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[00:00:01]
Unknown:
Hello, and welcome to Freedom Tech Friday. For those of you that might be new here, allow me to quickly explain what this is all about and why the hell we are here. Freedom Tech Friday is a weekly live and interactive show hosted on the ungovernable misfits x, Nostra, and YouTube feeds. And we go live for one hour every Friday at 9AM Eastern or 2PM UK time. And you can also catch up later on the Ungovernable Misfits podcast feed. On Freedom Tech Friday, we like to cover the latest news, trends, and for anything relating to Freedom Technologies. That could be anything from Bitcoin and Monero, encrypted messengers, privacy tools, and everything in between.
Essentially, if there's a news item, tool, or topic that can help you take back some control in today's digital Panopto then we wanna talk about it. My name's q and a, and I am head of customer experience at Foundation, where we build Bitcoin focused sovereignty tools. And as always, just about, for reasons that will become clear shortly, I am joined by my good friends, Max, the head honcho of the Ungovernable Empire, and Seth, who is VP at Cakewallet. As I mentioned, this show is live and interactive, and we really rely on you guys to steer us towards the topics you want us to cover or to send us your Freedom Tech related questions. There's loads of ways in which you can get involved, all of which really help spread awareness for the show. These include commenting or asking questions in the live chat on X or Nosta or YouTube, submitting your topics or questions ahead of time, boosting the show on Fountain or other two podcast and two point o apps, sending in your tips via Bitcoin and Monero at xmrchat.com, and finally, just sharing the show on an x or no start with your friends.
Top support from last week's Big Question Bonanza show comes from Turkey who sent 500 sats so and said no comments. And also from Uncle Swan who said also sent 500 sats. And he said, clearly, I'm wrong as a dad. Most of the time, I don't go to the bathroom by myself anymore. Yeah. He's referring to, one of our tangent, top topics there. That's, probably wrong, mate. Yeah. We'll give we'll give you some tips. Just, hop into the DMs. And we do also have an XMR chat from WebWipe, that was missed, by myself and Max. I think he submitted just after we recorded the last Bitcoin brief. And it is a time sensitive message, and he did send some XMR with it. So, I just wanted to quickly cover it here as well. WebWipe is hosting a privacy meetup in Austin, Texas on November 1 from 6PM till 10PM.
This is at Indra's a a warehouse. I'm not sure whether that's a type and it's supposed to be Ale House, but it said a warehouse. 790 4 F M 696. We're gonna present q and a's BTC privacy presentation from Baltic Honey Badger. We're gonna discuss Ashigaru, Ronin Dojo, XML tools, and more. Thank you for the support. Alright. Well, thanks for, sending that in, and, sounds like an interesting meetup to head to. I wish I was, able to to make it to that one. Anyway, without further ado, let's dive into the show. Max and, Seth, how is it going?
[00:03:08] Unknown:
Very good, Mayan, mate. Excited for today. This is, something I've been pestering people in the background for months to learn the ins and outs. So, this is a good topic. Very excited.
[00:03:21] Unknown:
And, just before he jumps in, if he is out of breath, he he has just run back to his hotel. So, bear with us, guys. But, Seth, how's it going?
[00:03:29] Unknown:
I made it. I made it just in time. Yeah. I, I learned the hard way. You hard way, you don't take an Uber in Lugano at 03:00, I guess, because it would take me, like, eight minutes to walk or, like, thirty minutes to take the Uber. So I had to cancel the Uber and ran, but I'm here. I'm here with definitely the best view of any of y'all. So I'll I'll keep those two. Oh,
[00:03:54] Unknown:
see. I was jealous before, but now I'm even more jealous. So I think we need to we need to see the view from your hotel room. And we also it might be worth just quickly mentioning, like, Refund, what were hell we're talking about. Like, where are you? What are you up to?
[00:04:09] Unknown:
Yes. So I am out in Lugano, Switzerland, which is the Italian quarter of Switzerland. I am here for the plan b forum, which is the, like, Bitcoin centric event that the folks behind Tether put on. Absolutely fantastic event. They get a lot of great people here. They have kind of a split stage approach, kind of like, the Bitcoin Mac events. So they'll have the the main event the main stage, which is bigger, focuses on broader topics, and then they have a separate p two p stage, which is all the all the stuff we love. So that's where I'll be having a panel tomorrow. I know there's some great panels from, like, Roy from Breeze and others that are gonna be participating there. So, yeah, I'm I'm very, very blessed to be out here. It is definitely the most beautiful place on Earth I've been, and I've been to a lot of beer. Wow. There may be better places, but this absolutely takes the cake for me and and where I've been. So it's, it's insane. If anyone ever gets the chance to get out here, definitely definitely do it. It's beautiful.
[00:05:05] Unknown:
Ever made it out to Slough in The UK.
[00:05:10] Unknown:
Slough? It doesn't sound beautiful, but It may be as as about as beautiful as it sounds.
[00:05:16] Unknown:
Yeah. Nice. Okay. May that'll be nice. I'll I'll come from Lugano to Slough, and I can directly You should do. How about that? Yeah. You should definitely do that, and then let us know your findings. Observe is asking the important questions. He says, Seth, how was lunch in Lugano?
[00:05:35] Unknown:
Well, it's creepy, but I did just eat lunch. I don't know how he knows this. It was it was good. It was good. I had some nice, nice grilled tenderloin, thinly sliced. What I learned was spinach, but I didn't know it was gonna be spinach, because I ordered in from an Italian menu. But it was good as well. Hanging with the cake team. We got a good bit of the cake team out here, as well. Just kinda kinda for a side team get together, so that's been a blast trying to balance that between us, the conference and that. But, yes, it was a good lunch. Thank you for creepily asking how my lunch was.
[00:06:08] Unknown:
Yeah. If, if Seth isn't on next week's show, then we we know why. It's because, Seth's got a stalker, and Observers just dragging into the big lake in Lagarde.
[00:06:17] Unknown:
He's been observing him all day.
[00:06:21] Unknown:
Anyway, as always, we we yeah. Nice. We've, we've digressed. Today, I want to tackle, one of the bigger questions that's been on the mind of, I'm sure, many misfits for years now. Can you really live on Bitcoin or crypto in your daily life? Now that could be paying for coffee, groceries, topping up your mobile phone, or be you know, going to the other end of the spectrum and being completely native where your, you know, 100 of your income is in Sats and you literally have no choice but to use that as your day to day living expenses. I wanna explore the practical ways you can spend today, and the different trade offs of all of these different options that we have.
So over the next, hour or fifty minutes, we're gonna break down into, like, three main categories. Native payments, gift card solutions, prepaid debit cards, with the aim of hopefully giving you guys the tools to, you know, make better choices or more private choices and and find the options that, kinda suit you the most. Before we dive in, I wanna quickly hear from both of you kind of at a high level. There's no need to go into specific techniques on the pros and cons. We'll we'll get to that. Do you think that living on Bitcoin or crypto can be a reality in 2025? And what are the kind of main considerations that somebody thinking about doing this, should give? I'll I'll hand it to Max. I'll give it to you first, mate.
[00:07:50] Unknown:
Yeah. I think for the most part, it is possible to live on crypto. I think one thing that we're missing, in these sections, on purpose just because everyone kind of already knows it, you can also sell for cash, like using peer to peer network is quite a good way to live on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But using the other things that we're gonna cover, yeah, I do. The the only thing I would say is there are some parts of life that make it very difficult, like anything where you're touching fiat world, things like, you know, buying a property or, like, leasing a car or doing those kind of things, that's where it starts to get a little bit more difficult, larger payments, where you have a family and you can't get around that. But for the most part, I would say, like, 95% of things. Yeah. And it's not even that difficult to do it.
[00:08:56] Unknown:
Yeah. I think the answer to me is more dependent on who you are. So, like, if you're single, you absolutely can do this. Like, absolutely no questions asked. You can definitely do this and live purely on Bitcoin. If you have a family, it gets much more difficult. Maybe impossible depending on where you're at. Just specifically, like or I shouldn't say impossible, but you would have to sacrifice a lot in terms of what your options are, where you can live, what kind of housing you can get if you do truly live only on a Bitcoin standard. Especially if you're trying to do it without KYC.
Now if you're willing to do, like, the strike thing and keep all your Bitcoin in strike or top it up regularly and use strike bill pay and stuff where you reveal a lot about yourself, but you do get access to more things. And then you can also, like, prove source of funds more easily for getting a mortgage, that sort of thing. It it unlocks a lot more, but then I think you lose a lot of the benefits of living off of Bitcoin. So I think the answer really just like everything we will ever talk about is it depends on you, the individual. But the more complicated your life in terms of if you have family, if you have kids, it gets much more difficult to be able to to live off of Bitcoin completely, but you can still do a lot with Bitcoin.
[00:10:14] Unknown:
Mhmm.
[00:10:16] Unknown:
Yeah. I tend I tend to agree with that. I I think rolling into to kind of segment one where we're gonna talk about spending natively, with merchants, you know, I I think, again, we could all agree that this is kind of the way it was meant to be and the utopia that we all kind of wanna live in in terms of a a peer to peer, you know, you earning Bitcoin or or crypto, you spend it all with your merchants and there's no kind of in between, there's no hoops you need to jump through or or third party services. That's the way that I think, you know, that where we all want it to head to.
I think that location plays a huge part in this, because obviously, you know, you've got online merchants. And if it's a, you know, digital goods and things like that, then I I think we can all agree that spending, natively so that you there's no conversion. It should always be, a preference, for for most people, not only because it's the way it's intended, but also because, you know, it's supporting those merchants that are kind of pushing the boundaries and being the the kind of mavericks in terms of, you know, being the first movers and and opting to to take this new money as as money, essentially. But, aside from kind of location, what what for all the things do you guys or tools or techniques do you guys kind of think about when you're when you're looking at kind of spending natively with merchants? Are there any specific tools that you use? Are there any specific pieces of software that you recommend?
Or, you know, what kind of tips and tricks do you have around there? Because, I think this is, you know, an important part of pushing what we call, like, the the circular economy.
[00:11:56] Unknown:
Yeah. I think for me, I mean, the the really hard thing is, at least where I'm at in The US, there, like, basically is no real merchant option in person, but you can get a lot of stuff online, either getting shipped to you by somebody who's, like, making fantastic beef jerky, for instance, or soap or maple syrup or there's there's tons of different things you can actually get online from other Bitcoiners and pay directly. Usually, that is over lightning. On chain obviously just has the drawbacks about timing and confirmation speed and that sort of thing. But in person, it can be really difficult to find local merchants. There are some good tools like btcmap.org.
There's a good Monero tool mostly for finding online merchants called Monerica, m 0 n e r I c a. And they have, like, a listing of all the merchants that are known that accept Monerica as well. And then there's also Cryptwerk, c r y p t w e r k, that has, like, a list of merchants for every cryptocurrency. So if you're not specifically looking for Bitcoin or Monero, but just wanna see anywhere that you can pay with crypto, they kinda try to track merchant adoption as well. So just finding some that are near you is the start, but that can be really hard in some in some places. So for me, I generally focus on getting everything digitally that I can from, from other Bitcoiners using Bitcoin or using Monero.
And then when I'm somewhere that allows me to pay with it, like, here in Lugano is one of the rare places where you can pay at quite a few restaurants and stores with Bitcoin directly or with Tether directly because this is the the the Tether town, basically. It's a great opportunity and a a chance to, like, kinda get what that feels like. Like, for instance, I went into a a Shvar, the kind of supermarket chain that's all throughout Europe, Switzerland specifically. And I was able to to buy my, like, snacks and waters and stuff with Monero using open crypto pay, which is just badass. And it it lets you finally get to see, like, what what all this stuff can be used for once we do get merchant adoption. So that was really encouraging. And just like a a thing I would recommend people to to go out of their way to do at least once so you kinda get a feel for what's possible, and that that really kind of fires you up and makes you want to to help with the merchant adoption. It makes you want to be willing to spend a bit more to pay in Bitcoin or Monero. It kinda helps to to get the fire lit.
[00:14:19] Unknown:
Yeah. Max, what's your I know we covered this briefly on, on the on the brief. No pun intended. On the brief. Seth made a great point here. Like, you know, a lot a vast majority of of, like, public or or outspoken Bitcoiners, or the wealth in Bitcoin is kind of, you know, in in the West and in North America, where we see Mhmm. You know, bricks and mortar adoption pretty lackluster, if anything. How big do you think that this new the news coming out of Square or Block where we've got the the kind of default Bitcoin support for any merchants that are existing Square customers. Do you do you think that's gonna be a bit of a nothing burger, or do you think that that could really move the needle?
[00:15:01] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, I think it it could be huge because you see them everywhere. And I think the thing that I really like about it as well is you tend to see it with the smaller, like, you know, like a little coffee shop van that's been converted, and it's like a guy who has that business or he has a couple of them. It's like the smaller businesses that tend to have them, little coffee shops and stuff. So I quite like that as well because it gives these people the option to hold some Bitcoin. It might entice them in over time. It might scare the shit out of them as well because you might have an 80% drop, but, they might start looking over the years and being like, oh, maybe we'll we'll hold a bit of our wealth in this. Maybe we'll start using it. So, yeah, I do think it's massive.
I I I have a little bit of, potential issue with the company behind it and, you know, the owner and everything. But as a as a way to spread Bitcoin use, I think it is huge.
