Ungovernable Misfits

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Welcome to the The Confab, the term derives from "confidential talk", which was commonly used in the Prohibition Era for meetings and conversations that took place in the smoky, rule-breaking speakeasies of that time.

The informal, privacy focused and clandestine nature of Ungovernable Misfits lends itself to these discussions.  So, grab a seat and a stiff drink from the concealed bar, listen and revel in the conversation.

On this episode, Max Tannahill drops-in to speak with Max

Show Discussion

I. Looking Back

Reflections on how the Bitcoin space has changed over the past few years - Max notes that while some aspects have become more centralized, there are also interesting experiments happening on-chain that diverge from the common narratives.

II. What the Chain Explains

Concerns about censorship and the precedent set by the Ordinals situation - Both express frustration with the purity testing and ideological rigidity around how Bitcoin "should" be used.

III. Privacy Post-Whirlpool

Strategies for privacy and spending Bitcoin - They discuss the pros and cons of using tools like Lightning, Monero swaps, and gift cards/vouchers to maintain privacy and flexibility.

IV. Compliance Conundrums

Observations on the regulatory landscape and potential challenges around taxation and KYC requirements - They both anticipate increasing pressure from governments to monitor and tax Bitcoin holdings.

V. Tether Works

Exploration of alternative payment methods like using Tether as a bridge between fiat and crypto - Max shares how this can provide pragmatic solutions in certain use cases.

VI. Head Up

Reflections on the overall state of the Bitcoin ecosystem and the need to remain adaptable as the landscape evolves.

The conversation covered a wide range of nuanced topics related to the practical realities of using Bitcoin in the current environment. The main themes were navigating privacy, censorship resistance, and regulatory pressures.


IMPORTANT LINKS 

• https://freesamourai.com
• https://p2prights.org/donate.html

SHOW SPONSORS

FOUNDATION (https://foundationdevices.com/ungovernable)

Foundation builds Bitcoin-centric tools that empower you to reclaim your digital sovereignty.

As a sovereign computing company, Foundation is the antithesis of today’s tech conglomerates. Returning to cypherpunk principles, they build open source technology that “can’t be evil,”

Thank you Foundation Devices for sponsoring the show.

Use code: Ungovernable for $10 off of your purchase


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You can support this episode using your time, talent or treasure.

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TALENT:

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(00:00:04) INTRO

(00:02:17) BOOSTS

(00:04:55) THANK YOU FOUNDATION

(00:06:19) Time Flies Tannahill

(00:09:16) Looking for Imagination

(00:14:01) The Chain Tells a Different Story

(00:21:55) Bad for Privacy, Bad for Compliance

(00:32:25) It May Seem Bleak, But Things Will Improve

(00:36:53) Enjoy the Speculation

(00:46:58) Embrace Proven Solutions

(00:55:27) Lightning, Monero & Nappies

(01:09:43) Some Tether in the Toolbox?

(01:17:49) Overcoming Merchant Adoption Challenges

(01:26:14) Thanks for Chatting with The Lincoln Podcaster

[00:00:04] Unknown:

Bitcoin   is close to becoming worthless.  

[00:00:16] Unknown:

Now what's the Bitcoin?  

[00:00:19] Unknown:

Bitcoin's like rat poison. Yeah.  

[00:00:22] Unknown:

Oh. The greatest scam in history.   Let's get it.   Bitcoin will go to fucking 0. Yeah.  

[00:00:42] Unknown:

Alright, you ungovernable misfits.   I'm your host, Max.   Everybody knows that Bitcoin is useless, worthless, and doomed to fail. But what if everyone's wrong?   What if it's the system that is doomed to fail?   Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space and slither to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin coin rabbit hole.  

[00:01:10] Unknown:

Welcome back to another confab episode.   This episode is with Max Tannehill.   Great insights.   Great blow.   Great name.   I'll tell you what's not so great is the sound quality.   I'm afraid for this episode, I had to record in a car outside   because my house was like a fucking war zone.   So   got up early, made myself a coffee,   sat in the car close enough to the Wi Fi so that I could record. But   it's a bit tinny. There's a bit of background noise. I've spent pretty much the whole weekend trying to clean up the audio like a fucking artist.   So I've done my best. I hope you can bear with it. It's always good chatting to Max.  

If you haven't already checked out the previous episode I did with Max probably a couple of years ago, I'd suggest you go back and have a listen. We haven't yet got a search function on the website, and I can't remember   the episode number.   If you just search in any search engine, governable misfits and Max Tannehill, it will come up.   Right. Onto the boosts.   Thank you, Jordan, for putting these into a lovely, beautifully organized spreadsheet so that I don't fucking forget and mess everything up. Appreciate   you. Late stage Huddl.  

Appreciate you all and have been appreciating Seth much more lately.   Didn't consider buying Monero until recently. Thanks for all that y'all do.   Mister Mister,   because I can.   Mister Mister,   repeat.   John,   Max's new favorite word, Rube Goldberg machine.   She dropped it in this episode as well. I think I fuck it up as well, though, because I think it's I think I keep saying Rube   rather than Rube. Anyway, there we   are. Rob Palmer Huddle, no message.   Fundamentals,   thanks gents for the new rabbit hole,   the one that might enable freedom.   8 Mythran Deere. Please don't tell me this is a pro racist, not guns.  

Expatriotic.   Listening to this sick on the beach in Florida. Oh,   we don't wanna hear that. I hope you're alright, mate. Bon. Much respect for Seth over the years. Some good discussions were had on his old opt out matrix room. Wartime,   fire.   Brother Abel, quadruple the usual boost because the example of getting   the good book to people in need   brought joy to my heart. God bless the young girl of all misfits.   Rev Huddle set has some good perspectives.   I have no doubt privacy solutions will improve on Bitcoin, but for now, you've gotta do what you gotta do. 2 Ryan.   Fake. Clowns to the left to me. Jokers to the right.  

Brother Abel, another excellent show. Keep up the great work.   Eyes.   Beers, strong-arm,   mushroom, rocket,   a 100.   And for the boost outside of fountain, Jordan has also put this in a nice spreadsheet for me,   anonymous   with no no, Rotelephant   with no no, Rotelephant   again with no no.   Barnabas Minor,   Breeze.   I'd second to reaching out to Urban for hired help.   Barnabas Miner again. Breeze. I don't know how many shows these ungovernable misfits kind of have. I can't keep up, but I love Max, and Urban is a great asset to the community.   Love you too, darling.  

Thanks to Chad Farrow for streaming 50 Sats A Minute. That's boss. Thank you to everyone.   All of these Sats really help us keep this show going. I really do appreciate it.   Thank you very much.   And finally, before we start the show, I wanna thank Foundation Devices for sponsoring this show.   They sponsor this show because I hounded them. I chased them around. I annoyed them until they said, okay. Okay.   We'll support you because they have the best hardware   in the Bitcoin world.   It's beautifully   designed. It's fully open source.   They have an absolutely   incredible team, and they do things properly.  

Anyone who listens to this show knows I managed to fuck almost everything up.   I've never had a problem using the passport.   I've never had a problem using the Envoy app.   It's so seamless. It's so simple.   If anyone has any questions at all, they can reach out to me and ask for help.   Or you can pay $99   to have Bitcoin Q and A hold your hand through the process.   If If you fancy a discount, and let's face it, who doesn't,   use the code ungovernable.   It also helps us support the show because it lets them know that I'm doing my job properly and chilling to all you good people.   Check them out at foundation   devices   dot x, y zed,   and enjoy the show.  



[00:06:19] Unknown:

There he is. Hey. How are you? I am alright. How are you doing? Yeah. Not too bad. Let me just turn up your volume.  

[00:06:27] Unknown:

Is mine coming through really low?  

[00:06:29] Unknown:

Yeah it's okay, it's, first time I use it on this computer, so it might be my end. Well, it actually is more likely to be my end because,  

[00:06:38] Unknown:

I'm sat in a car   outside   to try and record this, and I've moved my whole recording setup just to,   make it so there's not so much noise in my house. Yeah. Sure. I just realized this morning, I was like, no. This is gonna be horrendous.   So much noise. Actually,  

[00:06:57] Unknown:

I've just moved it to the middle on my volume, and you're coming through fine now. So it might be just because this is like a work computer I'm using, so I think we're alright, actually.  

[00:07:06] Unknown:

Okay. Alright. Fine. Well, I can always edit it afterwards. But, yeah, I'm I'm further away from the mic than usual. But, anyway, good to talk to you again, mate. Indeed. Good to chat. It's been a while. It feels like a good time to have your input on things. I've sent you on the messages back and forth. Always appreciate the way that you think about things and that you're not swayed by   trying to be in some sort of click or saying the popular thing.   It's more   nuanced   and reasonable approaches to things   rather than   I'm Bitcoin, so everything that touches Fiat is fucking stupid, and you should   delete all your accounts. And I feel like a lot of people kind of   burn bridges to   useful places and and useful people and things just to try and sound cooler. And it's starting to annoy me a little bit, so I'm looking forward to having your input on things. And I guess just sort of starting with I don't know how long it's been since we last spoke. Maybe   couple of years or something like that. I mean, I have to say,  

[00:08:12] Unknown:

my concept of time is quite warped at the moment. I'm looking at old   messages that have been sent from a few years ago.   You   know, some of them, like, from kind of things that popped up in Telegram chats to kind of old tweets, whatever.   What's incredible is, for me anyway, is that things seem to be a long time ago when I look at some of these things online. And then I can't leave it when it's only like 2020 or early 2019.   I obviously think 20 20, I think, would have, like a lot of people with the beginnings of things with kind of COVID and not really being very mobile.   And between 2020 and about 2023,   that feels   like just really   just a few months or a year because   life was so repetitive   with   things. Yeah, my   concept of time is so odd, so I genuinely had no idea when we last spoke.  



