{ "episodeId": "SLP751", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "nvk": { "name": "NVK", "role": "guest", "tag": "NVK" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:00", "start": 0.0, "text": "Hi everyone, welcome back to Stefan Lovera podcast. Rejoining me is my friend NvK, and we're gonna try something today. We're gonna try a quarterly self-custody update. So NvK and I have pulled together a few items, and we're gonna just, talk a little bit. So NvK, any kind of overall comments before we get into the first item on the list? Any broad themes you wanna touch on for, let's say, self-custody this last quarter?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "00:22", "start": 22.0, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I think, I think, real A little while, like people were just like, \"Buy my stock, buy my stock,\" right? and, and I, I think it's kind of like, it's always good for people to be reminded that there is a massive difference between real Bitcoin And, you know, and like Bitcoin exposure through some stocks, like nothing wrong with the stocks. I mean, you know, some people that works for them, but, you know, I, I think for most people, especially people who aren't seasoned, stock traders and things, like they should just stick it to real Bitcoin, you know? Like buy the thing, stick it in your cold card, and then, move on with your life, right? Like, this is a long game. This is not a, you know, what is it? Like, it's not a get Game, yeah. But, but whatever was, maybe I got this wrong, but, anyways. Yeah. Point is, it's nice to see self custody sort of like, you know, being sort of called out again, coming back into the fray, yeah, coming back, cool, being cool again. That's right. You know, nothing like being a sovereign. Yeah, cool. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:29", "start": 89.0, "text": "let's start. We'll, we'll try to, keep a good pace with it. I know, we were, we had a Sparrow wallet on our list. I know there" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "01:43", "start": 103.0, "text": "Yeah, I mean, like, you know, like they have like, silent payments now, dust detection, w- they're, like, I mean, Craig's been doing a lot of work on silent payments, right? The, the frigate thing, which is like a, a kind of like a, a silent payment detection server, right? they, they watch the index and then they find your payments. I think you mentioned to me that- Yeah. And" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:07", "start": 127.0, "text": "I guess the, in-- just the high-level point I would mention for the listeners It's like a thousand X speed up using GPU acceleration to quickly do the silent payment scanning. So that's kind of a really interesting, point because I think Craig sees this as like, look, one of the big problems in the ecosystem right now is a lot of people are doing address reuse. So what's one way to help stop that? Hey, it's silent payments. And I think the point he would make is going back to the early days, you know, changing from the kind of key pool, ex-appro-approach to the HD wallet was kind of a lift too, He sees it the same way, like silent payments is a step forward and it will reduce address reuse, so that's kind of a good thing from, from a perspective of if we can get more people to use that for donations or for exchange, deposit and withdrawal. So I think that's kind of the key kind of takeaway there. It's," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "02:58", "start": 178.0, "text": "it's a very cool spec, but it's a massive diff. Like, it's, it's like implementing silent payments isn't trivial. i-it's a big job, so that's, that's why I think you've seen sort of adoption being very slow, especially from the hardware side. there's, there's a lot to it you know," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:18", "start": 198.0, "text": "yeah, and I think that's the point actually in the podcast I had with him, he mentioned that like basically hardware wallets could theoretically support Solana payments, but they haven't yet, and as you said, it's probably because it's a bit of a lift on, on your side, especially you're a hardware wallet, you know, guy, you're a manufacturer yourself, so, w- I guess from your perspective, what are the main challenges you see there?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "03:39", "start": 219.0, "text": "Well, I, I mean, like it's just the amount of code you have to write You know, Musig, it's like, it's gigantic. So that means, y-you know, like with hardware, especially secure hardware, like you can't just, like, you know, add gigantic like code changes, right? Of" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:59", "start": 239.0, "text": "course, because you have limited memory to begin with or how- And also the security," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "04:02", "start": 242.0, "text": "the security concern, right? I mean, like, you know, for the software wallets like Sparrow, like the, the concern about security is a lot lower, right? Because, you know, it's already assumed that the computer is kind of compromised, right? There is that like he will depend on hardware wallets to keep the seeds secure, like real seeds, right? Maybe you have some, some seeds of less money there, but, you know, for your real money, you do it multi-sig or you keep it in a hardware wallet or both, you know? So, so the, like, when it comes to software wallets, like, you have more design space and more sort of leeway to, to a-adopt like these gigantic code changes, right? On the hardware side, you know, like, you have to be ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra conservative, so it takes, it's gonna take time. I-It is definitely on our list, by the way. We, we have, we have it there. I really wanna support it because it solves a lot of payment problems, like for example, for OpenSaaS, right? Like, it would be great if we just had, like, you know, a payment--" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:05", "start": 305.0, "text": "Right. You could tell each of your grantees, \"Hey, give me your SP address and we'll send it to you that way.\" That's right. You know?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "05:11", "start": 311.0, "text": "you know, and, and many such cases, right? maybe we can even have it on the CoinKite shopping cart, you know, like it's just like a CoinKite payment address, right? it, it, it's a very interesting proposal, it's very good, it's just a lot of software to write to support it. So, but I think it'll happen, I think it'll come." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:33", "start": 333.0, "text": "While we're there, might as well talk about the ColdCard side. any updates there? I know the big one this quarter would have been MK5, right? Your new device. any, any updates you wanna add on the ColdCard side of the house? Yeah," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "05:45", "start": 345.0, "text": "I mean, you know, we released Mark 5. I can't remember if we talked Better case, Gorilla Glass, the keyboard is amazing, there's NFC is much better on it. It's just like, it was like a very good evolution for Mark V. on the software side, there was a release for both Mark V really, Mark and Q, which was a BIP three twenty-two, so proof of reserves. This is really cool, you can scan and then BAM, you have a proof of your reserves, without doxing, which is really cool. And then, with stores, so for example, if you have old paper wallets, this is for OGs really, so old paper wallets, so with wallet import format, yeah, that's right, yeah, it is for" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:30", "start": 390.0, "text": "people," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "06:31", "start": 391.0, "text": "we support importing that into, 'cause the, the problem was this, like people would get like open dimes or old paper wallets and stuff. And then they would rely on, you know, computers which they can't trust to, to move, say, a thousand coins from an open dime, like many such cases. And then we're like, you know, this isn't great, so let's support importing that with straight into the cold card so that you can sign it. From the cold card to sweep those funds, so that, that's sort of like supporting a lot of OGs there. and then, transaction input explorer, so that helps with that as well, and then the edge firmware adds Musig 2. So Musig 2 is, in my opinion, the, the winner of the sort of like the more scripted type, transactions, I, I think, I think it's actually like it has more adoption than mini script, it has more adoption than most of the options it is the standard that BigGo uses, so we have a lot of enterprise users, a lot of like large holders that use BigGo, co-signing with Gold Cards using MoSign too. and, and then there's like a bunch of other scripts out there and a bunch of other things going on. I, I think it's like a good spec. it's still on edge, it's new implementation and sort of going forward with that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:53", "start": 473.0, "text": "Yeah, actually, it reminds me, I, I remember speaking back in the day, maybe two or three years ago, I did an episode with Brandon Black, Redden Code, and that episode was actually about how BitGo got Music to support, so it's kind of interesting to see sort of the, yeah, yeah. and then, so I guess actually just on that, like, I guess we're getting into this, policy co-signing kind of area, right? Like, do you see that as a big evolution or a big- Let's say more and more users, more and more people are gonna start using this kind of co-signing style or no?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "08:27", "start": 507.0, "text": "I, like, I generally think that, a-and I can see this from like our users, from our competitor users. Reality is like, you know, having a, a metal plate, plate with a seal on it, it's like, you know, ultra easy for most people. Like they, you know, people have held a secret before or like a bar of gold before, you know, you stick that in a drawer and an envelope, for most people that works, you A passphrase to it, like super easy as well, and then you can stick that in a safe deposit box. That works as a chain of custody for most people for, you know, inheritance or other purposes. i-it is ultra simple, that's the thing. It's like you're not relying on a third party for co-signing, you're not relying on, you know, like multiple devices on your desk to sign, like You know, like just operationally, it's so easy. so I think for most people, that's where we're at. a-and then, you know, of course, like if you're running a business, if you have more cosigners, if you have like substantially more coins, then yes, then like either multi-Sig two or straight up multi-Sig, you know, P2SH type, you know, i-is sort of like very viable. It's the better choice there. Exactly." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:40", "start": 580.0, "text": "Any thoughts on while we're there, actually, 'cause this is also I've heard with, Arvind out, and he, came out with SigBash recently, and I'm sure you're, you're probably, you, you might have seen it. Any thoughts on SigBash as kind of a, another form of a cosigner using like zk, proofs of things to try to give yourself, to give people sort of covenant-like functionality without covenants? Any thoughts on SigBash?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "10:04", "start": 604.0, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I think it's very cool. I, again, I think the problem is that like, a lot of this very, like, these are good specs, they're fairly mature, conceptually Like new technically, right, 'cause it just got implemented, but like they're fairly mature technic, conceptually. The problem is I think a lot of them arrive late. So," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:27", "start": 627.0, "text": "so you think it would have been better if it came a few years ago? Yeah, if it came earlier, they would-- You think there's like a path dependence that like the industry's already formed on certain ideas, and they wanna just stick on those ideas instead of going this" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "10:39", "start": 639.0, "text": "other way with Sibash? I think it's just, it's just too many people already have their, Less coins. That's true. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:49", "start": 649.0, "text": "the whales are already- No, yeah, most of the whales are already- But not just that, like," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "10:52", "start": 652.0, "text": "you know, remember there was the, like, the fish, the crabs, the whatever was like the, the different size of- Yeah, the shrimp and the dolphins and whatever, right? Whatever the whale and whatever, exactly, whatever, SeaWorld's, explanation was. But the, the point is like the adoption waves come and people have substantially less coins, like, and, and it's like power law sort" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:17", "start": 677.0, "text": "Like AnchorWatch and some of these other guys, they were looking at SigBash maybe from a business use. So maybe it's not at the individual kind of hodler level, but like businesses might see a use for that, right? That's right." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "11:27", "start": 687.0, "text": "I, I think, I think when you get into, like, a more complex- custodial solutions, right? Because, you know, you, you have a lot of checks and balances in a corporation or whatever, a treasury like that. I think you might see some of those things. But then on the other side, you know, like I, I like those corps also choose to do things that are the least novel as well. They're very conservative when they come into- Right. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:53", "start": 713.0, "text": "they're also just going to music too. They're just doing straight multisig. They're not gonna do the fancy stuff." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "11:57", "start": 717.0, "text": "Yeah. I, I really think the path to pedagogy is the best for this. Like, I, I think it's, it's, you know, we'll see it. Maybe some novel products will come into the market that just do it like so well and s-- for like very specific case scenarios that just sort of" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:15", "start": 735.0, "text": "That's right. That's a whole new use case, or maybe it's like integral to the business case, to the use at all. So maybe in those cases, it'll be, it'll really find some legs there, and in other cases, look, people will just default to what they already know and, and are comfortable with. I think" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "12:27", "start": 747.0, "text": "so." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:28", "start": 748.0, "text": "so let's move on. what about Liana? So I think they came out with a new version fourteen. Any updates you wanna share on the Liana side? So" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "12:35", "start": 755.0, "text": "they support multiple wallets, which every wallet should support multiple wallets Like, you know, you need your spending, your cousins, your, you know, this, your dad, your dad, your dad. Like, you need multiple wallet support, right? Like it's, it's like multiple bank accounts. Like, under your login, your bank account, yeah, like, whatever, yeah. You, you need multiple accounts. and then, safety net, recovery key product, I'm not super familiar with. I imagine it's something they host, and they change their dust defaults. Everybody's lowering their dust defaults." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:16", "start": 796.0, "text": "Well, that's the function of price, right? As numbers go up. Although, hey, yes, right now we're in the bottom of the bear, or hopefully we're the bottom of the bear, maybe we're going, who knows? But, obviously over time, some of these numbers have to get changed, in terms of dust limits and things like this. And then, Nunchuk. So also, you know, those guys are doing Taproot multisig, also the AI side of it. So I thought they-- that was interesting that they put out an AI agent CLI. now, on one hand, you could be like, \"Whoa, I, I don't want AI touching my coins and stuff like that,\" but obviously if you restrict it in certain ways and it's kind of, time-- sandboxed, any thoughts on, like, this kind of nunchuck AI CLI for your Bitcoin?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "14:00", "start": 840.0, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I, I think it's cool. Like, you know, Lock inheritance, more options, I guess. The, the AgenTech AI CLI is interesting, like I can see some people using it, starting to use it. I'm not sure yet what the format of something like that is gonna be. Coinbase has their, what is it, four o two X or whatever? Was there shitcoin and there's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:26", "start": 866.0, "text": "a bit of a competition there, right? Because, you know, there's L four o two, like the lightning one, and then there's Coinbase's base thing and everyone else's, everyone's got their own idea that they're trying to push, and then maybe it's a distribution" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "14:37", "start": 877.0, "text": "controversial opinion, yeah. get your tweets ready. I think that, the Aegentec payments, hype is gonna die down this next, couple quarters. I think the Aegentec, craze that happened with With, with OpenClaw and Hermes is gonna sort of slow down a bit in this, this next part of the year, I" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:01", "start": 901.0, "text": "think, so not just agentic payments, but just like even the OpenClaw and Hermes thing, like agents in general" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "15:09", "start": 909.0, "text": "It's a lot of fun to play with. I think a lot of people are finding out that's also a little too convoluted still. I, I think like we" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:16", "start": 916.0, "text": "got-- So you're saying it's kind of like it's not quite there yet in terms of practical use. I think it is for" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "15:21", "start": 921.0, "text": "very technical people, but most very technical people I, I know that know AI well end up not using like, autonomous agent tech AI that much. They just use like molds, like you just do everything essentially through your like agent, like a code The agent harness." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:39", "start": 939.0, "text": "Yeah. As in like you're just manually prompting it. That's right. But like if you're smart and you know what you're doing, you, you kind of manage it that way instead of having-" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "15:47", "start": 947.0, "text": "Or like people who have like some coordination. I, I find that most people using the, the sort of, open-clothe style, agent, agentic AI, thing is like, it's more people who aren't technical, because they, they, you know, they don't know how to code or they don't know how to use the Agents to do the thing for them or to, to coordinate the thing for them. I think what we're missing is like a couple more cycles of, advancement on that part just to make it a little bit more, A little bit less like glued with, with, so it's kind of like," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:27", "start": 987.0, "text": "you see some long-term value there," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "16:29", "start": 989.0, "text": "but it's not quite huge value. No, no, no, it's, it's huge, absolutely huge value. It's just that like, it's too brittle, right? Like the stuff breaks too much and then people end up wasting too much of their productive time fixing it, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:40", "start": 1000.0, "text": "Well, our friend, Brad Mills is always basically always posting about this. Brad Mills, Brad Mills, Brad Mills, Brad Mills," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "16:53", "start": 1013.0, "text": "Brad Mills, Brad Mills, Brad Mills, Brad This is already getting much better, I think OpenCL is like crap, so like we are like, say, two, three quarters away from it being substantially better, and then also just like easier ways to deploy it so that you're not like, you know, like spinning your disks trying to figure out how to do stuff. it's getting there, but like we, we definitely went through like a slight sort of like hype cycle, right? Like, like a peak. Yeah. Now," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:21", "start": 1041.0, "text": "well, the classic, you know, Gartner hype cycle, like the overinflated- Related expectations and then drop and then it's like- Yeah, it dropped. That's" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "17:27", "start": 1047.0, "text": "right. We, we are now going up again, but slower. yeah, yeah, slower, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:33", "start": 1053.0, "text": "Okay, cool. Let's move on. We got, Cove as well. So Praveen, is doing this, you know, phone wallet that can pair with a cold card and stuff. any updates there? Yeah," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "17:43", "start": 1063.0, "text": "so, so, Cove is my favorite sort of like easy phone wallet to send people to. It's like, it's got a lot of like really nice advanced