{ "episodeId": "SLP138", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "matt_odell": { "name": "Matt Odell", "role": "guest", "tag": "MATT" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:08", "start": 7.99, "text": "Hi and welcome to the Stephan Livera podcast focused on Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today we've got a show about whether a Bitcoiner should use CoinJoin and associated privacy techniques, but first, a word for the sponsors of the show. Go to Kraken dot com and sign up with Kraken, one of the world's leading Bitcoin exchanges. In an industry where many come and go, Kraken are one of the longest standing, and they're offering some of the best liquidity available in the industry. They've got high trading volume and low fees, with no minimum or hidden fees. They also offer twenty four seven support, and they've got the Kraken Pro mobile app, which you can find in the App Store. Kraken Pro delivers all the security and features you love about the Kraken exchange in a beautiful, mobile first design for advanced Bitcoin trading on the go. Kraken also offer an OTC desk, and they recently acquired Circle Trades OTC desk. This is for customers seeking a more private, personalized service for large block trades. Kraken also offer margin trading up to five times long and short, and also futures up to fifty times leverage. To learn more and sign up, go to kraken dot com. Next up, Unchained Capital. Unchained Capital are a Bitcoin financial services company, empowering customers with financial freedom and control. All their products are built on the foundation Of multisig, so they've got this approach to collaborative custody, giving the user control of the private keys as well as the benefit of a financial partner. Unchained offer two of three vaults, these are a great option if you're thinking about how best to secure your Bitcoin, and then if you need to access liquidity, if you wanna get a loan, but without selling your Bitcoin, Unchained offered this option where you can put up Bitcoin as collateral. All Bitcoin is stored on-chain, dedicated multisig, it's never rehypothecated, and also, I'm really impressed with Un Such as Parker Lewis' Gradually Then Suddenly series, and also check out Caravan and Hermit, some other open source contributions they've made. Unchained Capital are releasing great content, they're providing great services, I think you'll enjoy partnering with them. Go and sign up at Unchained Dash Capital dot com. Check out GiveBitcoin dot io, the easiest and safest way to get your friends and family into Bitcoin. Take it from me, I've given Bitcoin to people before, and they lost it. They didn't know what they were receiving, so that's why I saw huge value value in GiveBitcoin. You can buy Bitcoin for your friends and family with just their email address, and that gift is locked with a regulated US custodian for one year, during which GiveBitcoin delivers twelve monthly lessons to your recipient to speed them through the learning curve of becoming a hodler. GiveBitcoin has input from many well-known Bitcoiners including Safteen, Matt Odell, CitizenBitcoin, and others, and Jan Pritzker has just recently become the Chief Technology Officer as well. I'm also an advisor with a small equity stake assisting with the curriculum also. Keep an eye out for more excite- Exciting announcements coming. The aim is to really have a positive impact on Bitcoin adoption and understanding, so I'm excited to have them as a sponsor. The website is givebitcoin dot io. Have you backed up your Bitcoin seed? Look into Cipher Safe, they're producing the Cipher Wheel product, and so if you've got a Bitcoin bip thirty nine seed, such as one generated by a Trezor, a Ledger, or a Coldcard, you wanna make sure it's backed up in a way that's fireproof, waterproof, rustproof, petproof, and tamper evident. The Cipher Wheel is a In fact, it comes in a wheel shape, it masks the words of your seed unless you open a tamper-evident seal. So make sure your seed is backed up and make sure that you or your loved ones have access to your bitcoins if an accident occurs. The product is available for pre-order, so go to the website cyphersafe dot io, the link is in the show notes. So first episode for the new year, I hope you all had a great New Year's Eve, I certainly did. So today we're talking about coinjoins, should a Bitcoiner use coinjoin? What are the risks of not doing CoinJoin? How should we achieve this? What are some of the ways that Bitcoiners are currently falling down from a privacy perspective? So I'm pretty sure most, if not all, my listeners know very well who Matt Odell is, but just for those of you who don't, he's a co-host of Tales from the Crypt and Rabbit Hole Recap, which is a fantastic podcast, I listen to every episode, and Matt's known for his focus on Bitcoin and privacy, and he also first appeared on this podcast on episode seventy. So here's the interview. Matt, welcome back to the show. What's up Stefan? Always happy to be here. So there's been a lot of discussion recently about the topic of coin joining and Bitcoin privacy. So I, I know you've had some strong comments on that, and I think I'm pretty much aligned with your view on this as well, but I wanted to just explore that for a little bit, just to explore some of the different ideas, both for and against the idea of doing coin joining. but let's set the scene a little bit. So what was- What's, this recent incident in relation to Binance Singapore that seems to have set this off recently?" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "05:01", "start": 301.48, "text": "Well, I mean, I think what triggered the most recent conversation before Binance Singapore was Trace Mayer's comments. basically, I mean, he was on your show, he was on Peter's show, he was on our show, but he didn't actually talk about CoinJoin with Marty. and basically he was dissuading people from, from using CoinJoin in the first place, right? Right. And" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:24", "start": 324.14, "text": "I think I'm not, I'm not entirely clear on whether he was saying that for other people as well or whether he was saying that just in a personal capacity, as in he was saying he didn't personally want to CoinJoin, but the impression certainly was You wouldn't want to mix with a terrorist or whatever, so that was the implication. but I, I wonder what's your view there, because one analogy I was thinking is, and I, unfortunately, I didn't think of this at the time, but, the analogy of VPNs, right? Like you are in some-- obviously it's not technically accurate, but in some sense, you are using the anonymity set of a VPN when you use that service. So there's potentially some- Parallel there, what's your view?" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "06:10", "start": 370.15, "text": "Yeah, I mean, especially shared VPNs, right, where you're, sharing the IP address of other users. I mean, we've seen Binance, Do shotgun KYC on people just because their IP was flagged, but, you know, hundreds of people use that IP address 'cause it's a shared VPN service. you also see the analogy with Tor, you know, you also see the analogy with Bitcoin, right? So the-- we've heard this, that these statements come from no coiners plenty of times, where they say, \"I would never use Bitcoin because...\" terrorists and North Koreans use it, right? So to me it's, it's, it becomes, it's like, where do you draw the line? and I, I've-- it's hard for me to level that, that level the field where, where you think it's, it's completely, fine to use Bitcoin, because I mean, I think, I think all three of us agree with that, you know, Trace agrees with that as well, because- These, these, these products, these projects, to protect the average user, they have to protect all users. There's no, there's no way to delineate what's a good user and a bad user, 'cause as soon as you're able to delineate what's a good user and a bad user, then you have centralization, you have censorship there, and it's, it's going to be abused eventually. We see that happening, with Twitter right now, where they're stuck in the middle, where they're trying to police speech. And it's such a blurry line, how do you, how do you actually decide who is a good user and who's a bad user?