[00:09:05] Unknown:

Yeah.   It's,   similar story here, really.   I think, though, it is a couple of years.   From my perspective, things have changed a hell of a lot. Yeah. Sometimes, though, I wonder how much of that is just the fact that   some of this is less exciting and shiny and new than it was a couple of years ago for me, and how much of it is the space changing.   I tend to get very bored with things very quickly.   So anyone who knows me, like, in my normal life   has always been pretty shocked,   especially, like, my interest with Bitcoin because normally it's like, I'll find something, I'll do   it obsessively   a 100% for a while, and then I'll work it out, and then I'll just drop it. Yeah. This has been by far the longest, like whenever it was 20   end of 2017, I started like being interested in that. But it has started to   fade a little bit, and I've I've I'm wondering whether that is   the change or at least what it feels like the change in the fact that   I look on stages   with the exception of our good friend, q and a. It's generally a bunch of cunts   waffling.  

And, obviously, with samurai   no longer being a tool that we can use   and good people in bad situations,   I think that's left a pretty bitter taste. And the way that people have handled it,   and the fact there hasn't been more uproar, and people are still talking about such useless things and bringing that to the forefront when there's much bigger things to talk about. I don't know. It feels,   it feels like it's changed. But I wanted your perspective because you've been in a long time,   and,   yeah, you always look at things in a in a way that I think,   is useful.  



[00:10:59] Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, first off,   I, I certainly kind of feel that way, and I think we've probably got a lot of similarities here as well.   If you take Bitcoin as like a hobby or kind of any kind of interest,   it's been something I've been involved in over a longer period of time   and with more input and more time spent in that, invested   really anything else I can think of.   Obviously,   you can have your own hobbies. I've done all sorts of things over the years,   Scuba diving or stuff with travel. There's all these other things. But, you know, I think, obviously, the fact that it's so accessible and online   and, of course, so much these days, you know, we do do online and, you know, bloody phones   are prevalent everywhere. It's, kind of, easy to, kind of, tap into the zeitgeist and get an idea of what's going on. But, yeah, I do think things have changed quite drastically. I think, you know, when I was kind of first reading about bitcoin it would have actually been 10 years ago so we kind of took it 2014 and I didn't even buy any at that point or even, you know, really do much of the software. I spent an awful lot of time reading and I just felt that, wow, I'm so late to all of this. And there was kind of it's a bit like, kind of, I suppose a bit like   discovering music. You know, you come in at a certain period and you've got like, you know, if you're a kind of nineties kid or an eighties kid growing up in the nineties,   you might actually be interested not only about the music being produced now, but you look in kind of the eighties, seventies, and the sixties and there's all this other music that you're kind of working out and discovering. And I felt like that with bitcoin in 2014. There are all these interesting wallets, all these interesting tools that have already been existed. Plus there's new stuff being created.  

And 10 years later most of the stuff being created now, I have not a particularly   significant amount of interest in it.   And,   you know, I think it's also a little less imaginative. I mean, you know, takeout just recently in the last couple of days, Proton have kind of released their wallet And, you know, I haven't played with it. I'm sure it's a kind of, you know, it's a well architected wallet in a lot of ways. But at the same time, I mean, it's not drastically different   to Blockchain. Info back in the day with their web wallet. I mean, it's just another web wallet.   Okay. You've got some integration with email, but that's not the first time that's all been done. So things do seem a bit repetitive. And   I think at least culturally,   there's been a significant takeover, at least kind of on the Twitter side of space, but I imagine also kind of on social media like YouTube,   where it's just gone very much in the kind of   the price obsession. And I don't mean price obsession in terms of the degenerate trading and the day trading in and out type that used to be always kind of quite prevalent in the early days.  

This kind of long term kind of savings kind of attitude where you obviously we've talked about this before, but, you know, this kind of culture of like the soundest money and it will take over and it'll be the reserve currency of everything   and never using it. And I think that has without a doubt, it has drastically taken over.   But at least that's still kind of I would say it's still mostly in the social media space. I think what's kind   of interesting or a little bit different is   if you actually look on chain, for example,   then the blockchain does kind of tell you a slightly different story because a lot of the behaviour that we see on social media, for example, that's actually kind of a bit separate.  

In the last couple of years, you have seen the rise of ordinals.   Now, although it's not something I'm   particularly interested in, I've never really played around with it too much myself. At   the end of the day, those guys have paid out more in fees than   over   significant periods of time on chain than any of the other users of the Bitcoin blockchain, including like exchanges,   especially obviously like retail users and other platforms.   They've actually filled up block space. And so   what you see on social media isn't always kind of fully indicative   of the entire culture of who's actually using Bitcoin. The actual on chain kind of activity tells a slightly different story. And although   ordinals doesn't jump out at me from an interest perspective   for everything. You know, ultimately, I'm not that big on collectibles on chain. You know, I see some appeal here and there and obviously I'm more kind of interested in how you could use it to   actually buy and sell stuff.  

Shout out, Cara. But, yeah, at the same time, like there is some kind of I think some interesting experimentation there. The fact that people are launching, okay, it's tokens. It's not the most interesting things. People are launching tokens. There's actually kind of trading happening   without custody, without permission. There are some innovations   kind of happening there. And they're doing that in a way where it's been a lot more grassroots   than, say, some of the other kind of wallet development and protocol development that we've seen, which very much kind of starts within a small clique of Bitcoin developers and that kind of everlasting roadshow that seems to go on. It's quite different from that. These guys, you know, have used like the Taproot protocol, which had an entirely different   expectation of use from the guys that   developed and built that and deployed it on chain. They've used Taproot in a way that no one expected. I think that's somewhat encouraging even if it's not part of, like, you know, my particular interest.  



[00:16:13] Unknown:

I think that's a fair comment.   It frustrates me a little bit also seeing the way that people   have interacted with the whole ordinals thing. I'm I'm the same as you. Like, I've got no interest. I probably got even less interest than you. Like, I I literally couldn't give a fuck about ordinals at all. I've got zero interest, but I'm not   frustrated by it because when I was mining,   it was keeping me going. Like, it was I was like, oh,   okay. There's actually some fees coming here. People are actually using this thing. This is good, and that was very useful for a lot of my friends who mine. All the pleb miners who   they're not getting   favorable loans and all this kind of, like, the fiat side of things because they're massive   companies. They're just like 1 bloke with 50 machines or 20 machines or couple, and they're heating their home with it or whatever, and things got really, really tough for the miners   when I was then going on to social media, and I'm seeing the way that people are talking about it, about filtering   and   the purity of Bitcoin and how you, you know, you have to use it this way. And anyone who's mining is, like, profiteering   and by taking these fees. And you're like, hang on a minute. This sounds a little bit commie now. Like Yeah. You can't use it this way. You must use it this way. We dictate what is and what isn't pure,   and it starts to get a little bit religious   and just sort of, yeah, clicky and childish, and it didn't make any sense.  

The solutions that you're coming up with don't fix the problem as you see it anyway. Very much. Yeah. Me and John, we run the mining show together. We were saying, like, you can't pay your fucking energy bills in Vertu tokens.   You need to pay it in dollars. Exactly. Just because someone rubs your back and tickles your belly and maybe your balls because they say, oh, you're so virtuous. Well done. Or you're a pleb. You're part of this group. Well, no. You're just you're actually just being a silly cunt, and it's not what I expect from Bitcoin as I expect, like, let's be rational because you're not doing it for a laugh. Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's   hard business.  



[00:18:24] Unknown:

Yeah, I think one thing that, yeah, we have to be careful a bit though is looking too much in the past with like rose tinted spectacles   Because the funny thing is, is actually is the censorship on mining and then bitcoin generally is actually this push has been it has existed for years.   If you kind of look at some of the kind of the worst offenders with the filtering now in Bitcoin,   I mean, they're comically irrelevant, right? But Ocean Mining, of course,   has got Luke Dash Jr. As the CTO.   But over 10 years ago, Luke was looking at ways to   filter out certain transactions he didn't like on Bitcoin.  

And, you know,   this guy will probably do this for the next 10 years in various ways. And, you know, that's not to say that, you know, we can sit there and not worry about it. It's obviously something that does need to be fought against   cultural level to kind of make sure we get mind share and people understand what this protocol is about and then, you know, how it must work. But also just, you know, it needs to be fought out with actual kind of money and dollars. So, yeah, if you point Hash towards a miner that is   not operating Bitcoin,   not mining Bitcoin blocks in the way that is it's actually going to provide you the censorship resistant payment platform, then, you know, turn your hash elsewhere.  

And, of course, you know, we have to rely on the incentives working.   And, you know, when you look at bitcoin, I mean, it's an incredibly robust system, but there are weaknesses and there are definite trends   now where things are becoming more centralized. And these kind of threats,   you know, are definitely like, I would say probably more acute now than they were a few years ago. In some ways, some of the decentralisation   has improved and some of the ecosystem has had become more robust. And, you know, without a doubt even with some of the traditional finance adoption of Bitcoin, it's not entirely negative.   You know, there is some jurisdictional   differences between you know, even regulated institutions.  

Obviously, you can't rely on multiple regulated institutions   entirely using Bitcoin and, you know, you being able to keep the game theory going.   But, you know, having kind of competing and a lot of money riding on the line is useful for the security model. But yeah, it's, you know, if you look at the state of mining, which is how centralised it is now and the prospect for, you know, governments regulating   large miners to only mindset transactions.   We're a lot closer to it now than we were and a lot of this kind of ordinal filtering   could be viewed as a test run before, you know, looking to filter   transactions that are more critical to be done that someone might not want being, accessible to our chain.  



