I had a great discussion with Seth about a number of topics centering primarily on privacy and the proposed Fincen regulations. Seth has deep knowledge about privacy aspects of Bitcoin with a great ability to clearly communicate what we need to know.
BTC at time of recording: $34,623
Block height at time of recording: 814,874
News and Links
Website for Comments on Proposed Crypto Regulation
https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-treasury-crypto-mixers-money-laundering
Seth's Blog Articles on Patriot Act and Tornado Cash Indictment
https://freedom.tech/patriot-act-comes-to-cryptocurrency/
https://freedom.tech/tornado-cash-indictment-shows-desperation/
Seth's Twitter Accounts
@sethforprivacy
@FOUNDATIONdvcs
@freedomtech
Seth's Book Picks
Dune Trilogy by Frank Herbert
Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
The Pacific War Trilogy by Ian W. Toll
Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942
The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942–1944
Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945
Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
Music Credits
Protofunk by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4247-protofunk
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Ethernight Club by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/7612-ethernight-club
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Website
https://satoshis-plebs.com
Podcasting 2.0 Apps available at http://podcastapps.com and Value4Value information page available here: https://value4value.info
McIntosh can be reached by email at [email protected] and on Twitter at @McIntoshFinTech. His mastodon handle is @[email protected] and his Nostr. Kenshin can be reached on Twitter at @kenshin_ninja or on Nostr. Kenshin’s email is [email protected]. You can also follow the Satoshi’s Plebs podcast account on Nostr. We are looking forward to hearing from you!
We are looking forward to hearing from you!
[00:00:00]
McIntosh:
Hey, sat stackers. Today is November 2nd, and this is episode 141 of generation Bitcoin. I'm your host, Macintosh, and today's episode is a conversation with Seth for privacy. Alright. Let's, let's do our price update. To our market update, and we will jump right on in. We've got lots to talk about today. We had a great conversation with Seth, and I wanna get right into that. Right now, as I record, the price of Bitcoin is 34,620 three. That's 34,623. And our block height at time of recording is 814-784. I'm sorry? That's 814-874.
TikTok next block. Alright. As I started recording earlier today, an hour ago or so, an hour and a half ago with Right as I sat down to record, I got a new block. 1st one in over a day. Been a little slow and a little slow there for the old brains pool, but that's the way it goes. So, Anyways, our difficulty adjustment at this point will be, looking like it's going to happen. Oh my. Where is that? I can always lose track of this thing. There it is. November 11th 2023. Of course. Right now, it's estimated to be 8.41% up. Man, I hope it is not.
Our average block time right now, though, is 9 minutes and 14 seconds, which is why we would have that difficulty adjustment up. The pool is full, and sets are, blocks are expensive. Transactions, I should say, more expensive. Our hash rate right now, according to this 7 day moving average, 467.9 x hash. Yikes. Keep on climbing towards 500. Man, could you guys slow down? And we are officially at 88% of our progress to the next having. How are things doing out in the market? Well, I told you the price. As of this recording. The price is good. We have not broken 35,000 at least significantly at this point. We have definitely been staying below it, and we're just kinda where we're at. I mean, Let's look at the chart here real quick. I don't think a whole lot has changed.
I guess I was wrong about that bull pin. So it turns out I told you last time we recorded, we fell out of a bullpennant, which is true. You could certainly make the argument there was one there. But it It turns out that pendant is actually still forming. Very interesting. I would argue, we are getting towards the top of that. I do apologize. At the time, it made sense what I drew. I I really didn't wait long enough. It'd only been 3 days it'd been developing, so that's kind of my fault. But regardless, we've still got that $35,000 and some change, kind of sealing.
We've not broken through that, but it will not it has not fallen down. The Bollinger Bands are wide open. We could go way up. We could hit that 37,000 before we if, like, if it just woke up today and said, we're going, and not even go outside the ball of your bands. That would be pretty sweet. It looks like though before the end of the week, there's a very good chance, we could break through. I think by next Sunday, we'll know one way or the other. More likely we're going up, but certainly one way or the other. Of course, as always, this is not marketing marketing. This is not trading advice.
As always here on Generation Bitcoin. We dollar cost average. We do not try and time this market. I hope you are stacking sets. However you are doing that, of course, I talk about strike a lot. I would especially given today's topic mentioned, of course, your KYC ing yourself using that, but, but it's certainly a handy way to do that. Privacy is something here on generation Bitcoin that I think we're going to end up talking about more and more over the coming months and probably years. It's just too important a topic. It's something that a lot of people don't understand. And talking to Seth today gave us a great intro to some of the concepts. I've discussed a lot of this in the past.
I wanted to have him on specifically to talk about this fence and regulation, which we did. But, He is a great resource for this kind of stuff, and we're talking about all the different places that he can be reached, read, absorbed, listened to, and so on. So we'll be jumping right into that in just a second. But, again, in general market, we're We're about ready to make a move. I'm gonna go ahead and say by Sunday, by the end of the day, Sunday, I'm thinking by the close of the week, it's gonna do something. So alright. So we're gonna go from here. We're gonna jump right into this interview. Again, it was a great interview.
I really appreciate this. At the end, I'm gonna wrap up some things, maybe spanned a little bit on one of the topics that we were talking about. I don't feel like we discussed it enough. It's actually a new new thing for him, and I kinda wanted to pull that out and make sure you are aware of it. So enjoy this, and here we go. For our main section today, we're gonna be talking with Seth for privacy for we're gonna be talking to Seth. That's his handle on Twitter, Seth for privacy, about some privacy topics, about fencing, the regulation that they're attempting to pass right now that, in my opinion, is not a real good thing. I think he shares that thing, that idea. And then we're also gonna be talking about his other pursuits because he has a number of them.
He looks to me like he's a really busy person. We'll find out. But, Yeah. Let's Seth, first of all, welcome to the show. Thanks for, thanks for being here.
[00:07:30] Seth:
Thanks so much for having me, man. I'm I'm very excited to to chat through these topics, and I don't know. There's there's so many things kind of pressing in the world today that I'm trying to do what I can to help with. But a lot of that comes down to Kind of the the end user taking action. So looking forward to talking through this. I know a lot of this stuff can sound kinda depressing at at first glance, but I think there's some some good optimistic takes and some good action items we can we can take out of it. So looking forward to it. Great. I,
[00:07:57] McIntosh:
I'm glad you've got some optimism. Maybe you could have a little bit for me. That'd be probably a good thing. Yeah. It's hard sometimes when you're looking at this this kind of stuff. It it can be, you know, frankly, depressing, because we we see these things changing, and and, you know, for those of us who've been around frankly since before, the Patriot Act, which was, done by, 911. What it was initiated out of that, really. Mhmm. A lot of the privacy issues that we're having today. And I think I've seen you mention this that that they stem from that, in my opinion. So wow. Anyways, let's not get into all that quite yet. You've got a lot of other things going on, and I wanna talk about about those first. So first of all, you are a podcaster, so let's talk about that.
[00:08:48] Seth:
Yeah. So I kind of have a a broad range of things that I do or have done in the space. So generally, I've I've had a good platform on on Twitter, now X, which I don't know if I ever get used to there being a new name. Focusing on essentially privacy and security education has been kind of my focus. I really got woken up to the need for personal privacy after reading reading Snowden's book, really about 2019, so relatively relatively new to the scene. And that that made me take a kind of a drastic shift in what I wanted to work on with my career, what I wanted to work on in my free time. And Out of that came me using Twitter as an educational tool, and then eventually launching my own podcast, which was called Opt Out. It is still up. I run the website and everything. I haven't recorded in a while just because work life and family life have taken over the the majority of the time I was using for that before. But, It's, I think, a a good resource, especially when starting the personal privacy journey there. But that's that's like a very quick background. We can get into kind of the work side of things and and where I've landed there if you want as well.
[00:09:54] McIntosh:
Feel free to share as much as you want. I mean, your name is Seth for privacy, so I don't talk a whole lot about kind of my background in general. I'm a software engineer, but that's basically the extent of what I've told my audience. You're you're you're welcome to share whatever you wish. You do have some other things going on that you talk about on Twitter that we do certainly need to get into. So
[00:10:19] Seth:
Yeah. Yeah. I can also expand the intro a little bit. So I I am Seth from privacy, but I I do show my face on on podcast video and that sort of thing because I do think that there's a a value in someone who deeply loves personal privacy and understands it, like, I think well and is able to to distill the topics down still being an approachable face, not just a pseudonym. I think that the the default approach for most people should be Pseudonymous or anonymous. It's just safer. It's it's better for for almost every aspect of life online, I mean, obviously. Like, the real world buying a house, etcetera. It's Not easy to do anonymously, unfortunately. But I've chosen to be a little bit more publicly facing. So for my work, in in my past, I've worked in IT. I won't go more detail than that. It's not not very interesting.
But the the place that I've landed is I actually started working in the Bitcoin space, just over a year ago now. Okay. I jumped in and joined the team at Foundation Devices, who build Passport, which is a Bitcoin only hardware wallets. Very easy to use, very approachable, very security and privacy conscious, and then a mobile app called Envoy. So I jumped in with them initially as head of content. It's kind of expanded to to head of Strategy and marketing. But, really, the goal is bringing FreedomTech, which very simply FreedomTech as a as a category. It's just technology that empowers you, the user, Bringing that kind of technology to the masses, making it approachable, accessible, beautiful.
Trying to kinda kinda bring a lot of what Apple has done, but do it with an open source ethos and no walled gardens and and all the other fun stuff that comes with a lot of the the Bitcoin ethos.
[00:11:54] McIntosh:
Very cool. So I have not used the Foundation, product, at this point. So I can't really speak about it, but saying things like it's Bitcoin only, that's obviously a very good thing. Did you are are you saying that it's open source as well, the code for it?
[00:12:12] Seth:
Yeah. Yeah. So we actually open source is at the core of everything we do. So we're, we're big about contributing back to any projects that we use open source code from. Okay. Contributing to industry standards. But when it comes to our products that comes down to being open source hardware and software. Cool. So there are some good projects in the space that are open source software, which is vital, and we're thankful for that. I mean, We we view any project that's open source, even if it's a competitor, as being a positive and an add to the space. But We focus on doing both open source hardware and software, both to minimize trust in us, so that there's there's nothing happening behind the scenes that that no one who understands the code or understands the schematics can't can't uncover and point out to to people to to warn them if we were trying to do something sketchy, But also so that, no matter what happens to the company, everything that we make will always be contributing back to the the the broader Bitcoin and FreedomTech ecosystem. So even if Foundation goes away. Everything that we've made will help to create better products for Bitcoin and further technologies, as we expand down the line. So it's it's a big thing for us that what we do doesn't just contribute to a regulatory moat or to to our income, but it it it contributes also to the broader ecosystem and and helps the the space as a whole. So that's why we focus on being open source hardware and software with with everything we built.
[00:13:32] McIntosh:
Very cool. I did wanna mention, and you can correct me if I'm saying this improperly. I think I'm saying it at least close to correct. One of the definitions to go back, you talking about people being pseudo anonymous on the Internet and this kind of thing. Privacy is the ability to selectively reveal what you want people to know about yourself. Does that is have you heard that? Yeah. Okay. That's a it's a fantastic definition. It's usually my go to when I start to kinda describe personal privacy to someone. Right. And you choose to tell you put yourself on video, and I personally wouldn't have a problem with that either. I've never done video, a podcast, or anything like that at this point, but I don't have a problem with that. But you have somebody like, dear Gigi, and I hope I didn't butcher his name, but, you know, he literally does not show his face. And and that's his choice. He is choosing to not reveal that for whatever it doesn't even matter, whatever those reasons are. That's his choice. So I just I wanted to go back and kinda put a a bow tie on that and emphasize that for the listeners. It's something that I've mentioned in the past, and you reminded me of that when when you were talking about that earlier.
[00:14:49] Seth:
Yeah. I I definitely, I love that you expanded that and to expand it a little further, because I also mentioned pseudonymity and anonymity. It's privacy is not either of those things. So you can be passionate about personal privacy and not be anonymous or even pseudonymous. I could be using my my full name, telling every everybody where I work, and just choosing to To preserve the privacy of specific details about my life. But I could also love personal privacy, take active steps towards it, and be seeking to be totally anonymous. They're not things that have to go one way or another. Anonymity is very different than privacy. And like you said, privacy is just choosing what you reveal, and you can choose to reveal as little as possible, which would generally be closer towards anonymity Mhmm. Or as much as you want, which could be just totally being out in the public figure. But even even then, you still Both have a choice for privacy or should have a choice for privacy, or not. It's it's really up to you, which is the, I think, the important distinction there. And
[00:15:47] McIntosh:
not to get too crazy or conspiracy theory here, but I feel like, I don't feel like. I believe that this is something that is being trampled in the financial realm constantly over the last 20 years or so. We see a push for central bank digital currencies, for example. And I believe in large part that's because they want to be able to track every purchase that you've got, and people don't realize How much data can be gathered from that if they're not involved in even certain parts of the industry, which I've not been directly involved in advertising or this kind of thing, but I do understand how it works. I mean, they can piece together so much data and analyze it about Somebody, they can tell your your patterns and and all of this kind of stuff.
And if you're using a digital currency, You have no ability of a nonprivate digital currency. Let me say that. That you have no ability to stop that. All of that data gets hoovered up. It gets pulled in to a database, and then it can be analyzed and, you know, sliced and diced and whatever later. So, anyways, the point to all that is when we push back on things like Bitcoin and say, no. We need privacy for for Bitcoin. We it's kind of the same argument about cash. I don't care who does what with cash. People do bad things with money regardless. Everybody's always like, Oh, well, the drug dealers use cash or the drug dealers use Bitcoin. I don't I don't care.
That's not you You can't stop everybody from using something because of what somebody does with it. And, you know, I don't know. I'm just maybe I'm getting off on a rant here. No. But it does tie into what we're fixing to talk about with FinCym. Yeah. So Yeah.
[00:17:49] Seth:
Go ahead, sir. I was just gonna just gonna say, like, I I think that's something a lot of people don't understand is that financial privacy isn't just like a small piece of the pie. It's not like you have your your digital privacy, your email privacy, your mobile phone privacy, your messaging privacy, and your financial privacy, and they're all equal. It's not really how it is. No. Because if if you you touched on it with CBDCs, but if someone has visibility into every single Minute detail of how you spend your money and where you receive money from. Mhmm. They know everything about you, basically. Right. They may not have explicit details, But they're gonna know who you meet with, where you eat, who you ate, who you drink coffee with that day Mhmm. Where you work, who you did a little work on the side for they're gonna know everything about you. So if you don't have financial privacy, basically, all of the other human rights that that you would otherwise have falls apart very quickly. It's it's It's really the core to me of of any kind of privacy.
