Take personal responsibility - one seed at a time

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

-♪ Bitcoin ♪ -♪ Bitcoin ♪

Now, what's the Bitcoin? -The Bitcoin's like rat poison. -Yeah. -Oh. -The greatest scam in history. -Let's get it. -Bitcoin will go to fucking zero. -♪ Yeah ♪ -♪ Yeah ♪ -♪ Yeah ♪ -♪ Yeah ♪ -♪ Yeah ♪ -♪ Yeah ♪ -♪ 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 sliver to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Welcome back. I spoke to Antimas. You'll recognize him from our Bitcoin monthlies with Bitcoin Q&A. We discussed seed stamping, and we got into the topic of multi-sig. Antimas has been working really closely with seed mint and also seed siner.

It's really important that people take these things seriously and stamping your seeds into steel is a great start. As you listen to this, you will be able to go onto Vulcan21.com, and you'll be able to see all the incredible tools available to make this easier for you.

Before we start the show, I just want to say thanks to everyone who's been reaching out to me, buying the merch, and also being using podcasting 2.0 apps. I really do appreciate all the support.

And if you find it useful, you find it enjoyable. Please do share with your friends and family. I'd also like to say thank you to my show sponsors. Let's start with foundation devices. Foundation devices recently won the JSTARC Award at Guns N' Bitcoin for the best Bitcoin hardware.

They have an incredible team, really high-quality products. And a really simple, easy-to-use interface. You can use them for single-sig or multi-sig. And if you want to check them out, go to foundation devices.com and use the code bit by bit to get $10 off your purchase.

If you have any questions, you can always reach out to me before you order. Next up, staying on the theme of multi-sig, we have Casa. Casa make it so simple for anybody to have multi-sig.

We go through some of the different procedures in the podcast today of how to do this yourself. But if you are a fuckwit like me, and you either have too much to do, or you don't fully trust yourself, you can have a two of three with Casa.

They can hold one key in case you were to lose one, stamp it wrong, lose a hardware wallet, anything like that. You always know that they're there to hold your hand. You can do this from as little as $10 a month, and you can also get an additional 10% off if you use the code bit by bit 10.

Go to keys.casa and check them out. And if you have any questions at all, you can reach out to me and I'll be happy to help. And finally, there's no point in having multi-sig or seeds or stamps or anything else if you do not have the SATs in the first place.

Now, many of you Klebs will be mining or stacking no KYC, but if you wanna get your hands on some SATs or you are new listening to this, you can go to fastbitcoins.com. They make it so simple to buy Bitcoin.

They have an amazing team, and although they have to take your KYC data, they do everything they can to keep you safe and secure, and they also make sure that you take those SATs off exchange as soon as possible.

Check them out at fastbitcoins.com, and you can always reach out to me if you want to understand the trade-offs or you want any more information before you purchase. Enjoy the show. Hey, mate.

- Back again. (laughs) - Third time's a charm. - Okay, this is sounding better. - Yeah, I think that's better. Yeah, so it's nice to have you back on. I see you've been a very, very busy boy.

- Yeah, it's been good times. Yeah, to do this is getting longer, but it's pretty amazing. All the collaboration and all the people who suddenly get in contact with and the productivity coming out of all of it.

Something to dive in today, but it's been absolutely amazing. - And what about Nick? - Just doing fuck-all with his feet up, is he? (laughs) - No, man, he's a beast in every three second he has.

He's running after some idea he has such a creative dude and a real drive to get things done, so. - It's a match made in heaven. It's really cool to see you guys working and then also so closely would seat sign it as well.

And yeah, just so much creativity going on at the moment. And making really cool stuff. So we're kind of dive straight in if that's alright with you. - Sure. - 'Cause obviously I haven't really had an update from you guys since we last chatted.

I've seen what's happening sort of through Twitter and the odd conversation we've had, but obviously you've got seed men and now you've got this new Vulcan website, which looks really interesting and I hear snippets, but it'd be really cool to hear what's this process been like because I know you've been pouring loads of time into it.

