{ "episodeId": "SLP459", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "stephan_livera": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "guest", "tag": "STEPHAN" } }, "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 over at swan dot com or using the Swan app, you can do safe and easy Bitcoin buys. Swan offers recurring purchase plans, so this is an easy way for you to just stack a set amount every week, every month, and just keep recurring purchases going. Going. Now, Swan also offers one time buys, known as smash buys. So there are times where, let's say, there's a dip in the market and you wanna be able to purchase a little chunk right now, smash buys are great for that. With Swan, there's free custody in your own legally owned trust account, but of course, as we say, not your keys, not your coins, and Swan also offers free automatic withdrawals to self custody, so you can set up and have your wallet or your addresses in there and automatically receive coins to those addresses once you hit a certain Threshold. So this is a great way for you to purchase Bitcoin and also take self-custody in the process. Over at swan dot com slash livera, you'll get a free ten dollars of Bitcoin dropped into your account when you start stacking with Swan Bitcoin. When it comes to Bitcoin security, coinguide dot com are offering a range of products. They have the SAT card, this is like the new OpenDime. So if you need to gift Bitcoin to somebody, SAT card is a great cheap way to do this. If you need a cheaper device that has an- NFC, there's TapSina, this one's normally about forty dollars, and this one can work easily with phone wallets such as Nunchuk. Now, if you're looking for a more secure hardware devices or hardware signing devices, the Coldcard Mark IV is a great choice here. You can use this easily with wallets such as Sparrow Wallet or Specter Desktop on the computer, or you can also use this with Nunchuk using NFC, or you can even use micro SD card to ferry that information back and forth, and in doing so, you're using an air App which helps you increase your security, but of course, for the beginners, don't be worried, you can also use a direct cable, USB-C cable, to plug it to your computer or even to an enabled mobile phone device. So to get your cold card, go to coincard dot com, use code livera and get a discount on your cold cards. Are you a builder in the space looking at core Lightning or Liquid? Build on L2 is a community initiative led by Blockstream, so there is a community forming around this. There are contributors and companies building on core Lightning and the Liquid network with a range of technologies that they are looking at. So for example, with Liquid, there is confidential transactions, Miniscript, Elements, Covenants, Simplicity, and Federations. All kinds of technologies and techniques that you might find interesting or compelling to come to together and collaborate on. Whether you are a product manager, a designer, or an engineer, there'll be events, mentorship programs, and a community space to share notes. So go and sign up for access over at buildonl2 dot com. So for the episode today, my friend NVK, the founder and CEO of CoinKite dot com, rejoins me to chat about some of the latest in Bitcoin security, as well as the new device that they are launching, which is called the Q1. We talk about a range of things, as well as combining security techniques, Bitcoin gardening, not ossification, and his thoughts on things like OpVault and Nostra. And VK, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me, man. It's been a while. Yeah, yeah. And, obviously, lots happening. Hardware stuff is going on. I wanted to obviously chat about the new Q1 device, of course. I think that'll be the main thing to chat about. But, yeah, and all the ordinal stuff and Nostra and all this crazy stuff. But look, let's, let's start with Q1. I think that's what people wanna hear first. So can you tell us a little bit about the Q1 device?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "03:51", "start": 230.69, "text": "Device that, we've been wanting to make a, a QWERTY, so a full keyboard, hardware wallet for, for many, many years. And, we've been sort of like prototyping and experimenting with it for a long time, and, we just couldn't, couldn't find a reason to sort of like make it economically speaking, by just adding a keyboard kind of thing, since I still think the majority of the market is gonna want the MK4 because it is like smaller and sort of like, you know, thinner, cheaper. Kind of thing. But, there was one small breakthrough, we found a camera module that used to be expensive, but, like sort of like it became economically viable as a product, and, and the same with a bigger screen. So we were like, okay, great, so let's start designing a keyboard, right? So like this is, everything in this product is kind of like from scratch, right? It's not like we're using a, a, a sort of like a, a store-bought sort of like a keyboard or anything like So I wanted to make this device for a very long time, and, Star is a line kind of thing, and, and we made it. So wow, we made it. We're making it. It's still gonna be quite a few months. I mean, we, we hope to ship out this year, if, if there is no sort of like, supply chain sort of like surprises, we, we should be able to. Are we talking like mid this year, late this year? I think the, I think the, the, the" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "05:20", "start": 320.48, "text": "Having to do more, iterations on the plastic mold. Yeah. if it comes out right, which it should, because we're using the same plastic, we kind of like know our stuff already well for this. But, you know, there's always the, you know, oh no, you know, like the clip for this doesn't do just quite right, we need to update the mold kind of thing, right? Yeah. If that does happen, then, you know, like that pushes a month, pushes two months, pushes three months kind of thing. But aside from that, we are, we are using the same, sort of like architecture as Mark IV, right? So it's the same MCU, same secure elements. If between now and then, new chips come out, new interesting secure elements come out, it's possible we integrate that in. So we, because we already have prototypes of this stuff running, right? Like it's, there's no, it's all sort of like, good. but because it's long enough time, and, and And the, the Mark IV sort of design is already very well understood by us. it shouldn't be too hard to, to like add new secure elements and a few other cool, cool things there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:30", "start": 389.93, "text": "Awesome. Yeah. And so I guess in terms of the highlights then for the new device, it's got QR code, which is obviously the big thing, and it still retains the NFC and it still retains, it's got two SD card slots. And so, and it's also got a screen. And so then the idea is just like the QR scanning devices that are already out there on Market, you're, you're now able to offer a QR code signing." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "06:54", "start": 414.48, "text": "So, so I think it's two things, right? Like, like two big things on this. Like, one is a big screen, right? Like, w-we want to be able to do other sort of interesting UX things. So, like, having a bigger screen is great, you can display bigger QR codes as well, with more data in them. I really dislike animated QRs, they're terrible for, for people to read, but, they might still be needed. W-w-we're Software, right? So it's easy to update and sort of change and improve. And I, I think we need a better animated QR spec, so maybe we work on that too if we have time. So, so that's that part on the QR, right? another thing too is that we couldn't find a touchscreen that was safe to use because they have like a lot of preparatory stuff going on in them. So, so for now it's gonna be this kind of screen, right? And then on the QR part, the scanner, we don't like the idea of using normal cameras, shooting that unfiltered data straight into the, the processor, right? That's how most hardware wallets do that. because, you know, like your private key is in memory on the MCU and you're receiving all that random data in there, it's not hard to, to see a, you know, like, an exploit that tries to do buffer overflow, right, on, on the MCU or some other kinds of attack, and your private key is in memory at the same place as the stuff is happening, right? it's also like they don't read well, like the screen. that's why we wanted to wait, to see if ever, this, this QR modules would come to the market with a price that's economically viable. this is very similar to like supermarket scanners, the hand scanners. So it's a module that all it does is read QRS, barcodes, all that stuff, right? So technically we could do barcodes, seeds now too. And, i-it's very good at reading, like you point, it reads. Like, y-y-you know, like there's no sort of fiddling, it's just, it just, it's like hungry for QRs kind of thing. It has that vibe, right? And, and what we do is we pipe, it, it talks serial, serial port with the MCU, right? So it's a much more narrow protocol to talk to. The data's coming is very, very sort of like specific type, right? So it's a lot better security threshold. I, I think Flaxman brought this up way back in one of his episodes. That that was a concern, so, so