{ "episodeId": "SLP420", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "btcmap": { "name": "BTCMap", "role": "guest", "tag": "BTCMAP" }, "guest_2": { "name": "Guest 2", "role": "guest", "tag": "GUEST" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.51, "text": "Hi, you're listening to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. This show is about btcmap dot org and Nathan and Second Light developers and people contributing on this project. It's a FLOSS project. They join me and we chat about tagging local Bitcoin merchants and we also ta-talk about how you can get involved. So for- Those of you who want to help out, and maybe you're not specifically a developer, but you're looking for some way to contribute, this might be something that you can help out with. Are you still using a plain old block explorer? Bitcoin has grown beyond a single layer, it's now a fully fledged multi-layer ecosystem, and Mempool dot space helps you by looking at the different layers in this ecosystem. You can look at the mempool, you can see the blockchain, you can see second layer networks like Liquid and the Lightning Network. It's beautifully presented, you can see the different Lightning nodes, So you can even see the PPM fee, how much they're charging. You can even look at the on-chain transactions that relate to the channel open and close. So it's a fantastic Bitcoin and blockchain explorer. You can host it yourself, and if you are an enterprise, Mempool.Space now offers custom mempool instances with your company's branding, increased API limits, and more. Go learn more at mempool.space/enterprise. Now, as you know, I work at Swan, and one of the big items coming up with Swan is Pacific Bitcoin. It's on November 10th and 11th in LA, California, we have an awesome lineup of Bitcoiners coming, whether they are speakers or attendees. We have people like Michael Saylor coming in person, Lynn Alden, Pierre Rochard, Alex Epstein, Mark Moss, Alex Gladstein, Greg Foss, and so many more. We have three tracks in terms of multiple stages, there will be workshops and side events. I'll be one of the hosts of the show, and for premium ticket holders, there is going to be a VIP party that you don't wanna miss. Michael Saylor has said Go and get your tickets, it's PacificBitcoin dot com, use code Livera for a discount on your tickets. And when it comes to Bitcoin hardware, CoinKite dot com is the place. They have the Coldcard, which is my favorite Bitcoin hardware signing device. It's a very secure device with two secure elements. It's got more RAM and CPU to make for faster trans-signing of transactions. It has NFC support, but this is optional, so you can disable that, and in fact, it's disabled by default. You have to enable it, and it's a very reliable device, so Easy to set this up, and in fact, you can spin up your device and set it up without plugging it into a computer. So I love the peace of mind that gives me. Airgapping, I know there are different views in the community, but I believe it does help. CoinKite also have a range of products. They've got the TapSigner and the SatsCard. These are cheaper devices that aren't as secure, but perhaps they offer a different level of trade-off in terms of cost. And CoinKite also have the BlockClock in different sizes, so you Get a discount on your cold cards with the code LEVERA. And now, onto the show. Nathan and Second Light, welcome to the show." }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "03:08", "start": 188.01, "text": "Hey, Stephan. Good to be here. Hey, thanks for having me." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:11", "start": 191.43, "text": "So, Nathan and Second Light, I know you guys are working on this project, BTC Maps. So, I was really keen to chat about this. I came across it and I saw it's been, you guys have been having a bit of fun with this project recently. But yeah, I, I'm gonna presume most of the listeners don't know" }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "03:30", "start": 210.0, "text": "Yeah, for sure. So I'm relatively new to Bitcoin actually, so, as everyone did once upon a time, looks at it, didn't put the time in, moved away onto other things, but, about a year ago, I, I really fell down the rabbit hole pretty quickly from not really knowing too much about Bitcoin to running a full node within three weeks or something. So it was a pretty painful descent. And then, yeah, I guess the, the, the genesis story Story then of, of how did BTC Maps come up, come about, was, was basically through, my own need and other people's, because people are looking around for places to, to spend their sats, up until BTCMap dot org, there wasn't really a place you could do that in, in a single place. But we'll get into that. Second light, do you wanna introduce yourself?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "04:24", "start": 264.16, "text": "yeah, so I went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole in twenty twenty, summer of twenty twenty, and- And, after a few months of sort of learning about it, feeling, you know, that I had a decent understanding, I wanted to get as involved as I could. And so in the summer of twenty twenty-one, I started teaching myself how to code. six months after that, I quit my fiat job to, work on Bitcoin development full-time. And, yeah, so it's been about ten months now, and I've had the opportunity to work on some super cool open-source projects, so it's been pretty amazing." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:00", "start": 299.62, "text": "Cool. second light, just while we're here, do you wanna just spell out some of those projects you've been contributing with?