries where privacy is attacked all the time.

And many of people that are blissful didn't think about it. I just want to get rich quick and got sold on the idea of store value and, you know, number go up. All roads laid back to privacy.

All roads laid back to transactions and using the money. Because otherwise, what are we doing, right? Well, here's the thing. So everyone wants to get rich, right? No problem with that. Think about the five richest people you know and hold those people in your mind.

How much do they care about their privacy? How many lawyers do they have and shell companies do they have? And how many steps and measures do they take to keep themselves out of the public eye and secure?

Oh, yeah. I mean, even if it's not people you know directly and that's kind of what you mean, alter wealthy people. The irony is that those people, for sure, you'll never hear about, you know?

Like, unless they are Elon Musk or someone, you know, CEO of major corporations, other than that, you know, and even those guys take steps that they're not going to tell you about. Yeah. Not very many people are giving up their secrets on how to be private.

It just doesn't happen. Well, that's why these conversations are important. Yeah, like this is the one place where you can, you're getting to actually hear what to do. Like you're getting advice from people and there's even more stuff that yeah, sometimes there are things that you don't want to say online

that sometimes meeting people in person or, you know, meeting at an event and then you get to talk to people about these privacy techniques. And that's why it's important to like actually go and talk to people and actually ask questions, right?

Like the community wants to help each other. It's just a matter of what do you stand for. I think that's one thing that people might not like samurai wallet or meat for because we push back pretty hard on people, but we're very, we're principled people that care about what we care about.

We're willing to do whatever it takes and take whatever risks necessary to bring the privacy tools to the people. I don't think people have a problem with it. People maybe make some noise about it, but when all said and done, if they understand what's being done, I say between me and you, but this is between me and you and the listeners,

I have often people reach out to me and go, oh, fucking hell, you know, I really like what samurai or run and dojo are doing, but you know, they've said this and this is me or I don't agree with this or I don't agree with that or whatever.

And I'm like, listen, when you build a project and you put out software, which is risking your own freedom to allow other people to be free, come back and talk to me. And until then, I don't give a fuck.

There are very few people in this world who are prepared to put their life on the line. And it is literally that, like putting your life on the line to allow other people to be free. And I've said this many times, like genuinely, even if you or samurai or the whole fucking crew want to come out and said to me,

you know what, Max, we think you're a bit of a cunt and like everything that I love, you know, like your dog is shit, he's a bit fat. We don't like you. I go, okay, I still respect you because you're putting your freedom on the line.

You might be a bit straight down the line with your views and maybe you don't pull punches, but until someone else... - There you go, keep going. - Until someone else puts their freedom on the line, you don't have an opinion that matters.

- I'm sure there's noise in the background. - That sounds exactly like my vacuum cleaner. - That's exactly what it is, you know. - Yeah, is that a Dyson? - Probably. - I don't wanna dox you, but is that a Dyson?

- Okay, there we go. Probably. (laughing) I would know. God damn it, I thought I was doing. Okay. - Sure enough to like rage right now, but if you can hear me, I'll try to do this. - That's fine, I can hear you, I can hear you.

- Yeah, privacy is about principal people standing up for doing what they need to. Privacy is not something loved by the state and by other people, that's what they use to control people.

So just like Cody Wilson and the death athletic documentary, you know, releasing just information for people to build guns, not even building guns because it's a form of control. You're going against that narrative.

You are already at risk. So we cannot, and we do not. We don't work with people that don't understand that. They don't understand that like trying to scare people or trying to push a certain narrative is not gonna fly with us.

We don't work with the fence-sitting people. One of the things that I've always loved about you is just how straightforward you are. I mean, you're like me, like I'm-- - Good looking. - But that too, I'm deaf well, if you met me, you would know I'm definitely not good looking.

- If you've met me, you'd know that I am. - Oh, damn. - It's certainly good looking human being. - One day, I'll have to confirm with other people who have not you. - More denied. - Don't trust, don't trust, I gotta verify.