in our view is also a concern, and we wanted to address that if we were going to make this. You know, the module itself, it's like, you know, close manufacture, like sort of like, you know, it's their own crap in there. But because of this separation, right, this, this essentially firewall through, through, serial, it's okay, right? So, so that's that, that's nice. another thing that, that sort of like we- We've always debated was, to do alkaline batteries versus lithium batteries. We, you know, I'd like to have a device that's future-proof, so you don't depend on, on battery packages. It does make the device thicker. Again, like, you know, I like to say, like, this design for us, right? Like, it's kind of like a bulky device, and, we think it's pretty cool, and we don't think people should walk around with hardware wallets anyways. So, like, you know, the pocket is now where you put Wallet, right? So anyway, so, so it does have three triple A's, so that, that should last enough time if you don't use the flashlight a lot. the flashlight is part of the QR, module. So, we figure, hey, you know, why not add a button to turn on the, the flashlight as well? You know, a lot of people who are in the space understand why this is kind of important. you know, many, many people keep these devices in, in safes, like, You know, in sort of like, in places that may not be as well lit, and, and, you know, most very good safes, won't have, lights inside, because they don't have like power going or anything like that, so you have to use the battery ones and those die. or save deposit box sometimes is not well lit. So, so it, it sounds silly, but it's actually very useful. So yeah, so and, and, and the lithium-ion battery packs, I think they're like pretty cool, they're nice, power density as well. One of my fears with them is because they're opaque packages, like you could put some malicious crap in there, that, you know, I don't know, like radios to the nearby office when the thing is on. Kind of thinking, not hard to, to develop that. But, you know, like, it's, it's a bit like it gets into the paranoid sort of like, sort of Tim Foyle hat attack surface, which is where we live, but," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:55", "start": 714.7, "text": "right. But I think there's also a standardness of like just having triple A batteries, everyone knows where to get them, and it's very stock standard. You can go to like a convenience store and buy the batteries and, and off you go, like- I mean, listen," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "12:06", "start": 726.33, "text": "I'm not gonna pigeonhole ourselves, right? I sealed or something. You know, we're experimenting, you know, like this is, this is something we wanted to make because we wanted to make, like Mark one, I'm a little surprised at how many people wanted. I mean, the, the, the pre-sales were a little crazier than I thought. So, so I, I guess there is a demand for, for a mountain man device. Right. That looks like a" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:35", "start": 754.87, "text": "Blackberry, you know? Maybe people just wanna, they want a Blackberry and it's like, it's like an expensive" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "12:39", "start": 759.45, "text": "flashlight also, and, you know? Yeah. Button. It's like a, it's like a, a, a stick and an arrow together. that button is gonna be for, for expanding, passphrases. Sorry, like a, up to nine words, so like you can just like autocomplete. there's a lot of like little things that we wanna play around with. Oh, cool. So that's like the twenty--" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:18", "start": 798.12, "text": "calculate the twenty-fourth word scenario or just expand from" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "13:22", "start": 801.74, "text": "the two words, show me the next ones, kind of thing, you know? Sorry, the," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:26", "start": 806.4, "text": "the, the-- I see. Yeah Yeah, yeah, and certainly being able to type in your passphrase, because right now if you're clicking around, that can take a little bit of time, but, all, all of these things, it is a trade-off, right? And, you have to think about all of these aspects, right? The price point. Yes. So I guess now in terms of CoinKite's range, you would say, like You've got kind of at the cheaper end, you have the, you know, the Sats card, which is kind of like an open-dime, then you have the TapSigner, which is more like a forty-dollar TapSigner sort of sta-level, and then I guess going up, you have the ColdCard Mark IV, which is about a hundred and forty-eight dollars, something like that, and then this, this one, I think the pre-order was a hundred and ninety-nine, right? So- Yeah. And we," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "14:06", "start": 846.12, "text": "we, we hope to, Keep it within that, like the, the design was very deliberate, right? So, the reality is like, you know, the normies are coming, right? Yeah. And, and like, you know, any market, like, I mean, people, price is like one of the biggest drivers, right? There is a reason why, Ledger, i-is one of the best sellers, in this market, it's like, price is huge, right? And, and every maker seems to kill their very high- Very expensive devices, right? Remember, like Ledger Blue, I think was called, it was like six hundred euros, it was very nice, had some issues 'cause it was prototype, but, you know, it doesn't go anywhere. We, we think that like two hundred ish is like, it's like as far as you can go when, when the next bull run comes and, and the market sort of like really comes in. And, so we designed this with like economies of scale that we already have on chip purchases, right? So it's using the same MCU, there's like" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "15:08", "start": 908.12, "text": "And, and you get all the security, right? So, so like, I, I don't know, like I, I think it should be a slam dunk in terms of like capturing the people that want a device that's a bit bigger that does things that they want to do. Yeah, it's, it's exciting. I, I, I can't wait to like have a, a proper production test on my hands to, to do stuff with it. Right. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:28", "start": 928.05, "text": "And, and the bigger screen, I think, is going to be useful as well, especially for people who wanna do more Oh, okay. Which are the other xPubs in this setup? Right now, you can't do that, but you're scrolling through, in terms of the multi- Yeah, Address Explorer is huge." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "15:46", "start": 946.32, "text": "Yeah, that's right. we're, we're not like, so one thing we don't wanna do is make like sort of like a, a true sort of like, like color, GUI, sort of like too much of that stuff. Like, we still wanna keep it sort of like within, sort of like a simple, concise, tactile base UX, right? Like, Here and there, and, maybe, maybe, you know, in the future is more like a, like a, a, a interactive command line kind of thing, like where you have, like, you know, maybe a pop-up or something. But, but we do want to, to keep it sort of like simple, concise, focus on the actual data as opposed to a bunch of like pretty crap around. Yeah. So like, so multisig, you know, it's gonna be nice. you know. the address explorer would be nice to have a big screen, more data on QRS, you know, we can have more soft UI things on the UI as well. Yeah, it's, it's, it's nice. More real estate is, is always" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:48", "start": 1007.91, "text": "better. And I presume there's gonna be some familiarity for, for people who are already Coldcard Mark IV users. Oh, yeah. It'll be sort of similar" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "16:56", "start": 1016.1, "text": "in how you use it. I mean, unless we have a lot of time, which I don't think we will, it's gonna likely be a scaled-up version Existing UI with, with, you know, improvements to actually fit on the screen and sort of like be nice, right? But it's, it's, it's gonna start as an extension of that, as an improvement of that, and then just iterative sort of like improve that. Because like, you know, even though Mark IV has a tiny screen, I think the UX on it, as much as like, you know, you can get some criticism because it's not as, you know, easy or whatever, because, yeah, it's not touch, right? It, it's the- The kind of UX that prevents you from losing money, right? Like my priority is make sure that, that, like, that UX like really sort of keeps you from screwing up, as instead of just like, make sure that you have like, you know, a one tap sign, right? Like, for that, use your phone, right? Like, I, I mean, like, people, people are sending and receiving like part of their savings here, right? So, you, you know, the mindset really is like, how can I prevent you from losing money, right? So, so that" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:06", "start": 1085.98, "text": "Yeah, sure. and I think the focus as well on air gapping, so that's also something that is there quite strongly with the SD card, and the QR code. I think, as I understand as well from your earlier comments as well, it seems that the more interactivity there is, it's like that's, you're losing the