00:00 Hello, I'm Seth Simmons, and welcome to Season 1, Episode 13 of Opt Out. Opt Out's a show where I sit down with passionate people to learn why privacy matters to them, the tools and techniques they've found and leveraged, and where we encourage and inspire others towards personal privacy and data sovereignty. Wondering why FOSS and privacy have become such a focus for Matt O'Dell and Citadel Dispatch, or wanting to learn more about free and open source software in general?

This episode, we're going to sit down with Matt O'Dell for a bit of a different show, where we focus on listener questions around free and open source software, privacy, the community ethos around FOSS, and his personal journey towards privacy. Welcome on to Opt Out, Matt. Let's fucking go. I should have expected it. The bottle pop. I'm so glad to be able to have you on and just dive a little deeper into some of the topics and passions that I feel like we have in common.

You've been a huge inspiration to me over the few years that I've been in the cryptocurrency space, and now just the FOSS and privacy space, and I think brought a lot of wisdom and focus towards privacy in some communities that aren't as privacy-centric. I'm just very grateful for the impact you've had on me and just on the communities you've been a part of. So I'm really excited to jump into some of your personal privacy journey, jump into some listener questions, and really walk through some key topics here.

Dude, the pleasure is all mine. I think we met for the first time. You introduced yourself at Bitcoin 2019 in San Francisco, and since then you've built something special here with Opt Out Pod, and just your blog is fantastic, and just everything you do, there's a lot of respect there, and it is truly my pleasure to join you here. Thanks, man. Definitely was never part of the plan, but it's all just kind of falling into place. I feel that, man. I'm really grateful for the platform.

It was never part of my plan either. Yeah. Just kind of lean in, you know? I feel like that's the way of it, though. Yeah, I don't think we've actually met in person, though. So I haven't been to… We met in 2019. You don't remember introducing yourself? I haven't been to a Bitcoin conference. You weren't in San Francisco? No. No, I've never been. I've only been to a couple crypto conferences. I'm pretty sure there was a Seth at 2019, Bitcoin 2019 in San Francisco.

There was a Seth who walked up to me and said to me, Matt, I really love what you're doing with privacy. Why do you never talk about Monero? Maybe it was me. It was a body double. Maybe I'm just throwing cover to cover my tracks here. We'll never know. I love it. Awesome. Well, I also want to just shout out the chance to come on Citadel Dispatch. I guess it was a couple months ago now. And we had a really good chat about CalyxOS and mobile privacy in general.

And so it just kind of took some inspiration from that and your approach to listener questions. I wanted to make this one a little bit different than my norm and just a little more free-flowing. So excited to go and dive in. But for anyone who might not be familiar with you or your work, do you mind kind of introducing yourself or listeners? Yeah. When Seth came on to my show, that's Sill Dispatch. It's Sill Dispatch 34. So if you go to SillDispatch.com slash CD34, you can listen to that episode.

It was a fun one. I'm a Bitcoiner. I've been in Bitcoin for a minute now. Care about privacy. Care about sovereignty. And I've just slowly transitioned into basically a life that is obsessed with free and open source software and Bitcoin. And I surround myself with that basically 24-7, 365 now. And it's been a good run. I co-founded BitcoinTV.com, co-founded OpenSats, where we contribute to open source development. What else do I do? I have two podcasts.

I have a rapid hole recap on Tales from the Crypt. I have Sill Dispatch, as I said earlier. DevList.com, which you can contribute to devs directly. Consult for a bunch of companies, including Bitcoin Magazine. And I don't know. I just kind of came to the conclusion. I think it was like 2013, basically, when the Snowden leaks happened. I came to the conclusion that if we didn't have good people stand the fuck up, we were going to be in for a horrible ride.

And I kind of just took it up on myself. And as we said earlier, I just kind of kept leaning in and it just kind of happened. Yeah, yeah, I never actually knew that that was kind of the driver behind your jump into, I guess, personal privacy and just the broader focus on privacy as an important topic. Is that what kickstarted you into Bitcoin? Or when did you get into that? I'm curious. Yeah, so I found Bitcoin and Snowden at the same time. Okay.

That full year for you. Yeah, I mean, Bitcoin in 2013 was very much about privacy. It was a different beast back then. But so like I got I got basically red pilled by Snowden and by Bitcoiners at the same time. And it wasn't just Bitcoin, obviously. It was it was the greater free open source movement. I guess up until that point, I kind of got in red pilled on personal sovereignty. After 2008, after the financial collapse in 2008, I realized there was like no real experts like everyone pretends to be experts, but they have no idea what the fuck they're talking about.

But I thought I could trust like the major tech companies and Snowden basically threw that one on its head. And I was like, you can't trust Google. You can't trust Apple. You can't trust Yahoo or Microsoft. Like they're all complicit. So like what other options do you have except free open source software? And it all kind of came in as a whirlwind together. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely understand that. The marketing teams at big tech companies, I think, really understand the importance of people feeling like their data is private and secure and that they're well taken care of when they're trusting those companies.

But it's become clearer and clearer over the years that that's just not simply not a group of people and companies that you can trust with your data or rely on for privacy. And I'm very grateful for the free open source software movement and just all of the traction behind that. I feel like it's really taken off over the past few years. And obviously, I'm relatively newer to the scene, but I've seen a ton of growth in that time. So very, very grateful for that.

Remember when Google's slogan was don't do evil? And then they removed it. Surprisingly enough, it's almost as if it wasn't core to. There's like a war in Canary, basically. Mm hmm. And they fucking removed. They're like, OK, we're doing evil now. We're not doing evil. We're just not going to tell you whether we are or not. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. And has has doing Citadel Dispatch and before that kind of Tales from the Crypt and the other kind of educational things you've done, has that been something that's driven you deeper into FOSS and deeper into privacy?

Or is that just kind of been driven by it instead? I mean, CIL Dispatch came later. CIL Dispatch is I launched it at the end of December of last year. And it's more of a passion project. Tales from the Crypt is sponsor funded. And CIL Dispatch is 100% audience funded. Mm hmm. And I always wanted to do it audience funded. And I kind of got pulled into sponsor funded. So I felt like I was being a LARP a little bit by saying that audience funded makes more sense and not actually doing it.

So CIL Dispatch was born. And I wanted to tackle the real topics rather than like all this philosophical bullshit that you hear all the time on so many podcasts where they just talk in grandiose ways and just leave out any kind of specifics or if it's going to happen. And just kind of basically forsake personal responsibility because something better will come along in a little bit. And you can just do that. When I started on the education rabbit hole is what really opened my eyes even more to like the reality of the situation.

And because so maybe two, two years ago, two and a half years ago, I started with a bunch of good friends in New York. I started Bitcoin Citadel, New York, which was a workshops in person project. And we were teaching people privacy in person, not live streamed, no cameras, no photos, obviously pre-COVID. And when you start like trying to explain these concepts to people and using the Internet privately, let alone using Bitcoin privately, but using the Internet privately and trying to be more private in your daily lives, you start to realize like how big.

10:00 big of a slope we have to climb yeah like it is gargantuan like it is fucking massive um and there's a lot a lot of work to be done and it made me sometimes i get disenfranchised about it you know like are disillusioned about it and i get a little bit like in the dumps and i'm like ah we're fucked but most of the time it's you know we need to make progress because what other option do we have and i kind of just got really really strongly focused on trying to do my part and it's not just educating like end users like i there's a lot of value in educating the people that will educate others right and bringing them in because that's how it scales right like if you if you can if if you can help improve people to the point where they will improve other people then all of a sudden they're gonna they're gonna help 100 more people or 200 more people and all of a sudden it can scale there there is some opportunity there and that quickly became my focus maybe like a year and a half ago two years ago and that's what civil dispatch was focused on but i wouldn't say

necessarily that civil dispatch was um civil dispatch was the reaction to that understanding rather than the cause of that understanding yeah i think two things kind of jump out at me from that the kind of the age-old adage that you don't really know something until you've had to teach someone and just once you you think you understand concepts and then once you really have to dig deep and explain from the ground up some of the the tools that we use and talk about some of the concepts around privacy both general internet privacy um digital privacy and cryptocurrency privacy you really start to understand how i guess how little you grasp how everything really works and what threat models really are and and what real world usage looks like um so once you do dive into really educating others and that doesn't even necessarily mean like doing something like this podcast but um just really trying to introduce your friends to the same concepts um i think it it really helps you dive in and much better understand the the things that we

we definitely hold dear and do for ourselves um that's been interesting especially just kind of people that i run into in the real world we'll say um first realm whatever we want to call it but uh like friends family that i try to talk through about these concepts uh it really does kind of show me the areas where i'm weak and understanding when where i'm weak and in being able to kind of break down these topics for people who aren't as deep into foss and privacy and as deep into um just really basic computer usage that kind of thing um but yeah that that other point that you mentioned about being able to create people that will just keep reproducing and keep educating others um is so so important and i'm i'm so hopeful that people listen to this people listen to sit on dispatch and all of the work that you do and so many of the educators in the space do i hope that they don't just take that in for themselves but that they really try to to share that with other people whether that's just directly sharing the the

content or even better it's them actually taking the time to teach the people that they care about and value and and walk them through it because like you said that's that's really the way that this scales and we absolutely gain power in numbers and we we gain privacy when we have a crowd to hide in all using the same powerful tools yeah i mean when when someone turns to you and it's like i'm gonna ask the expert this question and i would i do not consider myself an expert but that's how they feel when they ask you that question yeah you have no idea what the answer is it's just like fuck like i just i need to go back and do my homework um and it really does it it like really like brings you into the gravity of the situation and how important it is um the the good news is that i have noticed firsthand um i used to be like more of a quiet person in the space until late 2018.

