Welcome to another episode of Freedom Tech Friday. Max, Seth and Q discuss the importance of privacy tools in the digital age, focusing on the ongoing Tornado Cash trial. The trial's implications for developers and the broader tech community are explored, highlighting the potential risks and rewards of creating privacy-focused technologies. Max, Seth and Q talk about the complexities of maintaining privacy in a world where open-source developers could be held liable for the misuse of their creations.
The conversation shifts to practical advice on Bitcoin security, discussing the merits of multisig setups versus single signature wallets with passphrases. They also address listener questions about the privacy of Bitcoin ATMs, the effectiveness of Whirlpool versus Monero swaps for privacy, and the implications of recent developments in hardware wallet technology. The episode wraps up with a lively Q&A session, offering insights into the challenges and opportunities in the realm of digital privacy and security.
IMPORTANT LINKS
VALUE FOR VALUE
Thanks for listening you Ungovernable Misfits, we appreciate your continued support and hope you enjoy the shows.
You can support this episode using your time, talent or treasure.
TIME:
- create fountain clips for the show
- create a meetup
- help boost the signal on social media
TALENT:
- create ungovernable misfit inspired art, animation or music
- design or implement some software that can make the podcast better
- use whatever talents you have to make a contribution to the show!
TREASURE:
- BOOST IT OR STREAM SATS on the Podcasting 2.0 apps @ https://podcastapps.com
- DONATE via Monero @ https://xmrchat.com/ugmf
- BUY SOME STICKERS @ https://www.ungovernablemisfits.com/shop/
FOUNDATION
https://foundation.xyz/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
CAKE WALLET
https://cakewallet.com
Cake Wallet is an open-source, non-custodial wallet available on Android, iOS, macOS, and Linux.
Features:
- Built-in Exchange: Swap easily between Bitcoin and Monero.
- User-Friendly: Simple interface for all users.
Monero Users:
- Batch Transactions: Send multiple payments at once.
- Faster Syncing: Optimized syncing via specified restore heights
- Proxy Support: Enhance privacy with proxy node options.
Bitcoin Users:
- Coin Control: Manage your transactions effectively.
- Silent Payments: Static bitcoin addresses
- Batch Transactions: Streamline your payment process.
Thank you Cake Wallet for sponsoring the show!
[00:00:00]
Unknown:
Okay. I've got some successful lights. So let's go and check all of the socials. We're live on Twitter. I don't see us on Nosta. Please correct me if, you guys can see us.
[00:00:15] Unknown:
I'm just about to check. Definitely see us on Twitter.
[00:00:22] Unknown:
Twitter looks and sounds good. How about YouTube?
[00:00:25] Unknown:
I'll check YouTube now. Just wait for a couple more minutes for everybody to flow in when we figure out some minor technical, stream details. Friday live.
[00:00:36] Unknown:
Yeah. That seems to be working on YouTube.
[00:00:40] Unknown:
K. Great. I just don't see us on zap.stream.
[00:00:43] Unknown:
There's some sort of background hiss coming through on the live stream. It's not terrible, but it's not coming through on Zencastr. So I think it might be on your your end queue. Let me turn my audio here.
[00:00:54] Unknown:
Oh, okay. Interesting.
[00:00:56] Unknown:
Like, I can't hear it in Zencastr when you're talking. But Maybe it's just Zencastr's separate noise canceling or something.
[00:01:04] Unknown:
Okay. Well, we'll we'll work with it. Guys, let us know in let us know in the comments on Twitter or YouTube if you, how the audio is coming through. Hello to William Horn Blower. Nice to have you with us, sir. Yeah. Not sure what's going on with with, the Nostra stream, but, we'll have to figure that out ahead of next week. All seven of our Nostra listeners. You're gonna miss out. Yeah. The Nostra chat was pretty hot last time. It was I know, actually. It's putting Twitter to shame. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I can't see anything on Nostra either. Interesting. How's your week been, guys? Just while we're waiting for people to flow in. Been a busy one?
[00:01:39] Unknown:
Always. Always. Tons of fun stuff. Bounties to claim. Maybe we can leak some alpha here. Oh. Lots of stuff going on. Been a fun week. Interesting. My week has been,
[00:01:51] Unknown:
extremely dull. So let's talk about these, bounties.
[00:01:56] Unknown:
Throw it out there real quick. So I don't know if y'all saw, but Matt Corallo, who created the bit three fifty three, basically, DNS based Bitcoin usernames. Mhmm. Which is a cool standard. There's there was already a multi crypto standard that had everything except for one little piece of it, basically, hardware wallet proof support, but that aside, Bitcoiners like to do Bitcoin only things. The spec is really cool. We had implemented it a long time ago in terms of, like, resolving these usernames in Cake Wallet, but Matt Corolla put it a put out a bounty, yesterday.
Yeah. Yesterday of a thousand dollars to a software wallet company that supports hardware wallets and thousand dollars to a hardware wallet company who would implement the specifically, like, the DNS sec proofs. They basically, being able to prove on the hardware wallet that you are sending to the correct address, preventing any kinda, like, man in the middle weirdness or something like that. Okay. Yeah. Bounty. We'd already implemented a bit of it. Cakewallet, and a couple of our amazing devs spent their lunch break and implemented the rest and have the PR open, and we'll be shipping a spend the lovely shipping release on Monday to get the get the bounty. Obviously, on that software one, we could technically claim the hardware one with Cupcake as well because we are gonna build the same support in there. But, we the part of the bounty was that you can't claim both. So we'll let someone else have a part of the pie.
[00:03:21] Unknown:
Love that. They just knock that out in a lunch break. So casual. I hope that they're, like, eating a sandwich or something while they do it.
[00:03:28] Unknown:
I'm sure they will. Handed. Drink that beer. European style. You know?
[00:03:34] Unknown:
Yeah. Very good. Interesting. Yeah. Sounds like, everybody's busy at, at team cake as always. Good morning. Good afternoon to Monero UK and Chad Farrow. Nice to have you with us. I'm Bitcoin Derby slash Derby. Look at look at Chad Farrow in the chat there doing all of our hard work for us, telling everybody to, like, subscribe, and smash that bell. How can you see that? I don't see that. It's coming through to the, through Restream, onto the live stream. So if you're watching the stream, you'll see it pop up. It's just because there's a delay. You're seeing it live live, and I'm seeing it a minute later live. That's why. Yeah. To to William Hornblower. What about Zap dot Stream? We it's all set up. It must be a break in the connection somewhere between Restream and Zap dot Stream. I've just checked that everything's set up. So unless there's something on the zap.stream side of things, I am not sure why that's not working. So we'll have to, do some troubleshooting there ahead of next week. Next time.
But, yeah. Got yeah. Chad, gotta go to this channel. You're absolutely right there. That's if, Max doesn't get us banned from YouTube,
[00:04:36] Unknown:
before Oh, I just did. I actually got another warning yesterday. We got another smile. I don't know. Genuinely genuinely yesterday. What's that one for? Give us the details. I I can't remember what it was for. Like, some, extreme language or something like that. Language? Surely not. It may have been John, actually. I can't I can't anyway, it was it was one of our ones, and it's, yeah, got us in trouble. Cram will fill the details in, I'm sure, but we get them quite often.
[00:05:07] Unknown:
Interesting. Okay. Well, we may or may not be back and available on YouTube next week depending on, how things how things go on on that front. But, we'll just have to see how that pans out. But, anyway, thank you to everybody for joining. Welcome to FreedomTech Friday. This is I can't believe it already. It's the third show. And, hopefully, this, third show will go a little bit more smoothly than last week. I, somewhat naively left I left Max in charge of all of the tech stuff. Doing. You're a band. Yeah. So I was on a, as Max called it, a hen party, with all my my girlfriends and drinking Margaritas. Drink drinking Pimm's and margaritas. Yeah. So, hopefully, normal normal service will be resumed this week.
Hopefully, I don't have a connection dropout like I did on the first week because I actually have a new router, guys, at long, long last. I, I bought I bought one of these, Flint routers. And, no, before all of the network maximalists ask, I haven't flashed any custom software on it just yet. But, the main thing is it seems to have fixed all of my Internet woes, and I I can actually have more than one device connected to my router at any one time before shit starts dropping out. So that's always nice.
[00:06:25] Unknown:
Was it the Flint two?
[00:06:28] Unknown:
I believe so. Yeah. It's it's I think the nickname is Flint two, and then the the real name is, like, MT6000 or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I have never heard of it.
[00:06:39] Unknown:
Tell me tell me a bit more. I mean, I know of the company that makes them, but I've never heard of the Flint specifically. Like, what was the draw there?
[00:06:46] Unknown:
The the draw there basically is number one, it it runs on some beefier hardware than the one the piece of shit that my ISP sent me. So it can actually cope with a decent number of connections. And then from what I've I've I've seen within the first couple of days is a lot more customizable. You can have network sorry, Wi Fi level VPNs. You can configure all sorts of port up, like, port forwarding, and there's just a lot more customizations. And you can flush, open source firmware on there. And I I believe the most popular one, correct me if I'm wrong, Max, is OpenWRT, is it?
[00:07:20] Unknown:
Yeah. That's what everyone was using. And and I had the same router. I gave it away before I before I left the country. But, yeah, it was pretty decent. And there was also the draw was there was quite a few people in TSB and some of our other shared groups that, made, like, a little Flint, group and, like, troubleshoot together and help each other out. So quite often when those sort of things pop up, I'm like, okay. At least there's people to help if things go wrong, but it was it was very good.
[00:07:53] Unknown:
Good. Yeah. I mean, I'll be able to share more in the coming weeks as I get more to grips with the kind of getting under the hood of it all and do some more customizations. But for now, like I said, my main goal was to just have functional Internet. William Hornblower, did you measure the wattage of your Flint two? Absolutely not. I'm curious why I would want to do that. Is it a big a a big power draw or something like that? I mean
[00:08:18] Unknown:
yeah. That's not there's no way. It's running like a mobile CPU in a gig or RAM. Like, it's not gonna be crazy, but I'm sure it's not. We should be It says under 20 watts is on the spec sheet. So I'm gonna be you'll survive.
[00:08:31] Unknown:
I'm gonna be open and honest and say I wouldn't even have a clue how to measure it anyway.
[00:08:35] Unknown:
You can get cool, basically, like a plug that plugs into the wall, and then you plug the device into. Oh, okay. You'll library it out of wattage and wattage over time and stuff like that. It is a nice thing to have, but absolutely pointless after you just test all the fun stuff in your house, and then you realize you just wasted your money on something that else you'll stick in a drawer and never use again. Yeah. It will still keep the site. Curiosity. Yeah. Exactly. You're like, well, I can't can't unplug my router, so I'm glad I know it uses 30 watts now.
[00:09:04] Unknown:
Chad Farrow, pro tip. If you troll just the right if you troll just right, you make it into the show audio. Yeah. Well, I think the flint good work. I think did you measure the wattage of your flint too kind of ticks that, ticks that box. So congrats. Work, guys. Chat, Chad said Seth is a little quiet. He's maxed out on my side, and it's all being piped through me. So hopefully, he can adjust his level slightly lower as well. I'm cranking it. Yeah. I'll start yelling if I have to. How's that? Okay. Okay. I feel angry, Seth. You're talking in all caps now, aren't you? I am. Yeah. This is the this is Odell mode activate.
[00:09:38] Unknown:
I can hear myself clipping. I'm gonna die if I leave that. I'm definitely turning it down a little bit. Yeah. You you sound good to me in my headphones here. So hopefully it's it's doable.
[00:09:45] Unknown:
Anyway, we we've digressed once again as we always do. But, yeah. Welcome to Freedom Tech Friday. For those of you the first time, tuning in, live or after the fact, this is a weekly live show. We do one hour at 9AM eastern and 2PM UK time where we talk about the latest and greatest in Freedom Technologies. We normally cover off a a singular news piece, which we're gonna do in a second. And then we open the floor to live questions and presubmitted questions from, our wonderful audience. And I'm very, very pleased to say, guys, that the list of questions is probably long enough to keep us going for the next three weeks. So thank you so much for everybody that's been interacting with the the tweets and the notes this week to post your questions. Really does make our life a lot easier. And we've got some awesome questions to get through as well after we've, finished talking about, the the news article of the week, which, is well, it's an important piece, especially when it relates to FreedomTech, but it it's not one that I relish talking about, unfortunately.
That is the, the tornado cash case. The trial has started this week. I'm gonna give a little bit of a background, before we kind of make that link and kind of have a bit of a discussion around the potential implications here and why people should care about this sort of stuff. Before I do that, though, I just wanna give a huge shout out once again to the guys, the whole team over at the rage.co. They're independent journalists who are doing an absolutely wonderful job of covering pretty much all of the aspects of this case. All of the info that I'm gonna run through in a second is all basically coming from their reports because they've been on-site kind of covering all of the details. So massive shout out to Lola and to David and, the rest of the team. I'm not familiar with the rest of the names, but I just think they they do a wonderful job, and they are massively underappreciated in the space for for being able to cover, know, the more difficult topics like the tornado cash and the samurai case as well. So, just, yeah, hats off. Keep up. Keep up the the great work, guys, because it it's, you know, super informative. And for for people, you know, privacy, advocates like ourselves, it's, it's really important to stay up to speed with this. But, anyway, a little bit of a background. Tornado Cash.