[00:18:44] McIntosh:
I get so frustrated when I go into the bank, and I need to send somebody some money and it's above a certain amount, which I believe in the United States at this point is is somewhere around $10,000. And they're like, well, what what are you doing with this? Why are you sending this person money? And I I Honestly, I want to scream in their faces. None of your blankety blank, blank, blank, blank business. But you can't. Right? I mean, I can choose to take my money out of the bank and literally carry it to whoever it is that needs it, but you're trapped in that system
[00:19:26] Seth:
at least to that extent. You know? But Even if you did that, there would be a a nice report filed about you. Right. You withdrew all your money from the bank and did something with it that they couldn't track. You almost can't win at this system. And the thing is is They are assuming that you're trying to launder Monday.
[00:19:44] McIntosh:
They are presuming that you're guilty. And I look at I'm not a constitutional scholar, but one of the amendments is you can't you don't assume guilt. Mhmm. Right? And people have privacy. That's another one. So,
[00:20:02] Seth:
I mean, I I don't know. I don't wanna get off well, I mean, that's kind of the topic in the podcast. But Yeah. Yeah. But It connects directly. I mean, if you if you talk about this concept of guilty until proven innocent, the the Finsen Proposal that's come out perfectly aligns with that shift in how governments view their citizens' finances, which is that anything that doesn't meet this explicit and insane criteria. Right. Anything that doesn't meet those criteria are, for some reason, money laundering and evil. Right. And there's this presumption that you must be a money launderer unless to prove that you're not to us Right. Which completely flips the entire, at least, US judicial system onset.
[00:20:41] McIntosh:
So for those who haven't heard. Can you go over kind of what we're talking about here with Vinson? So they came out with a proposed regulation, and I would say it's proposed. That has not been implemented, but, kinda take it from there and cover what the regulation is about, how people, Well, we'll go from there. Just
[00:21:03] Seth:
Yeah. Yeah. I can definitely dive into it. So there's a there's a long blog post that I've written that will go probably more detailed than we'll go into today Okay. That, I I can send you, and you can link in share notes. Absolutely. The The crux of it is that the US government has shown that they want to prevent people from being able to use privacy tools when it comes to cryptocurrency. And this has been a it's been a long war that they've been waging Mhmm. Really over a decade now. They've been attacking privacy projects within the Bitcoin space, it's been rapidly ramping up in the last 2 years, really starting with the sanctions against Tornado Cash, which we don't have to get into in too much detail. But Very quickly, Tornado Cash is a decentralized privacy tool for Ethereum, that could provide strong privacy.
A small part of its usage was, hackers supposedly from North Korea who stole funds within the Ethereum ecosystem and then use Tornado Cash to gain privacy. Fast forward, US government, they sanctioned the entirety of the Tornado Cash project, including their GitHub repos. One of the founders is arrested in the Netherlands. And then a year later, they ramped that up even more. In August this year, they indicted the other two remaining founders of Tornado Cash on charges of money laundering and money transmission, and are seeking, I think, 45 years in prison for the two of them even though they had no technical ability to prevent illicit usage of their tool. Right. So I have another blog post on that if you wanna get into kind of the the history there. But I think the context is helpful because for a lot of people, they saw this Fincen proposal, and they just thought it came out of left field. Like, where did this come from? Mhmm. This seems very, very detached from what we thought the US government wanted. But it's actually just a the next step in the the war that they've been waging against privacy tools for a while.
But very briefly, essentially, what happened is FinCen had already had a proposal in place. It was very clear that this was written up before the conflict, in the Middle East happened. But they used this conflict in the Middle East to to be kind of the boogeyman for this proposal. And the the justification is essentially we need people who use privacy tools to be on a list because Terrorists use cryptocurrency for financing, their terrorism.
[00:23:17] McIntosh:
Mhmm.
[00:23:19] Seth:
Interestingly, they don't provide any specifics on How much cryptocurrency is used for terrorism, and there's been a a massive backlash over the past couple of weeks because the the main article that was used for this, that was used by senator Warren in in her comments was essentially totally false And 99% over attributed Correct. Cryptocurrency usage to terrorists. Mhmm. But all that aside, essentially, Fincen has said, because terrorists use cryptocurrency supposedly, we need to make sure that whenever people use privacy tools within the cryptocurrency space, anytime they interact with a a regulated entity, be it a bank, a cryptocurrency exchange, cryptocurrency service provider.
Basically, anything that falls under US regulations. That need to have their information, all of it, including who they are, info about their their passport, Social Security number, whatever info you on file through the normal connect KYC procedures, and then send all of that info immediately along with info on where their funds came from, what privacy tool they used, amongst lots of other details. Package that up nicely and send it off to Finson immediately. Mhmm. So this is a big shift where even though Exchanges were using what was called KYC know your customer before where you'd have to, you know, submit a selfie and a a nice little video of you dancing with your passport or whatever to to get onto an exchange. That information wasn't sent to the government immediately. Right. Obviously, a lot of it ends up with the government, and the government can request it anytime. But with this new fence in ruling, whenever you use a privacy tool, all that information about you along with all of your history about what you've done in the exchange and any knowledge of on chain activity, Including privacy tool usage. It's immediately sent to the government, and you end up on a nice tidy list
[00:25:02] McIntosh:
that apparently also happens to have terrorists and money launderers. Sure. Of course, because you're evil, and you used a money laundering service called a coin join.
[00:25:14] Seth:
Uh-huh.
[00:25:15] McIntosh:
So are they targeting a specific set of techno services like, I don't know. I'm trying to think. Samurai Whirlpool maybe, or are they targeting a technology like CoinJoin in general?
[00:25:31] Seth:
Does that make sense? Yeah. No. That definitely makes sense. So the the target of the legislation, basically, how they define what they call a mixer, which I'll just called privacy tools because even the term mixing isn't as broad as their definition implies. Mhmm. Essentially, they're saying that Anything that provides privacy, no matter what, counts as a Cryptocurrency privacy tool, and that should be subject to these regulations. Specifically, they say, anything that facilitates transactions that obfuscate the source, destination, or amount Mhmm. Regardless of the type of protocol or service used. So they they do explicitly talk about some things. One of the specific categories they have sounds exactly like CoinJoin protocols, the Mhmm. The kind of broad protocol, not a specific one. Right. They don't name Wasabi or Samurai.
They do name tornado cash because, obviously, the US government already has open legal action against TornadoCash. Mhmm. So they use that as as a precedent for bad people using, these services and thus because TornadoCash is bad, Every privacy tool is bad. So that's their their broad definition. But it's it's hilarious because they even Know that their definition is overly broad. If you look further in kind of how they want to define this, they say, Fincen acknowledges this definition is relatively broad. However, given the nature of mixing, Fincen deems the breadth of this definition to be necessary. Wow. They're encompassing every single tool that I can think of. And I would include the centralized mixers that we've had in the past in Bitcoin, things like Helix. There's a lot of other examples of those.
Centralized coin join tools like Wasabi Wallet or Samura wallet. Decentralized tools like join mic join market or pay join seem like they would fit under this. Any kind of centralized instant exchanger, like fixed float or anything like that. Obviously, TornadoCash, they supposedly mention it. I would see decentralized privacy coins like Monero fitting under this definition and even decentralized exchanges because they they specifically talk about anytime you swap between cryptocurrencies that counts as a mixer, even though that makes no sense at all. That's it. Yeah. They include that as well because why not just lump up lump in everything?
[00:27:44] McIntosh:
So this clearly is not a good bill or it's not a bill. This clearly clearly is not a good regulation. Mhmm. As an end user, how can we push back against this?
[00:27:58] Seth:
Yeah. Yeah. And that's It's a tricky one. So if you are a US citizen, you can take the time to submit a comment and explain why you view the proposal as Illegitimate. Okay. And the the caveat there is obviously there's no explicit Control. We don't we don't get to vote on it or anything like that. We didn't get to elect the people that are part of Fincen in. Like, we we have no direct control as US citizens. But, supposedly, the comments are supposed to be considered and whether or not this will be, moved forward. And there's there's good efforts by people like Coin Center and and others who are helping to to set up this this comment system and helping people to better understand What these comments should look like when you submit them. It's something that I need to build out too for for our website freedom.tech to make it easier for people to submit comments.
That's the I mean, that's really the only direct action you can take. But the I think there's some other very important pieces of of action that we each can take as well. I mean, one of them, even if we we do comment or don't comment, whatever, one of the things that we can do Very important is just raise social awareness around what's going on here. I mean, the the best thing for the government is that no one talks about this FinCEN proposal. Right. It just gets to pass in the shadows, And life moves on theoretically even though regulations continue to tighten around anyone who wants to retain any sort of financial privacy. Right. So we can really kind of, like, pull back the fog of war, pull back those shadows from from the people around us by just talking about it. Obviously, we each have different kind of spheres of influence. Mhmm. Different circles that we can talk about this and and make sure that people understand What's actually happening here, especially outside of the cryptocurrency space.
Because like it or not, cryptocurrency users who would be deeply concerned about is a relatively small part of the world and and the the US populace. But if we can get a a broad consensus that we deserve financial privacy from our governments that can help to push back on this and and make it harder for the US government and specifically FinCEN to get something like this through because they they do still need our approval. They do still need our consent in one way or another. And if the masses are against something that they're proposing, they're they're much less Likely to try to force it through. Would this be something that say that either
[00:30:21] McIntosh:
the house or the senate could come back and say you can't do this? Does that does that make sense?
[00:30:28] Seth:
Yeah. I to be quite honest, I don't know what the next steps for this proposal are after it's approved or not by yeah. I I do need to do some more research on that, so I don't have an an interesting comment on the the next Steps here. I know that it waits for a 90 day proposal period, and then it moves on to be voted on, I believe, by the senate. Mhmm. But I I honestly don't know if I got my head, so I'll have to dig into that a little bit more. We'll we'll figure that out and and let the listeners know. Yeah. But it it's either that or there's gonna have to be court action
[00:31:03] McIntosh:
at some point saying, you know, This is illegal. You're violating our privacy or or whatever the tact is. Wow. That's yeah. One of the interesting things that I see out of all of this is I I told my listeners either late last year or very early this year, like January 1, that I thought that 2023 was gonna be a year of regulation. And I've been correct about that. Maybe not in really the way that I saw it in my head back then, but it's certainly been a lot of regulation. The SEC seems to be really cracking down on essentially alt coins.
Okay. Casino coins. I like that term better than another term that gets batted around a lot. Yeah. Okay. Which is fine with me, because I believe what they're saying is legitimate, and I have looked at it. I'm not just spouting off what I've heard on Twitter. They they do fit the definition of securities and therefore they should be regulated. And when they whine about it, it just whatever. So they've looked at Bitcoin on the other hand, and the chairman has said this is a commodity. This is not a security. And In my thinking, well, it doesn't even fall under the SEC's purview at that point.
But on the other hand, you've got this people like senator Warren primarily, although there are others who are just hell bent on killing everything. I don't I I mean, I don't even understand where it's coming from. She literally has people who are at least as, quote, progressive as she is, who are at this point saying, your narrative is all wrong. Bitcoin's not bad for the environment, you know, all of this kind of stuff, but she continues I mean, she was essentially behind this. Am I correct? Or a strong proponent of it.
[00:33:07] Seth:
Yeah. A strong proponent for it and someone who's was pushing at the same time for anti crypto
[00:33:15] McIntosh:
Legislation. Right.
[00:33:16] Seth:
She made the same kind of claims around Hamas being heavily funded by cryptocurrencies even though that was absolutely disproven over the last week or 10 days. And so she has been a she's been a longtime hater of the things that Bitcoin. I mean, she she broadly it's cryptocurrency. It's not targeted towards Bitcoin, it seems. But Bitcoin is, along with maybe a couple others, are the the ones that are actual useful tools for freedom. Mhmm. I mean, the the the very transparent truth is It seems that the US government wants to have control over our finances. Right.
Both surveillance control and actual Control and the ability to actually prevent us from doing things that we want with their finances. And that I think that's only a logical stepping stone for them. If a government already has vast amounts of power but wants to continue to consolidate power and grow Grow their control. Mhmm. The best tool to do that is through financial control. And as you mentioned at the beginning of of our pod, the CBDCs are the kind of the ultimate tool for that right now. Right. And the the only real kind of counter to CBDCs is Bitcoin is cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin that are actually decentralized and useful and can provide privacy. Right. It's only those things that can be used to counter Counteract the effects of CBDCs once they come because they will come.
And so I think that there's a there's a concerted effort to slowly shut down the usefulness of cryptocurrency. I think, like, the the approach of Senator Warren is not something that will come to pass and that There will be, like, a a total ban on cryptocurrencies, especially not Bitcoin. Right. But I think what can happen is that that they understand that if we can't use these things. While preserving our privacy. If we can only use Bitcoin in a transparent, surveilled way where our our identity is attached to our transactions. Right. Where there's no privacy tools to be able to use to to prevent other people from viewing the things that we do without our consent, Then it loses the vast majority of of its its ability to give freedom.
And I think that's the effort there is is rather than banning Bitcoin entirely, The goal is if you can strip away the privacy and strip away the the parts of the ecosystem that allow it to be used in a way that that cannot be controlled by the government or cannot be surveilled at the very least, then you can prevent it from being a tool that's used to to protect the individual from the overwhelming power of the state. And I I think, like, that's my overarching goal that I see for, like, senator Warren and and and broad broad swaths of specifically the the regulatory body of the United
[00:35:58] McIntosh:
So I think that's overall, I think that's a pretty good summary of what's been going on. I would, I would encourage the listeners if they have any interest in this and they should. But we will have links, in the show notes to comments where you can go make comments for this. I would encourage you to take the time to go do that. Understand what's going on. It's now is really the time to push back. It's not after it passes. Yes. That would be a mistake. We're not it's all is not lost if if it does, but it would certainly be a It'd be a blow. I mean, it would be. I think the end result of of what you were talking about with If if all of this came to pass and they basically kinda make it where it's this surveilled state, The only role Bitcoin has in that is a store of value for things like these ETFs, which I mean, I don't care about them, but that's not really what Bitcoin was created for.