air gap in a way, right? So maybe that's why Bluetooth doesn't really count as an air gap, probably NFC doesn't really strictly count as an air gap either. So really it's like SD card or QR" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "18:36", "start": 1115.84, "text": "I, I think, yeah, like, but even on the QR side, you know, like if you're sending straight to the, to the MCU, like, i, i guess it's like, there's like, it's like a, it's a big gray space, right? Like, a, at a minimum, there is no wires, right? Like that's, that's number one, right? Like, no wires, that, that do data. And then, that, like, then the, like That's true air, like that's the beginning of air gap, right? And then radios, absolutely, right? Like, I mean, if they are complex radios or whatever, yes, right? Like, they are not air gap. even though there isn't air gap, it's kind of funny. So yeah, so like Bluetooth is definitely no, Wi-Fi is definitely no, right? Like these are complex, long distance, sort of like radio types, right? NFC sort of like, yeah, it's not air gap technically, but it kinda is, you know, like it's very-- you have to be super, like, super close to it. It's very easy to sort of like segregate yourself from other things because the radio, you know, the way it works, it's kinda fine, but it" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "19:38", "start": 1177.84, "text": "In the middle there, and then like, you know, you have the QR next, right? Like the camera next, which is like, yeah, this is their gap. There is a few sort of concerns, I think we addressed them with the serial, and then to me, like, then there is Sneekernet. Sneekernet is like- The best way of doing air gap for the true paranoid, when you, you know, like when you still need to shuffle data back and forth, right? I mean, like that is sort of like the best you can do. so that's the scale." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:09", "start": 1208.86, "text": "Yeah, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "20:10", "start": 1209.54, "text": "I think that's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:10", "start": 1209.94, "text": "fair as well. I think people like one of the criticism is this idea that, oh, well, even with an SD card, you're putting in another computer inside and all this. But even there, I mean, it's sort of like, well, you have to use something." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "20:22", "start": 1222.42, "text": "You Two is, you can just dispose SD cards, have a pile, all fresh. You know what I mean? Like, and, and it's like, okay, so like, you, you just keep on tossing them out, right? Like, who cares? A-and then it's not as much of a concern, because even though, like, let's say the most advanced Stuxnet figured out how to do something there, right? you can still use a fresh new card to take the data out." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:48", "start": 1248.08, "text": "So the idea is that you would have it saved to the device, take, change out" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:56", "start": 1255.6, "text": "To take the, saved PSBT out and use that to import into the computer or so on. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "21:01", "start": 1261.12, "text": "And also, like, you could be sending that to a computer that's also offline, right? And then from that computer, you can do another hop if you want to. Also, like, you know, listen, this isn't like SD cards, like cameras read SD cards, right? Like, there's a reason why it's a max thirty-two gigabyte SD card. So this is the, the narrow set of the SD cards, the old school FAT thirty-two kind of SD cards So, we are using this in a very narrow way, you know, the way we don't just execute data from the SD card, you know, like, i-i-it's not simple. Yeah. There is a lot of nuance there. I think a lot of it is just like simple fud from ignorance." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:39", "start": 1298.85, "text": "Right, right. And I, I think the way, I mean, personally, I like to use it as part of a multi-signature, like if you, if you're talking about serious money, but I, I understand you have your criticisms of, of, Get an ex- get an expert or professional to help you. And then, yeah, you know, for the more advanced users, keep it simple, but, you know, I think if you want to learn multi-signature, you can, but you kinda have to be very slow and methodical and precise about your backups and you're keeping a copy of your output descriptor and all of these aspects of it also to kind of make it actually a more secure setup. So the way I'm doing it is, you know, if you're talking about like your big hodl stack and, you know, you have Q1 and maybe some other devices as part of your overall quorum, well, the whole point is that you're, you know, you're making it harder and harder and harder for somebody to realistically, you know, take your coins, obviously." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "22:37", "start": 1357.13, "text": "Yeah, no, I mean, like, you know, like I, I always say multisig is fantastic. The problem with multisig is the complexity for the amount of money that the average pleb is gonna put on, right? Like, i-i-it's just not, it's just not, it's, it's, it's stupid, you know" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "22:56", "start": 1375.78, "text": "Right? Like single sig plus passphrase is, it's like, like an amazing perfect solution, right? Like, well, perfect between quotes, right? the, the, you know, like, and then there is like, there's people who have a lot more money, right? Like, a-and for those people, like spending the money and the time to learn about multisig or, or find a, a, a collaborative multisig or something, you know, an audit, right? 'Cause like, listen, if you have a hundred million dollars to keep, right? Like, Don't trust any of these collaborative solutions either. You're gonna wanna like hire people to do diligence on them too. So like, this, nothing is simple, right? and, and I think we're finally like past the point now where like Bitcoiners can be a little bit more grown up and sort of like have nuance over custody. So like, we're not just on Twitter just saying, \"Uh, you know, like, twelve DVDs, right? Like, it, it, it's like, let's have nuance, right? Like, people have different piles, people are different So yeah, yeah, cool, cool." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:57", "start": 1437.46, "text": "So let's chat about the Coldcard firmware. I know there's some been, there's been some recent updates on that. I know the recent version, for example, has the output descriptor export for single signature wallets. So that's kind of an interesting one because I know this is something the g-the guys over in Bitcoin Core have been pushing descriptors as, as the new way, and it seems that now the hardware and the software are starting to adopt descriptors. So do you wanna tell us a little bit about that?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "24:25", "start": 1464.58, "text": "Yeah, I mean We, we, we've been, descriptor pushers since the, since the beginning. As soon as, actually before descriptors came to core, we, we already had implemented it. Nice. it's a much safer way for people to do backups, than, than, than just the BIP thirty-nine or writing down your, your, your, derivation path, or your script type or, you know, all that stuff. So, a, a, output descriptors are amazing. it's- It's a shame that very, very few wallets support it. I think at the moment it's just, Coldcard. Hey, gotta have a little website here, output descriptors dot org. So Bitcoin Core, Coldcard, Specter, Desktop, Sparrow Wallet, Nunchuk, Moon, Blue Wallet, and BTC Pay Server and Bitcoin and BDK, that's it. So cold card is the only hardware. So, Salvatore, you know, that keeps, keeps on badgering me to do miniscript. Do output descriptors first, sir." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:29", "start": 1528.7, "text": "I, I thought they-- I'm not sure, maybe they do have that now. I think maybe they, for their new, miniscript stuff. I don't think they do. It's just miniscript. I don't think they do output descriptors. Oh, I" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "25:40", "start": 1540.21, "text": "thought that, yeah, okay, I, I'd have to check. Well, let's, let yeah, well, I mean, it's a good thing. Just so the people listening, yeah, yeah, we're all friendly around this stuff, like it's, we're all- Well, I know" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:55", "start": 1555.1, "text": "he was pestering you for miniscripts, so, you know, yeah, you can, get him back for one. It's only fair. Yeah. and so I saw also in the recent firmware update, there's micro SD card as second factor. So I guess this is again like, you can have your different models, like, I mean, and Or I don't know if you've got a Duress pin, if you have a BrickMe pin, if you have a SD card as your second factor, if you have multi-signature, if you're using a passphrase, if you're using a combo of these things, like it's all, you know, people, I think" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "26:30", "start": 1590.06, "text": "that's part of the idea, right? It's a labyrinth. Yeah. So, so my idea is when a bad guy knocks on the door, he looks at a cold cry-- a cold card, he