i actually like practice very good this is always the this is the problem with privacy problem with privacy well i'm gonna get shit for that comment uh the problem with privacy is that if you truly care about privacy you should never be a public figure and talk about privacy um and i didn't talk about privacy publicly until like late 2018 and when i joined that uh platform when i like when i started broadcasting my thoughts about privacy very few people were talking about it um and now i feel like there's like a pretty pretty strong public community talking about privacy on twitter on blogs on podcasts and it's it's really rewarding to see that and i like to think that i was at least a small part in that um and i feel like i'm starting to the dream is always to get to the point where i can just like kind of fade into the darkness and i feel like i'm getting closer and closer to that and i can feel comfortable with walking away but at three years ago like it was bad it was really bad like people

think like the whole influencer thing on twitter and stuff is bad now like it was way worse it was way worse in in early 2018 i know that's hard to imagine but it was significantly worse yeah i've definitely seen i mean even in my in my involvement in kind of the pro privacy community i've already seen a ton of growth and it seems like it seems like people really are waking up in larger numbers than i think we at first realize um and it's been really encouraging to see people like Techlore really starting to gain up a pretty pretty mass following for their their work around privacy and that's really the center of what they do they don't even have really as much of a focus on the cryptocurrency or those kinds of things that can draw people in via other methods like the natural greed incentive and cryptocurrencies that kind of thing um so i've been i've been glad to see that and with opt out seen a very surprising amount of growth and seen a ton of people who are really just they're they're itching to

learn more and to be able to dive in but there so far has been kind of a um somewhat of a lack and there's been some gaps in the educational material and some gaps that have needed to be filled but it's been great to see more and more people it really seems like more and more people on on twitter making podcasts making videos making guides and blogs um just a kind of an army rising up to to produce content that helps to to pull more and more people in and it has a it has a serious impact and it is having an impact and it's i think it's it's hard to keep that in mind on some of the the bad days and the the bad news days and the times when it feels hopeless but there are there are a lot more people than we realize that are really waking up to to this to this you ever understand you ever wake up in the morning and just like i should fucking walk away yes absolutely uh usually if i'm on twitter i get closer to that point so eyebrows less and less these days but yeah it definitely it gets daunting and especially kind

of i don't know when there are laws that are passed that are very hurtful to privacy or when there are kind of mainstream media news things that come out where they really keep trying to tie privacy to terrorism and child pornography and just all of the kind of boogeymen that that get pulled out for um for why privacy is bad it definitely gets very disappointing but um i think it a huge part of it that helps me is just realizing how important community is and finding those good communities the one that really fucked me up recently was uh jay stark um being found dead or murdered or whatever you want to believe um i don't know about that one yeah jay stark was a uh he was a titan in the in the in the 3d printed gun community and he was very big on privacy so no one knew who he was um and he got doxed and the german government found him well they raided his apartment and then um they said they found him two days later dead of a heart attack in a car outside of his parents house rather than in

his apartment so that's why i said murdered or found dead you could ask that question um but uh like most people that knew about it just kind of didn't really talk about it because people are scared to talk about it which is really kind of hardening yeah people don't they don't realize that while we do have relative freedom of speech and in most countries they don't realize the power that it brings to actually speak out and actually like you don't need to be just posting on twitter or facebook it doesn't necessarily have to be that but having real conversations with people and walking through these things is is so important and really taking a broad stand and trying to pull people into a cause does still have power and in most countries and and places and can help to at the very least can help to wake other people up to to what's really kind of going on behind the scenes 100 i'm curious if there's any specific and i've

20:00 I feel like a lot of the answers here are the same. So I'm curious what you run into. But are there any specific kind of myths or roadblocks that you see people struggle with when it comes to personal privacy? And then how do you help to get people past those things as someone who does education and shares on Twitter and does conferences, that kind of thing? The biggest thing is I feel like we often, like privacy advocates, we get like deep in the weeds.

But if you look at the average person, there's so much low hanging fruit that they can improve. And that average person, the meme of I don't care about privacy, I have nothing to hide. I actually don't see that often. What I see more often is I understand that privacy should be important, but I'm such a lost cause that it's not worth it. And to those people, it's very important for us to keep going back to the basics, I think. And just that every little thing you do can improve your situation, your personal situation.

And every little thing you do to improve your personal situation at scale improves everybody's situation. Something as simple as you have a Google Home in your house. Unplug the Google Home. If you're listening to this podcast right now and I say, hey, Alexa, what's the weather? Like unplug that Alexa. Like you should, maybe you're even listening to it through the Alexa. Like what the fuck are you doing? Apple Watches, you know, using G Maps, Google Maps or whatever as your navigation.

Buy a standalone GPS that doesn't have connection to the internet. Like these little things. Don't send your DNA to some random company that's going to monetize it. You know, like these are basic things and they improve your standing and they improve everyone else's standing. And I feel like people get stuck in this hole where they're like, we are so fucked that we're just not going to do anything. Yeah, yeah, the nihilism really sets in and kind of kicks people down and holds them down.

And I do definitely agree that I think a lot of the problem there has been with privacy advocates. And either as kind of scaremongering or, like you said, getting too stuck in the weeds and focusing on the nitty gritty details of an advanced threat model. And not seeing the, just really the common, approachable, relatively easy ways that people can improve their privacy. I mean, another big one is just switching browsers, switching off of Google Chrome.

Right. Switching to something that actually has any kind of care about your privacy in general. There's a lot of very easy first steps that can be needed. Meanwhile, like the privacy advocates are all like arguing about whether or not like Signal's trade-off model is like a good balance. You know, like just use Signal. Like just try and improve yourself. Every little thing makes a benefit. And when you get people started with those easy tasks, it really wakes them up and helps them see, hey, I can actually do this.

It's like, oh, maybe Signal's a great solution forever, or maybe it's just the first step. And that's the way that I get in. And I realize, like, this is really cool that I can send messages back and forth and have group chats and not have to worry about who's going to be spying on it. Or if my government's going to pull this up in 10 years. Or if the ISP is going to keep these text messages for the next seven years or something ridiculous. Like it starts to kind of catch hold and kind of start a fire in them to realize, I can actually do these things.

So if we get them started on those introductory steps, all those first steps into privacy, we really can kind of start an unstoppable force in each person. Which then, like we talked about earlier, can hopefully be reproduced. And they can show other people that are in a similar situation, hey, like I started with these things. Like just switch to Signal, switch your browser, start with those things, see where you end up. I mean, I just brought up Signal, but like I feel like Signal is like a perfect example of a major win.

Oh, yeah. Because like the UX is simple. The tradeoff balance is like kind of obvious and relatively accessible. And then like once you get a couple of friends on to Signal, they get other people on to Signal, right? Like there's like a good momentum there. I like to see more. And like the comparison of Signal to something like PGP, right? Like we use PGP, but no one uses PGP. I've got probably five emails ever that are actually PGP encrypted. Like I go dust out the PGP key to remember the commands to actually decrypt things.

I'm like so proud of the dude who sends it to me. You know, it's like he's like he's totally just he learned PGP just to impress me. But yeah, I think I think like the Signal PGP example is like a very perfect is like a very good example of what builders in the privacy space should be kind of looking at. I mean, is Signal perfect? No. Like should it require phone numbers? No, absolutely fucking not. Like that's fucking ridiculous. Should it should it notify you when people in your phone book join Signal?

No, probably not. But for the most part, that tradeoff balance is like kind of what I think we need to be targeting as a community to to try and bridge that gap. Because once once you get people in, they will learn. They will do like you get the tools ready for them. You get the education ready for them. They will spend hours learning. But they need that. They need that first step. They need those training wheels. They need that introductory to really like get going.

Because otherwise, they're just going to feel overwhelmed. There's nothing I can do. I'm completely fucked. Yep. Sometimes they just need that that first push down the rabbit hole and it'll take it up. Take it over from there. Yeah. Signal, I think, is a great example. Like you talked about, I'm just kind of perfect becoming the enemy of good and people ditching it or bashing it or trying to get everyone to switch to yet another messenger out there that has some obscure advantage or maybe even a clear advantage.

But Signal is just so easy to onboard people to. And especially in the US, the phone number thing is definitely obnoxious that it's a requirement. But the ability to text and send Signal messages within the same app is absolutely massive for adoption. And that's a key reason that I've been able to get people onto Signal and I wouldn't have been able to get them onto Threema or Matrix. I mean, I've noticed that too. Like the selling point for Android users is so much easier than iPhone.

Because on iPhone, you don't have that feature. I never actually realized that. But I haven't used iPhone. On iPhone, you have to use iMessage. You have to use their native clients. So you can't have the text mixed in. I would actually say that like, I mean, fuck iMessage. But, you know, iMessage is also a, like at least the subpoena or the gag order has to go to Apple for iMessage. It's better than SMS. Yeah. SMS is like a postcard. You just like fucking send it out.

So, yeah. Yeah, I was listening to. That's a whole different rabbit hole. Yeah. Quick note on SMS. I was listening to Surveillance Report. Just a podcast that kind of goes through security and privacy news. And they were talking about a recent report that said that most ISPs keep text messages for at least a year. But I think it was AT&T keeps them for seven years. And they have that. Everyone's text messages just sitting around for a year, three years, five years, seven years, just waiting to use it.

And they have no problems giving that data over to whoever asks or selling that data or anything of the above. So, that's one of the low-hanging fruit that hopefully we can keep migrating people off of here in the US. Yeah, I mean, even if AT&T says seven years, like the NSA definitely keeps it for way longer than seven years. I mean, text is, like the theory for a while has been that for like phone calls, what they do is they transcribe it into text because audio is a bigger file.

Yeah. So, if you transcribe it into text, you can keep those texts forever for basically no money. Yep. And then much more easy to actually search and query. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Much more usable in that state. I was also just curious, kind of jumping back to your work on Citadel Dispatch, how have you kind of seen your privacy focus impact the Bitcoin space and the community around Bitcoin? Because I think you're one of the few big figures in Bitcoin that really pushes the need for privacy, both within Bitcoin itself and just in general internet life.