The case started this week, and, unfortunately, there is a chap called, Roman Storm, who is being tried on conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to vile violate economic sanctions under The US International Emergency Economic Powers Act or IEEPA. That there's a government analogy for you. Those charges carry each a potential sentence of up to twenty years in prison. There was also initially a third charge as well of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. However, a a a part of that charge had been dropped by the prosecutors. We believe in response to the Trump administration's recent Blanche memo, which kind of directed the halt of prosecutions for cryptocurrency operations purely on the basis of a lack of licensing. So it's regulation through prosecution, essentially.
There were many of us in the space that hoped that this was gonna be enough to get both tornado cash case and the the similar cases like the samurai, wallet cases dropped. Unfortunately, neither has happened, but it has been, you know, a slight positive in in the sense that with the Tornado Cash, they've kind of partially dropped the unlicensed money transmitting business. But, unfortunately, they're still going after, Roman Storm. So, there was a huge 37 page indictment, which I believe is actually quite short for a case like this. But it talks about how the the famous Lazarus group with hackers linked to North Korea used the Tornado Cash Protocol, to kind of, quote, unquote, lawn the funds.
The Lazarus Group, of course, is well known for in the crypto space for, some of the largest hacks, and they've alleged allegedly used Tornado Cash, multiple times to, again, quote, unquote, launder millions of dollars worth of, of Ethereum to try and kind of cover their tracks. However, the key point about the indictment and what it leaves out, although the Lazarus, money, is the main basis for the money laundering charge in this case, the prosecutors have not once claimed that Storm or his cocreators have ever actually had any interactions with the Lazarus Group or indeed North Korea. So this makes the the idea of conspiracy somewhat questionable in my opinion since the word means, breathing together is is a quote from the article from The Rage, which implying implies communication.
So can there really be conspiracy without making any communication? I'll, leave that one open to discussion later on. So we've had a couple of days worth of the trial already this week, and I believe the third day is ongoing as we speak. Some summarizations, the prosecution strategy, as I've said, they they aim to link Storm to various scams and hacks where the perpetrate but perpetrators have used Tornado Cash to anonymize illicit funds. And, again, I'm using air quotes here. I'm quoting people. The prosecution argues that Storm has maintained the protocol's infrastructure and profited from its use despite the claims, of limited control.
The defense's position is somewhat different. They emphasize that, he developed tornado cash, there's no secret there, as a privacy tool for legitimate users. They argue that he had no involvement with any fraudulent activity cited by the prosecution and that the protocol was widely used for lawful purposes. More common sense. Great to hear. The they've they've begun with some evidence presentation. The prosecution has, plans to present Telegram chat extractive extracted from the phone of, one of the co creators, Alekty Percev. And they're gonna use that to support their case.
And they've also done, you know, more on the hand things like showing photos of Roman Storm wearing a t shirt depicting a washing machine with the Tornado Cash logo inside of it, which obviously, you know, you'd understand how that could be construed, unfortunately. You could. Yeah. The jury's been selected. They've down selected that and done the shortlist. And then over on day two, they've begun some of the the, what's the word I'm looking for? They've been Testimony. Sponsorship. Testimony. They've started showing some evidence. Yeah. Thank you. The first, person or was an FBI forensic account accountant named Jessica Reyes or Reyes.
She presented various charts detailing, pepper sex expenditure, which I believe is is like a a regulated entity linked to tornado cash that you can probably That was the company behind tornado cash, the company that they formed around it. Yep. So the but the and the defense attorney has had the opportunity to kind of cross examine, this FBI forensic accountant accountant as well. And if I'm being honest from judging by the rage article, it's made it look a little bit foolish. The, the defense has challenged Reyes on the accuracy of her data, noting that in multiple, of her spreadsheets and pie charts that none of them add up to a 100%. Basically pointing the finger of, okay. Well, if you're using this as evidence, where is the rest of the funds that you're you're you're supposedly so sure that they've been spent?
There was some that added up to 90%. There was some that added up to a 104%. And in all cases, the the, forensic accountant was kind of unable to give an accurate answer, which again is a a positive for for the defense's kind of, stance here. And I think yeah. So the defense is basically had an effect quite an effective cross examination of Reyes to cast out on the prosecution narrative that tornado cash developers were engaged in illicit financial activities, which could potentially again, I'm I'm using a bit of conjecture here, but potentially weaken the government's case. So that brings us up to speed with everything that I've got. And once again, thanks to the guys at The Rage. I'm gonna kind of open with a question for you guys to to to kind of riff on and comment here.
And, again, this comes from from the article. I believe David Morris did this one, and it was a great quote, and I wanted to include it is, does a right to privacy really exist if it's illegal to provide privacy?
[00:18:05] Unknown:
I mean, I think, this is this is the crux of the case, honestly, is getting to the heart of what what rights do we actually have both as developers and as users. Like, I think, thankfully, for those who remember, there was a sanctions case around Tornado Cash in The US brought by the Department of Treasury. They sanctioned the entire protocol to prevent US citizens from being able to to legally use Tornado Cash. And that side of things is targeted at you don't have a right to privacy as an individual citizen. And then the indictment against Tornado Cash is targeted at you don't have a right to create privacy tools as a US citizen either, which is, I I think, really, them trying to hit both sides of the right to privacy at once. Thankfully, the sanctions have been overturned following, multiple court cases mostly done by the the folks over at Coin Center have done done a fantastic job.
So US citizens now are not barred for using Tornado Cash anymore, which is encouraging. I can still but now the like you said, the access do well. To take it away. Those of us who are developers Yeah. Or working with companies who are building software, specifically open source software. When we're using
[00:19:15] Unknown:
these technologies, I know most people listen to this probably more heavily on To those of us who are can you hear me still? Monero, but, you know, with these change that are trackable, it's very dangerous. That's the thing that they leave out, I think. Like, it's not it's not seen or not expressed as far as I can see in these courtrooms, the positives, the benefits of being able to, not leak all this data about your finances, and it's extremely dangerous. I I feel like every every couple of weeks when we do the Bitcoin brief, there's another story of another person who's had family members kidnapped or they've been tortured or something terrible has happened because somebody has found out that they have a significant amount of a cryptocurrency, and they try to take it from them. And without these tools on open public blockchains, it's very, very dangerous for the end user. So, you know, they're talking about protecting people and the that's what these agencies are supposed to be there for. But at the end of the day, what they're really doing is hurting people, and they're taking away tools that can protect people's families, and that's extremely dangerous.
[00:20:44] Unknown:
Yeah. Bo Boia, c a x a, please tell me how to say that name, in the YouTube chat said, there isn't much to say. Still made a tool that the corrupt system doesn't like, and now he's being fucked by the same corrupt system. We all know that they are corrupt. Yeah. I think that's a quite succinct way to summarize it. I I I have a question for you. If if if cash was never a thing, and it was introduced now in 2025, do you think the government would allow it? Definitely not. Because cash is the best.
[00:21:14] Unknown:
The only the only the only flaw with cash is sending it across borders is is hard. But, like Right. If someone said to me, do you wanna get paid in Bitcoin or cash? And it's like a local thing, like, cash. Definitely. No question. Monero maybe, I would say, yeah. But still probably cash is still the best. It's still what most most people will use if they don't wanna be tracked. It is still the best. I guess gold could be quite good as well. No one's most normal people aren't using cryptocurrencies for this stuff. Most normal people are using them just to make payments, normal payments. They're not stealing from people. They're not doing anything that would be deemed to be criminal, but that's not how it's painted.
[00:22:05] Unknown:
Yeah. Absolutely. I I think we've got Seth back with us.
[00:22:10] Unknown:
Theoretically. I should be back. Everything okay. We we can hear you now. I don't know if you can remember where you were, but if you wanna pick up where you left off, please feel free. Yeah. I don't know exactly where I where I got lost. I was in the middle of talking and then noticed that I just lost all Internet on all of my devices, which is beautiful. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I'll I'll just very quickly recap what I was saying because I'm not sure exactly where it cut out. But, basically, I was just just saying that there was the sanctions that were stopping individuals from having a right to financial privacy. And then there's this case that was targeted at making it so the developers don't have the right to build privacy software.
Thankfully, the sanctions were overturned following multiple cases by Coin Center, and US citizens can now use Tornado cashing in. That's at a very good precedent for for preventing that in the future. But then on the on the case side, it definitely like, the the key thing that lots of people have mentioned, so it's probably not fresh if you've listened to anything around tornado cash. But the the idea here that a developer can be liable for the way their product is used, even if they have no ability technically to prevent its usage in that way, would have massive impacts across the entire technology ecosystem, especially the open source ecosystem, and would essentially make no one want to build open source code in The US anymore, which would have massive ramifications for the economy. Like, you you it would be hard to, like, hard to even quantify or think about how dangerous, how harmful that precedent of essentially unlimited liability for developers would be. So that's the the crazy thing at stake here. Like you said, thankfully, it seems like the first couple of days have gone relatively smoothly with the, with the trial with with good stuff on the defense's side. A lot of weirdness for the prosecution.
Basically, trying to just make tornado cash look bad because people got scammed and their money went through tornado cash even though there's no ability for them to do anything. But, definitely curious to see how how things keep going. But this is definitely, like, this is the trial that essentially is, do you have a right to build privacy tools? And even more broadly, do you have a right to publish open source code and not have unlimited liability for how it's used?
[00:24:21] Unknown:
Yeah. That that's the big one here, isn't it? Is is the kind of implications on, like, the ability to publish open source code. Do you think, you know, in in the utopian world where this case goes the right way and we we all get the result that we want, that it's gonna kinda bring about kind of a, I guess, a bit more of a of a rush or a or a renaissance of privacy tech, Or do you think people are gonna be, somewhat understandably cautious despite the kind of the, you know, the recent ruling that, you know, this could be a not necessarily a green light, but could be at least getting a bit more freedom to to develop software in the way in which that you want it.
[00:24:59] Unknown:
I think you would definitely bring about a a rush in the increase of people wanting to build privacy tech in the cryptocurrency space specifically. Because, I mean, like, between this and the samurai wallet trial, which are both obviously still ongoing, like, don't wanna forget about the samurai wallet guys either. The the chilling effect that this has is immense. And, I mean, I'll even say, like, that this has a chilling effect on what we're willing to implement and launch at Cake Wallet. Like, I'm not gonna be not gonna be dishonest about that. Like, we would love to ship something like Whirlpool, but we also don't wanna compromise everything else that we're doing for that one piece. And, obviously, we're we're a known entity. We're a US company. Like, that would be extraordinarily dangerous right now to do something like that. But if there's a clear precedent set that that sort of thing is okay, is not a money services business, is not a money translate transmitter, is not liable for the way people use something that doesn't use any service or, server of yours, that would be absolutely fantastic for the space as a whole. And I think really would, especially on, like, the the wallet developer, the company side would kind of create a a Cambrian explosion of sorts of creativity because there wouldn't be this, like, this essentially legal or regulatory gray area or even, scarier area where where you're unsure what will happen to you as an individual if you publish something like that. So I think we we've already seen that more broadly in the crypto space, in the Bitcoin space since Trump took over in The US and since a lot of the regulatory headwinds essentially disappeared overnight or in the first few weeks. So we've already seen that affecting other areas, but I think, really, privacy is lagging behind because there's still these cases that are are somehow persisting despite the broader federal government being against this sort of anti crypto legislation through prosecution.
[00:26:48] Unknown:
Yeah. What Max, what's your take on the the comment from that says, I think this these days, what devs need to do is make the same, do the same as Satoshi did and create a pseudonymous chat through PGP with a restricted group of devs and then leave the project. What's your take on that?
[00:27:06] Unknown:
I would say, like, if you're doing things that could put you in a cell at the moment, that's probably wise. It was definitely wise. And, you know, it's the kind of thing we see from, like, Ashikaru at the moment. It's like they're not known entities. They're not and they have to do that. But I think that would be sad. That would be a sad state of affairs that that's the way it would have to be going forward because then it does mean that it is illegal to create privacy software that can protect most users and can be abused by some criminals like every other technology in the fucking world.
It would be a massive loss for users because as Seth said, it, you know, it couldn't just be a simple, oh, we'll just put Whirlpool straight into, into k wallet. Like, they wouldn't do that because they're a known entity, and they have families and lives, and no one wants to be put in a fucking cage. So, yeah, I mean, at the moment, I mean, I can't do it anyway because I'm a fucking mong. But if I was gonna create that type of software, I would definitely make sure that I wasn't known. I was using PGP. I was covering my tracks. I didn't have too much to lose. You know? But I don't wanna see a world like that. I wanna see a world where we can develop and create and, and privacy isn't criminalized.
