{ "episodeId": "SLP32", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "stephan_livera": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "guest", "tag": "STEPHAN" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:04", "start": 4.38, "text": "Welcome to the Stephan Livera podcast." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:12", "start": 11.91, "text": "Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. So today my guest is Rigel Walsh, also known on Twitter as CoinsureNZ. Welcome, Rigel. Thanks for having me on. Excellent, Rigel. I've seen some really cool stuff you've been doing in terms of the threads you did on basically censorship resistance, but perhaps we should just start with a bit of background about you." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "00:33", "start": 33.26, "text": "Sweetest, so my kind of professional background and who I am, I guess, so not long out of school, I joined the police, I did that for ten years. I was also in the army part time kind of before and during a little bit, so that's kind of my Professional cred, I guess. I now run a program which helps entrepreneurs get some government funding and start their business, so I'm kind of like a, a teacher really as my kind of day job, if you like. as far as crypto goes, I got my first Bitcoin late twenty fourteen. I guess I kind of heard the name band around a few times before then, but never really looked into it. What kind of sold me, originally was I read an article about the aftermath of the Silk Road trial." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:15", "start": 75.07, "text": "and, you know, kind of Knowing, I thought, man, this is a quite a significant political development when you think that something like that could, operate at that scale, you know, more or less in, in plain view, and there wasn't anything they could do about it. So I thought, well, this is gonna be a, a pretty game-changing, technology. So I jumped on, Tor and had a look around and, and started looking into Bitcoin and got my head around it and, yeah, like pretty much everyone else, this is don't go into the rabbit hole on Getting a bit further on the space, you know, twenty fifteen, sixteen, I started looking at altcoins and things like that and exploring it, but I, you know, I never really made a big deal out of it and have a Twitter profile or anything like that, 'cause my opinion in crypto, why would you, unless you got a good reason? but like twenty seventeen rolled around and, as we know, things started taking off a lot quicker than I was initially expecting they would, so I kind of figured, well, if I don't get involved now, I'm" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "02:16", "start": 136.09, "text": "Get, in touch and get a bit more of a contact and network going on with people here, off the back of that, I used some of the money I made, last year to travel to quite a few conferences this year, and so really I've just been trying to figure out what the best place for my skills and my abilities are, and, this is kind of the natural progression of that, I guess, while I'm also trying to very slowly get my skill up in programming and move in that direction. so that's kind of me." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:42", "start": 162.04, "text": "Yep. So let's now go into some background on what are these products that you've been fiddling around with. So just tell us a little bit about the GoTenna and the Samurai wallet." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "02:52", "start": 172.33, "text": "Cool. So GoTenna is a, like a, a mesh network, a radio mesh network device that, in layman's terms, and look, I'm, I'm certainly not an expert on some of the subtleties of, of GoTenna, but more or less it's a device that lets you communicate, with other cell phones, primarily, So you could be out in the middle of nowhere or somewhere with no cell network, and, you connect your phone to one of these devices via Bluetooth, and it can talk to other devices. as I said, it's like a radio sort of system, so depending on the logistics and the, the topography of where you are, yeah, that can be, as, as I kind of got, found out, it can be six plus kilometers, it can be kind of shorter on urban distances, but it's more just a way to, to broadcast short, small messages But go tenaris. they have started working with a Bitcoin wallet called Samurai Wallet that I've been a fan of, for a little while now. Samurai Wallet's run by a couple of guys who are the developers of it. It's, Got, got a focus on, privacy, anonymity, self-sovereignty, maybe I'm in, they'd be in a better position to meet a, say, exactly what they stand for, but as an outsider, I just thought that their approach and what they offered was much more in line with my personal philosophy on, on Bitcoin and what it's about than pretty much any other, the other ones out there on the market. So, yeah, I was a fan of it already, then I saw they were working together with Scotena, and so they've produced this," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "04:26", "start": 265.73, "text": "Samurai to create a transaction and then broadcast it through Gotenna, to a, internet connected device. So in, in a really simple way, you can use Samurai to write a, generate a Bitcoin transaction, you can then send it via Gotenna if you don't have the internet, as long as a mesh network has someone in there with an internet connection, it will bounce around, find that out point and get out to the internet, so you can send a Bitcoin transaction without having an internet connection through that method." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:54", "start": 293.57, "text": "Fantastic. And now I've seen on- On Twitter, you did some threads where the really cool thing you did was actually, you did what was probably the world record transaction for Bitcoin over the longest, distance, twelve kilometers, without any cell network or an internet connection. So maybe you wanna talk us through how did you go through the process of setting that up?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "05:16", "start": 315.91, "text": "Cool. so I saw GoTenna or the Textenna thing announced, I think it was June, it was much earlier on in the year, I went out and bought Forgot, forgot, I didn't actually do my homework enough and thought it was pretty much ready to go or that you could almost kind of get it going already. So I've had four of these units sitting around for since June-ish, I think. So as soon as it got released, I was pretty keen and, and, kind of itching to, to get out there and, start using it. So I kind of already thought about doing this, and when it got released, I was pretty much ready to go. so what I did was I- Thought, well, looking into it, these things, have a, if you go by GoTennis standard, they've got a range of around six point four kilometers in, kind of ideal open conditions. I think that's like a desert environment, and they say it's more like point eight in an urban environment. So obviously, unobstructed clear sort of, you know, land or topography was the ideal one. So I thought, well, I'll see if I can find somewhere that provides the best setup for that. luckily in Auckland, my" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "06:22", "start": 382.31, "text": "That used to be extinct volcanoes, kind of large helix really, in the area, so I mapped out a way where I could, you know, as close to that six point four as possible, bounce through a few of those and just see if I could get it going. initially I was, since I got four units, I was gonna try and see if I get about, nineteen point two kilometers, which is, I think, six point four times three. So I mapped that out, enlisted the help of my lovely, patient girlfriend so what I did was, mapped it out and then we went and, I more or less, left her sitting on top of one of the hills there with, with her phone and the, And the, the app running and a GoTenna, then I went out, five point six kilometers at a time or roughly that, so each league tried to send a transaction. If that one worked, I left another one there, or I left a GoTenna there, I should say, in, relay mode, so you can set it so it's basically just a, a passive listening station. If anyone sends anything in the area, it'll just relay it onto another GoTenna. So tried the first one from five point six-ish kilometers, I think it slightly longer, six plus kilometers, seven kilometers actually, looking at it now. so went to that one and then sent another one from there and that worked. So traveled from me to the relay I left in the first mountain, then from there got bounced onto my girlfriend, and that was twelve point six kilometers away. So that was pretty cool, pretty impressive. I then went on to another one which was, Really up, it's up a massive hill, and it's about seven point one five kilometers away. Tried that, and unfortunately that didn't go through. it sounds like it could have been an app issue there, but, you know, obviously I'm still, I'm pushing it a little bit beyond what they say they can do anyway at that stage. so, yeah, that was kind of how I stepped through, walked through that one there. just on that note, look, if you go on the GoTennis site, some people" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "08:26", "start": 506.16, "text": "Pretty good line of sight and all that, but it's quite possible that you can get a lot further than what I've done, so, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:32", "start": 512.17, "text": "Right, yeah. And so what other limitations did you run into? Was it mostly, mostly just a distance thing or what?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "08:39", "start": 519.25, "text": "so for that one, where I was just trying out primarily the distance, yeah. you know, it's, it's a little, little fiddly at the stage, not, not terrible, I mean, the UX is, is definitely alright, but, you know, just a little trying to cop around transactions. The other one that's the big problem is, well, not, not really a problem, but the setup that I had, so I just had one UTXO that I'm trading these transactions out of, and, if you don't have a internet connection and you've already broadcasted, of course, as far as your uninternet-connected phone is, aware that transaction that it's composing, a new tran- or a UTXO that's composing a transaction from is unspent. So if you've sent one out to the Know that that UTXO is no longer valid, even though the network thinks it is. So we'll keep re-referencing the old UTXO. So, so that's something which, I believe they're, they're looking at some ideas about getting back to, but it just kinda means unless you've got multiple, UTXOs in your wallet that you can draw from, or you're smart about the way you set that up, you kinda need to get an internet connection to re-reference it. So I had to do that, I had to just connect my phone That was a little bit of a limitation, but beyond that, it was pretty, you know, I was very surprised at how smooth it was to do it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:59", "start": 598.86, "text": "Yeah, sure. And then how about the cost in terms of equipment?