So, I'm curious how you've kind of seen that take over in the Bitcoin space. Who else in the Bitcoin space that's a big figure fucking talks about privacy? I don't know of anyone else. Basically, no one. I think a lot of people that run in your circles, but not people that are… Yeah, because I like promote them and I'm like trying to make them bigger. Yeah. I was like kind of hoping… It's so funny because like with like influencers on Twitter, usually if you see someone successful in something, there's like a million people that ape you and like try and do the same thing.

So, my strategy originally was I'm just going to talk about privacy all the time. So, what happened was like I kind of… My co-host at Tales from the Crypt…

30:00 Marty Bent. Basically, he started Tales from the Crypt. He had done 23 episodes and he seduced me into joining him for a weekly Bitcoin news show. And I was like, okay, I'll do it. At that point, I was lying about where I lived. No one knew what I looked like. I was doing pretty well on privacy. I dipped my toe basically into the self-docs. And that started going really well. And I ended up in kind of a public position. And I was like, if I'm going to be doxed anyway, I need to stand up for privacy. That's got to be the thing that makes it worth it. And my theory was that if I just kept talking about privacy, that a bunch of people would ape into doing the same thing as me and it would grow in dividends. There would be a massive gain in that. And no one really did. Everyone is just like, I won't say everyone. There's a lot of good people out there that have joined me in the cause.

And then I've joined them. But most of the large figures will not talk about it. It's super disappointing. Very much so. But talking about privacy publicly is a very controversial thing. It's not a... And I'm not trying to toot my own horn or whatever. Whatever. Fuck you. If you think I'm just like... There's so many people that just hate. They just fucking hate on you. And they assume the worst. And they're like, you're a hypocrite. You shouldn't talk about it publicly. And I just leaned into it. I mean, you saw it firsthand. I mean, your episode on Dispatch was super controversial episode because we had conversation about Monero for the last hour and your fucking Twitter handle is Monero symbol.

I try to be controversial and I can. So it's an easy plug. But like, I knew that was going to happen. And I was fine with that. Because at the end of the day, like life is short. Like, do I care how many Twitter followers I have? I could give two fucking shits. You know, I... You just... You gotta lean in. And my other thing is like, on Twitter, I don't have anybody blocked. I have nobody muted. I see everything. And... And with Dispatch, you know, I was going hard against KYC, that's really controversial. Like, you can't... Like, every big player in the space is just embedded in that regulatory environment. And then ironically, like, at the same time, like, I always prided myself that I had a non-Bitcoin job. But with COVID and shit, like, that job just kind of dried up. And I just needed to basically move on and move physically. And so like, I started to move into the Bitcoin space. And because that's what I love.

And that's, you know, like I said, life is short, I just got to fucking move into what I love and just focus on what I love and focus what I spend all my time. I literally spend all my time on it anyway. Like, the fiat job, I was just, I wasn't even really paying attention. Like, I was half-assing that job anyway. Like, I really shouldn't have still been there. So then I get shit from the other side, right? Like, the privacy advocates, like the hardcore privacy advocates that are NIMS. I love it. I absolutely love how hard they are. But they will fucking go at you. So like, I have like, I have like the KYC cucks on one side going at me for going after like KYC and being pro-privacy. And then I have, I have like, the super privacy advocates on the other side who are all NIMS just going at me for not being pure enough.

And I just kind of got stuck in the middle. And that's like my sweet spot. My sweet spot is just getting fucking hammered from both sides and just continuing. I feel like that sweet spot is where so many people are though. So like, it's a, it's a good spot to be in. It's, it's frustrating because there is definitely that, that feeling of fighting everyone some days, just like it's constantly a struggle to, to please anyone. But there's so many people that need a normal person's honest views and advice around privacy and not like, I think there's a lot to be said about the power of pseudonyms. And the, I think that many people or probably even most people should just use a pseudonym and not worry about any kind of revelation of who they are building a brand. But I think there's also a lot to be said about taking, taking the hit for the community. And like you said, kind of self-doxing and putting a face and name to, to your identity and just really letting people see that your cards are on the table and

you're someone that can just that they can follow. And not, I don't know that trust is our word. I mean, like, obviously I, I would say I trust you. And I think a lot of the content you've had is absolutely great. And I recommend it widely, but just that they can, I think it's, it's easier to connect with somebody who's not an M a hundred percent. I mean, I don't, I, I specifically tell people not to trust me. I know, I know they do trust me a lot of the times. And I know me telling them not to trust me makes a lot of them trust me more. It's not reverse psychology though. It's, I really, I don't want them to trust anyone and I have to lead by example and they shouldn't trust me.

Um, but yeah, the, the sad reality is I, I, and it's such a weird thing because I've actually gotten, I've gotten publicly shat on for advocating people to use NIMS and they're like, you're a hypocrite. Um, but I, I, I think you, you need a few, you need at least a few people to be publicly outspoken. Um, and those people should use their platform to promote NIMS and try and build those NIMS credibility of, of NIMS that you've gotten to know and, and, and you think are doing good work.

Um, because it does go a long way. Like the human condition is just that they, if they see a face, if they can have a glass of whiskey with you in person, um, they will inevitably be more drawn to the ideas that you talk about. Um, but I, I will say that the Bitcoin space and like the broader crypto community, I think has, we're in a little bit of a renaissance here with NIMS, which is good to see. Like it was, it was when I first got involved in like, so I didn't buy, it's very, I have to be very clear.

I did not buy Bitcoin in 2012, but when I first started paying attention to Bitcoin in 2012, it was fucking NIMS dominated. Like everyone was NIMS. Um, and then we went through like our mainstream-ish transition. Um, and it was dominated by, you know, like the Meltems and the, the Samsons and the, like everyone was, uh, you know, a suit pretending not to be a suit, very public. Um, and now there's like a, there's like a new renaissance with NIMS and, uh, it's, it's good to see. I, I, I, I, and one of the, one of the really positive things I've noticed, and maybe this is like a little bit tangential, but it's still very positive. So I'm going to talk about it. Um, it's like e-sports and like drone racing. They all use NIMS. Like the, like the best drone racer in the world is a NIMS.

The best, the best, uh, fucking Fortnite player in the world is like a 14 year old NIMS from like Argentina or something. Um, that's awesome. That's fantastic. Like kids are going to grow up and they're going to like look up to a, like an all-star and, and it's, you know, his name is going to be like Dingle muffin or something. Yeah. I never thought about that, but gamer tags are probably the best normalizing thing out there for letting people see that pseudonyms are not exactly like this, nothing wrong with it in there. There's a lot of value in having that, that way to either mask your identity or just have a second identity or what, however you want to use your pseudonym. But there's a lot of power there and I hadn't, I hadn't connected the dots there, but gaming is probably a huge part of how NIMS have become more normalized over time.

I was literally sitting in a hotel in Austin, uh, like two and a half weeks ago, three weeks ago. This is why like, like, uh, I hope your audience doesn't think like I'm, I'm a drone racing fan or something like I was sitting in, I was sitting in the hotel and we had to kill an hour, me and my lady. And we like turned on ESPN and there was just like the drone racing league was on and they had like the six best drone racers in the world. Uh, it was actually pretty cool, but they had the six, six best drone racing in the world and they were all NIMS. You know, no one had any idea what their real name. They showed the nationality. We saw their face and everything, but they were all NIMS.

Love it. Yeah. If a first person drone racing is really, really interesting. It's not something I've ever really gotten into, but watching it is, is pretty fascinating. It's a really cool, it's pretty fucking cool. Right? I don't know if you call it a sport, I guess. Yeah. I don't, I don't know if it's a sport, but I won't get into that. I'm going to anger a lot of people if I go one way or the other. So, well, I'm sure there's some drone racing finesse.

40:00 addicts out there listening it's if they add if they add weapons to the drones i feel like then we could call it a sport like that's that's what we need it would fit in it would fit in well i could get behind that i definitely did not uh did not expect us to get into to drone racing it wasn't in my uh my prepared list of questions or topics i love it that was my plan the matt special um yeah i definitely i i echo your thoughts on the bitcoin community and it's just it's very frustrating to i mean my most of my exposure is twitter so take that for whatever you want to take that for but it's very frustrating to see the engagement and focus that people get when they either sell out or just kind of pitch to the the normal audience and and avoid talks about privacy avoid talks about technical importance and talks about the technology behind especially in the cryptocurrency space and um they there's a lot for people to gain by doing that because normal people eat that up and people are incentivized by greed and whatever else is going on so it definitely does

get frustrating to see that but i think like you mentioned there has been a good resurgence that i've seen in the space of of nims or non-nims like yourself that really are trying to pull things back to more of the cypherpunk ethos around bitcoin and um one of the really good listener questions that i got before this one were uh was just what are your thoughts around the seeming decay of the cypherpunk ethos around bitcoin we talked about that a little bit already but um and then i kind of added on do you think that this happens to any fos project that grows too large or is it maybe just because of the unique greed incentives that are tied into into bitcoin first of all we got so many good questions on twitter and that was awesome i mean if you want to talk about if you want to talk about uh being optimistic like just those questions make me optimistic like people were pretty excited about this conversation and they had a lot of very good questions um i mean i i think twitter is designed uh with shitty incentives

uh in general um and i think you know and then those incentives being that if you keep things as simple as possible and as positive as possible uh you will get as much engagement you would get the most engagement you will maximize your engagement um don't link to sources kind of kind of pussyfoot around the truth don't really say the real truth thing give your own little like kind of angle on the truth that's kind of right but not really right um and i that that definitely gets exhausting um i i you know i i wonder if i i don't think it's i don't think it's bitcoin specific um i think there's better conversations that happen in person there's better conversations that happen on other platforms um i think privacy in general is just not something you know in the bitcoin community we talk about low time preference a lot this idea of thinking long term um and privacy is very much a low time preference type of thing um and that humans in general tend to value um high time preference activities you get you get a very quick dopamine hit as soon as possible rather than a long-term kind of benefit um so so that's that's the end result the end result is that you get a ton of engagement tweets