[00:28:36] Unknown:
Yeah. In a in a world where ultimately, we, the developers, aren't the ones responsible for enforcing good versus evil. Yeah. Like the the That's crazy. Yeah. It it's it's insanity to think that the the the solution to people doing bad things with technology is to force developers to not build technology that can be used to do bad things. Like, the the ramifications of that and the logic of that are just, like, so wildly disconnected from reality that it's it's hilarious, but it would be more hilarious if it wasn't also sad because people's lives are right now at risk of being ruined by this sort of prosecution. So it's it's crazy to think that, ultimately, that's what the government is saying here is you, the end developer, are the one responsible for enforcing good versus evil for preventing illicit activity, not us understand. The government with trillions of dollars at at our disposal, not us, law enforcement, with every piece of surveillance technology under our belt.
But you, the developer, building open source code, are the one who needs to ensure that no one can do bad things with your technology, which is insane from so many angles, but even more so because technology is necessarily neutral, and it depends on how it's going to be used. Everything that can be used for good can also be used for evil. An ambulance could be used to run people over. It it it doesn't you can't decide how a tool can be used. You can build it and build it with good legitimate use cases. And if people use it for bad things and it's unstoppable, that's unfortunate. But that's why we pay taxes supposedly is so that they can stop the bad guys while the good guys get to build and prosper in peace.
[00:30:14] Unknown:
Yeah. Indeed. I think that's a great way to kind of cap off, this, portion of the show. Obviously, we'll we'll do our best to keep you guys updated across the various, shows and streams that we've got in the ungovernable, ungovernable, empire as it seems to, be growing into. But, yeah, appreciate your insights, guys, and let's hope that the the positive start that the the process the sorry, that the defense has had, this week continues as as the trial comes on, or progresses. I believe they estimate the trial is gonna last up to three to four weeks. So, hopefully, you know, it doesn't drag on, and we we we get we all get the the result that we wanted. But, we shall see, and we'll keep you up to date.
Alright. So I wanna get on to, the questions. Again, we have, way more than we can get through, and some of these are really good and probably ones that we could talk about for a good fifteen to twenty minutes apiece. I'm gonna gonna, once again remind people that, we will prioritize those in the livestream. So if you if you're listening and you have a question or a topic that you want us to cover, feel free to drop it into the Twitter comments or the YouTube comments or even on an XMOT chat, and we'll, make sure we see that come through and jump on it. But for now, while we're wait waiting for any live questions to come through, wanna kick off with a question from Rob g on Twitter. Before you do before you do, should we just mention that the top three
[00:31:34] Unknown:
questions this episode are gonna win Yes. Some SATs or PICOs thanks to k Qualit. So every every time you tune in here, you have the chance to win a prize if you have, if you enter whatever competition we're running. And this time, it's, best questions.
[00:31:53] Unknown:
Yeah. We're gonna do $50 for the top three question $50 each for the top three questions. You choose if you want it in Bitcoin on chain, Bitcoin landing, Monero. Name it, claim it. We'll ship it to you. Very nice.
[00:32:06] Unknown:
Awesome. Thank you, KQL. Yeah. There's an incentive. Thank you, KQL. With that said, gonna kick off with the first person to respond to our tweets this week, was Rob g on Twitter. And his question is multisig versus single sig plus passphrase for a non public Bitcoiner with their life savings in Bitcoin? To clarify, there are a few attack surfaces slash vulnerabilities I can think of that are two or three multi vendor, multisig would help me sleep better about, But I'm not sure if they are worth the extra effort. But here they are anyway. Number one, bad entropy in the random number generator of your hardware wallet. Number two, some type of manufacturer attack where they preprogram the hardware wallet to generate known seeds and will one day, quote, retirement attack all of their wallets by sweeping everything.
And number three, malicious firmware updates. Number four, supply chain attack on your hardware wallet whilst on route. Very detailed question. It is a good question. Yeah. Very detailed, and I appreciate the the follow-up to you with to give us the extra context as well to kind of spell out what you or whoever it is that you're referring to, is worried about. I I think you can without jumping down the the multisig rabbit hole straight away and just trying to keep everybody's, self custody or cold storage set up as simple as possible for as long as possible, which is for those of you who have heard my voice on any podcast is what I always kind of, kind of try to whack lyrical about is just keep it simple for as long as you can. But some of the stuff that you are worried about, bad entropy, some, pre you know, retirement attack from a preprogrammed hardware wallet, and malicious firmware updates, etcetera.
All of those things can be mitigated even in a single signature setup by choosing the right hardware wallet and buying directly from the manufacturer. Open source software that's reproducible and verifiable, it it would enable somebody with the technical know how to spot bad entropy or or low quality entropy. The same goes for the the kind of retirement attack. You can obviously fix that by bringing your own entropy if you're advanced enough. But once again, I would urge extreme caution, in doing that. And, again, the a decent hardware wallet will also have a supply chain kind of validation check or security check as part of their onboarding such that you can you know, if it passes that test, you could be sure that the firmware on the device is not being altered whilst it is en route to you and after it leaves their factory.
But with all that said, yes. Would somebody in that position gain some extra security from going to maybe a passphrase wallet or a even a multisig wallet? Yes. Absolutely. Because, again, in the instance where you are using multi vendor multisig, even if you buy one of the worst own like, phone devices on the market, if that's just one key out of a possible three, where you need two to to sign in the instance of a two or three multisig then, you are protected from that specific device being the biggest piece of shit known to man. So, yes, you do get extra protection from vendors as well as, of course, all of the obvious stuff that you also get with multisig being that, you know, you don't have any single points of failure. And, you know, you just make yourself a lot more difficult to attack. But, again, as always, there's trade offs with that increased security.
To name just a few, you know, you've just got more stuff to look after. You've got, let's say, in the two or three scenario, you've got three devices. You've got three sets of secret backups. So there's potentially six locations that you need to store sensitive items. Most people are probably gonna struggle with that, and which would then push people to go down, you know, routes that may compromise or degrade the security of that by keeping devices close by or keeping seed words in easier to access places. Like, it just depends very much on the person. And then the descriptors and all that stuff as well. Yeah. With with with with, in in fairness, like, that is getting easier.
That is for most, multisig wallet coordinators these days is just, you know, store this file or print this piece of paper. So there's a million and one ways that you can do that. Obviously, you need the knowledge that you need to store that and and more more specifically, multiple copies of that in different locations. But most of the good coordinators will walk you through that as part of the onboarding anyway. So I believe that that is less of an issue than it used to be, but it is, of course, another thing, you know, yet another thing that you need to store when you go down the route of multisig. So, again, another piece of the trade off. So, again, I'm gonna take the the easy route to say, look, for for Rob g or the person that you're talking about, you know, it's impossible for me to say, what he should do or what the person that he's referring to to should do because I just don't have a full understanding of what that person's scenario is like, like, what what you know, their competency, their spouse's competency because inheritance is obviously a huge part of this as well. It's no good having the most secure setup in the world if, you know, your Bitcoin's gonna disappear with you because your wife or husband has no idea where you kept all of your three devices. And even if they did know, do they know how to get into them and operate them and coordinate them together to sign a transaction?
Like, that's gonna be difficult enough for a non Bitcoiner with a with one hardware wallet. You multiply that to two or three, and then they've gotta use, you know, a piece of software they're not familiar with. Gonna be difficult. So, yeah, trade offs all the way down. My advice, keep it as simple as you can for as long as you can. The the biggest cause of loss for most people with Bitcoin is that they fuck themselves out of it rather than somebody holding a gun to their head. So you, probably don't need as much security as you think you do. But, you know, with Bitcoin is it pays to be powering it, and it pays to kind of plan ahead and think of the worst case scenario. So I fully appreciate the kind of threat modeling, and, hopefully, you know, the the points I've raised will give you some food for thought. But, guys, I don't know whether you've got anything else to add to that.
[00:38:15] Unknown:
Mhmm. I just wanna just harp on two things. You mentioned everything I would normally mention going through this. But the the two things I want to just kind of reinforce again. The main thing when I think about this and talk to people about this that is often not considered is that inheritance angle of, like, that's great that you're this very technically savvy, very experienced Bitcoiner. If you're single or you have someone else who's extremely technically savvy and experienced, that's great. But for most of us who are married or have children or have a family who are not technically savvy or who are not Bitcoiners, the idea of having them be able to in the middle of grieving and trauma, because that's the assumption here, is that something really bad has happened and that I'm not able to to access my my Bitcoin stack, and instead, my wife does or something.
In the middle of that, they're going to need to do this extremely tedious process without a lot of experience. So it's like that's a very, very important thing to consider is, will this money just be gone when you're gone, or will it not be accessible in a time of need when you're gone? There are obviously ways around that. You can educate your spouse or family, walk them through it many times, have them regularly use the setup so that they're familiar and comfortable with it. There's obviously things you can do, but, that part is is always top of mind for me. And the other one that you you obviously note again, q and a, is just this idea of, like, how do people actually lose their Bitcoin?
And very I I literally cannot speak to any instance of someone losing their Bitcoin in a a good single sig hardware wallet scenario. Outside of fishing, where it doesn't matter if it's a multi sig or something. Because if you're vulnerable to fishing, you'd give up three seeds instead of one. But in most scenarios, it is just people screwing up and losing their money. So keeping things simple for most people is far, far, far better protection than going advanced with security. But just like you said, we don't know your specific scenario, your specific situation. Multi seg may be a better use case for you, especially if you're storing, like, massive amounts of wealth or something like that.
It could be better. It just it very much comes down to you need to figure out what am I trying to protect, who am I trying to protect it from, and what lengths am I and those close to me willing to go to protect it.
[00:40:32] Unknown:
Yeah. Well said. Thank you for the question, Rob g. That was, that was a great one, and hopefully, a lot of people got some insights from that one. Excuse me. I do have a couple from, from the live chat. Cortic, I I won't spend some time answering this in detail because I know it's a tongue in cheek question, but, I'll read it nonetheless. Do do you think not to users spend their Bitcoin ever, and how is their fee estimates? Yeah. I, he's referring to, obviously, to, to to the filter crowd, which, I'm I'm not one of. I actually
[00:41:06] Unknown:
I I do have a Oh, go on. An interesting anecdote here. Yeah. Just a minute. So I know it is tongue in cheek, but I I won't name who it is. But I actually was just talking to someone yesterday who is a not user and was complaining that fee estimation was causing their, coin joins to fail because their fee estimation was diverging so much from the active memble. So, obviously, that's not necessarily everybody. This is somebody who has, like, a really cool, really cypherpunk stack doing things the right way, but was using knots and had run into issues because of it. So it's, that was an interest that was the first, like, real world example of someone who I know was actually trying to use and spend Bitcoin and had problems because of knots and had to swap to using core to be able to properly use CoinJoin. So an an interesting example of that, that people should keep in mind.
[00:41:54] Unknown:
And all of that is while we're having a fairly low fee environment. So, presumably, that would be massively exacerbated when things get a bit spicy.
[00:42:01] Unknown:
Yeah. Now is, like, the best case scenario for a Nazi they're putting on their mempool blindfold.
[00:42:07] Unknown:
Yeah. That's very interesting. Okay. Well, there you go, Cortic. Thank you for the question. Next one comes from Vibrant Subtlety. How do you assess the new trade offs involved in using a seed signer, which was initially built to be fully buildable with off the shelf hardware and that now has a focus or sorry. Now the focus has shifted towards incorporating a larger custom LCD display hat. Does this shift undermine the platform's original DIY ethos and their flexibility it provided to users? So, I mean, I'll take that quickly. I'm not familiar with the the custom LCD app, but I'm I'm guessing that the fact that you're saying custom is that this is no longer, you know, something that you can just go and buy off the shelf.
If that is the case, and again, I'm saying that with with, a big if because I'm not familiar with it, then, yeah, it it would diminish the kind of DIY nature, which for me is the biggest selling point of a seat signer is that, you know, if you're in a in a jurisdiction where you just cannot, or it's too risky for you to import a passport or or similar kind of premanufactured hardware wallet, but you wanted air gap security or air gap multisig, then Seatsigner was kind of one of you the few options that you had. Well, with that said, I guess, to kind of push back on my own narrative, like, if you can get this custom LCD purchased separately, then it's still the same kind of approach, isn't it? You're just buying parts in, just presumably if if this is a custom LCD that you can only get from one manufacturer, then as long as you're buying the parts in separately, I don't see it being too detrimental to the kind of, ethos or or what you're able to do and where you can do it with the seed signer. Don't know what you think, Max.
[00:43:48] Unknown:
Yeah. No. I agree with that. I think the seed signer is incredible, especially for certain use cases. I've said it many times. It's it's not something I personally use myself, but I I see a massive, use case out there for it. And I think it's one of the ones if I was gonna build a clever multisig setup. It's probably the other device that I would use, outside of a passport. So, huge respect for them. I I don't think that it diminishes anything. Basically, what you've just said is is spot on. I can't really add anything to that.