- Yeah. - I'll reach you one at a time. But yeah, no, I tend to want to give people a benefit of the doubt, but I'm learning faster and faster that some people like to go on a hype train and then when it's time is tough or like implementing Whirlpool always sounds nice, right?

Like if you're everyone, I think it's gotten to the point where everyone knows that that's pretty much everyone knows that's the way to go if you're gonna mix. So you're a software developer, you see other people putting it in.

Yeah, that sounds great. And then push comes a shove, a proposed law comes up and all of a sudden we drop everything. It's just one of the things that people should, people need to recognize what their wallet is.

Like we see it, we know, but recognize that it's easy to slide on the hype train and to hold another thing to back up what you're saying and be willing to take that risk. Taking those risks is not something small by any means.

It's not a joke. That's why I say there is an unlimited pass, even if Samurai or you slag off my dog, which anyone else would get fucking knifed for. There is an unlimited pass because I respect it.

As much as I care about freedom and sovereignty and everything else like, I don't know if I'm as tough as that. What you guys are doing is admirable, it is scary, no one else is doing it, no one else has stepped up to the plate.

A lot of people talk, a lot of people squawk, a lot of people virtue signal, but there's not many people who are prepared to risk their freedom and to do everything that is possible to make other people as free as possible.

And so respect to what you're doing and respect to what Samara are doing. And I'd like to see more people join the ranks. I'd like to see it happen more and more, but I've been in this space not as long as many people, but it's been a while.

I've not seen anybody else do it and stick to it. And so it's a big reason why I push people into this stack as much as I do. It's a big reason why I use it as much as I do. It's because I'm like, fuck, these people aren't messing around.

And it's one of the only projects that gives me like real hope where I'm like, okay, like if I'm going to stand toe to toe with governments and I'm going to speak truth and just fucking say how it is like, okay, there's a few people who are doing the same.

That's cool. - Exactly. And, you know, I will say this about the growing community. I love that, you know, I think in the beginning I got really frustrated. I just love how we grew, right?

Because in the beginning, I remember feeling frustrated. I remember, you know, seeing Mino or Umbrell get all this love and all this stuff. And I remember being so angry and just being, you know, like it motivated me.

But I was just, I was like, well, I just want to be there. Like I just want us to be pulling all these fucking people. You know, like I want to fucking crush my competition. You know, I'm just competitive like that.

But our user base grew so organically, so naturally in the right way. And it's continuing to grow that way. It feels so much more organic and natural. And those are the users that I want.

I don't want people that aren't ready. And I say they're not ready, you know, that aren't joining us for the right reason, you know? And they're joining it because some, you know, other than you, Max, but some podcasts or whatever, you know, we're still on them to get it, you know, I don't care.

I want them to come to the conclusion and be like, oh, yeah, I found out that this is the best one. Or I was in a telegram group and everyone kept saying to use this, like that word of mouth, that grassroots, that's what I want.

And that's why I love your groups. Like your groups are that they are that like community of just regular people. Real people get it. Yeah, they're real people. That's what I want. In the same way that the growth of Sam Ryan, Ronan Dojo, you don't have VC backing, you're not going out and chilling

and just trying to grab as many users as possible. What happens is you grab the users who really care and actually want to take things seriously and you keep them. And that's the same as this show has been.

It's like, I don't have numbers like Peter McCormack. I don't even have numbers like fucking, what's his name? Who we just mentioned earlier, Australian. Lavera. I don't mean that in a negative way.

I just forgot his name, Lavera. Lavera, yeah. I don't have numbers like that. But what I do have is I have groups of people who are genuine listeners. They listen to every episode. We communicate.

They're building circular economies. They're selling their services and goods for Bitcoin. They're mining at home. They're doing things in the proper way. They're using lincoyn pool. They're using fucking paintings for payouts.

They're doing things in the way where I'm like, fuck you are like my people. This is awesome. And I'd rather have one listener like that than 100 fucking bullshit fake comes. The quality and the quality of users is so important.

