{ "episodeId": "SLP655", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "nvk": { "name": "NVK", "role": "guest", "tag": "NVK" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:12", "start": 12.17, "text": "Hi everyone, and welcome back to Stephan Livera podcast, brought to you by Bold. For American listeners, you can buy and sell Bitcoin over at getbold.io. Now, rejoining me on the show today is my friend NVK. Many of you know him as the founder and CEO of CoinKite, the creators of the Cold Card and various other products. Products relating to Bitcoin, security, and Bitcoin accessories, some of them. so, NVK, welcome back to the show." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "00:36", "start": 36.34, "text": "Hey, man, thanks for having me back." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:39", "start": 39.07, "text": "Yeah, great to chat with you, and, you know, we're gonna chat today, let's, let's, you know, the state of self-custody, what's kind of, what's the latest on this. Of course, I know there's some updates on Coldcard that we'll get to, and, maybe later we'll get onto some of the op-return drama because" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00", "start": 60.1, "text": "May 2025, where are we at in self custody today? I think it's great." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "01:08", "start": 67.99, "text": "you know, people are really taking on the challenge of learning about Bitcoin Getting harder wallets, you know, setting it up and, and, and getting that going. I think, I think we're slowly like sort of getting over the hump of like some of the, the old fud about, you know, grandmothers can't self-custody Bitcoin or this or that, like a bunch of like idioticities around that. I, I, I think people also like test it and try different things that have a lot more trade-offs. And I think, like, you know, enough people, especially people that have like a significant amount of Bitcoin like relative to, to their savings, right? they're realizing that like the importance of self-custody, the importance of self-- of sovereignty, the importance of, you know, checking their own node, the, the importance of having seeds, you know, all that good stuff. and, and I don't think it has ever been this easy, y-y-you know, like It's, if you ever used a cold card, you know, with Sparrow, like, you know, like you have your, your coins there, you, you scan the screen, you press sign, and then you tap your phone, and then the coins go out. Like, it, it really, like, i-i-it is easier than, than online banking. Thus far, without like really like barely any trade-offs in terms of privacy or, or, or," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "02:33", "start": 152.65, "text": "or any other sort of like, you know, bad trade-off that we could have in, in Bitcoin self-custody." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:38", "start": 157.59, "text": "Yeah, gotcha. And so I guess, as an example in that flow you're talking about there, you can, you know, you can get, you know, you can scan it in, with the, you know, the reader on the cold guard Q, as an example. And then what you're saying is, is you can like, you know, tap it to your phone to actually do the, the send, right? Like to broadcast the transaction, to be clear, yeah?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "03:00", "start": 179.55, "text": "Exactly right. So there's no micro SD cards involved, there is no USB involved, you know, there's no Bluetooth involved, there isn't none of this sort of like very sort of like bad complex protocols involved, which is very important in, you know, in regards to your air gap security. so, so I, I think, I think we're at a good place. you know, Push TX is open source standard, people can use it if they wanna integrate in their systems. You know, Barbecue QR, open standard, also, and, I, I think," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:34", "start": 214.15, "text": "I think that's like fairly easy now to do. Yeah, I'll tell you what, this is something I've, over the years, right? Because obviously I've been teaching people about self custody as well for years. And when I was teaching them cold card, it used to be like, \"Oh, you, you might need like one of these little guys that can do like the SD card to your computer. You might need like, you know, a USB or micro USB cable or, you, you know, you might need all these different things. And" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:02", "start": 242.19, "text": "It's more like, okay, get a cold card queue, get three triple A batteries, and then everything can either be done by scanning and, you know, sending it like and reading it back that way, or you can like do the, the NFC tap if you want. So it really has evolved a lot now, and I think tools like Sparrow, Sparrow is my favorite, but of course, there are others like, Nunchok, and I know Keeper as well. Yeah, there's also a Cove" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "04:26", "start": 265.76, "text": "coming out, which is really cool. Super simple to use wallet, it's gonna come out of beta, beta very soon. Everybody can use it, it's open source. and, and that also works in the same principles. So, you know, if you're a true noob and you don't want any of the other features and things, you can just use something like that. That, I think that's super cool." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:47", "start": 286.61, "text": "Yeah. And so I guess one thing that we have seen, and this is a trend I've seen, and I'm sure you've seen this as well, is that every now and again there's a new wallet that comes out, and it's super simple and it's super slick, but there are certain kind of bundled or hidden tradoffs made in the background, right? And in that background, it might be, let's say, maybe less verifiable or less reproducible or maybe less portable in the setup, that you can't just like take the seed out of that and put it somewhere else. And I think that's one challenge where, and, you know, there are people trying to make it easy for new people, but it, it ends up making some of those trade-offs or trade-offs being, are being made in the background. I'm curious, you know, what have you seen on that?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "05:34", "start": 333.82, "text": "Yeah, I, I think it's super important for people to try to come up with new solutions, right? And we have to test them in the market and see what works. But I think it's also super important to be very honest about the trade-offs, right? And, and that's often not something you see, right? Because everybody wants this other product. so I, I think that there is a few things that are non-negotiable when you're talking about sort of like long-term hold, right? I think the trade-offs are amazing, you know, like anything that is like, you know, a few inches away from, from, no custody is better, right? Like, you don't want people- To be on Coinbase, right? You want people to take the coins into self custody, right? But there are solutions that are sort of like in between, right? They require more trust, but they are easier to use, and that's great. However, you don't want your coins to be in a place that doesn't use a seed, you know, doesn't use a hardware wallet that has a screen, doesn't have PSBT so that is fully portable between other setups. You, you need to use systems that are fully vendor agnostic, right? That, that respects sort of like the, the None of the vendors matter. Your coins are your coins, and you can easily replace anybody in any part of the chain without any pain, ideally, right? so I, I think I put some of that stuff on bitcoinsecurity dot org. I think it's super important, especially as we see more people coming as the price starts to go up, to, you know, that eternal, eternal September battle, of, of like trying to educate the people who are coming in, of like, you know, these are the trade-offs, you know, don't use your gap computers, you know, use seeds, you know, check transactions on screen, you know, don't connect devices Access to the USB, you know, all the basic stuff, I think is important to always sort of like bring back again and sort of try to get people to, to understand that, because they're not obvious things, right? Everybody offers A, oh, look at my super easy, super secure solution, right? But, but like, you know, like a lot of trade-offs are sort of like understated or overlooked, you know, often because just the user's just knowledgeable enough." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:52", "start": 472.46, "text": "Yeah. And then I think the other challenge for people is, it's one thing to just get started with, okay, write down 12 words, generate a Bitcoin address and hodl on that, but I think the, the next step for a lot of people is more like dealing with things like inheritance and these kinds of aspects of it, and maybe that's where there's a bit of- What would I, what's the, like, it's a common concern for, let's say, high net worth Bitcoiners, maybe they're, they're a bit more concerned about, hey, how am I gonna make sure I can pass these coins to my heirs when I die?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "08:24", "start": 503.77, "text": "Yeah, it, it's, it's not an easy problem, it really isn't. and, and people do have different problems because of different jurisdictions and all kinds of other issues. and we don't have perfect or amazing answers yet, right? Like, there's really good solutions, like, you" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "08:42", "start": 522.5, "text": "chain, you know, there's Bitkey with some trade-offs. There is, what else? I mean, then, then there is like the fully sort of like self-like made multisigs, you know, with like keys ge- geographically separated in a way that the family gets it, like I don't think we're quite there yet, but there-- because it's also very early, right? I mean, it's only been sixteen years of Bitcoin. so, I think, I think people need to just sort of like accept that we don't have perfect yet. accept that, you know, we're gonna be changing things along the way, but, you know, but things are significantly progressing, right? Like for example, with min- with miniscript, degrading multisigs on something like Anchor Watch or Liana You know, they have trade-offs as well, it's not quite there, but, you know, it is significantly getting better. I think Trident is gonna be a huge improvement on this that's, that's a wallet by, Anchor Watch that's, that's coming out. and, you know, and then there is more things being worked on, and, you know, it's, it's, it's nonstop progress, but, but it does take time." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:01", "start": 600.58, "text": "Yeah, and I think the miniscript stuff is interesting. I think, it, it will become more and more popular over time, and more and more hardware wallets will support it. But I guess maybe what's needed is, in the same way that, multisig, when it was a bit newer, people were playing around with all kinds of different setups, and then over time, people sort of converged to two of three and three of five, you know? And so maybe in a similar sense, miniscript will have certain templates that become very popular, like this is a common template So just use the standard template there." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "10:33", "start": 632.62, "text": "I mean, and realistically speaking, for most people, even just passphrase and single sig on a, on a cold card, it's fine. Like, you know, like we can talk about state actor threats, we can talk about, you know, all kinds of like, you know, evil spouse, whatever it is, right? But like realistically speaking, for most people, for, for the, the amount of coin that they have versus their other savings, right? Like, you know, being able to pass on like a, like a seed plate, right? Like Different than them passing on their, like, you know, nice watches or whatever it is to their family, right? Like, you know, that is better than not doing it Or it is better than making trade-offs with systems and solutions that give up a lot of privacy, that give up a lot of other trade-offs, right? So You know, people really need to sort of like reflect on like, you know, you know, if this thing was worth ten times more than it is today, right? I love that, that, that rule of thumb. You know, if Bitcoin's worth more than ten times today, the amount that I have in the setup that I have, does it suffice? Is it realistically okay? For me to have as it is, why I learn more, why I try to improve it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:45", "start": 704.93, "text": "Yeah. And I guess the other question for a lot of people will just be, the impetus to self-custody, right? Because as I'm sure you're well aware, there's a lot of new people coming in over this and maybe over the next year, who knows? A lot of those people might be coming into custodial or derivative things, right? Like maybe it's ETFs, maybe it's, you know, Bitcoin treasury companies, this kind of thing. What do you find is the impetus that drives them to sort of start self-custody, start doing self-custody? Is it, you know, the, the number has gone up a bit and now it's time for me to actually get some self-custody Bitcoin? What have you seen?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "12:26", "start": 746.31, "text": "it's, sorry, Livera, I, I, I got a little distracted there. We might have to cut that one. Yeah, so in terms of what re-education" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:35", "start": 754.67, "text": "makes people start the journey of self-custody instead of just doing custodial stuff?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "12:39", "start": 759.29, "text": "Yeah, so, so like we, we do see now that the majority of retail comes first to derivatives of Bitcoin, right? So the MSTR or ETFs or whatever, right? And E-e-and all like those products unfortunately aren't convertible to BTC. It's not like Coinbase where you bought Bitcoin at risk and then all you had to do was just withdraw, right? You can't withdraw your coins from, from MSTR. you know, I don't see anything wrong with people going with those products, as, you know, if that's all they're gonna have, well, then it's better than nothing. However, those products were really designed for institutions and larger pockets that don't have a choice, like they're not allowed or able to self-custody real coin. So, you know, like, I think it's, it's part of our responsibility as, like, you know, like Bitcoiners, it's like, hey, you know, let's try to educate people and get them to, to not get hacked and, and sort of like self-custody their own Bitcoin, right? Because Bitcoin is about two two upsides, right? Like you have the non-debasement number go up upside, right? And then you have the sovereign upside, right? And the sovereign upside can't be understated. I mean, being able to withdraw and transact without permission is, is a huge fucking deal. It's what gives Bitcoin its, its number go up. So You know, I, I don't see the benefit of, you know, like your average person buying a little bit of ETF or, or, or a little bit of microstrategy. Like realistically speaking, like they're not gonna have enough that's gonna matter too much, so might as well buy real coin and have it in the safe the same way they have a little bit of gold, that they have a little bit of something else in their own safes." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:22", "start": 861.57, "text": "Yeah. yeah, and let's talk a little bit about the new features on Coldcard. I know there's two big ones. There's this, co-signing and the key teleport. So, do you wanna just explain the new co-signing feature? What is co-signing on the new Coldcard? So," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "14:38", "start": 877.52, "text": "part of the, the, the motivation on this was like, can we have Coldcard act As a collaborative multisig signer, right? Like, can we give cold card spending policy, right? So like velocity, so like how many, like can I, I can't spend more than one BTC per day or something like that, right? Like, or it needs, another authentication of sorts, right? So what we did was we essentially baked in that into the device. So now you can have a cold card that has two keys. One is your normal key, and the other key is a key behind a policy that you can't change unless you give its whole seed again, so you prove that you have the seed with you." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "15:24", "start": 924.42, "text": "so what does that mean? It means that, like, say for example, you can set up a, a company, executive with some coin that he can spend in a certain policy while traveling. It means that you can travel with coin now in a way that, you know, there is no amount of, of like, trying to force you to make that policy go away, right? And it's provable too, which is great. you know, this is great for you to, you know, maybe give it to a spouse or- Or, or like, or maybe between two coworkers, like because the two coworkers can both have a cold card that has, like, so one has their key and this policy key, and then yours can have their key, like your key and the policy key as well. so just, just imagine you now have collaborative multisig in your hands, like that's a good way of looking at it. for some people, maybe that's enough for their whole savings, right? Like, I mean, is it better than having a completely separate devices? Like, absolutely not, right? Like, I mean, having things properly done in the correct, like, super cypherpunk way, great, do that, right, if you can. But if this is the max that you can do, then, I mean, this is a massive improvement," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "16:35", "start": 994.83, "text": "right? And It's like, what else can we do with our secure environment, which is the cold card, that doesn't require computer services or servers, right? and, and we're trying to move in that direction with this feature, i-- and, and it's super useful. I mean, like, people have been sort of like contacting us and now even asking us to see if we can do this for a single sig too. So we're looking into like if that's possible in a way that we're comfortable with. But having the policies on the device itself are, are big deal." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:06", "start": 1026.45, "text": "Yeah. So just to refresh then, or to go back, as I understand, you have different things you can restrict. So one is magnitude, as in the amount. You can say, \"I don't wanna sign, I don't want this device or the spending policy to allow a signature spending more than a hundred thousand sats, as an example.\" and then you have address whitelisting. So I guess what you're saying there is only send to these addresses. And then you have velocity, how many transactions per day, and then you've got a two FA as well. So those are the main, as I understand, the spending policies that you can implement on the co-signing feature. Okay. And then, can you talk us through, I guess, I mean, you were talking about this a little bit earlier, but who are the typical users? Are you thinking this is like a business use case or, individual use case or maybe a family use case? What would it-- So it really" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "17:59", "start": 1078.84, "text": "is like, it's a very broad sort of user base for this, right? but, you know, like this started sort of like as a travel wallet, right? Like in terms of like mentalities, like can I have a device that when I'm away from the- The ba- from one of the keys, I'm still able to sign with that key, but I am protected by a policy, but only smaller amounts, let's say. Exactly. So travel, internal operations of companies" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "18:27", "start": 1107.25, "text": "you can use it for, for personal, sort of like a holo, you can use it for inheritance, you can use it for, you know, I mean, anything really, right? Like, I mean, having a policy that, that helps you not accidentally spend more than you should or, or under duress spend more than you should is a huge deal, right? this, this works for everyone, the same way the trick pins work for everyone in different ways, right? I really think that like people should essentially like look at their current setup, right? And see i-if like that could be improved with this another cool thing too is if they already have a multisig setup, they can still leverage this because they can load that second key or the third key into the same device So like they don't have to move their coins if they already are using multisig to leverage this, they can just load their own key. I see, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:27", "start": 1167.41, "text": "Okay, so yeah, it's a bit of an open one then, and I guess people have to be imaginative or at least understand the use case of like, why would they do this? And generally, that might be some kind of You know, make it so that you-- it can only spend a smaller amount and not the whole amount that's, secured by that wallet, as an example, by that hardware device. Yep. Yeah. Okay, and then, so that's the co-signing aspect of it. Oh, could you also explain the two FA part of that? Like, how does the two FA work on this co-signing?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "19:59", "start": 1199.45, "text": "Yeah, so, because Coldcard doesn't have a clock and stuff, like essentially you have to scan, it's called Web 2FA. you, you go to a website, you know, with your two FA. And then you scan this QR code, and then the cold card will liberate sort of like you'll be part of the, the, the, the transaction chain of authorization, right? So essentially like, you, you just, you use Authenticator, right? and, and just like, you know, on, for you to withdraw funds from your exchange, you need to use the Google Authenticator, you do the same. You, you just, you, you just use two FA for, for that policy to be, met." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:41", "start": 1240.76, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. This show brought to you by CoinKite dot com, the creators of the best Bitcoin hardware security devices such as the Coldcard Mark IV and the new Coldcard Q. Now, we use Bitcoin hardware security devices to keep our keys offline, our private keys offline. Now, the way these work is you can do that setup, write down your twelve or twenty-four words on the, the seed word cards, and keep that secure. Now, you can use this device to interact with the Bitcoin- Bitcoin network using software such as Sparrow Wallet, Electrum, or Vector Desktop or Nunchuk as a few examples. Now, you have a range of security features that you can use with these devices such as passphrases, you can use seed xor, or my favorite is multi-signature. Now, if you're starting in a basic way, just start with the device and the USB-C cable, plug it directly to the computer and use it that way, and then later improve your setup. But I believe these devices are great at helping secure your coin Coins, especially as you start to migrate up into multi-signature security, but don't be disheartened or don't be, scared away. They are accessible, and I think you actually do learn about Bitcoin in the process. So to get yours, go to coinkite dot com, use code Livera to get a discount on your cold card. This episode brought to you by Galloy. They are building banking software for the Bitcoin age. So if you are with a bank, a fintech, or a startup looking to offer some kind of Bitcoin product, whether that is a Bitcoin collateralized loan, deposit accounts, or payments, Galloy can help you. Their latest product is called LANA. It is a loans management platform, and you can use this to come to market quickly and offer a loans or Bitcoin collateralized lending product for your customers. Now, Galloy have a lot of experience in the space. They started with Blink Wallet in twenty twenty, and they've since grown this to become a community favorite over time, and so they have a lot of experience making things work in a secure, reliable, and scalable way. So if you need assistance Coming to market quickly with a Bitcoin banking product such as lending or deposits or payments, talk to the team at Galloy. You can email them, the email is biz at galloy dot io, or go to the website galloy dot io. And now back to the show. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, okay. So, yeah, got it. So that's the co-signer. Now, the other big feature I noticed is the key teleport. So, how does-- Yeah, what is key teleport?