i mean look i i think the monero community does a lot of positive things but like i you see it in the monero community and that's like a perfect example like i mean that that's a community that's supposed to be absolutely dedicated to privacy um and i see tweets that go out sometimes from monero people that are like you know uh look at this short squeeze potential that's gonna happen we're about to rip to the upside and that tweet always has way more engagement than uh than a tweet about technicals unfortunately even in yeah like you mentioned even in a community that's i think a lot closer to a cypherpunk ethos at its core the things that that catch on and pull more people in are generally the things that are either about how their favorite project connects to monero or yeah price speculation that's i think the other thing is like at the end of the day privacy is about personal responsibility and personal responsibility is difficult right so like people don't want a difficult fucking answer they want they want something easy if you can if you can give someone something that's easy

or something that's complicated they will choose the easy thing 99 of the time um so when you start talking about more and more people entering the space they're going to want to choose the easy thing they're going to want to press like on the easy thing they're going to want to press retweet on the easy thing you can just kyc you know dollar cost average not worry about it hodl and in five years they'll figure it out it's fine don't worry about it you're going to be so rich it's going to be fine like that's easy that is so easy uh people are going to choose it they don't want to choose personal responsibility um and and the important thing is just not get disillusioned by it you just have to i strongly believe that we're entering a period in humanity where we've never been before and as people get burned which they will get burned we will get burned harder and harder and harder about privacy like there's going to be leaks of scales that we can't even fathom like wait till 23andme's database gets leaked you know like like wait till like all these vaccine passports start getting

leaked like it's going to be crazy and as these leaks happen people get burned and they'll start to realize the importance and when they realize the importance it's really crucial that we have the education we have the tools ready for them rather than have to build them on the spot and that that's basically like how i look at it right now yeah i love that perspective that's something i talked about i think last episode a bit with j43 the last guest and just kind of how i feel like at least i started out in a place of like i need to win people over towards privacy like i need to convince people why they need privacy and i need to be the one evangelizing or i need to be the one that's really kind of figuring out how to make people want to be more private um but i think the longer you try that the the more you realize that that's that's almost impossible to actually convince somebody who hasn't had something happen to them that makes it clear why they need it personally i think like you mentioned both that personal responsibility is is hard and most people don't want to wrestle with

actually having to do something to gain a long-term benefit um but i think also just that people have been cushy and i think governments and big tech have done a good job of um just really allaying people's fears and convincing them that they don't need to worry about it and that it's it's all for their best interests and it's it's all to keep them safe and secure and has really kind of frozen people and stopped them from waking up they're absolving them of personal responsibility i mean if you want to talk about a mindfuck um you know i've been working very closely with alex gladstein of the human rights foundation um for almost three years now and we started small we were like teaching activists how to you know use encryption how to use bitcoin privately stuff like that in like small rooms and like 2019 and this year was like our big coming out like we had um they have this oslo freedom forum every year that's in oslo that's the name but this year was in miami because everything's in miami in covet times

we had the oslo freedom forum in miami um we had almost a thousand people including like 200 activists from around the world wow and we had a whole like bitcoin and privacy track um where we taught them about bitcoin and we talked that taught them about like internet privacy and tech privacy i was like a major part of that and it's such it was such a mindfuck because first of all you don't have to do that first part that you were talking about like you don't have to you don't have to tell them why privacy is important like they've been in jail for 40 times or 50 times they don't know where their brother is you know their their mom was killed or some shit some horrible shit by some authoritarian in one of these countries um so you don't have to explain to them what the need is but then you start going into like the nuances and the trade-offs and stuff and like i made the mistake i mean i don't think it was a mistake because i was being honest i said at one point in one of my workshops i was like like if like these

techniques help reduce mass surveillance but like if you're targeted if you're targeted you just have to assume that any internet connected device you use is being owned and you have to stay offline and one of the activists like raised their hand and i called on them and they were like

50:00 Matt, like, that is all of us. Yeah, like that that comment just like, just fucking killed me inside. I was like, fuck. I was like, I don't know, pen and paper, like use cash, like just as the I don't, I don't know. That was a real mindfuck. But but that that first part is what I truly believe. Like, I don't really think I think we're wasting our time if we're trying to convince people why privacy is important. I think most people are going to come around eventually.

And we have, you know, 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s coming around to it every month and figuring out that they need privacy. So the key focus needs to be okay, if you need privacy, how do you get better privacy? It shouldn't be convincing people because they're just wasting your time. Like I've spent way, way, way, way too many hours trying to convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced that privacy is important. Like that is I'm done with that. That is not going to happen anymore. Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree there. The focus has to be, building either tools or building education around existing tools that make it easy for those people who wake up and who do come to that realization, hopefully before anything too catastrophic happens to them, hopefully before they get in into the situations you talked about those people are in. Hopefully they wake up before that. But when they wake up, we need to have the tools ready, the educational material ready, the guides ready, the communities ready and willing to accept them in and

help kind of shepherd them and guide them in the process. And that is is very much the most important thing that is necessary. And if you're going to be able to get to the thing that is necessary and if you're listening to this even if you don't think that you have anything to add i'm sure there's some obscure thing that you you love or there's a specific tool that you love that there's not a perfect guide out there about or i'm sure there is some way that you can really give back and help to build out the material or help contribute to a tool or just help fund people who are doing the the dev work or doing the educational work and and help to to ensure that those people who do wake up have a place to go that they have the tools to run to they have the guides to run to they have the communities to run to yeah i mean as for guides like i've never come across uh someone who means well who's not doing it for a monetary gain who's who's tried to make a guide on something like you don't have to be an expert that that has been

that that i've looked at and been like you shouldn't have done this like like maybe your guide could be improved and i will give you feedback um all my contact information is at matt odell dot keybase dot pub uh telegram keybase and three ma but uh i will always give you feedback the the people who make guides like i used to be a guy who made guides i can't do it anymore if they get outdated so quickly i respect everyone who makes guides i will promote your guides i will give you feedback for guides they are so important people don't realize how important they are like they are especially if you can distill it and the thing is like people think they need to be experts to make guides like sit down learn something try and do it yourself if you can do it yourself you can make a guide and if you make that guide from your perspective as a non-expert that guide is infinitely more helpful than an expert like experts make guides and they leave out like key aspects that everyone else gets stuck on

but if if you got stuck on something it probably means 99 of people who are trying to do that thing are going to get stuck there too and if you can show them how to get unstuck um that is massive yeah that's i think that's such a good point that being an expert or thinking you're an expert in something and trying to make a guide often just complicates the process and makes it to where you like you said you leave out a ton of details that you just know like you just know oh this command obviously comes first and you obviously get into the into the host this way or this is how you spin up a vps or whatever and you just assume those things are common knowledge because they're intimately familiar to you but it's there's so much value that has come from people that that i know who have come in from the perspective of like i'm new i want to figure this out but if they take that time to create a guide there's so much value in that or even if you don't feel like creating a guide is something you want to

do like maybe you don't want to host it somewhere you just aren't comfortable with your writing style or whatever just going through the process of trying out these tools and using them from the perspective of someone who's not an expert and not extremely technical and then giving solid detailed feedback is so infinitely helpful and there there's such a need for that within the space and oftentimes the experts are the ones who can't possibly help with that because they they understand details or they grasp they grasp things or they have a perspective that just makes it impossible for them to come at it from the perspective of someone who has no idea what they're doing um so there's so much value in having that and like you said no one's ever sent me a guide or sent me a a video that they walk through something or anything like that where it's been like ah i think you should just delete this like there's just no value here like there's exactly there's so much and like you mentioned maybe there's some small

changes or whatever but um even just having 10 different people's approaches to spinning up a tool or using signal or using bitcoin or those kinds of things having those different approaches can be really valuable and just also having people who can keep things updated because like you said guides and educational material around technical subjects and tools they're outdated so quickly oh it's so hard to keep up with that i i don't even have that many guides and it's hard to keep up and and keep them all up and running with all of the changes to the tools all the changes to the operating systems there's so much that goes into keeping a guide up to date and working properly um around the topic of false projects out there uh one of the questions that i think was really really good from someone on twitter was uh just how do you decide what to focus on when you see all of the amazing false projects that are out there um and how do you kind of prioritize the things you approach and try out and

educate on second bottle pop um there's no science to it i uh my secret sauce is that i try everything that looks interesting and then i base my opinions on trying things um i am not a dev i'm not an engineer i'm not a coder i i know some like basic python i can like read a github you know um i can you know if if the code is is is decently straightforward i can i can follow it and see if there's something that stands out um but my my secret sauce is just i just try anything that looks interesting and i have a good gut check if something usually like if i think it's like if something looks too good to be true or is like making like extraordinary claims um i will ignore it or in some in some cases i will actually pay more attention to it to call it out um because like the a solid rule of thumb is just like if you see absolutes being thrown around like they're probably full of like fully anonymous or something like that um they're probably like completely full of um i just you know i've i've harnessed twitter to basically

um i've harnessed twitter to basically put as little energy into it as possible while still seeing as much as possible and i've just really like fine-tuned um i use lists on twitter uh and you know i have you know maybe 400 people like i like really respect and if they're talking about something like i'm going to check out what they're talking about um github is like kind of in a horrible way turning into a social network but also in that way it's also kind of helpful if you're if you're like following people on github and like watching what they're fucking doing um telegram i'm in telegram i don't know i don't know dude like i i just i play around with as many things as possible like my my day-to-day is just around with new tools and i decide if i like the tools or not and i decide basically if i think it almost doesn't even need to be the tool doesn't have to be fully fleshed out like it doesn't have to be quite there yet but if i think the team behind it if i think the maintainer if i think the

contributors are like in the right place they they mean well then i will engage with them and i'll talk to them personally i'll reach out to them one of the things is people think um you know like if you mean well like people will respond to you like they will talk to you and like they will you engage them you see where they're sitting at you're seeing what their opinion is and like people think a lot of the times like the reason like a like a feature or something doesn't exist in a false project is because like it's already been proven to not