[00:16:12] Unknown:
Yeah. BTC wrestle there has just co corrected me in the chat. I think I might have said it was on by default. That's a misunderstanding on my part, and he he thinks that the merchant must opt in. What I will say with that is, if it is true, is that they've kind of done a good job of incentivizing this as well where there's there's zero fees all the way through next year. No fees. Yeah. So not only is there no processing fees, but, you you know, that's you're saving, like, I I don't know what merchant charge these days, but it's like is it, like, 3% for credit card charges and stuff like that? So there are some like that. Two and a half, three or yeah. Go on, Seth.
[00:16:47] Unknown:
Oh, no. I was I was just agreeing. Yeah. I mean, I think the the biggest thing with it is, yes, it's not on by default. But before, what it would mean is you go to one of these merchants, how are you actually gonna onboard them to Bitcoin? Like, what's what's the game plan for how they accept it? And normally, that would be way too complex for the vast majority, and they're just gonna look at, like, look at you like an idiot and not have any interest. But now you could say if you see the Square terminal, you can say, hey. I'd love to actually pay you in Bitcoin, and you Yeah. Save on fees if I do this. Can I show you how to turn it on? Something I would love to see from the Square team. I haven't seen it. Maybe they put it out, but would be like a guide for Bitcoiners how to t to to show these people how you can enable it. Because I know a lot of these merchants, they're not gonna be like, if you're lucky, you have the owner behind the merchant. But most of the time, it's gonna be, like, some some worker who doesn't know much about the system. It would be really great for, like, me to have a guide that I could just open either to show to them or show them a QR or to, like, directly walk them through it if there's nobody there to be like, hey. I can help you enable it. It takes two seconds. You get it in Fiat. You don't have to worry about Bitcoin. But you save on fees, and I get to pay you on what I want. And that used to be the pitch, but there was, like, you also have to run BTC pay server or you need to use, like, you have to use one of these options, but now you can just enable the options, start using it, which is is pretty badass. So I would love to see something that simplifies how I could actually tell them to do it.
[00:18:08] Unknown:
Is there not a way that Square could, just actually enable this by default? Because if they're not charging fees for it and there's only gonna be a saving and that it can also convert in the back end without any extra fees, would it not make sense for them to just auto enable it and then just say like, people just go up and pay. Like, they just pay with the QR code. Like, I don't understand why you wouldn't do that because, presumably, most people would then have use of it. And then once that year of no fees comes to an end, they could say, by the way, here's a report on what you saved on fees because you haven't had the credit card processing fees and blah blah blah blah blah.
It's also converted, but if you'd have held Bitcoin rather than US dollar or whatever whatever country they're in, you'd actually be better off by this percent as well. So, like, you you they could they could have a report at the end that would entice them to keep going.
[00:19:10] Unknown:
It would be good. Yeah. I wish I had that power. I I I think they could do it by default. The reason I'm sure they don't is because you would still have to choose that option. You can't show like, you're gonna show a QR for other things, or you're gonna show credit card a a screen that's normally about tap to pay for credit cards. So you you wouldn't just automatically show a Bitcoin like a a lightning QR on all of them. People would get freaked out probably. But they could theoretically enable it by default, which would be nice. But I'm sure they just they probably talked to merchants who who said, like, I don't actually want this. I would be a little frustrated if it was gonna be by default. And it's better just slowly onboard them. But as long as they make it simple enough, I think it's fine that it's off by default, if you have a a clear way to simply enable it and to incentivize them, which there is right now. Mhmm.
[00:19:54] Unknown:
Yeah. Alright. Interesting time. We're gonna move us on. Before I do, we've got some, some zaps in the Nostich app. Musket hopping in with 21,000. No comment. Thank you very much, guys. Gwyddion, 42. Cyclops, 5,000. And Bon with 2,222 sats. Thank you very much, guys. Observer, I spotted your question. I'm gonna bring it bring it in, later on. Thank you very much for for hopping that in there. Alright. So we've established that merchant adoption, particularly in, well, in most places of the world, is is lackluster, but there are steps being made to kind of bring that closer to where, you know, the utopia that we we all want to see come to fruition.
But in the meantime, there are some stop gaps that we as the the spender can do to kind of bridge that gap. So one of the the popular ones and that's been around for years is gift card solutions. You know, I'm thinking of Bitrefill, CakePay, Moon, CoinsBee. I'm sure there's loads that I've I've missed off. These seem pretty popular. They seem to have stood the test of time. And, you know, from from my personal experience, they seem to have a pretty wide coverage in in most, places across the world. What what do you guys think of the kind of pros and cons of these? Maybe let's it's worth spelling out, you know, if I've missed any of the the popular implementations and and some of the main considerations that people should have when interacting with things like Bitrefill or Cakepay.
Seth, I'll hand it to you first this time.
[00:21:29] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think they're fantastic services. The gift card side, I know we'll touch on the the debit card side, which is a a little bit more convoluted, but the gift card side is just super straightforward. I think especially when we can do things, like, for those providers that do already let you do, like, in AppRedeem, it's even more powerful because then you could, like, go to the hardware store, go to checkout, and then see the amount, buy a gift card, and pay with it directly. That's a little trickier. Like, right now in CapePay, we don't have that, but we're working towards that. But that's a a huge advantage. I mean, simply though, just gift cards are an easy proxy merchant way to be able to pay with Bitcoin in quotes, wherever you go.
And you can get them for pretty much everywhere, especially if you're willing to use any service rather than, like, being locked into just Cake Bay or something. Like, there's always gonna be some some limitations in each service and what they support. So they're gonna be a little bit more focused on one one geographical location. We try to have a really wide range at Cake Bay, but I know there are some things that, like, Bitrefill has that we don't. So if you're willing to use multiple, so you can pay for the vast majority of things with gift cards. The main thing that is annoying, and this applies to prepaid debit cards too, is, like, if you're just buying a a flat amount gift card, if you don't perfectly use all of it, technically, you are losing some money at the end, like, if you don't drain that gift card. But on a lot of services, like, especially digital services, you can just, redeem the entire gift card and pay from there. So a lot of the services is fine. It's more like things like a restaurant or something where if you're not spending the full amount or you can't go back because you're using it one time or something, you could end up having some leftover balance on those gift cards. But overall, fantastic tool, really simple, really straightforward, something that everyone should be using, honestly. But like you mentioned, it's a it's a stop gap that we hope will go away. Like, I would love to not need to run cake bay. It would simplify my life, but also it would be really nice if all these merchants actually accepted it directly. I think the Square stuff is a good step towards that. And if that goes well, I think that will push a lot of other, POS system people to to start supporting Bitcoin as well. But the goal is to not need to use gift cards, but in the meantime, they're a fantastic, interim solution that just works well for most things.
[00:23:41] Unknown:
Yeah. I agree. The only thing I would say is it depends where you are. So when I was in The UK, it was really, really easy for me to, like, buy my diesel and do my weekly shop and, like, most restaurants or what whatever I was doing, pretty much I could do it. It's not the case everywhere. There are some places where literally, like, there's nothing you couldn't really use. Certainly for, like, the in store ones. So it'd be good to see some of those, like, other areas or different parts of the world, have more options. When I did have the use of it in The UK, I like to do the in store stuff most because I found that's, like, the most private way to do it. So if I was using one of these services and running a VPN and not giving any personal details and then buying, like, I don't know, a gift card for Aldi and then going in there and buying some meat and eggs and fish and whatever I needed, then there's no tie back to me in any way.
If you're doing the online stuff, obviously, there could be. Seth can obviously go into, what to do and what not to do and everything else. But, like, if you're buying an Amazon gift card, I don't think Amazon know that you've paid with Bitcoin or Monero or whatever you've paid with, but, presumably, there's some link. Like, there's some details that are then linking you to that Amazon account.
[00:25:20] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, the a lot of it comes back to, like, what's the main reason for using these gift cards. If the main reason is privacy, you'll have some different things that you need to focus on. But I think for a lot of people, the main reason is not necessarily, like, perfect privacy, but it's that I want to be able to use my Bitcoin. And I Yeah. Like having the side benefit of having good privacy. I mean, in general, you get fantastic privacy from the merchant, but you should assume that these things could be unwound, like, if there was a law enforcement request or something. Yeah. You could tie back the this crypto payment went with this Amazon account, because those gift cards like, the their gift card system obviously understands where things come from. They could go back to the supplier or whatever gift card provider you use, and then they could go to the gift card provider and ask them for their transaction ID. Like, they could in theory, that's possible. Obviously, like, CakePay, we're not logging.
Others, I know probably do the same thing. You can be smart about your account you create on these sites as well and use things like email aliases. But, for the most part, there's fantastic privacy from the merchant, which is the primary person you're trying to get privacy from when you're paying. Mhmm. And then, yeah, it's it's pretty straightforward there, which is nice. And that's just another benefit of the gift cards with and that's like this is a specific thing that crypto unlocks that just would not be possible otherwise. In theory, you could do this with cash, but actually going into a shop and buying gift cards with cash is, a lot harder these days.
Mhmm. Even though you can do it, but crypto just, like, so beautifully unlocks the ability to buy these things in a way that doesn't reveal anything about you. So that even if that merchant somehow was able to get the the lightning payment hash, like, so what? What are they gonna do with it? They get a Manera Manera transaction ID, what are they gonna do with it? Or even if it's an on chain Bitcoin transaction and you, use no case no KYC Bitcoin, like, what are they gonna do with it? They're not gonna learn anything about you. So it's it's really, really great from that perspective. And it funnily enough, in some ways, better for privacy than actually paying with, like, Bitcoin directly.
Because you do get that kind of, like, separation where the merchant doesn't know exactly what crypto is being used or what the payment is. But, for most people, that doesn't really matter.
[00:27:27] Unknown:
Cool. Just, two two quick comments from me. One from Observer in the, the live chat. He said, something to be aware of when you're using gift cards, online retailers, that if they've got existed discounts on, say, for, like, Friday or something similar, that more often than not, the, merchant won't allow you to use the gift card and still get the discount as well. Obviously, it's not gonna be, much of a widespread prop problem, but something that I've never considered before and and worth, being being aware of. And then the other point I was gonna bring up just quickly, Ben, it does dovetail nicely into the the next segment of the show around prepaid debit cards. But when it pertains to services like Bitrefill and Cake Pay, obviously, the, gift cards are all fixed most of them are fixed denomination up to a certain limit.
But do each of, these types of platforms have their own specific limits as well? So I'm thinking of a scenario that somebody who earns in Bitcoin and needs to basically convert all or most of their income into various different gift cards. Do these services have limits per month or per year, or is it kind of like a bit of a free for all? How does that normally work? And probably, Seth, I think you're best, suited to answer this one.
[00:28:40] Unknown:
Yeah. I don't I mean, I don't know of any merchant that has a limit. There's usually a limit in terms of, like, the size of individual cards you can redeem. And most of the time, if there's a limit in something like CakePay, that limit is enforced by the merchant, not by us. And so we're just not gonna sell you more, like, too big of a card that you wouldn't be able to redeem, obviously. That being said, I mean, I would not be surprised. Like, if you're loading your Amazon with $25,000 in gift cards, like, you're you're probably gonna get flagged for fraud. Like, it's just something that looks really suspicious. So even if there's not technically a limit, I still wouldn't assume that, like, loading a massive amount of money into a specific merchant would go south. But that's also very different from, like, if you're going to Aldi, like, like Max mentioned Yeah. And paying in store with a gift card. They're they're not gonna care or know that you're you've you've been using gift cards once a week for your groceries. Like, it's not gonna matter. But if you if you're doing one retailer for a massive amount, you you may have a problem.
[00:29:42] Unknown:
Just a point on that, Seth. When you say something like Amazon, if you're doing a massive amount like 25,000, you might get flagged. I assume you mean in one go or in a very short period of time, you don't mean that you just are using gift cards over a long period of time that amount to a a large amount? You mean just, like, one large gift card?
[00:30:07] Unknown:
I'm sure it would depend. I mean, one thing I know, like, very specific to Amazon is if you create a new Amazon account and you try to load it with, like, even a relatively normal amount of gift card and you don't have a valid payment method, it just won't it won't work, and you'll get flagged for fraud immediately. Because that's, like, a really common path for fraud path for fraud is people will steal gift cards or get gift cards and payment for something that is not legal. Yeah. And then they'll try to redeem them and use them on that. So, like, one thing that I've found is really successful is, like, if you already have accounts with these platforms that you've used in the past, yeah, you won't get as good of privacy because they'll know your maybe they will know your address because you gave it to them in the past or I mean, you have to give your address to Amazon anyways. They're delivering anyway. So yeah. Yeah. They're delivering anyway, so who cares? But using an account that has an established history is obviously gonna make it much less that you get flagged for fraud over time. Like, I've done I've I don't I have no idea how much. I'm sure we're not anywhere close to 25,000, but I've done a lot of Amazon gift cards over the years because that's a a staple of mine and something I use all the time. And I haven't had problems, but it was a it was an established account. So definitely, like, with these, you're probably gonna run into problems if you just create a new account and immediately load a ton in gift card funds. But if you have an established account, you probably wanna have problems. And the the hard thing with these though is they're not gonna publicize, hey. These are our limits for fraud detection. That's all obviously gonna be private. So you don't really know when you're gonna hit that threshold.