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "05:06", "start": 306.2, "text": "yeah, so, some of the ones that I've worked on over the past, ten or so months are CoinOS, which is a web wallet, it's actually been around since twenty twelve, run by a guy named, Adam Soltys online, Adam Soltys, really great guy, and he's actually been mentoring me as well, so that I'm super grateful for that. also had the chance to work The Lightning browser extension, bunch of great, people over there as well, Geyser, which is, Bitcoin crowd funding, and I did a, a few smaller contributions for Jam, which is the joint market web UI, and, yeah, the latest one is BTC Map." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:49", "start": 348.69, "text": "Fantastic. Yeah. And that's funny because, you know, I did a recent episode with, the, Alby guys, and, you know, I met some of the Geyser guys over at, Baltic Honey Badger, so it A few times across some of these different projects, but we're here to talk about BTC Map today because, this is one of those things where I know there have been historical attempts at this, but Nathan, do you wanna just touch on that, whether you were doing some research into this and that, that, and that formed part of the, the genesis of this project?" }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "06:19", "start": 378.71, "text": "Yeah, so it was, is that going back to Baltic Honey Badger, so that was, my first real Bitcoin conference, so I, I was there, I saw you guys, Stephan" }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "06:31", "start": 390.98, "text": "but really that was where the, the spark came for BTC Maps because I was figuring out how, where to go spend Sats whilst in Riga, and guess what? There's, there's nothing available. And so the problem has been, is that you kinda have this Vulcanization of, of Google Maps that people throw up on the website, whether it's a local meetup, or whether it's, you know, some sort of, merchant map, so Coin Corner, for example, have their own map. And, Ibex, Mercado have their own map, and it's, it tends to be all Google Map driven, which is limited for a whole bunch of reasons. So yeah, I started looking around, and, and couldn't find anything, and then I managed in Fdroid store there was an app in there called BTC Map. So I downloaded it and, you know, there were a lot of, points around the world, so I just started digging into what this data source was for BTC Map, within the F-Droid store. and I managed to track down the guy who, who wrote it. So it's a guy called Igar who's part of the core BTC Map team now, who created this app back in May of this year, I think it was. There's some history before then where Igar recreated a map a few years back, with some issues with Google Play, didn't quite, you know, get any traction. And so yeah, I, I contacted Igar, and at this point there was no, there was no website, there was literally a, a white on, on that domain. and of course, there was no lightning as well, because the dataset that BTCMap dot org uses is the OpenStreetMap, dataset, and we can get into that in a bit more detail. So yeah, I, I was literally sat at the front of, one of the, of the conference hall, Honeybadger, and I've got a very, very minimal coding background, but I managed to hack together a HTML page in Notepad, and we, we threw up the world's worst look- Looking webpage just to get something there, and that's when I created the Twitter handle, and then reached out to people to see who wanted to, contribute to what would be, a web app, iOS app, and a revised Android app, which is, is where we are now. I mean, that was only what, four weeks ago? Five weeks ago or something? And that's where Second Light reached out. So I, I don't know how you saw the tweet, but we, we started getting a little bit- A bit of traction, and then I just got a DM from, from Second Light, and, yeah, he's like, \"Where's the repo? Let's get going.\"" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:08", "start": 548.42, "text": "Excellent. So let's get into that question around data, and I'm sure people are thinking, \"Oh, well, historically, you know, you could-- there was Google Maps based things, or maybe people had their own little, Waldgarden version. Why the focus, on OpenStreetMaps?\"" }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "09:31", "start": 570.87, "text": "So some of my background, sort of pre Bitcoin days was, was around open data. So I worked a lot with UK government to get effectively data that citizen data, data that citizens should own, opened up, because it's effectively part of the commons. so I've got a, a, an open data lens on it, and I think people often talk about free and open software, so FOSS software, FOSS, but don't really think about the data side of it, as well as the software side of it. And so I, I was very familiar with OpenStreetMaps, and a lot of, like I say, a lot of UK government data was, was released, in various datasets, including mapping information. So when I found the, the app that had been created by, by Igar, I was then super keen to learn the, the data that drives the app, so where are the locations, was using OpenStreetMaps As a database. So for those people listening that, that don't know what OpenStreetMap is, it's basically Wikipedia for maps. So it enables anybody to create, assets, and base layer, layer maps, in a wiki format. So, if, I don't know, if there's a new, bus stop that, that comes at the bottom of your street, you can go right ahead and edit the map and input that in, And there's a change set associated with that, so, you know, you can look at the history of how, your local area has, progressed, just like you can look at the history of a, a Wikipedia page, and see what the edits were. so OpenStreetMap does that, and there are, you know, tens of thousands of, of cartography geeks around the world that absolutely love this and, have created a really rich dataset now. So, I don't know, maybe it's- Ten years ago, the dataset wasn't particularly good, but it's just been steadily, steadily, incrementally, improving in terms of, of data quality. and in some aspects, it, it outperforms other closed mapping providers because you just have that, collective power of, of people around the world, editing that data." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:55", "start": 714.57, "text": "And I know this is one of those things where, for those listeners focused on privacy and security, there are some listeners who use, let's say, Graphene or- OS or Calyx OS and things like this, as alternatives to try to get away from Google. And so they are typically using more OpenStreetMap's applications or applications, you know, working off of this data set. So that was definitely interesting. I know, there are people using alternative app stores like F-Droid and things like this. So do you want to just comment then a little bit on the situation with the accuracy and the completeness of OpenStreetMap's data as compared to, let's say, Google Maps or Apple Maps?" }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "12:33", "start": 753.33, "text": "Yeah, sure. So the, the, the data quality is effectively in the hands of the people that maintain the data. So if we take a look specifically at the Bitcoin dataset, it looks like back in 2014 there was a huge uptick in, additions. So clearly there was some sort of, push to get, places tapped. Now of course, that was all pre-Lightning days, so, and a lot of people, Who were in Bitcoin in, in that time, you know, may have moved on to different things in terms of vendors and merchant adoption. So there was basically zero Lightning information in OpenStreetMaps. So what we've been doing, and we've got a community of, so we've got our core team of, of the contributors, but we also have these, we call them shadowy super taggers, who are basically the, the plebs around the world who are, who are now tagging up, Merchants, with what we have now, which is a revised, set of tags, for, for Lightning, for Lightning contactless as well, so MASC Lightning payments, and Also being more explicit around on-chain acceptance. So yeah, we've been working with the OpenStreetMap community to, get a revised set of tags that makes sense for Bitcoin today, 'cause it's a very different, scene than it was back in twenty fourteen from a merchant adoption perspective. So yeah, one of the big pieces of work we've got to do is go back through the legacy nodes, of which I think, I think we've got about six and a half thousand legacy nodes at the moment. And we, we're, we're slowly updating those and/or deleting them. So if, if the, the merchant has gone bust or no longer accepts Bitcoin, then, you know, that work is, is as important as adding in new Lightning vendors, for example." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:35", "start": 875.13, "text": "Gotcha. So perhaps there's a bit of a call out for the community there, the plebs, the, Bitcoiners in every town, city, to go through and update some of that data, right? And I think they'll naturally want to do that because- Because if they're looking on the map for places that they can spend Bitcoin, and they find, \"Oh, wait, this place doesn't take it anymore,\" or maybe this restaurant is shut down now, and maybe if they find a new restaurant that wants to take it, they can try to get that added. Do you wanna just talk to us a little bit about what that looks like at the different levels? So you've got the people who can make a suggestion, and then there are people who actually know how to go and do the tagging themselves." }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "15:08", "start": 907.71, "text": "Yeah, so we've got two, two levels really. Place, where you want to add that, place to the map, then you can literally just fill out a, a four-field, form on our website, and there's a little embedded map there so you can place your pin where that is vendor is. And then what that does in the background is that creates, a ticket in, in GitHub, so we get a, an issue raised, we get notified in our Discord where we've got the community, and then somebody picks that up. So somebody who can tag, so one of these shadowy super taggers, can then just pick that ticket up and very easily just either update, add, or remove the data within, within OpenStreetMaps. I mean, it's not a Complicated process, so we're now getting some of the people, so the, Bitcoin island in Philippines that came out of nowhere kind of two weeks ago, and I think they're now up to something like two hundred or so, vendors, accepting Bitcoin Lightning payments there. they have gone through now, and are kind of retrospectively tagging their own data. because what we really encourage people to do, is, is own that data, 'cause it's not our data, it's, it's their data. So we really want this grassroots ownership of the data and to maintain that data going forward, because people, vendors will change, they'll, they'll come and they'll go, and they'll maybe stop accepting Bitcoin or start accepting, contactless payments or, or whatever it is. So yeah, the, the links with the meetups and, and the local communities is, is super important For, for data quality." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:58", "start": 1018.17, "text": "Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think this is a very natural fit for Bitcoin meetups in each city or town. They can take a, a more active role for the data in their area, and they're probably the ones who are trying to drive adoption anyway, right? Like they might be the ones trying to go and talk to this cafe or that restaurant or this business." }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "17:18", "start": 1038.48, "text": "Yeah, those are the guys dealing the orange pills kind of locally because, you know, they wanna drive adoption for themselves, and this is just a tool that helps That, and I find it's really useful to show local vendors what is available in the area as well. So if people are just coming up the curve and they're learning about it, and of course, are appre-apprehensive about it, with all of the foot in, in the mainstream, then just showing them a map of places that accept them, whether it be locally or to get some sort of scale, you can look at the glo- the global map. It really just takes the edge off that initial conversation with the merchant, I think." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:57", "start": 1076.54, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. Brains dot com is the place for Bitcoin miners. Now, you can find content educating you about the world of Bitcoin mining. You can find a profitability calculator and mining calculations and statistics over on the Insights dashboard, available over on Brains dot com, and they also offer software products that you can use. So, for example, they have Brains OS Plus. This is firmware that you can install on a range of different Bitcoin mining ASIC machines, and you can improve your efficiency and get more sats for your hash power using the features that they offer. And Brains are also the operators of Brainspool, which used to be called Slushpool, so that's the big change. They're changing names to align with the Brains brand and umbrella. So you can find all of this, all of this material over at brains dot com, that's b r a i i n s dot com. When it comes to securing our coins, we need to remove single points of failure in our setup. So this might include incorporating more Multi-signature, so Unchained Capital can help you do this. They have a vault product that you can use, you can sign up for free and set this up on the website. But if you need a hand, they've got a concierge onboarding program where if you need the hardware, they'll ship that out to you, they'll do a call with you and walk you through setting up the vault and then withdrawing from an exchange or even out of your single-signature hardware wallet into your vault. So this is a great way to improve your security, give yourself that additional peace of mind, and Which allows people across various states in the US to purchase directly into their vault. So this is a great combined feature that you can use. So if you're interested in all of this and you wanna get the concierge onboarding program, go to unchained dot com slash concierge, use code Livera to sign up there. And now back to the show. Yeah. So second light, we haven't heard a lot from you now. do you wanna tell us a little bit about your work with the project? Anything, you've done with BTC Map?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "19:48", "start": 1188.34, "text": "Yeah. So essentially, Front end of the, website and the, the web app. it's actually a progressive web app, so you can actually install it on your phone and it'll treat it sort of like a native app a little bit. It'll remove the browser URL bar, it'll add an icon to your home screen, stuff like that. I've been working with, Nathan mentioned Igor earlier, he's sort of like the main back end guy and also the Android lead. But yeah, I've been focusing, like I said, on the, the website and, it's, it Like we have, so we have the map, we have, like you mentioned, the add location and also report outdated forms, so we make it super easy to either add a location or edit one, even though, like Nathan was saying, it is fairly simple, and we have a wiki to get onboarded to actually edit the, data directly on OpenStreetMap. And, the latest thing I actually launched was a cool dashboard page which, where you can see stats on, total locations accepting each payment Payment method, and actually a cool, latest super taggers section where it's actually live data coming in. So as, the shadowy super taggers go around and, add the data to OpenStreetMaps, you get a little bit of recognition on the BTC Map website. And we plan on building that out further with, you know, maybe leaderboards, profiles, community pages, stuff like that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:17", "start": 1277.46, "text": "Fantastic. And as browsing the btcmap.org/dashboard page now Now, just as we speak, we've got, is it seven thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight locations, and we've got a breakdown there in terms of Lightning, on-chain, contactless as well, and I think this will be handy as well to give people a sense of where they can really go spend in person. I suppose one other, I guess, kind of interesting case is maybe where people are using these custodial ones, where you have to use that platform, right? Like if it's like a buy now, pay later thing or things like that, what's the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:52", "start": 1311.78, "text": "And not be tagged, because we wanna obviously promote the open, you know, the open Bitcoin and Lightning network." }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "21:58", "start": 1317.76, "text": "Yeah, yeah, I'd, I'd argue that's not-- You can't spend Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "22:01", "start": 1321.41, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "22:02", "start": 1321.99, "text": "You know?