[00:44:26] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, my my understanding of this is, like, just because people can build one using a custom LCD hat, it doesn't change that you can still build and use it with the the regular off the shelf parts. Like, as long as the firmware continues to support both LCD hats, there's there's no restriction for you as the end user. It just adds extra flexibility for those that do have access to this LC hat or already have one micron from another project or whatever. So I think as long as the firmware continues to support the off the shelf parts, which as far as I understand, it absolutely does and absolutely will continue to, it doesn't cause any problems for those who who want to go the traditional route. It just means that there's more more optionality for those who are more building it as a a fun tech tool rather than necessarily, like, the the most hardcore threat model of wanting it to be only off the shelf hardware.
[00:45:16] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:45:18] Unknown:
Agreed. Yep. William Hornblower has asked, does Foundation core slash prime have analog precaution like anti x fill, Jade, or anti Klepto Bitbox? Obviously, I'll be able to take that one. So, yeah, the this anti Klepto, anti x filter to quickly summarize, again, it is quite technical, and the the full details of it are even way above my pay grade. But it's essentially, a a way to detect or prevent your hardware wallet from, leaking or over time private key data, through either malice or incompetence. USB devices like the Jade or the Bitbox are able to do this because they have that kind of active permanent connection with the the the kind of coordinator software that they're connected to. So it's much easier to to do that in a way that isn't detrimental in any way, shape, or form to the end user. They don't even know it's happening. It just happens through the USB kind of bus communication. With air gap devices like, passport core, and, you know, call card, etcetera, is is no different.
When we interact with, SD cards or QR codes to be able to introduce the kind of anti exfil, anti Klepto depending on what you wanna call it, would basically be what it would mean is an extra round of QR codes back and forth, which is clearly, you know, a massive hurdle for for user experience. Like, if you're in the the wrong environment with the wrong device trying to scan QR codes, it can be difficult anyway depending on the hardware you choose, of course, to then have to do that back and forth again just to sign a transaction is is a huge kind of step away from the the what we want with QR code kind of, user experience, essentially. So the short answer is it's not impossible, but we believe that the the risks can be mitigated in other ways that aren't detrimental to the user, namely with open source software and with reproducible software as well, which is obviously the route that we go down with, all of our products at, at Foundation.
However, of course, we're moving into a world where Passport Prime is gonna be in customer's hands in, you know, a matter of days now. Passport Prime will, soon be able to sign transactions via the USB c port on the bottom. So, of course, we'll be looking to to implement any extra protections that we can in, via, you know, transaction signing via that method. Because as I stated stated at the top of the answer, the user is none the wiser. So, yes, we will be looking to do that for for the USB sign in with, with Passport Prime.
[00:47:55] Unknown:
And Bluetooth as well.
[00:47:57] Unknown:
Indeed. Yeah. Of course. With Bluetooth as well. Yeah. Because I get once again, same thing. It's just the user doesn't know. It's just an additional back and forth whilst everything's happening automatically unbeknown to the user. So, yeah, thank you for the, point of clarification.
[00:48:10] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. One thing you you briefly mentioned there that I just wanna reinforce too is this requires your hardware wallet to be running malicious firmware. It it's not something that can happen just kind of accidentally or something like that. It would require you to be running malicious firmware on the hardware wallet itself. So this is a protection against even when you're running malicious firmware that it can't exfiltrate the private keys off the hardware wallet and get them to the the malicious entity that's built that farmer. So, like, you and I said that this idea of reproducible builds, this idea of properly signed firmware, open source firmware essentially solves this, but it always is nice to have extra layers of protection like you do when you're able to do anti Klepto for Bluetooth through USB.
[00:48:48] Unknown:
But specifically on the passport, you'd have to first, you'd have to download the wrong software. You'd have to not verify it. And then when you do, try and load it onto the device using Envoy or whichever way you do it, it checks anyway to see if
[00:49:06] Unknown:
it's It wouldn't install it point blank unless it's signed by. That's what I mean. Install it. Yep. So, like, how So so well, with with hardware was, you can install custom, firmware, but you have to sign it with an external key, which has to then be loaded into the device. And as soon as you do that on any good hardware wallet, as soon as you turn it on, it will say this this device is running nonstandard firmware. You'll see that warning every time it boots up. That's the only way you can that's the only way you can install software that is not signed by us at Foundation. So for most people, that's it's never gonna happen.
[00:49:43] Unknown:
Yeah. Okay. So just don't do that then.
[00:49:46] Unknown:
Yeah. Okay. Next question comes from Ghost also on Twitter. Says, I love the idea of group wallets in Cake. My only question is, how do you maintain access if something happens to Cake? Without Cake Wallet, how do I access my Monero with only a 12 word Bitcoin seed?
[00:50:03] Unknown:
Yeah. It's a great question. So there there is a tool right now by Ledger that can be used to do 24 word seeds, not 12 at the moment. We we are also planning to release a separate tool that allows you to convert a 12 word Bitcoin, the 39 seed to a Monero seed. But the really important thing here is even if cake while at the company disappears, if literally anyone has the source code for cake wallet, you could build it and get access to your seed that way. So it's it's not like, that's again the beauty of open source software and freedom tech is that you're not reliant at all on k quality, the company, or k quality, the group of developers, or anything.
Even if you just downloaded a copy of the software and kept it handy, you could always build it at a later date and have access to that seed. Now, obviously, we want other options to be able to get that seed. So the two things you can do right now are, obviously, just have a copy of cake while it's code if you wanna keep that just in case. But also when you're actually in the Monero wallet, that's part of a wallet group in Cake Wallet. You can always export the or save right down stamp in a steal, whatever, the the regular legacy Monero seed, the 25 word seed, and restore height. So you can always get that now if you want to or even if, let's say, like, cake somehow cake disappears tomorrow as a company. Our app is wiped from all app stores, and the code in every computer everywhere is deleted.
As long as you have the app on your phone, you could still access that 25 word legacy seed. So there's there's not really a realistic scenario at all that you wouldn't be able to do this, but we do want to publish a separate tool at some point that will let you, convert those seed phrases. The other thing that I'll say is this is becoming an industry standard. So Exodus use this right now. So you could also use Exodus at the moment to get your full Monero seed. And we expect other wallets to also implement the standard, deriving that seed in the same way so you could always recover another wallets. Because we we definitely don't want you locked in, but, unfortunately, there wasn't really an industry standard before this. So we had to come up with it. We we expect it to take off in the industry, but there's many, many, many fail safes to make sure you can always recover your Monero.
[00:52:14] Unknown:
Very cool. Very concise and clear as always. Probably the last one we're gonna have time for maybe depends on how long it takes us to answer it. But, where have I put it now? Oh, Drinkop, asks, what is better for Bitcoin privacy? Whirlpool, obviously, with the the new Ashigaru, implementation, or swapping to Monero and then back again? The latter certainly seems a lot easier. Or am I retarded?
[00:52:40] Unknown:
Yes. You are retarded, mate. Come join me. I don't wanna be alone anymore. It's it depends. Can I take it? And then you just, like Yes, please. Yeah. Correct me. I I would say that they are best used in tandem. There are, from my understanding, issues with just swapping from from Bitcoin to Monero, because obviously or or or the other way around as well because of the traceability side on the Bitcoin side. So I would say in an ideal world, if I was gonna be doing a swap and it really mattered, I would be using something like Whirlpool first.
Maybe I would use Whirlpool, and then with the smaller denominations, maybe then I would do a swap, with those because the pool sizes are quite large at the moment. That's kind of how I would look to use it.
[00:53:43] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, like, I've answered this many times in the past, but to me, it really comes down to, like, what are you trying to protect your transactions from? If it's just, like, the barista at the coffee shop and not a nation state or chain analysis, either approach is gonna be sufficient. Swapping is definitely easier, but would I don't know. I was gonna say would cost more, but probably actually wouldn't cost more in in fees. And that would protect you from that person who doesn't have access to a bunch of off chain data. The problem is the difference between Whirlpool and swapping into Monero and immediately back out of Monero, which I'll be more specific in the use case that I see most people want to do is that swapping into Monero and then immediately back to Bitcoin.
The difference there is that in Whirlpool, no one knows exactly which output is yours in that mixing round except for you. Not even Ashigaru or Samurais, whoever's running the coordinator. Only you know which output is yours. On the swapping into Monero and back into Bitcoin side, technically, no outside observer knows that the Bitcoin on the other side is yours. But the instant exchange that you use, or potentially the atomic swap provider or a peer to peer swap partner, whatever route you're taking, most people are just going through an instant exchange because it's far easier and quicker. That person obviously knows that you're the same on the in and out, unless maybe you do it in separate swaps, and you do overtour, and you, like, refresh your session. Like, you do a lot of extra steps, but they could still have a really good guess that you're the same entity.
And then chain analysis, etcetera, those tracing firms have, for years now, had cross chain tracing, which what that really means is that they use timing and amount heuristics to to trace people doing things like this, swapping into Monero on an instant exchanger and swapping back to Bitcoin or Ethereum or something like that. So they have the capability to make very, very, very, very well educated guesses about that behavior. So Whirlpool, I would say, is more effective when it comes to breaking deterministic links. Swapping through an arrow is something I just generally don't advise because there's so many potential foot guns, so many potential problems.
But for simple surveillance protection, it can be good enough. But, really, the best way to do that would be to use Whirlpool so that you have deterministic links broken on Bitcoin. And then when you need to spend, you swap some of that whirlpooled Bitcoin into Monero every month or whatever, and you spend from the Monero. That's the best of both worlds, and that's what the the beauty of Whirlpool coming back really enables is that you can have, like that's really, in many ways, the ultimate setup for the freedom loving individual.
[00:56:31] Unknown:
I just add one other thing, which is, my concern with going if you didn't already use Whirlpool, and then use that Bitcoin to swap into Monero to spend. If you just had a UTXO that could be linked to you in some way, which is presumably why you're doing the swap in the first place anyway, You don't know who's on the other side of that swap, and you don't know what they might do with that Bitcoin, and you don't know what crazy law enforcement person might suddenly knock at your door and wrongly accuse of something that you had nothing to do with. And so that, I think, is a legitimate concern and why you should really do both and not fuck around.
[00:57:22] Unknown:
Yeah. I think I can't add anything of value other than what you guys have covered off, really. I think that's a a great nuance take as always. And and I guess, yeah, as always, there is no kind of perfect solution for one person. It depends where you're coming from and what your goals are as well. So, I'm gonna squeeze one more in just really quickly, and it was about Bitcoin ATMs. And, of course, I've just lost the question. Where has it gone? Oh, here we go. It comes from Trislo Arian DeFi on Twitter. How private are BTC ATMs? Do they do face recognition or keep serial numbers of bank notes? And how do they know when you reach the daily no KYC limit? Alright. Cool. I I can take this one quickly.
Having with with the caveat that I'm in The UK, we don't have any Bitcoin ATMs, but I know enough people, in jurisdictions that, do have them available to kind of hear about their experiences. How private are they? It depends how you use them. If you're giving it your kind of, Fiat phone number for one of a better term, then any of the funds are immediately tied to you. If you're doing that using a quote unquote burner number or one that's not tied to your personal identity, then, yes, you maybe you can purchase a bit more, privately.
With that, again, comes with the caveat that they don't ask for your ID, which unfortunately, a lot of them do these days even for for lower amounts. Do they do facial recognition? I would, operate under the assumption that they at least have a camera facing the ATM like most of them do. So minute warning. If you want to protect your privacy, then you should probably wear a mask, you know, for for COVID reasons, of course. Do they keep the serial numbers of bank notes? I've got no idea, but I, again, would say assume that they do. And how do they know when they when you reach the daily non KYC limit? But, again, this this comes back to how do they operate. Again, if it's just that you provide the phone number and you can buy up to, I don't know, a thousand dollars a day, then it'll just be any purchases against the mobile number provided.
But, unfortunately, as I said, most of them do require more identification. So it will just be a case of, you know, tying your identity to, to each of those purchases. And when you hit that limit, you'll just not be able to purchase anymore. Yeah. This it's a sorry state of affairs with Bitcoin ATMs. I I was really bullish on them back in, you know, 2019, 2020 before the regulation seemed to to clump down significantly on them even in places like The US. Seth, I don't know whether you've got any boots on the ground experience with what it's like these days in terms of the the ATM landscape.
[00:59:59] Unknown:
No. I I think you know that they're I mean, normally, I think they're not technically extensive enough to be doing, like, bank note tracking and stuff, but, obviously, it it always pays to to be wary. And like you said, unfortunately, that side of things has kind of been dying over the last three, four years due to regulation even in The US, unfortunately.
[01:00:19] Unknown:
Yeah. And it's also worth being COVID safe if you're gonna be using one of these because they will have cameras. And if they don't have cameras, then the place that you're using it will have cameras. So I used to use these quite a lot in The UK many years back, and I would always go mast and glasses and hat and make sure that I was using a burner and all those sort of things because, it's very, very easy with facial recognition. So, you can't I don't think there's any in The UK anymore, is there? But wherever there are, just bear that in mind that you will be filmed. I think it's less likely that you're gonna have, your your bank notes tracked. And and what are they gonna track them to? Like, where did you get them from is pretty difficult unless you've literally withdrawn them from a bank, and that bank's made a note. I I don't see that happening, but facial recognition Mhmm. And phone number is how they'd get you.