And I think that's very important to keep in mind in all of this. You know? We lose so much if if this happens. And I know well, I wanna wrap this up, this part of it, I guess, by saying, I I know that Bitcoin I guess well, let me say it like this. I wished privacy had had a stronger emphasis in Bitcoin from the start. Absolutely. I know there's not a whole lot of emphasis on it. I know there are things that are going on. But with all of this stuff that we see, that the these attacks that are ramping up, I would love to see it. Unfortunately, I'm not with a software engineer that can code this kind of stuff. This is not my forte. I can't read through the Bitcoin core code and contribute and this kind of thing. But I would love to see more people get involved specifically in the privacy that, in my opinion, need to be built out as soon as is reasonable.
Right? We don't we just like with all things Bitcoin. We can't rush this stuff. It's way too important. But as soon as it's reasonable, we need to be moving some of these things along that will bake this into the protocol because we've seen so much acceptance at this point of Bitcoin that if, by the government, I should say, at least in the United States, that if we bake this into the protocol, I think I think it's game over. I don't I mean, if they can't tell what you're doing when you're transacting, then I don't care what Financial rules they make. You know what I mean?
Yep. As long as they don't outlaw it. And if they do, then I guess I'll be an outlaw. I mean, I don't know. I I don't know. Probably shouldn't say that on the air, but but, you know, I mean, I don't I don't see that happening, though. To be honest, I mean, specifically, I don't I don't see that being, a rule, unlike I mean, Nepal, for example, they've actually outlawed cryptocurrencies. I don't I don't know if you've heard this, but it happened in 2021. And it was because stupid people were scamming people, not in Bitcoin, actually.
You know, I don't think that's gonna happen here in the United States. We are getting a division between these casino coins and Bitcoin. And yes, scams can happen on Bitcoin. We've seen it in the past, but the entire thing was not set up as a scam. So there is a difference. You mentioned freedom.tech, your website. And, I guess it's a newsletter. Correct? I I I want you to talk about that. I actually meant to bring that up upfront and forgot. So since we touched on that, let's go ahead and Discuss that for just a second before we move on. I guess it's a newsletter. Correct? I I I want you to talk about that. I actually meant to bring that up upfront and forgot. So since we touched on that, let's go ahead and Discuss that for just a second before we move on. Yeah. Yeah. Before we do, I do wanna kinda touch on what you were just talking about. Okay. Absolutely. I I definitely agree. I mean, you're you're preaching with the choir when you when you talk about making
[00:40:24] Seth:
changes to Bitcoin's protocol that improve the privacy. It's something something I've wanted for years, and it it's the main reason I got involved with Monero years ago, and I'm still a huge Monero fan is is that The protocols that bake in privacy at the base layer benefit far more people. Right. Because you don't need to understand even the need for privacy Right. To gain privacy, and it means that even people who don't care about personal privacy contribute to the broader privacy of those who do see that need. There's there's so many benefits there, and it it is something I would love to see come to Bitcoin. I I do think that at this point, Because of all the the institutional adoption and everything that people have clamored for Mhmm.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, It's very, very difficult to get some sort of a sweeping change like that put into into Bitcoin at this point. I think it's difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. But I I I would say, I think the thing that that would help to put some pressure on those who do have the the ability, who do have the tools, who do have the influence Is to just talk about that you want Bitcoin to be more private. Just be public about your love for privacy. I know that it sounds a little strange, but I think that's one of the problems is that the most privacy loving individuals usually aren't on social media or aren't talking about these things actively. And so it can feel like there's not a desire for privacy within the Bitcoin space. Right. But I I think we have seen that start to shift publicly, but I think something where, like, Every every one of your listeners can can help by talking about how, like, hey. I would love to see Bitcoin be more private. Like, what are the things people are building here? What are the tools I can Today. What are some of the ways that you could see it being more private?
I mean, I think the the approach that Monero has taken Is, like, the one of the safest and yet most effective approaches to bringing privacy to a to a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. Because, Really, to have strong privacy, you need to hide the sender, the receiver, and the amount. If you leave out any of those pieces, specifically if you leave out amount, Mhmm. It gets a lot harder to to protect any of the other things, because a lot of the the ways that you can trace cryptocurrencies, Even if it's hard to tell exactly who is sending money to who, if you can see the amount and you can follow the amount as amounts small amounts get peeled off, as change gets sent back, You can use that amount to be able to to unveil a lot of what people are doing even if the other things are hidden. That's why, like, if you use a coin joint protocol like Samurai Whirlpool. Mhmm. You have to use fixed amounts. So you enter pools that are a specific size. And the reason for that is so that if you're all mixing the same size input and output, You can gain privacy from it. But if you mixed different size inputs and outputs, different amounts of Bitcoin in each one, it would be trivial to trace through. So the the amounts is an important part. The tricky the tricky thing that comes into effect is when you talk about Bitcoin and you talk about hiding amounts, What that would mean is that the the simple auditability that has become important in Bitcoin circles, at least in in Bitcoin narratives Right. Would be lost. You would not lose the ability to audit Bitcoin. And that's a lot of the confusion Is that it it doesn't mean when you hide amounts like how Monero does it with what are called confidential amounts, you don't lose the ability to audit The amount of Bitcoin in existence. Interesting. But it does mean you rely on a bit more cryptography to audit the amount of Bitcoin in existence, And that would open up a potential risk for hidden inflation.
That risk is very, very, very, very, like, infinitismally small Because the cryptography and the code is so well understood and mature at this point. Right. But there is that risk. So it it's hard to get that through when a lot of the narrative around Bitcoin is is how sacrosanct the 21,000,000 Sure. Is. Mhmm. And this would put us, like I said, I I think an infinitesimally small risk that that that could be lost in some sort of a hidden inflation event. But the the privacy you gain from adding, the amount is is really immense, and it it enables so many other approaches to privacy to be built out on top of it. So
[00:44:28] McIntosh:
I don't know if if you know the detail of this, and I'm not I'm not looking for minutia, but in general, how do they how do they hide that? Is it like a ZK roll up where the kind of the top level knows. You could you can buy cryptography, know that If I have this value at the top level, well, then all this other stuff has to be. It has to amount to that amount or whatever. But I just botched completely that explanation. I'm sorry. But does that make sense?
[00:45:01] Seth:
Yeah. I think it's it's a it's a reasonable intro there. I think the so, like, for background, I have long been involved with the Monero community, and I do have a pretty deep understanding of this stuff. So I'm happy to happy to dive into that. Okay. So the the way that Monero hides amounts and the way that it maintains auditability, is that Monero uses something called confidential amounts to hide the amounts. Okay? Essentially, what that means is it's a it's a zero knowledge proof, which I know is a a big buzzword, but, that is what it is. It's a very simple zero knowledge proof where when you create a transaction, you also create a proof to go along with it that proves that the amount that you're sending in the transaction Is correct. They didn't generate any amount of Monero that that doesn't match the amount on the input side. Essentially, you're just proving that the inputs and outputs balance out And that no false Monero was created in the transaction.
That proof is able to be verified in a way that doesn't reveal anything about the amount. Right. Miners can still check that there was no inflation, that you didn't try to cheat the system because they can take that proof and validate it with without knowing anything about the amount. That's where the zero knowledge proof part comes in. And so you're still able to audit individual transactions that way. The other way that auditability is maintained is that When you mine Monero, the actual coinbase output, the the amount of Monero that's created in each block, that is totally transparent. That's not hidden by confidential amounts or anything like that. So you can still do the the simple napkin math addition to see how much Monero has been created through the mining process just like in Bitcoin. There's actually no difference there, which a lot of people don't don't understand.
But the so when it comes to the transactions, I mentioned how confidential amounts work. The the only risk there is that if the cryptography behind that zero knowledge proof Or the implementation of that cryptography is flawed. Mhmm. There is the potential for someone to be able to create Monero out of thin air And hide it. Again, it's like that's a an infinitesimally small risk because the actual cryptography that's used here is, I think, over a decade old at this point. Very, very well understood. And when it comes to 0 knowledge proofs, very simple.
So it it's It's a very, very, very small risk, but that's where that little bit of risk happens is if someone can create a proof that's fraudulent, but that looks like it's legitimate to minors and anyone else the chain. That's where the risk comes in.
[00:47:25] McIntosh:
Interesting. I I'm aware of Monero. I don't think I've ever actually owned any. And I knew about the, the privacy benefits of it, but I've, I've never heard the details of this. Is there some resources that we could put in the show notes as well in case somebody wants to dig into that any deeper.
[00:47:46] Seth:
Yeah. Definitely. I mean, the I'll send you some some links to some point, but the simple get Monero.org website is the kind of Official, but unofficial since there's no official company or anything behind Monero. It's the that's the main website to get started on, but I can send you some other resources as well. Okay. Very cool.
[00:48:05] McIntosh:
Yeah. Unfortunately, I think that well, it's certainly possible that that could be implemented into Bitcoin. And maybe if things get bad enough, it will be just as a defense mechanism. Unfortunately, I think certainly in the current climate. I don't think it would necessarily go over so well if somebody's been proposing that merge request or whatever. But, it's good food for thought. Now given the current constraints, how can people what's the best way for people to protect themselves, to speak. I would assume it's CoinJoins. Correct?
[00:48:44] Seth:
Yeah. Yeah. When it comes to Bitcoin, I think the the best So I kind of view it as 2 2 things. The the first thing that you need to protect yourself against in Bitcoin is having your identity connected to your usage of Bitcoin. And that That one can seem the most daunting to people, but I think that once you actually take the plunge and use some of these methods to acquire Bitcoin without giving over your ID. Mhmm. It's really not as difficult as it seems at first, and it's very refreshing to know that your identity is not directly connected to exactly how much Bitcoin you own and everything you do with it. So the the avoidance of this KYC that we talked about earlier is the the biggest step towards privacy in Bitcoin that you can do. I mean, if you're if you're gonna do one thing, it's just stop using Coinbase, start using HODL HODL or BisQ Right. Or AgoraDesk. There's lots of options.
Because that means that even if someone sees your activity on chain, there is no way for them to directly attribute your identity to it outside of, like, physically seeing you, knowing who you are, and watching you make a Bitcoin transaction. So it's it's a very, very important first step, and that gets you miles ahead of the vast majority of Bitcoin users and gets you out of the vast majority of the dragnet surveillance that happens today. So that I think is the first and most important step. Once you've done that, really the best tool today is samurai wallet, or Sparrow wallet, which is, made by someone else, but it's a desktop wallet that's absolutely fantastic, and incorporates a lot of the privacy tools of samurai wallet. Okay.
And they yeah. Their their approach is just it's it's proven. It's time tested. Works very well. They've got a lot of good people behind it. That's that's normally the way that that I push people for privacy on their
[00:50:29] McIntosh:
time. We have an entire episode actually about the p2p, exchanges essentially, like. So, the listeners can go back and look at that. I will include that in the show notes as well. My show notes are gonna be really long this time, and that's cool. But, very good. Very good. That'll get people started. Do you maybe do I don't I have no idea. Do you have, like, a YouTube channel? I guess you probably don't.
[00:50:56] Seth:
Yeah. So I don't. I have a a blog called Set for privacy.com. Okay. It has a lot of stuff and a lot of links out. I don't have a YouTube. It you do well, I have a YouTube channel for my podcast. It's an audio only podcast. So to be clear who are looking to go further into this, and I would strongly encourage them to do that.
[00:51:15] McIntosh:
You know, I'm just trying to get as many resources as possible. I would add one more. I'm on, Bitcoin, and It's a great way to get KYC free Bitcoin. So, I'm supporting the network. I'm earning some corn, and I have KYC free Bitcoin at the same time. So I love it. I would point that out as an option. I know that scares a lot of people. It's really not that hard. But, yeah. Very cool. Alright. Awesome. I, oh, I have 1 last topic, and then we're gonna wrap up. I've been trying to figure out how to say this. Bitcoin Twitter, it can be very toxic. I think, frankly, the security people on Bitcoin. Twitter may be even more toxic.
I will say you do a great job of managing these things when people get their feathers ruffled about something that you've said and this kind of thing. Why do you think though that, is it because people are just I my guess is it's because people are so passionate about privacy. Why why is it like that? I mean, it it can be frankly off putting to people who are kind of looking at that from the outside. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. It's like mommy and daddy are yelling at each other. What am I nice to do.
[00:52:55] Seth:
Oh, I, Yeah. This is a this is a topic I have thought A lot of a long time about this is something I've interacted with a lot. That's it's something that's one of the most saddening parts of being in the cryptocurrency space and being in the privacy space because both have a especially when it comes to privacy in the cryptocurrency space. There's a there's a very toxic maximalist holier than thou attitude that is common. And it's really unfortunate because The the approach that many take in the space only dissuades people from taking actionable steps towards personal privacy. Because when you're first starting to to realize, like, hey. I need I need to improve. I need to take steps here.
But you start to wade into the resources, and you realize that there's this feud that is going on where people are name calling and doxing each other and yelling at each other on Twitter, and you're seeing this back and forth. What do you think people are gonna do? I mean, people are either going to just have to blindly pick because they're not gonna have to wade through a feud. And so they may end up using a tool that's malicious or not nearly as, competent or run by people who are happy to to cede ground to the state, or they just say, nope. I'm out of here. And, unfortunately, I have many, many, many, many, many instances of people in in my DMs and signal messages, etcetera, Let's say, look. I tried to wade into, making my my phone more private, but then there's this whole drama that I don't understand about Graphene OS and other stuff going on. Or I tried to wade into making my Bitcoin more private and gaining some financial privacy, but this there's this whole, like, green versus red thing, and samurai hates It's Wasabi, and Wasabi hates samurai. And I see them fighting all the time. And Mhmm. It makes people go, I'm just I'm not even gonna bother. Like, it's not worth my time. I can't go through this. I can't wait through this. And it's really disappointing as someone who is extremely passionate about bringing people into the world of personal privacy. Yeah. And it's something I've tried to fight back against. But If I knew if I knew why this was such a problem in the space, I would hopefully have solved it already. Right. But it's something that I I haven't been able to figure I think the kind of the assumption I make is just that the people who are building the the truly state resistant tools Are understandably under a lot of pressure. Right.