features for people that need it, but they're sort of like tucked away or they're sort of like invisible, but they're there, which is nice. You know, it supports all the things that I think a phone wallet should support, and, you know, and he keeps on pushing out, that's, OpenSATS grantee, by the way. and, yeah, I mean, you know, they just exited, beta for Android, they support now, I think, It's like the, the, you know, it's the phone wallet I wish existed, it exists now. I think it's a good sort of like, separate, a vein from Nunchuk, so Nunchuk's very powerful, it's got lots in there, it's a very good wallet, but then like Cove is sort of like a bit simpler, I can just send new people there, they can get their, their job done, you know, like I use it myself for a bunch of stuff. I think it's great, like, Some, some different take on it, especially for UX, and yeah, it's a good wallet. Blue Wallet," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:56", "start": 1136.0, "text": "they've also" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "18:56", "start": 1136.0, "text": "got an update. Yeah, so they have a, they did a full UI refresh. They have a very large user base, you know, very decent phone wallet as well. I, I think the hardware wallet support there is pretty sort of like weak, but that's not their sort of like their, their target, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:12", "start": 1152.0, "text": "That's not their main thing, I guess. Yeah. But I mean, I think for the, for them, they Recommendation for a lot of people. So I think that, you know, it's kind of in this industry, if you've been around for a while, then you tend to, you can build up a, you know, a user base or whatever over time. Bitkey, so that's a big one. I know they've got a new, device version out because the main criticism of Bitkey V1 was that it doesn't have a screen and right to this, this concept of clear signing and knowing what you're signing. So I think that's the big, that's probably Version of the, the device. No," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "19:50", "start": 1190.0, "text": "they still don't support real, unilateral exit, so I can't recommend." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:56", "start": 1196.0, "text": "Yeah, I think they have this emergency exit kit, but, Yeah, but you know, like, it's" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "19:59", "start": 1199.0, "text": "one of those things, like, classic sort of like corporate solution to things where it's like, you know, we have this thing, but it's really more for marketing, like, you know, they're still deploying, like, the, the, the firmware for the thing is auto-update, so you're essentially at the mercy of them So that's not great. and then, you know, it's okay for noobs, but then like you can't unilaterally exit either without the APK that they control and release. Like, I think the original idea was to have a script like that, like, for, for Sparrow or something like that that would sort of like help you exit in case they are no longer-- or, 'cause it's very common for big corps to kill projects, right? Like, \"Oh, it's not selling. Well, great, kill it.\" Right? and, and I, you know, I'm scared of, you know, people getting shit out of luck there, you know, or they're considered terrorists now or whatever, right? Like, it's like- Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:55", "start": 1255.0, "text": "I'm probably not as against it in the way that, I think if it helps someone self-cuss that wouldn't otherwise not have, you know, it's better than nothing, it's better than leaving it on exchange, right? Oh, no, for that I agree, but then just" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "21:06", "start": 1266.0, "text": "use like, you know, Cove. You know, and backup to iCloud. There, there is no difference." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:12", "start": 1272.0, "text": "So you would rather they just have a phone, like a straight phone hot wallet, yeah? And, and backup to iCloud. Yeah, I guess I, I, I, it's sort of-- If that's the target market, right? Like, if the target market" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "21:22", "start": 1282.0, "text": "is like people who have like low BTC and just need a place to get started, I mean, then, then just use so-- something you don't even need the hardware." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:31", "start": 1291.0, "text": "Yeah, I guess. And I guess the other thing with Bitkey is they obviously are I believe it'll be integrated with like Cash App and things like that, so then the, you know, the Cash App, let's say the noob who buys Bitcoin on Cash App, can like, it's all kind of in a slick, integrated interface. So maybe that's also like, it's because of their distribution, right? Because Block, Square, Cash App-" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "21:52", "start": 1312.0, "text": "I, I wish they made a, a, like a Bitcoin wallet where like, they don't need the hardware. 'Cause like, if, if you're, if you have like noobs buying fifty dollars worth of Bitcoin, Weird, like it just doesn't make sense, like the, like the type of security, the type of price, the type of integration. you know, maybe it will in the future. I, I mean, like I, I just hope that they add the, you know, the, the proper unilateral exit sort of solution." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:25", "start": 1345.0, "text": "Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, in theory, I, I, I agree with that point, but I think also at the same time we have to remember the, the pragmatist angle of course, because look, we can talk about, you know What, what are some of the biggest wallets out there, like Trust Wallet by Binance or maybe Coinbase or something? No, it's brutal. Exactly. It is brutal. You know what I mean? So it's kind of like, you have to remember the scale of this thing 'cause like the size of Cash App and Block is just such a level that they could actually get a lot of-- they could really move the needle on self-custody. With this, you know, as an example. So it's kind of like, in theory, yeah, we want more people to, you know, do it the right way, but there's kind of that pragmatist angle of like, it's still better than what came before. So, you know, so it's kind of, that's why I'm sort of in the middle there. But, yeah, fair enough. let's move on. Crooks, that's a, that's a, Brazilian, yeah," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "23:17", "start": 1397.0, "text": "another open Sats Like progressing, sort of adding more features, and, I don't know if mnemonic XOR is, is the same as our C XOR. I haven't checked but yeah, like they, you know, they keep on progressing. It's an interesting DIY project. I think it's important to be out there. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:44", "start": 1424.0, "text": "I think we've got here on our list seeds owners, or they got taproot by default." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "23:48", "start": 1428.0, "text": "Yeah. So like, I'm not sure if taproot by default is a good idea. you know, there's a lot of wallets that don't support Taproot, change addresses correctly, like there's still like some, Some, concerns around that. I, I think default should still be legacy, but that's just my personal opinion. it's nice that they had translations. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:14", "start": 1454.0, "text": "Okay. alright. and then, Bitcoin Safe. I don't actually know a lot about this one. I think, you might have put this one on the list. Do, do you know much about them? Yeah," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "24:22", "start": 1462.0, "text": "it's like a, another open source grantee. so like, you know, it's like a-- Like, it's nice to From scratch and build like a whole sort of, a software solution for, self custody and sort of like, kind of like studying, you know, like it's almost like rebuilding, say, Electrum or rebuilding Sparrow or something like that from scratch and, and putting a lot of stuff into it. you know, that's, that's his project, and he's got some, some interesting sort of like Nostr integrations as well. Gotcha." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:56", "start": 1496.0, "text": "And I see here they've got compact block filters as well, so that's an interesting one because maybe it'll- Allows people to just kind of quickly get up and get started without, you know, having to do the full chainsync and everything, so that's maybe interesting for, again, for some users who might not have otherwise, you know, used it, yeah, with their own node. and then Electrum updates, I know, actually, I, funnily enough, I caught up with, I saw Thomas V from Electrum in, Prague recently, so it looks like they're doing some stuff on, you know, trying to get the lightning stuff, better and a few things there. And, do you have any updates you wanna share on the Electrum side as well?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "25:33", "start": 1533.0, "text": "no, I mean, that, that was it. you know, they, they just keep on pushing lightning Work well and, you know, they keep on plowing through it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:46", "start": 1546.0, "text": "Yeah. And, BDK, anything on BDK? Bitcoin Development Kit? Yeah." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "25:50", "start": 1550.0, "text": "So, so Bitcoin, B-BDK three came out, well, the, the release candidate came out, and they now have the Kyoto, CBF now default. And, I mean, BDK is amazing. Like, it, it really is a great project. Steve runs it. and, it's like a Rust, Bitcoin development And kit in a way, so if you're building a wallet, so for example, Cove is based on BDK, you know, a lot of other wallets are based on BDK, it's a good solution so that like a lot of the hard crypto stuff is done by people who like do a lot of reviewing it, understand it, and then, you know, people can build sort of the softer part of the wallet, right, the business logic, what they wanna support in terms of Bitcoin features, and the UX on top of something that's well- Reviewed and used by many people. It's, it's a great sort of model." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:48", "start": 1608.0, "text": "Yeah, so something even from my side, like when I talk to people, I, I talk to developers in the space, and many of them are saying, \"Hey, yeah, we're gonna build on BDK,\" or they like to build on, you know, that stack. So, it's, it seems to be popular, so, you know, good on them, doing good work out there. what else, have I got on my side? I'm noticing, you know, a lot of movement and development around things like SDKs and daemons, right? So as an example, BARK recently launched, right? So they launched Mainnet, I did a podcast with Steven Roos about that. So they have BARK SDK and BARK D, BARK daemon. So that's kind of an easy one, people can now do stuff with that or Breeze SDK, and then there's Phoenix D, it's also like Phoenix wallet, but the same team behind that have made like Phoenix D as a daemon that's been around Looking to take payment, these are like daemons that you can integrate, or some of them have like integrations with BTC Pay Server, things like that. so yeah, curious if you have any thoughts, like, I mean, especially, I mean, I, I presume for Coincard, you've kind of got your own setup that you're doing." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "27:59", "start": 1679.0, "text": "Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we have, we have a monster that we've built over the years. But that's also because you've been" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:04", "start": 1684.0, "text": "around for so long, you know, like if you were starting a new thing today," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "28:13", "start": 1693.0, "text": "That I've noticed, there's, there's a lot of JavaScript stuff. I'm not a fan, but- Right. So for you, it's a security concern, that's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:19", "start": 1699.0, "text": "why you wanna sort of do your own thing." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "28:21", "start": 1701.0, "text": "Yeah, that's right. Oh, I, I, I made a, a, an alpha vibe code by the way, but it, it works. btpay dot org. Oh yeah. it's, yeah, it's a Python version of like a, a, a smaller subset of btpay server, features. it's alpha, you know, like if you wanna play with it, play with it. I, I did that because I wanted to put like, make a few websites that needed to accept payment, and they were like lighter sites, So, you know, so I made that project, it's kind of fun, you know, if you're making like a T-shirt selling website or, you know, needs a quick checkout, try it out. you know, if you see bugs, please report it. but, you know, it works. There you go, it's fun. Yeah, merchants" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:08", "start": 1748.0, "text": "self-custody too, you know, it's not just individuals, but, we want, we want obviously merchants to be able to easily self-custody their stuff." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "29:18", "start": 1758.0, "text": "yeah, it is Stuff in objects and then saves to file and Redis. what else? so BTC Pay server had some regression, I saw, some tweet about it, there were LND hub issues, but I think they're, they're coming up with a plugin to support it again. Block still pushing a lot of, like Merchants to accept Bitcoin, I think it's automatic default now, not sure." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:50", "start": 1790.0, "text": "So" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "29:50", "start": 1790.0, "text": "blocks, oh, as in," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:51", "start": 1791.0, "text": "yeah, yeah," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "29:52", "start": 1792.0, "text": "gotcha. Like Square, the, yeah. I, I love that, that, that, project, like the, the fact that they're getting merchants to, like, 'cause it's great. I mean, like, it really closes the loop, right? If I can just go to a merchant and just pay Bitcoin without them knowing is my preferred, I don't wanna be known as a Bitcoiner when I go to For invoice without the merchant even knowing, they'll be like, \"That's amazing, like that's perfect. Nobody should know what the other person is paying.