{ "episodeId": "SLP117", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "pura_vida": { "name": "Pura Vida", "role": "guest", "tag": "PURA" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:08", "start": 8.27, "text": "Hi and welcome to the Stephan Livera podcast focused on Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today, for episode one hundred and seventeen, we're talking with Pura Vida about his journey learning about Bitcoin privacy. But first, a word for the sponsors of the show. So firstly, check out Kraken, one of the world's leading and longest standing Bitcoin exchanges. They're consistently rated the best. They have a high quality platform, they offer some of the best liquidity in the industry, there's high trading volume and low fees, with no minimum or hidden fees. On top of that, Kraken are renowned for their focus on security with Kraken Security Labs. 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You can also get Bitcoin as a present for birthdays, Christmas, bar mitzvahs, graduation and weddings, so put Bitcoin on your wish list at GiveBitcoin.io. I really think GiveBitcoin.io can have a positive impact on Bitcoin adoption and understanding, so I'm excited to have them as a sponsor. So today's episode is my discussion with Pura Vida. I've seen them around the traps in the Samurai Wallet chat group and the Nodle chat group It'd be an interesting perspective to share in terms of learning about Bitcoin privacy and putting it into practice. So we talk about things like coin joining, considering your UTXOs and coin selection or \"coinfu\" as Rory Highside calls it, and using your own Bitcoin node and using your own block explorer, and this also incorporates using tools such as Samurai Wallet and Nodle. So here's the interview. Welcome to the show, Pura Vida. Hey Stefan, appreciate you having me. So Pura, I know you're doing a lot of work. Obviously you're more of a pseudonym, you're not, publicly disclosing your name and stuff. But I know you're doing a bit of work and you're actually a moderator in the Samurai Telegram chat group and also you're, in the, active in the Nodle chat group as well. But, yeah, I was really keen to talk with you. But let's just start with a little bit of, just a Just whatever you're comfortable to say around how, how you got into Bitcoin and why. Yeah, sure. I mean, honestly," }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "04:31", "start": 271.22, "text": "I was always a gold and silver guy back in the day. Always wanted to control My money, you know, I, I, I was never a big fan of the banks. One of my buddies, guess it was probably back in two thousand and fifteen, talked me a little bit about Bitcoin. Unfortunately, I wasn't one of the two thousand nine, two thousand ten guys, like all of us wish we were. But, yeah, so he started talking to me about it, we got online, started, playing around with it, spending it, trading it, doing things we shouldn't be doing probably on the trading side, but, now that I know more seeing the value in it, and from there, as the years progressed, the big bull market we all rode up and rode back down and everything, Started really, I, I got involved in the, learned about Samurai Wallet, Nodal, and all these other awesome teams out there, probably, two thousand and seventeen, eighteen, somewhere in that area, and really honed in on the privacy aspect with internet life in general, but, I mean, with Bitcoin, it's very important, we need that, so really got me focusing on, What we, what most people don't think about in, in this, in this space, so it's, it's really cool to be involved there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:51", "start": 350.9, "text": "Awesome, man. and so tell us a little bit of your journey of how maybe in the earlier days you might have just used random wallets, but now you've sort of learned more of the ethos of running your own full node and connecting to your own full node. Oh yeah, so I, I couldn't" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "06:06", "start": 366.01, "text": "tell you how many wallets I've had on my phone. It's been anything from \"Bread\" before it was \"B" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "06:14", "start": 373.97, "text": "You know, gosh, I don't even know what other wallets I've had on there, just random Bitcoin wallets that popped up in the i-iOS App Store 'cause I was using Apple at the time. so I was, you know, we're all pretty limited there on what, what we could get. the functionality, well, Coinbase Wallet, too, you know, I mean, that's just unfortunately what was easy to use then. there really wasn't many good ones out there. I mean, they were starting to pop up, Learning. Coin control when everything was important, so trying to figure out what wallet gave you the full coin control, what wallet let you send it off their wallet to your own hardware wallet. So started learning more on the hardware wallet side, and really through that whole process, still not really thinking about the privacy side yet, you know, and that's- that's a whole different aspect there. So, my journey was iOS based, got, somehow, I think it was a Andreas Antonopoulos chat, heard him talking about Samurai Wallet on one of his videos, went and joined the group and They really opened my eyes before I even started using the wallet on how privacy should function and work within the bi-bitcoin ecosystem and just in life in general, and how I was at it, honestly, and all of us are probably. I mean, it's, it's unbelievable. So, got talking about, or start focusing on samurai, and I heard people saying, \"Nah, just get you a cheap Android phone and do, you know, get you a fifty dollar phone, a hundred dollar phone.\" Did that. Start playing with the wallet, loved it, and eventually, three androids later, got a nice android phone, and I haven't looked at iOS since, right? So, I mean, that's where I am in life with the, the wallet side. So, after that, I was one of the first Casa node guys. So right when Jameson tweeted that Casa was rolling out a node, I got on board, got involved there, really liked what they were doing, the whole lightning network thing, how, and you know, second layer solutions, bringing Bitcoin kind of clicked in my head a little bit how that's an option as well, so I wanted to, you know, join on the node in a box thing. I was running a full node for a while, it was on a desktop computer, laptop or whatever. but there's also a lot of, issues there you have with, you're running hundreds of different software programs that you don't know what they're doing to different parts of the computer there, so, there's some threat factor or threat vectors you have to watch out for, and I wasn't really thinking through that, nor was I doing a lot on a desktop wallet anyway, but, The node in all in a box, its own hardware, doing its own thing really clicked in my head, so jumped on with Casa. Then Nodal came out and I saw the power that Nodal had, so got a Nodal not too long after. And ever since, I've just been building, so I've, you know, got multiple nodes, Electrum, started with Electrum personal server, learning about- Bringing, you know, controlling those keys, watch, verifying all your own transactions, not relying on block explorers to give you that information is very important. And, from there, you know, you have BTC Pay Server, availability. So, I'm part of the Lightning Hood team, so we, we had a store and all that, so we used BTC Pay server with that as well, but then with Samurai and Dojo out, spun that up on a desktop, pointing it to the Bitcoin node on my Nodal, and now Full-fledged, in my mind, full-fledged self-sovereignty there, you know, I'm doing everything myself from verifying all my Whirlpool mixing transactions, through Dojo, verifying all my Mobile wallet transactions and then anything I'm doing with hardware wallets as well. So it's, it's trying to start that full stack compatibility there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:13", "start": 613.21, "text": "Right, yeah. And let's break that down a little bit just for listeners who might not be as familiar. So typically a lot of wallets are basically calling out to somebody else's server. And so the idea here is if you're able to set up your own Bitcoin server, then you can do that in a way that's more respecting of your own privacy and you're also- So not trusting, because how do you know that, for example, the-- if you're trusting somebody else's server, how do you know they're not lying to you, right? And so that is, where these node products can come in. And, can you tell us a little bit about your process around setting up the nodal, and then connecting that with your own, devices?" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "10:57", "start": 656.92, "text": "Yeah, sure. So, Quito Miner's done a great job building that product, so when you, when you get the box itself, virtually- Plug and play, right? So you're plugging it in, you log in, you can SSH into it if you wanna get root access to it and do anything you want on the box outside of the, the GUI or the, I guess, the web, the web interface. But basically, when you log into your web interface, set your password and everything, you have access, you, you start by installing Bitcoin D. Then right behind that, I always prefer to go with Tor, so run everything behind Tor, no matter what, if you can, in that aspect. From there, you can install LND and, the lightning, yeah, lightning network daemon there, if you want BTC pay server, you can do that. when the f- when the model first rolled out, you have Electrum personal server, which is basically a back-end option to not use the Electrum servers, because- It's a speculation, but we're all pretty sure that Chainalysis has some Electrum servers out there, and I, I damn well know in the beginning, I was, I'm sure pinging back in the day, pinging Electrum servers without even paying, paying any sense about, you know, not even thinking about it. So, So running EPS and now he has Electromex on there, which that actually takes a whole basically transaction history. So the log, when you log on, your transactions come up almost immediately, which has been really nice. so, and you can run a lot more wallets on there, and you're also not putting your xpubs into Electrum Personal Server. So when you do Electrum Personal Server, you're putting your xpubs on there, and, you know, that's, that's a risk factor, I guess, exposing those xpubs, you know, if somebody malicious somehow got into your computer or something and saw those xpubs, again, it's just exposing things you don't want out there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:48", "start": 768.34, "text": "When it comes to Bitcoin privacy, I think there are different parts in" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:56", "start": 775.7, "text": "Bitcoin's and spending those bitcoins. Maybe if we think of it in terms of acquiring those bitcoins, there are different ways to do that obviously. So you could buy it in cash in person, using things like Bisc or HodlHodl, or you might, use, a KYC exchange, and some people might do a mix afterwards. What, how do you think about those ways of acquiring Bitcoin, and then what should listeners be thinking of when it comes to their Bitcoin privacy? And what they've just done in terms of how they acquired those bitcoins? They" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "13:29", "start": 808.69, "text": "acquired, sure. So honestly, it all comes down to a threat level in my mind, right? So most people out there are gonna go with what's easy. It's gonna be a KYC, nice interface, quick, the fees aren't bad, so your Coinbase is-- and I'm just speaking in terms of localized to me, but Coinbase, Cash App, gosh, I don't even know, you know, even just a standard exchange, right? If they're doing a little trading, you can buy on there with, however, send money to Gemini and buy that way, right? So it depends on your threat level. If you don't care, you're in it for the trading, by all means, do whatever you want. Again Not your keys, not your coins, right? So buying on an exchange KYC'd, what you're doing is, they will report you to whatever tax authority you're in. They might, they might not give you your reports, but they're watching and they can find that out, right? So your other options, you got Bisc, completely decentralized exchange, it's a great product, the liquidity's a little off and on depending on where you are, right? but, but it functions, it works, it's great, HodlHodl, I've never personally used, but it lo- seems to be a really good, good option out there. And, you know, local bitcoins before they started really hammering down on the KYC was great. luckily I met a guy that I can do cash trades if I ever- Or buy Bitcoin, which I don't do. I can do, cash trades with him if I wanted to, or anybody could do that if they know. So the threat model, though What you have is your UTXOs, they don't-- when you put them into a wallet, let's just, we'll use Coinbase for instance, you wanna buy a hundred and fifty bucks worth of Bitcoin, they're gonna send you a transaction, say you wanna send it to your hardware wallet. Okay, it goes off Coinbase to your hardware wallet, let's just say Trezor or Coldcard. Well, then another day you have your samurai wallet, you found a guy that's got a hundred and fifty, you just do cash transaction, right? You send it to that same hardware wallet. If you're not thinking about it, you actually have a hundred and fifty dollars in Bitcoin, U-- in one, let's say one UTXO that hasn't been tied to your name in any way. But once, let's say you wanna go buy something and you're not really thinking about You have enough Bitcoin, but you're not thinking how you acquire that Bitcoin, and then you need to merge those UTXOs to give this person two hundred and fifty dollars. You have now just implicated yourself in a merged transaction that now somebody looking on chain, on the blockchain or chain analysis looking back, they will link your Coinbase transaction to your non-KYC transaction, right? So if that doesn't matter to you, by all means, do what you wish. But how I look at it is, To protect yourself in those cases, keep a separate, either a separate wallet, if you use Trezor, you can have multiple wallets on the same Trezor device, you can do passwords, if you use Samurai Wallet, just spin up a different Samurai Wallet if you want, but keep them separate, if that's the easiest way for you not to merge transactions, have two different wallets for KYC versus a non-KYC, and then you don't risk going through that issue, right? From there, I always think, like the samurai guys say, \"Every spin should be a coin join, right?\" So mix all your trans- mix all your coins. It's not that expensive, and it enhances your privacy. It's not the end-all-be-all, but it enhances your privacy and also enhances other people's privacy out there. It just, it helps build that ecosystem of constant mixed coins where it breaks up the heuristics of blockchain analysis, right? So I think that's a real-" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:22", "start": 1041.69, "text": "Yeah. So let's break that down a little bit, so my listeners. So listeners, if you haven't already, make sure you go and check out episode seventy-eight with Samurai Wallet, where we spoke about Whirlpool. So Pura, did you wanna just talk through your thoughts on using Whirlpool? What does that look like, for the listener, just to the, those who aren't as familiar with it?" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "17:42", "start": 1062.18, "text": "Sure. So, right now, Whirlpool is on a, basically it's a- To desktop wallet. they also have a client version, which is more, for more advanced users. I would say ver-not very soon, but soon they're gonna be rolling out the mobile, mobile Whirlpool wallet, which is gonna open it up for everybody and be great. But right now, you need to have a Samurai wallet, mobile wallet, to use Whirlpool, right? Because what you're doing, that wallet, that mobile wallet, is what actually, you know, that's your private keys and everything, and that's what you have to link to the Wh Interface. So when you spin up the interface, which you can use on Mac, Linux, Windows, I believe as well, it's a real easy to use interface, and you'll, you have basically a payload, well, I'm not gonna call it a payload, basically an encrypted, string of numbers and characters that you paste in from your mobile wallet into the interface, and it loads the UTXOs you have available, right? So from there It's pulling all the information, all the UTX open, unspent UTXOs that are, sitting in the main part of your wallet, and then inside there you can, ca-do what's called a TX zero, so that's the initial transaction, right? So from there, what happens is you click that, and what ends, if you click it, you set your fee. You can do a high fee if it's a high priority transaction, you can select the high fee, mid-range fee, and the low fee. But the way the mempool's been, it's been pretty easy to get low fees to go through there, it's been nice." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:20", "start": 1160.18, "text": "Sorry, just to clarify, with the TX zero, can you just explain what that's doing? Ie, it's, cutting up into the pools and it's taking the fee. Do" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "19:30", "start": 1169.95, "text": "you we'll just use a, we'll just say point five Bitcoin for example, and let's say you want-- they have three pools right now, you've got a point five Bitcoin, you've got a point o five Bitcoin, Pool, and then you've got a point o one Bitcoin pool. So what happens is when you click that TX zero is, and we'll just go to the point o five Bitcoin pool. Samurai takes a five percent fee, which is a po- of the five percent of the pool size, right? So a point o five pool would cost you two hundred and fifty thousand satoshis, so point o o two five, right? That's the fee. you mix unlimited after that. So once you pay that five percent fee, whatever UTXOs go in there, mix unlimited until you spend them on the other side. So you have their fee, it's gonna break up into, in this case, it would be nine Pre-mix UTXOs, so what they'll do is nine UTXOs will go into your pre-mixed part of the wallet, that'll be point oh five, and then at the very end they'll have a miner fee associated because those pre-mixers, those who haven't mixed yet. Have-- they're the ones basically paying the mining fee for each whirlpool transaction. So you'll have a small mining fee associated with, with each of those nine transa-- or UTXOs, and then, You have your change output that doesn't get mixed. So that'll be the breakdown of what you see in the actual transaction. You'll also have what's, it's, it's basically an op-return code in there, which is a, on- Unspendable transaction, but it's where inside you can see a note. So, for instance, we'll use the S code, Samurai Vida gives, every once in a while they'll have a fifteen percent off your whirlpool for two days, maybe, right? And that, that is translated into that OP_RETURN code there, so you'll see that on blockchain.info. So, did I explain that right for you? So you're breaking that initial tran- that TX0 into those subsets?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:39", "start": 1299.27, "text": "Gotcha. And then- I think it's important to note that difference because that's a slight difference in the way, say, wasabi mixing happens, where, Samurai has that structure of having that initial TX zero, which I think creates an additional separation, whereas the wasabi, it's, it's sort of mixing straight away, and, I think this comes down to the structure of the mix and how the solution has been architected, if you will, right? I would, I would agree with that, and" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "22:09", "start": 1329.33, "text": "without going into a ton of detail, I, I don't wanna knock the other, but the, the way Samurai structures it is basically once you TX zero It doesn't matter, I mean, it matters, but if you merged a bunch of KYC and non-KYC coins before you mixed in Whirlpool, you do a TX0, it goes into a premix way, once it's out the other side They're broken up, the heuristics has been broken, right? The way wasabi, the way the wasabi structure is, is, you know, you're doing You're, you're putting all these UTXOs you have in, and they're-- you say you wanna do a nonce of a hundred or something, they're pulling from all those UTXOs until Each of the one, each of the UTXOs on either side, amidst of that non-set, right? But they're all constantly intermixing with each other throughout that, and I don't believe in that structure it breaks it up completely, right? Does that make sense?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:13", "start": 1393.38, "text": "Yeah, I get you. I, yeah. So again, I don't wanna like start a debate or anything, but I think it's just a different structure and, I think that part of it, to me, it makes it a little more sense in terms of how that's done, but I could hear an argument the other side, right? So maybe a person who's, let's say, the argument might be, okay, well, fine, but Wasabi has a much higher number of, higher number of users, and, you know, therefore, that helps, you know?" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "23:41", "start": 1421.23, "text": "Correct," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:42", "start": 1421.75, "text": "yeah." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "23:42", "start": 1422.13, "text": "In, in each mix, right? Yeah, so it's, that's, that's definitely a separation there. So it I think, you know, in the end, the way it's broken up, it's nice, the mixes go quick, right? So once you-- and that's, that's another thing, once, once you start mixing and the liquidity's there, it's flying through until, you know, you're out of premixers and then, then you're waiting. So once you mix Your transaction goes out, each one of your UTXO outputs is identical, so they're all gonna be point oh five, can't tell the difference. that's, that's where you get that zero deterministic link, which is nice, and then you can, as long as you leave them in that wallet, they're just continually mixed and you're not paying more fees on that side either, so that helps the cause a little bit." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:29", "start": 1469.2, "text": "Right, yeah. So that's, I guess, once it's into that premix, as you mentioned, it, it then, once enough users And there are certain rules that Samurai Wallet applies, such as, you know, no previous TX or I think it's, there's certain rules about, what will be allowed to be mixed into the same mix, obviously to preserve-- Correct. You won't ever see it from the same TX or UTXO, yeah, correct. You're right. Yeah, correct. And then, so as you were mentioning, there's the free riding part, which is essentially as you have already done a mix and you can just sit in there, and then some new person who comes into pre-mix One who want to do a mix, and they will pay the miner fee associated for that, and then you just get a free ride mix out of that." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "25:15", "start": 1515.46, "text": "Correct. Yeah. And, you're providing liquidity for everybody new coming in, right? I mean, you're just adding liquidity, Enhancing your anon set, because every mix you're, you're just multiplying that, that breaking away further from that initial TX zero. So, it, it's helping the ecosystem, and it, and it goes quick. Once, once people are in there and doing it, it's a quick mix. So, yeah, absolutely." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:40", "start": 1540.48, "text": "Gotcha. And now let's talk about the post mix spending part of this, because I think this is another part where it seems to me like the Samurai approach is a little more holistic in this, from what I've read and what I understand, because Samurai wallet is essentially Trying to push the user down pathways where they're less likely to screw themselves over by accidentally merging a post mix UTXO with a premix UTXO. So as I understand with Samurai Wallet, you've got that menu and then it, you go into post mix spend. I think right now that's a temporary thing until it will, yeah, the UI fixes up or is, iterated further. But my understanding then is Samurai also tries to get The user to basically do a stonewall, a stonewall x2 or a kahoot spend coming out of the post mix. So can you just talk to those, ideas a little bit? Post" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "26:39", "start": 1599.01, "text": "mix spend is underrated out there. People are like, \"What the heck is that? Or what, what do I, you know, what do I need to be thinking, right?