{ "episodeId": "SLP201", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "stephan_livera": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "guest", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "guest_2": { "name": "Guest 2", "role": "guest", "tag": "GUEST" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:08", "start": 7.95, "text": "Hi, you're listening to the Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today, for episode two hundred and one, we're talking about Bitcoin local trader coming to BlueWallet with Nuno and Igor. So if you're interested in getting your friends or doing it for yourself to buy Bitcoin without KYC and non-custodial all in the one app, connected with HODL HODL, well, we're gonna talk about that in this episode. We talk about also the user experience, Lightning, custodial, watch-only wallets, and hardware wallet support. This show brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. You already know Swan is the best place to auto-stack Bitcoin in the US with low fees and easy setup. Connect your account, set the amount and frequency of your buys, and rest easy as Swan automatically buys your Bitcoin. Get started using my link, swanbitcoin dot com slash livera. Swan is also making a splash on the Bitcoin content scene with Swan Signal, pairing up great Bitcoiners for unique and compelling content. Discussions live every Wednesday on Twitter and YouTube, also available as an audio podcast. They've got a bunch of great shows in the archives, so go and check that out. That's available at YouTube dot com slash swan signal or the podcast at swan signal podcast dot com. Next is the Cypher Wheel by Cypher Safe. Are you backing up your Bitcoin seed? If you've written down the twelve or twenty-four words, are you keeping that on the piece of paper that came with your hardware wallet, or are you gonna look at keeping that in a way that's more fireproof? Waterproof, rustproof, petproof, and tamper evident, the cipher wheel comes in a wheel shape and it masks the words of your seed. You slide in the tiles for each of the letters, and in this way, you can make sure that you or your loved ones have access to your bitcoins if an accident occurs. They've also got the casino dice padlock sized for the cipher wheel available on the website. You go to ciphersafe dot io and use the code Livera to get ten percent off. Next is Unchained Capital, Bitcoin native financial services built using the foundation of multi-signature. So if you need a way to easily set this up and you're not sure how to do it, well, Unchained Capital can guide you through the process. So you can go on the website, there's a Vault Concierge onboarding package, and you can select the package which includes whether you want to have hardware wallet devices mailed out to you. the Concierge team will walk you through and set up and provide guidance, and you can build that vault together if you need Need US dollars and you don't wanna sell your Bitcoin, well, this is where Unchained Loans can help you out. You can put up some Bitcoin and get US dollars. Remember, all Bitcoin is stored on chain, it's in dedicated multisig addresses, you still hold one of three keys in that scenario, and you know it's never being rehypothecated. So go and look into Unchained Capital, they've got a lot of awesome content on their blog, such as Parker Lewis' Gradually Then Suddenly series, which is great for sending to your new coiner friends, and they Other open source contributions in the space such as Caravan, Multi-Signature and HERMIT, which is a Slip39 Shamir's Secret Sharing scheme. So go and find out more at Unchained Dash Capital dot com. Now onto the interview. Nuno and Igor, welcome to the show." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "03:13", "start": 192.96, "text": "Hey guys. Hi there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:16", "start": 195.79, "text": "Hey guys, so, thanks for joining me today on the show. I've been, watching the progress with Blue Wallet, and I thought it would be great to get you guys on to chat a little bit. do you wanna just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with Blue Wallet? So, Nuno, do you wanna start?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "03:31", "start": 211.04, "text": "yeah, I can start. So basically it started in the, in the last bull run for, at least from my side. so I remember like I was in the, in my corporate, job and office and like everyone was just buying shit coins, using Coinbase and so on. Yeah, like I think this happened to, to many people, like, and I, and I just thought like, okay, there's, if this is the best that we have at the moment, there's a lot more to be built. So yeah, I just decided to start, because I'm a designer, right? And like engineering isn't my, my strength, so I decided okay, let me start to learn more about why, why Bitcoin works this way, what are the tricky parts, what we need to learn to design something. yeah, then I decided to, okay, let me s- let me try to find an open source project that I can contribute to. Yeah, and the story there is funny 'cause like I just went through, to Reddit. to our Bitcoin, and I just posed a dig as I'm a designer, many years of experience, does anyone needs, needs help? and that's where, that's where I found Igor, or Igor found me actually. That's, that's like, that's like the short story." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:44", "start": 284.17, "text": "Awesome, Igor, let's hear from you." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "04:46", "start": 286.25, "text": "Yeah, just, I was browsing Reddit and found Nuno, who was looking to design something to contribute to the space. so I started, BlueWallet. I think the, the Out in early two thousand eighteen, so the reason I built it, was, because in the two thousand and seventeen bull market, There were lots of companies, lots of wallets who failed to implement SegWit, implement batching, transaction replacement, fee bumps, and I was super unhappy with that. I wasn't happy with Bread Wallet, which was my, my main wallet at, at the time, and I was in touch with Victor Rachanka, who, who's the creator of, Trust Wallet for Ethereum. back in the day, it was still pretty much a known wallet. So he said like, Igor, you know your stuff, why don't you build your own wallet? And I said, So I started building it, and I released a very bad looking, beta version. It was completely bluish because I stole some free designs from the web. It was, Blue background with white text, so I had to come up with a name, and the obvious name was Blue Wallet because everything was blue. yeah, so I released the beta version early two thousand eighteen, and I found Nuno, and I said, \"Nuno, we, we have, an opportunity to create a cool, Bitcoin wallet, but the only thing we can't change is the name, because what the name, it's, it sucks because you have to register a legal entity to publish your app, you have to...