\" Like that's like absolutely perfect." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:24", "start": 1824.0, "text": "Yeah, and I guess even there, like people will be using different layers, right? Like Yes, Bitcoin on chain and Lightning, but nowadays, how many other-- You've got Ark, Spark, Liquid, you have, Cashu and Fedi stuff. Like, there's so many of these now that you could be paying off some other thing and actually in the end is paying a Lightning invoice, you know? So but yeah, I guess to your point, it's more just like not even knowing that you're paying with Bitcoin at all in any form, but, yeah." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "30:52", "start": 1852.0, "text": "Yeah, I think that's, that's like what winning looks like for, for Bitcoin, is just like, you know, whenever you wanna spend it, it's like available for you to spend. But like, you know, most people shouldn't sell their BTC anyway, so like, it, it's a complicated, like, you know, we want the, the capacity, the, the ability of, of like paying things in Bitcoin, but that doesn't mean you wanna spend Bitcoin. Yeah. gotcha. It's, it's an interesting part of the, the sort of adoption phase." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:19", "start": 1879.0, "text": "Yeah. I guess the other cool one is I did a little mini-interview with, Tony Clasing from Stable Channels, right? So his concept is like this idea of Wallet, but the cool thing is it allows people to have sort of like a stable balance, but it's in Bitcoin, it's not even using a stablecoin. So that's actually kind of an interesting concept because, hey, it's, it might bring more people to actually use self-custody Bitcoin, as opposed to stablecoins right now. I'm not against, you know, Tether or whatever, it's just more like more users, more possibilities, right? And so, and there could be like a sta-stability, quote-unquote, receiver and a stability, quote Interest rate, but the, the user is kind of getting his stability that he wants, and he could just like a f-Phoenix splicing model, you know, earn and spend Bitcoin, and it fe- hopefully the idea is that it will feel sort of like a Phoenix wallet experience, but you have the ability to flip between Bitcoin and stable balance, but it's in Bitcoin. So I think that's a cool concept from a, you know, Bitcoin self-custody" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "32:23", "start": 1943.0, "text": "perspective. Oh, I love the idea. Like, I mean, seriously, like being able to, to hold stables that I'm just very skeptical on like the, the collinear sort of issues. You know, they're both directionally on the same asset, and, and like when the price moves a lot in either direction, like how those contracts behave. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:49", "start": 1969.0, "text": "So I think in this case, at for now, he is gonna, like, the, the company behind it is gonna be the main stability provider, and I think they would, you know, figure out those aspects of it, and I think- so I think the, the way it, it works is that like you, you might be putting up a certain amount of Bitcoin above what your, you know, the, what the fiat amount is, so there might be certain levels to which it can go, and then that's it, it stops out there, you know? Something like that. Cool. So, you know, can be handy, for people, and we'll see if it gets more self-custodial use of Bitcoin, that's a good thing, right? Like we want more people to use Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "33:26", "start": 2006.0, "text": "Yeah, I Whatever we can do, right? Yeah. Like, it's, exactly. And then," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:34", "start": 2014.0, "text": "Blink Wallet, I think they just, I was, I, I saw this recently as well. Blink Wallet, so previously called Bitcoin Beach Wallet, they, you know, spun off out of Galloy and now they've gone, Spark Wallet as well. They've gone non-custodial Spark accounts, and I think this is just a recent thing, so I haven't played around with it myself, but doesn't like Spark have like some serious," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "33:56", "start": 2036.0, "text": "like privacy issues, like you" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:01", "start": 2041.0, "text": "If they had a privacy setting, I don't know the exact, the latest on that, but I think some of the people who were plugging in through Spark were able to change that setting, so then like the privacy implication is different, but I don't know the latest on that, so I'd need to kind of check the detail on that. And obviously, Wallet Satoshi, they're another example like that. So, they have moved their, I think another update I saw is that they moved their merchant POS out of the custodial thing they had before into like the Spark setup as well" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "34:31", "start": 2071.0, "text": "Primo also uses Spark," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:33", "start": 2073.0, "text": "yeah." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "34:33", "start": 2073.0, "text": "it's, it's a, it's a very good solution, like in terms of like liability and legality, for wallets to support Lightning. It's sort of like this sort of middle ground of the state chain stuff, where, you know, like it's not really Custodial, but it's also sort of like easy, like Custodial wanted to integrate for wallets, so they're not like at risk of being considered AML, like all the AML KYC stuff, yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:00", "start": 2100.0, "text": "yeah, yeah, yeah. MSB, That perspective. So, yeah, again, if, if more people, if it helps more people kind of have a slick, good experience, hey, good, 'cause now there's a chance-- And they have a unilateral exit, so that's interesting, but, yeah, the conversation around how, you know, how much trust are you placing in the Spark operator and the thing like that, that can get a bit of a nuanced conversation, and people can sort of argue about like, oh, which is better, like, is Arc better or is Spark better or" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "35:26", "start": 2126.0, "text": "whatever. there was one more update Version thirty point one, they had a wallet migration bug, so those binaries got pulled, from the core website, and, I think they've re-released them as version thirty point two, and that sort of should, so Essentially, like, make sure you make a little backup of your wallet dot data dot dat if you do use Core Wallet, before you migrate. That was kind of like a, a biggie, and it wasn't fortunate because it was, you know, mangled in some of the drama. Gotcha," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:06", "start": 2166.0, "text": "yeah. And speaking of new wallets also, I guess I should mention, I think, on the BARK side, there's two new ones there. I think there's Noah Wallet, and that's, I think, by Hampus, and, I believe and then there's this other one called ARKE wallet, like A R K E, so that's like another BARK wallet. I haven't played around with that one. I think