And so it it leads to a lot of a lot of paranoia and a lot of Kind of defensive toxicity.
[00:55:23] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:55:24] Seth:
I that's the only thing I can really think of beyond just the fact that Many, many people who are absolutely brilliant also suffer in other areas Mhmm. And have some struggles. It could be that, but it it's really hard to say. So many individual cases of this that, obviously, it's it's certainly not a one size fits all thing, but it's tricky. I wish I knew the answer. It's something that I I try to fight against and try to avoid the toxicity and yet weighed into these things to help people understand the the tools at their disposal. But it It gets messy, and it's something that has to change if we want the average person to be able to jump in, see the need for privacy Right. Find the route the road to getting to those things and actually using the tools.
[00:56:03] McIntosh:
Well, I appreciate your level headedness in all of this. I and I mean that. And I I'm sorry I sprung that on you. It was not No.
[00:56:11] Seth:
It's It's a good question. But yeah.
[00:56:13] McIntosh:
I I what I genuinely was curious as to your thoughts on that. So, as I wrap things up, one of the things I always do is I ask the people who I'm interviewing what their favorite book is. I'm a reader, And I love, for one thing, to find new books to read, but it does help me to understand where people are coming from. I've gotten some very interesting answers, to be honest. Some quite unexpected. Yeah. So I'm gonna ask you. You can pick 1 or a couple. I I can't have a whole list, but a couple of your favorite books.
[00:56:52] Seth:
Okay. That's that's tricky. I'll give you so I'll give you 2 that are maybe recency bias Okay. That I've really liked. One is the Dune trilogy, which I know has become kind of in vogue with the Dune movies, but I was a very late comer to those. You're talking about the original. Correct? Yeah. Yeah. Dune, Dune Messiah, children of Dune, the the ones by the original author, not the sun. And when did you first read those? Maybe 2020 Okay. Great. Mhmm. Yeah. I missed those somehow when I was growing up and and reading sci fi. On the other end, I'm a big military history buff. Mhmm.
And I just recently went through a 3 part series on the Pacific War by E and W Toll. With you. I don't know the name of the series off the top of my head. Look it up. It was absolutely fantastic, and it's, kind of opened my eyes to a different part of World War two. I'm I'm in this weird place where I'm very anti war and kind of anarchist slash cryptoanarchist, but I have a passion for military history. So Yeah. Yeah. I don't really know what that means about me, but I I still really like reading military history books. So We are allowed to have
[00:58:04] McIntosh:
Schizophrenia.
[00:58:07] Seth:
The paradox of man. I I would
[00:58:10] McIntosh:
honestly put myself in very much the same boat. As I have gotten older, I've I've I've gotten a lot more antiwar for one thing when you have kids, and then your kids get to be the age where, it's one thing for you to go off to war. It's another one is your kids. That puts a whole different perspective on it. And I've learned a lot, frankly, over the last 20 years, that It's way too long for this podcast to go into. But I grew up I mean, One of my favorite movies is Gladiator. I mean, you know, and I do watch I mean, like, every once in a while, I pull out, the Tom Hanks movie about storming, Saving Private Ryan, you know, for example.
Mhmm. I tend to watch a lot of, more stuff centered around World War 2, frankly, because I even though that war was caused by finances, to be honest, I believe it least was a legitimate war. I mean, there was there was a Yeah. A threat. There and there was an existential threat going on.
[00:59:16] Seth:
One of the few that's So even though relatively reasonable. Frankly, people caused that war,
[00:59:22] McIntosh:
and set it up essentially without being too conspiratorial. That is a war that frankly I would have I would have signed up for knowing the consequences of it. You know? I don't wanna get too philosophical about all that, but, yeah, that's I I understand that, certainly. Do you have any other others? You've mentioned Snowden's book. Maybe we should that may not be your favorite book, but let's go ahead and throw it in. What is this book called? Absolutely. Yeah. I only let that one out because I mentioned it earlier. That's for me, that was the
[00:59:54] Seth:
the key to understanding personal privacy. Okay. I went from Absolutely no care in the world about personal privacy, Google Homes in every room in my house, and all the all the spyware Spyware you could possibly spend money on Right. To suddenly turning around and replacing everything in my home and confusing my wife why suddenly all our electronics are missing. It was a it was quite a revelation for me and and a good one. Mhmm. I went a little too deep on personal privacy initially, but I I finally came around and found a little bit more level headed approach. But for me, that was the the book that really opened my eyes. Great.
[01:00:29] McIntosh:
Dune, was Might have been the 1st sci fi book I read. And at the age I was, I was quite young. It was Mhmm. It was I actually did read the whole thing. When I came back, when I was in my late teens, I reread the the first 3 books, which were the only ones that were out back then. And, I have read all of them except the very latest one that just came out a few months ago, if I'm not mistaken. Frank was definitely a much better writer than his son. They have different styles. Mhmm. I'll say that. I haven't read any by the sun yet. I do enjoy them, but they are different. I I like how they fill in the backstory.
If you read fantasy at all, I would strongly encourage you if you've never read Tolkien's works, to read Oh, yeah. The Hobbit and then the Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and and then go out and read all of his son stuff. Okay? Because it's very similar. I there will never be any so I'm just gonna fanboy for just a second. There will never be an equal for a token in my opinion.
[01:01:41] Seth:
I would agree with that.
[01:01:42] McIntosh:
Frank Herbert is the closest thing that there is. And by the way, kids, George r r Martin, not even in the ballpark. Okay? So I'm sorry if I just offended half of the audience. I have read 1 or 2 of his books, and, frankly, I just couldn't stomach anymore. But Uh-huh. Regardless, very good stuff. Frank has a lot of thoughts. It's well and I will say this. They're hinted at in his books. His son unpacks a lot more of the kind of the computer side of things, okay, about how things may develop down the road and the implications that can come about through through technology advancing, which it's going to.
I mean, it's undoubtable, or whatever the word would be. So, anyways, I will I will stop there, but great list. I will add those. Probably what I should start doing is putting these links on Amazon so when people buy them, it helps the show out. You betcha. For now, I will just make links to them, and and we'll do that. Is there anything else you wanted to share with our listeners? First of all, I really appreciate you coming on. I appreciate your time. It's been a great conversation. But is there anything you wanted to leave our our listeners with?
[01:03:06] Seth:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think first, thank you. So glad to be able to come on and Chat about what I view as really important topics and and also just chat about fun topics. I think it's it's it's good that you blend in a little bit of, a lighthearted topic at the end there. So grateful for that. I think the only thing I wanna leave people with is is just that if this kind of piqued your interest about Open source tech, about privacy tools, about, this specific fencing proposal or the the indictment on Tornado Cash. That's a big focus for me recently is kicking off and driving a new publication called Freedom.Tech.
Okay. Starting as a blog, gonna be a podcast as well. Great. And just go there. Take a look at what I've written so far. We have, multiple new contributors jumping in to to start to write about All things FreedomTech. I think it's going to be, hopefully, the most useful single resource For staying ahead of the curve when it comes to empowering human freedom when it, through technology. So really excited for that. I would definitely recommend taking a look, and that Goes much deeper into a lot of the things that we talked about today. Great. Yeah. We just covered the surface.
[01:04:12] McIntosh:
I always encourage the re the readers. Sorry, guys. The listeners, you know, dig in. We're we cannot cover everything. There's just no way. But, yeah, that's awesome. I appreciate your time, Seth, and we're gonna wrap things up right there. Alright. That was a really great conversation with with Seth. So I hope you enjoyed that. We're going to move on from here to our supporters. We do have some support this week. While I'm finishing opening that up. I would like to point out that as a way of supporting the show and as a way to earn some sats, you can you can create clips of the podcast.
For the current episode, if you were to go in and make a, you know, at least a 32nd to 1 minute long clip or so. Post that on fountain as an example. I'll boost that back 500 sets. If it's an older episode, it would be 300 sets, and that's a way that I can get visibility for the show. It's a way for you to earn some sets as well. You provide value, and I provide value back for that. So, I would love to see people taking advantage of that so who are these supporters? These are people who, have taken the time to get a podcasting 2 point o app or to go to the new podcast apps.com website and look up our podcast and boost to show support for the show. They do this to, you know, get a message, to us, to just a lot of times, they don't even have a message. It's just a boost just as a way to provide that value back for the value that they're getting, from the Generation Bitcoin podcast. So, we also have streaming as well. I Cannot take the time to go through all the people who stream.
Eventually, we will get to the point where we will not be able to cover all the people who support and, boost, and we'll have to provide a cutoff. We're not there yet, so this is everybody who's boosted. And let's see here. I should be almost to it. I'll be glad when I get moved over, and I can just do this in helipad. Would be great. As of now, I'm still using. Great tool, but, I would much rather. So our 1st boost came in, from Karen at Mere Mortals. He just finished up his value for value, podcast season. I think it was our 3rd season. It was a great season. Well worth taking a listen to to learn more about the value for value ecosystem that we're building here on podcasting 2 point o.
And, as I you know, I talked about my mom, last Thursday, or excuse me, last Saturday, on that recording. And, she recently passed away. I think all of these are kind of about that. So bear with me, please. We're doing okay. It's a process, and, you know, we'll we'll be alright. But, yeah, we're we're still kind of in the middle of it. It's actually Wow. It's been almost exactly a week from right now. That's crazy as I finish up this recording. So condolences, Macintosh. My mom took a turn for the worst this week, and I also don't think I'll be fully prepared for the end. Best wishes. Thanks, Karen. I appreciate that. I appreciate your support.
It was 2022. It was row of ducks, and thank you very much. Yeah. I'm a I'm afraid you won't be regardless of when. It's just the nature of it. You know? I think after 10 years, you would have thought I would have been prepared for it, and I was to an extent, but, but not completely. So hypersensitive asaurus, sent in a boost of a 1,000 sats, and it was just a heart. And I appreciate that. I got the message. Thank you. I appreciate that very much. And we got another 1,000 sats from Radrac c. It's r a d r a c s e. I don't know how I'm supposed to pronounce that, but he said he or she said, Man, I'm sorry for your loss, and thank you. I appreciate that. Again, as well means a lot. And then, Berno, sitting in another I sitting in a 1,000 sat boost and said, I'm really sorry to hear about your mother, and I wish you the best. And thank you, Berna. I appreciate that. So, we in total let me go ahead and total this up real quick. We're always looking for the month to, to get a total of 25, 250,000 sets, but roughly $50. I'm gonna have to actually adjust that, I guess, as the market goes up, you know, to account for for inflation, for price inflation anyways, a good kind of inflation, of Bitcoin.
So, I'll probably start looking at that fairly soon. So in total for this episode, we looks like we had right around 66100. It was 6542, after Satoshi stream took their part, which is supposed to be 1%. By the way, speaking of inflation of price, Earlier, I was talking about good chance we could break 35,000. By the way, as I do this part of the recording to wrap things up tonight, our block time. I'm not gonna put this in the thing in into the show notes, but just to give you a idea. It's now 814918. 814,900 and eighteen.
We're now at 35,730, and I believe we touched 36,000 or at least came very, very close to it. Let me double check my little chart here. Oh, I should have it right here. Actually, yeah, 35,992 according to this chart. So really, really close to 36,000. It does look like there's a strong possibility, I think, that we're going to stay above it. We closed above 35,000, so that was certainly good for the day. And in fact, I brought that up. It was 35,441. So all that's happened in just the last few hours, and that's what Bitcoin will do. This is why we DCA people. Don't try and figure this out. Just know. Hey. We break this down into 4 year cycles. We've got this whole happening thing. We've got institutional adoption. We've got more adoption by people.
You know, number is going to go up over time. There you go. I don't know what that number is going to be. I don't try and predict that, but it will go up. Ladies and gentlemen, the next 2 years between now, November 1st, and at the end of December roughly. Please don't quote me on this, but somewhere in the Q4 at least of 2025, We are going to be in the bull market part of this, and it's gonna get crazy. And it's not just gonna be Bitcoin. We're not gonna be talking about all the other stuff. But as Bitcoin goes up, you always see these other altcoins, casino coins follow along, and that's fine. They will get blown out over time, but here we are.
So buckle up. Be prepared. I'm going to keep repeating this over the next several years. PCA. Alright. So that's the end of that. I do appreciate all of that support. There's a there was not any breaking news other than price go up. Right? Nothing really this week. I'm gonna kinda skip that section because we're getting kinda long. There's a lot of links in the show notes this week. Seth had a number of links. I've got Finsen stuff in there. Please take the time to go and and comment about Finsen. If you if you are knowledgeable enough to understand that they are trying to take our privacy, that this is an overly broad act, that frankly, this is supported by the constitution.
Please go comment on that. Okay? They need to hear from us. So there's a number of links in there. I made a couple of links to the blog post that we were talking about that Seth had written, and that's actually on his Freedom Tech site. There's a lot of great information there. I put Seth's links in here as well. Seth for privacy on Twitter, his foundation link and his freedom tech link. If you're on Twitter, I would advise you to follow those. Plus, I also put a link to the peer to peer, decentralized exchange ways to buy Bitcoin anonymously.
Okay? So Take a minute. Maybe you don't normally go through that, but go through the show notes, and click through some of those links. Take a look at that stuff. Alright. So we're gonna wrap this up. Generation Bitcoin supports podcasting 2 point o. We are a value for value podcast. We do not have sponsors. We do not have sizing. In that way, I do not get steered incorrectly because somebody is paying me some money. You can support this podcast in 3 different ways through time, talent, and treasure. If you wanna support the podcast and have some time or talent, I got a lot of stuff. Shoot me a message on Twitter, please. I'm on McIntosh Fintech on Twitter, or you can email me at McIntosh at jendashbtc.com.
If you wanna support the show with your treasure with Bitcoin, and please, of course, You can do this through your strike app or whatever. This should not be the coin that you're saving. God forbid. But you can, instead of going and buying a Starbucks, which is now almost $7 from large Starbucks. It's insane. I remember when it was five thirty five. I shut up, grandpa. That was 2 weeks ago. It's I mean, it's almost there. It really wasn't that long ago. It was 5.35, and now it's 7. Five thirty five because of our taxes. It was, like, $5 plus the taxes. Anyways, sorry.