cries, right? Because it's like, okay, I really" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "26:48", "start": 1608.02, "text": "Sort of like, i-it's a big labyrinth of like, of like plausibly deniable, things, right? So anyway, so like a lot of people are lazy and don't wanna like remember trick pins or do that. And so, so like my idea is, hey, why don't we use a micro SD? and I think with somebody else who seeded this idea in my head about a year ago, I can't remember who was. Why don't we use a micro SD card, the, the, the serial of the actual card, right? That which is cloneable, but it doesn't matter in this scenario. to be the second factor when you log in. So if that MicroSD card isn't in the cold card when you boot, okay? the, the cold card could do, different things, like a, like a trick pin, right? It could brick, it could erase the seed, and, and I think like a few other sort of, other options on the trick pins. It's very cool because like you can have it around, all MicroSDs kinda look the same, right? And, and yeah, if anybody turns it on without you being around, right? Like, kind of like an evil maid scenario. they won't know that, like, moving forward on that could, could, destroy the device, even if they took your PIN. Let's say they had a camera right behind you or something, they've been watching you. I-if they have the PIN now, they, they wouldn't be able to, to follow through, even if the, the correct PIN. Yeah. This is so many different options. Yeah, which is not true for the But if somebody had a camera and they were watching you closely, right? They, they could figure out which one is the correct pin, right? With, with this one, it's, it's pretty cool. you, you, you really get that extra security there. And you can travel away with your SD card, and it's kind of like nobody can get in, right? Like while you're away, without you" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:38", "start": 1718.23, "text": "taking the cold one. Right, right. And meanwhile, of course, in some other location, you would have the backup of that. So let's say" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "28:48", "start": 1728.14, "text": "Right? Like, and ideally, if you're using Sigosec, you do CDEX or on your, on your backup. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:54", "start": 1733.58, "text": "yeah. And I think it's funny because obviously, not a criticism of you here, obviously, but it's like we're talking about all these kind of like ways to make your stuff more secure, but then like some of these hacks you hear about are people just, you know, keeping their keys in the cloud or keeping their keys on a hot server." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "29:09", "start": 1748.61, "text": "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no. Yeah, but you know, like this isn People who, who contact us for, for issues where, when, like, it's, it's more the dark stuff, it, or, or like, you know, like, has been complicated things too much or whatever. But we don't have a lot of users who, who gave away their, their seeds on a DM or, or, or, you know, took a picture of their seed and put it on their iCloud, right? This is, this is more like a, like a ledger mass mark, mass market problem, than, than, than for" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:48", "start": 1787.73, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. Are you still using a plain old block explorer? Bitcoin is now growing, it's a multi-layer ecosystem, and mempool.space can help you analyze it, and I find it really useful personally. Whenever I'm sending a larger transaction, I like to check on mempool.space so that I can target my fee. And also when it comes to looking for new Lightning Network partners, I like to use the Lightning Network Explorer on mempool.space. With mempool.space, it's open source, and you can even host it yourself. Now, if you're with an enterprise, Offers customized features, you can have a custom instance with your company's branding or increased API limits and more. Go and find out more at mempool.space/enterprise. Next, as you know, I'm a fan of multi-signature and I believe it can increase your security and help you remove single points of failure in your setup. But I also know it's not easy for everybody to achieve that on their own. Unchained Capital can help you. They have a concierge onboarding program and they have vaults which enable you to go to multi-signature instead of keeping all your stuff in In a single signature wallet or leaving your coins with a custodian or an exchange. The Contech onboarding program is really simple, you pay upfront, they ship you some hardware if you need it, and they do a call with you. They walk you through the process so that you are now comfortable to withdraw out of your custodian or exchange or even out of your single signature hardware device and put it into a two of three multi-signature vault. Now, there's all kinds of additional features and added value such as the inheritance protocol which includes things like- Like the step-by-step checklists and letters for the executor or trustee, so go to unchain dot com slash consierge and sign up for the consierge onboarding program. BTC Prague is coming June eighth to tenth. It's going to be awesome, I'm really looking forward to it. This is going to be the biggest Bitcoin event in Europe, so if you are in or near Europe or even further, make sure you come along for this one. This is going to be a fantastic networking opportunity and a chance to learn about Bitcoin and meet a range of awesome people, Bitcoiners, whether they are speakers Or not. And we've got a range of awesome speakers, people like Michael Sailor and Robert Breedlove was recently announced also. So I'm gonna be there, I'll be one of the MCs, and I'm looking forward to seeing a bunch of you there. There are industry or whale tickets available over at btcprague dot com. So the industry ticket includes an extra one day business conference, and if you're interested in the whale ticket, there's gonna be four unique whale zones, white glove service, and premium food and drinks throughout all three days. So don't waste time, get your tickets before Use code Livera and get a discount on your ticket. I'm looking forward to seeing you there. And now back to the show. Though I wonder, maybe the question is, maybe once you become bigger, like once CoinKite becomes a bigger and bigger, maybe that, you do start to get those more mass market questions. So I guess maybe" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "32:33", "start": 1953.1, "text": "it's a growing thing. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, it, it is. And, and we see some of those with TapSigner. I-, you know, where people are a little bit more confused. That's why we try to make" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "32:47", "start": 1967.31, "text": "Thing, right? Like, i-i-i-it's like we, we try to make it so that you can't screw yourself even if you really wanted to, although like never underestimate people trying to lose their money. But, yeah. And that's the reality," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:00", "start": 1979.98, "text": "you know, there are people who will just take things and just screw around with them and just completely-- even people from like supposedly professional occupations, even people like a pilot or things like this who are very, who are meant to be very reliable and very sturdy or very, you know, reliable basically. They will just screw around with things and just totally, you know, I think sometimes all of us can just be stupid or do dumb things at, at times. Yeah, no," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "33:25", "start": 2004.74, "text": "like, listen, that's why like, you, you know, good security, setups don't require you to think, right? Because, see, like, we can have even like a core dev, like, who's like super knowledgeable, shadowy super coder, right, like lose his money because he made a custom setup that, you know, like, he didn't pay attention that day, right? Like, Maybe there's one bad day where, I don't know, like, say, say, like, you have a margin, like, like contract that you, you-- like you're super stressed and you have to deal with that, or you broke, like, I don't know, like you had a fight with your spouse or something, right? You, you're like super stressed and you go to your setup and you need to do a transaction because of the time of something, right? and if you have to think too much, like, you just have like this massive attack surface now for you" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "34:17", "start": 2057.41, "text": "And then you accidentally stick in the wrong micro SD, sorry, the, the long USB stick on it, and that one just happened to have, like, you know, an exploit. Like, you, you don't wanna, you wanna be in a place where like you're a lot, like, you know, safer from yourself, because people have bad days." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:34", "start": 2073.92, "text": "Yeah. And that's, I, I guess that's challenging as well online, even as you mentioned, I guess, well, I guess there's two examples, right? If cubes, I think I'm, I'm And the story there, because people were saying, and people were coming out saying this stuff like, \"Oh, see, even if a core de-core developer can't keep his coin secure, what chance does the average person have?