that's iPhone based, but, you know, different options for like phone self-custody, like, but with using BARK and Lightning stuff. And then, yeah, I guess chatting, I guess any other hardware updates? Oh, sorry, that was the other one. Treza and Tropic Square, I think there was a laser fault injection vulnerability. from what I can see, the funds were still safe because it was one of three independent security layers. and I believe it was- Oh, yeah. So that's," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "36:56", "start": 2216.0, "text": "that's a huge problem. So like- You know, so Tropic Square trying to make an open, secure element, View One, you know, i-it's like a Shiba coin friendly secure element, so it doesn't support Bitcoin Curve, very unfortunate. And then, you know, it did get owned, fully owned, and the other secure element that they have is the same one on the UBQ, which has been owned as well. maybe they have different configurations and that's why it wasn't exposed on this hack, but if I have to guess, you know, like the ledger guys will probably produce a full ledger own very soon, of both secure elements, and expose the seed. it's kind of nice that they added two secure elements, they, you know, like it's nice to see people following the lead. But again, it's, I, I think it was a poor choice of security element. The UBI key, security element was already owned when it was chosen. And, but, you know, like it, it, it is, it is incredibly better than the previous non-secure element Trezor." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:10", "start": 2290.0, "text": "I see, yeah. And I mean, just reading the Trezor blog, they're saying your funds remain protected, the vulnerability in one of our secure element chips in Trezor Safe Seven, which Tropic Score is disclosing, doesn't give access to your funds, neither remotely or with physical possession. they're saying it's a professional complex attack, disassembly and desoldering, backside decapsulation, specialized lab equipment and deep expertise Execute. So, yeah, so anyway, it looks like the Ledger Donjon team and Tropic Square, you know, put that out. but, you know, there's always, I love," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "38:41", "start": 2321.0, "text": "I love the Donjon. I love that they spend the resources that they do trying to break it. You know, they broke Mark III, right? Like, it's like they, they broke some of our devices too. It's, it's great. Like, we, we need that. You know, they really forced the secure element, sort of like, chip makers, right, to, to like up their game." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:58", "start": 2338.0, "text": "Yeah. I mean, hey, the white hat hacking is, needed, to, because you'd rather the white hat hacker finds it before the black hat guy finds it, right? Yeah, y-y" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "39:24", "start": 2364.0, "text": "So we, we sort of identified this problem a few years ago, we just didn't have the right way of sort of packaging it economically and sort of like conceptually, but it sort of finally kind of came together. You, everybody has like digital secrets now, right, that they need to keep Like maintain and have access to, right? and that's not a simple task, right? Like keeping something digital available but also not like exposed is a big deal Right? Like, what do you do with like bank account numbers or, you know, like, instructions on how to recover your seeds or the seeds that have less Bitcoin in them, for example? Like, what, what do you do with this information? Right? Like, do, do you put it on encrypted drive and you just leave like a password for the family? Like, it's, it's not ideal, right? And then there's the fact that you need access to this from different countries, like everybody's digital nomad now, right? we can't trust our computers. And we can't trust the cloud, so we figure, hey, why don't we create a device that's sort of like sort, solve this exact sort of problem, right? It's like an ark, like ark is a concept of like this, this box where you have like special things in it and you sort of like survives you and survives your sort of generation, and So this, this little box is a network, network connected device, we call it a personal data haven, and, you put it on, on your network, you set it up, it works over, I won't get into the details, but the point is It gives us secure access to it, and then you have a password manager, you have a password server for, like, for example, I don't know, we still decide if it's gonna be Bitwarden or XPass. So you're gonna have a password server on it, you're gonna have inheriting, inherent solutions, so, sorry, inheritance solutions in there, so dead man switches essentially. Yeah. And so is the ARCA" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:30", "start": 2490.0, "text": "device itself internet connected and, power connected? Yes. Like you would leave it, yes. Like kind of, you know, plugged in with power and internet and on, but it's like meant to be segregated away." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "41:40", "start": 2500.0, "text": "Yeah, it, it works like a HSM really, like a-- So what you have is like very, very, very hardened, hardware on it, so like uses like secure elements, uses reported FreeBSD to the embedded platform. it, it's like really hardcore, right? So that you can have secrets in it. W- Would I put a bear seed there that's for like, you know, millions of dollars? Probably not, right? But you could encrypt and then put encrypted blobs in there as well, everything that's in there There is encrypted and then is encrypted in different envelopes as well. It, it's, it's really, really secure. and what's cool about it and like real innovation on this is, on top of being physically secure, You can have multiple boxes in different jurisdictions, they find each other and they mirror each other. So they have multi-tenants, right? So you can have multiple tenants there, so you can have your tenant, you can have your other tenant, and then you can have your mother's tenant in there, right? And then you can choose which tenants sync with the other box that you have maybe sitting your mother's house in a different country, and maybe another one, you know, being hosted, like in a data center or hosted in some other place. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:55", "start": 2575.0, "text": "And then how would you manage this, like in terms of pairing? Let's say I've got, whatever, three devices in different places, like how do they pair and how do you kind of manage what you store in there? Like, how's, how's that gonna work?