- Yeah, so I mean, just to recap quickly, I mean, it's about a year ago that I started or reached out to Nick at the time. I was just looking for something to contribute with like a mechanical engineering background and something like be able to do something in the space.

And obviously with everything being so geared towards coding and like software development, it's pretty difficult. And then I saw Nick posted his work on the seed men and that was just fascinating to see.

So I reached out and that kicked off and went really fast from there and set up a first production, like pre-production set of 27 that we sold out. That was great. And so we've been working on a few improvements for the seed men itself, but then Nick, I mean, we both have been using seed signer pretty much for a year and a half now.

So pretty much from the beginning. And he started developing a version of their seed QR on steel plates. So this steel QR, yeah. So there's a loads of collaboration between him and seed signer and the whole community going backwards and forwards their different prototypes.

They went through. And yeah, so that was like the end of last year, beginning of this year. And at that point, we knew, okay, like demand is there for the seedment, but also obviously for these plates, we really want to get these out to people.

But obviously in the hardware space, it's all pretty capital intensive, logistics intensive and so on. So we weren't quite sure how to tackle this. So yeah, like for the last few months, we've been working through different solutions.

And then at some point decided that we'd both be starting our own company and then just like splitting up the workload 'cause it was really important to us to keep like the whole work we'd been doing with the rest of the community as well.

I mean, it's all based on open source, collaborating and working together. And we really wanted to promote that and not lose that by starting company and then going proprietary. So yeah, we were trying to find ways of doing that.

And we now settled on the solution that he'd be doing manufacturing and further development design. And I'd be doing the whole shipping, logistics, product placement and management and so on and customer support and all the bells and whistles would go with that and that suits our strengths, both I think quite well.

And at the end of the day, we're still working together. More, I mean, on paper, we're two companies, but at the end of the day, we're still working in a collaboration there. But yeah, that's the stage.

- Very cool. How are you getting around all the shipping and stuff like that? Because these things are presumably very heavy and shipping outside the EU and all that kind of stuff can be a bit of a pain in the arse.

Like, have you found a good way around it? And also with like all the taxes that come with it with international shipping, have you found sort of clever ways around that? Or is it just one of those things you have to suck up the cost?

- Yeah, I mean, obviously that's the goal to get that as minimal as possible, especially on the fees. It's pretty difficult because the parts that we're selling, obviously, made of solid steel, they're not very light.

So like the weights go up pretty significantly if you buy a few products. So especially like global shipping still is pretty pricey. We have now set up a system that it is definitely possible to ship pretty much anywhere.

And we've got the legal stuff all down as well and accounting and so on. So that's all fine, but it's still a work in progress. At the moment we've still got pretty standard shipping prices and we're hoping to get that down with bulk and also just with different packaging solutions and so on, get that as small as possible.

But I think one of the most important things and that's like our priority here in long-term vision is also to just grow like a network of free open source hardware people working in that space to collaborate there and see the loads of projects that are building different devices, physical devices

that they want to sell or want to distribute. And they're all in the same situation as we are. Some obviously in the US wanting to send to Europe and some here wanting to China or to Australia or whatever and building some kind of network there and growing in that space to get more efficient and collaborate on that.

I think that's something that's really important. I think that's not out of reach to do and that would obviously get prices way down. - Oh, interesting. So you thinking like if there are other hardware manufacturers who like metal work, for example, that you would have those files available

and you'd have some sort of agreement that's like, right, if there's one who say in the UK and you get an order in the UK, then maybe they produce it and ship it and get a percentage, but it brings everyone's costs down and then vice versa.

Is that absolutely what you're getting at? Okay. - Absolutely. I mean, the ideal situation would be if you can actually like distribute production into different continents, but also into different countries and jurisdictions, but also just the logistics themselves so that you could just send over a whole bunch of products

and bulk and have them distributed by another company selling other products and then we'd do the same for others and so on. So yeah, I mean, there are loads of different options there, but I think especially in this space, working in open source anyway, we don't have to limit that just to design work.