\" name it, after your app. So Apple, for example, has a policy, if you're in fintech, your company name must resemble the, your main product name. So you can't be blah, blah, blah and have a Blue Wallet as your main product if you're in fintech. So that's the Apple's regulation. So we had to register a co-a company named Blue Wallet Technologies, and, name everything blue something. That's why we have to stick with Blue-Blue Wallet name. yeah, and since then, things started getting better and better. We got more users, more features, but the very first feature I aimed to deliver was specifically SegWit and, replaced by fee, which is a tool to, bump your transaction fees. So if you're unhappy with your transa-- with the fees of the transaction you sent, you increase fees gradually till your transaction gets confirmed." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:15", "start": 435.27, "text": "Excellent. So let's talk a little bit about the way you set up the wallet and you- You get it. So obviously for listeners, this is available on Android or iPhone. And I think one thing BlueWallet is known for is just being really simple and easy to set up. So talk, can you just talk us through what's the process there, in terms of setup?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "07:34", "start": 454.49, "text": "You mean, you mean just to start using it?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:38", "start": 457.55, "text": "Yes." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "07:38", "start": 458.33, "text": "No, yeah, like I think, one of the main goals and, and that's like, what we are trying to build, it's to build a wallet for, like for the beginner user, like To get access to their own keys, and wants to have a little bit security that they are like using an open source project, that is following Bitcoin and is, trying to get, trying to have everything, up to date with the protocol and so on. So that's kind of the main, idea. So we try to make things like easier, simpler, like appealing, and, and even fun, like that's a little bit the concept. so basically You just start, you just install a wallet from the app store, you click, like you just tap, add a wallet and you choose Bitcoin and, that's it, like it's a little bit different from most wallets, like Usually what you see in wallets is like, you s-they have a start screen and they ask you, \"Do you want to create a new wallet or you want to import an existing one?\" Like BlueWallet is a bit different, like it starts by showing you the interface right away, so you can learn it, you can feel secure about it, a-and then you can choose to create a wallet once you see how the interface works. So yeah, I think there's a little bit of, effort and thought behind what you, what we do to try to make it simpler, for the, for the new users, that's the main The main goal of BlueWallet at the moment, like, I think in the future there are many areas that we can try to go, like, security, privacy, privacy management, cold storage, and all that sort of thing. But at the moment, it's to have like a very simple wallet that, as you learn, you're gonna discover a bit more powerful features, like, fee control, like batching, like connecting to your own node. But the idea, the idea is that you start, very simple with all the powerful, with all the power on your end. So I will just give you the key, a-and that's it, write it on a piece of paper and learn what the hell this is." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:52", "start": 591.66, "text": "Great. And so when you start BlueWallet- Wallet, you've also got the option to create the different wallets. So you have a Bitcoin one, and then you've got a Lightning side, and then you can do, say, a watching only side where if you want to have, say, your cold card or etcetera, so I think that's an interesting way to structure it as well, to give the new Bitcoin R some conceptual separation of what's going on in those different, sub wallets, if you will, so I'm interested to talk a little bit about your local trader feature. 'Cause I, I recently interviewed, you, you might have heard the episode, I did, I did an episode with Max from Hoddle Hoddle, and we spoke a little bit about the local trader feature. So I'd love to hear some of your perspective, on, that and how you integrated it into BlueWallet. So maybe Igor, do you wanna tell us a little bit about why you, you did this and how you integrated it?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "10:44", "start": 644.49, "text": "Yeah, sure. So, I met Max on Lightning Conference, and I've been following Hoddle It's an infrastructure project for the whole Bitcoin ecosystem because Bitcoin is built to be resilient, on, to be against, any kind of, regulations or blocking or whatever. So with Huddle Huddle, people can trade Bitcoin even if it's blocked in their country. So no one can, forbid people to pay each other money. So and this is how Huddle Huddle works. And it has escrow multisig, so it's non-custodial, so people can trade. Bitcoin, even if everything is blocked in your country, so this is, this is very, very important. So what, what you gonna do if Coinbase is blocked in your country? What you gonna do if Bitcoin is, forbidden in your country? You can still trade it on Huddle Huddle, and the fact that it's non-custodial, it's, it's, it's pretty good. so I said that we should probably integrate because we need to support projects like this, we need more, to have more users, aware about this project and more to, to give liquidity to everyone who wants to sell, who wants to buy in HODL HODL, and that's why we integrated, yeah, and launched it, so you can now buy Bitcoin non-custodial in a non-custodial way through Blue, through BlueWallet. We're planning to release support for selling through BlueWallet as well. Yeah, this is how it is." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:17", "start": 736.53, "text": "That's awesome. And so I actually, pro-- I, I tested it out myself. I just wanted to, get a feel for how it works. And obviously, I recognize this is very early days. I found-- I was quite impressed in term-- overall, I thought it was quite a simple flow. So essentially, at least my experience walking through it, you set up the Bitcoin wallet, then you go click buy on Local Trader, and then you log in with your HodlHodl username. So you have to have a Hodl" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:45", "start": 764.77, "text": "And then you can pick those, and then there were a couple little catching points, that I found, they weren't like too major. Obviously, I'm a more experienced Bitcoiner, but for somebody maybe who's a little bit newer, that might be a little bit confusing, but I, I think this is probably one of those things where it's just early, right? So for me, one thing I noticed was when you were doing the address, it w-it's the address, the receive address is the one listed on the Hoddle Hoddle" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:15", "start": 795.01, "text": "Like pick an address out of your wallet. Does that make sense?