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:47", "start": 467.23, "text": "Yeah, that's tricky, and it brings up this whole question of whether there is such a thing as taint as well, right? So my, my thought on that is more like taint is something that is externally observed and placed onto it, rather than something that inherently exists at the protocol level, right? Like quick example, right, my Bitcoin core node doesn't have any concept of blacklists or- Bad, dirty coins. My BTC Pay server doesn't have any concept of taint, right? It just, if it's a valid Bitcoin, it will accept it as payment, right? But what's your view there?" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "08:21", "start": 501.17, "text": "Well, I mean, I guess the, the issue here, the, the reason why this is, is dangerous logic to go down is because if this was ever enforced at scale, to, to be a Bitcoin user, you would basically, you'd have to, you know, you'd have to do the Mike Hearne style blacklists in, in your core node. You'd have Pay, you would, you would have to be basically doing chain analysis for every payment you received, otherwise, you know, god forbid you receive a Bitcoin with so-called taint on it. And then on, on top of that, I mean I don't, I don't know, i-if you go down the taint rabbit hole, right? Are, are we gonna include the, the miner fees? Like, what happens if, you know, the plus token guys did a transaction and they paid a miner fee, and then so that recently mined block reward, is that, is that tainted? Does that have taint on it?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:12", "start": 552.5, "text": "Yeah, and there are different ways to approach and tackle that question as well, even from a, the pro-taint view. the other component is also not just the taint aspect. But I think from a, again, not saying I agree with any of this government regulation, but recognizing that it applies to many companies today, part of it now is obviously KYC and some of these tools like KYT. So maybe it's not necessarily identifying taint, but just identifying who is the counterparty, and so maybe that is the- Implication or that's the real limitation that's being, enforced on all Bitcoin exchanges or large Bitcoin companies, because once you just get big enough, then they, you know, the government and regulators and so on try to slam the, you know, the book, they throw the book at you, so to speak." }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "10:04", "start": 603.63, "text": "What's KYT? Is that Know Your Transaction?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:06", "start": 606.23, "text": "Yeah, yeah. So there are tools like that do that to try and assess that, but I, I don't have a very strong knowledge of the specifics of that tool, but- my understanding from some of the blog posts and other articles I've seen from, you know, these companies, so like Chainalysis, Elliptic, CipherTrace, Crystal, and others Is that really from a Bitcoin point of view, it looks like the main things are address reuse and the common input ownership heuristic, and then I guess potentially the other thing is the KYC part giving them a good starting po-point, right? Because that, and I think thinking back to my earlier episode with Ergo, where he was pointing out, \"Well, maybe it's not so much that we have a Bitcoin privacy problem, it's more that we have a KYC problem, right?\" It's that because ex- Exchanges have so much of a, of a view into, who has what coins, and then if they end up-- again, I don't know the terms of the deal that they do with the chain spy companies, but it may well involve information sharing so that the chain spy companies can then say, \"Oh, okay, I know that Matt Odell bought x, y, and z bitcoins at this date and blah, blah, blah.\" but yeah, what's your view on, where are we falling down right now from a privacy perspective? Would you agree that those are the Right, address reuse, common input, ownership puristic, and then basically KYC services." }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "11:33", "start": 693.35, "text": "Absolutely. I mean, I, I think, I think they definitely have information sharing agreements, if they don't, they will, so we should just assume that, like, that's the de facto standard. you know, basically databases of known addresses, connected to known individuals, and it just greatly reduces the, anonymity set across the board. They're able to add all these additional connections to it. you know, Little things like, people don't think about it, but if you're receiving a payment from someone and they pay you directly from their Coinbase wallet, for instance, you know, the Coinbase exchange, then, then all of a sudden that transaction to you is linked directly to that person, and then whoever Coinbase is working with could have a connection there. You know, KYC is a, a tricky little fucker. Like, I don't know, how we're gonna avoid that on the onramps? We have, when, when we do end up as, as more people adopt Bitcoin, as more people earn Bitcoin, and there's an actual circular economy, that the, that effect could get reduced and the reliance on on-ramps and off-ramps gets reduced. as far as taint goes, to me, I, I feel like I would I would much prefer to receive coins that, that, that went through CoinJoin, that don't have a discernible history to them. I think i-if, if you properly use some of these privacy tools, and in the future, as these privacy tools get better, 'cause right now there's a lot of nuance to it, it's very easy to screw it up, I, I feel like the coins that have the least taint will be the ones that have, that have gone through CoinJoin, that use PayJoin, right? Like that, that to me seems like less taint The last four hundred transactions that have gone, gone through that UTXO." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:22", "start": 802.25, "text": "Right. I guess it can get complicated though, because even in the case of CoinJoin, it still matters about how much volume is being driven through that CoinJoin. So for example, I think even Laurent from the Samurai Wallet and OXT dot me team, he was pointing out that if- Plus Token, for example, had tried to move that volume through any of the, you know, well-known, non-custodial mixes, it would have basically-- no one, they wouldn't have had the volume of other people mixing to support them moving, you know, a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand BTC through the mixer, and so it could be identifiable through other means unless there were enough other people doing coinjoints or potentially if they moved it through very slowly, like they just did little piece at a time, right? Okay, here's a A hundred BTC, I'll move that through. Hundred BTC, I'll move that through over time." }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "14:15", "start": 854.56, "text": "Yeah, I mean, volume is, you know, liquidity is basically negligible. That's, you know, one of the reasons why I've been trying to advocate for people to use it more, and one of the reasons why I think it's important for people who use KYC exchanges to use it, because it's, it adds liquidity that is You know, considered legal liquidity by like the Western world, you know, all these compliant, nations. You know, one of the big issues here with this public ledger is timing, timing analysis, right? So if you're trying to-- even with-- even if the liquidity is better, like if you're If, like, you know, you, you move a bunch of coins through CoinJoin and then you don't combine the inputs afterwards, you know, you practice good coin control, but you move them all to like cold storage, as individual UTXOs, and you do it like around the same time every day, in like, in, in groups, you know, even though you're not combining them. that timing analysis can give you away, especially if it's a, you know, someone who's like dedicated to looking for a specific person, right? So like a lot of these tools, I think, help more For like a mass surveillance type of situation, right? Like where they're just trying to gobble up lots of data, but when you start trying to target individuals and you have a starting point or you have a couple addresses that you're watching, you can mix that with timing analysis and you can get a really good idea." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:39", "start": 938.79, "text": "Yeah, so it might be useful, that's a good point. I agree with you, and I think it might be useful then to distinguish between Let's call it basic privacy techniques, and then somebody who is trying to, who has, who needs, who has a higher need for advanced privacy. And so in the same way that somewhat we wouldn't expect, you know, IT general controls to catch every possible, hacker or every possible vulnerability, it's just meant to be a way to have like a basic level, here's kind of minimum standards, because as you say, there is a difference between, somebody who's trying to do mass dragnet Surveillance versus a targeted attacker, right? Because if someone's coming after you specifically, then they'll spend a lot more to come after you, but I guess ultimately comes down to what is the cost of attack and what's the cost of defense here, right?" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "16:27", "start": 987.39, "text": "Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:28", "start": 987.89, "text": "exactly. You" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "16:29", "start": 989.03, "text": "wanna make the cost of, the cost of attack, Way more expensive, right? You wanna make it so that it's way more difficult for them to, to pull off these attacks, way more expensive so that they can't do it on a mass scale. I mean, and then we, we also have all these other issues, right? Which is why we're trying to get people to run full nodes, not use hosted explorers. there's so many ways you can leak, private information with Bitcoin. that is really a minefield out there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:00", "start": 1020.07, "text": "Yeah, and I think the toolset is not quite easy yet. It's getting there though. Like one tool I really, I particularly like is the Ronin Dojo by Zelco. I know you guys, highlighted it on your show recently as well. But, I guess let's bring it back to what, what happened in that specific example with Binance though. So I think that was probably the first example where this individual had withdrawn from the exchange and then- It was-- the exchange was tracking what was happening after withdrawal, as opposed to tracking only what happened pre the deposit of Bitcoin into that exchange. And I think that was something that most people weren't aware of. what was your view on that?" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "17:45", "start": 1065.32, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I think that caught us by surprise because we were all watching for when CoinJoin deposits, you know, UTXOs with CoinJoin history would get blocked at exchanges, but in this case, it was through withdrawals, and it was basically they noticed that his previous withdrawals were going into Wasabi and going through CoinJoin to Wasabi, and so then when he tried to do a future withdrawal, right? Because they didn't, they didn't let him process that withdrawal, so they technically didn't know exactly where it was gonna go yet. They just based it on his previous withdrawal history, and they were like, \"We're not gonna let you withdraw unless you answer all these questions.\" And he had already KYC'd too. so I mean, yeah, I, I think that's, that's definitely an issue. It, it falls, it falls in the same- category I think in terms of them not accepting deposits, right? especially if you're, you know, I guess not accepting deposits, i-in either way, they're, they're holding funds hostage, right? 'Cause if you send a deposit, they're not gonna tell you that they're blocking the deposit until after they receive it, 'cause Bitcoin's a push system. And with withdrawals, you know, they're gonna lock your account under the suspicion that you're about to go through CoinJoin, I guess withdrawals it could be a little bit messier, if you have a large amount of, of funds on that exchange at any given time, but if you're practicing good- you know, Bitcoin practices, and you're not keeping large amounts on the exchange, then it should just be whatever your, your recent on-ramp purchase was, you know, before you swept it to your wallet. So in, in either case At least the, the benefit there is that I don't think there's, you don't have that much funds at risk, right? If you're doing it the right way, if you're not keeping a lot of money on exchanges, if you're not depositing large amounts at a single time, then, you know, that, that one UTXO that gets frozen, While not ideal, isn't like the absolute end of the world." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:42", "start": 1182.47, "text": "Yeah, true, true. And it is also this question around how it got detected. So my understanding here is that there was some debate here around exactly how that got flagged, right? Was it flagged because of the proximity to the Wasabi fee address and therefore the chain's analysis or whatever CipherTrace or whatever tool was flagging it because it, because that, that individual's previous withdrawals had a proximity to that address because they were part of, you know, the coinjoin transactions, right? The static fee address. Or was there some kind of heuristic done to identify equal output coinjoins?" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "20:22", "start": 1222.07, "text": "Yeah, I mean, it was definitely, it was definitely the fixed fee address. I mean, I'm like, the way the email was sent to him, where they listed the fixed fee address and said there was a connection to it, I, I think, you know, ninety-nine percent it was a- Very simple heuristic that they put in, to whatever their system was to flag connections to that fixed fee address. Now the Wasabi guys will say that The fixed fee address provides transparency, into their volume numbers and, and how much, you know, fees they're collecting, and that, that is true. It is very easy to track that. but it also makes it super easy for these chain analysis companies to put it into their software. But at the same time, I think that's- You know, I, I've said to them, I've spoken to them, I'm like, \"You should probably just get rid of the fixed fee address, it's more trouble than it's worth. But really, you're just delaying, delaying the inevitable.\" I, I, I think Trace is right in that A lot of these exchanges will start blocking, transactions with CoinJoin history. hopefully they don't try and do it at scale, where you have large amounts of exchanges doing it, right? Because if they start doing it at scale, then you're gonna have, you know, it's, it basically becomes a ban on self custody altogether, right? Because how do you know without doing chain analysis that the payments you're receiving, to your BTC pay don't have a CoinJoin history in them? so- So, I, I, as far as I'm concerned, they should remove the fixed fee address. It just makes it way too simple for chain analysis. But these chain analysis guys could easily put in a heuristic that says, you know, Wasabi coinjoins, flag Wasabi coinjoins. It's so obvious on chain. You, you clearly see the coinjoin. You clearly see a samurai whirlpool coinjoin. You know, you, you have five inputs, five outputs, all equal. it, it's pre- it's pretty obvious." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:19", "start": 1339.2, "text": "Right. Yeah. So Does impinge or impact the quality of the Wasabi mix because it sort of lowers the entropy because there's always one going that way or some input going towards that fee address? But a-anyway, that aside, I think it also comes down to that question of how could it be, how could detection be evaded hypothetically, right? Like there is things like that idea of the samurai ricochet, for example, or just you could just manually bounce it through different addresses or split it up, because if you wanted to still withdraw from the exchange without them knowing that you're doing coinjoin, well, then that's another thing you have to think about as well, because now if you, if, if that starts to be- become a common practice, then people would have to start thinking of ways to mask that behavior, right?" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "23:10", "start": 1390.39, "text": "I mean, it, it, it really comes down to how much the regul- you know, regulators in given countries want to crack down on this stuff, right? Because It does get very blurry very quickly, right? Like, where, where do you draw the line of, a coin join, a UTXO having coin join history? If a UTXO goes through coin join once, like five years ago, and has four hundred transactions after that, is that still a coin with, you know, a UTXO with, coin join history? If it goes into lightning, comes out of lightning, you know, what, where is the Where do you draw the line there? And, and I'm not sure if the, the end goal there, if they decide to enforce it hard, is basically just a complete ban on self-custody. And in that case, you know, I-- to me, it's, it's the same reason why I Bitcoin, you know, fuck it. Like I, it's, it's not a reasonable concern because to me, they could totally just say CoinJoin is illegal, right? And if they say CoinJoin is illegal, and you're trying to withdraw from like- Like, let's say Cash App, and you withdraw from Cash App, and you go through five hops, and then it goes to CoinJoin. Are they gonna, are they gonna, you know, block your account for that? And if they do, then they've essentially just completely banned self-custody, 'cause what happens if I pay someone and then they go through a CoinJoin?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:36", "start": 1476.02, "text": "Right, yeah. and I, I, I mean, there's a couple things there. So that might just push it more towards cash deals, right? People might actually have to just start doing, you know, Bisk and, HodlHodl, or they're not in the US, but I think Bisk is operative, operating in the US. it may end up pushing people more towards the, the gray market view of Bitcoin, and, and perhaps this is a good, topic to go into now because that's potentially what's at stake here Example, Tito from the Samurai team, commented that maybe this is really the tension, really that maybe we end up, we end up with bifurcation, right? We got the white market, compliant KYC Bitcoin view versus the gray market Bitcoin algorithm kind of view. Do you, a-and I don't think that's like a novel thing, I think people have seen that even in twenty seventeen, following the, you know, SegWit two x and Bcash stuff. What's your view there? Do you think that that, that is going to- To be attention amongst Bitcoin users? I mean, I think" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "25:39", "start": 1538.92, "text": "that will always be attention. I, I disagree with, I, I, I somehow am in the, I'm somehow stuck in the middle between the, as the samurai guys like to call them, the compliance bros, and like the, the street money guys. I, I think both are good. you know, I think, Bitcoin is stronger because, because people are investing in Bitcoin and the price goes up, so miners get paid more. And I think that supports the street money side. I, I go back to, do you remember the old meme where you have, Neo from The Matrix, and it's like, when it, when it comes time to sell your Bitcoin, you won't have to sell your Bitcoin, you'll be spending your Bitcoin. Yeah, classic, classic meme. Right. So if you take self-custody and you practice good privacy techniques, the- I, I won't-- I think the on-ramp matters more, like just getting on, right? Like just getting into the system. Once you're in the system, especially in these like Western democracies, like are they gonna go door to door, And take people's Bitcoin from them, like that'll be very expensive. We were talking about defensive versus, you know, the defensive versus offensive talk, like the Bitcoin's a defensive technology, like they'd have to go door to door and, and basically take your, take your keys from you, and that, that'll be really hard to do from a Western democracy side. So I, I think it, it makes sense that, that people that are trying to trade it on a daily basis or even in the short term, like a year or two years, might be worried that they're not gonna Exchange, but I, I, for me, that isn't a concern because that isn't my plan. Like, I'm here for the long term, and I think when it comes time, like, I'm, I won't be selling my Bitcoin, I'll be spending it. And then, you know, you're not even worrying about something like Bisc, which I think has its own, pitfalls, that aren't really talked about that much, because if you're spending it, like, it, let, let's say five years down the road, the scenario I You go and pay them in Lightning, and they're using BTC Pay. I, I don't think if all goes according to plan, they shouldn't know what your UTXOs are that funded that Lightning payment, right? So I think it becomes a moot point at that point," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:00", "start": 1679.86, "text": "right? Or it's like a specially segregated portion of your UTXOs, not your main stash, basically, right? Like you might have a main stash that you've got with your, you know, proper security, and then you might spend a small amount out of that, run that through a- Coinjoin fund your lightning node, and then, you know, hopefully by then we've got those lightning privacy enhancements, things like Schnorr signatures and so on, that help that. And then basically your counterparty for that trade, the convenience store, doesn't know what your main stash is. They just kind of only have maybe some idea of what is the balance in a specific lightning channel, but even then, maybe not so clear." }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "28:39", "start": 1719.27, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I think the balances in the lightning channels, like, it does go hand in hand, but like at the end- At the end of the day, it comes down to, are, are they gonna be able to know what the UTXOs were that funded that payment, right? Because that's where the chain analysis comes in. And I think Lightning, on its own, in its primitive state right now, is already a huge, massive improvement. I mean, think about just three years ago, four years ago, people were putting fixed addresses along the internet? you, you know, you, you find a fixed reused address and it's connected to a person, and then all of a sudden you have this huge insight into what, they're doing. And Lightning, you know, they're not saving, you know, Lightning by far isn't perfect right now, it's very early, but it, it, it's a massive privacy improvement just because on chain is, is so easy to leak your privacy. thing, little things, you know, like, every payment isn't recorded on chain forever, you need more active The fact that invoices aren't reused by default, you can't reuse invoices. So if you post an invoice on the internet, you're not leaking as much information as you're leaking when you post a fixed address, you know, little things like that. make it a massive improvement, and then hopefully we get all these other things that we want. you know, things like multi-party, you know, c-created, creating lightning channels with multi-parties where, you know, you, you have that common input heuristic is broken because, you know, you're, you're basically doing like a coin join into, into lightning. Little things like that, I think, will make, you know, huge step-up improvements." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:16", "start": 1815.68, "text": "Yeah, are there any areas that you see or what, what do you see that we need, in terms of Lightning privacy? Well, Lightning," }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "30:23", "start": 1823.15, "text": "I mean, you know, I, we need more nodes on Tor, and we need more routing nodes, that are, that are not known actors that are run through Tor, that aren't just broadcasting their IP, all the time, which is basically what the majority of the top nodes are doing right now, you know, not to be a Bitcoin fodder. but we've heard this a lot of times from, like the B-Cash crowd and, and whatnot, that Lightning will be something that's dominated by like the Bitrefill's of the world, right? Where you just have a couple large, big routing nodes. so I think a big thing that a lot of people can do is, is to just run, you know, run a node with some decent liquidity through Tor. It doesn't have to be like some massive node, Connect to some other, you know, other nodes that also, you know, respect privacy in that regard, and, and, and we can have some, some like good privacy-focused liquidity there. I think that is a, is a major one. you know, just user-friendly wallets in general that don't expose privacy, you know, like a lot of the wallets right now that Are super easy, friendly to use, aren't very private when you start talking about like network analysis. you know, I love Phoenix, I love Breeze, they know all of your transactions. if they get compelled, they, they can give that up, right? If, if they're taking logs, they'll have no choice. so, and let alone the custodial wallets that are being used by a ton of people, but even the non-custodial wallets, like the user-friendly non-custodial wallets are leaking a ton of information. which is why, Even discussed until last two years, no one was talking about, little things like running your, your ledger and not using your own full node, or running your Trezor and not using your own full node, 'cause you're sending all your, all your UTXOs to their server. No one was even talking about that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:20", "start": 1939.7, "text": "Yeah, so at least the game has changed a little bit and people are getting more aware about these things. So potentially there is something that can be done in terms of, let's call it coinjoin campaigning, right? People just saying, \"Hey, you should use these privacy tools.