We can actually open source a whole bunch of services that we'd do for ourselves anyway and can take up other people into that as well. - Really cool. Okay. And then so when are you gonna be having these things available?

Is it gonna be once the pod goes out or have we still got a little bit of time to wait? Like if someone is listening to this and they've gone on to Falcon or gone on to Seidman and seen those and the plates and stuff like, are they able now to order or what's the score there?

- Yeah, we've got pretty much everything set, which is great. It's been a long time coming now. We'd hope to be online a bit earlier, but the launch date is now Tuesday, the 12th of April.

So as from tomorrow, this will be time of recording. This will be online and you'll be able to order. So yeah, Vulcan, that's the shop under which we'll be selling the products and then we'll have the seed mint and the steel QR as our main products and a whole bunch of tooling and so on to go with it.

Yeah, so you can drop that in your car, but obviously we'll start off with the steel QRs. That's been the main focus and the highest demand at the moment and the seed mints, they'll probably be coming in in about two months or so.

- Okay, but can people pre-order those or? - Not yet, not yet, because we're still in negotiations with manufacturers. This is the first batch we sold. Nick produced them himself in his free time, which was obviously a huge hassle.

That was a fuckload of work. So that's just not sustainable, especially if we want to ramp up the amounts there. So yeah, we're still negotiating with a few manufacturers and doing prototypes there.

So we're sure about the construction itself, about the design, but just so that we can, we're sure we get the right quality from the producers and that the surfaces are all as we'd like to have them and that's reproducible.

Once that's fixed, then we can start with a first batch and then we'll be selling them with a shipping time about three to four weeks, probably sometime in May. - Okay, cool. Well, it will be, I'm hoping to get this pod out tomorrow for when you launch anyway.

So as someone listens to this, hopefully you should be live anyway. And yeah, they just have to wait a little bit for the seedment, but the other bits will be available. 'Cause it's funny, a lot of people who I've showed, I ordered one with you guys when the first batch came around and I started giving you a shipping address actually.

But I will do that, but I've showed quite a few people, like when I'm onboarding them and I'm like, you know, explaining where you write down the seed word and I'll always say now, to be honest, you probably want to stamp this into a steel really because you don't really want it on paper.

It's kind of, it's not ideal, especially if you're putting a significant portion of your net worth into this and then I show them. And even like normies who are just getting involved, they're like, that's really beautiful.

What does it do? And I'm like, yeah, well, this is the way that you would stamp your seed and I've showed them. And there's been a lot of interest, actually a lot more interest with that than I normally get with any of the hardware stuff, like as in, you know, from showing them a hardware wallet or a seed signer or anything like that.

They're like, yeah, I don't really care. There's no like real interest for that. Whereas, I don't know, it's just a really beautiful design. I think the materials that you've chosen to use are really high quality.

And yeah, the normies seem to like it. So it's best you do get that manufacturing sorted and otherwise Nick will end up having a heart attack trying to knock them all out. - Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, that's a testament to Nick and his eye for like functional design and aesthetics.

'Cause everything he does and he designs, it's functionality first, then like quality and detail. And those two things, the end result is always something that is aesthetically pleasing and the choice of materials is absolutely great.

And I think that's like the cornerstone of the product, of the seed mint and also the steel QRs, just this high quality materials and functional design. And I think, I noticed that personally as well, just when you're setting up your seeds for your stack, there's so much emotional involvement as well,

just with the whole space and with Bitcoin itself. We've all invested so much time into this and we're all behind this 100%. And you want to identify with the materials and the tools you use to secure that in the same way that you do with the asset and the network itself.

And I think that's something that we, yeah, really wanna focus on to get that out there and I think with the steel QR plates, that's a really nice balance that we're trying to walk on here 'cause the seed sign of project, I think generally, is one of the most important projects in the entire Bitcoin space.