So start small to make sure that you don't have, issues and and kinda build up from there.
[00:31:33] Unknown:
That makes sense. Alright. On to, to to the section three. We're gonna talk about prepaid debit cards. So we've established that spending natively with a Bitcoin focused or or crypto, focused merchant is is great, but they are few and far between. As a stop gap after that, we've got gift cards, which are these days fairly wide ranging, especially, like I said, if you're willing to to look across multiple suppliers like k pay per refill, etcetera, then you can cover most use cases. But undoubtedly, especially if you're somebody who is living on Bitcoin, there's gonna still be quite a lot of merchants where they only accept fiat and they just don't offer a gift card or they're inaccessible in your location. And that you're gonna have to interact and pay, or have some fiat value transfer somewhere along the line.
This is where I think, prepaid debit cards can be useful. They kind of offer, I guess, a flexible way to spend your Bitcoin or crypto pretty much anywhere. Again, there's there's some caveats for that that I'm sure we're gonna dive into. But for those that Max, you can take this one first. But can you just break down briefly kind of how high level these these platforms work, and kind of, you know then we'll get into the pros and cons. I mean, it's pretty self explanatory, but, Max, just give us the the high level of what is a prepaid debit card and and why is it useful.
[00:33:03] Unknown:
Prepaid debit cards are kind of, in the similar way to gift card. You're gonna be using a platform that you're gonna, spend a certain amount of sets or Panera or whatever, to purchase, one of these things. And with a Visa card or a prepaid Visa card, you can obviously spend that in store or online. Oh, actually, I think some you can only do online, not on not in store. But you're you're effectively just topping it up like you would with phone credit. And then depending on where you go, there's different fees, like top up fees or transaction fees or, like, limits on these type of things, but the limits tend to be quite large actually from what I've seen. It's not something that I've used personally.
It's something that I would like to because I can't really use gift cards where I am, like, at all. So, it's something I wanna start using, but but there are also some problems with where you are. Like, different jurisdictions are potentially difficult as well. So, yeah, a a prepaid, debit card.
[00:34:16] Unknown:
Yeah. And one one thing to kind of call out and explain a little bit is there so there are prepaid debit cards, and there are also reloadable debit cards. These are two very different things with very different pros and cons. So, like, a a prepaid debit card, which is the the kind of thing that's what we offer in CakePay. That's what I believe that refill offers is only prepaid. I don't think they have reloadable, but I could be wrong on that. Those are you you should really think of them as a, like, Visa or Mastercard gift card. Like, they they have a predefined amount that you purchase it for. You can use it until that balance is zero or close to zero, and then you just throw it away. You don't reuse it. Most of them are not able to or no. Many many of them can be added to Apple Pay or Google Pay. But since they are just that fixed limit and you have to replace it, it's a little bit limited in functionality. But it's much easier to purchase. And especially in The US, it's essentially the only option. There's some asinine regulation in The US that needs to change that prevents you from doing reloadable cards that are not KYC.
Hopefully, that won't improve. But reloadable cards are really the kind of the holy grail here because the idea is you get one card number. You can put it in Apple or Google Pay. Sometimes there's caveats. Some of the can't them can't be added to those. And then you can use it just like you would use any debit card, but you just top it up with crypto whenever you want. And that's obviously that's the the target and that's the the dream for all these services is what we're working towards at CakePay right now. And I know we'll kinda talk about both options, but those ones are definitely really nice, but you you just you can't do that in The US unless you're willing to KYC, due to ridiculous regulations. So an important caveat between the two, prepaid and reloadable, are are different even though you can spend them the same way. The way you actually purchase them is quite different and what jurisdictions you can use them in can be different.
[00:36:05] Unknown:
Yeah. Good call out. Alright. So this is a this is a a concept that's fairly new to me, and I know I fully understand that these have been around for for a number of years at least now. But some of the the most commonly recommended or or used ones that I've seen are are Dolphin, to fiat.com, MoonX, and MoonX also have a separate card called Moon one x. And I think there's a a more recent one called Freedomia as well. All these work in a a similar way. Some of them are reloadable, like Seth has said, and some of them are are kind of prepaid and single use. One of the ones that I've looked into a little bit more that I can kinda give a a a a quick dive into is the Dolphin card, which is come from the Aqua team, which I believe under the hood is just moon. So you can kind of apply what I'm about to say to to the moon cards as well.
They basically, it's a virtual debit card, that you can top up from your balance within the Aqua Wallet. There is no fee to top up. You can put up to 4,000, US dollars worth of Bitcoin on there, per month. And then there is a 1% spend fee, each time that you spend, or a minimum of $1 if you're doing a really small spend. So, obviously, that those costs can quickly add up, and I think that's something worth remaining cognizant of when you're interacting with any of these, that they do tend to be you know, the the the fees can rack up a little bit. But it is a very good private option to kind of do that.
[00:37:39] Unknown:
1% I don't think that's Each time each time that you spend.
[00:37:43] Unknown:
That that was just one. That is yeah. That is on the lower end. I guess, on the the higher end, you've got, like, 2fiat.com. I had a quick look at them, and they have a 6% top up fee and then a transaction and then a transaction fee on top of that. Now, again, all of these got pros and cons. You can do up to $10,000 on the two fiat card. So if you need to do larger amounts, then maybe the the 6% top up fee is okay for you. The two fee, you also need to pay for a card issuance as well. So again, the you know, it's worth, diving into these to see, what what's kind of, you know, all of the requirements. But if I just quickly flip back to the Dolphin card, because it does seem to make a really good set of trade offs.
0% deposit, 1% spend fee, $4,000 a month, no annual subscription, no setup fee. You cannot add it to Apple or Google Pay. And, one of the caveats that I found out through a third party that I know this week is that in Europe, they don't have what's called three d s activated, which I believe is kinda like a a two f a to verify, you know, who's doing the spend. And what that means is, I believe that you're limited to €50 per transaction in Europe, which kinda makes the the cart prohibitive for those users. But outside of that, and again, check if it's available in your local area, it seems to make a pretty good set of trade offs. If you're in The US, sorry, they don't serve US customers, and I believe Canada is the same.
Observer is saying the fees really sound like a Moon card. Yes. You're absolutely right. And I I again, I think I stated this earlier, but the Dolphin card, I believe, is supplied by noon, and the Dolphin are just kind of, a front end or Aqua Wallet is a front end for that. I also was speak been speaking to a couple of guys in who are based in the EU, and they've been testing the Freedomia card, which has, a top up commission, which is 4%. But it could go as low as 1% depending on the subscription fit, setup that you have. Some of them, they have really cheap annual subscriptions. And based on your plan, it it that dictates the commission.
There are zero, additional spend fees when you come to spend. And, again, depending on the tier that you choose, you can go between 1 and $5,000 equivalent. The accounts here require an email and a phone number. But, obviously, you know, as we all know, it's pretty easy to get, both of those that are not tied to your name. And I believe that the reason that the Freedonia kind of works so well in Europe is because it has that email or phone, and that enables them to activate that three d s where basically you get a text to verify, you know, with a six digit code to say, oh, we can see that you're trying to spend from this card. So, you know, input the six numbers and we'll verify the the the transaction. So it means that you can do, you know, transactions up to the the card limit, essentially.
Guys, any any comments or feedback on on what I've just mentioned or anything to add just while I go back to the chat to see if there's any questions?
[00:40:47] Unknown:
I'm sure Seth is gonna have some smart things to, to add here. So I just wanna ask, you said the card can't be added for Dolphin into Google Pay or, the Apple Wallet, whatever it's called. Correct. So does that mean you have to have a physical card and they've gotta send that out? You've gotta give your address and all your details and stuff? Good call out. No. They are planning to do physical cards. So but for now, what that means is it's online only.
[00:41:19] Unknown:
Because, obviously, you just need to enter. Okay. You you just need to enter the card details. Yep. I I believe, I'm I'm gonna check this when one of you hops back in. I'm gonna go to the Freedomio website, but I'm pretty sure that they allow you to add to Apple and Google Pay, which obviously unlocks any brick and mortar merchant then. But I'm just gonna go and fact check myself while I let one of you guys come in.
[00:41:41] Unknown:
When, when cake card?
[00:41:44] Unknown:
Working on that right now. Yeah. Actually, we're we're working on the the moon card itself. So, hopefully, we'll have that sooner rather than later. But yeah. Yeah. They've been good to work with. We'll actually probably be doing some gift cards with them as well, but, hoping to bring the same thing and specifically want Apple and Google Pay. I think these cards, honestly, for most people, they don't have that much value until you can do Apple Pay and Google Pay, because for the average person, that's gonna lock unlock you spending it in actual brick and mortar merchants. So to me, that's the, like, kind of the minimum viable product for something like this.
[00:42:18] Unknown:
Anything you can do that?
[00:42:20] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Nice. We will do it. Not I don't wanna commit to a timeline, but we will do it sooner than later. So definitely a hard priority for us because Too bad. Like you mentioned, it is unfortunately not for The US. So, we won't be able to change that. That's not that's a a regulation that, obviously, we're not gonna be able to work around. But, for people outside The US, it should be a fantastic tool. And for people in The US, we'll obviously keep improving our our prepaid debit card options.
[00:42:46] Unknown:
But sorry, Seth. One one more thing. When you say not for anyone in The US, so as long as you're not in The US, it's fine. Does that mean every other country that is not The US, or does that mean certain countries?
[00:43:02] Unknown:
I may misspeak, but off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure it's basically not The US or sanctioned countries, which is hilarious because we're the ones doing the sanctioning. But we're also the ones who can't use it. Sanctioning yourself. Yeah.
[00:43:17] Unknown:
Yeah. It's like many of these lists, it's gonna be, like, Iran, North Korea, The US. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you're not But everywhere else pretty much that has has Visa network, you should be able to, purchase it, redeem it, add it to your Apple or Google Pay, spend it, and it should all be good.
[00:43:35] Unknown:
I believe so. But I'll definitely confirm that closer to us actually shipping something like this. Okay.
[00:43:41] Unknown:
Just to come back in on my self fact check with Freedonia, they fully they support Google Wallet, and Apple Pay is coming soon. So that's pretty good. I'm impressed by that one. I haven't tried it myself. But as I say, yeah, Dolphin, the Moon ones, they seem to be, pretty popular at the moment. There's a a couple of comments actually in the, Nosta chat. Bon mentioned about wanting to disable your VPN when you register it or check your balance because you'll be blocked until you disable the VPN. But you could get flagged for fraud apparently. I haven't had that happen though. Okay. Interesting.
So it looks like they are kind of, well, as you'd expect, I guess, checking IP addresses and things like that. So you wanna be careful if you hop in between checking balance sites and things like that where, when you you, you know, you're interacting with with these types of services. And I guess an an additional practical piece of advice, like, there is loads of caveats with these cards, the limits, the top up fees, where they're accepted, where they're available to be purchased, the subscription fees, etcetera. So if you decide that you're gonna go with one, I would say top up with a very small amount. Yes. You might pay a high equivalent fee or an equivalent spend fee. But, like, what what you don't wanna do is, like, let's say you do a Dolphin card, you load it with $4,000, and then you realize that, you know, for whatever reason, it's that there's a regulation change, it blocked in your country. Like, I would treat these as a as a top up and spend, you know, with the the exact amount that you wanna do for a specific purchase. Don't leave funds on there or don't leave large amounts of funds on there, and definitely don't leave funds on there for a long period of time. Because, again, this is another call actually I've just remembered.
Not all of them do refunds, meaning that once the funds are on there, you can't get them back off. I don't know. You'd have to check all of them, but I know I've seen in in some of the small print with some of them that, it's kind of like a one way traffic and you then have to spend those funds back out.
[00:45:48] Unknown:
Okay. We Go on, Max. Sorry, mate. Just one just one more thing. If you're using something like Google Pay with one of these cards, is there any clever way to have a Google Pay or Google account spoofed? I think it's maybe harder with Apple, but, like, could you, in theory, have a phone a separate phone that you treat as your debit card and you just have a separate Google account that isn't actually linked to your any of your personal details, and then you just use that phone in stores like you would a normal tap and go debit card. Because if you could do that, that would be a really that would close that privacy loop very nicely.
[00:46:36] Unknown:
Yeah. I I think there's a way you could get an Android phone and cash so the IMEI is not tied to your personal, you know, personal identical person I can't even speak. Your your ident your identity. You know, and then if you go with a service that requires an email or phone, obviously, you can use services like Textverified and and email alias in, like, from Proton, etcetera. And then just, you know, make a a Google account that's not, you know, my name, my last my first name, [email protected]. Yeah. Yeah. I I don't see why that wouldn't work. Obviously, it's a lot of additional hurdles, but, you know, freedom isn't free and privacy is certainly not gonna be handed to you on a plate. But in my head, it seems like it would work. Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:47:20] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:47:22] Unknown:
Got some, feel free to drop your questions in the chat, guys. And I think we've been covering off. This has been a good conversation so far. In the meantime, we've got some, boosts, over on the Nostra chat. Nine one x has sent 500 sats. Thank you, sir. We've got, just an n pop. The your name's not rendering, sorry, but you said, you sent 420 sats and said, let's go with a rocket emoji. Thank you. Sawzall, is is that, is that John by any chance? It's gotta be John. Yeah. It's gotta be John. Well, John has sent I I did enjoy that conversation, by the way. For anybody wondering what we're talking about, go and listen to the latest MyIn inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches he says 2,100 sats, and then Lan Tungier zapped a thousand sats as well. Thank you very much. We do have, a a a question from Observer in the Noster chat that says, any experience with Curve as a bridge for Apple Pay usage for debit cards that currently do not support Apple Pay?