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "13:19", "start": 798.97, "text": "Yes, this actually, this is a planned feature, so we haven't, enough time to finish it the way we envisioned it. So, the way we envisioned it and how the, how the preparation began to support this, so every time you do a trade, the address is gonna be provided from BlueWallet, so you can actually have, for example, a watch-only wallet that's tracking your cold card, and it's watch-only, you can't spend from, from, from this watch-only on BlueWallet When you do a trade, you're buying Bitcoin, a new address is gonna be generated for, for your watch only, and your bitcoins from escrow gonna be released to this address, so they all land on your cold card This is a planned feature, it's not yet live. we're waiting for some changes from, HodoHodo API, but it's gonna be delivered, delivered eventually. yeah, and if you're talking about usability and user experience, there's only another way to trade Bitcoin in non-custodial way, which is Bisq, and it's way more, movements to, to get your Bisq node working. So at the moment, HodoHodo is a bit easier than Bisq, but we're trying, we're, we're, we Easier and easier and easier. Yeah, and I can talk a bit about the multi wallet scheme we have on BlueWallet. yes, obviously you can have on-chain wallets, you can have watch-only wallets, you can have Lightning wallets on BlueWallet. I usually say that this is both a blessing and a curse for a wallet, Well, first, BlueWallet started as a tool for ourselves, to manage our own zoo of different keys and different schemes, and we started supporting more and more schemes like BIP eighty-four, BIP forty-four, BIP forty-nine, legacy keys like single addresses, single addresses, wrapped segwits, single addresses, native segwits," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "15:10", "start": 909.65, "text": "Electrum, here, Electrum HD schemes, and Lightning, so you can have all of that in BlueWallet, And it's a pain in the ass to support all of this, but I think it, it brings value because different people migrate from different wallets, and they want to bring their own keys, and they will mostly work in BlueWallet. So even it's a pain in the ass to support all of this, I think it brings a lot." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:34", "start": 933.57, "text": "Yeah, I can imagine that would be quite a bit of work to maintain across all the different standards, whereas, if you just kind of have one thing that you do But obviously there's, there is that, compatibility aspect there. so, just on the local trader as well, so, can you tell us a little bit about what the sell flow might look like? So let's say somebody is, wanting to sell from BlueWallet, would it basically be similar to the buy flow or what, what are some differences there?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "16:04", "start": 964.23, "text": "It would be pretty similar, yeah. So you would, you would have to, if you're selling, you would have to create an order Offer, and once your offer is created, it's just sitting there waiting for someone to accept your offer. and once the offer is accepted, you would have to send coins from BlueWallet to an escrow address Yeah, Nascrow address on Huddle Huddle, it's, two out of three multisig, so one key, belongs to BlueWallet, one key belongs to Huddle Huddle, and one key belongs to buyer. so, and those three keys, they make, an escrow address. So you deposit coins to an escrow address, and then you provide payment details to, to the buyer, like your bank details, and you await for the buyer to send, payment with fiat, Once you get the payment, you press the button to release it from escrow. It's a bit more steps from, compared to buying bitcoins, but I think it's kind of similar." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:05", "start": 1024.57, "text": "Yeah, and look, I, I think it's a great feature overall, and I'd definitely love to see more development in this direction because it makes it easier for someone to just, let's say, okay, so the listeners of my show, they're typically not the straight beginner Bitcoiner, but they're typically someone who's, you know, teaching their, you know, their own friends, and so Girlfriend learn how to buy Bitcoin without KYC to start with, whereas historically that has been kind of, it's been a little bit more difficult, whereas this is kind of all in that app, if you will, so I, I like that, aspect of it. I think it's, it's, it should be an option that's out there, right? 'Cause you've got KYC services and then with Hodel Hodel you've got non-KYC, so that's a really cool feature, and yeah, just excited to see ways that make that If we could talk a little bit about some of the different wallets, so, the example you were touching on earlier around the, the watching only wallet for coldcard. So, can you tell us a little bit about the process around doing that? Can I add" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "18:06", "start": 1086.27, "text": "something to, to local trading before we move on? Because like, I think as you said, it's like, it's like early days, right? And, and I think it's still very underrated, but it's a super powerful feature that, more people should be looking into. Because let me just explain the concept" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "18:25", "start": 1105.1, "text": "Like Bisq and so on that are, that are essentially like liquidity pools, and imagine this service they start to provide open APIs for, for projects like BlueWallet to, to use. So eventually, you're gonna have enough liquidity for people to start to build, to bring liquidity for their own service, for instance, to bring liquidity for coin joints, to bring liquidity for pay joints, to bring liquidity for coin shops, to, to, to buy, to buy and sell freely, freely without, without KYC. Like I think this, this service, like, other other NBs are extremely important, people should support And eventually, I think this is the way that we can, not kill, but, but, fight against the big companies, the, the, the coin bases of, of Bitcoin and so on, because this is where we, as decentralized service, we have like a, a strength there, and we have a point to, to actually make something useful with tons of liquidity for users, Yeah, and I think this is like, it's the, one of the things that I'm more excited in the future to see this service grow and being used by independent projects to just, bring their liquidity in and start to build stuff without the need of, KYC and big companies to provide liquidity. So that's something super excited to look, to look forward to." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:00", "start": 1199.56, "text": "For sure, for sure. And, actually just, while we're on that topic of local trader and integrating, in terms of things like dispute Flow, I suppose, the way that's handled in the app is BlueWallet sort of opens up the browser to HodlHodl, and while you've got that, I guess this is all happening through the API, but basically there's like the, there's like the chat there that, let's say you're buying, you can chat with that other, with the counterparty, and, I suppose also like the dispute flows and all of that will be built in inside the app, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "20:31", "start": 1231.16, "text": "well, dispute flow is handled inside HodlHodl website," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "20:38", "start": 1237.79, "text": "Which is basically a web view that's open in HODL HODL website, or just open desktop computer, launch your browser, and go to HODL HODL. Yeah. So these disputes are quite rare, and we didn't build anything specifically for disputes. So you have, if you have dispute, you have to go to HODL HODL website." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:54", "start": 1254.42, "text": "Also, I think the feature that, Max mentioned in that, in my recent episode with him, which I'd also love to discuss with you guys, is this idea of being able to buy directly into, A cold card. So, did you wanna just touch on firstly how you would firstly import the cold card, master public key into BlueWallet?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "21:19", "start": 1278.7, "text": "Well, yeah, actually, watch-only wallets are my favorite feature in BlueWallet. So, if you're not trusting your keys, to a software that's running on your phone, you can import your wallet as a watch-only. we support different schemes, so we support, BIP84, BIP44, BIP 49 and several election formats which aren't, BIP compliant, BIP 39 compliant, as far as I remember. and you can just grab xPub from them and import it in BlueWallet, and it will import everything with your balance, with your transactions, and it's a watch only, you can't spend from it. So what you can do, you can just create new addresses from this hierarchy and give addresses to whoever wants to pay you. You can give this address to Hodel Hodel and Huddle Huddle will, will be releasing bitcoins to the, to those addresses. yeah, with Coldcard, there are several ways to import your Coldcard. You can use SD card, so, you write your, Skeleton, I think it's called Skeleton Wallet Format if you go to, to the Cold Card device. but you can just copy paste ZipUp and import ZipUp in the import screen of BlueWallet and it will work. So either way will work, either through SD card with a Dongle for iPhone, for example, or just copy paste and ZipUp, it will work." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:40", "start": 1360.24, "text": "also, is there a possibility to do QR code scan there as well?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "22:44", "start": 1364.28, "text": "Well, Cold Cards don't support, QR codes, right? Because the display is super small. So that's why you have to either mess with files, either copy, paste, zip up, or just move skeleton file to the SD card. but there are projects, I think the Foundation device, the new hardware wallet, which is based on Cold Card firmware, I think it's, they're created specifically to be Cold Card compatible, in terms of firmware. And to provide QR code flow so it can be completely air gapped." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "23:19", "start": 1399.2, "text": "Yeah, and at the moment we, we support QR codes with, with Cobovault, I think, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "23:24", "start": 1403.57, "text": "Yeah, yeah, another, another kid in town, which is Cobovault, devices, they specifically designed their device to be, air gapped and with QR code flow, which makes a lot of sense to me because once I have my co-- hardware wallet with bitcoins, I really don't want to plug it to anything. I don't even want to insert my- My SD card and this, like, it's, it feels like a risk to me. So making the flow completely air gap makes a lot of sense to me." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:51", "start": 1431.21, "text": "Excellent. And so just with that, connector, so I've seen, I think there's a demonstration video, that you have in terms of doing it with iPhone, I presume you can do similar with Android as well, that you just need a, basically a connector that can take a micro SD and then that's how you basically shuttle the, the skeleton file over, correct?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "24:11", "start": 1450.76, "text": "Yeah, absolutely. Or, you can" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:15", "start": 1454.56, "text": "I see. And so that's also another interesting idea as well. So we are potentially moving into a world where there will be some users who don't actually have a PC of their own. They might have a work laptop or a work PC, but maybe not. Maybe their main phone or their main device is their phone, so, or, or a tablet, let's say. So that's potentially another option where a person can have a hardware wallet without necessarily using a desktop or a laptop PC with it. They do the whole, you know, import watching only style." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "24:47", "start": 1487.46, "text": "Yeah, absolutely." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:49", "start": 1488.56, "text": "So in terms of, I guess, that user who wants to now advance up the pathway and they wanna now start doing things with their own Bitcoin node, can you tell us a little bit about what that process would look like? I suppose we've got, Electrum servers, and then we've also got LND hub and so on. So can you tell us a little bit about how to advance up that curve? Because, I guess just naively If the user just is totally new and they're just doing this, well, there is some level of-- well, there's at least a, there's a privacy concern there because they're not using their own server, they're not using their own node, those, elements. So could you just comment on that as well?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "25:28", "start": 1527.95, "text": "No, no. No, yeah, I can, I can comment, you can, you can give a more, a more technical, feedback, but like, yeah, like I think we did very early the backend. Like the open sourcing our backend and allowing an integration with, with, with users own Electrum servers, like we, we did it last year, so we had less than one year as a, as a wallet, so we did that pretty early, and I think it was a very good decision, like to right away allow people to just connect their own nodes because, like, Most of the Bitcoiners that care, they use their own nodes, and they know what they are doing, right? So that, that was one of the concerns that we had last year, so we did spend a lot of time trying to make that right. and it was like, yeah, it was a struggle, but like at the moment, I think it's pretty okay, like it's not the best that it can be, like you still need, to define, to define IPs, to get an URL, to get, certificates and so on, but, like it could be better just with the QR code and so on, but we aren't there. but it's pretty simple if you know what you are doing, you just need your, your Electrum IP, and you can" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "26:46", "start": 1605.51, "text": "Network, you need a VPN, for instance. But like so far we are happy, it will, for sure, improve in the future." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "26:55", "start": 1614.8, "text": "yeah, there's a cool thing that there are providers that sell, nodes That sell hardware, with pre-installed Bitcoin and Lightning node, specifically my node BTC, which is I like a, a lot. they, they provide Raspberry Pi with the case, with the casing, with the storage, with pre-installed Bitcoin, with pre-installed LND, and with pre-installed LND hub. So basically, you can buy this device, which is, which is pretty cheap because it's based on Raspberry Pi, and it's already has everything you need to be, to be, to have self-custody. And you just connect your BlueWallet to it, and everything works, and you're in control 100% of the time." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:36", "start": 1655.71, "text": "Gotcha. And so in terms of the, I guess the backups situation as well, right? So I presume then for the Bitcoin side, it's the typical write down twenty four words, and then on the Lightning side, what's the backup situation like there? Is it, as I, when I was, messing around with it, it basically had an LND hub URL, and I presume that's just for, if you're using- Using, you know, Blue Wallet's, LND Hub, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "28:03", "start": 1683.01, "text": "Yeah, yeah. So LND Hub is a wrapper around LND, so, basically the default one is hosted by us. So the, the backup string is basically username and password, once you install your own LND Hub, it's gonna be, username and password which is connected to your own node. So yeah, this is, this is how you roll if you're running, in custodial mode with Lightning." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:29", "start": 1709.08, "text": "And so I think it might be also useful just for listeners who aren't familiar with what LND Hub enables. It allows a kind of, account-based system. So, as an example, you might want to run the infrastructure, like, you wanna be the proverbial Uncle Jim for your family and friends, you might be able to, you might run one Lightning node with LND Hub, and then they, they can be users on your node. Mode. So could you just outline a little bit about how LND Hub works to do that?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "28:59", "start": 1738.86, "text": "Yeah, basically LND Hub is a thin wrapper around LND, which tracks users' balances and do-- and does stuff on their behalf, like sending payments and creating invoices. Yeah, and this is, you described it pretty accurately, so that we'll notice, and this is how people use it, they install it and they allow all their friends and family, use it. So this means, one person, holds, Hosts one LND node for everyone, for all his inner circle." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:29", "start": 1768.52, "text": "And so then it basically means that the, you know, the guy who can run LND hub for his family and friends, he does all the channel management and just sets up the channels and all of that, and then for his family and friends, they just have a nice easy- They just use it, they just pay or receive, and they don't really think too hard about it." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "29:48", "start": 1787.84, "text": "Yeah, absolutely. So, there's no channel management, displayed on the front end. So when you're using BlueWallet, you're not seeing any, anything about channels. So it's the guy who hosts the LND hub has to, do all the hard work of managing liquidity." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:07", "start": 1806.67, "text": "Alright. and in terms of more secure ways to connect back with your own node, I know there was I think this was like one concern that was raised earlier, maybe it was earlier in the year, around doing it in a more secure way. Did you wanna just comment on that and, any advancements being made in that space?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "30:25", "start": 1824.66, "text": "which one was that? I, I remember we had a ticket." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:28", "start": 1828.14, "text": "I think it was in relation to SSL, connecting using your, SSL to your own Electrum server." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "30:33", "start": 1833.49, "text": "Yeah, yeah. So the, the, the beta version of our Electrum integration was, using plain text, port, no SSL. we had a ticket to fix that, and, we actually fixed that. So all connections through Electrum are through us itself for, I don't know, for quite a long time now." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "30:53", "start": 1853.28, "text": "No, yeah, I think like, re- it's more related on how we work and how we build things, like, we all the time, no matter what we do, we have people requesting for stuffs, asking for things to be different. and this is just related to the way of, we work, I think, because we work in a very iterative way, with very small, shanks of changes being deployed like, every, every two weeks almost. so of course we can't build everything at the same time, but it time, till, till we get there. And I think the, the concerns about, about the security and privacy were valid concerns, and we just take it as feedback, like something to improve. and in this case was the TLS, integration with, with Electrum that was not there. so eventually we just got the time, Got the time and, and, and the people to do it, because like, in the end of the day, we aren't a big team, so we can't do many things at the same time. and, and luckily we have many people contributing, so that's a good thing, so more things are getting into production. but it's just a matter of time, like small iterations, like every release we put something out there, we get feedback and, and we improve. I think this is the, the best way to work, and it's the way we" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:15", "start": 1935.0, "text": "On your website. Now, I'm not a Mac or iPad user myself, but I noticed you are working on a desktop app. So can you tell us a little bit about that and what you're thinking to build there?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "32:26", "start": 1945.92, "text": "Yeah. Do you, do you want to, do you want to explain it? Like, I think the, I can just talk about what is the, the concept, right? So BlueWallet is trying to be A, a wallet for, for like the, as I said, the, the beginner, the, the newbies. and, and desktop is a big platform for that, like, I think mobile will be, a-as you said, like, big in some countries, some countries don't even have the habit of having a, a desktop. but, desktop, can be very useful for, for many people, as well, like, and especially like we are seeing people with, accessibility needs asking for, for stuff. and usually desktop works, works better for this kind of things. I think it's also an experiment on our, our tech stack, because we are using React Native, which gives us a lot of power on mobile, so we can, I'm, I'm not sure if you noticed, but we have a very, very fast cadence of, of releasing for iOS and Android, and the reason for that is that we develop once, and it works for both platforms. and what we are seeing now is React Native starting to go, to go to the desktop, starting to go to the web, and