And I really mean it. - No, I agree. - It's done worlds for so many people globally and it unlocks so much potential at such a low cost with parts you can get in any hardware store and 3D printed cases such a community that's so helpful.

And that ethos is something that we want to, yeah, we want to live by it too and then cooperate into the steel QR. So we wanna keep it accessible, we wanna keep it low price, but at the same time, we wanna have it with a high quality and longevity that you can feel confident to hold your seeds on there long term.

- Yeah, I mean seed signer is such a great example for other projects to look to and just say like, wow, look what they've achieved and they're an open source project. It just shows what people are capable of when they're working together and it's a great idea.

I think people can build on top of it and I can very much see the same happening with what you're doing. And between those two projects, you basically got things covered. There are other ways to do it, obviously, but you can go from zero to hero with those two products, those two businesses very quickly and easily and no one has to know.

- Yeah, yeah, I know that's, with now starting these companies as well, especially in the hardware space, because it's so capital intensive at the beginning to get everything set up, that was more or less a necessity that we had to do.

But keeping all designs and all the work that we do and design and collaboration, open source is really important to us. So I think, yeah, on that space, I mean, it's just been absolutely amazing working with SeedSigner together and we'll see where this takes us.

But I think also with design of this DLQR itself, I mean, maybe we could touch on that as well, because there are a few things to consider if people want to get one of these. We do have a few different versions and it's pretty difficult to explain in a few sentences on our website.

So I might take the chance now to just-- - Yeah, definitely. - Explain that. So we have, or maybe I'll take one step further back. The SteelQRs themselves, it's a steel plate on which to stamp your seed encoded as a QR code.

So if anyone has ever used a SeedSigner, you'd know that when you create a seed, you get your seed words, your 12 or 24 seed words, and these seed words can be encoded on your SeedSigner as a QR code.

And this will be shown on your screen of your SeedSigner and you can transcribe that onto these plates. First manually with a Sharpie and then you can stamp the holes with a center bunch.

So that's a process. Now the thing is that the amount of data you have to store that drives the size of the QR code. So if you have a 24 word seed, you'll have to store more data than 12 word seed, obviously.

So for those two sizes, we've got two different formats. That's the standard 24, which is the S24 for your 24 word seed and the S12, the standard 12 for your 12 word seed. So these are gonna be the S24 is a 29 by 29 QR code and the S12 is 25 by 25.

So the thing is there are quite a few holes to stamp. So for anyone who wants to just envision the process with the S24, you're talking about 350 to 400 punches and with an S12 around 250 to 300.

Now that sounds overwhelming, but once you get the hang of it, it's actually a lot faster than punching your 24 words into a steel bar, letter for letter. So those are the two standard formats that we'll be selling and seed signer has developed a compact seed format.

'Cause in every QR code, there's a whole bunch of data that is the same every time, it's redundant. It's just a part of the standard of the QR code and ripping all of that out just the raw data for your seed words left results in a much smaller seed format.

- Okay. - So this would be then 21 times 21. So that would leave you with about 150 to 200 punches. So that'd be a lot less. The disadvantage is that it's not a standardized QR format. So you can't scan it with any other device.

So we're still working on that. At the moment, we'll be selling the two standard versions and we've also got like a demo version of the compact format to sell as well. You can buy that, but just for anyone just to know, it's good to keep in mind that that is not a standardized format.

- Okay. And so obviously I can't see on the website yet, but can you talk about the pricing of the different products or do you have bundles or like, if someone's just listening to this and saying, okay, this is the first time I'm actually gonna take control of my Sats and this sounds like a good way of doing it.

What are they gonna be buying? What are the options and what's the pricing? - Yeah, so if we'd be selling now to start off, we'll be selling these three different steel QR formats and the two standard sizes will, for a single cost, 35 euros per piece and the smaller version, the compact version, 21 euros.