Absolutely none whatsoever. Don't know about you guys? I've never even heard of Curve.
[00:48:26] Unknown:
No. I've never heard of it. I've heard of it mentioned as, like, an option for GrapheneOS, but
[00:48:32] Unknown:
I've I remember looking into it and had a lot of drawbacks. I never actually tried it, and I've never heard of anyone using it since then. Mhmm. That doesn't mean that it's not good or doesn't work, but I Yep. I think you're yeah. I'm I'm sure there's gonna be some serious trade offs there. But like y'all mentioned, if you can just buy a phone or use an old Android phone, like, let's say you use GrapheneOS, you probably have an old Pixel lying around. Just flash it back to stock. Use a new Google account like we mentioned. You can even use an email alias to sign up rather than making a Gmail if you want, and then use Android Pay that way. That's that's a good solution.
[00:49:07] Unknown:
Yeah. Definitely. Alright. I'm gonna hit some, presubmitted questions that are tangential to what we're talking about while we wait for the live chat to to wake up a bit. Thank you for your question, Observer. Sorry. We couldn't help with that one. But we've got a question from TX Friday on Nosta. Great name, by the way. That that sounds like it was a planted question, but I promise it it wasn't me. And they said, we'd like to hear your guys' take on using Strike, the MalaZwan, as a Bitcoin bank and spending tool. Yeah. So, I mean, you you can use it as a a a basically, as a as a traditional KYC bank account that also speak Bitcoin if you want to. I do think it's a a a a useful tool in, if you're gonna use it as your bank and get your wages paid in there, but be able to pay a Bitcoin merchant that wants Bitcoin.
And let's say you don't want or have any to spend that you can do that from your cash balance in your Stripe account. I think that's a pretty cool, you know, product. Obviously, it doesn't give you any taxable spend headaches. So that's a a plus. So, yeah, as long as you look at it as it's just another bank account that can speak Bitcoin, then I I can see the benefit of it. But in in terms of, like, using it to to DCA, etcetera, you know, I've made my my points very clear on, you know, whether or not people should be using KYC KYC services to obtain their Bitcoin. Like, you're just adding quite a big privacy risk to to your kind of onboarding experience there. But, what about you guys? What do you think?
[00:50:37] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, echo echo those thoughts.
[00:50:41] Unknown:
Yeah. I I know people in The US who use this to be able to live on a, quote, unquote Bitcoin standard. So I think it's a great solution. Again, if your goal is like, not everyone's goal is perfect privacy, and that's okay. Like, obviously, I think people should strive for better privacy. But if you especially when you're using a service that knows everything about you, like your utility bills, your, mortgages, your credit card payments, like, all these things, you're already KYC'd with these entities or at least they know your name and full address.
So, like, I think thinking that you have to be anonymous when you pay with from these people is unnecessary in most cases. So using something like strike to to pay bills where the entity already knows who you are and they already know where you live Seems like a good solution to be able to use Bitcoin for these things. I don't have any problem with it. I mean, I obviously, I wish it wasn't KYC, and I wish you could you could do things like bill pay without that, but it's an unfortunate reality of of where we're at. So I think it's a it's a good option for a lot of people.
[00:51:40] Unknown:
Yeah. Definitely. I I think I've already answered this one, but I wanted to feature it. Gnostic Angle also asked about the the concept of keeping fiat on strike with Bitcoin under the hood so you're not creating taxable events. Yeah. I think you covered that. But, yeah, essentially, you can pay Bitcoin merchants from your US dollar balance or your pound balance, etcetera. So you can kind of, you know, I guess, have the best of both worlds. The merchant gets what they want. You don't create a taxable event and get, daddy government on your back for some capital gains. So it seems like, you know, it it could be a useful tool, again, if you're happy with the trade offs of the KYC stuff. But, again, you ain't getting a bank account without KYC in yourself anyway. So, alright. Next, question from, for Anon. I guess it's just Anon or x. Can you go through the options for Europe? Lots of services not available here, and if so, just very limited. Will be nice to know more about the possibilities for this forsaken content continent.
I I think every everything that we've discussed today, is available in some way, shape, or form across Europe. Bitrefill, Cape Pay, they all work in Europe. Obviously, you'll need to set your your, your location to there so to get the relevant gift cards available in in that jurisdiction. I know for a fact, having spoken to people in Spain, etcetera, that some of these, prepaid cards, they all work, in Europe. Again, they've all got trade offs. So just make sure you check out the t's and c's and the fees, etcetera. And then, you know, going back to the very first segment, spending natively with merchants, I guess, again, that's just kind of a geography problem, based on, you know, you're gonna have little hotbeds like in Lugano.
But if you go to, you know, out in the sticks in the middle of Italy, you're probably not gonna be able to spend Bitcoin. And that's a much wider problem and it's not kind of specific to, I guess, one part portion of the world. But, guys, anything to add there?
[00:53:34] Unknown:
No. I just, other than, you know, while I was in Europe, I had no problems and there's loads of gift cards and things available. So, I don't think it's difficult to live on it there.
[00:53:47] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, from what I understand, obviously I'm not European, so I don't have all the, the freedom and privileges that y'all do. But, from what I understand from, like, the gift card and debit card side, you're actually in, like, the best possible place, because you're gonna have wide re wide reach in terms of what gift cards you have available for merchants that you have, and you can also do a lot of these no KYC reloadable debit cards. So it's it's actually the best place to be probably if you want to live off of this stuff. Mhmm. Now, obviously, there's other issues with the EU, but, it it should be, from what I understand as a non European, the best place to be able to use these proxy merchants and use these debit card options.
[00:54:27] Unknown:
Awesome. Okay. Just one final question. It comes from Janizo on x, and they said would love a deeper dive to non KYC Bitcoin trade payment solutions for The EU. And what do you think about LNVPN and the trade service they offer? Is it trustworthy? Thanks. Well, the no KYC kind of peer to peer trade market, again, the The EU is one of the best places for it. It tends to have the most, liquidity when it comes to looking at the markets. Whenever I check Robosats or PEACH, etcetera, Eurotrades, particularly for for services like Revolut, or anything else that's popular on the continent. Again, it has the most, the most liquidity. So, I think, yeah, it's I guess I've got some go great guides on my website. If you can go and check those out at bitcoin.guide, there's there's, guides for most of the popular solutions.
Again, they've all got trade offs. You know, Robos apps is is lightning native. You've got Peach, which is mobile only. You've got Bisc, which is desktop only, although they did actually release a mobile app that's in alpha at the moment. So again, it kind of depends on what type of journey you wanna choose. Do you want Lightning only? Do you wanna, you know, interact with it on your computer only? Do you want a tour only service? Like, there's lots of considerations. So just, I guess, do do a bit of research on all of them. They all able you to just go and check out the liquidity on all of them without any login details, etcetera.
So, yes. Go and have a poker and see which one kind of, works for you. And then finally, yeah, I'm gonna leave let Seth answer the the last part of this question because I think he's gonna have some info on it. But, LNVPN and the trade service they offer, could you shed some light on that one? I think you might have some insight.
[00:56:18] Unknown:
Yeah. So this is it's hard to know exactly what's meant by Genuzzo on the non KYC BTC trade payment. If you mean from fiat, like q and a mentioned, there are a lot of good options. Again, Europe has much better options than The US at least, unfortunately. But if you're talking swapping to and from other cryptocurrencies, there's tons of good options. LNVPN actually uses a really good partner of ours at Cake called Trokador. They're an instant exchange aggregator. So there's there's good centralized solutions like that. There's a lot of decentralized exchanges popping up. We've already integrated, two of them at Cake, and have probably two more coming very soon so that you can do decentralized cross chain swaps, which is, again, kind of the the holy grail for swapping between different currencies because you can do it in a way that's more trust minimized. I won't say trustless because many of them have the ability to freeze swaps if they have to, but trust minimized.
So there's there's lots of good ways to swap between cryptocurrencies. But going to and from fiat, there's there's still some good ones in Europe for sure.
[00:57:16] Unknown:
Nice. Nice. I've I've got one question in in the Nostra chat that came in earlier from Observer that I promised to answer. But, Seth, I know you've got a hard stop. So if you wanna drop off, Max and I can can handle this one. And, I hope you, enjoy your weekend in Lugano. I'm very, very jealous.
[00:57:31] Unknown:
Yeah. I will, I'll I'll go party for y'all. Go have some good food. Go walk around the lake. But, yeah, I do. I I wanna hop back in and do some conference, make sure I make the most of my time here. So thanks for thanks for having me for a bit. Great questions, everybody, and I will see you all in the future. Enjoy,
[00:57:45] Unknown:
mate. Okay. Yeah. Observer asked earlier on, any experience with Viban, v IBAN, which is an IBAN proxy virtual IBAN account, and the following providers. Providers like wave dot space, never heard of them, bring in dot x y z. Yeah. I've heard them. The promise is that the usage of Viban, which is registered with your full name, will not alarm the compliance department of your Premier Bank. Usage sorry. Here's what the usage is. Swap Bitcoin via Lightning and get fiat on a credit card through your Viband proxy on your main bank account instantly.
That's a complicated question, and I think what he's basically saying is you can swap out into fiat through this these services, like bring in and get the the the presumably, your back into your your kind of, main bank account. Observer, if if is am I on the right line there? Because that was a complex question. But, Max, any thoughts while I wait for Observer to tell me if I've got the right end of the stick?
[00:58:59] Unknown:
I I read that personally as, like, yeah, it would it would be pinging into your bank account and without having the issues that you generally have, because it has your name on it. So if you're doing a if you're doing a swap for, you know, Bitcoin to dollars and you're doing that through BISK or whatever, or at least in The UK, or have been doing it on Bisc. It's a really, really good way to close your account down very quickly. You you like, it's it's probably faster than just actually going onto the app and closing it. So, this would be less of a problem because they look at it and they go, oh, it's q and a paying q and a. Okay. That's fine. Like, that you're not gonna have the issue that you would from like, oh, who's this random person, and now we're gonna, like, freeze your money until you answer these questions.
[00:59:55] Unknown:
Right. But do you see this as any different to just offloading through a KYC exchange? Because it seems as though, like, the the bringin or wave. Space, they have your name, and you're offloaded through them to get funds back to your I I don't see. Again, this might be me and my own misunderstanding of it, but it just seems like you're offloading through a a regulated entity that
[01:00:26] Unknown:
knows who you are and what you're trust somewhere else, basically.
[01:00:30] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. It seems that way. But I I'm I'm I'm struggling to see the benefit of, well, I guess the the the main benefit could be that, you know, if if you suddenly get a big deposit to your bank from Coinbase and your bank really dislikes Coinbase, that what this what Observe is saying here is that because of this virtual IBAN, it's like you're sort of paying yourself, so to speak. And that might say, yeah, he's given you a you said you've hit the the the the bull's eye there. So, nicely done, Max. You you got the right end of the stick. Good question. Mate.
And, I'm gonna go and check that out and see, like, where that's available. I I know Bring In is is EU based, I think, but I've not heard of the the Wave one either. But, thank you for your question. And that brings us overtime already, unfortunately. This was a fun one. Again, I'm sure we could have gone for a a couple of hours, on on the topic because it's, very wide ranging and there's lots of nuance here. But, thank you to everybody that, asked the questions in the chat. We've got loads of boost this week. Really, really, exciting to see. So thank you to everybody that's that's sent some value across. That's that's awesome, and, really great to see. So thank you very much for that.
Thank you to you, Max, as always. It was a pleasure, mate. And, yeah. We'll, see you and everybody in the live chat at the same time next week. Looking forward to it, and I'll catch you on Monday. For the brief.
[01:01:57] Unknown:
Thanks, everyone.
[01:02:03] Unknown:
Thank you for listening to Freedom Tech Friday. To everyone who boosted, asked questions, and participated in the show, we appreciate you all. Make sure to join us next week on Friday at 9AM EST and 2PM London. Thanks to Seth, Max, and Q for keeping it ungovernable. And thank you to Cake Wallet, Foundation, and my NIM box for keeping the ungovernable misfits going. Make sure to check out ungovernablemisfits.com to see mister Crown's incredible skills and artwork. Listen to the other shows in the feed to hear Kareem's world class editing skills.
Thanks to Expatriotic for keeping us up to date with Boost's XMR chats and sending in topics. John, great name and great guy, never change and never stop keeping us up to date with mining news or continuing to grow the mesh to Dell. Finally, a big thanks to the unsung hero, our Canadian overlord, Jordan, for trying to keep the ungovernable in check and for the endless work he puts in behind the scenes. We love you all. Stay ungovernable.
Hello, and welcome to Freedom Tech Friday. For those of you that might be new here, allow me to quickly explain what this is all about and why the hell we are here. Freedom Tech Friday is a weekly live and interactive show hosted on the ungovernable misfits x, Nostra, and YouTube feeds. And we go live for one hour every Friday at 9AM Eastern or 2PM UK time. And you can also catch up later on the Ungovernable Misfits podcast feed. On Freedom Tech Friday, we like to cover the latest news, trends, and for anything relating to Freedom Technologies. That could be anything from Bitcoin and Monero, encrypted messengers, privacy tools, and everything in between.