\" But it could also just be that he was using a very out-of-date setup. And" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "35:00", "start": 2100.26, "text": "he, well, yeah. Think about it this way, like, just because people are an expert on some things doesn't make them an expert on other things. Yeah. Y-y-y-you know, like I talked to Luke a bit, like, and, you know, we sent, we You know, since hardware wallets came out, right? Even an ideal setups, right? Like people have been robbed a lot last, right? so, so like I, I like to say, right? Like any hardware wallet is better than no hardware wallet. I mean, provided they're from the, say, like Bitcoin dot org list of hardware wallets, right? Like don't, it's, I'm not talking about like, you know, all those closed crap around that, like Support fifty thousand shitcoins that, you know, like you don't know the team or whatever. But like, you know, out of say, like Coldcard, Trezor, and, and like Ledger, like you're pretty well taken care of, right? So, you know, like, you can't like depend on having a specific vintage of an IBM laptop that just happened to have the right chipset. I, I, you know what I mean? Like, and like maintaining some complex-- like, it's just, it's unrealistic, right? And then, and then you die, right? has to deal with this like complete, like, stupid setup, right? We need better, right? We need, first, we need reasonable, right? And then, and then we need to sort of like improve on that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:21", "start": 2180.74, "text": "Yeah, and I think the challenge is keeping it secure but also keeping it simple. And that's, I think, trying to find things that can give people simple and secure is about-- is really the, the goal. And I think what some people end up doing, unfortunately, is they overcomplicate because they think it's gonna make them more- More secure, but the, the real skill is keeping it simple and secure at the same time. so that's interesting, and I think, yeah, one other firmware feature I've noticed is this ephemeral seeds one. Now, I know it's on, something, maybe from the, the prior firmware update, but I know, it's kind of an interesting one. So the idea is that you can import another seed and use that As part of, or inside this one device. And so it's, I guess, yeah, is it kind of like, it's almost like a seed signer then, isn't it? Kind of like a seed signer functionality." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "37:14", "start": 2234.08, "text": "Yeah. So we added that because I needed, I needed to help a friend sweep a reasonably sized, stash from a seed, right? And, I didn't wanna load that on computers or not in the mood of like setting up some crazy setup and And also, and, and he, the, the whole thing was like, a, a new cold card wasn't available, let's put it this way, in that situation. So, so like, this is what essentially he needed. And, I, I sort of like, did some thought on this and I think, hey, like, why don't we just load, like, seeds on, on cold card in, in read-only mode and don't erase the stored seed? Right? So like, you have your cold card stored seed, but I wanted to load extra So that he could export a Electrum, skeleton file so that he can then go create the transaction and sign it with that secure cold card. And essentially like so that a lot of people sometimes need to transfer old wallets to a new wallet, right? But they only have a single hardware wallet and they are in, you know, like in some place somewhere in the world where they can't get anything else fast enough. So there was that kind of situation. so being able to load in a seed Ephemerally, right? Like just temporarily on memory for you to spend it out, was, was, it's a good solution. It's like really, really nice way of s-spending or, or exporting sometimes just a read only, 'cause you, you export your read only, you put it in your computer or whatever, and then you can just forget that seed. So yeah, very useful so that you can have less cold cards in case you need some of that. the seeds other model, I'm like, I think it's great for multisig, I, I don't like it for single sig, I'm kind of very vocal about it. I don't think people should be touching private key material on a daily basis. even though you can't do that now with Coldcard, I don't recommend it because, you know, if you, if you have your private keys available to you in your house, like what's the point of having a hardware wallet? Like somebody's gonna come and hit you and take it. And, you know, your phone camera could accidentally see it, right? Like you, it, it, it's just, there's a million ways in which you can screw yourself with that. And, in their model, I think the problem is you can't guarantee that it wasn't raised but I think it's very cool for multisig, I think it's very cool for recovering or transferring from a specific seed. yeah, so, so that was sort of like the idea of it. So now you support it? it's there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:46", "start": 2385.7, "text": "Yeah, yeah, that's cool. and I think, yeah, it makes sense for users who maybe don't have new devices hang-- like around. And, yeah, I think it's probably, like you're saying, it's probably useful in the case where you wanna help a friend. And because the general dictum For a large stack, right? Maybe for smaller stacks, you, you're okay, you're comfortable with that risk, but for a large stack, you just don't do that. And if you don't have a new device on hand, then that's where having this ephemeral seed feature can be useful for you. I guess presumably this would be more like a last resort feature, though, it's kind of like a recovery and then send out into somebody's new setup as an example, because, you know, maybe that, say that friend of yours isn't gonna trust that your device is actually-- that You know, that fear that once you've typed it in," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "40:36", "start": 2435.77, "text": "you're, you're in the middle of the desert somewhere, right? You can't get a wallet, you've learned that your seed, original seed may be compromised because the backup got compromised. You, you know, when you're in a pinch, you wanna transfer from the old one to the new one using the same device. It's a great way of handling that. Another thing that happens, and I had to do this a few times, is, you know, you have like a phone wallet, and, you know, like it's not like, it's, it's not like a lot of coin, but, you know, it's enough that you don't wanna put it in a computer, and you wanna sweep those keys. The, this is, this is a great way of, of doing that. You, you put the seed in and, and you sweep those, those phone keys, even though maybe you don't use that phone wallet anymore, you don't trust it or whatever reason, that's kind of nice. So yeah, that's, that's the idea. Yeah. It's like using the cold card as your sort of like seed, seed management sort of like solution." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:25", "start": 2485.41, "text": "Yeah, and, yeah, it might be useful in, different ways that come or become more obvious in the Of simple and secure, and just kind of zooming out a little bit in terms of Bitcoin and security in general, right? Because obviously, you and I and probably many listeners, we want more people to be able to use Bitcoin securely, like we want that. We want more people, you know, to join us, and so I think that also brings this whole question about changes in Bitcoin and things like- OpVault as an example. So obviously, our friend James Ob has been, talking about that and helping, trying to explain what it does, how it helps. That's, I mean, that's just an example, right? Another example I like is AnyPreVault. So for me personally, I think, I, conceptually, I'm not a developer, that I've reviewed all the code of them, but conceptually, I like the idea of these because they help us scale Bitcoin or they help us self-custody Bitcoin or make it more feasible Do that. But on the other hand, and I appreciate this, we have to also be conservative, and we shouldn't just like willy-nilly change things. So where do we land on that? Like, how do-- How does one shepherd a change through in Bitcoin, given the community and the" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "42:42", "start": 2561.91, "text": "culture and all that? Oh my God, that's like a two-hour conversation. Maybe, maybe ten-hour conversation. We, we did two hours, of, upvote at the, at the Bitcoin Review Pod, my, my thing there with, with, Antoine. And, and, James and, and Ben Cartman. And like, again, like, you know, and we still didn't get to, like, it, it's, it's just a long conversation. But I, I think covenants of some kind will need to happen. So that, that's first, right? Like, we have no choice. One, one covenant solution is gonna have to happen. CTV was sort of galaxy brain, super cool, interesting, but like beyond the comprehension of like most people can even fathom in terms of, in terms of like possibilities and things. So like that makes it too scary because we don't know what could go wrong and stuff, even though a lot of work was done in sort of proving it's safe, but I don't know, I, I, I'm not comfortable with it, personally. And then Brian Bishop's, vaults like don't work because you