So that's the main pricing. Obviously, we'll be selling them then in a pack of three or six and the prices go down accordingly. So it gets cheaper the more you buy and those are like the standard bundles where you just get the plates.

But we've also set up three different bundles. The first is the essential bundle and that's just a plate or three plates or six plates plus a center punch either manual or automatic. And then we have the extensive bundle, which is then any number of plates you like plus both the center punch and or both versions

of the center punch, automatic and manual, as well as a anvil to stamp on and then the exclusive bundle, that's the largest will be one or three or six of each plate plus the center punches and the anvil.

- Okay. - So obviously there's something to browse through when you're there and there's a whole bunch of different configurations and options you can jump through in the site. But that's the main product range at the moment.

- Because presumably like if I was doing this, I would always want backups on backups. So I probably wouldn't even go for one personally like I'd be thinking about, oh, I'll have three or I'll have six or whatever, especially if someone's doing multi-sick and all these sorts of things.

So it's quite nice that you have those options. - Absolutely. - I think I don't envision a lot of people buying one. Maybe at the beginning, they will just to test and see, but I think long term will probably be setting up three as the minimum order.

We've also been discussing on whether to sell three, six, nine or three, five, 10. That's a bit of a, yeah, question of like how, what do you gear towards? And it's either, I mean, obviously this seed sign or itself was built with multi-sig in mind.

And the most common multi-sig is a two or three. So that would mean three plates of minimum. And then next would be a three or five. So that would be then five plates. But as I don't see too many people at the moment using a three or five.

So I think the better use case at the moment is to have either three, just one copy of each or six of them to have redundant plates. - That's what I would do. I would have six and I'd have redundancy.

That seems to make sense in my head. That's cool. It's really nice, really, really nice. It's amazing how quickly this has happened as well because I know it's like, okay, it's a year or whatever, but these things take time if you're doing it properly and it does feel like yesterday,

like we first had the conversation where it feels like yesterday that I first even saw a seedman and we featured it on 21ism and we're like, fuck analysis, this is really cool. And it's like Blinken, we're here.

And it's just amazing for someone who's coming in and we're always saying, take hold. Don't allow your sats to sit on exchange. And with these sort of things, it just feels so much more comfortable to tell people like, go and buy these things.

Here's a guide from Q&A or whoever else has written them and get going. Yeah, it's so much more comfortable 'cause before these things were around when I was first starting to stamp my seed words, I actually bought, I don't know where it was, I bought from it.

It might have been Amazon or something like that, just like steel plates, like whatever they were, like five inch by five inch steel plates. And it was supposed to be, what is it? Is it like 303 or I can't remember what the number is, but like the steel that isn't supposed to corrode.

Like a certain rating on it. And I ordered them, I paid like a reasonable amount of money for them and then I drew my own lines on it and put my own numbers, you know, one to whatever it was, I was doing 12, I think at the time.

And then stamped them by hand, like holding the little stamping kit and then a hammer and like doing it on my kitchen counter and it took forever to do. And then went away and hid them away and about two months later I came and like checked.

I was like, I'll just check, no one's found these. And they started rusting. And I was like, for fuck sake. And I went and doubled checks and it was definitely advertised as like, okay, this is the correct type of steel.

And then I was like, well, great. I've got to do all of this again. That's really fucking irritating and what a waste of time and money. And so just knowing that you've got products that are tested by other Bitcoiners and designed by other Bitcoiners and they're not going to mug you off, it's just so much more comfortable.

Because you know, like if I bought that from you and then two months later it starts rusting, I'm going to be putting it all over Twitter and calling you every name under the sun. Everyone's going to know.

And so, you know, it's that idea that you know, okay, this is what I'm buying, what I should be buying. And this is actually going to be safe in a fire or you know, isn't going to rust away and all the rest of it.

And you do it once, you do it properly and that's it. - Yeah, it's amazing how much there is to, there's a whole rabbit hole in itself. Diving into the specifications of the different alloys, even just looking at stainless steel.