1:00:00 be feasible 99 of the times like the maintainer the contributors haven't thought about it they haven't even considered it and like you give them the most basic feedback and they'll run with it and they'll make that tool better so i just kind of um i guess i guess if you're going to distill my approach it's kind of a spray and pray to be honest it's just like a spray and pray approach and then i see what sticks yeah it really i think boils down to two things to me it's what is your threat model or your approach to priorities in general like what do you need like app actually need right and those are the things that everyone's going to prioritize first hopefully right those are the obvious ones like obviously there's you know if i'm like looking for like a two-factor open source app because i need a two-factor open source app like i will seek out whichever project i think is best i'll try out all those projects and then i'll pick favorites and make it happen i mean our episode was completely focused on mobile phone privacy right like i needed i needed mobile phone privacy right

so i tried out all of those projects that were were catering to that and i like made conclusions based on what i was doing the more difficult thing is specifically when you're trying to um do something like sail dispatch or opt out where you're like kind of trying to hit projects that maybe you don't even have like a direct need to and those are more spray and pray um yeah yeah i think those usually kind of fall into your specific passions or interests or generally the way that you're gonna approach that and that's usually where i end up is most of the tools that i learn about are things that i just am curious about or i have a maybe a non-foss alternative that i i have been using and want to move off and have a passion for that or like recently i've been getting to know getting used to using docker a lot more and so i've just been looking into what cool tools are being built that run on docker and run easily in docker and those things are things that i'll test out myself or spin up for other people

to use like i host a bunch of tools that people can just use freely on a server and there's a lot of yeah just a lot of value i think in the spray and pray approach and figuring out like what are you what are you interested in once you've gotten past the like the things i absolutely need what are you interested in and then just try those things out i would say the most difficult part of um trying to expand the false ecosystem like through education and discussion is when you get something that you need and you find a project that you really like and you get like a little bit of attached to that project and you really like that project and you kind of you kind of put blinders on for for new projects and stuff that are in that same niche um and you kind of have to force yourself you kind of have to force yourself to constantly be trying out the alternatives um rather than like only if i was just doing it for myself i just wouldn't even probably even do that like i would just focus on i have this

tool works really well it's free and open source like why do i need an alternative to this i don't need an alternative to this but like it's important that you expand the ecosystem and you pay attention to the other things that that is probably the most difficult aspect of the whole thing yeah and that's one of those things that gets made even more difficult because of free and open source software like the beauty is anyone can fork it and make the changes they want and change things up and that has led to a ton of amazing projects that spawn out of other projects that people were attached to and were passionate about and cared about and had spent time doing and there's just there's always that other thing that's a little bit tweaked or a little different or that like graphene versus CalyxOS or just the 18 000 different messengers that are out there that everyone loves in their own specific way and it's if you're just looking for you like you said it's a lot easier because you can just decide like this fits my threat model this

fits my needs i'm comfortable with it awesome i'm content yeah yeah exactly that is definitely it's a lot easier of a place to be in but i think even people who aren't necessarily like actively trying to do education i think it's helpful for them to keep branching out and trying new things both because they could stumble across the tool that is actually much better for them that they wouldn't have tried otherwise but also just so they can better connect with people and when you're talking to people and when you're just having those conversations at the bar over a meal whatever you have a better understanding of the different tools that are out there that may fit that person's specific needs and when you compare and contrast the trade-offs like i feel like you learn a lot about the individual tools absolutely yeah yeah you learn a ton more about what specifically works and like with everybody using different messaging apps now and having their preferred one i've been trying out basically all of the popular ones and and trying to figure out what makes each one tick and what's

helpful what's harmful what's good what fits me what doesn't fit me there's there's a lot that goes into that but you do learn a lot more about each of the tools and i've learned a ton more about signal because i've been trying out lots of other messenger apps with people and um it also helps you i think pinpoint different user experience hurdles that you may not have caught otherwise um those things that either you can just improve about the project yourself or maybe you can put in an issue or uh make a pull request or something that will help that project fix that user experience gap that maybe another project covers uh kind of more effectively but there's definitely a lot of value in continuing to explore and um just staying staying hungry i think it's very important that you don't kind of settle down in your ways and get used to a specific set of things but just stay hungry to stay on top of things and keep learning all the time so much out there and the false ecosystem is i feel like just exploding right

now it's great to see but yeah i agree 100 like as far as i'm concerned like i would love if there was like five close competitors in every niche in false like let's go it would definitely be the best thing for for everyone involved whenever there's a monopoly things stagnate even if it's false it doesn't it doesn't really matter it's usually great there's competition out there and each each thing like you said will have its own set of trade-offs and it will fit specific people better than the other version there's there's always kind of some unique things that that fit in well there let's take a quick break from this episode to chat about the sponsors of opt out Cake Wallet and LocalMonero Cake Wallet is a key tool that i use daily as it allows me to easily and quickly use monero for private by default payments it's available in both ios and android it is a fantastic way to get started buying and using monero with a simple and easy to understand user experience i regularly onboard new users to Cake Wallet and

hope that it will help simplify and ease your journey into cryptocurrency if you're interested in purchasing monero for the first time or helping to bring others into a parallel economy i'd recommend you look at using LocalMonero like i do to buy and sell monero while maintaining your privacy and avoiding invasive exchange surveillance LocalMonero is entirely peer-to-peer and is an important part of opting out of the surveillance state and into a parallel economy thank you to both sponsors for their incredible support and partnership and i hope you'll take a moment after the episode to learn more in the show notes or at optoutpod.com sponsors also around foss and just kind of focusing on the different funding models that exist for free and open source software and obviously i'm using the foss term and the actual sense of free as in free use not free of cost necessarily um but i i got a great question on twitter that just talked about how um how should we think about the funding models around that and

basically just should all tools and projects be free of cost to end users always or is there a funding model that can go along with foss that can really benefit everyone involved it's a mess um it's it's it's been as a non-dev it's been something that i've been focusing on very hard um because i feel like it's something that i can i can help with and i can you know help foster the ecosystem better um i started with bitcoin dev list which was this idea that you could just fund devs through donations directly with bitcoin no middleman and i ran into basically the issue that so that's bitcoin dev list.com like you can literally go to bitcoin dev list.com devs will manually put themselves uh they'll pull a pull request we basically do like a basic due diligence check to make sure they're not like a complete scammer but like we're not really doing that much of a check they get posted on there and and they just accept bitcoin directly um no one donates uh it's just yeah there's people that want

to donate but they just don't know who to donate to they don't want to go through that time they don't want to figure it out um so what happens is like the really popular outspoken public facing devs will get some money but everyone else gets nothing um then i created open stats which is 100 percent pass-through non-profit uh organization 501c3 um basically the general premise is we don't have this live yet partially because it's 100 pastor so none of us are making any money from it and we're just fucking doing it on our side job um

1:10:00 But the idea was that you could just like pay with credit card, just set it up. You can pay with Bitcoin too. But the main idea in my mind was you like set it up with credit card. People like set and forget. You just do like $50 a month automatic. It just goes into this general fund and then we donate to devs. Now, one of the issues with 501c3s that people don't understand is with a 501c3 to be compliant, you actually have to get tax documentation from any grant recipients.

So if you're donating to privacy focused devs, they literally have to dox themselves to you and the IRS. So that fucking sucks. So the donation thing is not great. It's not a great situation. Part of the reason I started Dispatch was because I cared so much about FOSS that I felt like I should be in the same boat as them. Like I felt like if they were accepting donations and didn't really have like a monetization model, like I shouldn't either. And I'll tell you firsthand, I have a show that is sponsor funded and I have a show Dispatch that is audience funded.

And it is night and day the difference in the amount of money I make off of the sponsor funded versus audience funded. Like it's I just passed. I've done like 125 hours of Dispatch. Wow. And I've just passed like an hour of of Rabbit Hole Recap, which is sponsor funded. Goodness gracious. So like it's not even fucking close. So I really do think that open source projects should try and figure out some kind of clever monetization models. I think Bitcoin and even and Monero, you know, like I think I think cryptocurrency in general offers the ability for people to pay you without KYC, without that kind of friction.

And with you remaining an on as the dev, like if they can find some kind of business model that can't easily be forked, like it's a network effect kind of situation. I mean, that is obviously the ideal situation. And I think like a perfect example of it, I mean, I is is, you know, Samourai Whirlpool, they're completely open source and they make fees based off of their coin joint fee. And now can they be forked? Yeah, they can be forked. But if you fork them, then you get a different liquidity pool.

Yep. So there's a little bit of a stickiness there. Like they can't be absolute greedy bastards about how much they charge, but there's some stickiness there in terms of people willing to pay them. Wasabi has done the same thing. I mean, I think Wasabi's implementation is is not great. I think they agree with me, even though they won't admit it because they're about to release a complete rewrite. But but that's that model is super appealing to me, both Wasabi and Samourai, where they basically have a service fee that they can be forked.

But the service fee is like based on kind of a network effect type of thing. So it's less likely for them to be forked and people are just happy to use it. And on both of those on both of those services, I've given them a ton of money without even thinking about it because I wanted privacy. Right. Like I just I just wanted to use their tools, so I just paid them. So little things like that. I mean, I also I have a tool final message dot IO, which is a dead man switch where you just pay fifty dollars a year.

If you want to use the dead man switch, you pay it in Bitcoin. And like that's always been sustainable. Like I've never been in the negative. And that's really all you need in a false project. Like you just you shouldn't be burning money. It doesn't necessarily have to be the most profitable endeavor in the world. It just you know, you need to at least be able to just keep the lights on and just keep going. So I would like people to be more creative about it.

I've been talking to a big open source project that I really like is Seed Signer, where they have this like open source off the shelf. They use Raspi zeros for hardware wallets. I've been like talking to them about like creative funding models, like ways to do it while while keeping yourself at MIT licensed and fully open source. And that that's I think that's that's really the way going forward. Like you can't rely on grants from companies and donations.