it's still very experimental, experimental frameworks and libraries. But we managed to compile a first version to, to Mac, to, to MacOS Catalina, which, which is great because the, the Bitcoin code, itself, like the way you create transactions, the way you sign transactions, the way you broadcast transactions, it's, it's like it's battle-tested in, in, in production. But the way to compile the app to desktop isn't yet. So that's what we are trying to see now with the alpha release, like, is there any problems? Are there any bugs or... Different versions of software seeing different problems. And from there, as support increases, for Windows and Linux and so on, we're gonna keep adding more, more platforms. But it's a super nice experiment, and, I'm super happy that we are working with React Native because it gives us a lot of power and flexibility to put code and put code fast out there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:41", "start": 2081.17, "text": "I'm curious as well, what your thoughts are around trying to synchronize across the mobile and the desktop because obviously if it's connecting to, you know, the Electrum server or whatever, it will have the transaction, you know, the amount, but it might, it might not necessarily synchronize the descriptions. Is that something you would look at doing as well, at having a way for your mobile to sync with your desktop app or what are you thinking there?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "35:05", "start": 2105.1, "text": "Yes, we had requests from users like some people have- Spend a lot of efforts to document every transaction they make, so th- their transactions all have meaningful description text descriptions, text memos so people can remember what was this about this transaction. and we had requests to export, for example, just text descriptions for their transactions so they won't lose them. so eventually we'll make some kind of synchronization system, maybe through your iCloud or through Dropbox or through something we don't know yet, but this will definitely be done eventually." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "35:40", "start": 2139.98, "text": "Yeah. I think the, like the, the first feedback we got when we released this, this alpha version was, hey guys, I, I have, I have, like, a lot of wallets in my mobile, and I just want to export everything to desktop, please make it easier. so that's like the first improvement we're gonna do. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:59", "start": 2158.51, "text": "so I just looking through the application as well, there were some interesting things I saw. So I think this is a new one, it's-- I think you guys call this ground control. And so basically, you get a notification when you've got an incoming transaction. So that's, pretty cool little feature. Can you tell us a little bit about that?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "36:16", "start": 2175.62, "text": "Yeah, so ground control is a push notification server. It's open sourced because everything we do is open sourced. So, yeah, this, this, it's exactly serves the purpose to subscribe to, changes to your addresses. And to receive push notifications to your device. Yeah, and it was, named after, David Bowie's \"Space Oddity\" song, so it's a tribute to David Bowie, to his memory." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:41", "start": 2201.29, "text": "I also noticed, you are looking at l n u r l, which is, one of those easy ways to scan, and, get an invoice or receive. So I think in this case, you're looking at l n u r l pay, correct?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "36:53", "start": 2213.18, "text": "Yeah, where it's, it's delivered. I think we released it a couple of weeks ago." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "36:57", "start": 2217.38, "text": "Now, yeah, regarding push notifications and l n, l n, l n where l pay, this, this was the la-the, one of the last releases. Like, push notifications are just a The experience, the experience buy, buy a lot, so you don't need to open the app all the time to see if you got a transaction or not. You don't need to open the app to see if you already got a, a confirmation, like so it's a super cool feature. I'm, super happy with it. And regarding, Eliana, u-url, like it has a, it's a pool request that has been there for at least eight months, like a contribution from, from Fiat Jaff, from Thiago that we're trying to get in, get, get, getting the featuring in BlueWallet. Like in the end of the day, like Elion URL is a little small protocol that can improve the experience on, on Lightning. so we are super open of exper-experimenting with Lightning, like I think Lightning is still a very A, a very big experiment, and, like anything we try to do to learn more, it's knowledge for everyone. yeah. So we have, we have both, yeah, I, l e n u r l p and, I draw." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:15", "start": 2294.73, "text": "Right. and, also, before we went online, you mentioned a little bit around multi-signature, so can you tell us, your thinking around that, and is that something you're trying to implement as well?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "38:27", "start": 2306.67, "text": "Yes, actually, we're planning to work on The signature probably in several weeks. at the moment, we don't support multisig. yeah, we did some customer review, customer gathering, customer's feedback, users' feedback, and mostly people use multisig for self-custody. So some, yeah, multisig is supposed to be, joint custody with someone else, with some other parties, but usually people use it for self-custody to, to increase security. And this is the way we're gonna approach it. So we're, we're gonna keep in mind that That the multi-sig we're building is for, increasing the security of your funds. So it should be, as easy as possible to work with if you have several hardware wallets from different brands. So we're gonna focus most on compatibility. Thanks. We have, thanks, thank you. We have PSBT, that helps a lot. Yeah, like" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "39:22", "start": 2361.89, "text": "super excited about multi-sig, like I think, multi-sig is at the moment like the, the holy grail o-of Bitcoin. Right? So nowadays you, we see people like, buying hardware wallets and hardware wallets became like a, a huge market, but, in the future we need to think about ways that, your mobile phone needs to be enough somehow to, to secure, to secure your coins. and probably multi-sig will be the right way to do that, like there are teams experimenting with, with exotic, things that aren't, documented on Bibs, like, like Sidle's approach with, with Shamir secret sharing, a-and so on, but I think multi-sig is the right way to do it, and we're gonna invest like the, the rest of the year on it, and probably, probably it's gonna be very cool, like, We are talking about a mobile solution that will focus on simplicity, and we're gonna focus on making it, easier and probably free. so we have, we have, I have big ambitions with this feature, like the idea is to commoditize, multi-sig for the users. so that's how, how hard or how, how much we're gonna, we're gonna try to make it, Like awesome, basically. That, that's, that's the idea to bring what you see again to mobile, like, there was Copay at the time and people were using Copay on mobile. but it's not, it's not the case anymore. Like, I think Casa, it's probably Casa Caravan and Soanarbsolutions and Electrum, of course, most use it nowadays. But we, we want to bring, open source multi-sig to mobile, the best way we- We can. That's, that's the idea behind MultiSig," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:18", "start": 2477.79, "text": "So I guess my follow-up question on that would just be, what are the main ways you're looking at implementing? Is that going to be using something like the, the cold card, SD card, or is it gonna be trying to do the QR code approach with, say, the COBO or potentially with a passport? what are some of the ways that you're thinking about actually achieving that with a mobile?