[00:20:58] Unknown:

That was the main issue that I have with it is, like, it sets a precedent. Yeah. It opens the door for   once you start to decide.   All transactions are fine   and final, and anyone can do what they want   except   dick butts on chain because we don't like that. And now it's suddenly, well, I mean, you know you know how to filter those, so why don't we start filtering   these transactions?   Once you open the door for that, I guess it just kinda starts the conversation  

[00:21:29] Unknown:

where I kinda feel like it's not even a it should just be, oh, we were thinking about doing this. No. Fuck off. Don't be a retard. That that should be, like, straight away. It's crazy that it even does get entertained and spoken. And I think part of the problem though is one of the reasons that I think that you get particularly frustrated with that kind of lack of   robustness in the culture   surrounding so much of the discussion and the year. We're seeing this a lot now.   I just think it's the fact that there have been multiple people and businesses   that have just chased adoption no matter what. And of course, what you've now got is, a whole set of people, in the Bitcoin space that are using Bitcoin And we've actually no idea of what it's actually designed to solve   as a problem. And therefore, their expectations   are entirely different. They don't have that kind of they haven't gone through that process where some of the earlier folk kind of gone through this kind of introduction to Bitcoin where they've gone to a you know, an online chat room, whether it was an IRC   or Reddit or Bitcoin Talk or even Twitter in the early days or Telegram now where people didn't just kind of come out and immediately   expect customer support from   an open source wallet run by 1 guy.  

Or   they would just lurk in rooms and kind of read the room and understand what the culture was before, before kind of starting to offer an opinion. But of course, when you get enough people come in one go, you know, the old guys get drowned out and,   yeah, that culture gets watered down. What I would say though is I do think some of this will go in cycles.   So I think that, you know, where you see these weaknesses   now, silly solutions being adopted,   people championing   narratives, for example, that for to me and you don't make any fucking sense.   I think what will be the case though is that some of these things will play out over time. You know, for example, from a privacy perspective   just the kind of the sheer hassle of using   Bitcoin on chain and now especially with kind of the loss of certain tools, it's going to become like more apparent. Right?  

The failures of using Bitcoin for the purposes that are designed for are gonna be are gonna become more apparent and people are gonna collectively understand that. But at the same time I think people are also gonna understand that it's actually not necessarily that great for compliant use either. Because, you know, as we all know blockchain is not a particularly efficient database. And so, if you start using it just for kind of a compliant method of saving because it's sound money, you're going to find a whole generation, right, of bitcoins that probably come in in a certain year and hit the adoption curve there. They will KYC themselves to get into a platform.   They will compliantly buy their Bitcoin.  

They will sit there and wait for   an increase in purchasing power.   And then if that's a significant amount and certainly with the kind of the way things are going, especially in the West at the moment with   governments not balancing the budget, things getting more expensive, inflation going crazy. I think it's just a fairly obvious segment of the population to tax because there's still a lot of hostility to crypto generally. And it will be a quite a left wing populist position. Sure. I mean, crypto is a bit of a, what's the word, like a kind   of a segment, right, that you appeal to or kind of a vote of the voter base. But I still think, you know, outside of the States, it's a pretty easy target to tax. The easiest target. Yeah. Because, you know, people don't like the people that are speculated on and made a load of money. You know, you're taking the UK, for example,   you're working class and you worked a kind of a public sector job and you find that groceries and electricity bills are getting too high. You can get pretty resentful about, you know, some fella down the road that's got a brand new Range Rover because he sold some Bitcoin for   it. You'll be voting for parties that will tax that money. And, of course, if you KYC'd your way in and out, the idea of this being kind of some supreme asset preserving purchasing power is not going to feel particularly good if you take all the risk of this   asset which, you know, still to this day can go through some pretty significant   moves downwards and upwards.  

And, you know, if like all things, you know, I mean when I was president in the UK I never used the stock market for anything because like it's just not worth the hassle. Like, you know, you buy some shares or whatever, and then you know if you do really well you've got to pay capital gains tax and all that. It's, you know, it's the actual bureaucratic hassle. So I think it would turn off a lot of people when when some of this kind of comes home to roost. But I think, you know, we're just gonna have to wait for that to happen.  

[00:25:58] Unknown:

Yeah. It's an interesting sort of thing to watch over, say, like, the next 10 years because, as you said, there's, like, different   groups.   Before I got involved,   I think it was a lot more rare for somebody to KYC   Yeah. Same. In the early days. It was it was kind of like well you don't it's not a KYC thing, you just you buy it and no one keeps records and it's it's an it's an old school kind of like,   you know, it was very different. And then when I came in it was like straight away I was told like,   go on to this exchange, use my referral link, you know, and I don't fucking know. I'm, like, new to it. So I'm like, alright. Yeah. Okay. That's how you do it. That's how you do it. And you only find out after a few years of sort of digging around and being like, hold on. This doesn't quite add up. It's like it's uncensorable   private   money that no one can take from you,   but it's on this thing that's called a blockchain   that can be completely tracked and traced. And I've given all my details, but no one knows who I am, but they do know who I am because they know exactly where my coins are moving.  

Hold on. That doesn't fucking add up. And then you're like, oh, well, there's these tools. You've got samurai. You've got Whirlpool. You've got   you can do these things. It still comes back to   this problem which is like and I've said this to loads of people who I know, like, good friends in the space who   maybe are less on the, like, privacy   side than I am. They're more just like   and I don't have a problem with number go up, by the way. Like, a lot of people shit on people who want to preserve their wealth or invest in it. I I don't really agree with that. But those people who have KYC'd,   even though some of them might have gone through Whirlpool and done some trickery,   the problem is, as you said, as Europe gets worse and it will do and the UK gets worse and it will do, as normal people do start to say, well, what the fuck is going on? Like, I literally can't live. Yeah. The governments are not gonna say, oh, yeah. Hands up. Listen, guys. We've had endless fucking wars.  

We've had a lot of bills coming through for hookers and cocaine.   Things had to be done. I'm sorry. We spent all the money. We've printed it into infinity.   That's why the cost of living has gone up. No. They're gonna say, oh, it was those fucking greedy Bitcoiners, and it was, you know, whatever whatever narrative they spin. And so all then they have to do is   look at the list of people who's bought and go, right. They've bought. We now can't see any record of them selling anywhere because we've got all those records of all those exchanges as well. If they have still got those coins in theory, we're just gonna tax them. Them. We're just gonna knock on their door, and we're gonna tax them. And whether that is   an unrealized   gain or whether it's, well, we think you've got these coins, so prove it. And you're like, oh, well, I've sold them. And, like, where's the receipt?  

However it is they do it, they're gonna do it. And it might not be this year, but it's gonna be soon. And so I think you're right. It does put people off. I think people  

[00:28:55] Unknown:

are gonna start to realize, like, fuck. This isn't exactly what I thought. Yeah. You don't even need particularly punitive taxes. You just need and some of this has already happened in the UK anyway. You just need to go to an exchange and ask if they're user lists.   Some cases, the exchanges will push back. More often than not, they don't. And these things will be agreed obviously with regulators as they're trying to get their license as well. But you just have letters sent out to people just saying, 'Please report your trading activity'   and then   calculate your own taxes.  

And I mean,   if you imagine kind of going through that and going through all the kind of, you know, various exchanges that you used over the years, some that disappeared from that. Actually just working out P and L, I can't imagine a worse thing to do. I mean, you know, probably when we last spoke, right, I was running Momushi.   And, you know, I did Momushi in Singapore, which is probably one of the most kind of friendly business jurisdictions possible.   But paying taxes on that, the taxes weren't high at all. But the issue of paying taxes was major.   Just having to it's not a higher volume business, obviously. It was a kind of side project I did while bored during COVID.  

But, you know, you handle a few currencies.   You handle, you know, as in, you know, because I handle both Fiat, Monero, Bitcoin as well. But then you've got like inter exchange movements. You've got, you know, you've got to have invoice numbers, and then you find like you ain't got to report that and get exchange rates as of a date and then   filter it. It's a huge effort. And if you then got to do that with all your personal trading and all that, that'll just put off a lot of people and, you know, it stops becoming a kind of a useful money and, yeah, the big reason I think this is affected in the US, but the fact that if someone buys, I think this is still the case, in the US, if you buy bitcoin   then you use it to pay for a coffee, think officially, you're still supposed to kind of keep a record of that, so you can kind of work out like   the, because effectively that's a trade. I mean, you know, that in itself has already been   a highly effective deterrent.  

1, to just ordinary use and secondly to, you know, deterrent for using it in a way that is below the radar. Because if you're having to report every transaction, you know, if anyone's going to want to kind of use it as it's intended, which is as cash,   then, you know, what if you have just paid someone in the equipment of cash and then you've got like a hole in your books and where did that transaction go? And so it just it encourages   that kind of, you know, record keeping surveillance   structure to exist by just having those requirements along. And I think that's already happened in the last few years quite extensively.   Because of the friction? Because of friction, yeah. And it it doesn't take much,   absolutely.  



[00:31:38] Unknown:

I suppose it's not that much   of a hassle if you're a large company and you have a team of people doing that kind of stuff and you have the system set up. Or you can buy the software that will automatically calculate the taxes.   Not or, you know, just people who are starting small businesses. It's like, no way. That's way too much, hassle. And then it's like it pulls away from   people using it as cash,   which   is   slightly worrying.   And like you said, with the tools that we're missing now, it's kind of like it's very difficult   to use like,   I've been fucking around with this stuff for a long time   and pretty obsessively.  