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "23:08", "start": 1388.48, "text": "So, so Key Teleport was born out of the, the reality that, again, you can't trust your computer, you can't trust your phone for secrets in general, right? And a lot of people aren't no longer in the same location, right? Like they're traveling, they're sovereign individuals, you know, like people are exiting countries, coworkers are remote, you know, people are just remote all the time, right? And, and like, how do you get two people to exchange secrets securely and privately? Right? with a secure environment. So we created this, this feature called Key Teleport, and, and it's extremely easy to use. That was part of the, the, the requirements that we created for ourselves. So you can send somebody on a video call a private key. Without being concerned about the video call. That's pretty powerful, right? So, for example, let's say you're helping your grandma get set up with a cold card on the other side, right? The, the proverbial grandmother that doesn't exist. and, you know, you can just like, you can ship her a cold card, like, virgin, right? She just opens, presses the, the key teleport part, and then you can send to her a private key from your BIP eighty-five that you set up or a- Brand new cold card, you can send her the whole backup so the whole cold card is set up. It could even be a cold card that has co-signing, a co-signing setup on it too. So you can send the whole setup pre-made for her. So that means you can do this for coworkers, for example, right? So if you have an executive, he's abroad, he needs to do some transactions for the company, whatever, you can pre-set up the cold card, send it to him, over, over a video call or an FC with a web page that Support dot com. you can send other secrets. So for example, you have to send somebody some SSH keys for them to get into the server because server is down, the guy didn't take his, his computer that he has access to stuff. You know, you can send that. you can send secure messages. you can send, you know, secret bank accounts that are on your secure notes. Anything really that, that CodeCard supports in terms of data is now transmissible by, KeyTap." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:24", "start": 1524.08, "text": "Yeah. And then can you explain the encryption used here to, make sure that it gets to the other side with, nobody else, interfering?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "25:34", "start": 1533.5, "text": "Yeah, so we're using essentially like a whole Diffie-Hellman tunnel So, you, you just exchange like the, the receiver essentially shares his public key, which is ephemeral, so it's not related to your private key on, for Bitcoin at all, right? So he just shows you a QR code and gives you a PIN. That PIN just helps with the privacy to happen, and then you now have his public key, and you can just like encrypt the data with his public key to send it to him. It's the same way, very similar way to how Coldcard does its, secure clone or secure migrate." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:15", "start": 1574.61, "text": "Gotcha. yeah. And so then the actual, method of transmitting, is it using QR code there or what's the- Yeah, so you" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "26:25", "start": 1584.51, "text": "can use the QR code or you can use an FCI And so for example, let's say, you know, like your, you know, potato camera on the computer or the video call is too bad, you can't use QRs over the video call. then what you can do is you can just use, you just tap, and that gives you a link, and then you give that link to the other party on, on, say, a video chat, sorry, on text chat. Say, for example, you don't have access to video chat, it's only text chat. You can send this special link to them, and then this special" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:57", "start": 1617.48, "text": "Interesting, yeah, okay. And so then, yeah, that allows, maybe remote assistance that might be also interesting for people. of course, always gotta be wary. That can also open up like remote scamming vectors, but also at the same time, remote help. But they also have the" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "27:14", "start": 1634.21, "text": "seed, right? Yeah. So the remote, the, the remote scamming could just happen by, \"Please give me your seed.\"" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:21", "start": 1641.42, "text": "yeah, of course, of course." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "27:22", "start": 1642.46, "text": "Exactly. So, you know, this feature is inside of- Advanced, so like, you know, you do prevent some of that, there is a little bit gatekeeping there. another very cool thing is we're, there, there's a few, phone wallets, phone app wallets that are working on integrating this too. So say, for example, you wanna set up grandma, set up, you know, your dad, set up, you know, coworker, whatever, with a B89, B85 or, or some other seed from your seed vault. you know, you should be able to beam that, key teleport seed to their phone wallet as well. so maybe you do the backup for them while they're abroad and you can help them get, get all sorted. Because a lot of times, like most of the time, the impedance of you setting up your own seed is the fact that you may not be able to do a backup, right? Like you don't have a metal plate, you don't trust the environment, you know, whatever reasons or like you don't wanna get into the whole explaining to grandma how to, like, you know, like do the metal backup, you're already gonna handle the seed for her anyways, right? So Let's, let's, let's make this happen remotely as well, because people no longer live close to each other." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:37", "start": 1716.82, "text": "Yeah, interesting. Yeah, it's an interesting, point that, you know, now people are living further apart and they don't necessarily all live near each other, the people that they wanna help and support. So, yeah, we'll see what happens there. On, the Miniscript side of things, as I understand, that's still on the Edge firmware of Coldcard, do you wanna explain a bit where are things at, with Miniscript on the Coldcard Q?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "29:03", "start": 1742.8, "text": "Yeah, so like Coldcard Q is essentially like following the, the Edge, it's, it's the Edge release, but also following the Edge limits of like what Miniscript is at in terms of development, and, and also what is possible with hardware, right? Miniscript is a very large design space, right? Especially when you add Tapscript and all the other stuff. so, you know, it's early, there's a lot going on, you know, we're, we're still sort of e-even validating the safe scripts out there, right? so, you know, we, we did remove the big def warning from Edge firmware, so if you wanna use Biniscript, as long as Coldcard isn't the The sort of like, single critical point of failure, we're comfortable with people starting to use MiniScript with Coldcard for, for serious money, and people are. under those conditions, right? So we're trying to be, you know, as usual, extremely conservative with this kind of stuff because, you know, it's complex technology and that means there's gonna be a lot of edge cases, a lot of bugs to be found, and, you know, if it's followed without single points of failure, it should be good" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:16", "start": 1815.79, "text": "Yeah, and I think it will enable, different uses. I know Rob Hamilton and the AnchorWatch guys are doing this kind of Miniscript-enabled insurance case. There are others, as you mentioned, the Liana guys are using it, to enable things like, kind of very deep backup recovery, as an example, or these, different, conditions. I think the Keeper guys are also doing something there on Miniscript as well. so that, that, those are the main ones I know of who are actually really using Miniscript in practice on these devices. anything you, you wanna add there on the Miniscript side?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "30:55", "start": 1854.83, "text": "No, I, I think that's it. Like, I, I think it's progressing. It's gonna take time. you know, like there's a lot of things that are done in Miniscript to try to get around the fact that we don't have covenants in Bitcoin. but you know, you can't change Bitcoin, you can't depend on Bitcoin being changed, so like we keep, we have to keep on moving you know, there's been some interesting sort of like, ideas that people gave us because now with the cold card co-sign feature, once it moves to the, to the edge branch so that you can use Miniscript with it, it starts to get interesting. You can mix that with, with other sort of solutions and start creating some kinds of vaulting. Rindel had some ideas around that. I, I, it's all promising. It's just that like, you know, I think there's two conversations in Bitcoin sometimes get mixed together, but, you know, the, there is the true and tried stuff that just fucking works, right? Like, and, and the majority of people are still using single sig passphrase, right? Because it just fucking works. And then, like, multi sig got a lot better, so P2SH kind of multi sig got a lot better, and, and it's very production ready and everybody's using, there's billions of dollars on it. and then there's the miniscript stuff that's new. there's a couple scripts that are like, And then there is like, you know, all the, the crazy, amazing stuff that we could create. Yeah, yeah. Like there, there's a lot of stuff being worked on that still needs, you know, like it takes years sometimes to, to get some of the stuff going because again, like, you know, nobody wants to lose money, right? Nobody wants a miniscript voting accident." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:31", "start": 1950.84, "text": "Yeah, yeah, for sure. And yeah, and even more out there, maybe some of the frost stuff, I know that requires maybe more specialized hardware. I know there's the guy, the frost snap guys who are doing, who are doing some work on that kind of thing, but, still seems a bit early. I'm curious if you have any other, kind of thoughts on that, like the frost stuff. is, I presume it's interesting to you, but just early stage, right?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "32:57", "start": 1977.13, "text": "So frost is super interesting. I, I think there is potential there to diminish the need for hardware wallets, especially for like non massive piles. I think there is, there's potential to even improve hardware wallets on how they're done and stuff, but it's early you know, we still ha-we still need better ways of handling the interactivity of Frost, you know, it hasn't been productized yet. So, and that's very telling. you know, there's a lot of frost being used in Noster as well, starting to sort of get going on that as well, so you can have, your identity more protected. But, you know, again, it's like very complicated, complicated cryptography, com-cryptography, it's new stuff, it just takes time." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:46", "start": 2026.1, "text": "Yeah, in terms of, wallets and things, you mentioned Cove Wallet as well, so, shout out to our friend Praveen who's making, Cove Wallet. do you wanna touch on any of the actual wallet softwares and what you're seeing there? What's, I guess, interesting to you?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "34:04", "start": 2044.23, "text": "Yeah, so, okay, so, Cove is super cool. Super bullish on that. I think we were missing a ultra simple to use phone wallet that also works with other wallets with open standards. you know, it's not trying to do all kinds of crazy shit, it's not trying to do lightning, it's just basic. So like, you know, when I have to, like, you know, onboard new users, it's just like, \"Here, use this,\" you know? They can start with just a seed that they backed up on paper and then grow into a harder wallet all without having to change apps, right? So it's very cool, it's on test flight, it's gonna be, coming out of beta very soon. I highly recommend people go to, I think it's kovewallet dot com. join the testing groups, give feedback. It's fully open source, and uses BDK, it's working with the BDK guys to sort of improve BDK as well, because it's a good ta-testing ground for BDK And, yeah, all around great project, it's openSATS funded, and I think, I think it's gonna grow and it's gonna be a, a big deal. gotcha. just for" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:15", "start": 2114.9, "text": "listeners, it's covebitcoinwallet dot com, that's the address. Got it, perfect, thank you. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "35:20", "start": 2120.29, "text": "and then, Sparrow, Craig keeps on pushing. Sparrow's great. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a, it's a workhorse. It has a lot of features. You know, it is a bit more sort of like bloated in terms of UI, but because, you know, it has all the advanced features, right? But, you know, like if you're moving serious money, you need desktop wallets. You're not gonna do that on your phone, y-you know, y-you need to be able to inspect things further. And, you need to be able to have privacy features and things. So, Sparrow's doing great. Electrum, it's a, it's a mixed bag. I, it is sort of like, you know, it's the second wallet that ever existed in Bitcoin after Core. It is, it is, the, the cold base is like very complicated to review because it's older and it has a bunch of stuff added over time. they just added user space plugins, so if you don't know what that means, don't do it. Lots of room to, to, to be on there. but you know, like Electrum is there, it's being maintained, it is very helpful sometimes when you need to get out of a snag with older wallets. there is, Nunchuck, those guys are also pushing through, creating new things. you know, there's, the, the collaborative multisig is there, works great. you know, it works great to tap signer and Sat's cards same with Keeper. Keeper is a bit newer, it's, it's improving. what else?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "36:56", "start": 2216.12, "text": "You know, I-- and what I love about like all of these is that, like, you know, they all use seeds, right? Like, seed based, PSBT based, everything is interchangeable. You know, everything is vendor agnostic. It's, it's a great sort of place to be in, especially as things change. Right? Because honestly, like it's a high likelihood that none of the companies that are here now are here in twenty years from now, right? So, you know, being able to, to, to move things without the vendor being around Easily without needing special scripts and things, it's a huge fucking deal for the future, right? so, what other projects right now are doing great? Like Solana has an interesting proposition with, with how they do their, their degrading multisig, but you do have to rotate your TXOs, every time you spend. What else? there's Krux, if you're looking for a DIY hardware wallet to sort of like play around and make sure you always use DIY hardware wallets in multisig. you know, because those, those platforms are less secure, like Harden themselves. I'm pretty, pretty happy with that project too. also OpenSats funded fully open source. there, there's a lot going on. I mean, like, you know, it, it, it, I think because like single sig plus, plus phrase is so powerful, so good, works for most people, y-you know, like people sort of like stop looking, rightly so, right? But, but things are being developed and new ideas are coming in and, and I think, I think we are going towards a better place." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:37", "start": 2317.14, "text": "Yeah, interesting. And I think some of this miniscript stuff and the degrading multisig and these kinds of things, for now, as I understand, the timeout is like a little bit over a year, maybe a year and a half or a year and four months or something like that, and because of that, it requires like kind of a refresh every, like, let's say, once a year, something like that. and then maybe in the future, hypothetically, if people are okay with like a CTV or some, something like that, then maybe that would enable kind of more I guess more advanced forms of that, but for now, sort of yeah, I mean, listen, if we get Covenants" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "39:13", "start": 2352.68, "text": "and we get something like OpVault, you know, like it's gonna be a thousand times improvement in self custody, like, you know, it'll be huge. Like, you know, you, you're no longer in a position where you have to, like, you know, put fucking seeds in different, like, countries and stuff to that extent. Like, you can be in a much better place, and, and, and like we can have much more complex, policies and, and inheritance out in the future. You, you can do a lot of, like- a lot of, a setup that is chain dependent, not vendor dependent. I think it's, it's in everybody's interest to get something like OpVault on. It's a shame that covenant's discussion really sort of like goes down to like payments and feeding chickens online, where like, I think most people who are extremely conservative and, and more on the, on the store of value sort of like preference, preference stack, I think they'll greatly, they'd become, OpVault cheerleaders if they spent some time looking into it. But unfortunately, like, you know, the, the sales comes with like, you know, I wanna do DeGen shit on Bitcoin. you know, if you have time, go look it up Vault proposal, I, I think it's worth your, your time in your lobby." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:32", "start": 2432.31, "text": "Interesting. Yeah, fair point, I agree. and then also the, I think I just wanna, I guess, highlight something that you were talking about with seeds, right? It's important because maybe old hands will kinda know this stuff, but seeds are really cool because as an example, you could take like that same twelve words and recreate it or into another wallet, and so that- That gives you some help, like let's say there's a device failure for whatever reason or is a fire or whatever, and e- and it works even in the case of a multisig. So let's say this was like one in a two of three or one in a three of five, but this device, you know, broke or was in a fire or whatever, I could get another one, take the same twelve or twenty-four words, put it into that device, and it would still sign as the same key and it would still be a part of that key. Without the vendor." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "41:24", "start": 2484.48, "text": "That's the key. Without the vendor, you don't need to ask permission or, or contact anyone in order to do that. Like You know, like there, there is no server service or anybody else like between you and your coins being recovered. That's a superpower. It comes with more responsibility, but that is a superpower." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:50", "start": 2509.66, "text": "Yeah. So this kind of seeds as a superpower is an important point for people to understand. Now, I guess I agree with you on that point, but I think the counterplant, counterargument that you might hear from people is this kind of, \"Oh, everyday people shouldn't be handling key material,\" right? Which I think comes off as a little bit more of a sort of an ivory tower technocrat sort of idea," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "42:13", "start": 2532.68, "text": "but it's bullshit, right? Because like, listen, if you can't handle it, then they shouldn't even be buying Bitcoin in the first place. Like, if you're not willing to take responsibility, go buy some MicroStrategy. You're gonna probably get better returns. Like seriously, like realistically speaking, I mean, I'm not advertising go buy MS T R in that sense 'cause good news, right? Like, I mean, there is management risk on everything, right? But realistically speaking, y-y-you know, you buying some, some, like, if you're gonna, if you're gonna outsource the sovereignty anyways, then, then maybe just having that stuff in your broker account, you know, like- Maybe makes more sense, y-y-you know, like maybe they even give you more returns, right? So, I, I think that like, listen, if you're gonna own BTC and you need an in-between solution, absolutely find things that may have like trade-offs and, and it's a lot better than keeping coins on an exchange or having an SDR, but know that you must Learn and continue to improve your self custody and, and get to a point where you're sovereign. Otherwise, you're gonna end up fucked." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:23", "start": 2603.37, "text": "The lead sponsor of this show is BOLD, the best place to buy, sell, and save Bitcoin. For listeners in the US, BOLD lets you secure your financial future with complete peace of mind by integrating a low fee Bitcoin only brokerage with next gen multi sig vaults. With BOLD, you can smash buy Bitcoin or set a DCA plan for only zero 0.99% fees and seamlessly deposit the Bitcoin direct to your Bold Vault. The Bold Vault is a two or three collaborative multisig where you hold two keys and Bold holds one as a redundant backup protecting against loss or theft. You can use Trezor, Ledger or Coldcard hardware wallets to spin up a Bold Vault in just a few minutes and the Bold Vault is the only collaborative custody vault available with zero monthly fees. They're also offering zero fees on your first ten thousand dollars of Bitcoin buys and twenty five dollars of free Bitcoin when you buy a hundred dollars of Bitcoin. Bitcoin or more, try Bold today and upgrade your stacking experience over at getbold dot io. And now, back to the show. Yeah, it's important, it's an important reminder for a lot of people, you know, not your keys, not your coins, as we always say in the space, so it's important for people to remember that. so yeah, I guess that's kind of, you know, the self-custody aspect of it and the state of custody, as well as some of the cold card updates. I also wanted to chat to you, and I'm All this op-return drama and stuff like that. I'm curious, do you have a, a take on that? Do you have a position? What are you thinking about this op-return issue?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "44:54", "start": 2694.09, "text": "I have many takes, they'll probably get misrepresented. Like everything in Bitcoin. But, I, I think there's a few things going on. Like, first is, you know, there's a new batch of, of like GitHub maintainers. you know, it's a thanksless, it's a thankless job, it's hard, it's an impossible position, you can't please anyone. But I think the current crop just doesn't have the perspective, of, of like time, of like what Bitcoin was like, how we got here, you know? they, they don't have the patience with, you know, what they perceive people to be maybe less academic or less polite you know, they don't understand that that's where Bitcoin came from. y-you know, it was dark money. and, and a lot of the people who've been in the space forever are, are more interested in the bluntness than the politeness." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:55", "start": 2754.78, "text": "just to be clear here, are you referring there more to like the GitHub comments, because there were some very, you know, long-time contributors who were, you know, putting their comments on the mailing list, comments, people like, you know, Pitterrello and Luke Dasher and others, yeah? Yeah," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "46:08", "start": 2767.53, "text": "exactly. So, so like, I'm just talking first about the GitHub problem, right? Like, GitHub is, it is a centralized tool It is, you know, so much so that Microsoft bought them. you know, it ha- it, it's a very bad tool for rough consensus decentralized Protocols, okay? Because a, a centralized tool that has very poor, community management tools, you know, it indexes for it, pushes people to be dictators. Right? Because, you know, there's only so much time in their day too, and they don't wanna fucking deal with it, right? So there is that problem. Like Bitcoin should move out of GitHub and go to something like Nostr, y-you know, like at least for the conversation. I'm not saying like you don't even have to use Nostr or Git or anything like that, but like for the conversation should be in a decentralized place where people don't get fully disenfranchised or fully cut off from the discussion, right? the other thing is then there is Delpin Bitcoin, right? Like it's another centralized solution, it's somebody's server. You know, it's nice that the, the, the people who run it have the best intentions and they do put the backup publicly, right? So like people can download the backup and whatever, but still, it's a centralized place, it's not great. and then we have the mailing list. The mailing list is, you know, it's email, you know, it's a bit more open, the, the, the moderation is a bit more light-lighter handed So things get through, it's not perfect, but I think it's much better than the GitHub, discussion, moderation. So I'm, I'm, I'm extremely disappointed, and I, I've like barely lost all my faith in the capacity of the current team using GitHub to moderate Bitcoin. Right? Like, mind you, Bitcoin doesn't depend on GitHub, right? Like, you run your own node, you can do whatever you want, but realistically speaking, that's where the software gets managed and maintained is on GitHub, so it will be affected by it, wanting or not, right? so I think they should really look at themselves there. If they don't think they have the stomach to deal with, maybe they should find other people who do. you know, if it's not for you, and I understand, like most people don't want that fucking shit, like it's, I don't want it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:32", "start": 2912.0, "text": "Right, because I'm, I'm sure people would also say it's a, it's a thankless task. Yeah. And, but it's the task you chose to be a volunteer" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "48:38", "start": 2918.21, "text": "for, so, you know, eat the shit or like let somebody else do it. you know, that is the truth there. I also think that we arrived at a