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "41:39", "start": 2499.06, "text": "Well, we don't know yet. We are, we are in research phase. it's the kind of thing that people, that people will need to wait, but like, we are open to feedback at the moment. So we are checking all the solutions, we are trying to identify errors on the current solutions, and we are trying to identify ways to improve the current solutions. so we don't have an answer yet, but, but it will be more clear in the, in the, in the next weeks for us. So at the moment, we are in research phase." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:11", "start": 2530.55, "text": "And o-obviously, I've got to hit the privacy topic as well. I think, some listeners will definitely wanna hear the answers around that. So are there any things that you're looking at in terms of things like payjoins or coinjoins?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "42:24", "start": 2543.74, "text": "Yes, actually, at the moment I'm working on pay joins. So we had, we have pull requests, from Luke about pay joins. So it's basically implemented, I just need to brush it up, and we're aiming to release it with the next release, I guess. so pay join is gonna be there. But privacy is a very complex topic, and I don't want to, I'm not even trying to look like I'm an expert on this topic, so I don't want to give people false hope that BlueWallet is gonna be Privacy solution soon, so because privacy is hard to gain and, and it's easy to lose, so we don't want to give the users false sense of security. So BlueWallet isn't a privacy solution at the moment. If you're looking for privacy, look elsewhere." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "43:11", "start": 2591.17, "text": "Yeah, like, I think the only thing I can, I can add to that is that we are definitely more focused on security now and to make, for instance, private key management easier and things like that, then we are looking into privacy, like, and I, I look a little bit into privacy and it's complex, like, there's a lot of critics, on the current proposed BEPS. Most of the be- the beeps were, were rejected to, to be implemented on Bitcoin Core at least, and there were teams doing their own versions, and there is no consensus surrounding the current implementations. And of course, there's a huge fight, on the CoinJoin, world that is just, that is just fun to see. But, but I think, I think we need to see more decentralized, solutions on CoinJoin. And nowadays we are really- Relying on centralized service, I think BIP 47 is very interesting, but it's not, it's not, clear why there aren't more wallets, are getting, you know In, how do you say it, introducing that. So we haven't looked into that, but, when we'll have the time and, and the bandwidth to do so, we will. But we are looking, at least, at what other people are doing." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:33", "start": 2672.67, "text": "I guess the other question that a user might have is just around the sustainability of the project, that they might wanna know, okay, how- This is an open source project, what's the way that, the project will sustain itself into the future? Is there like a revenue model? Is it venture funded? Can you, can you discuss a little bit on that?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "44:52", "start": 2692.41, "text": "Yeah, I think that's interesting, like one of, one of the, one of the first things that I, that I realized when we decided to be the wallet was that there was a lot of, Not a lot, but some material online telling, okay, there's no business model for a Bitcoin wallet, especially, open source Bitcoin wallets. That is exactly what's, what we're trying to do. Like, but, I think it's a, a learning, matter. Like in the end of the day, we are dealing with a platform that the only thing it does is, handling transactions and handling value, thinking that there isn't a business model here, I think it's insane. but, but it is concerning what we see on the industry nowadays. So basically we see Bitcoin wallets starting and eventually they go On the altcoin, road path, because they need to make money, right? So a-and that's far from ideal. Like the last thing we want to do or we, we won't do it. I probably will kill the project and add any altcoin to it. but it's to find, we need to find a revenue model, that is independent, that is self-sovereign, that is decentralized, to the wallet. And we have, we have ideas on how to do that. This is probably something we're gonna work next year. and this will pass in the way, in, in different ways, like it will be about user experience, like I think people will pay, for the best user experience on mobile. I think people will pay for the best self-sovereign solutions that they can control without being dependent on any software provider. So we'll be working on that as well. in the end of the day, we can also like have, revenue models surrounding, fees, routing, like third parties. We already have some, like we have revenue from, from third parties on the service we have on the marketplace and on buying and selling Bitcoin with, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, all that kind of thing, but we need a stronger, business model that is independent, I think that is very important, and something that we're probably gonna focus our time next year. Regarding founding and the sustainability, sustainability of the project. oof, like, many things to, to say here. First is that BlueWallet, BlueWallet is founded by, by a group of, Bitcoin OGs, investors that, that reached out and wanted to help us. so the short story is we bootstrapped the project for like one year and a half. And since, since March this year or February, fe- probably February, we started full time. and at the moment it's just me and Igor, in the next months more contributors will, We'll probably pass full time, and this is the way we, we want to work. We're gonna, we want to add, provide the contributors, the people that just started, contributed without anyone asking anything to become, be- to, to be paid for their