[01:01:13] Unknown:
Yeah. Absolutely. Alright, guys. We're we're already over time. Time has flown by. That was fun. Touch wood. We we got through without any technical issues. Thank you, to everybody that was, getting involved with the live chat. You asked about, the the Whirlpool kind of, comments. I'm gonna be covering that with Max on the next Bitcoin brief, so stay stay, cheap for that one. If you are listening to or watching this after the fact, please make sure to share the show, and just help spread the word, of Freedom Set Friday. And, yeah, we will see you the same time next week, guys.
[01:01:48] Unknown:
Thank you. Have a good one.
[01:01:49] Unknown:
We pull the plug in 54321. Stay ungovernable.
[01:01:56] Unknown:
Shit. I stopped the stream just as you played that, actual.
[01:02:00] Unknown:
That's alright, mate.
Okay. I've got some successful lights. So let's go and check all of the socials. We're live on Twitter. I don't see us on Nosta. Please correct me if, you guys can see us.
[00:00:15] Unknown:
I'm just about to check. Definitely see us on Twitter.
[00:00:22] Unknown:
Twitter looks and sounds good. How about YouTube?
[00:00:25] Unknown:
I'll check YouTube now. Just wait for a couple more minutes for everybody to flow in when we figure out some minor technical, stream details. Friday live.
[00:00:36] Unknown:
Yeah. That seems to be working on YouTube.
[00:00:40] Unknown:
K. Great. I just don't see us on zap.stream.
[00:00:43] Unknown:
There's some sort of background hiss coming through on the live stream. It's not terrible, but it's not coming through on Zencastr. So I think it might be on your your end queue. Let me turn my audio here.
[00:00:54] Unknown:
Oh, okay. Interesting.
[00:00:56] Unknown:
Like, I can't hear it in Zencastr when you're talking. But Maybe it's just Zencastr's separate noise canceling or something.
[00:01:04] Unknown:
Okay. Well, we'll we'll work with it. Guys, let us know in let us know in the comments on Twitter or YouTube if you, how the audio is coming through. Hello to William Horn Blower. Nice to have you with us, sir. Yeah. Not sure what's going on with with, the Nostra stream, but, we'll have to figure that out ahead of next week. All seven of our Nostra listeners. You're gonna miss out. Yeah. The Nostra chat was pretty hot last time. It was I know, actually. It's putting Twitter to shame. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I can't see anything on Nostra either. Interesting. How's your week been, guys? Just while we're waiting for people to flow in. Been a busy one?
[00:01:39] Unknown:
Always. Always. Tons of fun stuff. Bounties to claim. Maybe we can leak some alpha here. Oh. Lots of stuff going on. Been a fun week. Interesting. My week has been,
[00:01:51] Unknown:
extremely dull. So let's talk about these, bounties.
[00:01:56] Unknown:
Throw it out there real quick. So I don't know if y'all saw, but Matt Corallo, who created the bit three fifty three, basically, DNS based Bitcoin usernames. Mhmm. Which is a cool standard. There's there was already a multi crypto standard that had everything except for one little piece of it, basically, hardware wallet proof support, but that aside, Bitcoiners like to do Bitcoin only things. The spec is really cool. We had implemented it a long time ago in terms of, like, resolving these usernames in Cake Wallet, but Matt Corolla put it a put out a bounty, yesterday.
Yeah. Yesterday of a thousand dollars to a software wallet company that supports hardware wallets and thousand dollars to a hardware wallet company who would implement the specifically, like, the DNS sec proofs. They basically, being able to prove on the hardware wallet that you are sending to the correct address, preventing any kinda, like, man in the middle weirdness or something like that. Okay. Yeah. Bounty. We'd already implemented a bit of it. Cakewallet, and a couple of our amazing devs spent their lunch break and implemented the rest and have the PR open, and we'll be shipping a spend the lovely shipping release on Monday to get the get the bounty. Obviously, on that software one, we could technically claim the hardware one with Cupcake as well because we are gonna build the same support in there. But, we the part of the bounty was that you can't claim both. So we'll let someone else have a part of the pie.
[00:03:21] Unknown:
Love that. They just knock that out in a lunch break. So casual. I hope that they're, like, eating a sandwich or something while they do it.
[00:03:28] Unknown:
I'm sure they will. Handed. Drink that beer. European style. You know?
[00:03:34] Unknown:
Yeah. Very good. Interesting. Yeah. Sounds like, everybody's busy at, at team cake as always. Good morning. Good afternoon to Monero UK and Chad Farrow. Nice to have you with us. I'm Bitcoin Derby slash Derby. Look at look at Chad Farrow in the chat there doing all of our hard work for us, telling everybody to, like, subscribe, and smash that bell. How can you see that? I don't see that. It's coming through to the, through Restream, onto the live stream. So if you're watching the stream, you'll see it pop up. It's just because there's a delay. You're seeing it live live, and I'm seeing it a minute later live. That's why. Yeah. To to William Hornblower. What about Zap dot Stream? We it's all set up. It must be a break in the connection somewhere between Restream and Zap dot Stream. I've just checked that everything's set up. So unless there's something on the zap.stream side of things, I am not sure why that's not working. So we'll have to, do some troubleshooting there ahead of next week. Next time.
But, yeah. Got yeah. Chad, gotta go to this channel. You're absolutely right there. That's if, Max doesn't get us banned from YouTube,
[00:04:36] Unknown:
before Oh, I just did. I actually got another warning yesterday. We got another smile. I don't know. Genuinely genuinely yesterday. What's that one for? Give us the details. I I can't remember what it was for. Like, some, extreme language or something like that. Language? Surely not. It may have been John, actually. I can't I can't anyway, it was it was one of our ones, and it's, yeah, got us in trouble. Cram will fill the details in, I'm sure, but we get them quite often.
[00:05:07] Unknown:
Interesting. Okay. Well, we may or may not be back and available on YouTube next week depending on, how things how things go on on that front. But, we'll just have to see how that pans out. But, anyway, thank you to everybody for joining. Welcome to FreedomTech Friday. This is I can't believe it already. It's the third show. And, hopefully, this, third show will go a little bit more smoothly than last week. I, somewhat naively left I left Max in charge of all of the tech stuff. Doing. You're a band. Yeah. So I was on a, as Max called it, a hen party, with all my my girlfriends and drinking Margaritas. Drink drinking Pimm's and margaritas. Yeah. So, hopefully, normal normal service will be resumed this week.
Hopefully, I don't have a connection dropout like I did on the first week because I actually have a new router, guys, at long, long last. I, I bought I bought one of these, Flint routers. And, no, before all of the network maximalists ask, I haven't flashed any custom software on it just yet. But, the main thing is it seems to have fixed all of my Internet woes, and I I can actually have more than one device connected to my router at any one time before shit starts dropping out. So that's always nice.
[00:06:25] Unknown:
Was it the Flint two?
[00:06:28] Unknown:
I believe so. Yeah. It's it's I think the nickname is Flint two, and then the the real name is, like, MT6000 or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I have never heard of it.
[00:06:39] Unknown:
Tell me tell me a bit more. I mean, I know of the company that makes them, but I've never heard of the Flint specifically. Like, what was the draw there?
[00:06:46] Unknown:
The the draw there basically is number one, it it runs on some beefier hardware than the one the piece of shit that my ISP sent me. So it can actually cope with a decent number of connections. And then from what I've I've I've seen within the first couple of days is a lot more customizable. You can have network sorry, Wi Fi level VPNs. You can configure all sorts of port up, like, port forwarding, and there's just a lot more customizations. And you can flush, open source firmware on there. And I I believe the most popular one, correct me if I'm wrong, Max, is OpenWRT, is it?
[00:07:20] Unknown:
Yeah. That's what everyone was using. And and I had the same router. I gave it away before I before I left the country. But, yeah, it was pretty decent. And there was also the draw was there was quite a few people in TSB and some of our other shared groups that, made, like, a little Flint, group and, like, troubleshoot together and help each other out. So quite often when those sort of things pop up, I'm like, okay. At least there's people to help if things go wrong, but it was it was very good.
[00:07:53] Unknown:
Good. Yeah. I mean, I'll be able to share more in the coming weeks as I get more to grips with the kind of getting under the hood of it all and do some more customizations. But for now, like I said, my main goal was to just have functional Internet. William Hornblower, did you measure the wattage of your Flint two? Absolutely not. I'm curious why I would want to do that. Is it a big a a big power draw or something like that? I mean
[00:08:18] Unknown:
yeah. That's not there's no way. It's running like a mobile CPU in a gig or RAM. Like, it's not gonna be crazy, but I'm sure it's not. We should be It says under 20 watts is on the spec sheet. So I'm gonna be you'll survive.
[00:08:31] Unknown:
I'm gonna be open and honest and say I wouldn't even have a clue how to measure it anyway.
[00:08:35] Unknown:
You can get cool, basically, like a plug that plugs into the wall, and then you plug the device into. Oh, okay. You'll library it out of wattage and wattage over time and stuff like that. It is a nice thing to have, but absolutely pointless after you just test all the fun stuff in your house, and then you realize you just wasted your money on something that else you'll stick in a drawer and never use again. Yeah. It will still keep the site. Curiosity. Yeah. Exactly. You're like, well, I can't can't unplug my router, so I'm glad I know it uses 30 watts now.
[00:09:04] Unknown:
Chad Farrow, pro tip. If you troll just the right if you troll just right, you make it into the show audio. Yeah. Well, I think the flint good work. I think did you measure the wattage of your flint too kind of ticks that, ticks that box. So congrats. Work, guys. Chat, Chad said Seth is a little quiet. He's maxed out on my side, and it's all being piped through me. So hopefully, he can adjust his level slightly lower as well. I'm cranking it. Yeah. I'll start yelling if I have to. How's that? Okay. Okay. I feel angry, Seth. You're talking in all caps now, aren't you? I am. Yeah. This is the this is Odell mode activate.
[00:09:38] Unknown:
I can hear myself clipping. I'm gonna die if I leave that. I'm definitely turning it down a little bit. Yeah. You you sound good to me in my headphones here. So hopefully it's it's doable.
[00:09:45] Unknown:
Anyway, we we've digressed once again as we always do. But, yeah. Welcome to Freedom Tech Friday. For those of you the first time, tuning in, live or after the fact, this is a weekly live show. We do one hour at 9AM eastern and 2PM UK time where we talk about the latest and greatest in Freedom Technologies. We normally cover off a a singular news piece, which we're gonna do in a second. And then we open the floor to live questions and presubmitted questions from, our wonderful audience. And I'm very, very pleased to say, guys, that the list of questions is probably long enough to keep us going for the next three weeks. So thank you so much for everybody that's been interacting with the the tweets and the notes this week to post your questions. Really does make our life a lot easier. And we've got some awesome questions to get through as well after we've, finished talking about, the the news article of the week, which, is well, it's an important piece, especially when it relates to FreedomTech, but it it's not one that I relish talking about, unfortunately.
That is the, the tornado cash case. The trial has started this week. I'm gonna give a little bit of a background, before we kind of make that link and kind of have a bit of a discussion around the potential implications here and why people should care about this sort of stuff. Before I do that, though, I just wanna give a huge shout out once again to the guys, the whole team over at the rage.co. They're independent journalists who are doing an absolutely wonderful job of covering pretty much all of the aspects of this case. All of the info that I'm gonna run through in a second is all basically coming from their reports because they've been on-site kind of covering all of the details. So massive shout out to Lola and to David and, the rest of the team. I'm not familiar with the rest of the names, but I just think they they do a wonderful job, and they are massively underappreciated in the space for for being able to cover, know, the more difficult topics like the tornado cash and the samurai case as well. So, just, yeah, hats off. Keep up. Keep up the the great work, guys, because it it's, you know, super informative. And for for people, you know, privacy, advocates like ourselves, it's, it's really important to stay up to speed with this. But, anyway, a little bit of a background. Tornado Cash.
The case started this week, and, unfortunately, there is a chap called, Roman Storm, who is being tried on conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to vile violate economic sanctions under The US International Emergency Economic Powers Act or IEEPA. That there's a government analogy for you. Those charges carry each a potential sentence of up to twenty years in prison. There was also initially a third charge as well of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. However, a a a part of that charge had been dropped by the prosecutors. We believe in response to the Trump administration's recent Blanche memo, which kind of directed the halt of prosecutions for cryptocurrency operations purely on the basis of a lack of licensing. So it's regulation through prosecution, essentially.
There were many of us in the space that hoped that this was gonna be enough to get both tornado cash case and the the similar cases like the samurai, wallet cases dropped. Unfortunately, neither has happened, but it has been, you know, a slight positive in in the sense that with the Tornado Cash, they've kind of partially dropped the unlicensed money transmitting business. But, unfortunately, they're still going after, Roman Storm. So, there was a huge 37 page indictment, which I believe is actually quite short for a case like this. But it talks about how the the famous Lazarus group with hackers linked to North Korea used the Tornado Cash Protocol, to kind of, quote, unquote, lawn the funds.