Essentially, if there's a news item, tool, or topic that can help you take back some control in today's digital Panopto then we wanna talk about it. My name's q and a, and I am head of customer experience at Foundation, where we build Bitcoin focused sovereignty tools. And as always, just about, for reasons that will become clear shortly, I am joined by my good friends, Max, the head honcho of the Ungovernable Empire, and Seth, who is VP at Cakewallet. As I mentioned, this show is live and interactive, and we really rely on you guys to steer us towards the topics you want us to cover or to send us your Freedom Tech related questions. There's loads of ways in which you can get involved, all of which really help spread awareness for the show. These include commenting or asking questions in the live chat on X or Nosta or YouTube, submitting your topics or questions ahead of time, boosting the show on Fountain or other two podcast and two point o apps, sending in your tips via Bitcoin and Monero at xmrchat.com, and finally, just sharing the show on an x or no start with your friends.
Top support from last week's Big Question Bonanza show comes from Turkey who sent 500 sats so and said no comments. And also from Uncle Swan who said also sent 500 sats. And he said, clearly, I'm wrong as a dad. Most of the time, I don't go to the bathroom by myself anymore. Yeah. He's referring to, one of our tangent, top topics there. That's, probably wrong, mate. Yeah. We'll give we'll give you some tips. Just, hop into the DMs. And we do also have an XMR chat from WebWipe, that was missed, by myself and Max. I think he submitted just after we recorded the last Bitcoin brief. And it is a time sensitive message, and he did send some XMR with it. So, I just wanted to quickly cover it here as well. WebWipe is hosting a privacy meetup in Austin, Texas on November 1 from 6PM till 10PM.
This is at Indra's a a warehouse. I'm not sure whether that's a type and it's supposed to be Ale House, but it said a warehouse. 790 4 F M 696. We're gonna present q and a's BTC privacy presentation from Baltic Honey Badger. We're gonna discuss Ashigaru, Ronin Dojo, XML tools, and more. Thank you for the support. Alright. Well, thanks for, sending that in, and, sounds like an interesting meetup to head to. I wish I was, able to to make it to that one. Anyway, without further ado, let's dive into the show. Max and, Seth, how is it going?
[00:03:08] Unknown:
Very good, Mayan, mate. Excited for today. This is, something I've been pestering people in the background for months to learn the ins and outs. So, this is a good topic. Very excited.
[00:03:21] Unknown:
And, just before he jumps in, if he is out of breath, he he has just run back to his hotel. So, bear with us, guys. But, Seth, how's it going?
[00:03:29] Unknown:
I made it. I made it just in time. Yeah. I, I learned the hard way. You hard way, you don't take an Uber in Lugano at 03:00, I guess, because it would take me, like, eight minutes to walk or, like, thirty minutes to take the Uber. So I had to cancel the Uber and ran, but I'm here. I'm here with definitely the best view of any of y'all. So I'll I'll keep those two. Oh,
[00:03:54] Unknown:
see. I was jealous before, but now I'm even more jealous. So I think we need to we need to see the view from your hotel room. And we also it might be worth just quickly mentioning, like, Refund, what were hell we're talking about. Like, where are you? What are you up to?
[00:04:09] Unknown:
Yes. So I am out in Lugano, Switzerland, which is the Italian quarter of Switzerland. I am here for the plan b forum, which is the, like, Bitcoin centric event that the folks behind Tether put on. Absolutely fantastic event. They get a lot of great people here. They have kind of a split stage approach, kind of like, the Bitcoin Mac events. So they'll have the the main event the main stage, which is bigger, focuses on broader topics, and then they have a separate p two p stage, which is all the all the stuff we love. So that's where I'll be having a panel tomorrow. I know there's some great panels from, like, Roy from Breeze and others that are gonna be participating there. So, yeah, I'm I'm very, very blessed to be out here. It is definitely the most beautiful place on Earth I've been, and I've been to a lot of beer. Wow. There may be better places, but this absolutely takes the cake for me and and where I've been. So it's, it's insane. If anyone ever gets the chance to get out here, definitely definitely do it. It's beautiful.
[00:05:05] Unknown:
Ever made it out to Slough in The UK.
[00:05:10] Unknown:
Slough? It doesn't sound beautiful, but It may be as as about as beautiful as it sounds.
[00:05:16] Unknown:
Yeah. Nice. Okay. May that'll be nice. I'll I'll come from Lugano to Slough, and I can directly You should do. How about that? Yeah. You should definitely do that, and then let us know your findings. Observe is asking the important questions. He says, Seth, how was lunch in Lugano?
[00:05:35] Unknown:
Well, it's creepy, but I did just eat lunch. I don't know how he knows this. It was it was good. It was good. I had some nice, nice grilled tenderloin, thinly sliced. What I learned was spinach, but I didn't know it was gonna be spinach, because I ordered in from an Italian menu. But it was good as well. Hanging with the cake team. We got a good bit of the cake team out here, as well. Just kinda kinda for a side team get together, so that's been a blast trying to balance that between us, the conference and that. But, yes, it was a good lunch. Thank you for creepily asking how my lunch was.
[00:06:08] Unknown:
Yeah. If, if Seth isn't on next week's show, then we we know why. It's because, Seth's got a stalker, and Observers just dragging into the big lake in Lagarde.
[00:06:17] Unknown:
He's been observing him all day.
[00:06:21] Unknown:
Anyway, as always, we we yeah. Nice. We've, we've digressed. Today, I want to tackle, one of the bigger questions that's been on the mind of, I'm sure, many misfits for years now. Can you really live on Bitcoin or crypto in your daily life? Now that could be paying for coffee, groceries, topping up your mobile phone, or be you know, going to the other end of the spectrum and being completely native where your, you know, 100 of your income is in Sats and you literally have no choice but to use that as your day to day living expenses. I wanna explore the practical ways you can spend today, and the different trade offs of all of these different options that we have.
So over the next, hour or fifty minutes, we're gonna break down into, like, three main categories. Native payments, gift card solutions, prepaid debit cards, with the aim of hopefully giving you guys the tools to, you know, make better choices or more private choices and and find the options that, kinda suit you the most. Before we dive in, I wanna quickly hear from both of you kind of at a high level. There's no need to go into specific techniques on the pros and cons. We'll we'll get to that. Do you think that living on Bitcoin or crypto can be a reality in 2025? And what are the kind of main considerations that somebody thinking about doing this, should give? I'll I'll hand it to Max. I'll give it to you first, mate.
[00:07:50] Unknown:
Yeah. I think for the most part, it is possible to live on crypto. I think one thing that we're missing, in these sections, on purpose just because everyone kind of already knows it, you can also sell for cash, like using peer to peer network is quite a good way to live on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But using the other things that we're gonna cover, yeah, I do. The the only thing I would say is there are some parts of life that make it very difficult, like anything where you're touching fiat world, things like, you know, buying a property or, like, leasing a car or doing those kind of things, that's where it starts to get a little bit more difficult, larger payments, where you have a family and you can't get around that. But for the most part, I would say, like, 95% of things. Yeah. And it's not even that difficult to do it.
[00:08:56] Unknown:
Yeah. I think the answer to me is more dependent on who you are. So, like, if you're single, you absolutely can do this. Like, absolutely no questions asked. You can definitely do this and live purely on Bitcoin. If you have a family, it gets much more difficult. Maybe impossible depending on where you're at. Just specifically, like or I shouldn't say impossible, but you would have to sacrifice a lot in terms of what your options are, where you can live, what kind of housing you can get if you do truly live only on a Bitcoin standard. Especially if you're trying to do it without KYC.
Now if you're willing to do, like, the strike thing and keep all your Bitcoin in strike or top it up regularly and use strike bill pay and stuff where you reveal a lot about yourself, but you do get access to more things. And then you can also, like, prove source of funds more easily for getting a mortgage, that sort of thing. It it unlocks a lot more, but then I think you lose a lot of the benefits of living off of Bitcoin. So I think the answer really just like everything we will ever talk about is it depends on you, the individual. But the more complicated your life in terms of if you have family, if you have kids, it gets much more difficult to be able to to live off of Bitcoin completely, but you can still do a lot with Bitcoin.
[00:10:14] Unknown:
Mhmm.
[00:10:16] Unknown:
Yeah. I tend I tend to agree with that. I I think rolling into to kind of segment one where we're gonna talk about spending natively, with merchants, you know, I I think, again, we could all agree that this is kind of the way it was meant to be and the utopia that we all kind of wanna live in in terms of a a peer to peer, you know, you earning Bitcoin or or crypto, you spend it all with your merchants and there's no kind of in between, there's no hoops you need to jump through or or third party services. That's the way that I think, you know, that where we all want it to head to.
I think that location plays a huge part in this, because obviously, you know, you've got online merchants. And if it's a, you know, digital goods and things like that, then I I think we can all agree that spending, natively so that you there's no conversion. It should always be, a preference, for for most people, not only because it's the way it's intended, but also because, you know, it's supporting those merchants that are kind of pushing the boundaries and being the the kind of mavericks in terms of, you know, being the first movers and and opting to to take this new money as as money, essentially. But, aside from kind of location, what what for all the things do you guys or tools or techniques do you guys kind of think about when you're when you're looking at kind of spending natively with merchants? Are there any specific tools that you use? Are there any specific pieces of software that you recommend?
Or, you know, what kind of tips and tricks do you have around there? Because, I think this is, you know, an important part of pushing what we call, like, the the circular economy.
[00:11:56] Unknown:
Yeah. I think for me, I mean, the the really hard thing is, at least where I'm at in The US, there, like, basically is no real merchant option in person, but you can get a lot of stuff online, either getting shipped to you by somebody who's, like, making fantastic beef jerky, for instance, or soap or maple syrup or there's there's tons of different things you can actually get online from other Bitcoiners and pay directly. Usually, that is over lightning. On chain obviously just has the drawbacks about timing and confirmation speed and that sort of thing. But in person, it can be really difficult to find local merchants. There are some good tools like btcmap.org.
There's a good Monero tool mostly for finding online merchants called Monerica, m 0 n e r I c a. And they have, like, a listing of all the merchants that are known that accept Monerica as well. And then there's also Cryptwerk, c r y p t w e r k, that has, like, a list of merchants for every cryptocurrency. So if you're not specifically looking for Bitcoin or Monero, but just wanna see anywhere that you can pay with crypto, they kinda try to track merchant adoption as well. So just finding some that are near you is the start, but that can be really hard in some in some places. So for me, I generally focus on getting everything digitally that I can from, from other Bitcoiners using Bitcoin or using Monero.
And then when I'm somewhere that allows me to pay with it, like, here in Lugano is one of the rare places where you can pay at quite a few restaurants and stores with Bitcoin directly or with Tether directly because this is the the the Tether town, basically. It's a great opportunity and a a chance to, like, kinda get what that feels like. Like, for instance, I went into a a Shvar, the kind of supermarket chain that's all throughout Europe, Switzerland specifically. And I was able to to buy my, like, snacks and waters and stuff with Monero using open crypto pay, which is just badass. And it it lets you finally get to see, like, what what all this stuff can be used for once we do get merchant adoption. So that was really encouraging. And just like a a thing I would recommend people to to go out of their way to do at least once so you kinda get a feel for what's possible, and that that really kind of fires you up and makes you want to to help with the merchant adoption. It makes you want to be willing to spend a bit more to pay in Bitcoin or Monero. It kinda helps to to get the fire lit.
[00:14:19] Unknown:
Yeah. Max, what's your I know we covered this briefly on, on the on the brief. No pun intended. On the brief. Seth made a great point here. Like, you know, a lot a vast majority of of, like, public or or outspoken Bitcoiners, or the wealth in Bitcoin is kind of, you know, in in the West and in North America, where we see Mhmm. You know, bricks and mortar adoption pretty lackluster, if anything. How big do you think that this new the news coming out of Square or Block where we've got the the kind of default Bitcoin support for any merchants that are existing Square customers. Do you do you think that's gonna be a bit of a nothing burger, or do you think that that could really move the needle?
[00:15:01] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, I think it it could be huge because you see them everywhere. And I think the thing that I really like about it as well is you tend to see it with the smaller, like, you know, like a little coffee shop van that's been converted, and it's like a guy who has that business or he has a couple of them. It's like the smaller businesses that tend to have them, little coffee shops and stuff. So I quite like that as well because it gives these people the option to hold some Bitcoin. It might entice them in over time. It might scare the shit out of them as well because you might have an 80% drop, but, they might start looking over the years and being like, oh, maybe we'll we'll hold a bit of our wealth in this. Maybe we'll start using it. So, yeah, I do think it's massive.
I I I have a little bit of, potential issue with the company behind it and, you know, the owner and everything. But as a as a way to spread Bitcoin use, I think it is huge.
[00:16:12] Unknown:
Yeah. BTC wrestle there has just co corrected me in the chat. I think I might have said it was on by default. That's a misunderstanding on my part, and he he thinks that the merchant must opt in. What I will say with that is, if it is true, is that they've kind of done a good job of incentivizing this as well where there's there's zero fees all the way through next year. No fees. Yeah. So not only is there no processing fees, but, you you know, that's you're saving, like, I I don't know what merchant charge these days, but it's like is it, like, 3% for credit card charges and stuff like that? So there are some like that. Two and a half, three or yeah. Go on, Seth.