\" So Coin joins are great, but if on the back end you're not paying attention to how you manage those UTXOs going out, you, you could completely-- I mean, you basically wipe out anything you've done in the beginning. You, you just made that point, very clear there. So I think the post-mix spend's extremely important on what you do, and Ergo BTC, has done a phenomenal job. On Twitter using the KYC, KYCP dot org site and OXT dot me and looking at different mixes from both Whirlpool, Samurai, and just spends in general and seeing how all these post-mix spends can really screw up and create links back to, to what your initial spends were. So, so to get into the post-mix, yes, so you have a Stonewall option and Sa-Samurai wallet even in the premix side had a stonewall option, so basically what they're-- the basic gist of that, it's trying to What it would do is, I don't know the exact how it's formulated, but what it does is, let's say I wanna send, point one Bitcoin to somebody, you-- typically with a stone wall, you need to have at least two times the amount you wanna send because what's gonna get sent to an address? Is gonna be an output, they're gonna have an identical output to what was sent, and they're also gonna have two more identical outputs, but different than the first two, that are gonna be in the post-mix or in that basically those post-spend, UTXOs. So you're gonna end up with, say, four UTXOs, two of each are the same with each other. And what's that, what that's doing is giving you plausible deniability on what is happening or what has happened. So it, it, it's a really nice, it- It breaks up, you know, chain analysis on what they're looking. You can't, you can't tell for sure what somebody's spending there. So it's a really nice option, and like you said Post-Worldpool, that's if your wallet, your U- your UTXO set can handle it, you will be almost not forced, but you're basically essentially the wallet's gonna Make you do at least a stone wall, if possible. So, and one thing we didn't even bring up before stone wall, you can manage the UTXO single as well. So if you wanna send each one one by one, you can do that. And again, that's a, that's a really nice way to make sure you're not gonna merge them as well, especially if you're going to cold storage or something. So, so yes, you can do single, you can do a stonewall. The stonewall times two is basically you're coordinating with, say, a friend. Now, again, you're ask-- you're adding a trusted third party, it's a friend, but they will see in that structure, they're gonna be able to look back on the blockchain and see two UTX-- they'll know two of 'em are theirs, they'll know two are yours, right? So they can backtrack at least so far and see something. So you have to add a little layer of trust But again, it's gonna create a similar output to what the stonewall does, you're just using somebody else's UTXOs along with yours, to again further break up some of that, what, you know, chain analysis will look at and see." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:07", "start": 1807.17, "text": "Gotcha. And, do you wanna just talk through what a stowaway is? Now my understanding there is you-- this is if you are spending to another samurai user, and this is basically like a, like a payjoin that doesn't reveal the actual amount spent. Correct," }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "30:23", "start": 1822.9, "text": "yeah. So this actually ends up just looking like a regular transaction, essentially. So y-y-it is, it's very similar to a pay join, you are doing it with another samurai user, and again, you're adding that layer of trust, and they're, they are gonna see the UTXO you're spending, so def-definitely keep that in mind, but it honest, it, it looks like a no, none of the outputs actually match what is being sent, which is really cool. I mean, I'm not a too big of a math guy, it's, it's amazing to me how these guys build this stuff and, you know, make, make all this happen, but, yeah, it's a, it's a very good way to, break up, You know what chain analysis is gonna look like or any, any, anybody looking back on the blockchain is gonna see. So, yeah, that's a really good option as well. And Samurai doesn't charge anything for those. Those services. That's, that's just something you can do. The only thing you're gonna do is end up paying a little more miner fee because you're, you know, you, you're doing a little bit higher, transaction cost there. So," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:22", "start": 1882.12, "text": "gotcha. Yeah, no, that makes sense. And in terms of, how it's actually done, I, I've done, I've tried it with a friend as well, where basically you, you craft a transaction together with that other person, right? And so you would do it by sharing the QR codes." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "31:41", "start": 1901.27, "text": "off the top of my head, I, I wanna say it's a five step process. I believe when you're going back and-- Yeah, I believe it's a five step process. It'll end up being either QR codes with each other, it could be, basically text blobs that you can paste back and forth to each other, so you and I. Across the world from each other could do this easily if we wanted to through an encrypted chat, right? So we could, and I've done that with a couple guys and it's worked great. So again Every once in a while, you'll find out it doesn't work if somebody's UTXO set isn't set up for it too. So you have to make sure somebody has enough, mix of coins in there to be able to handle the, the, the value of the transaction going through as well." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:23", "start": 1942.93, "text": "Got it. Sorry, could you explain that part a little bit? So that's one part where sometimes when I'm testing with a friend, I wasn't able to construct it because, as I think as you mentioned, the, the UTXOs weren't configured in the right way or there Or construct that transaction. Could you just outline what are the, some of the guidelines for that?" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "32:41", "start": 1961.37, "text": "Well, and that's a good question. You might stump me here, but to my-- Alright, so, like I said, kind of stone wall, you have to have at least double the amount that you're-- It's, it's gonna need at least double the amount that you're wanting to send, right? So if your UTXO set, say you wanna say send point one, but you only have 0.15. It, it's not gonna stonewall, right? It's gonna be similar with, the stowaway. I just don't know what, how the breakdown of the UTXO set is, but my, my assumption is If you have, if we wanna do one that's, you know, again, point one, but I hold point seven five of it, or point o seven five of it, it isn't gonna work because there's not enough UTXO on, mix of UTXOs on your side to complete that, stowaway. So I, I-- Does that make sense?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:31", "start": 2011.45, "text": "Yeah, gotcha. I think, yeah, so it sort of comes down to how many inputs you've got there that you can put into, that you can contribute to that little transaction." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "33:40", "start": 2019.52, "text": "Both have to have a certain amount of inputs there that, that will function together to create that out-- the, the output. The way it needs to be. Yeah, correct. I just don't know the values of what each side needs to have." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:52", "start": 2032.46, "text": "Gotcha. Yeah, yeah, that's a little bit beyond us, mathematically and technically. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Okay, so one other point, I guess, this is the point where I think it's difficult right now, but will hopefully become easier, because right now, theoretically, if most people are using Samurize backend They have, obviously, they would choose this trade-off for that, for whatever reason, but they are doxing their coins to Samurai in that sense, right? Samurai knows who their, what their coins are. They don't necessarily know your identity unless you tell them, obviously. Correct. Yeah, sure. but then hopefully, if more people start using Dojo as the back end, then this problem starts to go away." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "34:36", "start": 2075.68, "text": "Yeah. So Dojo, when they released that to everybody, that, that was great because what, what we basically all had- Have an option to have out here is our own full samurai backend, right? So what we have, what they released is identical to what they use, what their servers are. Now theirs are A lot larger because there are thousands of people are using them, right? So, but the, the software itself is the same. So what they do, I mean, they're-- they have a log, ex-- they have xPub's, they know all the transactions going in and out, like what you said, they know nothing about us unless we give that information to them, right? So they don't log IPs or anything. So again, it's a threat level thing. If you're more comfortable relying on their server, just like you're more comfortable relying on the Trezor. Web wallet or just, you know, it's a threat level thing. So, but for those that want full coin control for themselves, and be assured that they are watching their own backend, they're controlling everything from the buy side all the way to the spend side without leaking that information, running that samurai dojo server is, the way to go. And what it does when you log on, when it's installed, and they just rolled out the partnership with the model and I'm sure you saw that obviously, and that's, that's gonna be a phenomenal tool right there, all in one box. but what, what you do is you actually pair using a QR code, through, The, the interface all over Tor, and what it does is it pairs your wallet, and then from that side, you can select if you wanna use your Bitcoin D as the back end, you can use the, oxt dot me API as the back end for doing some re-scans and everything. That's an option you can set up there. but from there, everything you're doing is being, run on that samurai backend there, just very similar to how Electrum X works, E-P-S works, just for, but for samurai wallet. So, you're controlling everything in-house and Whirlpool as well, you know, all that's being done. Right inside your scope of stuff." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:51", "start": 2210.75, "text": "Yeah, that's great. And I, I've got a nodle as well, so I'm looking forward to, the dojo coming on that. And I know, as you mentioned, there is the new premium level nodle, and samurai collaboration, which is the, the red one, obviously runs faster. The faster, that's right, that's right. That's right. So, one other thing, I think it's also good to talk about how people should be segregating their coins, so they might have Cold storage, and they might have day-to-day spend. What are your thoughts on that?" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "37:22", "start": 2241.91, "text": "Gosh, there's so many ways. You've done a lot of good videos lately, with this, with multisig and cold storage, yeah, cold card. I mean, there are so many options, it's almost too many options, but, so it really, Well, threat level for one thing, how much Bitcoin you have, right? I mean, if you only have a quarter Bitcoin, it might not be worth going out and buying a trezor and doing all this setup for if you're not planning on keeping much more than that. But for those that have one, five, ten, twenty, hundred, thousands, right? You wanna have a pretty full setup or be assured, you know, through multisig, Through your own personal setup, Glacier Protocol, you know, I mean, it, you can go many different levels with this, to decide what's right for you, but, you know, in this space, not your keys, not your coins, right? That's, that's an important narrative we all spit out there and understand, But to our own detriment, that can be bad as well, because you're in full control of those coins at that point, and if you aren't paying attention or you do something wrong, you lose your seed words or you forget a password, they're gone, right? So, How I, how I look at it is, you know, Samurai Wallet specifically, that's the one I would use, or I use. You keep what you need to spend, you have to have what you're mixing, because that is part of, you know, the mix process. you can set Samurai Wallet up basically as a cold storage hardware wallet, because it can actually be done all offline when you do the setup. there's some videos online that you can, go through. so you can set it up, get a wallet on there, throw it in the safe or whatever, and let, leave it on or keep it plugged in and let the thing keep mixing if you wanted to." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "39:19", "start": 2358.84, "text": "From there, you have hardware wallets, you've got your multisig, everything. Hardware wallets, I think, are important, you know? There's, I think the cold card's my favorite, I don't know what your thoughts are there, but I, I like the cold card, I like the partially, partially signed Bitcoin transaction portion to that. I think that's a, the air gap way is the way to go, the secure element, everything they're, they're doing there. Is the right way to do it. Trezor's got a great, done a great job. They finally went Bitcoin only on some of the firmware, which I think's really cool. It closes off some of those attack vectors. And I believe I heard, somewhere they are rolling out a, basically, they'll get away from that web interface and have a desktop style application. Did you hear that as well?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:08", "start": 2408.44, "text": "Yeah, yeah, they are having, they're gonna be coming out with Trezor Suite. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "40:12", "start": 2412.39, "text": "Trezor Suite, that's it And cold or having a hardware wallet for basically the bulk storage is not a bad way to go. I think multisig as it simplifies, Casio's done a great job, honestly, creating some simplification there. You're also adding a layer of trust a little bit, in there because you're doxing a little bit of your information of your public or your xPub information, so they'll, they could technically see what you have, but they offer a good solution for those that maybe aren't So technical, technically savvy, to, to control and keep those bitcoins safe, right? I'm sorry, I might have got off, offline, off topic a bit. Yeah, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:58", "start": 2458.01, "text": "No, well, I think, yeah, well, I mean, we were just talking about the segregation, so I think it's also from a privacy point of view, you might want to take- Extra care around what coins have been KYC'd and then spent into your cold storage, that sort of thing. and would, whether you would like run that through a mix before spending into cold storage, that kind of thing, and then have an, a, a smaller amount obviously that you keep on your phone for day-to-day use, let's say." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "41:27", "start": 2486.89, "text": "Gotcha. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:28", "start": 2487.69, "text": "yeah," }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "41:28", "start": 2488.17, "text": "I went completely off topic there. so, yeah, in my mind, right, the segregation, I, if you're using a KYC exchange, unless you're planning- on spending that Bitcoin right away, I don't, you don't necessarily have to mix it. But when you go to spend, I think you should mix it. I think every coin that's out there should go through a mixer. It's not that expensive, it enhances privacy for everybody involved, and, you're breaking, if you don't have to spend that KYC coin up, you put it through a mixer, what comes out on the other side, you broke that off, you kind of broke that away from that initial KYC, because a little bit, because they don't, they can't automatically assume that those UTXOs on the out, other side are yours, right? So anything you put through that mixer will break up a little bit, but necessarily, do you have to- Go to cold storage that way? No, but if you're looking twenty years from now, when fees could be a lot higher, doing it now might be a better time, mix it now, go to cold storage, right? So it really depends what kind of long-term output you're looking at there as well. but like you said Don't keep it all on a mobile wallet. I don't think that's a safe way to go function. So anything you keep on the mobile wallet, the nice thing when Samurai rolls out the, mobile whirlpool, you don't have to mix it right away. If you go, if you need to spend a little bit, you'll be able to push a button, mix it, goes out on the, output on the other side, and then go ahead and spend it right. So you have a couple minutes there that you need to wait for the mix to happen, but then you're spending" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "43:08", "start": 2587.54, "text": "Do mix your coins before you spend them, because again, you're enhancing not only your own privacy, but everybody else involved too." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:15", "start": 2595.49, "text": "Right. And another example, let's say you are buying and selling bitcoins in person and you're doing cash trades, at that point, the other, the counterparty could essentially look on the blockchain and try to trace back theoretically, right? I didn't even think about that good point, yeah, absolutely. This is another reason why you might need to think about doing mixing before or after- After, let's say, doing this kind of cash trade, if it's like a less trusted counterparty, let's say." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "43:43", "start": 2623.01, "text": "Yeah, you might not know the person from, you know, anywhere, and if you, if you took it out of a ten, ten Bitcoin UTXO and he wanted to buy point five, he knows you got nine and a half sitting there, so that's a, that might, in his term, be a good reason to follow you home, right? So, that's a very good point. so yeah, I would definitely agree with that. So the, from the K or from the non-KYC trade points, yeah, definitely mix before you're sending them as well. So absolutely." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:11", "start": 2651.03, "text": "Just thinking off the top of my head, I mean, you can mine Bitcoin, although probably not a lot-- probably not a high percentage of my listeners are Bitcoin miners, but maybe some of them. And, not too profitable for most of us out there, probably. And I guess the other way is obviously earning Bitcoin, right? So if you've got BTC Pay Server or, you Earn bitcoins, and that's probably one of the best ways. Yeah. You got" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "44:34", "start": 2673.83, "text": "Lolly, you got GetPay, you've got, you've got a ton of ways out there. But again, so to your point there, you're earning them. The Lollies, the GetPays, the ones that are giving you cash Bitcoin back. They, you're linked to them in a way because they've got credit card transactions or something going on there, so there's a linkability for sure. And people think KYC, oh, if I give a driver's license, that's KYC, but credit card or bank card, they have no idea. They got everything on you, right? So anything that you associate any kind of credit card with or whatever, run those through, a coin join for sure, because, you know, you wanna break that up there. like you said, earning from, through Hood site, you know, or stickers or whatever. I mean, people are sending us coins wherever, but yeah, you definitely wanna mix it because those people can look on the chain and see where it goes in, see what's there. you wanna, you wanna break that up. Not show that to everybody. I mean, it's, it's just something we all don't think about, but it's extremely important, you" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:38", "start": 2737.83, "text": "know? Right. Yeah. And hopefully with Lightning and as Lightning increases in adoption, then that will automatically bring a lot of privacy just through that fact. Correct. But there will still be channel open, channel close, and there may be something that a-an outsider may be able to infer from watching your channel opening and channel closing as well. Sure." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "45:57", "start": 2757.46, "text": "Well, and something actually I thought I was- I think I tweeted it earlier, but so all these change outputs that come from mixing, right? So we'll, we'll use Borelpool for instance, but Wasabi has the same thing. The whole coin, the whole UTXO set can't go through the mix, right? There's always gonna be-- there's a fee going in, but there's always gonna be some change that comes back because nothing in the world is perfect in that case, right? So what do you do with that change? That's still linked to your past history, so let's say KYC or whatever, And so you have a whole subset of little bit, little pieces of change. Well, you gotta really think about, do you wanna mix? Do you remember? First off, you label in your transactions, that's important, right? And if you aren't- If you just go through and just merge all those premixed transactions or the change transactions, there you go, you just linked a bunch of mixes that you just put together, right? You don't link the other side, but you at least link that you did a bunch of mixes, right? But one thing you can do that I've used that works really well is you can take those small bits of change and put them into Lightning, use them zigzag or using submarine swap, some of these tools that actually take on chain and swap it into Light- Before you're using the service, you pay a little fee, but you, you miss going into that, the open of channel phase, you just go right into lightning. So if that's a really good tool, right now at least, to get rid of some of that little bit of change you have." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:25", "start": 2845.36, "text": "Right. Yeah. That's, and that's a difficulty as well I've noticed. I think Samurai are aiming to come out with something on this. I think the function, they were calling it mix the change, so they might have something in future on that." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "47:38", "start": 2857.61, "text": "Yeah, I think Way down, but yeah, they're very talk about the change for sure. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:45", "start": 2864.61, "text": "and I think that's, to me, I think overall, again, I don't wanna like sound like I'm shitting on other, things, but I just, to me, it seems like the Samurai Solution is a little more holistic in that it's considering the actual post mix part as well, whereas if I were to go and try and teach someone, \"Oh, hey, use Wasabi mixing,\" then I've also got to, like, it's so easy to make a mistake with" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:11", "start": 2891.33, "text": "Wallet, if they just, if they're a newbie and they just want a color card or Wasabi, I think it's a great wallet, but I am a little, hesitant at this point to recommend Wasabi mixing." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "48:21", "start": 2901.18, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:22", "start": 2901.7, "text": "But, yeah, but, and now, to be fair, people could also throw back an objection and say, \"Well, right now, not that many people on Samurai are using Dojo, and therefore, that means a lot of people are trusting Samurai servers. So, you know, if there's no one's perfect in this, right?" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "48:41", "start": 2921.14, "text": "What works for each person individually, right? And that's how you gotta look at it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:46", "start": 2925.57, "text": "how I- Yeah. And, and I guess we've also gotta consider there is the OG join market mixing, right? So that's like, that's like the hardcore one. I've never" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "48:53", "start": 2933.03, "text": "personally used it. I, I don't know if you have. I've never personally used it. It looks, seems really cool, but-- And I know there's a, there's a maker feature, a market maker and taker feature where you can actually earn doing it. I just never" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:07", "start": 2946.96, "text": "tried it myself Larger mixes on join market, although I haven't, I haven't got to that yet. But yeah, so I, I think those are some good, tips for the listeners in terms of if they're thinking about Bitcoin privacy in terms of transaction graph. I guess we might talk about a little bit from an IP point of view. So this is things like using Tor, maybe being careful about, when you use a block explorer, if you look that up from your home IP, then obviously they can infer that this IP was interested in this address. Etcetera. do you have any, any, any points to add around that? That's a learning curve" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "49:45", "start": 2985.13, "text": "consistently, right? I still catch myself doing stupid things on that front, right? So like you said, I, I think the user and block explorers is, in my mind, almost imperative. like you said, if you're using Firefox, it's set up to your IP, maybe even a VPN, right? Well, VPN still logs that IP, right? So, once you do that, you look up a transaction, okay, they know it came from you. Well, let's say you look up another transaction from a cold storage wallet, you just wanna say, \"Yeah, I just wanna check on my coins that are in cold storage.\" Well, shoot, now they know that IP looked at this wallet and this wallet, right? And even for Tor, believe it or" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "50:27", "start": 3026.62, "text": "If you don't change your identity between transactions and you look up, now granted, onion, right? So onion routing, it, it, it hides it a little better, but if you don't change your Tor identity in between looking up a transaction, you can still- Somebody, I'm sure, out there, not me, but somebody out there could probably dig through there and say, \"Okay, this, this Tor relay, this Tor, however it's set up, they looked at this transaction, then five minutes later, the similar route looked at this transaction, right?\" I mean, it gets that deep, and most of-- no, I mean, heck, I forget to do it sometimes, but it's a constant learning curve you gotta go through. So, yeah, switching, switching identity These in between transactions, I think, is an important, important step in the right direction for everybody. It's gonna be a habit change for most people, but you can open and maybe just switch between a couple different explorers if you're looking up a couple multiple transactions, just go between a couple explorers, use Blockstream dot info, use, you know, mempool dot space or whatever you wanna do." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:37", "start": 3096.66, "text": "Yeah, I think the other way that it will go is just people will learn to use their own block explorer, right? Like if they're, right? And then And that way, you can just safely look up as many times as you want and not worry about changing, cycling through IDs all the time, if you can run your own. Right now," }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "51:50", "start": 3110.5, "text": "it's a little hard to set up. There's a few out there that have come out. I, I haven't done one. I know the new knot or the new upgrade that's coming, that will be coming, not necessarily the box, but, Ketto miners rolling out an upgrade that's gonna have a block explorer built in. So, I know Electrum X was a big part of that because" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:14", "start": 3133.68, "text": "Recorded it, but I haven't released it yet. but I'll be releasing that with, the guy who created Mineo, and Mineo actually has its own block explorer, so that's another great, privacy win. Yeah. but there are some other ways you can get owned as well, right? Like email notifications, I think that's a really, you know, just no-brainer, but at the same time, there's a security part there as well. So let's, so let me walk through the example. So I go to a KY But they send an email notification saying, \"Hey Stefan, we're withdrawing X, Y, and Z number of bitcoins to this address,\" and now your email provider has your, knows that address. How many" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "52:55", "start": 3174.67, "text": "people are using Google out there, right? For email, holy crap. I mean, good gracious. You know, it's, yeah, no, I didn't even, yeah, that's, I mean, that's a very valid point because now that's all logged in that email server. Now they have, and who knows, you get broken into there. And that's where mixing comes in, right? You take that, put it into your address, mix it, send it somewhere else, right? And break up that, break up that trail that you started with an email, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:22", "start": 3201.89, "text": "Yeah. Right. And I guess, look, I mean, there's different views on this point. I, I'm sure if you hear some people in the community or in the Bitcoin world, they'll say never use KYC exchange, and others who will think of it more like, \"No That's a harmful mindset. I sort of, I'm sort of on the fence there. I think there is a need for some of these KYC exchanges for different purposes, but there's also a need for some of the no-KYC exchanges as well." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "53:50", "start": 3230.19, "text": "Yeah, I- I- I'm on your side with that. I, I- it was a recent episode you published, I know you were kinda going back and forth, was it the Bisq one, maybe?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:58", "start": 3237.92, "text": "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "53:59", "start": 3238.92, "text": "Where, you know, some- they were like, \"Ah, just, just don't They, their KYC, but they, they, they help build, I mean, gosh, Coinbase when it first came out, their wallet was slick, easy to use, right? It just, it, it's something I didn't think about, but it was easy to buy. You could get it, get it off, do your thing. But again, like you said, there's a need for it, but then once you're comfortable and you understand how the process works and you feel like you wanna go to that next level, that's where you take that, that reliance off of KYC exchanges and go to something like Bisc or HodoHodo, cash trades, you know, whatever. There, there's a lot of options out there, you just gotta hunt a little bit. Right." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:49", "start": 3288.53, "text": "And, let's talk, I guess, about privacy outside of just Bitcoin itself. So, for example, with your phone, with, some SIM cards require KYC. Do you have any thoughts on ways to protect yourself there?" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "55:02", "start": 3302.36, "text": "Yeah, so this, and again, this is for me, this is the newer side of privacy for, for me, and I, I learned, I will credit the Samurai Telegram chat for this. They, like, just over the last couple years, just listening to these guys talk and- Chatter, about privacy in general really opened my eyes to, you know, everything from, you know, cell phones to SIM cards, how, how, how it all ties everything back to you, right? So for instance, on a cell phone, iOS is, iOS is pretty, is a to my knowledge, pretty safe phone, right? It's locked down pretty good, just like a Mac computer. I mean, those things are tough to really-- you don't see guys maliciously creating code for them too often, right? But you're also limited. But with, with Android You can, basically using something, you can root phones. Now, I wouldn't recommend just going out, rooting a phone and putting a Bitcoin wallet on it, right? you know, the, the Samurai wallet guys, they say always make sure to have a hardened operating system like Graphene OS, Graphene OS, where it's, it's hardened all the way down to basically, I, I- Hardened all the way down to the, the secure, the secure-- I wouldn't say secure element, but there's only certain phones they build this operating system on, like the Pixel, right? So, it's locked down as much as you can lock it down, right? It's all using Android open source, Code, and then from there, you can, basically customize and do anything you want. So you can, you, you've de-loaded your phone at that point, no Google. you've basically wiped it down to a browser, F-Droid for downloading, you can always use Aurora, which is, gives you access to Play Store, so you get other apps if you want them. But you've worked it down all the way to texts, phones, a browser, what is bare minimum as you want to go, right? but from there, you, you mentioned SIM cards, so I think it's hard to get them nowadays, but I think the UK has no KYC SIM cards, which you can get fairly easily, And what you can do is use Bitrefill with Bitcoin, a lot of guys living off Bitcoin out there, they don't want their phones tied to a, tied to their name, so what they're doing is using SIM cards topping it up with Bitcoin, and there's no, there's no connection to you. And all these chat apps we all use, you know, Telegram, WhatsApp, Which I wouldn't recommend that. Telegram, I think Signal, they all ask for a phone number, right? So if you're going through all these privacy steps, and we'll use Telegram for instance, we go through all these privacy steps, we all have NIMs out there, we're all being as safe as we can, but then- We just give Telegram our phone number, right? Our, our actual phone number. you've just inadvertently given a server somewhere in Russia, I think Telegram's out of, somewhere over there Access to your phone number, right? Who knows, are they gonna go sell it? Are they gonna go come looking for you? I mean, you can plug a phone number up on Google, I'm sure find somebody's address pretty easily, right? So, I mean, it's that easy to dock yourself. So there's really a lot of things, depending on your threat model, that you need to really look out for, in that aspect as well." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:36", "start": 3515.81, "text": "So part of it though is, there's a bit of a social network component to this as well, right? So obviously with Bitcoin, there's a lot of Telegram chat groups, so then you kinda have to use Telegram, even if you might prefer to use something else. And I think at this point, it's fair to say nobody has really hit the holy grail in terms of ease of use, encrypted all end to end, and like not doxing your phone number as well. Like, I think it's pretty much nobody's got that. I would agree, I" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "59:04", "start": 3543.88, "text": "would agree. I think there's a-- some of them have got about eighty percent there probably, but the convenience or the mass adoption of that service isn't there, right? I, I-- who posted it recently? Was it Jamison? Somebody posted a, A spreadsheet of all the different, chat apps or whatever. I think- Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:24", "start": 3564.18, "text": "Jameson posted it. I think this other guy was, tweeting about it, forgot his name as well, unfortunately. he, he's not a Bitcoiner, but I think he's like a privacy guy. But anyway, I think at the top of that list, there was Riot Matrix and, I think Wire was pretty high on the list. It wasn't the top one. Wire was on there, yeah. yeah. But yeah, I guess those are ones to" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "59:49", "start": 3589.12, "text": "You're chatting with yourself, that's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:50", "start": 3590.5, "text": "exactly what you're" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "59:51", "start": 3591.48, "text": "doing. So I down-- it's kind of funny, I downloaded, Riot. I did, after I saw that, I'm like, \"Ah, Riot.