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "10:02", "start": 602.39, "text": "I mean, I can't remember what I paid for these things. they're around about," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "10:09", "start": 608.97, "text": "a hundred and fifty New Zealand, so around a hundred US dollars a unit. I mean, if you buy more, it's cheaper, that sort of thing. Yeah, you need to go double-check that price, but it's It was super cheap. I mean, I used like some close pigs and some old kind of army camouflage stuff to just, not, not so much to try and be a ninja, but just to, avoid anyone stealing my, go tenders while I wasn't there. but apart from that, yeah, it's pretty, pretty cheap, you know? And the infrastructure to, to, deploy something like that is, when you look at what the distance that can be achieved, is, pretty good value for money. Yeah. And then how about keeping them" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "10:53", "start": 653.46, "text": "I want to do when I do another update on this is just test what is the battery life. Supposedly, GoTenna says twenty-four hours, and I'm guessing obviously the, the, workload that you put on it would affect that. But, I mean, the big advantage of these things is they've got just a nice kind of, micro USB input, so if you had a conventional cell phone battery, you could plug it into that, you know, maybe a solar charger. So you could extend that battery life by quite some time and, and possibly infinitely if you had a, solar setup that was reliable." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:23", "start": 682.66, "text": "Yeah, fantastic. And now, I think you were also working with the Gotenna and Samurai support teams just on that. Do you wanna elaborate a little on that?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "11:31", "start": 691.32, "text": "Yeah, sure. So, I, hit up, I think TDev or, not Samurai, well, at the other, anonymous, Samurai developer, on the team there about a few things. I think he actually hit me I was gonna try and do this while I was overseas with the Blockstream satellite, 'cause, as you might be aware down here, we can't get that at the moment. so I think I posted a thing that I was, had a photo that I was gonna do that, and he made contact and said, \"Oh, let me know if you get any results.\" So as soon as I did the first slot from memory, or before I did, that's right, yeah, no, I hit him up beforehand and, just had some issues with the pairing and a few little kind of subtleties that he helped sort me out with. And, through the whole experiment, I've just been kind of relaying to him about little UX things that I found or stuff like that there. So, really super communicative, communicative those guys and, and really, really helpful. the Gotera guys as well, Decentralization, I think is his title there, but he's kind of the guy on the GoTiner end that's working on this project, and he's been super helpful with a few, little subtleties. But also there, we've got what they call the GoTiner mesh network, which is a forum that they have there, and, that, that, it's really super helpful on there. When I first got them, I couldn't, you had to update the firmware on them, and, they weren't updating" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "13:01", "start": 781.44, "text": "Away, I had a, someone from the support, the support, team hit me up, it was only about six hours, and a lot of help on the forums and had it sorted straight away. So pretty communicative and pretty involved and, and helpful on the GoTEN end as well." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:16", "start": 796.29, "text": "Alright, let's talk about this other, the second story, which I think is even more interesting. Now, you were-- the idea here was to test it out in even more hostile environments, such as a prison, or just in cases where you need to obfuscate IP, such as using a work or cafe Wi-Fi to broadcast the transaction. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "13:39", "start": 819.35, "text": "I wasn't trying to be, you know, James Bond or anything here, and I mean, I guess it's probably an important caveat to say, like, right here that, what I was doing was by no means trying to be, A, a depth or a, or a, a step-by-step, guide of how to do some sort of, an-anonymous or, or sneaky sort of use of Bitcoin. It was just more like, you know, I think, I think a lot of these things with censorship resistance, we still don't really, we've got a couple of hypoth- hypothetical ideas, but we still don't really know when and where that scenario is gonna look like. And so to try and preempt it, I think it's a little silly on my part. I just kind" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "14:20", "start": 859.67, "text": "of exploration and see what, what we can do. So the first one, what I tried was to, see if you wanted to broadcast a transaction without going through your personal IP address or node, and, and again, you know, I'm not gonna pretend here that I can talk about all the subtleties of, de-anonymizing Bitcoin transactions through chain analysis, the, the, distribution of, the transactions to nodes and things like Dandelion is, is looking at, but, you know But obviously there's, there's some, some kind of tentative research or, or ability for certain people to try and, link, Bitcoin transactions to IP addresses. and also, you know, in this hypothetical, apocalyptic scenario I'm dreaming at, there might be something where, you're in a hostile state and, broadcasting a Bitcoin transaction from your IP address or from your cellular device might not be a smart idea for a host of reasons. So my thing was, well, can you use this as a way to- To kind of add an extra layer of an-anonymity between your device and your transaction and the IP address that it's being broadcast from. So what I did was I, used an office space that I've got access to and the WiFi password for, and I, got the GoTenners and stashed them in a couple of just, you know, the first things that came to my mind about sneaky places I've seen things hidden in, in the past, so one of them was I kind of taped a, a GoTener and a phone together in a Zip" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "15:51", "start": 950.75, "text": "The other one I kind of stashed the GoTenna inside a, a network, cable plug outlet, so kind of inside the wall, and the other, and the phone to relay it, behind a painting on the wall. And then just went about five hundred meters up the road, didn't go too far out, but just to see if I could get some distance and, send a transaction that worked fine. so, so I mean, the whole idea with that was, Here's, here's you with one cent of Bitcoin transaction not wanting to link it to your device or your IP address, some friendly actor who, has access to a, Wi-Fi password might be able to get a throwaway phone like I had, so about forty dollars worth, and a GoTenna and secrete it somewhere within Wi-Fi range, and so that more or less opens a, an open Wi-Fi access point, if you like, for someone to send a Bitcoin transaction through. And, and of course, with the availability of the GoTenna, as Get access to that point, you know, well beyond the range of Wi-Fi. So, you know, theoretically, looking at what I did before, they could be five kilometers away and broadcast to this hidden, relay point that's, connected to someone else's Wi-Fi, and that could be a, a kind of a sneaky way that you could bypass something where, State level actor, or, you know, again, I'm, I'm just making this up as I go, but state level actor or a, some, something to do with the, cellular infrastructure network, was in some way trying to prevent you, sending a Bitcoin transaction. So, so that was that one. The next one I tried was," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "17:22", "start": 1042.08, "text": "going to a, like a, a, a prison type setup, so, you know, I've worked in that environment before, and, I kind of tried to think of the, the closest replica that I could find, around where I live here, there's a, a set of tunnels that used to be used in Second World War, First World War, for, for guns and stuff, if the Japanese were gonna invade, they were gonna blast them from artillery in these, setups in the hills. So they're kind of concrete kind of tunneling or concrete range and, and, underground space between you and the outside world. So I thought, well, that's a, about as close a replica as you're gonna get, out there. So, what I tried with that one was I went inside, yep, just down the tunnels until I got to a point where there's no cell phone reception. So I thought, well, this is about as good a, a replica as you're gonna get about, you know, that environment in one way that's, cell phone's not So I then got there, connected with my GoTenna to my girlfriend who was outside, and got her to move, a series of, distances back, and then kinda went out and checked, you know, hey, did that go through or not? so yeah, that worked. I think the first one was about 80 meters, then about 200, and then all the way down the bottom of the hill, which was, I think a point five or something like that, so a longer distance. Again, I didn't try it much longer," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "18:47", "start": 1127.39, "text": "But again, that's, if you had a hostile environment where you were denied telecommunications access, look, I've certainly in my previous career seen some sneaky things that have been used, and, and those setups, and I just want to see if this could be a, a complimentary, tool and, and, and a setup like that, and, yeah, it certainly seemed to work. the last one I tried was going back to that, kind of covert relay with some Wi-Fi. What I did was I, there's a cafe, That I know they've got the Wi-Fi password for, so what I did was I did something slightly more discreet than the, original one in the office block where I kind of hid it in a sock with a Ziploc bag and chucked it in a bush, within Wi-Fi range of that cafe, and then went up the road and tried sending some, using that as a relay point. had some issues when it was at the ground level, didn't seem to travel very well, like not over 200 meters there, but," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "19:42", "start": 1181.68, "text": "when I Just, just playing around really, and I don't pretend this is some, you know, step-by-step guide to, you know, do something sneaky or whatever, but just, we were trying to get the conversation going and, show what was possible with this, and it was quite surprising how successful it was." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:56", "start": 1195.81, "text": "Yeah, I thought it was pretty funny how, in your thread, you've got the picture there and you can, you've got it highlighted there in red or just a little red circle around it showing, okay, here's" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "20:05", "start": 1204.7, "text": "where I've hidden it in the tree. Yeah, it Which was pretty invisible to the eye that would be doing the job, on standby, it was pretty cool." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:18", "start": 1217.91, "text": "Alright, and, and with the tunnel example or the concrete, how much of a limitation on the range did you find?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "20:26", "start": 1225.63, "text": "Well, it didn't seem to have much at all, just going back to my thing here, just so I can refresh myself on how long that actually was," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "20:38", "start": 1237.92, "text": "so the, the longest one I did was two hundred meters, and, I didn't have any issues with that. So, I mean, who knows? I, again, it's, it's, it's a time thing of doing this both times, taking me about five or six hours to do so. I've gotta, especially when I'm getting help from someone else, you gotta be kind of conscious of their time, so I don't wanna try this out again and again and again. But, you know, this was, if you look at the photos, it was" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "21:06", "start": 1265.7, "text": "You could easily have got a kilometer, in that environment there, and, one of the big tests I want to find with that first example where I was in it mountain, mountain was, okay, so they can say that, you know, if you got a, a clear line of sight and good elevation, it works well, but what about interference from, yeah, urban environments, I've got no idea exactly about what level that would be, but I just wanna see if, you know, having houses around would reduce the range, and it clearly didn't seem to. So, you know, that's, that example there could have gone for a lot longer from what I can see. And, you know, if it's a real issue, it wouldn't be too hard to what I just talked about, to create one on relay mode somewhere around two hundred meters away and then step it out. So, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:43", "start": 1302.94, "text": "Do you have any ideas on" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "21:52", "start": 1312.11, "text": "Which was pretty cool. following the, the post that I made about it, he, I'd actually seen this mentioned, but I didn't think it was gonna be applicable, but he and his, I believe it's his wife, Elaine, they're working on a thing with high frequency radio, so a very similar idea to, to the GoTenna thing, but, obviously on a much longer range. I'm just trying to get my head around high frequency now, but you can do some pretty impressive distances with it. So I, I wanna do a few more things with Gotena. I wanna try like drones and a couple other ideas about, you know, getting it elevated and some, and, and a little bit, some stuff that's a little bit more rigorous about establishing some distances and trying to get some sort of credible data about, you know, Yeah, where this works, you know, some, some, get some homework down, some numbers and stuff for people. But, the, certainly the next thing I wanna try and work on is that, actually, looking at, some pretty impressive distances when you come from New Zealand, obviously one thing that's on Becky's mind is our internet comes through a couple of cables from overseas, and if they were cut or something happened with that, we would be in a interesting situation as far as the internet and, and Bitcoin goes. so this is a way where potentially Overseas and so that's the next thing I wanna look at is trying to work with HF radio and building on." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:11", "start": 1390.61, "text": "Oh, fantastic. No, that's great. And then in order to enable that, do you have any-- Now that you've gone and done some of these experiments, do you have any thoughts on how the tech or the Bitcoin products need to kind of evolve to enable this sort of thing?