point now where maybe there is too much philanthropy in Bitcoin, maybe there's just too much money available for people to work on Bitcoin, and, and that makes it for more academic and less customer oriented And I think we need to find a balance where it's more customer oriented, so maybe we go back to a place where there's more core devs being sponsored, maintain, like, and, and like, maintained by industry other than philanthropy so that's maybe another sort of like power shift. And listen, it's not like none of these issues are, critical to Bitcoin to exist, right? Like all these things are just blips. You don't have to update your Bitcoin node. You can be running version fourteen, still runs, if you want SegWit, run version sixteen. But to be fair, there are vulnerabilities and things that- Yeah, but those vulnerabilities are all- No, but see, this is the thing, I, I don't subscribe to that because I- have nodes that are very old running, no problem. So most of the vulnerabilities found later, they aren't, they aren't mission critical for anybody that, that doesn't care if their node gets taken down here and there, right? Like if you're only concerned about your node crashing And you can just spin it up again, you don't care that much. a lot of these vulnerabilities are more concerned towards the Lightning problems, which require node to be online. Which" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:12", "start": 3012.31, "text": "requires liveness and online checking and, you know, watching the chain. And this" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "50:16", "start": 3016.01, "text": "is again, it's like payments hijacking the Bitcoin focus a bit more than it should. because technically there is no vulnerabilities that I know of that would make me too concerned, with, with some versions back on Bitcoin. So, so there is a bit of that, there's a lot of nuance being lost, you know, in that as well." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "50:42", "start": 3041.9, "text": "and, and you know, like it's changes of guard come with a lot of mess, and, you know, and, and I think But, but I think, you know, the current team is at a risk of essentially, you know, completely," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "50:58", "start": 3058.25, "text": "disengaging with a lot of industry I think, I think, you know, essentially industry that isn't fairly integrated with a lot of the philanthropy is, isn't as well heard as the rest, which, you know, money talks, right? But nobody wants to, nobody wants to like say out loud that money talks when it comes to philanthropy as well," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:24", "start": 3084.17, "text": "right? Yeah. I, I'm curious your take on this idea because when you talk to some Bitcoin Core developers and- And people in that, you know, ecosystem, they might say, \"Actually, there's not enough core developers.\" They might say, \"Actually, think about the size of the ecosystem and a relatively small number of Bitcoin core full-time developers, which might be, I don't know, under a hundred, maybe under fifty.\"" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "51:48", "start": 3107.67, "text": "Well, listen, any, any, any team in the history of all teams will always say we're underfunded and understaffed, right? I mean, maybe, maybe if the priorities were a bit different, they wouldn't feel so overstretched, right? Like You know, there's a lot of things that, like, you know, academically speaking, they are mission critical, but practically speaking aren't. That's, that's what I keep on saying, like, if you want to run your business with Bitcoin being version fourteen or sixteen, you can, you still can, no problem. Right? you know, are you gonna miss some features? Are you gonna have some issues? Absolutely, but, you know, you can also patch software yourself. You know, a lot of miners patch the software themselves, they're not running stock core. So, you know, it's, it's a, it's a matter of like party and, and like taking everything with a grain of salt. I think just taking everything with a grain of salt, like when people complain about things, is a big deal. Listen, you know, if you think you're, like, you know, core doesn't follow priorities that you care or doesn't pay enough or whatever, I mean, go, go work somewhere else." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "52:57", "start": 3177.07, "text": "You know, like it's, nobody has a god-given right to work on core. And, and, and it's like when I say that, like, it's not out of a place where it's like, \"I'm extremely grateful for the people who do the work, who do, do the moderation, who do all this.\" But I think we have to be very careful with deifying people. We have to be very careful with as- ascribing more value than we should to some things, to some features. Ascribe more risk than there is to some things, you know, because whenever you ask an engineer, \"Yeah, the airplane's gonna fall,\" you know, it's not perfect, right? Like But that's not true, right? Like it still flies, right? Like and software will never be perfect. So I think it's very important to, to sort of like have a more cool-headed approach to assessing risk, assessing priority, assessing priorities on, on Bitcoin Core. And, and I think it's in a great place, it's working great You know, everybody is making money, y-y-you know, you know, you can send transactions without permission, you know, the world's not gonna end, and, people just need to remember that. And, and I think when, when you have people who are more consumer oriented than academic oriented, they often, are, are a little bit more realistic about risk and, and priorities. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:21", "start": 3260.8, "text": "Okay. So can you, do you have a specific comment about the specific- Op-return issue, which is sort of opening up the limits on op-return as opposed to keeping it more locked down. Do you have a, a take on that specific issue or your, your, your kind of... I mean, like op-return," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "54:37", "start": 3276.63, "text": "op-return limitations came, Jesus, way back then. I can't remember the date anymore, maybe twenty fourteen or maybe before that. Yeah, I think that was the original op-return was. Yeah. So like, you know, it was born out of the fact that like people didn't want CPE on it, you know, like bad evil images on it it was a risk, Bitcoin was very small, so, you know, you had to be careful with, like what was on it in case there was the, the, the, the, say, black flag operation on it or something. so, you know, so that was, that was changed, and then we had a new set of, of dynamics, right? Because, you know, nothing in Bitcoin is a very simple change. Whenever you change something, a bunch of other things no longer work in the same way economically speaking, right? So, you know, that's what we have now." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "55:32", "start": 3332.29, "text": "I, I don't like, I don't have, I can see both sides of the conversation on this one I, I don't personally have a strong opinion either way, but I respect the fact that both sides should be able to express their opinions on on the GitHub PR, as unsavory and as annoying, as, as noisy as it comes. Listen, you know, if people are there just calling people's names, fuck it, you know, like, you know, mute the comment. You know, like, but don't block people out of it. You know, listen, if they are there calling people's names, we know, like, listen, if they're calling people's names and also providing some technical, substance, maybe you let it fly, right? Because remember, the goal here isn't to not be offended, the goal here is to To get to a, a consensus truth, right? So in order to get to a consensus truth," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "56:38", "start": 3397.65, "text": "you know, you might need to hear Technical messaging, you know, in a way that isn't polite, then I'm okay with that. now if people are just there saying like \"fuck you\" and that's their only comment, then \"fuck you back\" and, and sort of like mute them, you know?