There's a whole bunch of different stuff to consider. And Nick's got a wealth of experience on that field. So he's a pro there and knows exactly what he wants. He also has the opportunity to actually test the material when it comes to get them to a laboratory, to have them checked if the alloy is

and then all the single components in the alloy actually match what they're supposed to. So that's definitely great. So we can test that and that's all fine. The alloy itself that we've now chosen is three 16L.

I mean, there are a whole bunch of different naming schemes, but I think that's the most common or the other is 1.4404. It's one of the highest graded stainless steels with temperature resistance, well, melting point of over 1,450 degrees or Celsius.

So that's quite a bit higher than any residential fire. So that's out of that range. And also, we were also looking at a few other alloys, but here this one, the 360 Nell, is especially resistance against corrosion, especially against like chlorine and different acids.

So obviously these are outlier situations. I don't see most of these plates coming into a situation where you'd really need that. But the jump is a small one from one alloy to the other. And it's not a huge difference in price and work.

So just picking the right one now is definitely important. - Oh, definitely. I mean, for the extra few sets that it costs to upgrade it and make sure that it's resistant to all of that, it's well worth it.

Because if you do have a residential fire and you've gone for a lower quality material, and then you think, oh, well, at least I've stamped it into metal and you go and it's fucking melted and you can't read it.

And you're like, oh, that's my net worth gone because my hardware wallets were in there as well. And I don't have any other backups. So I'm fucked. Why didn't I spend the extra couple of euros or dollars or pounds just to go for something higher quality?

It just makes no sense. I suppose that should really be the standard because even these fireproof safes, when you actually read and look at the spec unless you go for a really expensive, really high quality safe, they don't actually stand up to that much.

- No. And I mean, it's always time based. So it's always like how long can it survive at a certain temperature? Those times are pretty short. So relying and even if the safe holds up structurally, the temperature will just rise inside.

And if you've got it on something, either an electronic device or on paper or some other less durable material that would just burn up inside anyway. So I think that's one of our priorities was to get this as low price as possible so that it's not a huge hurdle for people to get.

But the one compromise that we weren't willing to take is to take shortcuts on the material. We've chosen to take shortcuts then more on the surface finishing and so on, not have everything perfectly polished up and not the most brilliant packaging and all these kind of stuff.

We want it to be functional, but we want the actual product itself to be the maximum that it can be in longevity and functional quality and all the rest we can build up on as time goes on as maybe the quantities that we're getting out there rise, the manufacturing costs will go down and then we can also lower prices again

and get other nice features to accompany them. But the base had to be solid material and a build quality that does exactly what it's supposed to. - A lot of what you're doing and what seat sign is doing is around multi-sig.

You obviously have spent a lot of time thinking about this and the ideal setup. Do you have something in your head where hardware-wise and software-wise, what you feel is the best mix for most people, something that you would advise to friends or family?

- Yeah, this is the dangerous part where it's- - Without doxing. - No, no, no, that's not the deal. It's more giving advice on something that is so dependent on your personal situation. But there are a few things to keep in mind generally when you're setting up your multi-sig.

There's a bunch and I'll just, in no particular order, one of them is definitely to get your threat model defined and in this whole process, I'd advise anyone to really take your time. It doesn't have to be the same day you have to come to a conclusion.

You can take a week or a month to go over this and rethink these things and document everything, write everything down so that you actually have written down the different things if you've worked through so you can recap how you came to a conclusion.

And I think the threat model is definitely a big one because there are so many things you can guard against. But for most people, there are quite a few of those things that aren't the highest priority.

So for some people, obviously depending on the jurisdiction in which you live, the threat might be coming from an institution or from the government. In another place it might be from crime, people breaking into your house.

In other situations, it might be natural catastrophes of hurricanes or floods in other places or in other situations. Maybe you yourself are the biggest threat and you just want to keep it simple.