\" And I guess bringing it to more on-chain privacy, I think that's another aspect of, where people can start spending and paying with a coinjoin, right? So there's a few different things, right? So one is this idea of the, like the stone wall style, the algorithm that includes an extra input so that it's not clear that there's, now there's multiple interpretations to that transaction, and another is obviously payjoin, which is supported by both JoinMarket and, Samurai Wallet, it's called, stowaway in their, in their scheme or in their product. what's your view there around, driving use of that? Will that change the game, change the heuristic in terms of if enough people use pay join features?" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "33:17", "start": 1997.13, "text": "Right. So pay join is, particularly awesome in terms of these, Blacklisting discussions because it doesn't use, equal, equal outputs. basically with Payjoin, right, you're, you're getting, an input from the receiver of the transaction, so the heuristics there get broken a bit. They also Samurai has Stonewall times two, where you like have a friend give you inputs that isn't the receiver of the payment, which is also a very interesting concept. I'm like pretty bullish on Samurai in general, just because I think I think for the average user, it, it's just way more convenient for them to, to, you know, when they have this mobile mixing, that they're planning on releasing soon, it's way more, it's way easier for them to just install You know, a, an app on their phone, click mix, and then when it comes time to spend, have, have some integrated tools that are, that are very useful for them to, you know, to use without like really knowing exactly what they're doing. you know, I've always loved CoinJoin Market, I've been showing CoinJoin Market since it first came out. The whole idea of like the, the maker-taker model is like the ultimate Bitcoin incentive that, that we all love, you know, where you, you have a financial incentive to provide CoinJoin liquidity," }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "34:37", "start": 2076.72, "text": "Going to get the average user, to, to use it if they need to do like seven or eight steps in command line before they even get to a GUI, and, and that's who we need if we want to get the liquidity, because otherwise you just end up having, a very small subset, using those, using those transaction types. Now, as far as payjoin goes, it gets really interesting, I think. with BTC Pay, which is relatively new, like in the scheme of things, like what, that project launched like two years ago, or like the famous Ni- Nicolas Dorey tweet was, was like two and a half years ago maybe, 'Cause merchants never really had an easy way to accept Bitcoin without a centralized provider, and now they have this relatively turnkey way to accept payments, and if they integrate Payjoin there Then every payment to a BTC Pay merchant could be a pay join, which I think would be--" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:37", "start": 2136.58, "text": "That would be pretty huge. Right. And let's talk through the on-chain impact there, because when you do a pay join with somebody, the actual-- Well, firstly, to an outside observer, they don't know that it is a pay join, so that's also, that's win number one, right? And then win number two is that the actual amount being transacted is masked, and so that's not clear. And I think- I think the other big win, and I think I've seen Chris Belcher speak on this topic, is that when you pay join with somebody, to an outside observer, unless they have insight into, you know, unless there's information sharing, they don't really have a good way to trace transactions going forwards because now they either have to cluster you together or just treat that like a dead end." }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "36:24", "start": 2184.12, "text": "Right. It's all about, when you're doing chain analysis, it's all about assumptions and basically probabilities. Right? They're, they're, they're making a guess about where these UTXOs are going and if they change hands. Right? Like for the longest time, what a lot of people said was, if you were sending from a hosted wallet like Coinbase that did KYC and you wanted to- Do sports betting, you, you just send to a different wallet of yours that was non-hosted, and then you'd send to the betting site. And by doing that, it gives you an additional level of plausible deniability, right? You don't know if the exchange is gonna care about that extra level of plausible deniability, but as far as chain analysis is concerned, they don't know if you just paid Mr. Hoddle and then Mr. Hoddle went and, and, you know, bet, bet using that Bitcoin. They, they don't know for sure as soon as there's Except for there's one heuristic that if you send all, if there's, if there's basically, if there's no change in the transaction, then it's like very likely a self-transfer. yeah, so I, I think breaking down those heuristics and making it so that they have to guess and then it's, it's less likely, you know, their, their probabilities go down in terms of, of who to, you know, where to follow the UTXOs is, is obviously a huge benefit, but it still doesn't solve the The, the, the trace concern, right? Because, you know, he-- I-- someone from that, you know, camp would just say, if, if you're a BTC pay merchant and you're doing pay join with your customers, then maybe you're just tainting your Bitcoin, right? Maybe you're, making your Bitcoin harder to spend at a KYC outlet in the future." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:03", "start": 2282.76, "text": "Right, I see you. Yeah. And I think on this whole topic of heuristics and so on, part of- I guess what happens currently, so again, I don't have intimate detail of it, but I've heard, you know, stories and rough ideas, is that some of these tools used by some of these larger, you know, Bitcoin exchanges, maybe even the large brokers and so on, that they might pay for use of a certain tool, and they need to, quote-unquote, risk score their customer, and then they might look at a certain incoming deposit and see, oh, okay, that's got potentially higher risk because whatever, maybe it was associated with some- Stolen exchange coins from years ago and therefore this customer might be higher risk and blah, blah, blah. But that may potentially be the future with coinjoin transactions. But I think if enough people start doing coinjoin, it starts to break that, you know, that association that, that chain spy tools could no longer- Yes. Flag somebody as high risk, pure, merely for the fact that they have CoinJoin history, if enough people start doing it. What's your view there on that and whether that kind of campaign could be driven?" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "39:13", "start": 2352.68, "text": "Absolutely. I mean, that's the biggest reason why I've been trying to push CoinJoin liquidity, even if you don't do it. You know, one of the things that stops a lot of people from doing CoinJoin that I've noticed Bes-besides the fact that, you know, these concerns that traces said, which I've heard that concern many times, is the concern that they're a little bit overwhelmed if they, if they could do it correctly, right? But, we leak so much information, and just the default way of using Bitcoin, the way most people are using Bitcoin, that I think, you know, as long as you don't assume you have perfect privacy, if you use Coinjoin, you're improving the situation, both for yourself and for Bitcoiners, just because the default is so bad I also tend to agree with that, that if we can get coinjoin liquidity up to a certain point, to an exchange, they might actually prefer receiving, you know, there, there might be a, a dirty area in between where Things get like really nasty and a lot of transactions are getting blocked and deposits and withdrawals are getting blocked and you basically can't use them. but in the, in the long term, they might actually prefer receiving CoinJoin deposits because then all of a sudden that responsibility isn't on them. They don't have to, you know, they, they don't have the means to look at this huge history. That, that huge history of a UTXO when you deposit to an exchange is just a massive regulatory burden for them. If, if they don't- See it, then it's on, it's almost better for them in that regard." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:41", "start": 2441.02, "text": "Right. And although we do have to consider it's a cat and mouse game, though. So let's hypothetically say, right, we, a lot of people are driving coin join campaigning and everyone starts doing coin joins, and yeah, we really do break that heuristic, and so exchanges can no longer safely flag someone merely for using coin join. It may, I wonder whether that may still, you know, the compliance departments of those ex- May still feel some level of, you know, anxiety that they're not doing enough, so to speak, and that they would then need to ask for other info on every customer. I, I don't know, what, what's your thought there?" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "41:19", "start": 2478.75, "text": "I mean, I think what happens here is the end game becomes, if we go down this route successfully, the end game becomes to enforce at scale, they have to ban self-custody completely. And I, you know, I think that's a fight that I'm willing to take. I think that's a fight that all Bitcoiners should be willing model as your government just banning Bitcoin altogether, right? They could ban CoinJoin, they could ban Bitcoin just as easily. I mean, we see, we see, we already see exchanges, like Circle and Robinhood that don't even give you the option. You can't deposit and withdraw, you just, you just hold the IOU on their platform, and they don't even have to deal with any of that regulatory compliance, issues. And, and in my mind, I think in most Bitcoiners' minds, that's not really Bitcoin, right? 'Cause you have to trust this So, you know, I, I don't think any-- if, if, if the idea that people have is that this is gonna be an easy process, that governments aren't gonna fight back, I would dismiss that wholeheartedly, and I would say that the fight is beginning. it's actually been slower than I expected, but you should still expect that there's gonna be-- there's gonna be a fight here. and you have to decide what's important. You have to decide if you really want control over your own money or if you're fine with, you know, For you, just like gold is, on these centralized platforms." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:41", "start": 2560.76, "text": "Right. And, I think Giacomo has also made a similar argument there around how KYC, I think he was talking about Know Your Confiscation or something, but basically the argument was if the government knows every Bitcoin holder, then theoretically it knows whose door to go and knock on, right? Exactly." }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "42:57", "start": 2577.11, "text": "I mean, and that's why I disagree with Ergo in that regard, in terms of he said like once you KYC, you can never get out of that. Because I think that it's still a huge improvement if you use CoinJoin and run your own node, control your own keys after you go through KYC, because at least now it's still so difficult to hold your own Bitcoin securely, right? It's gotten significantly-- it's gotten significantly better, but if, if you practice good privacy techniques post-KYC, at least it gives you a level of plausible deniability as years go by, right? So- If, if they don't, if they're able to actively know your balances, you know, that's the first step. We saw that, in America with Executive Order sixty-one-O-two in the thirties, right before they confiscated everyone's gold. I mean, that was the confiscation order, but they knew where all the gold was, so that, that's how they were able to confiscate it. The gold they didn't know, you know, where it was, like in a closet somewhere, and, and the person bought it without KYC," }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "44:04", "start": 2643.84, "text": "Like today when we see, cold card vulnerabilities, BitBox vulnerabilities, Trezor vulnerabilities, if you bought on a KYC exchange three years ago and you use CoinJoin properly and you run your own node and you practice good privacy hygiene, they're not sure if you still have it, right? And, and so then it comes down to the fact like, how far does that government wanna go? and, and- With Western democracies, like, I don't think they're gonna go that far. Like, I think, especially as we get Bitcoin in more hands, like, that would-- there'd be a lot of public outrage if they're going door to door, basically breaking kneecaps and threatening jail time to try and get people to admit to Bitcoin that they're not even sure if the person actually holds." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:47", "start": 2686.78, "text": "Right, especially as you say, as time goes on. But perhaps there is also a value there in, you know, so, so we've got the big KYC exchanges, and they're But there might also be a value in driving the use of non-KYC as an alternative, right? So if you've got family and friends, potentially if they have their own little informal network where they trade amongst themselves, as opposed to everyone going to KYC exchanges, then there's at least less, less Bitcoiners who have been, quote unquote, bagged and tagged." }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "45:19", "start": 2718.92, "text": "Absolutely. And I mean, I think this improves over time as more-- there's more Bitcoin holders, so there's more people to participate in that circular economy. an, an obvious, venue for receiving KYC-free Bitcoin is through mining. That's one of the reasons proof-of-work is so important, besides countless other reasons. another way is to, you know, receive Bitcoin for goods and services, especially if you offer a discount because you want that KYC-free Bitcoin. So I think we'll see more of that, you know, specifically BTC Pay merchants accepting it. as far as you know, P2PKYC free transactions with strangers, there's a lot of risk involved there. Like, first of all, we've seen in America undercover agents, We've seen undercover agents participate in the transaction, so you don't know if they're an undercover agent and the whole thing's, you know, being watched. And in, in that case, it could be even worse for you, because there's a, you know, an implication of, of guilt there, just because you're trying to, you know, as far as these so-called democracies care about, that, you know, they, they think you're trying to end around the, the regulations. And then the other issue is, you know, something with like BISQ I wanna fund it, like I love the product, project, I like, I want people to use it. but like, how do you know, like, you're just gonna get like a random person's gonna send a bank transfer into your account? Like, obviously you have to use cash, because if you just accept bank transfers from random people, that can raise a whole ton of flags. Like, who do you-- who's paying you? So, and like, who are you paying? Like, are you-- You know, I, I, who, who are you sending a bank transfer to? They see all the, that transaction. So, so, so cash is obviously king in terms of privacy. If you can do cash transfers that