I just don't. It's just not a sustainable model. Unfortunately. Yeah, it's such a it's such a tricky topic because like you mentioned, it would be easiest if the products could just accept donations in things like Bitcoin or Monero and call it a day and get the funding they need, do the work they need, move on. But unfortunately, just simple donations seems to be an angle that's very hard to be like you mentioned, even even successful enough to keep the lights on.

Like that model is usually pretty tough to to use to sustain a project, even if it's something you're just doing in your spare time. That can be pretty rough. I will say that my buddy Wiz, who is like just a ride or die Bitcoiner involved with the BISC project. He's involved in Liquid. He runs his own ISP in Tokyo. But his project mempool.space is open source, fully open source project. And like you can run on your own hardware. But if you want to use his hosted version, it's mempool.space.

And he has donations enabled. And what he did was there is a social element to his donation. So like I donated to him and like my little Twitter badge is on his donation page at like mempool.space slash donate or whatever the page is. I think that's the page. And there's like 100 of us or 200 of us there with our little, you know, Twitter profile pictures, like showing like supporters of mempool.space. I think like if you add like a social element to the donations, people are way more likely to do it.

Like kind of like a little bragging points. Yeah, I like that. There's something there. I still, I'm not in love with the donation model. But there's something there. Like if you have like a social reinforcement involved with your donation. Yeah, there's been a, I think the Monero community has been trying to work our way through this. Because obviously Monero is a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. It's all fair issuance. There was no dev tax or there's no company behind it.

There's no monetization available natively in the protocol or anything like that. So funding has always been a topic of discussion constantly throughout the life of the project. And it's something that I've tried to be a part of. And obviously Monero is basically entirely funded through donations. But I think there's been two approaches that so far have been pretty successful. The first one has been the community crowdfunding system, the CCS, where people can just make a proposal for some work they want to do around Monero or just around the ecosystem generally.

And then it goes through some community vetting and then goes up for funding. And as far as I know, no proposal has failed to get funding. Really? Yeah. There have definitely been ones that were denied because they obviously weren't a good fit or weren't actually something with home and arrow or if the scope is too large. Like there are ones that have been denied before that stage. But as far as I know, no proposal has ever gone unfunded. And throughout this bull market.

That's impressive. Yeah. It's really cool to see. And I think a lot of that honestly is down to the cypherpunk ethos that's so very prevalent among the Monero community. And many of the people who have been in Monero for a very long time have stuck around. And they help. I think what helps is, what helps is like, I know the Monero community hates number go up. But what has helped is in both Bitcoin and Monero is this like, like if you've been around for a while, you've done pretty well for yourself.

So yeah. There are whales. Yeah. With very, you know, with very good bags. And they're grateful. And they do support. Talking about like normie, more normie organizations that don't have like that cryptocurrency kind of backing. I feel like Calyx has done pretty well for themselves in terms of how they give. Like I feel proud to be a member of Calyx. And then I also have the little hotspot. Like the little hotspot's a cool idea. Like that's a cool concept.

And like it means I give a bigger donation than I would have given otherwise. Right. Like what is the hotspot now? Like I got to give like $600 a year or something like that. But I do it and I'm proud of it. And I have my hotspot. There's something there, right? There's something there. They do it right. Yeah. I think that's a great example. I think they figured out really early on a way to incentivize people. And they're using a lot of nonprofit and basically using a lot of the existing infrastructure around nonprofits to help make that sustainable.

But I think they've done a brilliant job. Like I said, you can for a specific donation level, you get like a 4G hotspot for a higher donation level. Now you get a 5G hotspot. I got my stickers. I got my shirts. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The real prize in the package. They've also introduced recently, I think it was probably six months ago or so, but.

1:20:00 They also introduced, you can buy a Pixel 4a through them. Like your donation gets you a Pixel 4a with Kallax OS. Ooh, that's a good idea. Which is another really interesting way to, again, they're not making money. They're a nonprofit, but they're bringing in donations in very innovative ways. And I think it's a great example for other organizations and projects to investigate the ways that they can do similar things to incentivize that. And I think, like you said, that could be as simple as really just making it a social thing.

I think obviously Patreon and products like that have taken off because they, in a sense, they pay well off content, which I struggle with how to do that. Like, obviously I'm a content creator. I don't have a Patreon and I understand the draw there. I hate paywalls. Yeah, no, I hate them too. And I'm generally very against them. But I think there's something to be said for the effectiveness of tools like Patreon to fund things. A hundred percent.

But I, yeah, it's hard to find that balance. And, yeah, I think two other kind of interesting funding examples in the, also in the Monero community, which obviously for anyone listening, I'm very deep in the Monero community. I try to help out where I can. And something that we've kickstarted lately is a bounties system for funding specific things within the Monero ecosystem. And basically it's just bounties.monero.social. And it lets anyone, literally anyone, there's no vetting.

Obviously if you post something that's like spam or whatever, it's going to get deleted. But you can post any idea of something you want done. And then people can donate Monero to that specific feature request, that specific thing that you're asking for. And who holds the Monero in that situation? So this specifically is held by the Monero core team. It's, unfortunately, there's no way to decentralize that with Monero right now. We're hoping actually with the next version of the protocol, there'll be some more advanced tools that we could hopefully build in some sort of.

You don't have like multi-sig or anything like that? Well, it's, I mean, it's behind multi-sig, but it's not. Like there's not a protocol driven way to do it outside of that. It's just obviously. Well, I don't know if you could have a protocol way ever to do something like that. Because you need to actually know that the bounty was actually solved. Yeah, I think there's some, I haven't dug into it, but I know some people have been talking about, I'm going to mention Bitcoin Cash.

It's going to freak people out. But apparently there's a way that. Yeah, that's going to freak me out. I don't really know how the system works. Apparently there's a way within Bitcoin Cash that you can collaboratively work together to fund something. And the transaction only goes through if all of the funding actually happens. So it's actually like, it can only happen if the funding occurs and no one actually. Otherwise you don't lose your money or whatever.

Yeah, everyone gets it back if it doesn't properly fund. Well, I will just say that from what I know about Bitcoin Cash, they're probably full of shit. But that sounds like a great idea. Yeah, I have, I am definitely not speaking to the veracity of that claim. It's something that I've heard as we've been working. We can talk about Monero and I won't completely dismiss you. But if Bitcoin Cash comes up, they can go fuck themselves. They're just, I don't even, they're on cloud nine.

I don't even know what the fuck's going on over there. I do not keep up with them at all. But I'm curious if that type of system would be something that could be implemented in the future. But the bounties system has been a really interesting one. Like, yeah, it's a really cool way for like anyone can request. Like, I had a specific thing where I really want a, like a version of the Monero GUI and Node and P2 pool that I can run on a desktop that anyone can run and like their taskbar have it running all the time, that kind of thing.

And no one was creating it. So I opened up a funding request for it and it's been gaining traction and people are starting to work on it now because of their visibility and the funding behind it. Yeah, part of OpenSats is that we're going to be doing bounty programs. I'm doing bounty right now with HRF for a joint market to make joint market easier to use. I think there's a lot of power there. Yeah. I mean, we have, we have maybe like 70 million sats and they're like 0.7 Bitcoin.

So that's like, I don't even know what that is right now. That's like $40,000 just waiting for that thing. But like, it's like a, you know, it's a multi-sig, right? So it's, it's me and a group of people that are like going to decide. We're going to decide if the bounty gets solved or not. So that's obviously the issue. Yeah. But I think that's, it's definitely no worse than a system where you're just donating to a dev and hoping that it helps in some way.

It's, it's definitely, it's objectively better. I would say. Yeah. No, I definitely, I definitely agree. It is clearly better. And I think that's, I think that's why I've really been fascinated by that attempt at like that approach of funding, because people can clearly see what they're funding. And I think that's why like the CCS and Monero has done well, because you're funding someone to work on a very clear set of objectives for a very clear set of time.

And you know what you're getting when you're, when you're donating money. And I think a lot of times the trouble with it being just a broad, like, Hey, I work on Monero, donate money to me is it's hard for people to see like, okay, I can donate to you. But maybe I like you, but how do I know anything good is going to come at my donation? And I think I really want to, I really want this feature to be added in. So I'm going to throw some Monero at that, or I'm going to throw some Bitcoin at that and make sure that that happens.

What do you think of something like Decred where they like have a, they like, like literally have like a treasury tax that happens. And then like people are like stakeholder voting where that treasury goes. It's probably a, it's a more decentralized approach to, I think what the CCS does in Monero. Because like, for instance, they, their treasury is actually controlled by the protocol and it requires like on chain votes for those kinds of things.

So it's a, it's a pretty cool system to actually ensure that the funding is legitimate. Um, and you're not going to trust anyone with multi-sig or that kind of thing. So I do like, I like that part of it, that it's a more, again, it's just consensus driven and it's not people driven. I think as much as we can, these funding tools need to get away from having someone behind the wheel of payouts. So that kind of thing and move it into a way that it can be consensus driven in some way, but that's really hard to do.

So, yeah. I mean, I think the problem is like my perspective at this point of that is that it like kind of seemed promising in theory, but it almost just destroys the currency. So yeah, I mean, it's like defeats the purpose. Like you just never, I just don't even, I, I think it's like almost like a, it's almost naive, you know, it's like naive, this idea that you can even have that. I don't know if we'll have that, but like, I, there's a lot of people, like the Bellagis of the world will tell you like that, that, that's the future of open source funding is like this.

And the reason I brought up Decred is cause like, I feel like they're like, like the, the, the oldest, most sophisticated DAO. Um, but like this idea of like a, a decentralized autonomous organization that just like takes basically, uh, a treasury tax or, I mean, I guess they would all be angry at me for calling it a tax, but like, uh, I mean, that's what it is. A treasury budget to, to fund open source projects. I don't, I don't think that'll ever really turn into like a meaningful funding.

No. And I think there's two real core problems there. I mean, I think the first is that the, the tax is involuntary. Yeah. So if you use Decred or if you just hold Decred, you are losing value because a part of every block reward emission is going into a treasury that you may or may not want to be used for the things that it ends up being used for. And technically the second problem is technically, yes, you have a vote, but I was pretty heavily into the Decred ecosystem.