Get that little rant in. Instead of doing that, buy $5 on strike in Sats. Send that to your Bitcoin wallet, whether that's an Albie wallet or your fountain app or whatever, and support your favorite podcaster or podcasters. Try not to be too discriminatory. I'm only gonna support 1 purse. There's a lot of podcasts out there. If you listen to more with 1 podcast you should be and getting value from them. You should be supporting more than 1. Anyways, if you like the content, Most of all, I would love it if you would just tell your friends about Generation Bitcoin podcast. You can give us a review, whatever. Or tell people, hey. This is great. Awesome. That does help too. Alright. Thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful, and I would love to hear from you. I'm on Twitter at Macintosh Fintech. Like I said, I'm on Mastodon at Macintosh at podcast index dot social.
Hey. Stay humble, friends. Go out and make it a great week. I'll talk to y'all next Monday.
Hey, sat stackers. Today is November 2nd, and this is episode 141 of generation Bitcoin. I'm your host, Macintosh, and today's episode is a conversation with Seth for privacy. Alright. Let's, let's do our price update. To our market update, and we will jump right on in. We've got lots to talk about today. We had a great conversation with Seth, and I wanna get right into that. Right now, as I record, the price of Bitcoin is 34,620 three. That's 34,623. And our block height at time of recording is 814-784. I'm sorry? That's 814-874.
TikTok next block. Alright. As I started recording earlier today, an hour ago or so, an hour and a half ago with Right as I sat down to record, I got a new block. 1st one in over a day. Been a little slow and a little slow there for the old brains pool, but that's the way it goes. So, Anyways, our difficulty adjustment at this point will be, looking like it's going to happen. Oh my. Where is that? I can always lose track of this thing. There it is. November 11th 2023. Of course. Right now, it's estimated to be 8.41% up. Man, I hope it is not.
Our average block time right now, though, is 9 minutes and 14 seconds, which is why we would have that difficulty adjustment up. The pool is full, and sets are, blocks are expensive. Transactions, I should say, more expensive. Our hash rate right now, according to this 7 day moving average, 467.9 x hash. Yikes. Keep on climbing towards 500. Man, could you guys slow down? And we are officially at 88% of our progress to the next having. How are things doing out in the market? Well, I told you the price. As of this recording. The price is good. We have not broken 35,000 at least significantly at this point. We have definitely been staying below it, and we're just kinda where we're at. I mean, Let's look at the chart here real quick. I don't think a whole lot has changed.
I guess I was wrong about that bull pin. So it turns out I told you last time we recorded, we fell out of a bullpennant, which is true. You could certainly make the argument there was one there. But it It turns out that pendant is actually still forming. Very interesting. I would argue, we are getting towards the top of that. I do apologize. At the time, it made sense what I drew. I I really didn't wait long enough. It'd only been 3 days it'd been developing, so that's kind of my fault. But regardless, we've still got that $35,000 and some change, kind of sealing.
We've not broken through that, but it will not it has not fallen down. The Bollinger Bands are wide open. We could go way up. We could hit that 37,000 before we if, like, if it just woke up today and said, we're going, and not even go outside the ball of your bands. That would be pretty sweet. It looks like though before the end of the week, there's a very good chance, we could break through. I think by next Sunday, we'll know one way or the other. More likely we're going up, but certainly one way or the other. Of course, as always, this is not marketing marketing. This is not trading advice.
As always here on Generation Bitcoin. We dollar cost average. We do not try and time this market. I hope you are stacking sets. However you are doing that, of course, I talk about strike a lot. I would especially given today's topic mentioned, of course, your KYC ing yourself using that, but, but it's certainly a handy way to do that. Privacy is something here on generation Bitcoin that I think we're going to end up talking about more and more over the coming months and probably years. It's just too important a topic. It's something that a lot of people don't understand. And talking to Seth today gave us a great intro to some of the concepts. I've discussed a lot of this in the past.
I wanted to have him on specifically to talk about this fence and regulation, which we did. But, He is a great resource for this kind of stuff, and we're talking about all the different places that he can be reached, read, absorbed, listened to, and so on. So we'll be jumping right into that in just a second. But, again, in general market, we're We're about ready to make a move. I'm gonna go ahead and say by Sunday, by the end of the day, Sunday, I'm thinking by the close of the week, it's gonna do something. So alright. So we're gonna go from here. We're gonna jump right into this interview. Again, it was a great interview.
I really appreciate this. At the end, I'm gonna wrap up some things, maybe spanned a little bit on one of the topics that we were talking about. I don't feel like we discussed it enough. It's actually a new new thing for him, and I kinda wanted to pull that out and make sure you are aware of it. So enjoy this, and here we go. For our main section today, we're gonna be talking with Seth for privacy for we're gonna be talking to Seth. That's his handle on Twitter, Seth for privacy, about some privacy topics, about fencing, the regulation that they're attempting to pass right now that, in my opinion, is not a real good thing. I think he shares that thing, that idea. And then we're also gonna be talking about his other pursuits because he has a number of them.
He looks to me like he's a really busy person. We'll find out. But, Yeah. Let's Seth, first of all, welcome to the show. Thanks for, thanks for being here.
[00:07:30] Seth:
Thanks so much for having me, man. I'm I'm very excited to to chat through these topics, and I don't know. There's there's so many things kind of pressing in the world today that I'm trying to do what I can to help with. But a lot of that comes down to Kind of the the end user taking action. So looking forward to talking through this. I know a lot of this stuff can sound kinda depressing at at first glance, but I think there's some some good optimistic takes and some good action items we can we can take out of it. So looking forward to it. Great. I,
[00:07:57] McIntosh:
I'm glad you've got some optimism. Maybe you could have a little bit for me. That'd be probably a good thing. Yeah. It's hard sometimes when you're looking at this this kind of stuff. It it can be, you know, frankly, depressing, because we we see these things changing, and and, you know, for those of us who've been around frankly since before, the Patriot Act, which was, done by, 911. What it was initiated out of that, really. Mhmm. A lot of the privacy issues that we're having today. And I think I've seen you mention this that that they stem from that, in my opinion. So wow. Anyways, let's not get into all that quite yet. You've got a lot of other things going on, and I wanna talk about about those first. So first of all, you are a podcaster, so let's talk about that.
[00:08:48] Seth:
Yeah. So I kind of have a a broad range of things that I do or have done in the space. So generally, I've I've had a good platform on on Twitter, now X, which I don't know if I ever get used to there being a new name. Focusing on essentially privacy and security education has been kind of my focus. I really got woken up to the need for personal privacy after reading reading Snowden's book, really about 2019, so relatively relatively new to the scene. And that that made me take a kind of a drastic shift in what I wanted to work on with my career, what I wanted to work on in my free time. And Out of that came me using Twitter as an educational tool, and then eventually launching my own podcast, which was called Opt Out. It is still up. I run the website and everything. I haven't recorded in a while just because work life and family life have taken over the the majority of the time I was using for that before. But, It's, I think, a a good resource, especially when starting the personal privacy journey there. But that's that's like a very quick background. We can get into kind of the work side of things and and where I've landed there if you want as well.
[00:09:54] McIntosh:
Feel free to share as much as you want. I mean, your name is Seth for privacy, so I don't talk a whole lot about kind of my background in general. I'm a software engineer, but that's basically the extent of what I've told my audience. You're you're you're welcome to share whatever you wish. You do have some other things going on that you talk about on Twitter that we do certainly need to get into. So
[00:10:19] Seth:
Yeah. Yeah. I can also expand the intro a little bit. So I I am Seth from privacy, but I I do show my face on on podcast video and that sort of thing because I do think that there's a a value in someone who deeply loves personal privacy and understands it, like, I think well and is able to to distill the topics down still being an approachable face, not just a pseudonym. I think that the the default approach for most people should be Pseudonymous or anonymous. It's just safer. It's it's better for for almost every aspect of life online, I mean, obviously. Like, the real world buying a house, etcetera. It's Not easy to do anonymously, unfortunately. But I've chosen to be a little bit more publicly facing. So for my work, in in my past, I've worked in IT. I won't go more detail than that. It's not not very interesting.
But the the place that I've landed is I actually started working in the Bitcoin space, just over a year ago now. Okay. I jumped in and joined the team at Foundation Devices, who build Passport, which is a Bitcoin only hardware wallets. Very easy to use, very approachable, very security and privacy conscious, and then a mobile app called Envoy. So I jumped in with them initially as head of content. It's kind of expanded to to head of Strategy and marketing. But, really, the goal is bringing FreedomTech, which very simply FreedomTech as a as a category. It's just technology that empowers you, the user, Bringing that kind of technology to the masses, making it approachable, accessible, beautiful.
Trying to kinda kinda bring a lot of what Apple has done, but do it with an open source ethos and no walled gardens and and all the other fun stuff that comes with a lot of the the Bitcoin ethos.
[00:11:54] McIntosh:
Very cool. So I have not used the Foundation, product, at this point. So I can't really speak about it, but saying things like it's Bitcoin only, that's obviously a very good thing. Did you are are you saying that it's open source as well, the code for it?
[00:12:12] Seth:
Yeah. Yeah. So we actually open source is at the core of everything we do. So we're, we're big about contributing back to any projects that we use open source code from. Okay. Contributing to industry standards. But when it comes to our products that comes down to being open source hardware and software. Cool. So there are some good projects in the space that are open source software, which is vital, and we're thankful for that. I mean, We we view any project that's open source, even if it's a competitor, as being a positive and an add to the space. But We focus on doing both open source hardware and software, both to minimize trust in us, so that there's there's nothing happening behind the scenes that that no one who understands the code or understands the schematics can't can't uncover and point out to to people to to warn them if we were trying to do something sketchy, But also so that, no matter what happens to the company, everything that we make will always be contributing back to the the the broader Bitcoin and FreedomTech ecosystem. So even if Foundation goes away. Everything that we've made will help to create better products for Bitcoin and further technologies, as we expand down the line. So it's it's a big thing for us that what we do doesn't just contribute to a regulatory moat or to to our income, but it it it contributes also to the broader ecosystem and and helps the the space as a whole. So that's why we focus on being open source hardware and software with with everything we built.
[00:13:32] McIntosh:
Very cool. I did wanna mention, and you can correct me if I'm saying this improperly. I think I'm saying it at least close to correct. One of the definitions to go back, you talking about people being pseudo anonymous on the Internet and this kind of thing. Privacy is the ability to selectively reveal what you want people to know about yourself. Does that is have you heard that? Yeah. Okay. That's a it's a fantastic definition. It's usually my go to when I start to kinda describe personal privacy to someone. Right. And you choose to tell you put yourself on video, and I personally wouldn't have a problem with that either. I've never done video, a podcast, or anything like that at this point, but I don't have a problem with that. But you have somebody like, dear Gigi, and I hope I didn't butcher his name, but, you know, he literally does not show his face. And and that's his choice. He is choosing to not reveal that for whatever it doesn't even matter, whatever those reasons are. That's his choice. So I just I wanted to go back and kinda put a a bow tie on that and emphasize that for the listeners. It's something that I've mentioned in the past, and you reminded me of that when when you were talking about that earlier.
[00:14:49] Seth:
Yeah. I I definitely, I love that you expanded that and to expand it a little further, because I also mentioned pseudonymity and anonymity. It's privacy is not either of those things. So you can be passionate about personal privacy and not be anonymous or even pseudonymous. I could be using my my full name, telling every everybody where I work, and just choosing to To preserve the privacy of specific details about my life. But I could also love personal privacy, take active steps towards it, and be seeking to be totally anonymous. They're not things that have to go one way or another. Anonymity is very different than privacy. And like you said, privacy is just choosing what you reveal, and you can choose to reveal as little as possible, which would generally be closer towards anonymity Mhmm. Or as much as you want, which could be just totally being out in the public figure. But even even then, you still Both have a choice for privacy or should have a choice for privacy, or not. It's it's really up to you, which is the, I think, the important distinction there. And
[00:15:47] McIntosh:
not to get too crazy or conspiracy theory here, but I feel like, I don't feel like. I believe that this is something that is being trampled in the financial realm constantly over the last 20 years or so. We see a push for central bank digital currencies, for example. And I believe in large part that's because they want to be able to track every purchase that you've got, and people don't realize How much data can be gathered from that if they're not involved in even certain parts of the industry, which I've not been directly involved in advertising or this kind of thing, but I do understand how it works. I mean, they can piece together so much data and analyze it about Somebody, they can tell your your patterns and and all of this kind of stuff.
And if you're using a digital currency, You have no ability of a nonprivate digital currency. Let me say that. That you have no ability to stop that. All of that data gets hoovered up. It gets pulled in to a database, and then it can be analyzed and, you know, sliced and diced and whatever later. So, anyways, the point to all that is when we push back on things like Bitcoin and say, no. We need privacy for for Bitcoin. We it's kind of the same argument about cash. I don't care who does what with cash. People do bad things with money regardless. Everybody's always like, Oh, well, the drug dealers use cash or the drug dealers use Bitcoin. I don't I don't care.
That's not you You can't stop everybody from using something because of what somebody does with it. And, you know, I don't know. I'm just maybe I'm getting off on a rant here. No. But it does tie into what we're fixing to talk about with FinCym. Yeah. So Yeah.
[00:17:49] Seth:
Go ahead, sir. I was just gonna just gonna say, like, I I think that's something a lot of people don't understand is that financial privacy isn't just like a small piece of the pie. It's not like you have your your digital privacy, your email privacy, your mobile phone privacy, your messaging privacy, and your financial privacy, and they're all equal. It's not really how it is. No. Because if if you you touched on it with CBDCs, but if someone has visibility into every single Minute detail of how you spend your money and where you receive money from. Mhmm. They know everything about you, basically. Right. They may not have explicit details, But they're gonna know who you meet with, where you eat, who you ate, who you drink coffee with that day Mhmm. Where you work, who you did a little work on the side for they're gonna know everything about you. So if you don't have financial privacy, basically, all of the other human rights that that you would otherwise have falls apart very quickly. It's it's It's really the core to me of of any kind of privacy.
[00:18:44] McIntosh:
I get so frustrated when I go into the bank, and I need to send somebody some money and it's above a certain amount, which I believe in the United States at this point is is somewhere around $10,000. And they're like, well, what what are you doing with this? Why are you sending this person money? And I I Honestly, I want to scream in their faces. None of your blankety blank, blank, blank, blank business. But you can't. Right? I mean, I can choose to take my money out of the bank and literally carry it to whoever it is that needs it, but you're trapped in that system
[00:19:26] Seth:
at least to that extent. You know? But Even if you did that, there would be a a nice report filed about you. Right. You withdrew all your money from the bank and did something with it that they couldn't track. You almost can't win at this system. And the thing is is They are assuming that you're trying to launder Monday.