great, you know, you hope it's not an undercover agent, you keep it under ten thousand dollars, because that's when things start getting, like extra dicey. But, I, I think in terms of like circular economy, I think you will see, you know, more friends and family type situations. I think we'll see that across the board, Bitcoin purchases, but also with, you know, like running your node or something like that, like where one person runs a node and, and their friends and family connect to it as like a, you know, a trusted third party that they know and actually do trust. And I, I think this, this whole idea of, of earning Bitcoin for goods and services, like your convenience store and you, you do offer a discount, like I think that's like how the Bitcoin circular economy starts, because otherwise, like, why, why would people spend Bitcoin if they're dollar-cost averaging in and they're speculating on the price going up, unless there is like a substantial discount? So the, the merchant should be offering discounts so they can get that KYC-free Bitcoin, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:08", "start": 2888.31, "text": "and here's a hypothetical for you, Matt. If a hundred percent of the demand for Bitcoin was all done on, you know, street deals, darknet markets, do you think the price would actually be higher than it is now?" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "48:20", "start": 2900.2, "text": "No way, not in a million years. I, like, I strongly disagree with that, with that logic, what do you think?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:27", "start": 2907.07, "text": "Do you think it would be higher? right now, no, but I think maybe longer term it could be. I mean, if, if enough people started just doing it that way, I don't know. yeah, so, let's start talking a little bit about, action steps then for people. So what are some takeaways for the listeners in terms of things they can do? What tools should they be thinking of? what are some, you know, steps that they can take?" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "48:54", "start": 2934.3, "text": "Should be running your own node and securing your keys, right? And, and like actually using your node for your keys, right? So, you know, whether that's Electrum, which is- Has its own issues with Electrum server, but stuff like MyNode and Nodal and Raspiblitz and stuff are making it easier to run Electrum servers, so that's good. Because that's just like an obvious, you're just obviously like, tons of information leak. and then I think like people should be experimenting with CoinJoin. I, like, like I said, I think that as long as you don't have this assumption that it's Perfectly private, it's a net benefit just because the status quo is, is so bad. And, and I really do think that the next step will be, you know, stuff like Samurai that make it really easy. And then as, as far as payments and receiving payments and sending payments, like Lightning will be the way that people can do it in a slightly more private fashion that hopefully will scale up in time and, and become more private." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:59", "start": 2999.35, "text": "Yeah, and even in the case- In case of taking, deposits, I, I read an article recently about why static address deposits are really bad, so don't use those. A lot of people use them for donations, even Bitcoiners, right? So it's sort of like surprising in some ways when, once everyone, like, I could understand maybe like some streamer who's not really like a hardcore Bitcoiner, but they just put up an address to take donations, but there are people even like Bitcoiners, like, we have to lead by example, right? So I think two better solutions I would suggest there is, one Nims for donations or two, set up a BTC pay server and use that to take donations. I think that's one thing to combat this whole address reuse problem as well." }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "50:41", "start": 3040.8, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I think I love pay Nims. The biggest issue with pay Nims is that the only way the, the, the payer can pay you is if they have Samurai, which means they have to not only have Samurai, but they have to have an Android phone. Which greatly reduces the amount of people that could pay you. BTC Pay is obviously fantastic. I mean, I, I think people should also temper their expectations a little bit, right? Like if you look back two years, three years, everyone was reusing addresses. Now the default is HD wallets, right? Like we, we didn't even- We've come, we've come such a long way in such a short amount of time. I'd be really surprised if that improve, if those improvements don't continue, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:19", "start": 3079.47, "text": "Yeah, no, agreed, agreed. and then I think the other thing is this idea of like, even using Samurai, if you're using every, for every spend, you try to make it a stone wall, then that's another thing as well, because when you make every spend a stone wall or better, right? Stone wall, stone wall x2 or a stowaway, then You're really starting to screw with the heuristic a bit. Now, right now, sure, the number of people using, you know, privacy tools is lower, obviously, but if that start-- if that number starts, if you know, if we get a number go up there, then that really does start to change, the heuristics and change the way people are able to spy on the blockchain." }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "52:00", "start": 3119.51, "text": "Yeah, I mean, a lot of this relies on adoption increasing and continuing, which I'm bullish on, which helps, in terms of my mental model, and just usage increasing, and that's why education's important for these specific tools. I mean, like, how many people do we think are actually using, Samurai Wasabi, Stonewall specifically in, in Samurai? and then I think, you know, also they just like these individual project teams are, they, they need to iterate on their designs, right? Like- So I, for instance, I used a Stonewall spend, I've been, you know, I practice what I, what I preach, and I, I, I've been using both Samurai Whirlpool and Wasabi, And I, so, so post Whirlpool, right? I, I was sending a transaction to myself to, to practice, Stonewall. And the way their algorithm works, like, it included a ton of inputs. I guess a ton of outputs, as, you know, there's technically no inputs, but it included a ton of outputs for the input side of the transaction, and- Like that is, you know, in terms of coin control, right? Like that's combining a bunch of UTXOs to make the payment. So you do get that benefit from Stonewall that, that common input, the common output, heuristic is, you, you don't really know, for, for sure, but- You, you are combining all those, those UTXOs, so there's a lot of nuance there and the tools need to be iterated on and improved on, because the end user, you know, a, a, like a, a Bitcoiner that's educated right now can use just basic Coinjoin, but even for them it's not that intuitive, right? A, like, I was using Coinjoin on Electrum for the longest time, and they don't have like default labeling, right? One of the things Wasabi does great is it forces you to label. Samurai doesn't have forced labels yet. Samurai's coin control is, is the opposite. It's, instead of picking the UTXOs you spend, you pick which ones you mark as \"don't spend.\" And supposedly that's gonna change with their new app, so we'll see. But like, these tools need to iterate, you know? Wasabi has a \"select all\" button, that lets you select all the, lets you select all the UTXOs at once. To include in a transaction. Like, why does that feature exist? That feature shouldn't exist. It's just, tricking users into using it, and inadvertently linking a bunch of UTXOs post-mix. so, so these tools need to be iterated on. They need to fail and then improve. and that's just how it's gonna go. It's gonna be a slow and steady process. and a-as, as we have liquidity and as we have these tools, you know, improve, hopefully, the situation will get better. I cautiously optimistic." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:51", "start": 3291.19, "text": "Yeah, no, that's, that's a fair point. I think, there's still work to be done, but, you know, that's, that's the nature of it. Some of this stuff is just cutting edge. I know in the case of Samurai, I think they are looking at, yeah, as you said, including, labeling, and more direct coin control features on the app in the coming versions, and I think they are also working on like a new engine that picks UTXOs in a Smart way so that you don't screw yourself over. so the idea is, if you-- when you do the TX zero, that it won't, you'll have that unmixed change, right? Like that little bit there, and that's the most toxic part, which you shouldn't ever mix together with other, you know, other pieces, other, you know, unmixed changes, 'cause then it links the mix-mixes together, et cetera. and I think their new engine will actually try to intelligently, hold those back" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "55:49", "start": 3349.01, "text": "That's-- again, these are things that are coming, but, I think, we can be optimistic if people get, pointed towards the right tools. And so, for example, when I'm, trying to help onboard a beginner, I'll try to default them into the more private things, right? So I might try to-- if, if that person has an Android phone, well, then I'll get them set up on Samurai Wallet so that, that way, they're at least starting with a privacy tool in their hand already. And so there's not as much" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:19", "start": 3379.01, "text": "them to change from some other tool to using, you know, a more privacy focused one." }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "56:24", "start": 3384.5, "text": "Yeah, I mean, right now with Samurai Wallet, when you do the, the transaction zero, like the premix, you get that, as you said, you get that toxic change, and that toxic change is not automatically marked \"do not spend,\" so you have to go in and make sure you do not, you mark it as \"do not spend\" for future transactions. And also, it's not automatically labeled, so if you don't go back and label it, you end up in a situation I don't even know what this toxic change thing is. You know, where is that UTXO from, and now it's worth like a hundred dollars, like, do I wanna risk spending it or do-- does my privacy, you know, is worth a hundred dollars? And you get into this like really dirty situation. so little, little tweaks like that, I, I think at the end of the day, basically what these privacy tools have to do is they have to, you know, do, at least a light chain analysis on yourself, basically use the tools that- That the people tracking us are using, to, to help automate these processes, so that it's, it's much easier for the end user, but do it in a way that doesn't actually sacrifice, the individual user's privacy. So, you know, running your own node and, and running all, all that chain analysis locally, would, would be key." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:40", "start": 3460.37, "text": "Yeah, right. I can see that, you know, already it's becoming more common now to have your own block explorer, but, potentially having your own chain analysis, might be, a bit more difficult 'cause that requires more hardcore, you know, like, specked up h-- a hardware and so on. But, yeah, look, I think that's definitely the-- hopefully that's the direction we can at least, go in. So I guess, to close it up then, make the case for the listeners, why should they, participate in the CoinJoin campaign?" }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "58:11", "start": 3490.65, "text": "I mean, look, if you compare, if you compare, if you care about personal sovereignty, you know, if that's why you're in Bitcoin, then financial privacy is a key element of that. And the Bitcoin system as a whole isn't as secure if individuals are doxing themselves left and right. So if you, I think that if users care about financial privacy, like there's this whole divide, this perceived divide between like the \"number go up\" crowd and the financial- privacy crowd, and I think that divide shouldn't exist, because at the end of the day, if individuals start protecting their financial privacy, it will make, it will help the number go up. Like I, I think Bitcoin becomes more valuable, becomes more resilient and robust long term if individual users practice financial privacy, because that is the single biggest vulnerability that Bitcoin has today, because if you look at the way like a government would come in and- And try and control the system is, it starts with the lack of financial privacy. They start, you know, tagging users and then going after users and making examples out of them. And then if your question is why is financial privacy in general important, it's because it's, it's, you can learn so much from a user from just their spending habits and I look at the world today and I look at all these people who are using, all my peers that are using Venmo and PayPal and all these credit cards and all these centralized payment processors, and they're basically exposing their whole lives, not only to these companies, but also to the governments that they're affiliated with. And if you have like an authoritarian come in, they're gonna use that against you, they're gonna know, you know, they're gonna know all your intimate spending habits. And then just from the most innate view, your boss shouldn't know where you spend your money if they're paying you Bitcoin and the merchant that you shop at shouldn't know what your salary is." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:05", "start": 3605.12, "text": "Fantastic, I couldn't have said it any better. I, I totally agree with you there, Matt. so look, I think we'll, we'll, we'll call that an episode. I think most of my listeners already know you very well, but just in case any of them don't, make sure you shout out now just, where they can find you online and where they can find, obviously, Tails from the Crypt and Rabbit Hole Recap." }, { "speaker": "matt_odell", "time": "01:00:23", "start": 3623.57, "text": "Yeah, so I'm Dot io, we have podcast and we have a newsletter. Yeah, I, I, I love coming on the show with you, Stefan. I'm a huge fan of, of your show, I listen to every episode. I, I tend to think that we're all part of the same, like Bitcoin network. where we're just like individual shows on the same channel. So, it's an honor to come on the show, and it's just an honor to, to be doing this whole, you know, taking part in this whole process, alongside you." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:58", "start": 3658.14, "text": "Oh, of course, man. I'm a big fan of your work as well. I listen to every episode of yours. So, thank you again for joining me. Cheers, guys. Now, one small correction. I believe there were actually one or two other instances that were similar where an exchange flagged a user's withdrawals France one, by now Singapore one was the one that, more people knew about and it sort of blew up more. But anyway, hopefully you are now interested to check out some more coinjoin mixing tools and techniques. One I would suggest is Ronin Dojo, which is a user interface, think of it like a scripted and easy overlay to run a Raspberry Pi Samurai Wallet Dojo and Whirlpool CLI. So just to clarify what that is, some people get a bit confused, Dojo is like you're running your own samurai server. And what you can do is you can buy, say, a Raspberry Pi four and run your own little dojo server on that, and then you can also run what's called Whirlpool CLI. So think of that like a daemon that just continually keeps the coins remixing, and you can control that using Whirlpool GUI, which is like a desktop application. And then there's also mobile mixing coming. And then what you would do is once you've set up the dojo, you start with that, and you'd set up the dojo, and then you would get samurai wallet Your Android phone and you would pair it with your Dojo, and then once you've set up the Whirlpool stuff, you can then configure it and control it from your laptop or your PC with Whirlpool GUI, and then in the background when you're away or when you're asleep, Whirlpool CLI is what keeps that tumbling. So hopefully that was useful for you. Remember show notes and transcript, stephanolivera dot com. If you've got any feedback, stephanolivera at pm dot me. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the citadels" } ] }