And a lot of the things that got passed were passed, even if there wasn't clear community support because the whales who were in from early on had pulled the vast majority of voting sway. And then you wonder if like the whales are involved or whatever. Yeah, exactly. And that's the same, like a little bit of the same problem still exists in something like the CCS Terminero because whales can still fund things. But the difference there is they're not funding things with taxes that came out of your wallet.

They're not using your money to do it. Yeah, exactly. It's something where they're donating their own funds, which if they fund something that you don't want to actually get done, oh well, like assuming it would still get like merged into the project and all that. And there would be a whole different set of ways that would be handled. But it's better in that sense because it's not involuntarily taken taxes being used for a thing that maybe you agree with, maybe you don't, and you have to kind of deal with it either way.

And that goes to my like next thought where like I really feel like if we're talking donations, like I really feel like the dream is that we have many groups of people, many organizations basically running these bounties. So like you can pick and choose who your multisig that is holding it and deciding. So then there's some competition there rather than trusting the same people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If there's no way to make that something that's like a consensus level protocol level thing.

Which I don't think there is. I don't know if there could ever be. I just, I think, yeah, I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure on the technical details of how that would be possible. I think maybe there would be a way where you could build a transaction so that only if it reaches a certain amount, it would actually go through. But that's definitely something that I'm not super well versed in. But I think while we're in this phase, at least, of

1:30:00 having to trust someone, it is really beneficial if more and more different groups pop up to do these kinds of things or different people pop up or different communities pop up and do funding in their own way. And also just that they try different things. Like there may be a funding method that no one's ever thought of that you can kick off and it could be super successful. That's basically what my strategy has been. I've just been trying to throw a million different things at the wall in terms of trying to fund open source projects. So hopefully I learned something from it. I love that. It'll be effective. I love open sats and I've definitely kept an eye on Bitcoin dev list. And like you said, I think it's, it's very valuable, but a lot of times the problem just comes down to people need to decide to donate. And sometimes they don't, but I think also, I think we need to keep working and working on figuring out good ways to incentivize people to donate to specific causes maybe, or to specific people or different things. I think bounty systems or

there's definitely a lot of exploration that's needed. Yeah. Another thing I've been thinking about is like with dispatch, like if I can get the, if I can get the donations really rolling on dispatch and the audience support really rolling on dispatch, like it'd be awesome if I can, if I could basically split those payments and just like you donate to me and then like you donate to dispatch, you want to support the show. And then like 30%, 40% goes to open source devs. Yeah. Stuff like that. Like if we could get, if we can get that into like people's psyche, psyche, like, and then you have multiple content creators, like all doing it. Cause the thing is like content creator, it's way easier for us to raise money. Even though I'm struggling with dispatch, it's way easier for us. I mean, I know yours is audience funded, right?

Like, do you have a sponsor now? Yeah, I do actually have sponsors. Are you Cake Wallet? Yeah. Cake Wallet and a LocalMonero sponsors. Um, but you were audience funded for a while. Yeah. Yeah. Just donations driven. That's how I've handled my blog and other content that I've put out the hosting that I do. All of that is purely donation funded. Yeah. Like if we could, if we can like get people to, and maybe like even like the sponsor funded stuff, like maybe, you know, maybe there's something there, you know, sponsor my show, but also give this much to open source projects. I'll pick what the open source project is. You know, there's something there.

Yeah. I like that idea. We'll figure it out. I think there's a lot of unnecessary hatred towards the idea of sponsorships, but I think a lot of that just comes from sponsorships being abused in lots of different ways throughout the years. But I think there's a lot of value in actual good, useful tools and projects sponsoring good, useful education and good, useful material out there and good, useful content creators as a way to, to spread the word from people that are actually like a, again, trusted source is probably not the right term, but someone that people follow and care about and actually like care about their personal usage. And I think as long as sponsorships are, are by tools that you actually use and actually care about and aren't just something you're taking for the money, but are actually something you want people to learn more about and use. I think there can be a lot of value there, but it's, it's a fine line to walk and it's very, very tricky.

It's so difficult. I think the key is you have to be, you have to be critical of your sponsors. You can't just like, they can't be buying your voice. Yeah. As long as you're, as long as you're key with that, then you're good ish. Yeah. If anyone is unwilling to stand up to their sponsors or is not talking to their sponsors, you're a slave, you're like bought and paid for. Yeah, exactly. And that, that is always a negative. Like that, that's never good. That's never a good situation. But I think like, uh, like Techlore came out and put out a video with some sponsorships they're starting to take on and they have like a very clear set of rules.

They have a very clear document outlines their ethos. Yeah. That's, I think they did a really good job of writing that line of like realizing that sponsorships can really help them grow in ways that donations just simply aren't sponsoring them now. Um, I don't think they said, or I just totally forgot. Okay. I think it was basically saying they've been exploring it and like talking to the community about it for a while. Um, and I think this was their just kind of initial, Hey, we're going to be taking on sponsors, but I love tech. You know, Techlore is their new peer to peer to post is Bitcoin TV. Yeah. I was glad that they all got connected that way. It was a great fit. A hundred percent. Good dude. Awesome. I'm trying to, trying to think through anything else major that I wanted to run through. Um, there's a couple of kind of the normal questions I want to get to before we close out, but was there anything else you, you wanted to cover chat about?

I'm good on time, whatever you want to talk about. Okay. Uh, yeah, let's dive into a couple, a couple more listener questions. Um, these ones are a little bit more Bitcoin centric, um, which I think it'd be, be good for people to hear your response, go as in depth as you want. But, um, the, the first one was both these from Twitter, of course, first one was, do you see Bitcoin's lack of fungibility as a potential growing problem enabling free speech money globally as more users continue to enter the KYC system and governments tighten regulations? And why or why not?

Yeah. I mean, obviously I do. I mean, that's why I like focus the majority of my time on that shit. Um, I think that question was from don't, don't trace me, bro. Yeah. I like that dude. Um, yeah, I mean, it's obviously a fucking issue. The majority, the overwhelming majority of people are coming in through, uh, KYC AML, which is, I assume most of your audience knows what that is, but it's this idea that you're just giving all your personal information to these regulated companies.

They're storing it. Um, they're sharing it. It could get hacked. It could get stolen. Um, that data is never getting deleted. Uh, they're saving all your withdrawal addresses. And it really does complicate. It adds an additional complication to the already inherent Bitcoin protocol risk because Bitcoin's a transparent ledger. Um, literally like, I mean, if you were going to say the number, like nine, it has to be 99% of newcomers that are coming in or coming in that way, um, and the overwhelming majority are probably even keeping it in custodial exchanges as well.

So they're not even withdrawing it. Um, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a major issue. It's something that I think long-term gets partially mitigated from like a circular economy. Um, this idea that you just, you're not buying Bitcoin, you're earning Bitcoin, you're not selling Bitcoin. Yeah. You're spending Bitcoin. Um, but it's definitely a concern. And when I talk about privacy on Bitcoin, it's, uh, I mean, this, this most recent time, like I was, I wanted to do a episode on Sill Dispatch where it was, there's so many newcomers coming into Bitcoin. So I wanted a Sill Dispatch where I could just, this is the newcomer episode. Like you just come, like you listen to these two and a half hours.

We give you start to finish. This is what you need to know. You don't have to do it all in one episode and like get it done, but like, this should be your, your pipeline or your, these should be your steps that you take as you enter. Yeah. And like, we're talking about like transaction fees and UTXOs and like coin selection. If you receive Bitcoin, like the, the sender might know where your Bitcoin goes next. If you don't practice coin control and if you pay someone with Bitcoin, you don't pack, practice coin control. They might see what funds you have previously. And then there's like, there's like all these professional surveillance mercenaries that are like working for governments and corporations and authoritarians and fucking they're, they're all trying to track you all the time. And it gets really fucking convoluted really quickly. Um, and it's very, it, it, it makes you very, uh, disillusioned. It's like the fourth time I've said disillusion. That's how disillusioned I can be sometimes. Um, I think, I think it's, it's the biggest threat to Bitcoiners that exists. It's not,

to me, I don't think it's a threat to Bitcoin. I've come to the conclusion that I don't think it's a threat to Bitcoin. It's not a threat to Bitcoin, the network. It's not a threat to Bitcoin, the protocol. It's a threat to individual Bitcoiners. And when I say that, I mean that if you want to attack Bitcoin and you're a large nation state or a sophisticated actor, that's sub nation state, but maybe a corporation or something like a Facebook or I guess Meta, whatever they're calling themselves now, um, you don't attack the network. You can attack the users. You attack the users, you bag and tag the users, you hit them with onerous regulation and you, and you make examples of those who don't comply. And then the majority of people comply, which is what we saw. I mean, 2020, I mean, if you don't think the majority of people will comply, if you make examples out of a few people, like, I don't know where the fuck you're at. So that that's basically the kind of

1:40:00 I've come out with and I you know I think Bitcoin will be relatively fine in that situation I think it's just people will learn they'll get burned and they'll learn um I yeah I don't know I don't I don't think it's a uh I don't I don't think it's a Bitcoin killer I think it's a Bitcoiner killer I think it's a really good way to phrase it like you said that's it's the easiest way to actually attack Bitcoin because technically attacking Bitcoin is very difficult and technically changing Bitcoin is very difficult but exactly grabbing those on ramps and off ramps especially when there hasn't really been a strong circular economy still unfortunately um I'm still definitely hoping that's something that continues to develop and there definitely are places and people that are really driving that it's gotten stronger I mean you can go to El Salvador you can buy anything you want yeah yeah there's a lot of complications there too but it it's a it's a good step forward at least for people to start wondering what it would be like to have a a circular economy that involved