[00:16:47] Unknown:
Oh, no. I was I was just agreeing. Yeah. I mean, I think the the biggest thing with it is, yes, it's not on by default. But before, what it would mean is you go to one of these merchants, how are you actually gonna onboard them to Bitcoin? Like, what's what's the game plan for how they accept it? And normally, that would be way too complex for the vast majority, and they're just gonna look at, like, look at you like an idiot and not have any interest. But now you could say if you see the Square terminal, you can say, hey. I'd love to actually pay you in Bitcoin, and you Yeah. Save on fees if I do this. Can I show you how to turn it on? Something I would love to see from the Square team. I haven't seen it. Maybe they put it out, but would be like a guide for Bitcoiners how to t to to show these people how you can enable it. Because I know a lot of these merchants, they're not gonna be like, if you're lucky, you have the owner behind the merchant. But most of the time, it's gonna be, like, some some worker who doesn't know much about the system. It would be really great for, like, me to have a guide that I could just open either to show to them or show them a QR or to, like, directly walk them through it if there's nobody there to be like, hey. I can help you enable it. It takes two seconds. You get it in Fiat. You don't have to worry about Bitcoin. But you save on fees, and I get to pay you on what I want. And that used to be the pitch, but there was, like, you also have to run BTC pay server or you need to use, like, you have to use one of these options, but now you can just enable the options, start using it, which is is pretty badass. So I would love to see something that simplifies how I could actually tell them to do it.
[00:18:08] Unknown:
Is there not a way that Square could, just actually enable this by default? Because if they're not charging fees for it and there's only gonna be a saving and that it can also convert in the back end without any extra fees, would it not make sense for them to just auto enable it and then just say like, people just go up and pay. Like, they just pay with the QR code. Like, I don't understand why you wouldn't do that because, presumably, most people would then have use of it. And then once that year of no fees comes to an end, they could say, by the way, here's a report on what you saved on fees because you haven't had the credit card processing fees and blah blah blah blah blah.
It's also converted, but if you'd have held Bitcoin rather than US dollar or whatever whatever country they're in, you'd actually be better off by this percent as well. So, like, you you they could they could have a report at the end that would entice them to keep going.
[00:19:10] Unknown:
It would be good. Yeah. I wish I had that power. I I I think they could do it by default. The reason I'm sure they don't is because you would still have to choose that option. You can't show like, you're gonna show a QR for other things, or you're gonna show credit card a a screen that's normally about tap to pay for credit cards. So you you wouldn't just automatically show a Bitcoin like a a lightning QR on all of them. People would get freaked out probably. But they could theoretically enable it by default, which would be nice. But I'm sure they just they probably talked to merchants who who said, like, I don't actually want this. I would be a little frustrated if it was gonna be by default. And it's better just slowly onboard them. But as long as they make it simple enough, I think it's fine that it's off by default, if you have a a clear way to simply enable it and to incentivize them, which there is right now. Mhmm.
[00:19:54] Unknown:
Yeah. Alright. Interesting time. We're gonna move us on. Before I do, we've got some, some zaps in the Nostich app. Musket hopping in with 21,000. No comment. Thank you very much, guys. Gwyddion, 42. Cyclops, 5,000. And Bon with 2,222 sats. Thank you very much, guys. Observer, I spotted your question. I'm gonna bring it bring it in, later on. Thank you very much for for hopping that in there. Alright. So we've established that merchant adoption, particularly in, well, in most places of the world, is is lackluster, but there are steps being made to kind of bring that closer to where, you know, the utopia that we we all want to see come to fruition.
But in the meantime, there are some stop gaps that we as the the spender can do to kind of bridge that gap. So one of the the popular ones and that's been around for years is gift card solutions. You know, I'm thinking of Bitrefill, CakePay, Moon, CoinsBee. I'm sure there's loads that I've I've missed off. These seem pretty popular. They seem to have stood the test of time. And, you know, from from my personal experience, they seem to have a pretty wide coverage in in most, places across the world. What what do you guys think of the kind of pros and cons of these? Maybe let's it's worth spelling out, you know, if I've missed any of the the popular implementations and and some of the main considerations that people should have when interacting with things like Bitrefill or Cakepay.
Seth, I'll hand it to you first this time.
[00:21:29] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think they're fantastic services. The gift card side, I know we'll touch on the the debit card side, which is a a little bit more convoluted, but the gift card side is just super straightforward. I think especially when we can do things, like, for those providers that do already let you do, like, in AppRedeem, it's even more powerful because then you could, like, go to the hardware store, go to checkout, and then see the amount, buy a gift card, and pay with it directly. That's a little trickier. Like, right now in CapePay, we don't have that, but we're working towards that. But that's a a huge advantage. I mean, simply though, just gift cards are an easy proxy merchant way to be able to pay with Bitcoin in quotes, wherever you go.
And you can get them for pretty much everywhere, especially if you're willing to use any service rather than, like, being locked into just Cake Bay or something. Like, there's always gonna be some some limitations in each service and what they support. So they're gonna be a little bit more focused on one one geographical location. We try to have a really wide range at Cake Bay, but I know there are some things that, like, Bitrefill has that we don't. So if you're willing to use multiple, so you can pay for the vast majority of things with gift cards. The main thing that is annoying, and this applies to prepaid debit cards too, is, like, if you're just buying a a flat amount gift card, if you don't perfectly use all of it, technically, you are losing some money at the end, like, if you don't drain that gift card. But on a lot of services, like, especially digital services, you can just, redeem the entire gift card and pay from there. So a lot of the services is fine. It's more like things like a restaurant or something where if you're not spending the full amount or you can't go back because you're using it one time or something, you could end up having some leftover balance on those gift cards. But overall, fantastic tool, really simple, really straightforward, something that everyone should be using, honestly. But like you mentioned, it's a it's a stop gap that we hope will go away. Like, I would love to not need to run cake bay. It would simplify my life, but also it would be really nice if all these merchants actually accepted it directly. I think the Square stuff is a good step towards that. And if that goes well, I think that will push a lot of other, POS system people to to start supporting Bitcoin as well. But the goal is to not need to use gift cards, but in the meantime, they're a fantastic, interim solution that just works well for most things.
[00:23:41] Unknown:
Yeah. I agree. The only thing I would say is it depends where you are. So when I was in The UK, it was really, really easy for me to, like, buy my diesel and do my weekly shop and, like, most restaurants or what whatever I was doing, pretty much I could do it. It's not the case everywhere. There are some places where literally, like, there's nothing you couldn't really use. Certainly for, like, the in store ones. So it'd be good to see some of those, like, other areas or different parts of the world, have more options. When I did have the use of it in The UK, I like to do the in store stuff most because I found that's, like, the most private way to do it. So if I was using one of these services and running a VPN and not giving any personal details and then buying, like, I don't know, a gift card for Aldi and then going in there and buying some meat and eggs and fish and whatever I needed, then there's no tie back to me in any way.
If you're doing the online stuff, obviously, there could be. Seth can obviously go into, what to do and what not to do and everything else. But, like, if you're buying an Amazon gift card, I don't think Amazon know that you've paid with Bitcoin or Monero or whatever you've paid with, but, presumably, there's some link. Like, there's some details that are then linking you to that Amazon account.
[00:25:20] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, the a lot of it comes back to, like, what's the main reason for using these gift cards. If the main reason is privacy, you'll have some different things that you need to focus on. But I think for a lot of people, the main reason is not necessarily, like, perfect privacy, but it's that I want to be able to use my Bitcoin. And I Yeah. Like having the side benefit of having good privacy. I mean, in general, you get fantastic privacy from the merchant, but you should assume that these things could be unwound, like, if there was a law enforcement request or something. Yeah. You could tie back the this crypto payment went with this Amazon account, because those gift cards like, the their gift card system obviously understands where things come from. They could go back to the supplier or whatever gift card provider you use, and then they could go to the gift card provider and ask them for their transaction ID. Like, they could in theory, that's possible. Obviously, like, CakePay, we're not logging.
Others, I know probably do the same thing. You can be smart about your account you create on these sites as well and use things like email aliases. But, for the most part, there's fantastic privacy from the merchant, which is the primary person you're trying to get privacy from when you're paying. Mhmm. And then, yeah, it's it's pretty straightforward there, which is nice. And that's just another benefit of the gift cards with and that's like this is a specific thing that crypto unlocks that just would not be possible otherwise. In theory, you could do this with cash, but actually going into a shop and buying gift cards with cash is, a lot harder these days.
Mhmm. Even though you can do it, but crypto just, like, so beautifully unlocks the ability to buy these things in a way that doesn't reveal anything about you. So that even if that merchant somehow was able to get the the lightning payment hash, like, so what? What are they gonna do with it? They get a Manera Manera transaction ID, what are they gonna do with it? Or even if it's an on chain Bitcoin transaction and you, use no case no KYC Bitcoin, like, what are they gonna do with it? They're not gonna learn anything about you. So it's it's really, really great from that perspective. And it funnily enough, in some ways, better for privacy than actually paying with, like, Bitcoin directly.
Because you do get that kind of, like, separation where the merchant doesn't know exactly what crypto is being used or what the payment is. But, for most people, that doesn't really matter.
[00:27:27] Unknown:
Cool. Just, two two quick comments from me. One from Observer in the, the live chat. He said, something to be aware of when you're using gift cards, online retailers, that if they've got existed discounts on, say, for, like, Friday or something similar, that more often than not, the, merchant won't allow you to use the gift card and still get the discount as well. Obviously, it's not gonna be, much of a widespread prop problem, but something that I've never considered before and and worth, being being aware of. And then the other point I was gonna bring up just quickly, Ben, it does dovetail nicely into the the next segment of the show around prepaid debit cards. But when it pertains to services like Bitrefill and Cake Pay, obviously, the, gift cards are all fixed most of them are fixed denomination up to a certain limit.
But do each of, these types of platforms have their own specific limits as well? So I'm thinking of a scenario that somebody who earns in Bitcoin and needs to basically convert all or most of their income into various different gift cards. Do these services have limits per month or per year, or is it kind of like a bit of a free for all? How does that normally work? And probably, Seth, I think you're best, suited to answer this one.
[00:28:40] Unknown:
Yeah. I don't I mean, I don't know of any merchant that has a limit. There's usually a limit in terms of, like, the size of individual cards you can redeem. And most of the time, if there's a limit in something like CakePay, that limit is enforced by the merchant, not by us. And so we're just not gonna sell you more, like, too big of a card that you wouldn't be able to redeem, obviously. That being said, I mean, I would not be surprised. Like, if you're loading your Amazon with $25,000 in gift cards, like, you're you're probably gonna get flagged for fraud. Like, it's just something that looks really suspicious. So even if there's not technically a limit, I still wouldn't assume that, like, loading a massive amount of money into a specific merchant would go south. But that's also very different from, like, if you're going to Aldi, like, like Max mentioned Yeah. And paying in store with a gift card. They're they're not gonna care or know that you're you've you've been using gift cards once a week for your groceries. Like, it's not gonna matter. But if you if you're doing one retailer for a massive amount, you you may have a problem.
[00:29:42] Unknown:
Just a point on that, Seth. When you say something like Amazon, if you're doing a massive amount like 25,000, you might get flagged. I assume you mean in one go or in a very short period of time, you don't mean that you just are using gift cards over a long period of time that amount to a a large amount? You mean just, like, one large gift card?
[00:30:07] Unknown:
I'm sure it would depend. I mean, one thing I know, like, very specific to Amazon is if you create a new Amazon account and you try to load it with, like, even a relatively normal amount of gift card and you don't have a valid payment method, it just won't it won't work, and you'll get flagged for fraud immediately. Because that's, like, a really common path for fraud path for fraud is people will steal gift cards or get gift cards and payment for something that is not legal. Yeah. And then they'll try to redeem them and use them on that. So, like, one thing that I've found is really successful is, like, if you already have accounts with these platforms that you've used in the past, yeah, you won't get as good of privacy because they'll know your maybe they will know your address because you gave it to them in the past or I mean, you have to give your address to Amazon anyways. They're delivering anyway. So yeah. Yeah. They're delivering anyway, so who cares? But using an account that has an established history is obviously gonna make it much less that you get flagged for fraud over time. Like, I've done I've I don't I have no idea how much. I'm sure we're not anywhere close to 25,000, but I've done a lot of Amazon gift cards over the years because that's a a staple of mine and something I use all the time. And I haven't had problems, but it was a it was an established account. So definitely, like, with these, you're probably gonna run into problems if you just create a new account and immediately load a ton in gift card funds. But if you have an established account, you probably wanna have problems. And the the hard thing with these though is they're not gonna publicize, hey. These are our limits for fraud detection. That's all obviously gonna be private. So you don't really know when you're gonna hit that threshold.
So start small to make sure that you don't have, issues and and kinda build up from there.
[00:31:33] Unknown:
That makes sense. Alright. On to, to to the section three. We're gonna talk about prepaid debit cards. So we've established that spending natively with a Bitcoin focused or or crypto, focused merchant is is great, but they are few and far between. As a stop gap after that, we've got gift cards, which are these days fairly wide ranging, especially, like I said, if you're willing to to look across multiple suppliers like k pay per refill, etcetera, then you can cover most use cases. But undoubtedly, especially if you're somebody who is living on Bitcoin, there's gonna still be quite a lot of merchants where they only accept fiat and they just don't offer a gift card or they're inaccessible in your location. And that you're gonna have to interact and pay, or have some fiat value transfer somewhere along the line.