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "23:26", "start": 1406.09, "text": "Yeah, I mean, Look, one thing to me about, like, kind of, I guess what, what Bitcoin's about, and I've, I've kind of definitely seen this year was, I, went to Building on Bitcoin, this year, and, one thing that really kind of blew me away going there was, You know, as an outsider, a-and especially someone that's not, you know, and that, and deeply mesh in the tech side of things, you think this is this, you know, monolithic technology that, you know, there's all these barriers to getting involved and making contribution. And, one thing I really saw at building on Bitcoin was, it's still such a grassroots open thing, you know, it's just up to people to pick up a shovel, shovel and start digging, if you like. so kind of what I would like to see myself and Contribute to a bit more is, things like this that, that keep the conversation about not, not Lambos and making shitloads of money or whatever, but, but keeping it focused on what the original idea of this stuff was, which was, you know, censorship resistance, making sure, you know, that, giving users sovereignty over their funds and making sure that it is, you know, truly decentralized, if you like, and, so, yeah, I mean, is anything that's gonna feed onto that, that's what I wanna try and- myself play my little part to do, so, you know, I love things like Wasabi, what they're doing, certainly I think the Samurai guys, the efforts that they're making, the direction they're trying to take stuff is sort of benefit, and, and what I've really liked about both those products, or s- apps, whatever you wanna call them, is, this, same thing, I guess, with, Attack is, well, there's, there's a philosophy behind this, you know, it's Features, we're not gonna incorporate these features because this is the, the vision we have for this technology and what it's about, and by using this, you know, you can, you know, ca- bring yourself and your use into line with this philosophy, if, if it's the one that you think is right for you." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:27", "start": 1527.38, "text": "Okay. And I think, you know, detractors or maybe, you know, as a devil's advocate question, maybe they, they might say, \"Well, look, are, are you just larping? Are you just live action replaying about censorship" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "25:43", "start": 1543.15, "text": "Or, or with some, opsec expert here trying to show people how to do this stuff, and, and let's be honest, you know, kind of what I'm doing is, is more fun, or, you know, you, you could even describe it as like larping or whatever. But I mean, I think if the, the whole idea is, you know, with censorship resistance and, and some of these uses for it, we don't know when or where exactly, you know, there's certainly some visible in the world today, but we don't know what" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "26:12", "start": 1571.56, "text": "About this sort of stuff, like, fine, can it work? Does this work? Does this, does this not work? which sort of, sort of, situations it suitable for? Yeah, when it's needed, that information isn't gonna be there or it's gonna be far too late to find it out. So, yeah, again, you know, I'm, I'm not pretending to, to know or instruct people on, how this works. I just see, look, hey, someone's gonna get out there and do the work for this, I'm gonna try and, as I said, you know, pick up a shovel and start digging, doing my own little part, you know, that I can play for this at the kind of early stage that I'm at. so yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's what I would like to see is, is this, and it's, it's great that it seems to have, you For censorship resistance, not try and pretend like it's an instruction manual, but this works, this doesn't, so when, when the right time comes around, people can, you know, use that or, or build on it as they need to. But also, I think like a really important thing is keeping the narrative and keeping the, the focus around, you know, what is this really for? It is not, in my opinion, a way to buy coffee or a competitor to PayPal. It's self-sovereign money and, and it's a, a network that, you Keeping the focus on that and, and everyone picking up their piece and, and keeping it, keeping the conversation about that, I think it's really important. If you look at something like, say, U-A, UAS, if I think they clearly kind of communicated, look, the unis, users wear the pants here, you know, the users are the people that decide what this technology is about and where it will go. And I think it's very important to, to, to, you know, even in a silly way like kind of what I'm doing, keep that conversation So, yeah, you know, I just wanted to play my little part in trying to keep that conversation focused on that and get some energy around it, and, yeah, I'm happy that it's in its own small way it seems to have done that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:06", "start": 1685.83, "text": "Yeah, no, I think, I agree with you very much. Actually, while we're on that topic of, you know, the why and the philosophy behind it, do you want to comment a little bit on maybe who are some of your influences, whether they're like, from an economic point of view or philosophically" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "28:26", "start": 1706.02, "text": "Original thing that got me into it, which is the, the Silk Road thing, and, and by that, I'm not meaning this is all about buying drugs and doing illegal stuff. It's more that, that this could operate, like, you know, from my professional background, I know something of that scale, if they could