And, you know, anyone who listens to the show knows I'm I'm not a technical guy by any stretch of the imagination, but I still can do more than   most Bitcoin users.   And I'm struggling to think of ways, like, you know, I've be like, oh, okay. Maybe maybe this is pretty private. May maybe this is quite a good way of doing things, but   I feel like   my whole flow of how I would use   Bitcoin privately and use it as cash   has been kneecapped because   without Whirlpool   and the tools surrounding it, like, it it was my toolkit, basically. And so now with that missing, it's like, okay. How do I use this as cash? And it's got quite challenging. Like, you know, everything that I'm coming up with or queues coming up with and we're playing around with is kind of like a a root Goldberg machine. It's like you've got some old post mix, and then you can open up a private channel in lightning from your own node, but you can only use that for spending.   You can't receive,   and maybe you can buy some gift cards with it. And it's like, okay. It is post mix, then it's gone into lightning, and it's sending. You got good send privacy. So that's quite good. Now someone wants to pay me in lightning. Oh, fucking hell. Well, that's a bit of a problem then. How do we get around that? It's just,   again, friction. There's so much friction,   which is why we've been saying me and Jordan and a few of the other guys in the team, like, using Monero a bit more just for pinging back and forth and trying to use that and truck a door and   swaps and but it's   still friction. It's still annoying.  

You know? And that's me who uses it a lot. Like, every day, I use Bitcoin, and I'm finding it, like, fucking hell. I'll just use cash,  

[00:34:11] Unknown:

like, for if I could. I think it's getting it's definitely getting to that stage at the moment. I don't think we're gonna be stuck in this. Definitely, I do think things are going to   improve, but it's just a it is a particularly dark period at the moment.   I think, you know, I mean, just for kind of, yeah, the way I'm using it at the moment, I mean, I suppose I'm somewhat fortunate in the fact that, yeah, my entire Bitcoin stack was in post mix. So, you know, I wasn't doing the kind of thing where a few people were which is just kind of keeping some spending money. You know, I'd always kind of moved everything over and then just, you know, if I if ever fees were high, right, I didn't mix and I just waited for kind of fees to go low and I would wait sometimes as long as 3 to 6 months, especially when the ordinals were kind of, for want of a better word, spamming the chain. Right? I'm just not going to use Whirlpool because I didn't have to because I already have a whole bunch of post mix. And then once those fees came down, then I would then proceed to do everything. And thankfully, you know, when Whirlpool did get shut down and seized, you know, I was sitting pretty pretty and, you know, it's all okay. But yeah, I mean at the moment now, I'm in the unenviable position. Like, I never used to even label my transactions in Bitcoin because I hated labeling because I didn't need to really because what I could do is I could just get those deposits and then I would just get everything into the mix. And then it would be like once I've spent from that then I send the change back into a mix or, you know, into Monero as well. But like now what I'm doing is if kind of similar to you, is I'm using the post mix to spend. Obviously, that's, you know, that will begin to dwindle over a period of time. And then as I receive new funds, I'm actually using a lot of, like, these instant exchange sites. I may go back and check the atomic swap software. I've still not used unstoppableswap.net.   That was using the same library as the samurai tool sorry the samurai tool. I'm hoping that the old samurai Monero swap software gets fixed because at the moment like you can't run it because it's got actually got a dependency on Whirlpool because it was part of the flow. I'd never actually sold   XMR as like a kind of as a user. I'd only ever kind of gone from Bitcoin into Monero. So I'd never kind of used the Whirlpool side of it, but that kind of needs to be taken out of software. And I think once that's done that will kind of give everyone a bit of some breathing space.  

It's not like a real substitute but it certainly at least kind of stops the, stops the kind of the onward surveillance right. If you know you receive a coin you kind of swap it over to Monero   and then especially if you're comfortable keeping a bit of a position in Monero over time, you can then kind of, you know, move assets back into Bitcoin as and when. And I think that's still kind of really the best route. I mean, you know, back to kind of something else you're saying as well is, you know, I still see nothing wrong at all. And, you know, I kind of almost encourage it for people to actually trade Bitcoin.   You talked about like the whole kind of number go up thing and enjoying it. I mean, I've always been, how to put it, like I've always thought that it's okay to kind of, you know, buy Bitcoin for the sake of a price increase. I don't think it's necessarily the best idea   to borrow money to do it and,   you know, put yourself at risk. But the other thing as well is if you've been in this space a long time you should be able to see certain cycles. You know, take profits where you can. Convert it into cash. Because also you don't want to be stuck in a bear market for an extended period of time without like,   without the ability to have a bit of a cushion,   a fear to use. And you know be opinionated. I wouldn't necessarily, I never thought that kind of the DCA ing over kind of you know years or whatever made an awful lot of sense. Have an opinion about what you think the market is. Go in and if you think things are kind of looking pretty cheap go and, you know, stretch yourself a bit more and buy more and if you think things are getting, you know, look on social media. If you think there's a lot of newbies and it's all kind of quite idiotic   then, you know, maybe take some off the table and,   take some profits and do it that way and that certainly worked out well for me over the years.  



[00:37:58] Unknown:

Yeah. You're right. It's it's actually it's not really looking at the charts   and the numbers. It's more just like a feeling. It's like, oh, this is all getting a bit silly. Everyone's getting a bit overexcited   here. Yeah. And that's the times, but I've never done that. Like, I've always just been like, oh, I just chip a little bit of whatever I've got that I can go as I'm just treating it as savings and but over the last couple of years, because I've been doing this pod and gone out of a proper career and just doing, like, donkey work to keep the 2 things running,   You know, there just hasn't there hasn't been the opportunity to buy anything. It's just, you know Yeah. Fucking expensive   having a family and all that kind of stuff. So I've been more in that kind of, like, selling and using,   which   if I look at myself, say, 5 years ago,   the idea of selling   Bitcoin was horrific to me because, you know, previously, it was like, I come from property.  

This property thing's pissing me off because of all the problems with tenants and Yeah. Legal side and the stresses.   And actually when you boil things down,   what your yield really is compared to what people would sell. You know, they sell you a dream of, like, you have this investment portfolio, and   don't   think   I don't think it's a good investment anymore, and I don't think it's going to be going forward. It's not the worst, but it's certainly not the best. I think this Bitcoin thing's better.   I actually think it's much better. So   I came with that mindset of, like, this is an investment and and, like, long term investment.  

Yeah for sure. Same with property, you want to stay on a log, I don't want to sell, I want to you know do everything I can to hold on to this. But you know very much has changed now where I'm like most of what I have, like, I'm not underwater with.   I've got stuff I've got to buy. It's not a fucking Lamborghini. It's like   nappies and, you know, eggs.   But but, you know, it's like well I need that, and so this thing that I've held for a certain amount of time,   I'm at least not underwater on, or it's like, you know, it's it's better than what I've paid, and so  

[00:40:08] Unknown:

why not use it? I need it. Yeah, I think that's quite I think it's important psychologically. I think actually one of the reasons that we've got the issues in the space that we have and some of the behaviour is a lot of folk are somewhat underwater   or not necessarily even underwater but just don't feel that the payoff has really occurred. If you look at the kind of what they're being sold and they're being shown an awful lot of past performance,   you know, when it was a very different asset, you know, if you look at kind of how many people are invested and how   sizable the market is now, you know, you're just not really going to see the same kind of multiples,   right, of return. You know, it was, if you were kind of in a kind of 2011 time, I mean,   I'm not the greatest here with remembering price charts, but if you're in 2011,   pay over 2010, you could easily make kind of 1,000, 10000 dex right, to now.  

Whereas, if you're kind of in like around the 2015,   2016,   you know, and this is obviously excluding kind of screwing up and losing. But, you know, you could you could equate it to like a 100 x based, you know, in that time. And so these are obviously great numbers and they're fantastic, but if you look at anyone that's come in since, say, 2017,   we're now looking at what, like, you know,   yeah, if you got in the 3 ks, you could do the well, but at the same time in 2017,   things were a high of like 19 ks. And so we're only like 3 times that now 5 years sorry,   sorry, 2024 from 2017.  

Compared to the highs of 2017 we're only 3 times that 7 years later. So you can actually imagine that for a lot of people coming in things haven't really turned out the way that they were sold it,   And, you know, I think that's part of the reason that you see this kind of frustration, this desperation   for it because people, you know, this generation have gone through like a huge amount of inflation.   Wage stagnation is very common, like, you know, countries in the west, especially, you know, we talk about the UK.   Wages are very same in London, you know, for years now. Obviously, the price, everything gone up. And so this has been kind of sold as a bit of an escape valve. I think, you know, as much as I'm personally bullish on Bitcoin, even now as to obviously a big part of the reason I hold it, you know, it wouldn't surprise me, for example, for there to be some quite drastic   drops as people do exit and, you know, we'll see how things go with ETFs, but it wouldn't surprise me if people kind of start exiting out the ETFs because it's not providing the   returns they expected.  

And of course, you know, this kind of environment   of hype cycles around other things, you know, a few years ago with machine learning now it's being called AI, right? But there's other kind of companies that people can invest in. And if it's just after a return, they don't care about any of the actual   meaning behind all this, then there's other things they can go and get a decent return on.  

[00:42:52] Unknown:

Yeah. Like you say, you know, a 3 x in 7 years is,   is not that impressive. It is fucking amazing. It's a lot better than most things, but it's   like with the backdrop of, like, when you go and do your weekly shop, it's like double what it was 7 years ago.   Yeah. If I go down to the shop and I'm just buying   like some shit, like my missus like can you get this thing and that thing, and like it's like a shopping basket. And I'm like yeah yeah, okay get that. And I'm like oh that was a £100.   And so   I know in my head, like,   that would have been, like,   45, £50.  

So when are you talking about a 3 x? Was not even really a 3 x in purchasing power?  