This is where I think, prepaid debit cards can be useful. They kind of offer, I guess, a flexible way to spend your Bitcoin or crypto pretty much anywhere. Again, there's there's some caveats for that that I'm sure we're gonna dive into. But for those that Max, you can take this one first. But can you just break down briefly kind of how high level these these platforms work, and kind of, you know then we'll get into the pros and cons. I mean, it's pretty self explanatory, but, Max, just give us the the high level of what is a prepaid debit card and and why is it useful.
[00:33:03] Unknown:
Prepaid debit cards are kind of, in the similar way to gift card. You're gonna be using a platform that you're gonna, spend a certain amount of sets or Panera or whatever, to purchase, one of these things. And with a Visa card or a prepaid Visa card, you can obviously spend that in store or online. Oh, actually, I think some you can only do online, not on not in store. But you're you're effectively just topping it up like you would with phone credit. And then depending on where you go, there's different fees, like top up fees or transaction fees or, like, limits on these type of things, but the limits tend to be quite large actually from what I've seen. It's not something that I've used personally.
It's something that I would like to because I can't really use gift cards where I am, like, at all. So, it's something I wanna start using, but but there are also some problems with where you are. Like, different jurisdictions are potentially difficult as well. So, yeah, a a prepaid, debit card.
[00:34:16] Unknown:
Yeah. And one one thing to kind of call out and explain a little bit is there so there are prepaid debit cards, and there are also reloadable debit cards. These are two very different things with very different pros and cons. So, like, a a prepaid debit card, which is the the kind of thing that's what we offer in CakePay. That's what I believe that refill offers is only prepaid. I don't think they have reloadable, but I could be wrong on that. Those are you you should really think of them as a, like, Visa or Mastercard gift card. Like, they they have a predefined amount that you purchase it for. You can use it until that balance is zero or close to zero, and then you just throw it away. You don't reuse it. Most of them are not able to or no. Many many of them can be added to Apple Pay or Google Pay. But since they are just that fixed limit and you have to replace it, it's a little bit limited in functionality. But it's much easier to purchase. And especially in The US, it's essentially the only option. There's some asinine regulation in The US that needs to change that prevents you from doing reloadable cards that are not KYC.
Hopefully, that won't improve. But reloadable cards are really the kind of the holy grail here because the idea is you get one card number. You can put it in Apple or Google Pay. Sometimes there's caveats. Some of the can't them can't be added to those. And then you can use it just like you would use any debit card, but you just top it up with crypto whenever you want. And that's obviously that's the the target and that's the the dream for all these services is what we're working towards at CakePay right now. And I know we'll kinda talk about both options, but those ones are definitely really nice, but you you just you can't do that in The US unless you're willing to KYC, due to ridiculous regulations. So an important caveat between the two, prepaid and reloadable, are are different even though you can spend them the same way. The way you actually purchase them is quite different and what jurisdictions you can use them in can be different.
[00:36:05] Unknown:
Yeah. Good call out. Alright. So this is a this is a a concept that's fairly new to me, and I know I fully understand that these have been around for for a number of years at least now. But some of the the most commonly recommended or or used ones that I've seen are are Dolphin, to fiat.com, MoonX, and MoonX also have a separate card called Moon one x. And I think there's a a more recent one called Freedomia as well. All these work in a a similar way. Some of them are reloadable, like Seth has said, and some of them are are kind of prepaid and single use. One of the ones that I've looked into a little bit more that I can kinda give a a a a quick dive into is the Dolphin card, which is come from the Aqua team, which I believe under the hood is just moon. So you can kind of apply what I'm about to say to to the moon cards as well.
They basically, it's a virtual debit card, that you can top up from your balance within the Aqua Wallet. There is no fee to top up. You can put up to 4,000, US dollars worth of Bitcoin on there, per month. And then there is a 1% spend fee, each time that you spend, or a minimum of $1 if you're doing a really small spend. So, obviously, that those costs can quickly add up, and I think that's something worth remaining cognizant of when you're interacting with any of these, that they do tend to be you know, the the the fees can rack up a little bit. But it is a very good private option to kind of do that.
[00:37:39] Unknown:
1% I don't think that's Each time each time that you spend.
[00:37:43] Unknown:
That that was just one. That is yeah. That is on the lower end. I guess, on the the higher end, you've got, like, 2fiat.com. I had a quick look at them, and they have a 6% top up fee and then a transaction and then a transaction fee on top of that. Now, again, all of these got pros and cons. You can do up to $10,000 on the two fiat card. So if you need to do larger amounts, then maybe the the 6% top up fee is okay for you. The two fee, you also need to pay for a card issuance as well. So again, the you know, it's worth, diving into these to see, what what's kind of, you know, all of the requirements. But if I just quickly flip back to the Dolphin card, because it does seem to make a really good set of trade offs.
0% deposit, 1% spend fee, $4,000 a month, no annual subscription, no setup fee. You cannot add it to Apple or Google Pay. And, one of the caveats that I found out through a third party that I know this week is that in Europe, they don't have what's called three d s activated, which I believe is kinda like a a two f a to verify, you know, who's doing the spend. And what that means is, I believe that you're limited to €50 per transaction in Europe, which kinda makes the the cart prohibitive for those users. But outside of that, and again, check if it's available in your local area, it seems to make a pretty good set of trade offs. If you're in The US, sorry, they don't serve US customers, and I believe Canada is the same.
Observer is saying the fees really sound like a Moon card. Yes. You're absolutely right. And I I again, I think I stated this earlier, but the Dolphin card, I believe, is supplied by noon, and the Dolphin are just kind of, a front end or Aqua Wallet is a front end for that. I also was speak been speaking to a couple of guys in who are based in the EU, and they've been testing the Freedomia card, which has, a top up commission, which is 4%. But it could go as low as 1% depending on the subscription fit, setup that you have. Some of them, they have really cheap annual subscriptions. And based on your plan, it it that dictates the commission.
There are zero, additional spend fees when you come to spend. And, again, depending on the tier that you choose, you can go between 1 and $5,000 equivalent. The accounts here require an email and a phone number. But, obviously, you know, as we all know, it's pretty easy to get, both of those that are not tied to your name. And I believe that the reason that the Freedonia kind of works so well in Europe is because it has that email or phone, and that enables them to activate that three d s where basically you get a text to verify, you know, with a six digit code to say, oh, we can see that you're trying to spend from this card. So, you know, input the six numbers and we'll verify the the the transaction. So it means that you can do, you know, transactions up to the the card limit, essentially.
Guys, any any comments or feedback on on what I've just mentioned or anything to add just while I go back to the chat to see if there's any questions?
[00:40:47] Unknown:
I'm sure Seth is gonna have some smart things to, to add here. So I just wanna ask, you said the card can't be added for Dolphin into Google Pay or, the Apple Wallet, whatever it's called. Correct. So does that mean you have to have a physical card and they've gotta send that out? You've gotta give your address and all your details and stuff? Good call out. No. They are planning to do physical cards. So but for now, what that means is it's online only.
[00:41:19] Unknown:
Because, obviously, you just need to enter. Okay. You you just need to enter the card details. Yep. I I believe, I'm I'm gonna check this when one of you hops back in. I'm gonna go to the Freedomio website, but I'm pretty sure that they allow you to add to Apple and Google Pay, which obviously unlocks any brick and mortar merchant then. But I'm just gonna go and fact check myself while I let one of you guys come in.
[00:41:41] Unknown:
When, when cake card?
[00:41:44] Unknown:
Working on that right now. Yeah. Actually, we're we're working on the the moon card itself. So, hopefully, we'll have that sooner rather than later. But yeah. Yeah. They've been good to work with. We'll actually probably be doing some gift cards with them as well, but, hoping to bring the same thing and specifically want Apple and Google Pay. I think these cards, honestly, for most people, they don't have that much value until you can do Apple Pay and Google Pay, because for the average person, that's gonna lock unlock you spending it in actual brick and mortar merchants. So to me, that's the, like, kind of the minimum viable product for something like this.
[00:42:18] Unknown:
Anything you can do that?
[00:42:20] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Nice. We will do it. Not I don't wanna commit to a timeline, but we will do it sooner than later. So definitely a hard priority for us because Too bad. Like you mentioned, it is unfortunately not for The US. So, we won't be able to change that. That's not that's a a regulation that, obviously, we're not gonna be able to work around. But, for people outside The US, it should be a fantastic tool. And for people in The US, we'll obviously keep improving our our prepaid debit card options.
[00:42:46] Unknown:
But sorry, Seth. One one more thing. When you say not for anyone in The US, so as long as you're not in The US, it's fine. Does that mean every other country that is not The US, or does that mean certain countries?
[00:43:02] Unknown:
I may misspeak, but off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure it's basically not The US or sanctioned countries, which is hilarious because we're the ones doing the sanctioning. But we're also the ones who can't use it. Sanctioning yourself. Yeah.
[00:43:17] Unknown:
Yeah. It's like many of these lists, it's gonna be, like, Iran, North Korea, The US. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you're not But everywhere else pretty much that has has Visa network, you should be able to, purchase it, redeem it, add it to your Apple or Google Pay, spend it, and it should all be good.
[00:43:35] Unknown:
I believe so. But I'll definitely confirm that closer to us actually shipping something like this. Okay.
[00:43:41] Unknown:
Just to come back in on my self fact check with Freedonia, they fully they support Google Wallet, and Apple Pay is coming soon. So that's pretty good. I'm impressed by that one. I haven't tried it myself. But as I say, yeah, Dolphin, the Moon ones, they seem to be, pretty popular at the moment. There's a a couple of comments actually in the, Nosta chat. Bon mentioned about wanting to disable your VPN when you register it or check your balance because you'll be blocked until you disable the VPN. But you could get flagged for fraud apparently. I haven't had that happen though. Okay. Interesting.
So it looks like they are kind of, well, as you'd expect, I guess, checking IP addresses and things like that. So you wanna be careful if you hop in between checking balance sites and things like that where, when you you, you know, you're interacting with with these types of services. And I guess an an additional practical piece of advice, like, there is loads of caveats with these cards, the limits, the top up fees, where they're accepted, where they're available to be purchased, the subscription fees, etcetera. So if you decide that you're gonna go with one, I would say top up with a very small amount. Yes. You might pay a high equivalent fee or an equivalent spend fee. But, like, what what you don't wanna do is, like, let's say you do a Dolphin card, you load it with $4,000, and then you realize that, you know, for whatever reason, it's that there's a regulation change, it blocked in your country. Like, I would treat these as a as a top up and spend, you know, with the the exact amount that you wanna do for a specific purchase. Don't leave funds on there or don't leave large amounts of funds on there, and definitely don't leave funds on there for a long period of time. Because, again, this is another call actually I've just remembered.
Not all of them do refunds, meaning that once the funds are on there, you can't get them back off. I don't know. You'd have to check all of them, but I know I've seen in in some of the small print with some of them that, it's kind of like a one way traffic and you then have to spend those funds back out.
[00:45:48] Unknown:
Okay. We Go on, Max. Sorry, mate. Just one just one more thing. If you're using something like Google Pay with one of these cards, is there any clever way to have a Google Pay or Google account spoofed? I think it's maybe harder with Apple, but, like, could you, in theory, have a phone a separate phone that you treat as your debit card and you just have a separate Google account that isn't actually linked to your any of your personal details, and then you just use that phone in stores like you would a normal tap and go debit card. Because if you could do that, that would be a really that would close that privacy loop very nicely.
[00:46:36] Unknown:
Yeah. I I think there's a way you could get an Android phone and cash so the IMEI is not tied to your personal, you know, personal identical person I can't even speak. Your your ident your identity. You know, and then if you go with a service that requires an email or phone, obviously, you can use services like Textverified and and email alias in, like, from Proton, etcetera. And then just, you know, make a a Google account that's not, you know, my name, my last my first name, [email protected]. Yeah. Yeah. I I don't see why that wouldn't work. Obviously, it's a lot of additional hurdles, but, you know, freedom isn't free and privacy is certainly not gonna be handed to you on a plate. But in my head, it seems like it would work. Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:47:20] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:47:22] Unknown:
Got some, feel free to drop your questions in the chat, guys. And I think we've been covering off. This has been a good conversation so far. In the meantime, we've got some, boosts, over on the Nostra chat. Nine one x has sent 500 sats. Thank you, sir. We've got, just an n pop. The your name's not rendering, sorry, but you said, you sent 420 sats and said, let's go with a rocket emoji. Thank you. Sawzall, is is that, is that John by any chance? It's gotta be John. Yeah. It's gotta be John. Well, John has sent I I did enjoy that conversation, by the way. For anybody wondering what we're talking about, go and listen to the latest MyIn inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches inches he says 2,100 sats, and then Lan Tungier zapped a thousand sats as well. Thank you very much. We do have, a a a question from Observer in the Noster chat that says, any experience with Curve as a bridge for Apple Pay usage for debit cards that currently do not support Apple Pay?
Absolutely none whatsoever. Don't know about you guys? I've never even heard of Curve.