The Lazarus Group, of course, is well known for in the crypto space for, some of the largest hacks, and they've alleged allegedly used Tornado Cash, multiple times to, again, quote, unquote, launder millions of dollars worth of, of Ethereum to try and kind of cover their tracks. However, the key point about the indictment and what it leaves out, although the Lazarus, money, is the main basis for the money laundering charge in this case, the prosecutors have not once claimed that Storm or his cocreators have ever actually had any interactions with the Lazarus Group or indeed North Korea. So this makes the the idea of conspiracy somewhat questionable in my opinion since the word means, breathing together is is a quote from the article from The Rage, which implying implies communication.
So can there really be conspiracy without making any communication? I'll, leave that one open to discussion later on. So we've had a couple of days worth of the trial already this week, and I believe the third day is ongoing as we speak. Some summarizations, the prosecution strategy, as I've said, they they aim to link Storm to various scams and hacks where the perpetrate but perpetrators have used Tornado Cash to anonymize illicit funds. And, again, I'm using air quotes here. I'm quoting people. The prosecution argues that Storm has maintained the protocol's infrastructure and profited from its use despite the claims, of limited control.
The defense's position is somewhat different. They emphasize that, he developed tornado cash, there's no secret there, as a privacy tool for legitimate users. They argue that he had no involvement with any fraudulent activity cited by the prosecution and that the protocol was widely used for lawful purposes. More common sense. Great to hear. The they've they've begun with some evidence presentation. The prosecution has, plans to present Telegram chat extractive extracted from the phone of, one of the co creators, Alekty Percev. And they're gonna use that to support their case.
And they've also done, you know, more on the hand things like showing photos of Roman Storm wearing a t shirt depicting a washing machine with the Tornado Cash logo inside of it, which obviously, you know, you'd understand how that could be construed, unfortunately. You could. Yeah. The jury's been selected. They've down selected that and done the shortlist. And then over on day two, they've begun some of the the, what's the word I'm looking for? They've been Testimony. Sponsorship. Testimony. They've started showing some evidence. Yeah. Thank you. The first, person or was an FBI forensic account accountant named Jessica Reyes or Reyes.
She presented various charts detailing, pepper sex expenditure, which I believe is is like a a regulated entity linked to tornado cash that you can probably That was the company behind tornado cash, the company that they formed around it. Yep. So the but the and the defense attorney has had the opportunity to kind of cross examine, this FBI forensic accountant accountant as well. And if I'm being honest from judging by the rage article, it's made it look a little bit foolish. The, the defense has challenged Reyes on the accuracy of her data, noting that in multiple, of her spreadsheets and pie charts that none of them add up to a 100%. Basically pointing the finger of, okay. Well, if you're using this as evidence, where is the rest of the funds that you're you're you're supposedly so sure that they've been spent?
There was some that added up to 90%. There was some that added up to a 104%. And in all cases, the the, forensic accountant was kind of unable to give an accurate answer, which again is a a positive for for the defense's kind of, stance here. And I think yeah. So the defense is basically had an effect quite an effective cross examination of Reyes to cast out on the prosecution narrative that tornado cash developers were engaged in illicit financial activities, which could potentially again, I'm I'm using a bit of conjecture here, but potentially weaken the government's case. So that brings us up to speed with everything that I've got. And once again, thanks to the guys at The Rage. I'm gonna kind of open with a question for you guys to to to kind of riff on and comment here.
And, again, this comes from from the article. I believe David Morris did this one, and it was a great quote, and I wanted to include it is, does a right to privacy really exist if it's illegal to provide privacy?
[00:18:05] Unknown:
I mean, I think, this is this is the crux of the case, honestly, is getting to the heart of what what rights do we actually have both as developers and as users. Like, I think, thankfully, for those who remember, there was a sanctions case around Tornado Cash in The US brought by the Department of Treasury. They sanctioned the entire protocol to prevent US citizens from being able to to legally use Tornado Cash. And that side of things is targeted at you don't have a right to privacy as an individual citizen. And then the indictment against Tornado Cash is targeted at you don't have a right to create privacy tools as a US citizen either, which is, I I think, really, them trying to hit both sides of the right to privacy at once. Thankfully, the sanctions have been overturned following, multiple court cases mostly done by the the folks over at Coin Center have done done a fantastic job.
So US citizens now are not barred for using Tornado Cash anymore, which is encouraging. I can still but now the like you said, the access do well. To take it away. Those of us who are developers Yeah. Or working with companies who are building software, specifically open source software. When we're using
[00:19:15] Unknown:
these technologies, I know most people listen to this probably more heavily on To those of us who are can you hear me still? Monero, but, you know, with these change that are trackable, it's very dangerous. That's the thing that they leave out, I think. Like, it's not it's not seen or not expressed as far as I can see in these courtrooms, the positives, the benefits of being able to, not leak all this data about your finances, and it's extremely dangerous. I I feel like every every couple of weeks when we do the Bitcoin brief, there's another story of another person who's had family members kidnapped or they've been tortured or something terrible has happened because somebody has found out that they have a significant amount of a cryptocurrency, and they try to take it from them. And without these tools on open public blockchains, it's very, very dangerous for the end user. So, you know, they're talking about protecting people and the that's what these agencies are supposed to be there for. But at the end of the day, what they're really doing is hurting people, and they're taking away tools that can protect people's families, and that's extremely dangerous.
[00:20:44] Unknown:
Yeah. Bo Boia, c a x a, please tell me how to say that name, in the YouTube chat said, there isn't much to say. Still made a tool that the corrupt system doesn't like, and now he's being fucked by the same corrupt system. We all know that they are corrupt. Yeah. I think that's a quite succinct way to summarize it. I I I have a question for you. If if if cash was never a thing, and it was introduced now in 2025, do you think the government would allow it? Definitely not. Because cash is the best.
[00:21:14] Unknown:
The only the only the only flaw with cash is sending it across borders is is hard. But, like Right. If someone said to me, do you wanna get paid in Bitcoin or cash? And it's like a local thing, like, cash. Definitely. No question. Monero maybe, I would say, yeah. But still probably cash is still the best. It's still what most most people will use if they don't wanna be tracked. It is still the best. I guess gold could be quite good as well. No one's most normal people aren't using cryptocurrencies for this stuff. Most normal people are using them just to make payments, normal payments. They're not stealing from people. They're not doing anything that would be deemed to be criminal, but that's not how it's painted.
[00:22:05] Unknown:
Yeah. Absolutely. I I think we've got Seth back with us.
[00:22:10] Unknown:
Theoretically. I should be back. Everything okay. We we can hear you now. I don't know if you can remember where you were, but if you wanna pick up where you left off, please feel free. Yeah. I don't know exactly where I where I got lost. I was in the middle of talking and then noticed that I just lost all Internet on all of my devices, which is beautiful. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I'll I'll just very quickly recap what I was saying because I'm not sure exactly where it cut out. But, basically, I was just just saying that there was the sanctions that were stopping individuals from having a right to financial privacy. And then there's this case that was targeted at making it so the developers don't have the right to build privacy software.
Thankfully, the sanctions were overturned following multiple cases by Coin Center, and US citizens can now use Tornado cashing in. That's at a very good precedent for for preventing that in the future. But then on the on the case side, it definitely like, the the key thing that lots of people have mentioned, so it's probably not fresh if you've listened to anything around tornado cash. But the the idea here that a developer can be liable for the way their product is used, even if they have no ability technically to prevent its usage in that way, would have massive impacts across the entire technology ecosystem, especially the open source ecosystem, and would essentially make no one want to build open source code in The US anymore, which would have massive ramifications for the economy. Like, you you it would be hard to, like, hard to even quantify or think about how dangerous, how harmful that precedent of essentially unlimited liability for developers would be. So that's the the crazy thing at stake here. Like you said, thankfully, it seems like the first couple of days have gone relatively smoothly with the, with the trial with with good stuff on the defense's side. A lot of weirdness for the prosecution.
Basically, trying to just make tornado cash look bad because people got scammed and their money went through tornado cash even though there's no ability for them to do anything. But, definitely curious to see how how things keep going. But this is definitely, like, this is the trial that essentially is, do you have a right to build privacy tools? And even more broadly, do you have a right to publish open source code and not have unlimited liability for how it's used?
[00:24:21] Unknown:
Yeah. That that's the big one here, isn't it? Is is the kind of implications on, like, the ability to publish open source code. Do you think, you know, in in the utopian world where this case goes the right way and we we all get the result that we want, that it's gonna kinda bring about kind of a, I guess, a bit more of a of a rush or a or a renaissance of privacy tech, Or do you think people are gonna be, somewhat understandably cautious despite the kind of the, you know, the recent ruling that, you know, this could be a not necessarily a green light, but could be at least getting a bit more freedom to to develop software in the way in which that you want it.
[00:24:59] Unknown:
I think you would definitely bring about a a rush in the increase of people wanting to build privacy tech in the cryptocurrency space specifically. Because, I mean, like, between this and the samurai wallet trial, which are both obviously still ongoing, like, don't wanna forget about the samurai wallet guys either. The the chilling effect that this has is immense. And, I mean, I'll even say, like, that this has a chilling effect on what we're willing to implement and launch at Cake Wallet. Like, I'm not gonna be not gonna be dishonest about that. Like, we would love to ship something like Whirlpool, but we also don't wanna compromise everything else that we're doing for that one piece. And, obviously, we're we're a known entity. We're a US company. Like, that would be extraordinarily dangerous right now to do something like that. But if there's a clear precedent set that that sort of thing is okay, is not a money services business, is not a money translate transmitter, is not liable for the way people use something that doesn't use any service or, server of yours, that would be absolutely fantastic for the space as a whole. And I think really would, especially on, like, the the wallet developer, the company side would kind of create a a Cambrian explosion of sorts of creativity because there wouldn't be this, like, this essentially legal or regulatory gray area or even, scarier area where where you're unsure what will happen to you as an individual if you publish something like that. So I think we we've already seen that more broadly in the crypto space, in the Bitcoin space since Trump took over in The US and since a lot of the regulatory headwinds essentially disappeared overnight or in the first few weeks. So we've already seen that affecting other areas, but I think, really, privacy is lagging behind because there's still these cases that are are somehow persisting despite the broader federal government being against this sort of anti crypto legislation through prosecution.
[00:26:48] Unknown:
Yeah. What Max, what's your take on the the comment from that says, I think this these days, what devs need to do is make the same, do the same as Satoshi did and create a pseudonymous chat through PGP with a restricted group of devs and then leave the project. What's your take on that?
[00:27:06] Unknown:
I would say, like, if you're doing things that could put you in a cell at the moment, that's probably wise. It was definitely wise. And, you know, it's the kind of thing we see from, like, Ashikaru at the moment. It's like they're not known entities. They're not and they have to do that. But I think that would be sad. That would be a sad state of affairs that that's the way it would have to be going forward because then it does mean that it is illegal to create privacy software that can protect most users and can be abused by some criminals like every other technology in the fucking world.
It would be a massive loss for users because as Seth said, it, you know, it couldn't just be a simple, oh, we'll just put Whirlpool straight into, into k wallet. Like, they wouldn't do that because they're a known entity, and they have families and lives, and no one wants to be put in a fucking cage. So, yeah, I mean, at the moment, I mean, I can't do it anyway because I'm a fucking mong. But if I was gonna create that type of software, I would definitely make sure that I wasn't known. I was using PGP. I was covering my tracks. I didn't have too much to lose. You know? But I don't wanna see a world like that. I wanna see a world where we can develop and create and, and privacy isn't criminalized.
[00:28:36] Unknown:
Yeah. In a in a world where ultimately, we, the developers, aren't the ones responsible for enforcing good versus evil. Yeah. Like the the That's crazy. Yeah. It it's it's insanity to think that the the the solution to people doing bad things with technology is to force developers to not build technology that can be used to do bad things. Like, the the ramifications of that and the logic of that are just, like, so wildly disconnected from reality that it's it's hilarious, but it would be more hilarious if it wasn't also sad because people's lives are right now at risk of being ruined by this sort of prosecution. So it's it's crazy to think that, ultimately, that's what the government is saying here is you, the end developer, are the one responsible for enforcing good versus evil for preventing illicit activity, not us understand. The government with trillions of dollars at at our disposal, not us, law enforcement, with every piece of surveillance technology under our belt.
But you, the developer, building open source code, are the one who needs to ensure that no one can do bad things with your technology, which is insane from so many angles, but even more so because technology is necessarily neutral, and it depends on how it's going to be used. Everything that can be used for good can also be used for evil. An ambulance could be used to run people over. It it it doesn't you can't decide how a tool can be used. You can build it and build it with good legitimate use cases. And if people use it for bad things and it's unstoppable, that's unfortunate. But that's why we pay taxes supposedly is so that they can stop the bad guys while the good guys get to build and prosper in peace.