And just going over complicated will actually be the biggest threat. And then obviously there's the threat of someone hacking your devices or maybe you're sharing a flat with a variety of different people with that changing up constantly and you don't really know who to trust.

Or you're a nomad and you're traveling around the world. I mean, there's so many different scenarios and I think it's really important to define for yourself what is it actually that is the biggest threat to my stack and to base all further decisions off of that.

And then obviously there are other considerations that come in after that. Like obviously the cost, like how much is your budget? How much is, how high is the amount you're storing? That has to be somehow in relation.

How high is your technical ability and your understanding of the process and the underlying technology? And also to what different locations do you have access? And so these are all things that factor into that.

But I made to tie this all together again. We've come to a point in the community and in software development and also hardware development that it is very user friendly by now to set up a multi-stake.

And I don't think I could have said that confidently one and a half, two years ago. - Oh no, definitely not. - And the development has been absolutely amazing, especially on the front of the hardware wallets and seed signer coming out, but especially the coordinators like Sparrow and Spectre.

So I think for a lot of people just going from a single-sake to a multi-sake will already bring a huge benefit and a piece of mind. And yeah, I think that's step one. - Yeah, I've been thinking about it for a long time and working out where I am concerned and what things I'd like to probably use.

And a big one for me is I really don't like the idea of having one hardware manufacturer. So I really like the idea of a mix of, say, seed signer and foundation 'cause I don't wanna rely on one.

But then what I quite like is where you guys have got this QR scanning capability. So it's like, you know, you can punch, punch all the holes and do all of that. So you've got these plates ready.

And I quite like in my head like something like Sparrow and then having two of three and then having, yeah, the mix of the hardware wallets and having each plate in a separate location. So someone would then have to go to three separate locations, scan these before they can spend and have that as like deep cold storage.

It adds not that much complexity but it adds a lot of security. Like no one can just turn up your house and put a gun to your head and say, right, you need to send me this. And like, 'cause you can't actually do it.

That I quite like. And the fact that it is scannable, the QR, that feels like a much nicer flow to me. - Absolutely. I mean, working with the seed signer, everyone who's done that a few times will know that spending from a wallet with the seed signer is quite the process of typing in all your 24 seed words with a joystick.

So having that scan the QR code is a huge benefit there. Obviously at the moment, the seed signer is the only hardware wallet or signing device that supports that, but we've been hearing some positive feedback also from other manufacturers who might implement that in the future.

So hoping on that, that even though these other hardware wallets are in the traditional sense hardware wallets that save your seed, they just also have the capability of scanning a QR code with the seed and forgetting it again afterwards.

So you can use it at the end of the day, the same way as you would a seed signer. And if we get to that stage, then I think we'll be another whole step further along so that you can really use these plates, this deal QR interchangeably with different manufacturers.

Yeah, I like that. Relying on anything just one thing freaks me out. You know, even if it's a manufacturer that's been around for a long time and I have trust in, I still feel a bit funny about it.

Even having just one stack or one wallet, I always find funny. Like people always laugh at me 'cause I'm always like, well, I'd never want all my eggs in one basket like, yeah, it was multi-sick.

Like you just have one and you have all your funds in there. And I'm like, no, I wouldn't feel comfortable with that personally. I'd want at least a couple so that if I fuck something up or something goes terribly wrong, then you haven't lost everything.

I think some of that just comes down to like my understanding with some things, like there are holes in my understanding in certain parts where I'm like, not 100% confident and I don't fully understand the process and start to finish. So I'm then concerned and I just think, well, if I don't fully understand it,

then I can't fully trust it, which means I don't want to just have one thing. Like, what are your thoughts around that? Are you of the opinion in the way you're thinking, well, I just have one and I understand that this works and I have to sign with two.

If I lose one, I'm still fine in a two of three or, you know, and I have redundant. I have backup, so everything's fine. Would you feel comfortable having effectively all your ex in one basket or not really still?