can't prove that ephemeral seed was deleted and so, so like that was just cool sort of like speculative work kind of thing, but, you know, it's, it's not viable, right? There was one more I can't remember now, and then, and then there's OpVote by, by James, like James is, you know, legit sort of like- Core person, right? He knows what he's doing, he knows what he's talking about. He's done some deep, deep research on this. The, the paper is actually quite straightforward. It's a narrow, primitive. So it's a new Bitcoin primitive, OpVault. It's very narrow, which is nice. So less sort of like possible issues, less possible, attack surface, or just bug surface. And, and OpVault creates like a, a very sane way way of doing some basic types of, of covenants, which gets very complicated fast to explain on, on, you know, whatever, like fifteen, twenty minutes we have left here. So what I'd say is like, we're gonna need something. James isn't, married to this. he's gonna pro- a bip is coming out, probably like imminent. So that people can start the, sort of like the debate on it, let's put it this way. And so he's not married to this, if something else comes out that's like better, simpler, and sort of works, then so be it, right? Like, but we need something, and we need something soon. as you know, I am an ossify kinda guy for Bitcoin, right? But like when, when I mean ossify, it's not that like software won't be changed ever again, right? Like, and I think a lot of people who aren't technical don't understand this. Even ossified software needs gardening, right? And I'm trying to introduce this concept of gardening to people so they understand, we talked a lot on that episode about it, where, you, you need to update the software because computers change, the attacks change. Surface changes, right? Like, we have the Unix bug, you know, that's gonna have to get fixed, it, if, like, at some point. Or I think a" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:52", "start": 2752.02, "text": "really good example is the Tor v2 deprecation in favor of Tor v3. Yeah, that's right. Like, Bitcoin Core had to change. If you'd, if, if we didn't have that change, you wouldn't be able to use Bitcoin with Tor. So, I, I mean, you know," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "46:06", "start": 2765.67, "text": "Optime Verify," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "46:09", "start": 2769.11, "text": "sorry," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:13", "start": 2772.95, "text": "Locktime Verify was added, nobody Scrutiny or maybe it was the network was smaller or no, that" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "46:18", "start": 2778.32, "text": "was after, that was, that was after, SegWit, if I remember right, wasn't it? No, no, CLTV, I think that was, they were pre-SegWit. CLTV and CLTV, that's right, that was, yes, but that was after the P2SH Like worse. Yeah, I think so. Like, and then there was the op, return wars, and then there was the original block size wars, you know? Bitcoin was thirty-two megabytes blocks, and then it went down to one, right? Satoshi just changed that. And then, like, and then we went to four, like- The, the thing is, like, things will change, right? We want to strive and sort of target and, and trend towards almost no changes, especially with new features. But like, new things will come and they're gonna be necessary. So I, I think, I think people need to sort of like, start thinking about Bitcoin that way, that there will be things. you know, it wasn't Taproot that, that added dick butts to the, to the blockchain, right? It, it was, it was the seg- With discount and the extra, for-- like four X increase in block size. So it was the block size that made the big, the big blocks. Yeah, specifically the witness discount, right? Yeah, well, even that, yeah. But the blocks weren't made for megabytes, right? And, and the idea is blocks should be full. So you should be angry at the block size, not at the Diggbots. I mean, you know, like it's-- because it was already possible to add all those inscriptions and things into- Bitcoin before that, and, and with enough fiddling, he could probably have done that, like, you know, like even, even before the discount too. It's just a discount on--" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:59", "start": 2879.04, "text": "I mean, it was always possible, right? The question is more just like the cost to do it, right? So I think some people have been, unfairly saying, \"Oh, Taproot is to blame,\" which is clearly wrong, right? It's not the, it's not the fault of Taproot that now there's inscriptions on Bitcoin. It was possible pre-segwit" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "48:18", "start": 2897.87, "text": "Straightforward, right? Right? Like, because the Taproot witness doesn't have, like, it has a discount, but it doesn't have a limit. Like, the, the, the witness for normal transactions does have a limit on the script size, right? So, so that there is that, but it was already possible, it just wasn't possible this straightforward, let's put it this way. Yeah. I, I, I do think one amazing thing might come out of this, I think that, compression, data compression on blocks is gonna be, much Actually fought through because of this, so we, we might actually get some benefits out of this, aside from, you know, having, pictures on the blockchain, which, like, you know, that's sort of like a moral sort of issue and whatever. Like, I, I'm not gonna get into this in the short time. Yeah, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:05", "start": 2944.88, "text": "But yeah, I mean, I guess bringing it back to the point really that there may be some people who just don't wanna change at all, but I, I think i-if we want Bitcoin to be available to more people and we want more You know, personally, I would, I would be pro OpVault. I would like to see people support these ideas so that we can make Bitcoin more accessible. But crucially, of course, we wanna make sure everything is safe before we bring anything in. Yeah. So," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "49:31", "start": 2971.42, "text": "yeah, so like, you know, long-winded road, like OpVault, like, is really, really cool. I mean, like, you have a means now of, well, you will have a means of creating, like, like a, a script that, that like could be in, in, Right? Of, of certain, a thing that happen, right? So for example, say, say you have your vault and your, say, your funds are there, and, you know, you set it up so that, like, you know, like if more than a certain amount tries to get out in a certain period, you, you know, you're informed by like a, a wallet that watches it, like a watchtower, some, some form of thing like that, and, and then like you can press the nuclear button, right? So like that, that vault gets You vault or some, some key like that, that's on a hard wallet under a lake or something. You, you know what I mean? Like so you have an out, right? So you can do, you can do, a reactive security versus, versus, proactive security, right? Like, yeah. You, you can, you, you can sort of like, you can know and have time, in a, a window, right, to sort of like get the money out of the difficult situation, right? I, I think, you know, like, if, if this is done like very well and the solutions are amazing, I mean, there's a possibility that, like, we, we actually don't need more multisig or, or hardware wallets in a way that we do now." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:01", "start": 3060.74, "text": "Yeah. Or it's maybe it's combo together, right? Like, as an example, bring you back to that example where let's say, let's say I'm the evil attacker guy trying to go after you. Now, now, I don't know whether you've got a Duress And under all of that, you know?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "51:20", "start": 3079.53, "text": "That's right. So no, and, and, and the vaults don't even dox your ETXOs. This is so cool. Like you can still have privacy on that vault. And so one, one thing that was bugging me before about this proposal was that, you would have to have like preset fees, right? Which in, you know, in a twenty-year sort of like thinking, it's like hopeless, right? Right. The fees could be so much higher by then," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:47", "start": 3107.15, "text": "et cetera." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "51:48", "start": 3107.87, "text": "It could be, it could be whatever, right? Like, so you would have to have like, anchor, anchors output, I think, or something. Yeah, I can't remember the term. Yeah, anchor outputs for like, yeah, it, it, some very, like, another change to Bitcoin, right? for that to be able to do. But, James gave us the news in the last episode, like that, like he figured out how to do that" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:13", "start": 3132.89, "text": "without-- Oh, right, I think" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "52:18", "start": 3138.17, "text": "yeah. So, so that's really cool. So now it's like nice and tight. I think, I think the discussion is gonna probably be like fairly healthy because this is so narrow." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:29", "start": 3148.66, "text": "Yeah. So I think one other thing is maybe some of the other soft fork discussions get bogged down because something isn't perfect. And I think maybe we need to, maybe we, you know, we, we kinda have to take something that's not perfect, but it's, it's a big improvement, you know? Like, as long as" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "52:43", "start": 3163.03, "text": "it's safe. My fear of that thinking is We'll do our best to do make it perfect, there will be unintended consequences period, like you're saying by not being perfect, right? But, as long as we can sort of put enough effort into trying to understand, what the consequences will be as opposed to surprises, mind you, it's just the timing of Casey with, with like ordinal inscriptions versus like Taproot and everything was just sort of like aligned, like, but he's, he's an extremely bright individual, he would have-- and he was a Or Dev, by the way, he would have figured out a way of doing this regardless, right? So th-this is kind of the mindset that I think is important, was, it's not a good example, even though it's the one that's like rubbing on everybody's face. Anyway, so, so like I, I think, I think the discussion should be very, very reasonable. I, the problem, in my view, is gonna be the activation, right? It's just soft fork, but, on this one, it's gonna be tricky because, you know, we, we are all PTSD from activation. I, I am not a fan of speedy trials. I am not a fan of lot falls. Right. You'd" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:53", "start": 3232.63, "text": "prefer like a flag day sort of activation." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "53:55", "start": 3235.42, "text": "I want chicken, you know, game of chicken where, you know, like the network either isn't consensus or isn't. And, like, you know, I think we can do a better job at, at like displaying, like, a consensus, but, but I, I don't like the, the slippery slope of, of speedy trial. I don't, I feel like that gives an upper hand to the miners. for this update, I don't think it's a big deal, it's not like something that matters, but I, I think we, we should find a way of, of like keeping it consistent. But I think I'm in a minority, so like I," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "54:32", "start": 3272.24, "text": "Technical people and industry prefer the certainty, even though it is giving the upper hand to the miners, it is giving some certainty to the network." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:40", "start": 3279.72, "text": "Yeah, maybe some of the large businesses might prefer speedy trial, I'm not sure. But, yeah, let's see, let's see what the discussion is, see what people are saying. Hopefully, we can get enough people on board with the idea of improving some aspects of Bitcoin, such as OpVault. Also, wanted to get your thoughts a little bit on, Nostra. So I know, yeah, obviously you've been, Just if you think some of the hurdles will be overcome. So as an example, how does this network deal with things like spam and DOS? Is it through using, you know, SAT as the, you know, pay, pay to play? Is that how we do it? Or it's" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "55:15", "start": 3315.43, "text": "already being dealt with. Yeah. If you can use the, the global feed again, right? At least on Damos. So it'll be a mix of many things, right? y-y-you're gonna have pay to relay, you're gonna have pay to join a relay, you're gonna have, Of spam filters, right? So, you know, it's essentially a, a censorship really, right? Like that just gives you an updated list of things to censor, right? Which is might be spam. You're gonna have like filters, like, the, the filter idea that I had, for, for Will, which is only show me, Stuff that my, people I follow post, but also show me things that the people I follow follow, so second degree, that greatly expands the network, right? And, and it's kind of enough in a way, that might be all you want. Yeah. what else? you can, you know, you can filter by, like, you know, like, you can use some machine learning there to figure out some of the crap that people post. 'Cause like, because Nostr is censorship resistant, it's gonna be a lot easier for spammers to spam. But all- So because we don't have a single vendor of clients, right? You're gonna have a lot more work done in clients against spam, like you can see that already. Like, I mean, Damos like dealt with, with spam faster than Twitter, right? Like, Twitter's still having spam problems, Damos right now doesn't. and, and people are migrating, I mean, like, Zero Hedge is already on Nostr, right? Like- Oh, nice, I didn't know that. Yeah. Okay, cool. Like, i-i-it's crazy That like Nostr is like the lifeboat, some are there because they already wanna be there like me, right? Like I'm tired of like Twitter negativity and like the current thing and all that stupidity. So I want my sort of like, cozy safe space for now. Until the masses come to Nostr, let's see. But I mean, look, personally, I'm, I'm obviously- That's right. But then you can have your own relays." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:13", "start": 3433.31, "text": "Yeah, of, of course, yeah. And I'm supportive of Nostr, like I, I have it" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:20", "start": 3440.37, "text": "as Growth and see, see it coming, and I think it is early days, right? Like it's extremely early days, and yet we still have so much advancement. I, I" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "57:29", "start": 3448.72, "text": "see, like to me, like this, this was sort of like an invention, like kind of like, you know, Bitcoin was. It's like a, a concatenation of many different things that sort of like arrive at a, at a new paradigm. A-and has that vibe. It has, like, you know, like very novel sort of ways of thinking about, like, data. And like, you know, and, and you know, people are coming and it is winning and it is a lot better than Mastodon by like, you know, like orders of magnitude. and it's, it's an engagement. You get more engagement on Noster than you do on Twitter. Okay, by the numbers. Jameson actually, LoP did, a little research on that. So, so like, i-it is happening, and, and I think it's time for us to sort of like stop, sort of like, you know, sort of, humbling it down. It's like, no, it's like, this shit's happening, and people need a new home, that is censorship resistant." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:27", "start": 3506.75, "text": "Yeah, and, it'll be interesting to see," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:33", "start": 3512.69, "text": "'cause I saw, and, consistent way to-- Turns out that a lot" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "58:39", "start": 3519.11, "text": "of that was, Chinese spam. Once we, once we dialed in some, some spam filters, a lot of the traffic died. but the, but the traffic, the real traffic is sort of going, and there is a lot of-- There was a lot of people from Hong Kong came in. Pretty cool." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:54", "start": 3534.38, "text": "Yeah, and I think one aspect that may be difficult for people to deal with is sometimes if you want to talk about freedom and censorship resistance, sometimes you end up having to deal with, you know, the, People who aren't so that maybe these are p-people who are prickly or maybe they're not that popular or for some reason they've already been cancelled on the mainstream platforms and, you know, now those people will come and use Nostra and it's kind of the same idea, Bitcoin is- I mean," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "59:20", "start": 3560.04, "text": "then you don't have to go, yeah, then you don't have to go to shit holes, right? Like the Truth Socials and the whatever, like one of these sort of like ten different pick your new sensor, right? Like, and those places are horrible. I mean, like Exact type of thinking, right? There's no diversity of ideas, there's no discussions being had. It's just, you know, it's just like people agreeing with each other on hating on some other platform, right? So it's like they're just posting a tweet and then just hating on it as if the world give a fuck, right? Like, so, so yeah, like this is different. This is like you're, you can have different communities and different people sort of interacting, which is the value of Twitter. Yeah. And that's, that's a good point" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:03", "start": 3603.07, "text": "because But like you said, they kind of are built around the personality of maybe one, a few people, and they, they just, I don't, I think they haven't really been able to really build a proper network effect. And then you've got stuff like Mastodon, which obviously you were hosting the, the Bitcoin hackers instance, and of course, which is" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:00:22", "start": 3622.26, "text": "garbage, it, it's garbage software, like stupid protocol design, like there is a reason why Mastodon never took off, like it's ten years old by the way. The, the activity pub, like it's just terrible, terrible design. Yeah. and, and then all the things-- And I was, I was the censor, I was the censor and benevolent dictator of bitcoinhackers dot org, right? Like, I've been slowly telling, like, this next month, I'm, I'm killing it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna point that domain to Noster and, and so be it. I don't wanna be The benevolent dictator, like, i-it's, it's not cool. Plus, I mean, every single other instance, blocked us. Yeah. Because we don't have like strict moderation. Like, so what's the point?