[00:43:37] Unknown:

And I think the other thing that you wanna kind of kinda look in, like, you know, a few years ago, you know, Bitcoin still has always had this kind of ability to really drop in price and, okay, it's done very well over the last few years. But   if you did kind of invest in 2017,   or whatever, then you never actually had to psychologically deal with   the drops so significantly   down. I think, you know, I forget the term for it, but there's effectively   like   the sharp ratio is it? It's like basically like the the gain that you get versus the, you know, the kind of the the risk that you're putting on I think. It's you know it's something like that but   effectively like you know without getting into the technicals of it, obviously I'm not really kind of capable of it as I so long since I've looked at it, but the point is is that you know, you could go in like from a straight kind of economic perspective, you can go in to buy Bitcoin   and then hope you get a good increase in purchasing power and maybe you do. Yeah.  

But if during that period over those few years, you've been like significantly   in the red and dealing with that, then that's actually not a particularly compelling investment because we all know that the unexpected can happen. You know, you could lose a job. You could have a huge accident.   You might need to pay out something. And if you're then actually   forced to sell on something that does go is so volatile in the price   then that's actually not particularly compelling to me as an investment because, you know, you can very easily find   that you're   that you end up selling a significant chunk and then can't get the gains because you sold it at a loss. Whereas if you for example got an asset that actually over a several year period is also getting you something like a 3 x return,   but doesn't have quite the kind of the highs and the lows.  

And then that's actually a more compelling thing for me because, and again it will obviously depend on your own risk tolerance, the age you are, the obligations, if you've got family or whatever, But I think it's also kind of part of the kind of culture that we see it in Bitcoin. You can imagine there is if you've got kind of fairly reliable say 10 or 15% a year, That's just very preferable for a lot of people. Because, you know, if the unexpected happens you're not looking at being completely out of pocket. I think that's where a lot of people haven't appreciated,   with Bitcoin as an asset to purchase   because   it's still got that volatility.  



[00:45:51] Unknown:

Yeah. It it does. And and, you know, I'm one of those idiots that piled in in 2017 right at the tippy tippy top because I got all overexcited.   And it was extremely fucking I mean, it's alright now because it's like Yeah. Okay. Whatever I've managed to hold on to, it's it's still better than what I bought it, but it's like it's not that dramatic an increase. And the the stress over the 7 years is, like, it's been pretty significant.   When you sat there and I'm, like,   all excitable, I'm like, oh, it's at 20 k now. And my mate told me, you know, it's it goes up like this. It'll do like 10 x in the next couple of months. So, you know, I'm gonna be fucking swimming in it. It's gonna be lovely. And then it's like, oh,   actually, it's just 2 years of fucking pain   and then like a little pump up to almost where we were and then just pain again.  

You know, it's not what I signed up   for. I've only I've only stayed just because I'm like, I've met some cool people and, like, I get what this thing is supposed to be about or or what it's about to me anyway.   And yet the fact that you can use this even if someone tells you not to, and there's there's all these these incredible things about it. The story that this show is trying to paint to people is,   okay. Here's the cool stuff that you can do with it.   And now   without having Whirlpool,   the message is much less clear because the message was   either if you have cheap energy and you're not too Yeah. Technically   inept, go and mine,   keep those coins, and shut the fuck up, or   go and buy in cash or or sell your goods or services   for Bitcoin,   and then be quiet.  

Put it through Whirlpool,   and use it as you need to. Use it use it as cash.   It's very different now for me trying to   have a clean, clear message of, like, what do I think this thing can be used for and and how?  

[00:47:44] Unknown:

I think I think look. I I think how to put it,   like I think it's obviously fairly obvious that things are a lot tougher now.   But at the same time, you know, samurai itself   kind of as a kind of way of using Bitcoin, etcetera.   It still exists   in a huge way and I'll kind of go through a bit more kind of detail. Let's just take a step back.   With the 2 guys being, under,   I think it's house arrest now for both of them are certainly kind of   extensively kind of tracked or whatever, whatever the loss of freedom while they're waiting at court date.   Obviously things were kind of tougher because there's there's no business being operated like there was before.  

But the stuff they left behind can be used. And I think what we're probably going to see is like obviously with these 2 guys gone   there is very little chance that anyone's going to come in and fill that void   and I think there's a few reasons for that. Number 1, what they built was done over 9 years and they were in it from the earliest days and so it's a tough proposition to kind of come in and get something else to kind of fill that. Secondly, some of the people that are close to it probably going to be the least likely to kind of launch something again because, you know,   they're already under probably,   you know, the watchful eye,   paper under more scrutiny   because, you know, obviously,   the actions taken by the DOJ were against the 2 main guys and they're gonna be immediately suspicious of anything else that kind of comes up, you know, so it's not like the guys can do much. So I think people need to kind of appreciate that that's not likely gonna happen. But that being said is is that what the 2 guys left behind   was   a pretty significant   kind of community   and I think what we're gonna see probably over the next few years are components of these things being brought back.  

And in some ways it won't be in exactly the same form. But I think the most important thing that they left us with and what we need to kind of keep in mind   is the kind of the red lines that they put in the in the sand.   And, you know, whenever you deal with someone that's kind of very much in that community or even outside the community but had the same kind of concept,   KYC was always a red line, permissionless was always like a red line, everything had to be without that. If you just start taking that as a way of life into how you use bitcoin,   things become a bit simpler and I think things become, you know, it becomes easier to discard and also you start realizing   'actually maybe I need to do a bit more work myself here on a few things.' So, for example, like, you know, there's no like Dojo server now for everyone to use. So if people aren't using their own node, you know, they're gonna have to, you know, they could obviously use something like Sparrow Wallet and using the public collection service. But my recommendation would be   is actually go and run your own node now and do your work there. There's a very good guide. Well, there's several good guides, but obviously Catan has got great ones on YouTube.  

I followed those and, you know, I've got very little patience for this type of stuff and I can use that. If you don't like, video guides,   there's, you'll need to find it on, like, the internet archive. There's the kyc3.life   that's kind of heavily,   based on the Catan varieties, but rather than in video formats like a set of instructions.   There's some kind of tweaks and changes   with the way that he's done it.   But, again, you know, you can obviously buy these nodes,   but, you know, what Catan does with these kind of like, Lenovo's and, I think he does Dells and things like that. You can go into like, again, don't try and find out some fancy new node even necessarily. You You just go into like eBay and look for the specs and   buy what you need and just buy something cheap.  

Oh, some old business machine. Get doing that and then run that and hook up your your samurai wallet, which you can still use.   Still got a whole bunch of like useful privacy features   and just kinda start taking a bit more of an active kind of role in doing that. Don't get distracted by all the new shiny stuff. Don't get a bit distracted by like, oh, here's another layer too. Look at like some of the stuff that's actually been in use. And just, I would say, is look at a way that you can do that and manage it without it without you needing to be a sysadmin yourself.   But just kind of concentrate what's important. And certainly that's kind of, you know, what I've done. I mean, obviously, I've been running my own dojo for a while, but I've actually,   I've actually kind of gone through the process again. I was using,   like an old red nodle.  

And that's just quite frankly, just not powerful enough anymore. Like it's it kind of causes the wallet to lag. And then I had like another machine that I was using an Electrum server on and then I just replaced it all and put the newest version of Dojo that Pavel had released with the, a fulcrum server and Bitcoin. This thing is like 8 year old hardware.   It's really old, but decent and the performance is great. And yeah, I mean, it sucks that some of the tools that don't exist now, but like the great thing is is everything those guys left behind for us,   it works and it will work. And also like, yeah, bitcoin hasn't changed that much over the last few years and that can kind of suck in some ways with the lack of progress.  

At the same time, like   this software,   if it takes 2 years for someone to release like another version of Samurai Wallet for these guys to beat the charges and come back, actually things are kind of you can carry on using this stuff for a while and it's going to be fine.   And it's going to be, it can be just as robust and all that.   I think what we're also going to see is, I I, you know, I am optimistic that Whirlpool will come back.   I suspect it's going to be someone   jurisdictionally   very different from how it's being run before. I don't expect we're gonna see,   what samurai had hoped which was like unless obviously there's a very kind of significant win that they have in the courts where you could have like services like Proton Wallet integrating   with Whirlpool. I mean that would have been ideal I think. I don't think we're gonna have that, anytime soon.  

But at the same time like I think, you know, this stuff will come, but I also think it's gonna come in like pieces,   you know, the Ronin Dojo team right, will start hosting nodes for people to use. Yeah, maybe someone will make a plug in for kind of coin joins or something like that that you can do, you know. I just don't think we're gonna have someone that's gonna offer quite under one roof everything that Samurai did because it was just insane. You know, the whole block explorer that they provided. I mean, you actually kind of look at like their product suite. It was enormous for something that was actually just a few people.   You look at like someone like Blockstream. I mean, you know, massively well capitalized company. Yeah. They had their own block explorer. They had their own wallet, and they have obviously like a few other products. But it's actually as a product line, it's not that much larger than samurais and like we're talking about a massive difference of that. I also think we also have to accept that there's also not much of a monetary incentive to go and   do stuff like the samurai were doing because, you know, if you look at all like the court documents, for example, so is this something they say something like, oh, they they've got 4,000,000 or whatever in fees over years'   and you're thinking, 'Hang on, that's that's to pay a few people   over several years plus server costs and all that. Okay.  

This is we're not like there's some kind of huge reward here, for someone. So I think, you know, we're gonna have to wait a while   but look I think there is a vacuum for it, I think there's still enough folk in the space   that ideologically   might motivate to get some, you know, some of the things up again.   And I think, you know, for just people like me and you it'll be our obligation,   as I'm sure we will, to, you know, basically make sure we throw our money at those services   and reward,   and I think that'll happen. It's just for the moment, it just does feel like a bit of a punch in the gut.  