- I think what you mentioned beforehand of having being independent of a manufacturer is a big deal and I don't see any manufacturers at the moment where I'd say here that I'd think they were malicious, but you never know what can happen and you never know who's involved in all this process.

They're all electronics that go through so many different factories and so many different hands. There is always the chance of something funny happening along the way. So as you say, having redundancy while setting up your multi-seq is a big one.

But I think for starters, just getting to a multi-seq, a two or three multi-seq is a step that is the most important step and one that I think you need to make before you can really go on to all the next steps after that.

I don't think it's something that you have to get right and perfect the first time. Like don't let the... - Perfect, be the end of the good, that's the one. - There are so many optionalities with all of this, setting that all up and you have to be comfortable with the process itself and you can only do that when you actually use it.

So I think as well that it's not a bad idea to upgrade your setup, maybe once a year or so depending on your situation. But if you're involved in the community and if you're learning along the way and you want to upgrade, don't be afraid to go in steps and then just reshuffle to a new setup.

At some point that will keep you confident with doing transactions, with using the tools, with working with the different devices and softwares that would also incrementally make your setup safer.

- That makes sense. And also I suppose if you set up a multi-sig, I think a lot of it's like time. So like if I set up a multi-sig now, I obviously wouldn't transfer everything over to it because I'd be like, okay, if I fuck it up, then there's a real problem.

But I suppose if I've set it up and then I send in £50 or something like that and then I go, right, now let me start this all from fresh and just see that I can actually see that if I was to actually lose this hardware, whatever I can, then fucking hell mate.

I'm losing my brain here. You know what I'm trying to say? - If I was to restore. (laughing) Sorry, my brain's absolutely fucking mush today. If I was to restore and then no, okay, right, I'm all good.

Then over time I'd probably feel comfortable sending more in over time and sort of going from single-sig to multi-sig and at some stage I'd go, okay, now I get this, I feel comfortable. - Exactly.

You don't have to like transfer everything each time and go from one to the next. You can have multiple parallel and just trickle down in steps and push this further down the line. So you've got maybe an old single-sig and then you set up a single-sig with a passphrase and you push a bit in and then go from there

to a three multi-sig and then maybe redistribute your seeds to different locations to get that more secure. I think just circling back to the first thing I said on that topic as well, the documentation is something that should not be neglected.

'Cause I think I've heard the argument as well that some people say, yeah, but if I document everything and someone finds the documentation, then they'll know exactly what the whole setup is.

And obviously there is some truth to that, but I think the risk of not remembering exactly what your setup is, especially if you're going through different setups and trying out different solutions or you've just got different stacks for different things, it's so important to be disciplined

with actually writing down exactly what you've been doing and then going back, checking your backups, taking notes and filing every change you make so that even if you do for some reason, leave everything for a few years and come back to it, you can read up on it.

Or if something God forbid happened to you, your loved ones and relatives can fall back on that and go through that. And I think that just gives a lot of peace of mind and will help you significantly in an emergency situation.

- Well, I'm really looking forward to this going live tomorrow. I'm going to get on and just a bit of editing and get an intro and an outro done and all that kind of stuff, but I'm gonna try and get it live for tomorrow.

Thanks for coming on, mate and giving me an update and I look forward to getting one of these in my hand and for people to be able to see them. So just remind everyone where they can go to find your products and get some more info.

- Yeah, so cheers for having me. The shop is at Volcan21.com and the same Volcan 21 on Twitter. The shop will be live tomorrow, tomorrow evening, sometime depending on your time zone, but we'll have all the information on Twitter and we'll probably have one of the bundles to give away sometime tomorrow throughout the day.

So maybe check that out and keep a lookout for that and yeah, I hope to see where this all takes us but we're really excited and yeah. - Looking forward to it. - Nice one, mate, well congrats on pulling this off and I know a lot of hard work has gone into it.

So it's really good to see that you are at the finish line now and things are going live. So yeah, congrats, it's really cool to see and we will catch up soon.