It makes it so much more enjoyable when you see such high quality people coming in. And those that come in and they're not that high quality and then they're angry or whatever, I'm like, you know, there's been times where I've offered to, yeah, someone was upset or whatever.

I was like, all right, well, either you try to work with me and we'll fix whatever it is and I guarantee you a behalf for that, if you don't, I'll just buy it back. I don't want to have this back and forth of, you know, you being upset and not being there.

I was like, so that's, you're not a, if that's the case, if this is what this is going to be, then I don't want to have you as a user is what it is. So yeah, I think it's amazing. It's so much better.

Like I can guarantee you that none of the other podcasters have people have the quality of listeners that you do and just like the quality of like samurai users that are there. So yeah, like it's amazing to see it and that's what I'm excited for.

That's what we're excited for, you know, the future. And I don't know. I'm just, I'm super hyped and bullish for 2024 and that's irregardless of price movement. Don't care, but it is nice when the price goes up.

That's always cool. (laughing) Honestly, don't care. I'm bullish about development in 2024 and 2025. It's going to be amazing. - I care. - Everyone's going to get really fucking upset with me here.

Listen guys, I just sold some Bitcoin peer-to-peer for cash. I know like I'm supposed to fucking hold this forever and everything, but I sold it and guess what? I'm not buying more Bitcoin with it.

I'm buying a holiday for my family because I don't get to see them enough and we're going to go and fucking enjoy it. So I was actually pleased about the price pumping. - Isn't it amazing?

Like just that idea of being like, oh shit, look, I can actually like use this. - Oh mate, I'm going to have a lovely holiday. - It feels so good. - Genuinely, I wouldn't have been able to afford it if the price hadn't pumped, not this holiday.

And now I'm going to go and have a holiday with my family and it's going to be really nice and we're going to go away for a week and I'm going to really enjoy it and I'm going to spend some quality time with them.

I'm not going to edit and I'm not going to do my fiat mining and we're going to have some sunshine and proper family time. And that to me is what Bitcoin's about. If the price runs, it's great.

I don't care about seven generations and fucking all that shit. I just want to make life a bit easier and enjoy it. - All right, I honestly, since I started spending it, that's exactly how I felt.

That's why the price didn't matter to me. And I'm super happy for you. I know that you've been working endlessly for a long time. So if anyone deserves it, it's 100% you and yeah, we'll keep working.

That's also why we did our pre-sale that we're doing now. So people can still pre-order. Pre-order Tonto's, two terabyte Tonto's. We also have pre-sync options. So people can do that, but part of the reason for pre-orders is so that we can also take a breath for a minute and get everything together

and give our team a little bit of a break over the holidays. So yeah, we're really excited. We're not stomping by any means but we're going to slow down a little bit just for that. So I'm really happy, man, that you were able to get a vacation for your family.

- I appreciate that, mate. And yeah, it's getting late here. So as everyone knows, from the last episode, we're going to carry on this conversation where the spaces will set a date and let everyone know.

So anyone who's listening to this, who's thinking, "Well, maybe I'm still not sure why I want to know." And if I do want to know, why does it want to be a Ronan Dojo node? Does it want to be a Tanto, do I want to build my own?

Whatever it is, you can join us in the spaces. I'll put some information out there. And thank you for joining me, mate. It's always a pleasure. - Yeah, I always love being on your talk to you, Max, and engaging with your listeners.

So thanks for having me. And I look forward to the spaces. It's going to be a good time. - Awesome. All right, mate. Thanks for coming on. - Yeah, dude. I think that was a really good moment.

- Thanks for listening. I really hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do share it with friends and family. If you have any questions about the new Tanto, you can reach out to me or the team.

And if you want to discount on one, you can use the code ungovernable or click in the link at the bottom of the show notes. That will give you a discount and help me continue to run this show.

I've also put some links in there for anyone who might be interested in the new ungovernable misfits clothing. We teamed up with Samurai and Ronan Dojo and made a hoodie and t-shirt collection.

Check it out at ungovernable misfits.com and make sure to join us on the 15th at eight o'clock London time. Look forward to hearing from you.