[00:55:20] Unknown:

Yeah. A little bit.   And I agree. At some point, I think, these services will come back or or something similar.   But for now, like, have you got any thoughts about   the use of lightning?   Is that something that you're playing around with? Because with the samurai crowd,   generally, there's a deep hatred for lightning,   which I understand because it's fucking annoying to you. It really   pisses me off at times, but I just wondered if you had any thoughts on No. Fair question.  

[00:55:52] Unknown:

I'm still trying to keep an eye on it. So, like, when it like in our local group chat, like in Singapore, for example, like one of the guys I'm close to here is quite keen on it and he uses it as a bit of a privacy tool as well   And he, you know, he's kind of got, you know, servers up and managing that. I keep an eye on them but I've yet to see anything that's compelling to bringing me back. I mean, actually, I first started using, I think I did my first transaction in 2018 or 2019,   I think it was with Lightning, and I had my   hosted LND   and at that time I was using it with like Zap and I then also used Use as well.  

And the reason I'm not at the moment,   is you know, is actually kind for what it's worth I used to argue a bit with   samurai themselves on it because I kind of thought it was doable and usable.   And then funny enough like what kind of convinced me wasn't really a particularly good privacy tool was I realized   I actually couldn't manage the privacy myself and so what I mean by that is I think there's 2 things to think about when you're using lightning,   in terms of like a privacy perspective aside from all the kind of the hassle of hosting it.   And so like number 1 is when you make a payment through the lightning network there are a bunch of privacy trade offs on that. Yeah, you you know this like as a sender versus a receiver   and obviously as your transactions actually hop through the actual lightning network itself.  

What are the surveillance   capabilities of those looking? Because even if it is going through Tor, at the same time, like, people are monitoring lightning channels, there is surveillance software out there actively monitoring the lightning network and with it being as centralised as it is, you can't basically guarantee that as you send the transaction on the lightning network you're necessarily giving the privacy to be sure absolutely sure. I would say that when you send that transaction, even if it goes through a few hops, that someone can't track that by the time it's made it that other destination,   you haven't been tracked on the way through. Now, as an individual, could I track someone else's lightning payments? No. But I'm pretty convinced though that based on how the topology of the Lightning Network and the surveillance software in use by kind of chainalysis   and type companies,   that I think you're not getting kind of a I would say you're not getting a reliable kind of degree of privacy on the actual on chain.  

So that makes me a bit hesitant.   The other aspect for me which is actually more important than the on chain than the off chain piece is actually just what to do with the on chain channels.   And for me it's it's mostly because I actually just don't want the overhead of managing the UTXO's.   So, like, as you said, is you could take like a UTXO's post mix for example and then open a lightning channel with that and that's absolutely fine. But then it's like what happens when that when you close that lightning channel or it's force closed on you? You've now got like another wallet   and at least the way I've used Lightning wallets and things like MND that don't necessarily enable you to actually have that many tools to like label output. So if you've got like multiple channels closing,   how can you be sure that you can go in and appropriately label? Because effectively as those channels close,   they're deterministic   linked   to the channel openings and potentially linked to some of the transactions that have gone through. And so for me, it becomes very, very quick that it becomes unmanageable   to keep track of for a privacy perspective and so that's basically why I'm not using it. Whereas on the flip side,   if I take a UTXO   and I put it on to Monero, I see you swap it into Monero.  

I don't have to keep track of the TXOs and Monero because I know that every transaction I make uncomfortable   given that there's no amounts in the clear and given that there's like ring signatures and everything and, you know, stealth addresses,   that every transaction I'm making there   hasn't got any link to the swap that I did to get into it and if I do a swap out of it. Now that's not to say that Monero is absolutely dead easy and you can't make mistakes in swapping Bitcoin to Monero.   I read like recently that, you know, that they track someone that used fixed float and that went into Bitcoin from Monero and then went straight from Monero back into Bitcoin in the same thing. Yeah. And obviously, you know, I don't swap in and out on the same browser. I don't even use the same market. I don't stick to one market. You know, I always go over Tor and I'll use things like, you know, Trocador,   EXCH   was another one. I've used Majestic Bank. You know, I use all these various and I never try to go straight back in and and all that. But just for me at least, it's like an it's an easier overhead and then what I try and basically do   is ensure that when I can, I spend from a and if it's not possible then I will use Bitcoin post mix   or some kind of, you know, outputs from a Monero swap exchange   into my Bitcoin wallet and go from there? And then I try and get myself to a position where I basically don't have to label anything.  

So everything in my Bitcoin wallet is basically post mix or the output of a Monero swap and that's obviously not even not ideal because someone could probably look at the output of a Monero swap and say that's pretty toxic, we don't like where that's from. So, yeah, nothing's perfect, but for me it's just about like the overhead, like I share my wallet on desktop with what I use on mobile, I try and keep the same seed.   I'm very kind of personally that's how I operate so I'm quite fussy about that and of course, you know, I don't have like labels that sync across wallets and things like that so I know I'll end up like if I label on Sparrow I forget to label on Samurai or something like that so that's kind of like where I've been and so I, you know, I just feel I get more kind of comfort from that. But then also to be absolutely kind of clear, I'm possibly not using Bitcoin as much as say someone like you because I've, you know, and even though I really like the guys behind Koincards, I think they've built a great little business, and Bitrefill, you know, you know it's overall it's pretty good. You know disclaimer I even invested in them,   but   I actually find that the coin, you know, the card companies can actually feel it sometimes like worse than just using a credit card or a card   because, you know, you find you've got terms and conditions over redeeming them. You've kind of adding more middlemen to the mix. So I have kind of also, if I'm honest as well, I've kind of moved to a bit of a kind of   a position of like, well, if I can't spend directly my Bitcoin Monero, I'm not going through extra hops to go through vouchers. I'd just rather use a bloody card or cash where possible. Now that's lazy on my part partly but it's also because for me it's like I want to spend bitcoin peer to peer not going through a payment processor or having like a voucher that can be invalidated.  

Yeah, there's privacy advantages   at the same time, like for me, it's not just about privacy, it's about transacting without having too many like, you know, dependent   parties.   It's one of the reasons that credit cards are so miserable to use online,   you know, you've got to put your address, your name, and then you get a fraud check or something like that. So,   yeah, that's kind of how I'm using it all at the moment.  

[01:02:38] Unknown:

It makes sense.   That trade off of, like, when you use Monero, there are certain privacy guarantees   Yeah. Where you don't have to worry. I find myself   still using   Bitcoin   way more than Monero. Like, I probably use Monero, like, not even 1% of the time. Interesting.   It's a tool that I've got and I use very occasionally, and and I think it's very useful for certain things, but I think it's probably because a lot of the time, the people that I'm interacting with and having to pay for Ungovernable Misfit stuff or whatever, they want on chain or lightning.   So my kind of flow   you're talking about with the lightning stuff being concerned about, okay, well, how do I label things if there's forced closes or whatever?  

Mine's pretty like a basic setup, and and someone listening might find flaws in this and and tell me, and if if you do, then tell me, please. But it's just have some post mix,   Open a large channel   with a well connected pair. Yeah. Once that is opened,   only use that to send. So you've already got your post mix, so you're pretty good there. You're opening with a private channel. You're just using that for send. So when I'm paying people, I'm   pretty comfortable   that I'm like, okay.   Yeah. Maybe   there's some government agency, if they really wanted to who could potentially do something here maybe. Probably.   But I'm not really that's not really my concern. Know. Yeah. You know, that's not really my threat model because I'm fucking boring. Like, no. No government agency is interested in me. It's like, I'm just worried about $5 wrench attacks or people snooping around. That's that's more my concern.  

So when I'm using it   that way,   I'm happy.   The fees are low. I only open the channels   in low fee environment.   And then if I need to top up because I've been spending,   then I can just swap back in. And again,   at at low fee times, it's it's really not difficult or expensive to do. And so most of my spending is like that. It's through lightning.   Most people that I've gotta pay don't wanna deal with Monero. Yeah. I can imagine. A few do, but most don't. So it's like, well,   this currently is my flow. And if I was to have a forced close, which I haven't had,   then I'm like, well, I know it's only come from 1 UTXO.  



[01:05:02] Unknown:

Yeah. Sure.  

[01:05:04] Unknown:

I know what it is. It's not like I'm suddenly now, like, commingling and all that kind of stuff. It's it's pretty   simple.  

[01:05:12] Unknown:

Yeah. I think no. I think that kind of that that that works well. If you're kind of you're getting the kind of right experience, I think a lot of it would depend on, like, how to put it, like,   who you're paying, who you're interacting with, and obviously what their preferences are.   I mean, like, I did actually have to do lightning about a month ago or whatever.   And again, like, my experience is a bit different because I'm also not keeping channels in lightning. Right? So this guy, he only wanted to accept lightning.   So I paid him some translation services and,   it was a pain for me because he's like I think he gave me like and again, this is my experience of it. People give me like these like get Alby or something like some link or whatever. Then I could only put like $150   through at a time and it was like, oh jeez, so then I'd do like 3 payments   and then go through the swap service and do that and like, you know, it got through in the end but it's like   again,   you know, it depends I suppose like what kind of transaction size you're doing,   but invariably I've also found that over a certain amount, you know, then you find that the lightning stuff kind of gets a bit more of a pain, to do, But, yeah, again, like again, you know, it's gonna depend on like what wallets you're using and what you're comfortable with and, you know, the,   who you're actually interacting with and what their preferences are. But I mean I, you know, I certainly agree with you though. There's not, you know, even if you can find services that accept Monero, you're not necessarily gonna find people that want to be paid in it.  

I think that's   that's fairly common.  