[00:30:14] Unknown:
Yeah. Indeed. I think that's a great way to kind of cap off, this, portion of the show. Obviously, we'll we'll do our best to keep you guys updated across the various, shows and streams that we've got in the ungovernable, ungovernable, empire as it seems to, be growing into. But, yeah, appreciate your insights, guys, and let's hope that the the positive start that the the process the sorry, that the defense has had, this week continues as as the trial comes on, or progresses. I believe they estimate the trial is gonna last up to three to four weeks. So, hopefully, you know, it doesn't drag on, and we we we get we all get the the result that we wanted. But, we shall see, and we'll keep you up to date.
Alright. So I wanna get on to, the questions. Again, we have, way more than we can get through, and some of these are really good and probably ones that we could talk about for a good fifteen to twenty minutes apiece. I'm gonna gonna, once again remind people that, we will prioritize those in the livestream. So if you if you're listening and you have a question or a topic that you want us to cover, feel free to drop it into the Twitter comments or the YouTube comments or even on an XMOT chat, and we'll, make sure we see that come through and jump on it. But for now, while we're wait waiting for any live questions to come through, wanna kick off with a question from Rob g on Twitter. Before you do before you do, should we just mention that the top three
[00:31:34] Unknown:
questions this episode are gonna win Yes. Some SATs or PICOs thanks to k Qualit. So every every time you tune in here, you have the chance to win a prize if you have, if you enter whatever competition we're running. And this time, it's, best questions.
[00:31:53] Unknown:
Yeah. We're gonna do $50 for the top three question $50 each for the top three questions. You choose if you want it in Bitcoin on chain, Bitcoin landing, Monero. Name it, claim it. We'll ship it to you. Very nice.
[00:32:06] Unknown:
Awesome. Thank you, KQL. Yeah. There's an incentive. Thank you, KQL. With that said, gonna kick off with the first person to respond to our tweets this week, was Rob g on Twitter. And his question is multisig versus single sig plus passphrase for a non public Bitcoiner with their life savings in Bitcoin? To clarify, there are a few attack surfaces slash vulnerabilities I can think of that are two or three multi vendor, multisig would help me sleep better about, But I'm not sure if they are worth the extra effort. But here they are anyway. Number one, bad entropy in the random number generator of your hardware wallet. Number two, some type of manufacturer attack where they preprogram the hardware wallet to generate known seeds and will one day, quote, retirement attack all of their wallets by sweeping everything.
And number three, malicious firmware updates. Number four, supply chain attack on your hardware wallet whilst on route. Very detailed question. It is a good question. Yeah. Very detailed, and I appreciate the the follow-up to you with to give us the extra context as well to kind of spell out what you or whoever it is that you're referring to, is worried about. I I think you can without jumping down the the multisig rabbit hole straight away and just trying to keep everybody's, self custody or cold storage set up as simple as possible for as long as possible, which is for those of you who have heard my voice on any podcast is what I always kind of, kind of try to whack lyrical about is just keep it simple for as long as you can. But some of the stuff that you are worried about, bad entropy, some, pre you know, retirement attack from a preprogrammed hardware wallet, and malicious firmware updates, etcetera.
All of those things can be mitigated even in a single signature setup by choosing the right hardware wallet and buying directly from the manufacturer. Open source software that's reproducible and verifiable, it it would enable somebody with the technical know how to spot bad entropy or or low quality entropy. The same goes for the the kind of retirement attack. You can obviously fix that by bringing your own entropy if you're advanced enough. But once again, I would urge extreme caution, in doing that. And, again, the a decent hardware wallet will also have a supply chain kind of validation check or security check as part of their onboarding such that you can you know, if it passes that test, you could be sure that the firmware on the device is not being altered whilst it is en route to you and after it leaves their factory.
But with all that said, yes. Would somebody in that position gain some extra security from going to maybe a passphrase wallet or a even a multisig wallet? Yes. Absolutely. Because, again, in the instance where you are using multi vendor multisig, even if you buy one of the worst own like, phone devices on the market, if that's just one key out of a possible three, where you need two to to sign in the instance of a two or three multisig then, you are protected from that specific device being the biggest piece of shit known to man. So, yes, you do get extra protection from vendors as well as, of course, all of the obvious stuff that you also get with multisig being that, you know, you don't have any single points of failure. And, you know, you just make yourself a lot more difficult to attack. But, again, as always, there's trade offs with that increased security.
To name just a few, you know, you've just got more stuff to look after. You've got, let's say, in the two or three scenario, you've got three devices. You've got three sets of secret backups. So there's potentially six locations that you need to store sensitive items. Most people are probably gonna struggle with that, and which would then push people to go down, you know, routes that may compromise or degrade the security of that by keeping devices close by or keeping seed words in easier to access places. Like, it just depends very much on the person. And then the descriptors and all that stuff as well. Yeah. With with with with, in in fairness, like, that is getting easier.
That is for most, multisig wallet coordinators these days is just, you know, store this file or print this piece of paper. So there's a million and one ways that you can do that. Obviously, you need the knowledge that you need to store that and and more more specifically, multiple copies of that in different locations. But most of the good coordinators will walk you through that as part of the onboarding anyway. So I believe that that is less of an issue than it used to be, but it is, of course, another thing, you know, yet another thing that you need to store when you go down the route of multisig. So, again, another piece of the trade off. So, again, I'm gonna take the the easy route to say, look, for for Rob g or the person that you're talking about, you know, it's impossible for me to say, what he should do or what the person that he's referring to to should do because I just don't have a full understanding of what that person's scenario is like, like, what what you know, their competency, their spouse's competency because inheritance is obviously a huge part of this as well. It's no good having the most secure setup in the world if, you know, your Bitcoin's gonna disappear with you because your wife or husband has no idea where you kept all of your three devices. And even if they did know, do they know how to get into them and operate them and coordinate them together to sign a transaction?
Like, that's gonna be difficult enough for a non Bitcoiner with a with one hardware wallet. You multiply that to two or three, and then they've gotta use, you know, a piece of software they're not familiar with. Gonna be difficult. So, yeah, trade offs all the way down. My advice, keep it as simple as you can for as long as you can. The the biggest cause of loss for most people with Bitcoin is that they fuck themselves out of it rather than somebody holding a gun to their head. So you, probably don't need as much security as you think you do. But, you know, with Bitcoin is it pays to be powering it, and it pays to kind of plan ahead and think of the worst case scenario. So I fully appreciate the kind of threat modeling, and, hopefully, you know, the the points I've raised will give you some food for thought. But, guys, I don't know whether you've got anything else to add to that.
[00:38:15] Unknown:
Mhmm. I just wanna just harp on two things. You mentioned everything I would normally mention going through this. But the the two things I want to just kind of reinforce again. The main thing when I think about this and talk to people about this that is often not considered is that inheritance angle of, like, that's great that you're this very technically savvy, very experienced Bitcoiner. If you're single or you have someone else who's extremely technically savvy and experienced, that's great. But for most of us who are married or have children or have a family who are not technically savvy or who are not Bitcoiners, the idea of having them be able to in the middle of grieving and trauma, because that's the assumption here, is that something really bad has happened and that I'm not able to to access my my Bitcoin stack, and instead, my wife does or something.
In the middle of that, they're going to need to do this extremely tedious process without a lot of experience. So it's like that's a very, very important thing to consider is, will this money just be gone when you're gone, or will it not be accessible in a time of need when you're gone? There are obviously ways around that. You can educate your spouse or family, walk them through it many times, have them regularly use the setup so that they're familiar and comfortable with it. There's obviously things you can do, but, that part is is always top of mind for me. And the other one that you you obviously note again, q and a, is just this idea of, like, how do people actually lose their Bitcoin?
And very I I literally cannot speak to any instance of someone losing their Bitcoin in a a good single sig hardware wallet scenario. Outside of fishing, where it doesn't matter if it's a multi sig or something. Because if you're vulnerable to fishing, you'd give up three seeds instead of one. But in most scenarios, it is just people screwing up and losing their money. So keeping things simple for most people is far, far, far better protection than going advanced with security. But just like you said, we don't know your specific scenario, your specific situation. Multi seg may be a better use case for you, especially if you're storing, like, massive amounts of wealth or something like that.
It could be better. It just it very much comes down to you need to figure out what am I trying to protect, who am I trying to protect it from, and what lengths am I and those close to me willing to go to protect it.
[00:40:32] Unknown:
Yeah. Well said. Thank you for the question, Rob g. That was, that was a great one, and hopefully, a lot of people got some insights from that one. Excuse me. I do have a couple from, from the live chat. Cortic, I I won't spend some time answering this in detail because I know it's a tongue in cheek question, but, I'll read it nonetheless. Do do you think not to users spend their Bitcoin ever, and how is their fee estimates? Yeah. I, he's referring to, obviously, to, to to the filter crowd, which, I'm I'm not one of. I actually
[00:41:06] Unknown:
I I do have a Oh, go on. An interesting anecdote here. Yeah. Just a minute. So I know it is tongue in cheek, but I I won't name who it is. But I actually was just talking to someone yesterday who is a not user and was complaining that fee estimation was causing their, coin joins to fail because their fee estimation was diverging so much from the active memble. So, obviously, that's not necessarily everybody. This is somebody who has, like, a really cool, really cypherpunk stack doing things the right way, but was using knots and had run into issues because of it. So it's, that was an interest that was the first, like, real world example of someone who I know was actually trying to use and spend Bitcoin and had problems because of knots and had to swap to using core to be able to properly use CoinJoin. So an an interesting example of that, that people should keep in mind.
[00:41:54] Unknown:
And all of that is while we're having a fairly low fee environment. So, presumably, that would be massively exacerbated when things get a bit spicy.
[00:42:01] Unknown:
Yeah. Now is, like, the best case scenario for a Nazi they're putting on their mempool blindfold.
[00:42:07] Unknown:
Yeah. That's very interesting. Okay. Well, there you go, Cortic. Thank you for the question. Next one comes from Vibrant Subtlety. How do you assess the new trade offs involved in using a seed signer, which was initially built to be fully buildable with off the shelf hardware and that now has a focus or sorry. Now the focus has shifted towards incorporating a larger custom LCD display hat. Does this shift undermine the platform's original DIY ethos and their flexibility it provided to users? So, I mean, I'll take that quickly. I'm not familiar with the the custom LCD app, but I'm I'm guessing that the fact that you're saying custom is that this is no longer, you know, something that you can just go and buy off the shelf.
If that is the case, and again, I'm saying that with with, a big if because I'm not familiar with it, then, yeah, it it would diminish the kind of DIY nature, which for me is the biggest selling point of a seat signer is that, you know, if you're in a in a jurisdiction where you just cannot, or it's too risky for you to import a passport or or similar kind of premanufactured hardware wallet, but you wanted air gap security or air gap multisig, then Seatsigner was kind of one of you the few options that you had. Well, with that said, I guess, to kind of push back on my own narrative, like, if you can get this custom LCD purchased separately, then it's still the same kind of approach, isn't it? You're just buying parts in, just presumably if if this is a custom LCD that you can only get from one manufacturer, then as long as you're buying the parts in separately, I don't see it being too detrimental to the kind of, ethos or or what you're able to do and where you can do it with the seed signer. Don't know what you think, Max.
[00:43:48] Unknown:
Yeah. No. I agree with that. I think the seed signer is incredible, especially for certain use cases. I've said it many times. It's it's not something I personally use myself, but I I see a massive, use case out there for it. And I think it's one of the ones if I was gonna build a clever multisig setup. It's probably the other device that I would use, outside of a passport. So, huge respect for them. I I don't think that it diminishes anything. Basically, what you've just said is is spot on. I can't really add anything to that.
[00:44:26] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, my my understanding of this is, like, just because people can build one using a custom LCD hat, it doesn't change that you can still build and use it with the the regular off the shelf parts. Like, as long as the firmware continues to support both LCD hats, there's there's no restriction for you as the end user. It just adds extra flexibility for those that do have access to this LC hat or already have one micron from another project or whatever. So I think as long as the firmware continues to support the off the shelf parts, which as far as I understand, it absolutely does and absolutely will continue to, it doesn't cause any problems for those who who want to go the traditional route. It just means that there's more more optionality for those who are more building it as a a fun tech tool rather than necessarily, like, the the most hardcore threat model of wanting it to be only off the shelf hardware.
[00:45:16] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:45:18] Unknown:
Agreed. Yep. William Hornblower has asked, does Foundation core slash prime have analog precaution like anti x fill, Jade, or anti Klepto Bitbox? Obviously, I'll be able to take that one. So, yeah, the this anti Klepto, anti x filter to quickly summarize, again, it is quite technical, and the the full details of it are even way above my pay grade. But it's essentially, a a way to detect or prevent your hardware wallet from, leaking or over time private key data, through either malice or incompetence. USB devices like the Jade or the Bitbox are able to do this because they have that kind of active permanent connection with the the the kind of coordinator software that they're connected to. So it's much easier to to do that in a way that isn't detrimental in any way, shape, or form to the end user. They don't even know it's happening. It just happens through the USB kind of bus communication. With air gap devices like, passport core, and, you know, call card, etcetera, is is no different.