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "22:03", "start": 1322.57, "text": "Yeah, we, we actually had someone report that the other day. They were like, \"Yeah, I went into this place and they wanted me to do KYC.\" And so yeah, and, and in my opinion anyway, if you have to do KYC, it's not Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:16", "start": 1335.9, "text": "So yeah, so let's, see, let's see, Tagging or adding or removing records even. and I think the other interesting thing is, I recall in, in those twenty thirteen and twenty fourteen days, yeah, it was big rah rah merchant adoption, and what we found, at least what I saw in those days, was there, there might be some merchants or pubs who would take it or be willing to take it, but then not that many people were buying Bitcoin there or, or buying stuff with Bitcoin there, and so then they stopped after a little while. And so I, I'm wondering- Yeah, I" }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "22:52", "start": 1371.96, "text": "think the UX, I know this was pre my involvement in it, but even today, you know, if you're trying to do stuff on chain and it's, you know, it's, it's a two dollar coffee, yeah, it just isn't-- that's not what it's meant for really. So I think Lightning completely changed the game in terms of merchant adoption and I think that's now driving the revival of, of things like BTC Maps dot org because, we now can very easily spend Bitcoin, and merchants don't even have to like Bitcoin. So, you know, I'm spending Bitcoin here in Manchester and in the UK, and there are now applications, point of sale applications through CoinCorner and others, which means they-- these guys can cash out to fiat in real time. So So they're bringing in additional custom, because Bitcoiners want to frequent places that they can spend Bitcoin, but they don't necessarily have to be hardcore Bitcoiners, they're not necessarily hodling that Bitcoin, they could be just cashing out to fiat. So, so yeah, I think Lightnings and, and some of these POSs, are changing the game really." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:01", "start": 1441.1, "text": "Yeah. And so in terms of communities that you're s-seeing success in, in terms of tagging and things like this, could you maybe spell out some of the- Other communities that we're seeing that, at least in this early stage." }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "24:12", "start": 1452.47, "text": "Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, our, our roadmap's been evolving pretty quickly. So we're only, I think it's our week five now, it feels like it's been a lot longer, but, we rolled out community, well, the initial communities which, enables people just to have their own URL endpoint on BTC Map, which is a map centered on, on that, that community. So we've got the, the Bitcoin Island Philippines guys are probably the frontrunners, I think they've got about a hundred or so locations tagged up at the minute. so in terms of density of vendors, they've gotta be right up there, I think. We've got Isle of Man obviously that we tagged, we've got, Gibraltar, Bitcoin Rock, as they've, chose to call themselves, so they're now tagged up. we're getting the Bitcoin Akashi project, down in The township in South Africa, so those guys have started tagging, and just this morning actually, Bitcoin Beach, In Brazil, have committed to, to getting all of their information tagged this month. so, so basically all of the prominent international, communities seem to be quite quickly wanting to, wanting to come onto the platform." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:34", "start": 1534.21, "text": "And for good reason, really. I mean, if you're a tourist, or if you want to attract tourists, they need to know where to find you, especially if they're a Bitcoin tourist and they wanna know, okay, I'm gonna go to this town, where can I actually spend? So I think- I think it, it, it's tangible and it makes it more real for people, even if you're not gonna go there, because let's say you are showing somebody, you can now show them, \"Oh, look, here are all the places that you can go in person and spend Lightning, you know, today.\"" }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "25:59", "start": 1558.87, "text": "Yeah, and I've, I've, been showing it to some of my pre-coiner friends, and it's, it's a real sort of, \"Oh, wow, this isn't just, you know, crazy, internet, internet money in those normie conversations, and like I said earlier, with, with the vendors as well. So, I think merchant adoption is, is one of the most important things right now in terms of moving Bitcoin forward And, you know, I think this project's quite, quite an important part of doing that, 'cause if we can get all of that data open and into one, one place, then it means that us and others, 'cause it's all open, can, can build, on top of that value." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:46", "start": 1606.23, "text": "Right, yeah. I think I might slightly disagree. I think the hodling is probably the-- well, I would say the hodling adoption is the most important to grow, but I definitely see, a value in growing that, because for a lot of people They can see people buying real things, then it starts to make it real in their own mind. So you might help kind of bring those, those pre-coiners into the conversation or at least into being open-minded to Bitcoin and actually starting to hold some. And I think that's really the, that's the real adoption as well, because once somebody's trying to actually save in Bitcoin or denominate things in Bitcoin terms, that's, that's when you, you're really starting to, move the needle if we can get a lot of people thinking like that. I'm curious as well If you have any thoughts on whether apps can plug into this dataset?" }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "27:34", "start": 1654.37, "text": "Well, for sure. I mean, yeah, second light, you wanna take that one?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "27:38", "start": 1657.63, "text": "So yeah, we're in the process of building out an API right now. There are some endpoints available, but there's zero documentation, so we need to work on that. But, yeah, stay tuned, we plan to have some documentation and we'll essentially have like all the data we use available in our API. So if you, if anyone would like to build an application using our data, they'll be able to" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:00", "start": 1680.04, "text": "That's great, and I know there are already some different apps, and maybe these are made by a provider. So I, I, I think I saw one for Ebex Mercado where they would show, okay, here's all the merchants for, like, that we're supporting. And I know, Oshi in America is maybe a similar thing as well, where they're showing, okay, these are the places you can spend your Bitcoin. But then if, if there's, let's say, a dataset that's global, then maybe it can have other uses for people, whether they, There are tourists and they just wanna have one way of viewing all of the restaurants, pubs, bars, et cetera. I'm also curious as well, so the-- I mean, the business or at least the, the data will show, like, not just for in-person, like, not just for like restaurants and pubs and bars and cafes, but also for just other businesses, right? Like if they do, you know, curtains or whatever, right? It'll show that also." }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "28:55", "start": 1735.06, "text": "Yeah, so it's not just, yeah, entertainment or, Yeah, re- any retail, anything will show. So, the, the thing with Open Street Map is it is based in a physical premise. So, you're talking about places you can spend your Bitcoin at, which is different than an online directory of, you know, maybe services that, you know, don't have a physical location. so yeah, we're, we're very much focused on i-in person, where can I go and spend Bitcoin? 'Cause that's, that's the mapping element to it, is that geographic link. So yeah, I mean, the, I mean, the data's there. OpenStreetMap itself has open APIs, we are building, APIs on top of that in order to just make the whole process a bit more, more, more straightforward. So it's all free and open source, so people can, can ultimately download those those servers that we'll create and, they will pull in the data from OpenStreetMaps, at the backend." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:01", "start": 1801.27, "text": "Well, yeah, that's, that's all sounding great. If there are any, I guess, main call outs you have to the community, what are the main call outs? Is it mainly just to contribute with data and tagging, or editing if something's wrong or if it's not, if it's out of date?" }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "30:17", "start": 1816.7, "text": "Yeah, so for now, that's, that's the big ask. we, we have a good core team and we're, we're shipping software fast, and it, it does feel good. The, the wider shout out is in terms of the data. So whether, whether you're a new, you can, and there's places that you can just directly on the website enter, a-and we, we can take care of it in the background, or I guess more importantly, if people will actually start to tag data themselves, 'cause like I said, it's not difficult. It's, it's basically like editing a spreadsheet. It's about that complicated. And if we can have a, a global, army of, of shadowy super tega plebs maintaining that data for themselves because it's their local data, then that, that's how we, that's how we scale and that's how we build resilience into, the whole endeavor really, because we're not then relying on a single organization or a single group of people to maintain some sort of wall garden dataset, it's everyone owns the data. Maintains the data and we get the resilience through that kind of anti-fragility really." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "31:29", "start": 1888.89, "text": "Oh, sorry, I just wanted to add, we've been getting some good feedback, like people seem to be really enjoying, like being, you know, quote unquote, shadowy super taggers. It's kind of fun and, and it's a way to, you know, get involved with a Bitcoin open source project. you can do it on your spare time. you know, not everyone is gonna have design skills or coding skills, and this is sort of, i Can get involved with, Bitcoin open source is, the Bitcoin mapping community." }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "31:58", "start": 1918.03, "text": "Yeah, it's a really good point. It enables pretty much anyone to meaningfully contribute to an open source project without having to be a coder." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:06", "start": 1926.16, "text": "Yeah. And so maybe there's a, an effort there or a project to be undertaken with all the, with the past data as well, that maybe that could be something where some of this can be done as online research and some of it can be done as actually going, if you're in the area, obviously, going to that restaurant or bar or whatever in person to They still take Bitcoin would be handy, and then once we get this dataset sort of cleaned up, then it, it represents a much more accurate state of play, and then Bitcoin meetups and communities around the world can get, get to work." }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "32:37", "start": 1957.32, "text": "Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. and we've seen both of those things happen already. So we're seeing, people physically go to places, and then they've, they've, they've contacted us via the forums and, and say, \"You know, it's, it's out of business or whatever, and it's deleted.\" and then we're, we're getting other people who are verifying this online as well. So looking at other datasets, so going to Google for, for whatever, and, and seeing, you know, is that place still available? We have people calling up places or looking at their, their websites. so yeah, it doesn't have to be in person, it can be both in person and online. but it's amazing because this is just happening now organically. So we're, we're getting- Getting the word out there, mainly through, through Twitter and engaging with some of these communities, but then we're getting people just, just turn up and, and start doing the work, which is e-exactly what we want. We just need to scale that more." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:37", "start": 2017.02, "text": "Fantastic. Well, I, I guess, do you have any other thoughts on where you see the project going? Like, do you see any other future ideas on what you would like to see built into b t c map dot org?" }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "33:49", "start": 2028.91, "text": "Yeah, I mean, it's, it's been a really fun four or So far, and we, we, we don't have a shortage of, of ideas of where you could take this. I think communities is gonna be key, so right now we have, these community URLs which is just basically centered on, on a map Where they are. But if we can start to build that out a bit further, and, and start to give communities a home to, where to be, so kind of like the meetup side of things, but, but more focused on, on the community, and, you know, there's plenty of ideas that, that flow from having a place where communities can live." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:30", "start": 2070.39, "text": "Fantastic. Well, I think that's probably a good spot to finish up. I'll encourage listeners to get involved, get out there Yeah, get tagging, contribute in whatever way you can, and for you guys, Nathan and Second Light, where can listeners find you online?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "34:43", "start": 2082.62, "text": "Is it okay if I just mention one more thing?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:44", "start": 2084.5, "text": "Yeah, sure." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "34:46", "start": 2085.5, "text": "as far as integration goes, I forgot to say, you can actually embed, BTC Map on your own website, just with a few lines of code, and that information is available on the btcmap.org, GitHub repo, and, we've already seen a few, places like, Boltcard is now using our It's, it's just kind of a cool, another way you can integrate with us." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:09", "start": 2108.99, "text": "Fantastic. Alright, so, Nathan and Second Life, where can people find you guys online?" }, { "speaker": "btcmap", "time": "35:13", "start": 2113.12, "text": "Yeah, so the best place to go, is on the website, so b t c, map dot org, and you'll see hand-- links off to our Twitter, which is b t c map dot org on Twitter, and we also have the Discord on there as well on the website, so you can link into our, our community. and we've At the moment, and we've got various different language channels, because ultimately we need to be having local people conversing in their local language globally to, to, to improve the dataset. yeah, so that's the corporate stuff. I'm Nathan underscore Day on Twitter, it's my, my other handle." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "35:55", "start": 2155.41, "text": "yeah, for me, everything is, secondlight Twitter, GitHub, it's s e c o n d l, the number one, g h t. I also have a website, secondlight dot co Great, and I have a blog on there too, which, I write some articles every now and then." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:10", "start": 2170.48, "text": "Fantastic. Well, thank you both for joining me today." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "36:13", "start": 2172.84, "text": "Thanks, Stefan. Thanks, Stefan. It was awesome." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:16", "start": 2175.96, "text": "Alright, that was the episode. Now just reading out a few of the boosts from those of you doing podcasting two point oh using apps like Fountain, Breeze, Podverse. I've got one here from Peanut Butter Life. Lots of enjoyment from this episode relating to the NVK one. My kiddo and I dance to your outro music every time an episode closes and have" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:36", "start": 2196.17, "text": "The track is called \"Laid Back Summer Vibe\". I got it from this website called PremiumBeat dot com. So I've had this, intro and outro music for a couple years now, so that's the answer for you. also got a few boosts there, got one from Cliff B Janga and also from Michael Matulis. So thank you to you guys and get the show notes over at StephanLivera dot com. Thanks for listening, I'll see you guys in the citadels." } ] }