[01:06:42] Unknown:

Final point on this whole   lightning and gift card sort of thing just to tie it off. When you said that, you know, you're not using them so much, I totally fucking get that. And I use credit cards where I can and when I need to and stuff. I'm like, I'm not such a perfect privacy guy. I do my do my best without, like, causing myself too much extra stress in life.   But one thing I have found   quite nice with the gift cards being that I'm now pretty much always in a position where I'm either flat or selling.   I don't obviously like to give my   details   even even with, like,   Bisc or anything like that. You know? I don't wanna be going on there and giving   my personal details, my bank details to someone on the other end who I don't know who they are. It's probably where I would sit if I wanted to gather information on people and do a few transactions. I'd take the information and go, okay. Alright. We'll keep an eye on you. And I'm not saying that that's a high percentage of the trades. I'm sure most people are just normal people, but it's something I think about. So if I'm thinking, okay, I actually need to buy some fucking nappies or whatever, I'm not gonna be going on to Bisc to sell.  

I'm not gonna be going to a random and going and doing a cash trade because, actually, it's a pain in the ass to have to get in the car, go and drive somewhere.   There's risk involved with it potentially.   Generally, the people that I'm friends with seem to all be as poor as me, and I'm like, hey. Do you wanna buy some Bitcoin? They're like, no, mate. I'm fucking I haven't got any money. I'm like, oh, okay. Right. What am I gonna do here? Oh, I know what I'll do. I'll buy a gift card. So that's, for me, a useful way where I get to buy the stuff that I need to buy without the extra friction. I buy on lightning.   I go on to whichever site I'm using in the Tor browser.  

I don't have an account that's linked to me. Everything is done with burner emails. Everything is done post mix and only spending from lightning, and I only go into the store to buy physically   with the gift card. So even they don't have my details of where it's being shipped to.   Again, if a government agency wants to find out, oh, who's this country who's buying nappies?   They could, but it's boring.  

[01:08:55] Unknown:

Yeah. And I I completely get that. I think, you know, for me, like, the cash trading, I'm a bit fortunate in Singapore. It's like it's not a hassle to do the cash trading. I've got like obviously my own personal network, but, but again, it's a small country, right? So it's not really hard to find places to meet. And also, you know, if I go into the office, for example, you know, it's in the central business district, you know, it's easy to meet someone there. It's incredibly safe to do so. And again, you don't have to do like massive trades. I mean, you know, I've had like just friends hit me up and say, oh, I'm going to go on a holiday for the next few weeks.   Would you would you be okay to buy a couple of grands worth or something like that? But there is even a fairly healthy market where people are doing several   $100,000 worth. I think that's quite that's also the case in Dubai as well. And of course, you've got a fairly kind of high degree of safety there. So again, it would depend I think on your own circumstances.  

Where I've also found, funnily enough, although I wouldn't say I like using it, but then a similar thing is I think with the gift cards, the other thing that's kind of nice is like let's say you've got, if you're if you're fairly flat, you also got to effectively hedge the price of Bitcoin, right? So if you can take the amount that you've got at that kind of the end of the month, let's say you've got some incoming or whatever, you can then buy like, you know, your Waitrose voucher, your Sainsbury's voucher, whatever it is,   and, you know, and and convert that. You now know you've got like, I can get a 100 pounds worth of groceries or something like that and that's quite useful. Exactly. I think similarly for me, like one of the things I've done   is, I'm noticing on some servers, like if I want to buy, like, you know, have a server rented or something, some of them I've even noticed don't take Bitcoin on Monero but they'll take Tether, which is an interesting one. They've actually got light and so I've actually found myself using even that a bit more and similar to kind of the way that you'd use a voucher,   I actually quite like it if I can sign up anonymously for a server, you know, like log in online on toll browser,   have like a little VPS server and I don't mind if they only take Tether because then I can use like a Trokadot app, right, to just go from an arrow or some post mix Bitcoin into the required amount of Tether. They get something, the merchant, that they don't have to worry about volatility on because obviously it's pegged to USD.  

And also it's kind of easy because if you're buying like, say, a server for kind of 12 months, for example, then that might be like say around a round number of a couple of $100 or whatever. You don't want leftover credit and all that. You could basically kind of buy the amount you want. So, I am using that because that's kind of like a nice way over from the crypto world if you if you are to interfere   without still actually touching at least from the kind of experience here without touching too much of the way bank accounts. And, you know, yeah, sure, Tether is a pretty pretty big middleman,   but of course at the same time, it's, you know, it's something that I don't have to deal with with terms of channel management. I don't have to worry about   redemption,   terms and conditions on vouchers. So, you know, where I can find like merchants that accept Tether,   that's also kind of quite a, a quite a decent thing and you can kind of, you know, use a swap service as a proxy,   there as well.  



[01:11:53] Unknown:

Yeah. That's interesting. I've not heard really much talk of that, but it makes sense.   I don't like this purity   kind of you can only   to me that is using Bitcoin. It's like Yeah. You're using Bitcoin, and there's like a step in between, which is   I don't see that as an issue. It's just like how do you spend this thing. In the same way, like, I see using Bitcoin, if someone says to me, like, a good mate is like, oh, can I buy a couple 100 quids worth of Bitcoin from you? Yeah. I need to go and do my weekly shop. That's fine.   There we go. It gives me the cash. I go and buy it. To me, that is using Bitcoin. I know it's not physically going into the shop and going,   ding, ding, and it's like lightning.  

It's like it's not that, but it's the same thing really.  

[01:12:39] Unknown:

Absolutely. And I think the other thing that's kind of important as well is, is that,   you know, you also do get a kind of privacy from, you know, if you're looking at kind of, for example, like   let's say you're you're buying, like, just, you know, it's an easy thing to talk about right by a server online because it's something that you can do,   you know, very kind of   easily with Bitcoin.   But the nice thing is, is if you've kind of got sitting there kind of your   Bitcoin that you bought from a friend in cash,   Obviously, in an ideal world, you will pull everything or go through a swap. But if you've got like heavily cash traded Bitcoin in your wallet,   like, you can use that and then buy, like, a server or something online. Mhmm. And,   like, that's actually be very hard to, like, track to you, you know, and there's still plenty of service online that you can use, like, Ben or emails for. You don't have to kind of KYC. I mean, sure, that's going to change in certain aspects of Europe over the next few years, but, you know, you can still kind of run some things. If you want to put like kind of anonymous, say you want to like do an anonymous block,   I feel like it's pretty cool now that you could use Bitcoin   and, you know, no one would see from your actual bank account that money's necessarily gone into to anywhere. You could because you can use it from your own savings of Bitcoin. You can then go out for this blog and you go to like a jurisdiction that doesn't have too much of the requirements is you know, well outside the US, get a decent domain name and you can still set that up. And that's pretty cool for me. And you don't have anything sitting at your home,   you know, a server that could be seized.  

You know, if you're kind of writing something kind of, kind of dissenting,   in your country, you could be   sitting in a kind of tough regime and you can like pay for and manage a server over a tour while sitting in a regime, having no equipment and, you know, access browser. And that that for me is very, very liberating and cool that can still be done.  

[01:14:24] Unknown:

Yeah. That's exactly what I see Bitcoin as being needed for is like,   as it gets more and more difficult to live in a free   open free speech kind of way throughout the world   to have a tool, whatever little hoops you gotta jump through. Yeah. It doesn't really matter to me. It's just like that you've got this thing that gives you options.   And I think, yeah, what I take   from that is, like, there are still options, even options that I hadn't really considered. I'd never really thought of, like, all these ones that take Tethr. I'd never even heard of it, but it's good to hear because   people still can say what they wanna say. They can still move their funds where they wanna move them, and there might   be a couple of hoops they've got to jump through but it still works. So Yeah. That's encouraging. Exactly. And I mean, you know, Tether is like, for me and you, it's not particularly useful  

[01:15:17] Unknown:

but, you know, in places like where like say, you know, especially in like the emerging markets,   it's big in parts of Southeast Asia and, and   in areas like Eastern Europe and all that or the Middle East, you know, you've kind of got people that can't necessarily open bank accounts, but want a stable store of value. Right? And,   you know,   obviously, you know, it gets shield a lot, Tether,   from some of these guys. I certainly kind of don't like it from from the perspectives, you know, that it's coming from. But I, you know, because I acknowledge it's uptake   in certain places,   it's like   that knowing that   one thing that's kind of worth kind of just keeping the back of your mind is like if you get like a web developer to build you something or you want to pay someone like me for a pain through translation service or somewhere in Brazil, there's a high chance they'll give you like a PayPal address, but if they're not paying for PayPal maybe they can do a Tether because they've got the on and off ramps. Like at least for you, you can sit there with all your savings in Bitcoin and go, you know what, for this few minutes I'm just gonna use this as a kind of quick bridge to do it, and just that's where I'm finding it like just useful. So there's no, I've never even, have any of you even used any recent time an actual wallet to hold Tether, and I wouldn't even bother with that because, you know,   EVM chains are so horrendous with privacy anyway, you know, you'd be reusing addresses,   but just simply as a kind of almost like a way to pay invoices,   yeah, I've quite happily used it and it's kind of opened up some of the things, you know, some places I can buy things from.  



[01:16:48] Unknown:

So you do it as like a swap? Like Yeah. You go on to a service where you'd say, right, This is who I wanna pay,   and I'll pay you in Monero   or Lightning or  

[01:17:00] Unknown:

Exactly. Yeah. And so whatever and that's kind of quite nice. So if you're a Lightning, you know, if you really enjoy Lightning, I mean, one of the great things if you use a swap and you pay Lightning, then at least whoever you're swapping with at least you're paying your end pretty quickly. And it's one of the reasons I quite like Monero because it's the average 2 minute block times. I know things are better with Bitcoin at the moment on the phase. But, yeah, the, you know, Trokadot is pretty decent for that. I've not had much luck with their,   their card service.  