[00:19:44] McIntosh:
They are presuming that you're guilty. And I look at I'm not a constitutional scholar, but one of the amendments is you can't you don't assume guilt. Mhmm. Right? And people have privacy. That's another one. So,
[00:20:02] Seth:
I mean, I I don't know. I don't wanna get off well, I mean, that's kind of the topic in the podcast. But Yeah. Yeah. But It connects directly. I mean, if you if you talk about this concept of guilty until proven innocent, the the Finsen Proposal that's come out perfectly aligns with that shift in how governments view their citizens' finances, which is that anything that doesn't meet this explicit and insane criteria. Right. Anything that doesn't meet those criteria are, for some reason, money laundering and evil. Right. And there's this presumption that you must be a money launderer unless to prove that you're not to us Right. Which completely flips the entire, at least, US judicial system onset.
[00:20:41] McIntosh:
So for those who haven't heard. Can you go over kind of what we're talking about here with Vinson? So they came out with a proposed regulation, and I would say it's proposed. That has not been implemented, but, kinda take it from there and cover what the regulation is about, how people, Well, we'll go from there. Just
[00:21:03] Seth:
Yeah. Yeah. I can definitely dive into it. So there's a there's a long blog post that I've written that will go probably more detailed than we'll go into today Okay. That, I I can send you, and you can link in share notes. Absolutely. The The crux of it is that the US government has shown that they want to prevent people from being able to use privacy tools when it comes to cryptocurrency. And this has been a it's been a long war that they've been waging Mhmm. Really over a decade now. They've been attacking privacy projects within the Bitcoin space, it's been rapidly ramping up in the last 2 years, really starting with the sanctions against Tornado Cash, which we don't have to get into in too much detail. But Very quickly, Tornado Cash is a decentralized privacy tool for Ethereum, that could provide strong privacy.
A small part of its usage was, hackers supposedly from North Korea who stole funds within the Ethereum ecosystem and then use Tornado Cash to gain privacy. Fast forward, US government, they sanctioned the entirety of the Tornado Cash project, including their GitHub repos. One of the founders is arrested in the Netherlands. And then a year later, they ramped that up even more. In August this year, they indicted the other two remaining founders of Tornado Cash on charges of money laundering and money transmission, and are seeking, I think, 45 years in prison for the two of them even though they had no technical ability to prevent illicit usage of their tool. Right. So I have another blog post on that if you wanna get into kind of the the history there. But I think the context is helpful because for a lot of people, they saw this Fincen proposal, and they just thought it came out of left field. Like, where did this come from? Mhmm. This seems very, very detached from what we thought the US government wanted. But it's actually just a the next step in the the war that they've been waging against privacy tools for a while.
But very briefly, essentially, what happened is FinCen had already had a proposal in place. It was very clear that this was written up before the conflict, in the Middle East happened. But they used this conflict in the Middle East to to be kind of the boogeyman for this proposal. And the the justification is essentially we need people who use privacy tools to be on a list because Terrorists use cryptocurrency for financing, their terrorism.
[00:23:17] McIntosh:
Mhmm.
[00:23:19] Seth:
Interestingly, they don't provide any specifics on How much cryptocurrency is used for terrorism, and there's been a a massive backlash over the past couple of weeks because the the main article that was used for this, that was used by senator Warren in in her comments was essentially totally false And 99% over attributed Correct. Cryptocurrency usage to terrorists. Mhmm. But all that aside, essentially, Fincen has said, because terrorists use cryptocurrency supposedly, we need to make sure that whenever people use privacy tools within the cryptocurrency space, anytime they interact with a a regulated entity, be it a bank, a cryptocurrency exchange, cryptocurrency service provider.
Basically, anything that falls under US regulations. That need to have their information, all of it, including who they are, info about their their passport, Social Security number, whatever info you on file through the normal connect KYC procedures, and then send all of that info immediately along with info on where their funds came from, what privacy tool they used, amongst lots of other details. Package that up nicely and send it off to Finson immediately. Mhmm. So this is a big shift where even though Exchanges were using what was called KYC know your customer before where you'd have to, you know, submit a selfie and a a nice little video of you dancing with your passport or whatever to to get onto an exchange. That information wasn't sent to the government immediately. Right. Obviously, a lot of it ends up with the government, and the government can request it anytime. But with this new fence in ruling, whenever you use a privacy tool, all that information about you along with all of your history about what you've done in the exchange and any knowledge of on chain activity, Including privacy tool usage. It's immediately sent to the government, and you end up on a nice tidy list
[00:25:02] McIntosh:
that apparently also happens to have terrorists and money launderers. Sure. Of course, because you're evil, and you used a money laundering service called a coin join.
[00:25:14] Seth:
Uh-huh.
[00:25:15] McIntosh:
So are they targeting a specific set of techno services like, I don't know. I'm trying to think. Samurai Whirlpool maybe, or are they targeting a technology like CoinJoin in general?
[00:25:31] Seth:
Does that make sense? Yeah. No. That definitely makes sense. So the the target of the legislation, basically, how they define what they call a mixer, which I'll just called privacy tools because even the term mixing isn't as broad as their definition implies. Mhmm. Essentially, they're saying that Anything that provides privacy, no matter what, counts as a Cryptocurrency privacy tool, and that should be subject to these regulations. Specifically, they say, anything that facilitates transactions that obfuscate the source, destination, or amount Mhmm. Regardless of the type of protocol or service used. So they they do explicitly talk about some things. One of the specific categories they have sounds exactly like CoinJoin protocols, the Mhmm. The kind of broad protocol, not a specific one. Right. They don't name Wasabi or Samurai.
They do name tornado cash because, obviously, the US government already has open legal action against TornadoCash. Mhmm. So they use that as as a precedent for bad people using, these services and thus because TornadoCash is bad, Every privacy tool is bad. So that's their their broad definition. But it's it's hilarious because they even Know that their definition is overly broad. If you look further in kind of how they want to define this, they say, Fincen acknowledges this definition is relatively broad. However, given the nature of mixing, Fincen deems the breadth of this definition to be necessary. Wow. They're encompassing every single tool that I can think of. And I would include the centralized mixers that we've had in the past in Bitcoin, things like Helix. There's a lot of other examples of those.
Centralized coin join tools like Wasabi Wallet or Samura wallet. Decentralized tools like join mic join market or pay join seem like they would fit under this. Any kind of centralized instant exchanger, like fixed float or anything like that. Obviously, TornadoCash, they supposedly mention it. I would see decentralized privacy coins like Monero fitting under this definition and even decentralized exchanges because they they specifically talk about anytime you swap between cryptocurrencies that counts as a mixer, even though that makes no sense at all. That's it. Yeah. They include that as well because why not just lump up lump in everything?
[00:27:44] McIntosh:
So this clearly is not a good bill or it's not a bill. This clearly clearly is not a good regulation. Mhmm. As an end user, how can we push back against this?
[00:27:58] Seth:
Yeah. Yeah. And that's It's a tricky one. So if you are a US citizen, you can take the time to submit a comment and explain why you view the proposal as Illegitimate. Okay. And the the caveat there is obviously there's no explicit Control. We don't we don't get to vote on it or anything like that. We didn't get to elect the people that are part of Fincen in. Like, we we have no direct control as US citizens. But, supposedly, the comments are supposed to be considered and whether or not this will be, moved forward. And there's there's good efforts by people like Coin Center and and others who are helping to to set up this this comment system and helping people to better understand What these comments should look like when you submit them. It's something that I need to build out too for for our website freedom.tech to make it easier for people to submit comments.
That's the I mean, that's really the only direct action you can take. But the I think there's some other very important pieces of of action that we each can take as well. I mean, one of them, even if we we do comment or don't comment, whatever, one of the things that we can do Very important is just raise social awareness around what's going on here. I mean, the the best thing for the government is that no one talks about this FinCEN proposal. Right. It just gets to pass in the shadows, And life moves on theoretically even though regulations continue to tighten around anyone who wants to retain any sort of financial privacy. Right. So we can really kind of, like, pull back the fog of war, pull back those shadows from from the people around us by just talking about it. Obviously, we each have different kind of spheres of influence. Mhmm. Different circles that we can talk about this and and make sure that people understand What's actually happening here, especially outside of the cryptocurrency space.
Because like it or not, cryptocurrency users who would be deeply concerned about is a relatively small part of the world and and the the US populace. But if we can get a a broad consensus that we deserve financial privacy from our governments that can help to push back on this and and make it harder for the US government and specifically FinCEN to get something like this through because they they do still need our approval. They do still need our consent in one way or another. And if the masses are against something that they're proposing, they're they're much less Likely to try to force it through. Would this be something that say that either
[00:30:21] McIntosh:
the house or the senate could come back and say you can't do this? Does that does that make sense?
[00:30:28] Seth:
Yeah. I to be quite honest, I don't know what the next steps for this proposal are after it's approved or not by yeah. I I do need to do some more research on that, so I don't have an an interesting comment on the the next Steps here. I know that it waits for a 90 day proposal period, and then it moves on to be voted on, I believe, by the senate. Mhmm. But I I honestly don't know if I got my head, so I'll have to dig into that a little bit more. We'll we'll figure that out and and let the listeners know. Yeah. But it it's either that or there's gonna have to be court action
[00:31:03] McIntosh:
at some point saying, you know, This is illegal. You're violating our privacy or or whatever the tact is. Wow. That's yeah. One of the interesting things that I see out of all of this is I I told my listeners either late last year or very early this year, like January 1, that I thought that 2023 was gonna be a year of regulation. And I've been correct about that. Maybe not in really the way that I saw it in my head back then, but it's certainly been a lot of regulation. The SEC seems to be really cracking down on essentially alt coins.
Okay. Casino coins. I like that term better than another term that gets batted around a lot. Yeah. Okay. Which is fine with me, because I believe what they're saying is legitimate, and I have looked at it. I'm not just spouting off what I've heard on Twitter. They they do fit the definition of securities and therefore they should be regulated. And when they whine about it, it just whatever. So they've looked at Bitcoin on the other hand, and the chairman has said this is a commodity. This is not a security. And In my thinking, well, it doesn't even fall under the SEC's purview at that point.
But on the other hand, you've got this people like senator Warren primarily, although there are others who are just hell bent on killing everything. I don't I I mean, I don't even understand where it's coming from. She literally has people who are at least as, quote, progressive as she is, who are at this point saying, your narrative is all wrong. Bitcoin's not bad for the environment, you know, all of this kind of stuff, but she continues I mean, she was essentially behind this. Am I correct? Or a strong proponent of it.
[00:33:07] Seth:
Yeah. A strong proponent for it and someone who's was pushing at the same time for anti crypto
[00:33:15] McIntosh:
Legislation. Right.
[00:33:16] Seth:
She made the same kind of claims around Hamas being heavily funded by cryptocurrencies even though that was absolutely disproven over the last week or 10 days. And so she has been a she's been a longtime hater of the things that Bitcoin. I mean, she she broadly it's cryptocurrency. It's not targeted towards Bitcoin, it seems. But Bitcoin is, along with maybe a couple others, are the the ones that are actual useful tools for freedom. Mhmm. I mean, the the the very transparent truth is It seems that the US government wants to have control over our finances. Right.
Both surveillance control and actual Control and the ability to actually prevent us from doing things that we want with their finances. And that I think that's only a logical stepping stone for them. If a government already has vast amounts of power but wants to continue to consolidate power and grow Grow their control. Mhmm. The best tool to do that is through financial control. And as you mentioned at the beginning of of our pod, the CBDCs are the kind of the ultimate tool for that right now. Right. And the the only real kind of counter to CBDCs is Bitcoin is cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin that are actually decentralized and useful and can provide privacy. Right. It's only those things that can be used to counter Counteract the effects of CBDCs once they come because they will come.
And so I think that there's a there's a concerted effort to slowly shut down the usefulness of cryptocurrency. I think, like, the the approach of Senator Warren is not something that will come to pass and that There will be, like, a a total ban on cryptocurrencies, especially not Bitcoin. Right. But I think what can happen is that that they understand that if we can't use these things. While preserving our privacy. If we can only use Bitcoin in a transparent, surveilled way where our our identity is attached to our transactions. Right. Where there's no privacy tools to be able to use to to prevent other people from viewing the things that we do without our consent, Then it loses the vast majority of of its its ability to give freedom.
And I think that's the effort there is is rather than banning Bitcoin entirely, The goal is if you can strip away the privacy and strip away the the parts of the ecosystem that allow it to be used in a way that that cannot be controlled by the government or cannot be surveilled at the very least, then you can prevent it from being a tool that's used to to protect the individual from the overwhelming power of the state. And I I think, like, that's my overarching goal that I see for, like, senator Warren and and and broad broad swaths of specifically the the regulatory body of the United
[00:35:58] McIntosh:
So I think that's overall, I think that's a pretty good summary of what's been going on. I would, I would encourage the listeners if they have any interest in this and they should. But we will have links, in the show notes to comments where you can go make comments for this. I would encourage you to take the time to go do that. Understand what's going on. It's now is really the time to push back. It's not after it passes. Yes. That would be a mistake. We're not it's all is not lost if if it does, but it would certainly be a It'd be a blow. I mean, it would be. I think the end result of of what you were talking about with If if all of this came to pass and they basically kinda make it where it's this surveilled state, The only role Bitcoin has in that is a store of value for things like these ETFs, which I mean, I don't care about them, but that's not really what Bitcoin was created for.
And I think that's very important to keep in mind in all of this. You know? We lose so much if if this happens. And I know well, I wanna wrap this up, this part of it, I guess, by saying, I I know that Bitcoin I guess well, let me say it like this. I wished privacy had had a stronger emphasis in Bitcoin from the start. Absolutely. I know there's not a whole lot of emphasis on it. I know there are things that are going on. But with all of this stuff that we see, that the these attacks that are ramping up, I would love to see it. Unfortunately, I'm not with a software engineer that can code this kind of stuff. This is not my forte. I can't read through the Bitcoin core code and contribute and this kind of thing. But I would love to see more people get involved specifically in the privacy that, in my opinion, need to be built out as soon as is reasonable.