\" The pur-- and I, the purism guys use Riot, and I'm, I got looking at it, I'm like, \"Oh, this is great.\" Who the hell do I talk to? There's nobody there to talk to, right? So there I'm back to Telegram again, and then it's like, \"I gotta go sell people to come" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:19", "start": 3619.5, "text": "Maybe not anytime soon, but if we were to get enough of a community momentum around something, then maybe we could push people to go to Riot or, I don't know, one of these, one of these apps, right? Yeah. Yeah. Who knows? But then the, the other challenge is as well is what if it gets superseded later and people are getting fatigue from having seven thousand different chat apps on their phone? So" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "01:00:40", "start": 3640.85, "text": "yeah, yeah. I think part of the-- I mean, the real issue honestly is, God, the cell providers, I'll be honest with you, the way they've got it set up, we have to use SIM cards for the most part, right? I mean, it's getting a lot better, a lot of places where you can go, voice over IP and things like that, which that's great, but, You can't do that fully yet. That once, I, I was reading, once 5G gets out there, I think it'll get to that point where you can basically do without SIM cards, right? And then you're at a hardware level battle to create that phone like the Purism guys, the Librem 5 or something that is a-- has hard kill switches on the microphones, the cameras, but yet they have the full compatibility to be able to utilize a spectrum like that, and then you could- Essentially do without SIM cards, and then we're in a different game, you know? I mean, that's where it opens up the door for a lot of these chat apps, the encrypted ones, to really, I think, take off and, people utilize" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:01:44", "start": 3704.96, "text": "them. Yeah. what about your thoughts on using a NIM online? Now, within-- I guess I'll just offer some quick thoughts myself. I think within Bitcoin, it's, it is useful that there are some people, you know, like me, just real name, real face, they're out there just to kind" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02:02", "start": 3722.93, "text": "value to having anonymous or pseudonymous nims. Can you comment on, on your thoughts there and any tips around using a nim and keeping some privacy in that way?" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "01:02:13", "start": 3733.44, "text": "I'm still working my way around this one, right? n- online nowadays, nims I think are important, especially in our space, because we all have a belief on where this space is taking us, where it's going, where the value will be, and I think we're a very small sub- set of the ecosystem or the world in general, and when people wake up to what Bitcoin is and the potential of it, it could really harm some people out there if they aren't, you know, paying attention a little bit, or being safe w-w-with what they do. So I think NIMs are important, it's extremely easy even if you have a NIM to dox your NIM. I've done it multiple times, without really thinking about it, and again, you're linking again phone numbers and different things that maybe, Maybe, you know, your, your friends might not care about, but, you know, other people will see Facebook, all these Instagram, all that kind of stuff. You're, you're putting your face out there, you're putting your information out there. You need to- Think before, you know, people need to just think what's more important, right? You're gonna give up some convenience, you're gonna give up, I, you know, I haven't had Facebook for, I don't know, four years now, and it's been- Liberating, to say the least, and, but you're giving up some convenience and socialization in that aspect because you're going behind a, in my case, a Paym from Sam, you know, the little Paym robot face, right? I'm going behind a little robot face that, you know, I express out on Twitter and different pla- Telegram and different places, And you're creating almost a, a separate, personality for yourself, but in the end, I think it's important for the protection of yourself and your family in some cases, to do that. And people do it in a whole, in many different ways, right? Sometimes they just create a fake name, fake account, on emails, you can, you can easily do all that. I just, you look, I mean, remember what happened to Jameson, right? Out there in Raleigh, I think it was in North Carolina, where somebody knew, found out where he lived and sent the SWAT team there, just called some bullshit on him and sent the SWAT team there and, yeah, dude almost got killed by the SWAT team for nothing, right? Just because somebody got pissed at him or whatever it was. I mean, it's dangerous, it's kinda, you know, gotta watch that. So I think people need to think about it, think, think what's important and, you know, go from The right thing to do for" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:04:58", "start": 3898.65, "text": "them. Did you have any parting thoughts to share with the listeners in terms of things they should think about as they're going on that journey of improving their own privacy?" }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "01:05:07", "start": 3907.02, "text": "I would say just Go online, join chat groups, listen to podcasts, ask questions. Believe me, I've asked a ton of questions, and I'm learning every day. I mean, it's, it's an experience to go through the journey. My wife looks at me and goes, \"Are you crazy?\" Some, you know, I mean, she's like, \"What the hell are you thinking?\" I'm like, \"Hey, just, just let me do my thing, babe.\" You know? but it's one of those things, just, just learn from people, 'cause You, you see in these chats, they wanna help you, right? I mean, they, they, they value, we're all in this together in the end, you know? We're all fighting the same thing, the, you know, well, my world, the, the government and all that crap, all the BS they put down on us. We're all out here to Create a more liberating society, I guess, where we can function together. so we're all in this together. I would just pay attention, I mean, your pod-- everything you're doing is phenomenal. people just need to listen to podcasts. They're driving down the road, I mean, sitting in traffic for two hours going to work, put some darn podcast on instead of listening to Miley Cyrus or whatever, right? I mean, learn. It's, it's an experience. catch, go on Twitter, go on Bitcoin Twitter specifically, because there's a lot of good people on there that just-- There, there's more, there's more than you can read in a day, right? So it's important just go on Twitter, go on Telegram, join, join the samurai group, join the nato group, join whatever group out there and just learn from people, 'cause there's all over the world, you wouldn't believe what people are doing and going through, to, to keep themselves safe, private, and, You know, keeping it going. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:06:52", "start": 4012.99, "text": "yeah, fantastic. Well, look, thank you very much for joining, and I think the listeners will get a bit out of listening to your journey." }, { "speaker": "pura_vida", "time": "01:07:00", "start": 4020.21, "text": "Yeah, no, I appreciate you having me. Hopefully, I didn't ramble too much on stuff, but, yeah, I hope, yeah, just check out everything we talked about. I think, I think people will enjoy going down that rabbit hole a little further, so gives them something a little different to look at." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:07:15", "start": 4035.48, "text": "Hope you enjoyed that. Make sure you follow Pura Vida Lightning hood. Also, just a quick note for Raoul Pal and the guys over at Real Vision, they wanted to share this quick offer just for the listeners who are interested in their Gold versus Bitcoin series. So you can go to realvision dot com slash gold dash bitcoin. They're offering a deal where it's three month subscription for one dollar, and they've got a whole range of different speakers as part of the series, including Plan B, Safe Deen, Dan Tapiero, Dan Morehead, and some others. Lastly, go to stephanlivera dot You can find the show notes, the transcript, and you can subscribe using a podcast app such as PocketCasts. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the citadels." } ] }