That's pretty flaky.   Lots of kind of terms and conditions, but at least at the moment the Tether   and I think there's a few other stable coins. You know, I think, you know, certainly in the emerging markets, they're using like the Tron blockchain locks. It's such cheap fees. It's not even on ETH. So, you know, overall, like a swap is is pretty cheap and, you know, you can stick to using Bitcoin or Monero or Lightning, whatever it is, and just and just do that. And what do you see in Singapore  

[01:17:52] Unknown:

in terms of, like,   usage of different   cryptocurrencies?  

[01:17:56] Unknown:

Is it very much that like Bitcoin is dominant or is it? It's actually probably more Ethereum here, like that's probably Is it? Yeah, I think so. Like, I think I don't know if it's like Vitalik has been here in Singapore like multiple times. Great guy. Great guy.   Never met him. But, yeah, it's always had a fairly kind of big presence. I, I, I don't know if it's like kind of culturally, like, there was more interest from a kind of geekier aspect from the smart contracts from some of the early excitement.   I think kind of actually some of the kind of the Bitcoin Maximus culture probably alienated a lot of the kind of community,   here and probably that's kind of some of the reasons they've gone there. There's a lot of kind of exchanges that have been set up here and of course they're going to be more interested in altcoins as well.  

But, yeah, I mean, there's, you know, I think people are just more more content to hold more different more coins. One thing I've noticed though is that overall, like, you know, merchant adoption has been piss poor. Like, that's for sure. There used to be quite a decent network of ATMs and then they all got shut down. I mean, not for the reason I don't think that the government was like, this is a problem for kind of, you know, money laundering. I think literally the problem was is that old guys used to get scammed out their money by like, you know, people posing as girls online and, you know, can you send me some money And invariably it meant, you know, the easiest way was to get people to put money into like a, you know, Bitcoin ATM machine. And so they were just kind of basically too much use to prey on the older vulnerable   segment of society.  

There is a kind of company here that does the,   that does like the payment processing. It's kind of like a bit pay type company for some services here. And I just lost my patience with that. I paid with some Bitcoin,   for a local taxi company to top up my account. I was like really excited because this is like one of these super apps, you know, so you can kind of, you know, I hadn't KYC'd to use the app. I could buy food vouchers or like buy direct food. You can even like, you buy taxis, you buy food, you can buy,   you know, you're shopping on this. It was like this app and then I used some like mixed coin,   to top up the NOBLX, that's all I have, right? And then they rejected it and were like, there's a compliance issue with your stuff. And at that point, I was just like, this is also kind of why I've heavily moved away from like bothering me, like as I said, with like vouchers even and things like that because I think that's going to happen unfortunately to the voucher companies. Like they're going to have probably end up   finding that regulators can't them and kind of see them as, like, effectively no different to an exchange and then being like, well, you've got to monitor deposits just like an exchange monitor deposits   And then what's gonna I think this is unfortunately gonna happen. A lot of these companies are gonna run into things where they're gonna you're gonna you've kind of seen this a bit with Bitrefill.  

You have to kind of log in and have an account or you can only use,   I can't remember which one it was, but I think one of them, like one of the Amazon vouchers or like the eBay vouchers, whatever it was, you had to have like an account there before you could redeem a voucher for it and you're like, the whole reason I wanted a voucher is I didn't need an account because I actually opened an account at one of these big companies, it's actually a real hassle because for all the 4 checks they had, they want to make sure you got a credit card. I'm like, 'Hang on, hang on, I've got to get a credit card to get an account,   to then go and spend vouchers.' It's like when I look at that process, I'm like well forget all that. I'm just going to keep the Bitcoin   myself and then when I need to I'll just actually do a cash trade and then just spend in cash while I can   until I can find people that, like, accept it directly. So I have, like, lost patience with some of it. Over $500  

[01:21:26] Unknown:

a day is the, limit as well. Yeah. With the card. So it's unless you have an account, but then saying that and and to be fair, to open an account,   there's no extra KYC.   It is, just email,   which, you know, you you'd use anyway. You can just have a burner email that's, like, literally that, and then your account is open, like, 1 minute later. I don't even know what I I can't remember what extra information there was. I think I just had to make a username,   like,  

[01:21:57] Unknown:

whatever, like, fucking Michael Sailor. It doesn't matter. I think where I've possibly ran into problems is try and do things a bit more internationally.   So like when I was doing the movie, for example,   like I used to buy bit refill vouchers for Best Buy. And then, so what I could do is I could take a payment,   for like, so let's use the example when Diverter was doing that for me.   I take, I have the website, process the payment.   Obviously, I keep a stock of pixels as well, but like by and large, you do a mark to market. So as you receive a payment for a phone, then basically buy the underlying phone as well. So I then go and buy a voucher and then give like the VERT a code so you can redeem the voucher. And then eventually like they stopped doing that for whatever reason,   and so that wasn't possible. And then I tried to go through another route and then found that like   I couldn't redeem the eBay voucher because it wasn't, it was only possible to like do it for like,   you know, I can't remember which way round it was, but like, basically if you had like a US voucher, you can use it on the dotco.uk   account I was registered with or something like that. I had another issue recently with someone that was trying to buy from Spain   that they've got some vouchers, but they're in a US voucher and they couldn't use it on like the local accounts there. And so there are a few more terms and visions, like if you've got like already existing accounts, you're all local and everything, it's okay. But invariably, with some of these things, you're trying to kind of like, you know, you're trying to buy stuff internationally, get stuff posted through, you know,   very quickly I was finding like things started like falling apart. It's become like more hassle.  

And the joke is it's not because I don't think they're, you know, you're getting spied upon so much. I think unfortunately, a lot of the practices that you use, VPNs or Tor Browser,   you know, certain email accounts that you use, they have a profile that's very similar to someone that's like doing spamming or   bots attacks, whatever. So you kind of run with that. So I've got like a 20 year old eBay address, right? Like, I can, I can use that for buy all from Ebay's all over? I've got 20 year old Amazon account. I can go on to any site, never, and there's never a problem. I never hit fraud checks cause it's like such an old account. They know it's legit.   But yeah, it's that kind of problem, especially when you're trying to get started and registering new accounts that I think, you know, it does get it. Yeah, it gets, gets arduous.  



[01:24:10] Unknown:

How many times do you have to tick the boxes of where the bicycle or the bus is? That's my life is like The hydrants. Yeah.   I'm like, fucking hell. Do you have to add this little bit? Because it's slightly overhanging. The bus is actually I still don't know what the answer is.   Yeah. I don't know what the answer is. I always add them in, but then I'm but sometimes I get in this, like, never ending loop where it's, like,   20 in a row. Yep. I'm not like, what the fuck is what the fuck is going on here? Like, I know where the bus is. Like, I actually am a human. Why can't I pass this fucking thing?   But that is, like you say, using Tor Browser,   using VPNs, all this stuff, which, like, is best practice. Just it is   very annoying.  



[01:24:52] Unknown:

Yeah. I think that like the way I see it is there's gonna be a kind of cat and mouse game though, is that there's gonna be a never ending thing. Like eventually, you know, these cut these voucher companies are going to get targeted. I think it's probably already started a bit and then we're going to go through a phase of finding it more difficult, but then like there is a chance though that if those, you know, if voucher companies kind of decide either okay we're not operating this jurisdiction for whatever reason and there's businesses that were getting a whole bunch of income previously from vouchers and that those vouchers were predominantly purchased with crypto that at that stage they might say, well, you know what, let's now actually host our own like BTC pay server or something like that. So, you know, even if these things aren't ideal at the moment, like they do get the circular economy working and, you know, because there is a kind of an issue of a coincidence of once, you know, trying to kind of get this, you know, not every company wants everyone to spend their Bitcoin at all time highs, you know, self-service or whatever, right? So, you know,   you do need to kind of, you know, tap the liquidity a bit. I think, you know, there's gonna be a bit of a cat and mouse game, but overall there should hopefully be a kind of, you know, you're gonna find like a niche in certain areas where these companies will directly start, you know, providing it. But, you know, from my perspective is if you can get a company that is gonna, you know, obviously accept Bitcoin and Aero directly just use those as much as possible because, you know, keep them in business, keep them going and, and you'll also give yourself a lot less hassle, you know, and your time is worth money.  



[01:26:15] Unknown:

Absolutely.   Talking about time, mate, I think I've taken enough of yours. I appreciate you coming on again. It's been really good covering stuff that I don't feel people necessarily get into the depths with so often, but I hope that people find it useful.   It's been good to chat to you again. And, actually, I think this might be my new office, this car. It's the Samsung 1. Really nice. Yeah. It's been really nice. It's there's been no disruptions. I've had my little coffee,   cup next to me.   It's relatively comfy in here. It's, yeah, it's been quite nice. Like the Lincoln Lawyer of Podcast House.   It's so low quality, this setup.  

I've just got the microphone, like, resting against the, the steering wheel with a hoodie underneath it so that it's in the right   spot, laptop on the floor, but   it works. Excellent.  

[01:27:07] Unknown:

Well, mate, look, thanks for your time as well. Always good to chat and, yeah, keep in touch. Yeah. I I definitely will. Alright, mate. Thanks again. We'll speak soon. See you soon.  

[01:27:18] Unknown:

Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed listening as much as I enjoyed recording.   I apologize again for the sound quality. I probably won't do that again. Probably won't record in the car, although I really liked the experience.   Any,   techie audio   people who wanna give me some advice   so that I could do it and it sound good, your advice is welcome.   And for anyone listening who's been boosting and supporting the show, I just wanna say thank you. It really does mean a lot.   We'll catch you on the next one.