Right? We don't we just like with all things Bitcoin. We can't rush this stuff. It's way too important. But as soon as it's reasonable, we need to be moving some of these things along that will bake this into the protocol because we've seen so much acceptance at this point of Bitcoin that if, by the government, I should say, at least in the United States, that if we bake this into the protocol, I think I think it's game over. I don't I mean, if they can't tell what you're doing when you're transacting, then I don't care what Financial rules they make. You know what I mean?
Yep. As long as they don't outlaw it. And if they do, then I guess I'll be an outlaw. I mean, I don't know. I I don't know. Probably shouldn't say that on the air, but but, you know, I mean, I don't I don't see that happening, though. To be honest, I mean, specifically, I don't I don't see that being, a rule, unlike I mean, Nepal, for example, they've actually outlawed cryptocurrencies. I don't I don't know if you've heard this, but it happened in 2021. And it was because stupid people were scamming people, not in Bitcoin, actually.
You know, I don't think that's gonna happen here in the United States. We are getting a division between these casino coins and Bitcoin. And yes, scams can happen on Bitcoin. We've seen it in the past, but the entire thing was not set up as a scam. So there is a difference. You mentioned freedom.tech, your website. And, I guess it's a newsletter. Correct? I I I want you to talk about that. I actually meant to bring that up upfront and forgot. So since we touched on that, let's go ahead and Discuss that for just a second before we move on. I guess it's a newsletter. Correct? I I I want you to talk about that. I actually meant to bring that up upfront and forgot. So since we touched on that, let's go ahead and Discuss that for just a second before we move on. Yeah. Yeah. Before we do, I do wanna kinda touch on what you were just talking about. Okay. Absolutely. I I definitely agree. I mean, you're you're preaching with the choir when you when you talk about making
[00:40:24] Seth:
changes to Bitcoin's protocol that improve the privacy. It's something something I've wanted for years, and it it's the main reason I got involved with Monero years ago, and I'm still a huge Monero fan is is that The protocols that bake in privacy at the base layer benefit far more people. Right. Because you don't need to understand even the need for privacy Right. To gain privacy, and it means that even people who don't care about personal privacy contribute to the broader privacy of those who do see that need. There's there's so many benefits there, and it it is something I would love to see come to Bitcoin. I I do think that at this point, Because of all the the institutional adoption and everything that people have clamored for Mhmm.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, It's very, very difficult to get some sort of a sweeping change like that put into into Bitcoin at this point. I think it's difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. But I I I would say, I think the thing that that would help to put some pressure on those who do have the the ability, who do have the tools, who do have the influence Is to just talk about that you want Bitcoin to be more private. Just be public about your love for privacy. I know that it sounds a little strange, but I think that's one of the problems is that the most privacy loving individuals usually aren't on social media or aren't talking about these things actively. And so it can feel like there's not a desire for privacy within the Bitcoin space. Right. But I I think we have seen that start to shift publicly, but I think something where, like, Every every one of your listeners can can help by talking about how, like, hey. I would love to see Bitcoin be more private. Like, what are the things people are building here? What are the tools I can Today. What are some of the ways that you could see it being more private?
I mean, I think the the approach that Monero has taken Is, like, the one of the safest and yet most effective approaches to bringing privacy to a to a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. Because, Really, to have strong privacy, you need to hide the sender, the receiver, and the amount. If you leave out any of those pieces, specifically if you leave out amount, Mhmm. It gets a lot harder to to protect any of the other things, because a lot of the the ways that you can trace cryptocurrencies, Even if it's hard to tell exactly who is sending money to who, if you can see the amount and you can follow the amount as amounts small amounts get peeled off, as change gets sent back, You can use that amount to be able to to unveil a lot of what people are doing even if the other things are hidden. That's why, like, if you use a coin joint protocol like Samurai Whirlpool. Mhmm. You have to use fixed amounts. So you enter pools that are a specific size. And the reason for that is so that if you're all mixing the same size input and output, You can gain privacy from it. But if you mixed different size inputs and outputs, different amounts of Bitcoin in each one, it would be trivial to trace through. So the the amounts is an important part. The tricky the tricky thing that comes into effect is when you talk about Bitcoin and you talk about hiding amounts, What that would mean is that the the simple auditability that has become important in Bitcoin circles, at least in in Bitcoin narratives Right. Would be lost. You would not lose the ability to audit Bitcoin. And that's a lot of the confusion Is that it it doesn't mean when you hide amounts like how Monero does it with what are called confidential amounts, you don't lose the ability to audit The amount of Bitcoin in existence. Interesting. But it does mean you rely on a bit more cryptography to audit the amount of Bitcoin in existence, And that would open up a potential risk for hidden inflation.
That risk is very, very, very, very, like, infinitismally small Because the cryptography and the code is so well understood and mature at this point. Right. But there is that risk. So it it's hard to get that through when a lot of the narrative around Bitcoin is is how sacrosanct the 21,000,000 Sure. Is. Mhmm. And this would put us, like I said, I I think an infinitesimally small risk that that that could be lost in some sort of a hidden inflation event. But the the privacy you gain from adding, the amount is is really immense, and it it enables so many other approaches to privacy to be built out on top of it. So
[00:44:28] McIntosh:
I don't know if if you know the detail of this, and I'm not I'm not looking for minutia, but in general, how do they how do they hide that? Is it like a ZK roll up where the kind of the top level knows. You could you can buy cryptography, know that If I have this value at the top level, well, then all this other stuff has to be. It has to amount to that amount or whatever. But I just botched completely that explanation. I'm sorry. But does that make sense?
[00:45:01] Seth:
Yeah. I think it's it's a it's a reasonable intro there. I think the so, like, for background, I have long been involved with the Monero community, and I do have a pretty deep understanding of this stuff. So I'm happy to happy to dive into that. Okay. So the the way that Monero hides amounts and the way that it maintains auditability, is that Monero uses something called confidential amounts to hide the amounts. Okay? Essentially, what that means is it's a it's a zero knowledge proof, which I know is a a big buzzword, but, that is what it is. It's a very simple zero knowledge proof where when you create a transaction, you also create a proof to go along with it that proves that the amount that you're sending in the transaction Is correct. They didn't generate any amount of Monero that that doesn't match the amount on the input side. Essentially, you're just proving that the inputs and outputs balance out And that no false Monero was created in the transaction.
That proof is able to be verified in a way that doesn't reveal anything about the amount. Right. Miners can still check that there was no inflation, that you didn't try to cheat the system because they can take that proof and validate it with without knowing anything about the amount. That's where the zero knowledge proof part comes in. And so you're still able to audit individual transactions that way. The other way that auditability is maintained is that When you mine Monero, the actual coinbase output, the the amount of Monero that's created in each block, that is totally transparent. That's not hidden by confidential amounts or anything like that. So you can still do the the simple napkin math addition to see how much Monero has been created through the mining process just like in Bitcoin. There's actually no difference there, which a lot of people don't don't understand.
But the so when it comes to the transactions, I mentioned how confidential amounts work. The the only risk there is that if the cryptography behind that zero knowledge proof Or the implementation of that cryptography is flawed. Mhmm. There is the potential for someone to be able to create Monero out of thin air And hide it. Again, it's like that's a an infinitesimally small risk because the actual cryptography that's used here is, I think, over a decade old at this point. Very, very well understood. And when it comes to 0 knowledge proofs, very simple.
So it it's It's a very, very, very small risk, but that's where that little bit of risk happens is if someone can create a proof that's fraudulent, but that looks like it's legitimate to minors and anyone else the chain. That's where the risk comes in.
[00:47:25] McIntosh:
Interesting. I I'm aware of Monero. I don't think I've ever actually owned any. And I knew about the, the privacy benefits of it, but I've, I've never heard the details of this. Is there some resources that we could put in the show notes as well in case somebody wants to dig into that any deeper.
[00:47:46] Seth:
Yeah. Definitely. I mean, the I'll send you some some links to some point, but the simple get Monero.org website is the kind of Official, but unofficial since there's no official company or anything behind Monero. It's the that's the main website to get started on, but I can send you some other resources as well. Okay. Very cool.
[00:48:05] McIntosh:
Yeah. Unfortunately, I think that well, it's certainly possible that that could be implemented into Bitcoin. And maybe if things get bad enough, it will be just as a defense mechanism. Unfortunately, I think certainly in the current climate. I don't think it would necessarily go over so well if somebody's been proposing that merge request or whatever. But, it's good food for thought. Now given the current constraints, how can people what's the best way for people to protect themselves, to speak. I would assume it's CoinJoins. Correct?
[00:48:44] Seth:
Yeah. Yeah. When it comes to Bitcoin, I think the the best So I kind of view it as 2 2 things. The the first thing that you need to protect yourself against in Bitcoin is having your identity connected to your usage of Bitcoin. And that That one can seem the most daunting to people, but I think that once you actually take the plunge and use some of these methods to acquire Bitcoin without giving over your ID. Mhmm. It's really not as difficult as it seems at first, and it's very refreshing to know that your identity is not directly connected to exactly how much Bitcoin you own and everything you do with it. So the the avoidance of this KYC that we talked about earlier is the the biggest step towards privacy in Bitcoin that you can do. I mean, if you're if you're gonna do one thing, it's just stop using Coinbase, start using HODL HODL or BisQ Right. Or AgoraDesk. There's lots of options.
Because that means that even if someone sees your activity on chain, there is no way for them to directly attribute your identity to it outside of, like, physically seeing you, knowing who you are, and watching you make a Bitcoin transaction. So it's it's a very, very important first step, and that gets you miles ahead of the vast majority of Bitcoin users and gets you out of the vast majority of the dragnet surveillance that happens today. So that I think is the first and most important step. Once you've done that, really the best tool today is samurai wallet, or Sparrow wallet, which is, made by someone else, but it's a desktop wallet that's absolutely fantastic, and incorporates a lot of the privacy tools of samurai wallet. Okay.
And they yeah. Their their approach is just it's it's proven. It's time tested. Works very well. They've got a lot of good people behind it. That's that's normally the way that that I push people for privacy on their
[00:50:29] McIntosh:
time. We have an entire episode actually about the p2p, exchanges essentially, like. So, the listeners can go back and look at that. I will include that in the show notes as well. My show notes are gonna be really long this time, and that's cool. But, very good. Very good. That'll get people started. Do you maybe do I don't I have no idea. Do you have, like, a YouTube channel? I guess you probably don't.
[00:50:56] Seth:
Yeah. So I don't. I have a a blog called Set for privacy.com. Okay. It has a lot of stuff and a lot of links out. I don't have a YouTube. It you do well, I have a YouTube channel for my podcast. It's an audio only podcast. So to be clear who are looking to go further into this, and I would strongly encourage them to do that.
[00:51:15] McIntosh:
You know, I'm just trying to get as many resources as possible. I would add one more. I'm on, Bitcoin, and It's a great way to get KYC free Bitcoin. So, I'm supporting the network. I'm earning some corn, and I have KYC free Bitcoin at the same time. So I love it. I would point that out as an option. I know that scares a lot of people. It's really not that hard. But, yeah. Very cool. Alright. Awesome. I, oh, I have 1 last topic, and then we're gonna wrap up. I've been trying to figure out how to say this. Bitcoin Twitter, it can be very toxic. I think, frankly, the security people on Bitcoin. Twitter may be even more toxic.
I will say you do a great job of managing these things when people get their feathers ruffled about something that you've said and this kind of thing. Why do you think though that, is it because people are just I my guess is it's because people are so passionate about privacy. Why why is it like that? I mean, it it can be frankly off putting to people who are kind of looking at that from the outside. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. It's like mommy and daddy are yelling at each other. What am I nice to do.
[00:52:55] Seth:
Oh, I, Yeah. This is a this is a topic I have thought A lot of a long time about this is something I've interacted with a lot. That's it's something that's one of the most saddening parts of being in the cryptocurrency space and being in the privacy space because both have a especially when it comes to privacy in the cryptocurrency space. There's a there's a very toxic maximalist holier than thou attitude that is common. And it's really unfortunate because The the approach that many take in the space only dissuades people from taking actionable steps towards personal privacy. Because when you're first starting to to realize, like, hey. I need I need to improve. I need to take steps here.
But you start to wade into the resources, and you realize that there's this feud that is going on where people are name calling and doxing each other and yelling at each other on Twitter, and you're seeing this back and forth. What do you think people are gonna do? I mean, people are either going to just have to blindly pick because they're not gonna have to wade through a feud. And so they may end up using a tool that's malicious or not nearly as, competent or run by people who are happy to to cede ground to the state, or they just say, nope. I'm out of here. And, unfortunately, I have many, many, many, many, many instances of people in in my DMs and signal messages, etcetera, Let's say, look. I tried to wade into, making my my phone more private, but then there's this whole drama that I don't understand about Graphene OS and other stuff going on. Or I tried to wade into making my Bitcoin more private and gaining some financial privacy, but this there's this whole, like, green versus red thing, and samurai hates It's Wasabi, and Wasabi hates samurai. And I see them fighting all the time. And Mhmm. It makes people go, I'm just I'm not even gonna bother. Like, it's not worth my time. I can't go through this. I can't wait through this. And it's really disappointing as someone who is extremely passionate about bringing people into the world of personal privacy. Yeah. And it's something I've tried to fight back against. But If I knew if I knew why this was such a problem in the space, I would hopefully have solved it already. Right. But it's something that I I haven't been able to figure I think the kind of the assumption I make is just that the people who are building the the truly state resistant tools Are understandably under a lot of pressure. Right.
And so it it leads to a lot of a lot of paranoia and a lot of Kind of defensive toxicity.
[00:55:23] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:55:24] Seth:
I that's the only thing I can really think of beyond just the fact that Many, many people who are absolutely brilliant also suffer in other areas Mhmm. And have some struggles. It could be that, but it it's really hard to say. So many individual cases of this that, obviously, it's it's certainly not a one size fits all thing, but it's tricky. I wish I knew the answer. It's something that I I try to fight against and try to avoid the toxicity and yet weighed into these things to help people understand the the tools at their disposal. But it It gets messy, and it's something that has to change if we want the average person to be able to jump in, see the need for privacy Right. Find the route the road to getting to those things and actually using the tools.
[00:56:03] McIntosh:
Well, I appreciate your level headedness in all of this. I and I mean that. And I I'm sorry I sprung that on you. It was not No.
[00:56:11] Seth:
It's It's a good question. But yeah.