[00:48:26] Unknown:
No. I've never heard of it. I've heard of it mentioned as, like, an option for GrapheneOS, but
[00:48:32] Unknown:
I've I remember looking into it and had a lot of drawbacks. I never actually tried it, and I've never heard of anyone using it since then. Mhmm. That doesn't mean that it's not good or doesn't work, but I Yep. I think you're yeah. I'm I'm sure there's gonna be some serious trade offs there. But like y'all mentioned, if you can just buy a phone or use an old Android phone, like, let's say you use GrapheneOS, you probably have an old Pixel lying around. Just flash it back to stock. Use a new Google account like we mentioned. You can even use an email alias to sign up rather than making a Gmail if you want, and then use Android Pay that way. That's that's a good solution.
[00:49:07] Unknown:
Yeah. Definitely. Alright. I'm gonna hit some, presubmitted questions that are tangential to what we're talking about while we wait for the live chat to to wake up a bit. Thank you for your question, Observer. Sorry. We couldn't help with that one. But we've got a question from TX Friday on Nosta. Great name, by the way. That that sounds like it was a planted question, but I promise it it wasn't me. And they said, we'd like to hear your guys' take on using Strike, the MalaZwan, as a Bitcoin bank and spending tool. Yeah. So, I mean, you you can use it as a a a basically, as a as a traditional KYC bank account that also speak Bitcoin if you want to. I do think it's a a a a useful tool in, if you're gonna use it as your bank and get your wages paid in there, but be able to pay a Bitcoin merchant that wants Bitcoin.
And let's say you don't want or have any to spend that you can do that from your cash balance in your Stripe account. I think that's a pretty cool, you know, product. Obviously, it doesn't give you any taxable spend headaches. So that's a a plus. So, yeah, as long as you look at it as it's just another bank account that can speak Bitcoin, then I I can see the benefit of it. But in in terms of, like, using it to to DCA, etcetera, you know, I've made my my points very clear on, you know, whether or not people should be using KYC KYC services to obtain their Bitcoin. Like, you're just adding quite a big privacy risk to to your kind of onboarding experience there. But, what about you guys? What do you think?
[00:50:37] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, echo echo those thoughts.
[00:50:41] Unknown:
Yeah. I I know people in The US who use this to be able to live on a, quote, unquote Bitcoin standard. So I think it's a great solution. Again, if your goal is like, not everyone's goal is perfect privacy, and that's okay. Like, obviously, I think people should strive for better privacy. But if you especially when you're using a service that knows everything about you, like your utility bills, your, mortgages, your credit card payments, like, all these things, you're already KYC'd with these entities or at least they know your name and full address.
So, like, I think thinking that you have to be anonymous when you pay with from these people is unnecessary in most cases. So using something like strike to to pay bills where the entity already knows who you are and they already know where you live Seems like a good solution to be able to use Bitcoin for these things. I don't have any problem with it. I mean, I obviously, I wish it wasn't KYC, and I wish you could you could do things like bill pay without that, but it's an unfortunate reality of of where we're at. So I think it's a it's a good option for a lot of people.
[00:51:40] Unknown:
Yeah. Definitely. I I think I've already answered this one, but I wanted to feature it. Gnostic Angle also asked about the the concept of keeping fiat on strike with Bitcoin under the hood so you're not creating taxable events. Yeah. I think you covered that. But, yeah, essentially, you can pay Bitcoin merchants from your US dollar balance or your pound balance, etcetera. So you can kind of, you know, I guess, have the best of both worlds. The merchant gets what they want. You don't create a taxable event and get, daddy government on your back for some capital gains. So it seems like, you know, it it could be a useful tool, again, if you're happy with the trade offs of the KYC stuff. But, again, you ain't getting a bank account without KYC in yourself anyway. So, alright. Next, question from, for Anon. I guess it's just Anon or x. Can you go through the options for Europe? Lots of services not available here, and if so, just very limited. Will be nice to know more about the possibilities for this forsaken content continent.
I I think every everything that we've discussed today, is available in some way, shape, or form across Europe. Bitrefill, Cape Pay, they all work in Europe. Obviously, you'll need to set your your, your location to there so to get the relevant gift cards available in in that jurisdiction. I know for a fact, having spoken to people in Spain, etcetera, that some of these, prepaid cards, they all work, in Europe. Again, they've all got trade offs. So just make sure you check out the t's and c's and the fees, etcetera. And then, you know, going back to the very first segment, spending natively with merchants, I guess, again, that's just kind of a geography problem, based on, you know, you're gonna have little hotbeds like in Lugano.
But if you go to, you know, out in the sticks in the middle of Italy, you're probably not gonna be able to spend Bitcoin. And that's a much wider problem and it's not kind of specific to, I guess, one part portion of the world. But, guys, anything to add there?
[00:53:34] Unknown:
No. I just, other than, you know, while I was in Europe, I had no problems and there's loads of gift cards and things available. So, I don't think it's difficult to live on it there.
[00:53:47] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, from what I understand, obviously I'm not European, so I don't have all the, the freedom and privileges that y'all do. But, from what I understand from, like, the gift card and debit card side, you're actually in, like, the best possible place, because you're gonna have wide re wide reach in terms of what gift cards you have available for merchants that you have, and you can also do a lot of these no KYC reloadable debit cards. So it's it's actually the best place to be probably if you want to live off of this stuff. Mhmm. Now, obviously, there's other issues with the EU, but, it it should be, from what I understand as a non European, the best place to be able to use these proxy merchants and use these debit card options.
[00:54:27] Unknown:
Awesome. Okay. Just one final question. It comes from Janizo on x, and they said would love a deeper dive to non KYC Bitcoin trade payment solutions for The EU. And what do you think about LNVPN and the trade service they offer? Is it trustworthy? Thanks. Well, the no KYC kind of peer to peer trade market, again, the The EU is one of the best places for it. It tends to have the most, liquidity when it comes to looking at the markets. Whenever I check Robosats or PEACH, etcetera, Eurotrades, particularly for for services like Revolut, or anything else that's popular on the continent. Again, it has the most, the most liquidity. So, I think, yeah, it's I guess I've got some go great guides on my website. If you can go and check those out at bitcoin.guide, there's there's, guides for most of the popular solutions.
Again, they've all got trade offs. You know, Robos apps is is lightning native. You've got Peach, which is mobile only. You've got Bisc, which is desktop only, although they did actually release a mobile app that's in alpha at the moment. So again, it kind of depends on what type of journey you wanna choose. Do you want Lightning only? Do you wanna, you know, interact with it on your computer only? Do you want a tour only service? Like, there's lots of considerations. So just, I guess, do do a bit of research on all of them. They all able you to just go and check out the liquidity on all of them without any login details, etcetera.
So, yes. Go and have a poker and see which one kind of, works for you. And then finally, yeah, I'm gonna leave let Seth answer the the last part of this question because I think he's gonna have some info on it. But, LNVPN and the trade service they offer, could you shed some light on that one? I think you might have some insight.
[00:56:18] Unknown:
Yeah. So this is it's hard to know exactly what's meant by Genuzzo on the non KYC BTC trade payment. If you mean from fiat, like q and a mentioned, there are a lot of good options. Again, Europe has much better options than The US at least, unfortunately. But if you're talking swapping to and from other cryptocurrencies, there's tons of good options. LNVPN actually uses a really good partner of ours at Cake called Trokador. They're an instant exchange aggregator. So there's there's good centralized solutions like that. There's a lot of decentralized exchanges popping up. We've already integrated, two of them at Cake, and have probably two more coming very soon so that you can do decentralized cross chain swaps, which is, again, kind of the the holy grail for swapping between different currencies because you can do it in a way that's more trust minimized. I won't say trustless because many of them have the ability to freeze swaps if they have to, but trust minimized.
So there's there's lots of good ways to swap between cryptocurrencies. But going to and from fiat, there's there's still some good ones in Europe for sure.
[00:57:16] Unknown:
Nice. Nice. I've I've got one question in in the Nostra chat that came in earlier from Observer that I promised to answer. But, Seth, I know you've got a hard stop. So if you wanna drop off, Max and I can can handle this one. And, I hope you, enjoy your weekend in Lugano. I'm very, very jealous.
[00:57:31] Unknown:
Yeah. I will, I'll I'll go party for y'all. Go have some good food. Go walk around the lake. But, yeah, I do. I I wanna hop back in and do some conference, make sure I make the most of my time here. So thanks for thanks for having me for a bit. Great questions, everybody, and I will see you all in the future. Enjoy,
[00:57:45] Unknown:
mate. Okay. Yeah. Observer asked earlier on, any experience with Viban, v IBAN, which is an IBAN proxy virtual IBAN account, and the following providers. Providers like wave dot space, never heard of them, bring in dot x y z. Yeah. I've heard them. The promise is that the usage of Viban, which is registered with your full name, will not alarm the compliance department of your Premier Bank. Usage sorry. Here's what the usage is. Swap Bitcoin via Lightning and get fiat on a credit card through your Viband proxy on your main bank account instantly.
That's a complicated question, and I think what he's basically saying is you can swap out into fiat through this these services, like bring in and get the the the presumably, your back into your your kind of, main bank account. Observer, if if is am I on the right line there? Because that was a complex question. But, Max, any thoughts while I wait for Observer to tell me if I've got the right end of the stick?
[00:58:59] Unknown:
I I read that personally as, like, yeah, it would it would be pinging into your bank account and without having the issues that you generally have, because it has your name on it. So if you're doing a if you're doing a swap for, you know, Bitcoin to dollars and you're doing that through BISK or whatever, or at least in The UK, or have been doing it on Bisc. It's a really, really good way to close your account down very quickly. You you like, it's it's probably faster than just actually going onto the app and closing it. So, this would be less of a problem because they look at it and they go, oh, it's q and a paying q and a. Okay. That's fine. Like, that you're not gonna have the issue that you would from like, oh, who's this random person, and now we're gonna, like, freeze your money until you answer these questions.
[00:59:55] Unknown:
Right. But do you see this as any different to just offloading through a KYC exchange? Because it seems as though, like, the the bringin or wave. Space, they have your name, and you're offloaded through them to get funds back to your I I don't see. Again, this might be me and my own misunderstanding of it, but it just seems like you're offloading through a a regulated entity that
[01:00:26] Unknown:
knows who you are and what you're trust somewhere else, basically.
[01:00:30] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. It seems that way. But I I'm I'm I'm struggling to see the benefit of, well, I guess the the the main benefit could be that, you know, if if you suddenly get a big deposit to your bank from Coinbase and your bank really dislikes Coinbase, that what this what Observe is saying here is that because of this virtual IBAN, it's like you're sort of paying yourself, so to speak. And that might say, yeah, he's given you a you said you've hit the the the the bull's eye there. So, nicely done, Max. You you got the right end of the stick. Good question. Mate.
And, I'm gonna go and check that out and see, like, where that's available. I I know Bring In is is EU based, I think, but I've not heard of the the Wave one either. But, thank you for your question. And that brings us overtime already, unfortunately. This was a fun one. Again, I'm sure we could have gone for a a couple of hours, on on the topic because it's, very wide ranging and there's lots of nuance here. But, thank you to everybody that, asked the questions in the chat. We've got loads of boost this week. Really, really, exciting to see. So thank you to everybody that's that's sent some value across. That's that's awesome, and, really great to see. So thank you very much for that.
Thank you to you, Max, as always. It was a pleasure, mate. And, yeah. We'll, see you and everybody in the live chat at the same time next week. Looking forward to it, and I'll catch you on Monday. For the brief.
[01:01:57] Unknown:
Thanks, everyone.
[01:02:03] Unknown:
Thank you for listening to Freedom Tech Friday. To everyone who boosted, asked questions, and participated in the show, we appreciate you all. Make sure to join us next week on Friday at 9AM EST and 2PM London. Thanks to Seth, Max, and Q for keeping it ungovernable. And thank you to Cake Wallet, Foundation, and my NIM box for keeping the ungovernable misfits going. Make sure to check out ungovernablemisfits.com to see mister Crown's incredible skills and artwork. Listen to the other shows in the feed to hear Kareem's world class editing skills.
Thanks to Expatriotic for keeping us up to date with Boost's XMR chats and sending in topics. John, great name and great guy, never change and never stop keeping us up to date with mining news or continuing to grow the mesh to Dell. Finally, a big thanks to the unsung hero, our Canadian overlord, Jordan, for trying to keep the ungovernable in check and for the endless work he puts in behind the scenes. We love you all. Stay ungovernable.
Welcome, show format, and hosts introduce themselves
Seth checks in from Lugano and Plan B Forum preview
Bantery travel tales and lunch in Lugano
Main topic setup: Can you really live on Bitcoin in 2025?
Spending natively with merchants: tools, maps, and realities
Square/Block enabling Bitcoin payments: will it move the needle?
Listener boosts and transition to gift card solutions
Gift cards 101: Bitrefill, CakePay, pros, cons, privacy
Limits, fraud flags, and best practices for heavy gift card use
Prepaid vs reloadable crypto debit cards: how they work
Comparing cards: Dolphin/Moon, 2fiat, Freedomia, fees and 3DS
Operational tips: VPNs, Apple/Google Pay, top‑up cautiously
Q&A: Strike as a Bitcoin bank and bill pay tool
Europe focus: availability for gift cards and debit cards
Non‑KYC trading in the EU and LNVPN/Trocador swaps
Seth signs off; virtual IBANs (VIBAN) and bank compliance
Wrap‑up and sign‑off