When we interact with, SD cards or QR codes to be able to introduce the kind of anti exfil, anti Klepto depending on what you wanna call it, would basically be what it would mean is an extra round of QR codes back and forth, which is clearly, you know, a massive hurdle for for user experience. Like, if you're in the the wrong environment with the wrong device trying to scan QR codes, it can be difficult anyway depending on the hardware you choose, of course, to then have to do that back and forth again just to sign a transaction is is a huge kind of step away from the the what we want with QR code kind of, user experience, essentially. So the short answer is it's not impossible, but we believe that the the risks can be mitigated in other ways that aren't detrimental to the user, namely with open source software and with reproducible software as well, which is obviously the route that we go down with, all of our products at, at Foundation.
However, of course, we're moving into a world where Passport Prime is gonna be in customer's hands in, you know, a matter of days now. Passport Prime will, soon be able to sign transactions via the USB c port on the bottom. So, of course, we'll be looking to to implement any extra protections that we can in, via, you know, transaction signing via that method. Because as I stated stated at the top of the answer, the user is none the wiser. So, yes, we will be looking to do that for for the USB sign in with, with Passport Prime.
[00:47:55] Unknown:
And Bluetooth as well.
[00:47:57] Unknown:
Indeed. Yeah. Of course. With Bluetooth as well. Yeah. Because I get once again, same thing. It's just the user doesn't know. It's just an additional back and forth whilst everything's happening automatically unbeknown to the user. So, yeah, thank you for the, point of clarification.
[00:48:10] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. One thing you you briefly mentioned there that I just wanna reinforce too is this requires your hardware wallet to be running malicious firmware. It it's not something that can happen just kind of accidentally or something like that. It would require you to be running malicious firmware on the hardware wallet itself. So this is a protection against even when you're running malicious firmware that it can't exfiltrate the private keys off the hardware wallet and get them to the the malicious entity that's built that farmer. So, like, you and I said that this idea of reproducible builds, this idea of properly signed firmware, open source firmware essentially solves this, but it always is nice to have extra layers of protection like you do when you're able to do anti Klepto for Bluetooth through USB.
[00:48:48] Unknown:
But specifically on the passport, you'd have to first, you'd have to download the wrong software. You'd have to not verify it. And then when you do, try and load it onto the device using Envoy or whichever way you do it, it checks anyway to see if
[00:49:06] Unknown:
it's It wouldn't install it point blank unless it's signed by. That's what I mean. Install it. Yep. So, like, how So so well, with with hardware was, you can install custom, firmware, but you have to sign it with an external key, which has to then be loaded into the device. And as soon as you do that on any good hardware wallet, as soon as you turn it on, it will say this this device is running nonstandard firmware. You'll see that warning every time it boots up. That's the only way you can that's the only way you can install software that is not signed by us at Foundation. So for most people, that's it's never gonna happen.
[00:49:43] Unknown:
Yeah. Okay. So just don't do that then.
[00:49:46] Unknown:
Yeah. Okay. Next question comes from Ghost also on Twitter. Says, I love the idea of group wallets in Cake. My only question is, how do you maintain access if something happens to Cake? Without Cake Wallet, how do I access my Monero with only a 12 word Bitcoin seed?
[00:50:03] Unknown:
Yeah. It's a great question. So there there is a tool right now by Ledger that can be used to do 24 word seeds, not 12 at the moment. We we are also planning to release a separate tool that allows you to convert a 12 word Bitcoin, the 39 seed to a Monero seed. But the really important thing here is even if cake while at the company disappears, if literally anyone has the source code for cake wallet, you could build it and get access to your seed that way. So it's it's not like, that's again the beauty of open source software and freedom tech is that you're not reliant at all on k quality, the company, or k quality, the group of developers, or anything.
Even if you just downloaded a copy of the software and kept it handy, you could always build it at a later date and have access to that seed. Now, obviously, we want other options to be able to get that seed. So the two things you can do right now are, obviously, just have a copy of cake while it's code if you wanna keep that just in case. But also when you're actually in the Monero wallet, that's part of a wallet group in Cake Wallet. You can always export the or save right down stamp in a steal, whatever, the the regular legacy Monero seed, the 25 word seed, and restore height. So you can always get that now if you want to or even if, let's say, like, cake somehow cake disappears tomorrow as a company. Our app is wiped from all app stores, and the code in every computer everywhere is deleted.
As long as you have the app on your phone, you could still access that 25 word legacy seed. So there's there's not really a realistic scenario at all that you wouldn't be able to do this, but we do want to publish a separate tool at some point that will let you, convert those seed phrases. The other thing that I'll say is this is becoming an industry standard. So Exodus use this right now. So you could also use Exodus at the moment to get your full Monero seed. And we expect other wallets to also implement the standard, deriving that seed in the same way so you could always recover another wallets. Because we we definitely don't want you locked in, but, unfortunately, there wasn't really an industry standard before this. So we had to come up with it. We we expect it to take off in the industry, but there's many, many, many fail safes to make sure you can always recover your Monero.
[00:52:14] Unknown:
Very cool. Very concise and clear as always. Probably the last one we're gonna have time for maybe depends on how long it takes us to answer it. But, where have I put it now? Oh, Drinkop, asks, what is better for Bitcoin privacy? Whirlpool, obviously, with the the new Ashigaru, implementation, or swapping to Monero and then back again? The latter certainly seems a lot easier. Or am I retarded?
[00:52:40] Unknown:
Yes. You are retarded, mate. Come join me. I don't wanna be alone anymore. It's it depends. Can I take it? And then you just, like Yes, please. Yeah. Correct me. I I would say that they are best used in tandem. There are, from my understanding, issues with just swapping from from Bitcoin to Monero, because obviously or or or the other way around as well because of the traceability side on the Bitcoin side. So I would say in an ideal world, if I was gonna be doing a swap and it really mattered, I would be using something like Whirlpool first.
Maybe I would use Whirlpool, and then with the smaller denominations, maybe then I would do a swap, with those because the pool sizes are quite large at the moment. That's kind of how I would look to use it.
[00:53:43] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, like, I've answered this many times in the past, but to me, it really comes down to, like, what are you trying to protect your transactions from? If it's just, like, the barista at the coffee shop and not a nation state or chain analysis, either approach is gonna be sufficient. Swapping is definitely easier, but would I don't know. I was gonna say would cost more, but probably actually wouldn't cost more in in fees. And that would protect you from that person who doesn't have access to a bunch of off chain data. The problem is the difference between Whirlpool and swapping into Monero and immediately back out of Monero, which I'll be more specific in the use case that I see most people want to do is that swapping into Monero and then immediately back to Bitcoin.
The difference there is that in Whirlpool, no one knows exactly which output is yours in that mixing round except for you. Not even Ashigaru or Samurais, whoever's running the coordinator. Only you know which output is yours. On the swapping into Monero and back into Bitcoin side, technically, no outside observer knows that the Bitcoin on the other side is yours. But the instant exchange that you use, or potentially the atomic swap provider or a peer to peer swap partner, whatever route you're taking, most people are just going through an instant exchange because it's far easier and quicker. That person obviously knows that you're the same on the in and out, unless maybe you do it in separate swaps, and you do overtour, and you, like, refresh your session. Like, you do a lot of extra steps, but they could still have a really good guess that you're the same entity.
And then chain analysis, etcetera, those tracing firms have, for years now, had cross chain tracing, which what that really means is that they use timing and amount heuristics to to trace people doing things like this, swapping into Monero on an instant exchanger and swapping back to Bitcoin or Ethereum or something like that. So they have the capability to make very, very, very, very well educated guesses about that behavior. So Whirlpool, I would say, is more effective when it comes to breaking deterministic links. Swapping through an arrow is something I just generally don't advise because there's so many potential foot guns, so many potential problems.
But for simple surveillance protection, it can be good enough. But, really, the best way to do that would be to use Whirlpool so that you have deterministic links broken on Bitcoin. And then when you need to spend, you swap some of that whirlpooled Bitcoin into Monero every month or whatever, and you spend from the Monero. That's the best of both worlds, and that's what the the beauty of Whirlpool coming back really enables is that you can have, like that's really, in many ways, the ultimate setup for the freedom loving individual.
[00:56:31] Unknown:
I just add one other thing, which is, my concern with going if you didn't already use Whirlpool, and then use that Bitcoin to swap into Monero to spend. If you just had a UTXO that could be linked to you in some way, which is presumably why you're doing the swap in the first place anyway, You don't know who's on the other side of that swap, and you don't know what they might do with that Bitcoin, and you don't know what crazy law enforcement person might suddenly knock at your door and wrongly accuse of something that you had nothing to do with. And so that, I think, is a legitimate concern and why you should really do both and not fuck around.
[00:57:22] Unknown:
Yeah. I think I can't add anything of value other than what you guys have covered off, really. I think that's a a great nuance take as always. And and I guess, yeah, as always, there is no kind of perfect solution for one person. It depends where you're coming from and what your goals are as well. So, I'm gonna squeeze one more in just really quickly, and it was about Bitcoin ATMs. And, of course, I've just lost the question. Where has it gone? Oh, here we go. It comes from Trislo Arian DeFi on Twitter. How private are BTC ATMs? Do they do face recognition or keep serial numbers of bank notes? And how do they know when you reach the daily no KYC limit? Alright. Cool. I I can take this one quickly.
Having with with the caveat that I'm in The UK, we don't have any Bitcoin ATMs, but I know enough people, in jurisdictions that, do have them available to kind of hear about their experiences. How private are they? It depends how you use them. If you're giving it your kind of, Fiat phone number for one of a better term, then any of the funds are immediately tied to you. If you're doing that using a quote unquote burner number or one that's not tied to your personal identity, then, yes, you maybe you can purchase a bit more, privately.
With that, again, comes with the caveat that they don't ask for your ID, which unfortunately, a lot of them do these days even for for lower amounts. Do they do facial recognition? I would, operate under the assumption that they at least have a camera facing the ATM like most of them do. So minute warning. If you want to protect your privacy, then you should probably wear a mask, you know, for for COVID reasons, of course. Do they keep the serial numbers of bank notes? I've got no idea, but I, again, would say assume that they do. And how do they know when they when you reach the daily non KYC limit? But, again, this this comes back to how do they operate. Again, if it's just that you provide the phone number and you can buy up to, I don't know, a thousand dollars a day, then it'll just be any purchases against the mobile number provided.
But, unfortunately, as I said, most of them do require more identification. So it will just be a case of, you know, tying your identity to, to each of those purchases. And when you hit that limit, you'll just not be able to purchase anymore. Yeah. This it's a sorry state of affairs with Bitcoin ATMs. I I was really bullish on them back in, you know, 2019, 2020 before the regulation seemed to to clump down significantly on them even in places like The US. Seth, I don't know whether you've got any boots on the ground experience with what it's like these days in terms of the the ATM landscape.
[00:59:59] Unknown:
No. I I think you know that they're I mean, normally, I think they're not technically extensive enough to be doing, like, bank note tracking and stuff, but, obviously, it it always pays to to be wary. And like you said, unfortunately, that side of things has kind of been dying over the last three, four years due to regulation even in The US, unfortunately.
[01:00:19] Unknown:
Yeah. And it's also worth being COVID safe if you're gonna be using one of these because they will have cameras. And if they don't have cameras, then the place that you're using it will have cameras. So I used to use these quite a lot in The UK many years back, and I would always go mast and glasses and hat and make sure that I was using a burner and all those sort of things because, it's very, very easy with facial recognition. So, you can't I don't think there's any in The UK anymore, is there? But wherever there are, just bear that in mind that you will be filmed. I think it's less likely that you're gonna have, your your bank notes tracked. And and what are they gonna track them to? Like, where did you get them from is pretty difficult unless you've literally withdrawn them from a bank, and that bank's made a note. I I don't see that happening, but facial recognition Mhmm. And phone number is how they'd get you.
[01:01:13] Unknown:
Yeah. Absolutely. Alright, guys. We're we're already over time. Time has flown by. That was fun. Touch wood. We we got through without any technical issues. Thank you, to everybody that was, getting involved with the live chat. You asked about, the the Whirlpool kind of, comments. I'm gonna be covering that with Max on the next Bitcoin brief, so stay stay, cheap for that one. If you are listening to or watching this after the fact, please make sure to share the show, and just help spread the word, of Freedom Set Friday. And, yeah, we will see you the same time next week, guys.
[01:01:48] Unknown:
Thank you. Have a good one.
[01:01:49] Unknown:
We pull the plug in 54321. Stay ungovernable.
[01:01:56] Unknown:
Shit. I stopped the stream just as you played that, actual.
[01:02:00] Unknown:
That's alright, mate.
Technical Setup and Stream Issues
Weekly Updates and Bounties
FreedomTech Friday Introduction
Tornado Cash Case Overview
Right to Privacy Discussion
Implications for Developers
Listener Questions and Answers
Monero and Group Wallets
Bitcoin ATMs and Privacy Concerns