shut it down, they would have, you know, well before they, they did. And, and really, if you look into how they did it, it had nothing to do with the technology, it was just, you know, plain old, sort of common sense" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "28:56", "start": 1735.98, "text": "Pretty, that is a pretty significant, thing about, to me, it all comes back to, that's what it's about, it's about providing that censorship resistance and keeping the focus on, On, on, enabling things, you know, I think Eric Voskel said it pretty well in, when I saw him talk at Honeybedja this year. It's about the grey markets, you know, and that's, again, it's not necessarily meaning drags and illegal stuff, it's things like, if you Google \"operation strangleholds,\" \"operation chokepoints,\" \"stranglehold,\" I always get them mixed up. The one that was basically shutting down, financial access even to bank accounts for, for porn stars, you know, doing nothing" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "29:36", "start": 1776.5, "text": "wasn't wasn't even really clear. These people can deny access to financial services, no, you know, this is obviously a, a controversial topic as well, but I think something like Gab, recently, you know, has been a, a pretty good illustration of that about, It's pretty scary to me that how, and, and you know, I'm no fan of this guy, but Alex Jones is another one, how all these tech companies can come together and shut these people down very quickly when they decide that, you know, they, they, they don't want them to talk anymore. And so, you know, that's something that I think everyone should be, you know, that's, it's really more of the conversation, the focus of Bitcoin should, should be, 'cause that's its killer app, you know, not, not making us I've, as I said, I, I've certainly, over the past explored, you know, plenty of other cryptos and things like that as you do, but I, you know, I think Bitcoin still has the developer community, but most importantly, the, what I've seen going to a lot of conferences here is it has the right culture and the right, kind of ethos or the, has the right people thinking about the right things, more concentrated in Bitcoin than any other crypto, in my opinion. so, you know, I think that" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "30:50", "start": 1849.53, "text": "The, the big one, Bitcoin. This is what the conversation needs to be about because if it is, you know, taken another direction or the narrative goes another way, you know, this is gonna evolve into just a shitty version of PayPal rather than something that could really fundamentally change the world, and I think that, those are the things I'm talking about are ones. So, so to me, it's been people like Ameataki, Cody Wilson, certainly, a lot of, yeah, those guys like right when I first got into it were the people that got me thinking in the right zone about, what this is really about. And certainly this year, you know, people like Eric Voskau, you know, I've only really become aware of him and Francis Puelo and definitely, Mark Goldstein and, Pierre Rochard as well, you know, talking about not just the censorship-resistant stuff, but also the sound money, which I think is a very important and, under, exploited angle as well about why, you know, Bitcoin should mean something. But that, that sort of things I'm still getting my head around, I don't, I don't pretend to have an, really in-depth knowledge of Austrian economics, but it's something which I think is, is another valid kind of part of the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:51", "start": 1911.27, "text": "puzzle. Yeah, sure." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "31:56", "start": 1915.75, "text": "Have you Down with our, gun to our money, by Rothbard, making my way through some of, Guido Huysman's ethics of money production right now. and I've read quite, yeah, quite a few articles on the Mises Institute, but, you know, I think the, the big problem, nowadays is just too much time, too much to re- so, too little time, too much to read. And, my five cents is, look, I think the, the most important thing to know in this space is, Tangible thing that you can hold and measure and value in the space is your, your knowledge of code and your ability to, to utilize it, to, you know, to, to really manifest your will, if you like. So I'm trying to focus my energy there as much as possible, and I've got a very large amount in front of me, but, that's kinda-- I'm trying to make my way through as much Austrian stuff as possible, but to me, yeah, Python, mastering how to, program is, is the most important thing," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:54", "start": 1974.03, "text": "that With Gotenna and Samurai Wallet." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "33:00", "start": 1980.49, "text": "Yeah, I mean, look, I, I, I definitely hope people do it. you know, I don't wanna be like the Gotenna guy who's the only person in the world doing it or whatever. you know, they're pretty easy to get, it's, it's pretty fun, people obviously seem to care, so, you know, it's not like you're gonna post it and no one's gonna care about the five hours you spent. People seem to be pretty engaged about it. there's a lot" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "33:29", "start": 2008.75, "text": "I'd say is, is look, don't be afraid to head up, the Gotenda guys or the Samurai Wallet guys if you are doing that and need some help. They've been super helpful for me. I know they're working on a couple of ideas about how they can address some of the, UX and just, general overarching limitations that this technology has or this setup has. so I think the more people that are getting out there testing and giving them some feedback, I know they've certainly said that they're quite appreciative about some of the, you know, difficulties The better, but most importantly, this is a mesh network, you know, so these things have got to be plugged on and, and sitting around, for this thing to have its power. if, you know, you had enough people within a certain, square kilometer of a, urban city, you know, this thing is, has the real, ability to travel tens or hundreds of kilometers or whatever. But if you're the only person in town using it, it, it's, it's not gonna be that useful. So, so the more people that Maybe there's competing products, maybe, you know, there's other things here, but this is a company which has taken an active interest in Bitcoin, that wants to help this thing happen, and I think it's pretty, it would be a worthwhile endeavor to try and, return that, interest by, you know, building on it and trying to see what else we can come up with it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:48", "start": 2088.22, "text": "Yeah, I think it's a really interesting story, and I think people, people are motivated by stories, so it's, it's, it's a good way, it" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "34:59", "start": 2098.93, "text": "Yeah, thanks. I mean, that's exactly what I was thinking was, you know, like I said, I think stories are very important. I think it's something that's very under-utilized, unrecognized in the space about just how important the, the meaning and the message behind some, some of these things is. It's not just the technology. and, you know, that's what I was hoping to do. So really great to hear that you think that. Thank you." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:18", "start": 2117.62, "text": "Yeah, excellent. Alright, well, look, how can people follow you?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "35:22", "start": 2121.93, "text": "so," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "35:29", "start": 2128.91, "text": "I mean, I guess you're gonna have the link to that in here. that, that'll be, that's probably the best way to get me. yeah, hopefully I'm gonna put this all together in a medium post, and maybe that's gonna be something in the future, but wanna get some quality content, something that's worth composing a post out of first, so that might take a, a couple of months. one thing I would like to just take the opportunity to mention while I got you here, if I can, so this" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "35:59", "start": 2159.07, "text": "like, next up I said, he was working on it again in February, and I'm gonna try and learn as much as I can between now and then. But what I would really like, if there's anyone out there listening to this on the east coast of Australia, Sydney would probably be i-ideal, but anywhere on the east coast, I would really like to work towards sending a, Bitcoin transaction trans Tasman, so that's about two thousand two hundred kilometers, which is possible through, HF radio. So, obviously that" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "36:29", "start": 2188.77, "text": "Friends over here, if there's anyone that's listening that's interested on the east coast of Australia that would like to help out as being the other end of that, in whatever way possible, that would be really appreciated. So if, if there's anyone that fits that thing, could you please give me a DM over Twitter? I'd really like that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:43", "start": 2203.14, "text": "Oh, that'd be fantastic, yeah, that's, definitely hope, some listeners out there, keen to get involved with that. Alright, well, I think that's pretty much gonna do it for this episode. So thanks very much for coming on, Rigel." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "36:54", "start": 2214.01, "text": "No, thanks, so, thank you so much for having me on, man. It's been a real pleasure and, I really appreciate it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:59", "start": 2219.18, "text": "I hope you found some of Rigel's stories interesting like I did. Maybe some of you will be inspired to go out and try your own experiments with Gotenna and Samurai or TX-Tenna, which is the product. I will list some relevant links to Rigel's thread, the TX-Tenna site, and Richard's talk on TX-Tenna, which was called \"Decentralized Last Mile Communication Using Mobile Mesh Networks.\" Lastly, if you enjoy my podcast, you can support me on patreon.com/stefanlivera. You can follow me on Twitter at steve Stephan Livera. Give me a message with any questions, comments or suggestions you have. Also, rate, review, subscribe. I got a five star review from a pseudonym Yoshi Nakamoto from Uganda, which was excellent. Thanks for listening, guys, and speak next time." } ] }