work, so we are looking on how to, how can we, how can we provide, for instance, like, can we provide people with just Bitcoin bounties for the features? can we provide people with just re-rewards based on time like a normal payment? Should they just be employees? Can we, for instance, give the, the company equity to the, the contributors? Like this is all, all different things, that we are looking into, because like... There's not many examples on Bitcoin on how to do this, so we have are kind of trying to, to figure out, which is a good thing, like, it's, it's good to be one of the first on, on doing something. More things regarding founding, I already told that we are, we were founded by, by some investors, by some bitcoiners, and the process to do that was, was interesting, to say the least from, first we, first we got lucky, I think, like we, because like our, our solution went kind of viral, so there were many people trying it, using it, so we were approached by many investors, which, which facilitated everything, at the same time brought many, many, No, I'm not gonna tell scammers, but, there were many people with bad offers, people trying to acquire the company, people, people, trying us to get, to, to go big and fail fast kind of Silicon Valley style, We refused them, we refused many offers from big companies that we didn't like. so it was a learning process because, like, so imagine like what's happened? Was that we, we were building a wallet and learning, and we started to play with Lightning, and, and eventually we put Lightning out there, and the next type of wallet was going viral worldwide with thousands of users. So it was kind of overwhelming, experience. For instance, I had to, I had to quit my job, and the amount of emails and contacts we were getting was just completely insane, right? So that was very good in a way because we had many people that really wanted to help us, and it was bad because it, it brought all the bad things with it as well. so we spent like the entire last year learning on, okay, how can we incorporate a Bitcoin company? Where is the best place to, to incorporate a Bitcoin company? Where, how can we get a bank account for a Bitcoin company? For instance, like, Igor, Igor got refused for all banks in London, to, to get a bank account and be able to, to work, which is completely insane, that is, two thousand and twenty, and people are just being refused. having a bank account because they work on Bitcoin, but that was the reality and it's happening in, in February. yeah, yeah, my, myself, I had, I had to struggle a bit as well to figure it out. But like, it was like a huge learning, like if people need help or not to set up a Bitcoin company, I can give some tips. but, yeah, it's, that's the, the difficult part, I think, in terms of investment. There's a lot of investment in the space, which is good, especially on the Lightning side. Many, many companies want to support Lightning projects. so that's a very good thing. But, but at the same time you also get a lot of investors that are crypto investors, that they don't understand what Bitcoin actually is. So most of the people that reach out, like I, I always have to- To answer the, the question, why, why are you guys just working with Bitcoin and not with Ethereum? Why do, why you don't get tokens? And, and once that qu-question came up, you already know that the conversation wasn't going anywhere, right? If I had to explain to an investor that we are working with Soul Money with, With probably the most scarce, thing ever invented, and this is a completely, it's a breakthrough in technology, maybe you are not the right person to work with us. so that was most of the conversations, like, the reality there is a lot of money, especially in crypto, in, in Bitcoin is a little bit more difficult. so yeah, 2019 was a interesting year to say the least. it started from, quitting my job to work on BlueWallet full time, and to basically create a company and get investment without leaving my, without leaving my room, which was pretty cool in the end of the day. So, yeah, I'm, I'm already speaking for a long time. Sorry. Yeah, sure." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:05", "start": 3185.11, "text": "Sure, sure. Yeah, no, that's fine. yeah, thank you for that, e-explanation there around, you know, the- Discussion of the business model for Blue Wallet. I think that's pretty much the main points that I wanted to touch on, unless there was anything else you wanted to close up with on, why people should consider using Blue Wallet." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "53:26", "start": 3206.15, "text": "Igor, why should people use Blue Wallet? that's a good question. I don't know." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "53:32", "start": 3212.05, "text": "Like, I think, I think the most important thing is like, like we are building the wallet for ourselves first, like it's something--" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "53:40", "start": 3219.84, "text": "It started as a tool for ourselves, it is a tool for ourselves, and sometimes we build stuff because we think it's freaking awesome, not because someone asked us to do this. and we're lucky that some people find that this is also a g-- pretty cool and they use it. But the final goal is actually to be the good actor in this space. And replace bad actors. And when I say bad actors, it's, I mean Blockchain Dot Com and Coinbase. If, if we could replace them, that would be pretty good." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "54:09", "start": 3249.06, "text": "yeah, like I just, I just want to say that like, just try it out, give us feedback, like it's very important because m-most of the time we are alone in our own, in our own rooms working by ourselves. so just reach out, give feedback, like, and give a violent reaction if you want to trash something, please do. That will be super useful as well. yeah, so feel free." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:32", "start": 3272.35, "text": "Excellent. So where can listeners find you online?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "54:36", "start": 3275.94, "text": "just find us on Twitter like BlueWallet, it's bluewallet.io. Twitter handle is bluewalletio. I'm on Twitter as well as, nv cuéllu, and that's, yeah, that's enough. Igor, you are over Torment on Twitter? Yes, I am." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:54", "start": 3293.97, "text": "Alright, well, thank you very much for joining me." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "54:57", "start": 3296.65, "text": "Thanks for inviting us. Thank you so much, Stefan. That was a pleasure." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "55:01", "start": 3300.59, "text": "Now, as Coldcard came up in the episode, just a reminder for those of you who would like to get a Coldcard, it's my favorite Bitcoin hardware wallet, and you can get that from CoinKite dot com and use the code Livera for a discount on that also. Show notes are available on my website, StefanLivera dot com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the citadels." } ] }