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "43:06", "start": 2586.0, "text": "It's so, you're gonna get a, a UI, right, where you can just choose, you know, like what kind of secret you wanna store in there, and you just tell the box which box To sort of use to mirror, and they, they talk to each other, and they, they shake hands with each other, and then they immediately mirror each other, that's it. Like it, it's very easy in that sense. So, so then what's cool is that you get high availability of this very important data that you want to have for a long time, because electronic devices die, right? Like, I mean, we're using the best components we can, but realistically speaking, things can die, right? Yeah. It can burn, device failure, etcetera, yeah, it happens. Exactly. So, you know, you have two, three boxes of this in the world, they're mirrored to each other, every time so atomically, updated, and then, you know, if something happens to one, the other ones continue. They also support remote hints, so you can call up your mother and say like, \"Do this on the front panel,\" and the box comes back up. we, we're gonna support it so that, like, there's a few sort of wizards for you to set up, so you can set up as an individual, you can set up as a third party, like setting up for somebody else, or you can set up as like a hosting for it as well. and, like ideally, you know, like when I pass, my kids have a, a key that I left somewhere, and that key only works if I don't do the check-in for the dead man switch, for example." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:34", "start": 2674.0, "text": "Yeah, okay. So, yeah, Going in terms of, digital sovereignty and things like that, and then where it ties in with the Bitcoin side of things, like, and maybe this one, I guess, like we, like I said before, this one may be not strictly Bitcoin related, but a lot of Bitcoiners would probably be interested in it. Oh, I" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "44:54", "start": 2694.0, "text": "mean, Bitcoiners get it, right? Like, it's like, for Bitcoiners, this is a no-brainer, right? Like, you need a place to store, like your phone seeds, for example, right? If you're not Well, it's all seed based, by the way. So the backup of the ARCA" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:12", "start": 2712.0, "text": "key is like a seed. Gotcha, yeah, yeah. And people gonna start using, yeah, and sometimes because of the familiarity that people have with like writing, writing down your twelve words, then people take that same concept and apply that in other areas so that you can backup your key in a similar way." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "45:28", "start": 2728.0, "text": "I mean, we've seen so many hacks of like password managers and like you, you just can't trust your stock anymore, like it's really bad. you know, we're building this for ourselves, the first one is gonna be a founders edition, we're gonna probably make a smaller batch. I need it, I want it. Doc Hex need it, he wants it. We're gonna make it, you know? Hopefully enough people want it, you know, like if you feel like you want something, you know, on the-- Yeah, and" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:55", "start": 2755.0, "text": "maybe the Bitcoin I just remembered also there's some updates on Frost Snap. So as you, as I'm sure you know, NVK, there's this technique called Frost, and it's like, kind of like multisig, but actually it looks like single sig on chain, but using, you know, cryptography. and so these guys are doing Frost Snap, which is a hardware device or multiple devices, and you kind of, kind of do this, hardware wallet, centipede sort of thing. They, they, they, go into each other and then they set up Nick and, Lloyd and Adam from the FrostSnap team recently in Prague as well, they put out some updates, so it looks like they've got on-device backup check, they've got, a verify address dialog, you know, backup reminders, and so the thing, like, the thing with them is they've got their own wallet on the phone, right? Their own phone app, let's say, and you, you, you plug in the devices that way. I think they don't have, like the remote signing thing yet He's in Melbourne and we wanna do Frost Snap together. We can't yet right now, but they are going to build that, but it seems like for now it's kind of-- That's like just a different paradigm, right? Like it's just kind of, you got the, let's say Sparrow Wallet, Electrum, Nunchuk, kind of Liana sort of multi-sig paradigm, With, you know, with your different devices, and then you've got sort of FrostSnap, which is a, kind of a different, paradigm, because they don't necessarily all play together. Like you need different device types for that, right? So I'm curious what you see on the Frost side of things." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "47:28", "start": 2848.0, "text": "Yeah. I think, I think it's cool. I think it's very early. but somebody's gotta do it. Props to them for doing it. I, I think it's fun to, to watch, but again, like, it's like, you know, as you know, I was a big fanboy of Frost. I think the reality is that, like You know, path dependency, I think Musig 2 sort of like, kind of like one in that sense, you know, being worse or better, however you wanna see it based on your preferences, but like, I don't know, I think it's cool. The device looks cute, you know, like they got the little, you know, centipede going there. You just attach one to the other, to sign. You do like your three or" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:10", "start": 2890.0, "text": "five or your two or three or whatever, at for the initial setup, and then you go around and collect. It's not actually a PSBT, but conceptually it's sort of like you, you do, you go around to your different locations. Let's say you've got five locations, and you need to go to" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "48:24", "start": 2904.0, "text": "three of them to, Right? but you know, it does hold keys, so y-you do need, you do need something there, especially if you're gonna be USB connected. I find it fun that they did serial over USB in their own spec there, so they could pass on the, the comms between the devices. it's cool. And I, I think once you have like the, again, like the remote signer thing that, you know, they mentioned, I think it's gonna become more useful. I'd, I'd love to see where this goes." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:58", "start": 2938.0, "text": "Yeah. I just want to keep it, you know, quick and snappy for people so they get some updates. Any other last bits and pieces you wanna share before we wrap this up?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "49:09", "start": 2949.0, "text": "no, I, I think, I think that's it. I think Arca was the only thing, so it was like very new from us. it's arca-safes dot com. you know, people use the password manager and Coldcard, they're gonna love this. and, You know, I'd love to see how people use it and if you, you know, go there, put your email there if you want updates for it. what else? check out OpenSATS, we have a lot of new sort of like blog posts about the stuff that we support there. And, that's, I think that's all I got for today, Laver. Cool," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:46", "start": 2986.0, "text": "we'll, we'll leave it there. So listeners, let us know what you think. Do you want us to keep doing this format? we'll, we'll keep, experimenting with this, and trying this out, the quarterly self-custody update. If you like it, make sure you share it out there, so people can learn about Bitcoin, follow NVK, and of course, follow me. and that's it from" } ] }