[00:56:13] McIntosh:
I I what I genuinely was curious as to your thoughts on that. So, as I wrap things up, one of the things I always do is I ask the people who I'm interviewing what their favorite book is. I'm a reader, And I love, for one thing, to find new books to read, but it does help me to understand where people are coming from. I've gotten some very interesting answers, to be honest. Some quite unexpected. Yeah. So I'm gonna ask you. You can pick 1 or a couple. I I can't have a whole list, but a couple of your favorite books.
[00:56:52] Seth:
Okay. That's that's tricky. I'll give you so I'll give you 2 that are maybe recency bias Okay. That I've really liked. One is the Dune trilogy, which I know has become kind of in vogue with the Dune movies, but I was a very late comer to those. You're talking about the original. Correct? Yeah. Yeah. Dune, Dune Messiah, children of Dune, the the ones by the original author, not the sun. And when did you first read those? Maybe 2020 Okay. Great. Mhmm. Yeah. I missed those somehow when I was growing up and and reading sci fi. On the other end, I'm a big military history buff. Mhmm.
And I just recently went through a 3 part series on the Pacific War by E and W Toll. With you. I don't know the name of the series off the top of my head. Look it up. It was absolutely fantastic, and it's, kind of opened my eyes to a different part of World War two. I'm I'm in this weird place where I'm very anti war and kind of anarchist slash cryptoanarchist, but I have a passion for military history. So Yeah. Yeah. I don't really know what that means about me, but I I still really like reading military history books. So We are allowed to have
[00:58:04] McIntosh:
Schizophrenia.
[00:58:07] Seth:
The paradox of man. I I would
[00:58:10] McIntosh:
honestly put myself in very much the same boat. As I have gotten older, I've I've I've gotten a lot more antiwar for one thing when you have kids, and then your kids get to be the age where, it's one thing for you to go off to war. It's another one is your kids. That puts a whole different perspective on it. And I've learned a lot, frankly, over the last 20 years, that It's way too long for this podcast to go into. But I grew up I mean, One of my favorite movies is Gladiator. I mean, you know, and I do watch I mean, like, every once in a while, I pull out, the Tom Hanks movie about storming, Saving Private Ryan, you know, for example.
Mhmm. I tend to watch a lot of, more stuff centered around World War 2, frankly, because I even though that war was caused by finances, to be honest, I believe it least was a legitimate war. I mean, there was there was a Yeah. A threat. There and there was an existential threat going on.
[00:59:16] Seth:
One of the few that's So even though relatively reasonable. Frankly, people caused that war,
[00:59:22] McIntosh:
and set it up essentially without being too conspiratorial. That is a war that frankly I would have I would have signed up for knowing the consequences of it. You know? I don't wanna get too philosophical about all that, but, yeah, that's I I understand that, certainly. Do you have any other others? You've mentioned Snowden's book. Maybe we should that may not be your favorite book, but let's go ahead and throw it in. What is this book called? Absolutely. Yeah. I only let that one out because I mentioned it earlier. That's for me, that was the
[00:59:54] Seth:
the key to understanding personal privacy. Okay. I went from Absolutely no care in the world about personal privacy, Google Homes in every room in my house, and all the all the spyware Spyware you could possibly spend money on Right. To suddenly turning around and replacing everything in my home and confusing my wife why suddenly all our electronics are missing. It was a it was quite a revelation for me and and a good one. Mhmm. I went a little too deep on personal privacy initially, but I I finally came around and found a little bit more level headed approach. But for me, that was the the book that really opened my eyes. Great.
[01:00:29] McIntosh:
Dune, was Might have been the 1st sci fi book I read. And at the age I was, I was quite young. It was Mhmm. It was I actually did read the whole thing. When I came back, when I was in my late teens, I reread the the first 3 books, which were the only ones that were out back then. And, I have read all of them except the very latest one that just came out a few months ago, if I'm not mistaken. Frank was definitely a much better writer than his son. They have different styles. Mhmm. I'll say that. I haven't read any by the sun yet. I do enjoy them, but they are different. I I like how they fill in the backstory.
If you read fantasy at all, I would strongly encourage you if you've never read Tolkien's works, to read Oh, yeah. The Hobbit and then the Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and and then go out and read all of his son stuff. Okay? Because it's very similar. I there will never be any so I'm just gonna fanboy for just a second. There will never be an equal for a token in my opinion.
[01:01:41] Seth:
I would agree with that.
[01:01:42] McIntosh:
Frank Herbert is the closest thing that there is. And by the way, kids, George r r Martin, not even in the ballpark. Okay? So I'm sorry if I just offended half of the audience. I have read 1 or 2 of his books, and, frankly, I just couldn't stomach anymore. But Uh-huh. Regardless, very good stuff. Frank has a lot of thoughts. It's well and I will say this. They're hinted at in his books. His son unpacks a lot more of the kind of the computer side of things, okay, about how things may develop down the road and the implications that can come about through through technology advancing, which it's going to.
I mean, it's undoubtable, or whatever the word would be. So, anyways, I will I will stop there, but great list. I will add those. Probably what I should start doing is putting these links on Amazon so when people buy them, it helps the show out. You betcha. For now, I will just make links to them, and and we'll do that. Is there anything else you wanted to share with our listeners? First of all, I really appreciate you coming on. I appreciate your time. It's been a great conversation. But is there anything you wanted to leave our our listeners with?
[01:03:06] Seth:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think first, thank you. So glad to be able to come on and Chat about what I view as really important topics and and also just chat about fun topics. I think it's it's it's good that you blend in a little bit of, a lighthearted topic at the end there. So grateful for that. I think the only thing I wanna leave people with is is just that if this kind of piqued your interest about Open source tech, about privacy tools, about, this specific fencing proposal or the the indictment on Tornado Cash. That's a big focus for me recently is kicking off and driving a new publication called Freedom.Tech.
Okay. Starting as a blog, gonna be a podcast as well. Great. And just go there. Take a look at what I've written so far. We have, multiple new contributors jumping in to to start to write about All things FreedomTech. I think it's going to be, hopefully, the most useful single resource For staying ahead of the curve when it comes to empowering human freedom when it, through technology. So really excited for that. I would definitely recommend taking a look, and that Goes much deeper into a lot of the things that we talked about today. Great. Yeah. We just covered the surface.
[01:04:12] McIntosh:
I always encourage the re the readers. Sorry, guys. The listeners, you know, dig in. We're we cannot cover everything. There's just no way. But, yeah, that's awesome. I appreciate your time, Seth, and we're gonna wrap things up right there. Alright. That was a really great conversation with with Seth. So I hope you enjoyed that. We're going to move on from here to our supporters. We do have some support this week. While I'm finishing opening that up. I would like to point out that as a way of supporting the show and as a way to earn some sats, you can you can create clips of the podcast.
For the current episode, if you were to go in and make a, you know, at least a 32nd to 1 minute long clip or so. Post that on fountain as an example. I'll boost that back 500 sets. If it's an older episode, it would be 300 sets, and that's a way that I can get visibility for the show. It's a way for you to earn some sets as well. You provide value, and I provide value back for that. So, I would love to see people taking advantage of that so who are these supporters? These are people who, have taken the time to get a podcasting 2 point o app or to go to the new podcast apps.com website and look up our podcast and boost to show support for the show. They do this to, you know, get a message, to us, to just a lot of times, they don't even have a message. It's just a boost just as a way to provide that value back for the value that they're getting, from the Generation Bitcoin podcast. So, we also have streaming as well. I Cannot take the time to go through all the people who stream.
Eventually, we will get to the point where we will not be able to cover all the people who support and, boost, and we'll have to provide a cutoff. We're not there yet, so this is everybody who's boosted. And let's see here. I should be almost to it. I'll be glad when I get moved over, and I can just do this in helipad. Would be great. As of now, I'm still using. Great tool, but, I would much rather. So our 1st boost came in, from Karen at Mere Mortals. He just finished up his value for value, podcast season. I think it was our 3rd season. It was a great season. Well worth taking a listen to to learn more about the value for value ecosystem that we're building here on podcasting 2 point o.
And, as I you know, I talked about my mom, last Thursday, or excuse me, last Saturday, on that recording. And, she recently passed away. I think all of these are kind of about that. So bear with me, please. We're doing okay. It's a process, and, you know, we'll we'll be alright. But, yeah, we're we're still kind of in the middle of it. It's actually Wow. It's been almost exactly a week from right now. That's crazy as I finish up this recording. So condolences, Macintosh. My mom took a turn for the worst this week, and I also don't think I'll be fully prepared for the end. Best wishes. Thanks, Karen. I appreciate that. I appreciate your support.
It was 2022. It was row of ducks, and thank you very much. Yeah. I'm a I'm afraid you won't be regardless of when. It's just the nature of it. You know? I think after 10 years, you would have thought I would have been prepared for it, and I was to an extent, but, but not completely. So hypersensitive asaurus, sent in a boost of a 1,000 sats, and it was just a heart. And I appreciate that. I got the message. Thank you. I appreciate that very much. And we got another 1,000 sats from Radrac c. It's r a d r a c s e. I don't know how I'm supposed to pronounce that, but he said he or she said, Man, I'm sorry for your loss, and thank you. I appreciate that. Again, as well means a lot. And then, Berno, sitting in another I sitting in a 1,000 sat boost and said, I'm really sorry to hear about your mother, and I wish you the best. And thank you, Berna. I appreciate that. So, we in total let me go ahead and total this up real quick. We're always looking for the month to, to get a total of 25, 250,000 sets, but roughly $50. I'm gonna have to actually adjust that, I guess, as the market goes up, you know, to account for for inflation, for price inflation anyways, a good kind of inflation, of Bitcoin.
So, I'll probably start looking at that fairly soon. So in total for this episode, we looks like we had right around 66100. It was 6542, after Satoshi stream took their part, which is supposed to be 1%. By the way, speaking of inflation of price, Earlier, I was talking about good chance we could break 35,000. By the way, as I do this part of the recording to wrap things up tonight, our block time. I'm not gonna put this in the thing in into the show notes, but just to give you a idea. It's now 814918. 814,900 and eighteen.
We're now at 35,730, and I believe we touched 36,000 or at least came very, very close to it. Let me double check my little chart here. Oh, I should have it right here. Actually, yeah, 35,992 according to this chart. So really, really close to 36,000. It does look like there's a strong possibility, I think, that we're going to stay above it. We closed above 35,000, so that was certainly good for the day. And in fact, I brought that up. It was 35,441. So all that's happened in just the last few hours, and that's what Bitcoin will do. This is why we DCA people. Don't try and figure this out. Just know. Hey. We break this down into 4 year cycles. We've got this whole happening thing. We've got institutional adoption. We've got more adoption by people.
You know, number is going to go up over time. There you go. I don't know what that number is going to be. I don't try and predict that, but it will go up. Ladies and gentlemen, the next 2 years between now, November 1st, and at the end of December roughly. Please don't quote me on this, but somewhere in the Q4 at least of 2025, We are going to be in the bull market part of this, and it's gonna get crazy. And it's not just gonna be Bitcoin. We're not gonna be talking about all the other stuff. But as Bitcoin goes up, you always see these other altcoins, casino coins follow along, and that's fine. They will get blown out over time, but here we are.
So buckle up. Be prepared. I'm going to keep repeating this over the next several years. PCA. Alright. So that's the end of that. I do appreciate all of that support. There's a there was not any breaking news other than price go up. Right? Nothing really this week. I'm gonna kinda skip that section because we're getting kinda long. There's a lot of links in the show notes this week. Seth had a number of links. I've got Finsen stuff in there. Please take the time to go and and comment about Finsen. If you if you are knowledgeable enough to understand that they are trying to take our privacy, that this is an overly broad act, that frankly, this is supported by the constitution.
Please go comment on that. Okay? They need to hear from us. So there's a number of links in there. I made a couple of links to the blog post that we were talking about that Seth had written, and that's actually on his Freedom Tech site. There's a lot of great information there. I put Seth's links in here as well. Seth for privacy on Twitter, his foundation link and his freedom tech link. If you're on Twitter, I would advise you to follow those. Plus, I also put a link to the peer to peer, decentralized exchange ways to buy Bitcoin anonymously.
Okay? So Take a minute. Maybe you don't normally go through that, but go through the show notes, and click through some of those links. Take a look at that stuff. Alright. So we're gonna wrap this up. Generation Bitcoin supports podcasting 2 point o. We are a value for value podcast. We do not have sponsors. We do not have sizing. In that way, I do not get steered incorrectly because somebody is paying me some money. You can support this podcast in 3 different ways through time, talent, and treasure. If you wanna support the podcast and have some time or talent, I got a lot of stuff. Shoot me a message on Twitter, please. I'm on McIntosh Fintech on Twitter, or you can email me at McIntosh at jendashbtc.com.
If you wanna support the show with your treasure with Bitcoin, and please, of course, You can do this through your strike app or whatever. This should not be the coin that you're saving. God forbid. But you can, instead of going and buying a Starbucks, which is now almost $7 from large Starbucks. It's insane. I remember when it was five thirty five. I shut up, grandpa. That was 2 weeks ago. It's I mean, it's almost there. It really wasn't that long ago. It was 5.35, and now it's 7. Five thirty five because of our taxes. It was, like, $5 plus the taxes. Anyways, sorry.
Get that little rant in. Instead of doing that, buy $5 on strike in Sats. Send that to your Bitcoin wallet, whether that's an Albie wallet or your fountain app or whatever, and support your favorite podcaster or podcasters. Try not to be too discriminatory. I'm only gonna support 1 purse. There's a lot of podcasts out there. If you listen to more with 1 podcast you should be and getting value from them. You should be supporting more than 1. Anyways, if you like the content, Most of all, I would love it if you would just tell your friends about Generation Bitcoin podcast. You can give us a review, whatever. Or tell people, hey. This is great. Awesome. That does help too. Alright. Thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful, and I would love to hear from you. I'm on Twitter at Macintosh Fintech. Like I said, I'm on Mastodon at Macintosh at podcast index dot social.
Hey. Stay humble, friends. Go out and make it a great week. I'll talk to y'all next Monday.
Introductions
Overview of the proposed FinCEN regulation and its impact on financial privacy
The importance of advocating for privacy in Bitcoin and pushing for privacy improvements
The importance of privacy in cryptocurrency
Maintaining privacy in a toxic online environment
Seth's favorite books