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:53", "start": 3412.72, "text": "Yeah, gotcha. one other thing, because, you know, things are changing over time, right? It's not that Bitcoin exists in a vacuum. I think one example, I'm curious to get your reaction on this as well, one example that might have arguably changed some of this stuff is BitVM" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:10", "start": 3429.73, "text": "A verifier kind of proving, model has enabled a bunch of either, you know, L2s or, you know, real L2s to think of Bitcoin as being this data availability layer, right? Because what, what is, what has it motivated? It's motivated them to think about trying to, you know, anchor things into the chain And the kind of debate is sort of, should they just be pushed to put it into the UTXO set and therefore spam or pollute the UTXO set, or should, you know, they be allowed to, let's say, put more into the op return because maybe it's, it's kind of seen like a harm minimization thing. So I guess I'm curious your reaction. Do you agree or disagree that, you know, it's because some of these things have changed around Bitcoin, things like BitVM and the associated, L2s that wanna use something, BitVM or Or BitVM style, because of their sequencer or something like that." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "58:07", "start": 3486.83, "text": "Yeah, I, I, I don't. I, I mean, like honestly, like most of the BitVM stuff is like completely like Rupergolberg machines. It's like, in my opinion, like Too complicated, very difficult to do. I hope somebody manages to make it work like in a way that doesn't break things, but like, or, or that makes people lose money, but, you know Honestly, like, I am now less interested in, in all this sort of complicated shit, personally. you know, like, please, by all means, investigate, but like, you know, we don't need to change, like, our priorities or Bitcoin in order to make these things work. We shouldn't. We should actually give less priority to these things, you know, go, go work on, you know, cross input, signature aggregation, go work on things that are a little bit more pressing, you know, go work on more privacy, with the tools we have" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:07", "start": 3547.1, "text": "Yeah. Okay, and here's the other point I wanna ask you, because culturally, I'm with you, right? I'd rather just, hey, yeah, I would rather just, you know, not have these people, you know, spam the UTXO set. But hypothetically, let's say the op-return limit isn't, you know, raised or taken away, and they were to start just spamming the UTXO set At that point, are you- There is no such thing as spam, in my opinion. If it's paid, it's paid. There is no spam. Okay, so would you- Okay, what about the term \"pollute\"? Would you be okay with the term \"polluting\" the UTXO set? I mean, honestly, I think" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "59:42", "start": 3582.08, "text": "the term I like is, \"I don't give a shit.\"" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:45", "start": 3585.45, "text": "So you don't care if it makes, the UTXU TXO set just continue to blow out?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "59:50", "start": 3589.96, "text": "Are they paying? You, you know, I, I think, I think people should be good citizens of, of the common" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "01:00:00", "start": 3600.03, "text": "of the commons, but, you know, like, I, I don't think we should care. I mean, I, I don't care. Like, I, I don't even wanna engage in the discussion because it's pointless. Like, it really is. Like You know, people can already make some of these changes on their nodes, and, you know, like, i-it is a fight for the defaults, and the fight for the defaults is always gonna be the fight for the defaults. I think everybody on all sides is just wasting their time I, I think most things get priced out, and if they don't get priced out, then let them feed the miners." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:35", "start": 3635.55, "text": "Okay. Yeah. And then I guess the other question people would be interested to know is your thoughts on Core as contrasted with other implementations, whether that's Not or BTC-D or Libcoin or whatever else? Do you see this current debacle as it might encourage the use of a- alternative implementations other than Bitcoin Core?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "01:00:58", "start": 3658.62, "text": "I, I don't see a problem with, like, I think it's great that, like, people try to implement other things. I, I, I just tweeted actually about the- You know, OpenSats may be taking applications for Bitcoin or not. I think people shouldn't be afraid of competition." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "01:01:18", "start": 3678.72, "text": "but, you know, it's, it's, it's tricky, right? Like, Bitcoin Core has a monopoly on Bitcoin, right? Like, nine, nine percent of the, the, the, the, the nodes are Bitcoin Core nodes. It's impossible to know for sure, of course, because people can just flag whatever they want. But, you know, that's the reality, right? and, I, I think, I think it's good for people to experiment, for people to try to create new things, for people to fork core and try to maintain it in different ways. I think Core needs to feel a little bit of competition sometimes for the, the-- for the management, might be the wrong word, but, you know, for the lack of a word, for the management of the conversation. You know, like, it would be great if somebody just forked Core on GitHub and, and took like enough people with them That are interested to have the discussion in a different sort of like set of, of, of tolerance on the discussion language, for example, right? Like maybe, maybe that's, that's enough, you know? But I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see more competition on that. I, I feel like people get too comfortable, with their positions, they get too comfortable with power and power corrupts, and it's not great. And, and, you know, like, you know, I think so far the best maintainer that Bitcoin ever had was Orion. You know, like he, he always went above and beyond to make sure To not look like a censor, to, to try to be neutral and perceived neutral, which is more important than even being neutral. So that the discourse isn't about censorship, the discourse is about the technical merits of things. I, I think like that is the, the crux of all this is like, how can you keep things In, in a perception level where everybody feel like it is a fair technical discussion, it's not a censored technical discussion based on language quality" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03:52", "start": 3832.94, "text": "Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think there's a fair criticisms around, the way the comments were moderated. I think- Yeah, it might be. Yeah, there's a lot of back and forth, and it, it is quite a niche, kind of technical issue that requires a, a decent level of understanding, and I think, yeah, I think we're, we're sort of seeing a lot of people just kind of spouting off, but, yeah, I don't know. I guess, do you have any thoughts on where this resolves, or is it just kind of, it'll blow over and just, you know, it won't matter that much, in the" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "01:04:26", "start": 3866.75, "text": "I don't think it'll matter too much in the long run. It's, it's, all these things are kind of irrelevant, like it really is irrelevant. Like, it's like people are burning Their reputations, people are burning, their patience, people are burning, their capital, people are burning their energy in irrelevant shit. It, it really is, like, it's, You know, but it" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:04:50", "start": 3890.05, "text": "is what it is. Yeah. Okay. Well, I guess any final comments on, I guess from the open side, as you mentioned, you touched on this earlier that, you're, you were looking to potentially fund, other, developers, Yeah, try stuff, man. Try" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "01:05:09", "start": 3909.22, "text": "stuff and apply, as long as it has like reasonable technical merit, it's something useful, there is value to the commons, I think, I think you have a fair shake at being funded" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:05:20", "start": 3920.99, "text": "Great, okay, well, look, I think that's a good spot to wrap up there. so listeners check out coin guide dot co- coin guide dot com and of course, opensats, is it opensats dot org, right? I'll just check the website. Opensats dot org, yeah. Yeah. and so, yeah, great to chat, NVK, and, yeah, I'll see you around soon. Hey man, thanks for having me. It was a pleasure." } ] }