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:01:04", "start": 3664.29, "text": "Yeah, exactly. Because then like the wokies get into it, and the point I think is how do you have a technology that the wokies can't destroy, you know? And then maybe if you are a wokie, then from your point of view, you, you at least wanna have a technology that you can, you know, not get shut" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:01:23", "start": 3683.1, "text": "Don't wanna, like, don't wanna be censored by China, right? Like, and, and Mastodon is like one click away from being, like, censored. Oh, Mastodon is so bad that they didn't include quote Tweet, right? Because encourages people from dunking. Like, just the fact that you can do that is so dumb, right? Like, it, it's, it's like, it's the wrong way of thinking about, like, free speech and, and thinking about, like, like, you know, resistant information and, like, proper Nation, is this the wrong sentiment to go with to begin with, right? Like, it's like they-- I don't think they have the heart in the right place." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02:00", "start": 3720.14, "text": "Yeah, yeah. So I'm, I'm hopeful, that some of this stuff can get, resolved. And as you said, maybe it's like a Nostra equivalent of cloud fe-flare. Maybe it's like a Nostra can have filters built in, like who-- people who you follow, second degree or third degree connections maybe, and then cutting out beyond that because you don't wanna open yourself Attack, and then maybe from the privacy point of view, I know one other criticism, criticism people have had, it's this idea that you, it's really important to use a VPN, otherwise you're doxing your IP, because let's say I have my Nostr app and I'm connecting to fifteen relays, all those relays might know my IP. So that's" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:02:40", "start": 3760.87, "text": "kind of- Yeah, but that's, that's like a, that's an early day, like low-hanging fruit, easy to fix, right? Like, there's a million ways you can do this. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:02:52", "start": 3772.9, "text": "Like the, the, the, the avatars and things that are leaking IP, you can have buffer relays. You can have your own buffer relay. You can spin up a relay that just is a client for many relays and then you just read from your buffer relay, right? You, you know, it's like, it's easy stuff, it's a non-issue thing, for, for this stage. The thing is, there's only so much time, right? And so many, like, people that can code. So, i-in our priorities, right? There is bigger priorities For example, adding zapping, right? Like so, like that's like lightning tips in the thing. you know, there's so many people on this that we broke wallets of Satoshi like more than once, because we were just tipping too much, right? Like, and a lot of people use that. So i-it's, everything is on a to-do list and it's very doable, it's just a matter of prioritizing what, what brings people, what helps people first, what, what helps the network bootstrap. There's a lot of bounty- For it, I have a website called a Bountsir, so it's Bount, B O U N T S R dot O R G. there is a bunch of bounties there for people to, to, to code things, and, and people are picking at it, which is really cool. Yeah, it's, I highly recommend it. I mean, if you wanna be like a normy user of this, just download demos on your phone and like get working, like get, get tweeting there. It's, it's a lot of fun." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:04:20", "start": 3860.95, "text": "Yeah, yeah. I've been using, Amethyst on the Android, and works pretty well for me. Still a little rough around the edges, but it, it is improving" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:04:34", "start": 3874.7, "text": "It's like, it's just time, right? Just need time to sort of like get the code in, but it's moving fast. Yeah. Really fast." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:04:42", "start": 3882.39, "text": "Yeah. It's interesting to see that because at the same time, Twitter's having all its issues and like all these other platforms are having their own issues, so, you know, maybe that's what pushes people over to actually adopt and use nostr. I mean," }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:04:53", "start": 3893.28, "text": "the stars are aligned, right? I mean, the stars seem to be aligned, which is really" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:04:57", "start": 3897.6, "text": "cool. Yeah. Whereas I think there have been historical examples where people" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:05:04", "start": 3904.74, "text": "I think that has happened maybe two or three times, but it never really stuck. Whereas I think Nostrum has, I think it has more of a chance of sticking. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:05:13", "start": 3913.63, "text": "I think, you know, the vibes are high. And remember, a Nostr social media application is like, you know, a tiny little part of this protocol can be used for, right? you know, there is a bounty of twelve BTC for people to rebuild GitHub on it, right? Because you could transport Git commits on Nostr, right? And then you can have a decentralized, distributed, Which is the social sort of layer, the business sort of logic for Git. You know, like, I, I have a bounty for, for somebody to redo Medium and Substack. Like, I wanna replace Substack and Medium with Noster, right? There's a bunch of things there. Like, you can do anything that is sort of like more in a broadcast like method, like, it's very, very cool. The conference is gonna be the first one that's gonna be in Costa Rica." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:06:03", "start": 3963.0, "text": "Yeah. Yeah, unfortunately, I won't be able to make that. Just 'cause it's clashing with, Vietnam LightningCon, but, look, wasn't that canceled? No, no, the Lightning conference in Berlin was unfortunately canceled, but, okay. Vietnam LightningCon in Da Nang is on kind of late March. Oh, cool." }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:06:21", "start": 3981.11, "text": "Cool, I can see that. So a lot of stuff happening now. You know, and this, as this space grows and things that are happening, there's gonna be a lot more like date conflicts. Oh, yeah, a" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:06:29", "start": 3989.06, "text": "hundred percent, yeah. I mean, eventually it'll be impossible Yeah, but yeah, it's already, it's gonna happen to that level soon, sooner or later. And then, yeah, so I guess kind of closing out, so I mean, we spoke about Q1, we spoke a bit about, you know, cold card and, you know, just Bitcoin security. I'm curious, do you see any other, I guess, any other things we haven't spoken about or any other trends or directions that you think the industry or things should go in from a Bitcoin security point of view?" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:06:57", "start": 4017.48, "text": "Yeah, I, I think like You know, hardware wallets are becoming a lot more sophisticated and sort of like we're understanding the problem better. You know, the NFC stuff is growing. There, there is, there's slowly more wallets doing NFC, which is great for consumers, like, you know, more, more normy use of things. You know, I think we're gonna see things like inscriptions and ordinals be like, sort of like the next biggest thing that happens in Bitcoin. There is a massive amount of demand for that stuff, like me liking or not liking it, it's- You know, irrelevant. you know, the, the, the shitcoiners are running now like Bitcoin nodes and full nodes, 'cause they want their inscriptions there, right? So that's an interesting sort of funnel, right, for Bitcoin. You know, you made the blocks bigger, now have them full, you know? Another thing too is that this quiets out a little bit of the security budget fud, too, which is funny, What else? oh, the Q1 thing, before I forget, because the demand was bigger than we thought for the reservations, get your reservation in if you want, because i-if it keeps on going like this, we might cap it, and then, and then you, you won't be part of the," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:08:10", "start": 4090.3, "text": "the first" }, { "speaker": "stephan_livera", "time": "01:08:10", "start": 4090.74, "text": "round of" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:08:11", "start": 4091.42, "text": "Q1 recipients. Yeah. Well, I've, I've ordered mine, I'm definitely looking forward to playing around with it. So, yeah, thanks for joining me, NVK. Listeners, make sure you follow NV" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:08:23", "start": 4103.99, "text": "and get the stuff over at coincaid dot com and, well, I was gonna say your Twitter, but no, let's, let's follow n v k on Nostra. I'll, I'll put a link for that in the show notes. Awesome, thanks for having me, Livera. Thanks. Get the show notes at stephanlivera.com/459. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the citadels." } ] }