Bitcoin there's like you mentioned so many of the issues around privacy on Bitcoin they're not fixed by there being no KYC on or off ramps um but they are definitely at least they're significantly reduced yeah I mean the KYC is what really complicates a shit ton of it yeah um especially when you start to talk about like you talk about coin join and people like if I use coin join I might never be able to send it to a regulated service yeah right but like if you're in a circular economy situation like no no one's gonna someone's not gonna sell you a sandwich and be like well what this transaction like eight hops ago had coin join history yeah as long as they're not reliant on a regular banking system yeah and that's that's where it gets complex because if every KYC on and off ramp or every if every on and off ramp is KYC and people can't actually spend their Bitcoin but then I wonder because I wonder because we talked about lowest hanging fruit right and like imagine you could do so much damage just not allowing

withdrawals from regulated exchanges oh yeah um maybe that's the lowest hanging fruit maybe maybe I'm just overthinking and and that's not even like the lowest hanging fruit isn't even the KYC it's just you're not allowed to withdraw like you can buy you can get price exposure but you're not allowed to withdraw but I don't know I think that's the ideal I think they realized drawing that line would maybe be too aggressive maybe but I think also the hard thing with Bitcoin is that the default behavior is not conducive to privacy so as long as people aren't withdrawing and then using privacy tools like coin join I don't think they really have a problem because if you're just withdrawing I've spent like I've spent like two and a half years like telling people that if they're going to use KYC services they should coin join afterwards yeah have to and like we really just haven't had really like the adoption's good it's good to see the adoption I mean it's not nothing um you know like whirlpool liquidity right now is a couple hundred

million like it's not nothing things like quarter of a billion right now um but it is it has not been as it comes down to you know the it it comes down to the same personal responsibility discussion we had earlier yeah I was just gonna say that it's just like people don't want to it sounds too complicated for them and they just want to do the easy route yeah and that's and that's been I mean anybody who follows me on Twitter has known me for a while it's been kind of my my issue with Bitcoin is that I struggle to recommend it to people because if I don't recommend it with all of the specific ways they need to use it to maintain privacy it's risky yeah and I I think you definitely recommend it well people like Bitcoin Q&A are putting out great content and the default recommendation from some of y'all is great privacy practices but like you mentioned most of it is so bad yeah yeah most people are just recommending like you said just set up your dollar cost averaging account maybe if you're lucky you're actually

withdrawing every now and then they're like buy a hardware wallet and just like DCA the hardware wallet and don't care about privacy yeah exactly and that's always been my struggle with Bitcoin as a as a tool like if we get past the money aspect which is really hard to do but if we get past that money aspect as a tool that's made it the thing that just really stops me from recommending it because I I can't really trust that I can just tell someone to use it and even give them the resources but still I would worry that they wouldn't use it it properly but like you said if if KYC becomes a diminishing factor that does greatly reduce the the issues that are inherent there there are still definitely some problems but that would be the vast majority of it erased but I mean even if you talk about stuff like coin join if you talk about a lot of the coin join pitfalls like a lot of the coin join pitfalls are KYC related right so like if you have like a tool like Samourai you have an app level kind of tool

rather than a protocol level like something that Monero has done the mistakes are usually KYC related mistakes it's like it when once you mix KYC in there it becomes that much more dangerous but if you receive you know like if you accidentally fuck up your toxic change or something but like you receive that because you sold someone a sandwich like it's just not as bad as if it's a coinbase UTXO so yeah yeah that's definitely true like they're there still can be issues with people who aren't seeing but get get wrecked because the person who sent them funds is KYC yeah which happens all the time to me stuff yeah yeah I'm sure that you have to deal with a ton of that whenever you're doing you know you know my uh Bitcoin poker story I do not know that yeah so I was like hosting a Bitcoin poker room and um well no I was historically playing in this room and then one day they were like Matt you're the bank today I was like I don't want to be the bank like you're the bank I was like okay fine I was like so everyone's got to pay through lightning because I don't want your fucking UTXOs I just so like I'll pay me through lightning I'm using my own node you know I'm like doing it the sovereign way and but to keep track like I'm putting invoices together with memos and I put one guy's nim poker the memo is is poker and then his nim and then he paid me from strike so then strike knows his nim and that we played poker and my node ID you know so like I'm going to be the

like all that got combined just because he decided to pay me through strike or whatever so yeah it's definitely an issue yeah do you I mean do you have a realistic way that that changes or do you think at some point the way that you recommend tools may change or is it just something that you think is a moot point and you you hope that people wake up and do that actually in a lot of ways like if the regulations get worse it's actually better for us so like the worst case scenario is the biggest fear I have is that people come to the conclusion that like custodial KYC privacy is the way to go yeah so my explanation of that is like so I had another guy who I want to bet from right and he paid me on chain and I'm I'm the fucking crazy person that like I always chain analysis anyone who pays me so he paid me on chain and I checked the payment I looked at it and it was like a batch payment with like a hundred other payments and I like messaged him I was like you paid me from cash app and he was like yeah I paid you from cash app like I didn't want you to know how much bitcoin I have so he like made he made the calculation in his head that he basically gets bank level privacy right like it's the same privacy you get like with a private venmo transaction that's not you know on their social media feed or whatever where cash app knows that he made the payment but I don't know how much money he has and he's protected in that regard so to me that's the biggest

fear to me the biggest fear is that the next step here is that the most private way that you can make a bitcoin payment like the narrative being the most private way you can make a bitcoin payment is if you use a strike or a cash app or something because they'll protect your privacy and then you're just trusting them yeah we're just back where we started with big tech with paypal with venmo and yeah right so in a lot of ways like if they just if they ban withdrawals like that would actually not be the worst thing in the world the worst thing would be if they allow withdrawals and then that becomes the main main payment method yeah i've heard of a couple people doing that before but i've never really i get it all the time i've never clicked why people were doing that but i mean it makes sense i guess if you trust your custodian more than you trust yourself to maintain privacy yeah no one

1:50:00 Everyone knows I'm going to chain fucking analysis them. So they probably pay me with KYC sats. They're all worried. I've never dug into that. That's a fascinating angle. And definitely, I think that's a great, I mean, not a great fear, but a great, like, worst case scenario for people to be cognizant of and consider when they're figuring out how they want to use Bitcoin or approach Bitcoin. But this is like a perfect example that I just feel like most of the people that I have like conversations with, like, just don't fucking use, they don't use the tools.

They don't actually fucking use it. You know, like it's immediately apparent to me, like, I'm not a fucking expert. Like, I'm not doing anything very scientific. Like, it's apparent. It's very obvious. And I mean, yeah, I don't know how much you want to delve into this, but that's why I love Monero and recommend it because I don't have to worry about people shooting themselves in the foot nearly as much because it's something that anybody can use any wallet with and gain pretty strong privacy guarantees.

And I know there's a lot of back and forth about the kind of the monetary aspects of Monero versus Bitcoin, but that's why I love it as just a tool for privacy and a tool for spending money privately. So since we last spoke, you started running Monero swaps with Bitcoin. Yep. Yeah. Are you still doing that? No, I was for a good bit, mostly just to kind of get things started and try to be the one of the people driving adoption. So I did it for a little while.

It was a bit terrifying because I don't normally work with Bitcoin. So I had to remember all of the different aspects of Bitcoin privacy and circle back to kind of a couple of years ago when I was more heavily into Bitcoin. But I was doing that for a while. I think it's an incredibly powerful tool and it's probably my best hope for Bitcoin that atomic swaps take off and there's enough liquidity there that anyone can swap into Monero whenever they want without a bunch of fees or arbitrage or having to worry about liquidity problems.

But I definitely I was doing it for a little bit and have tried to continue to help out with just suggestions and guides and that kind of thing throughout. Yeah. So, I mean, like, look, my theory is that Bitcoin is just it's just so strong from a monetary policy perspective and just a network effect perspective that this thing is going to dominate the world like we're going to live in a Bitcoin world. And that's why my focus has always been on Bitcoin.

I think it'll be the strongest asset in terms of I just rolled my eyes a little bit. I think it's going to be the strongest asset in terms of purchasing power increases like it's going to hold my value. The the thing is, it's like it's kind of a damned if you do damned if you don't for chains that focus on privacy. And right now, the only chain that really focuses on privacy is Monero. I think everything else is basically garbage. But like with Monero, like Monero needs Bitcoin Monero swaps because you don't have the on ramps.

You don't have you don't have the liquidity like that's the liquidity. Like, I mean, you see it firsthand with the whole BISC fiasco with Haven or Haveno. The the majority of BISC volume is Monero to Bitcoin and Bitcoin to Monero. So Monero needs it. But at the same time, the fact that it exists means that if you really need privacy, if you're in a life or death situation, you can convert your spending cash over to Monero very easily and you can spend and receive Monero and then come back and hold your savings in Bitcoin.

So it doesn't in terms of in terms of the battle between whether or not Monero or Bitcoin becomes the reserve currency of the world. It doesn't help. It doesn't help Monero in any way. So it remains an option and you get all the benefits of Monero without actually really holding Monero long term or any substantial amount of Monero long term. So that's kind of how I look at it. And I think that's to me, that's probably the most reasonable view of someone who's deeply into Bitcoin.

I think it just it makes the most sense with the store value properties that Bitcoin has proven over time. I mean, Monero has done very well over time as well. But Bitcoin obviously has a longer track record and it can be trusted a bit more in that sense of of actually saving and gaining purchasing power in it. So I think it's a gamble. It's a gamble. I mean, I think it'll outperform over the next five to 10 years or whatever. But that that is my personal opinion.

I will say that the transactional privacy guarantees of Monero are absolutely fucking fire. So nice. And like if you talk about like what I the conversation I had with Bitcoin Q&A on sale dispatch on Tuesday, it would make that conversation significantly easier. Much shorter episode. Right. Exactly. It'd be a much shorter episode if if Bitcoin had the same transactional privacy guarantees. But at the end of the day, everything is tradeoffs. And I'm grateful that Monero exists.

And I'm grateful that Bitcoiners can easily access Monero if they need it and vice versa. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I do love atomic swaps. And I'm hopeful that's something that continues to to take off and really gain adoption because it is it it enables people to use the tools that they want to use and to use Monero for what it is incredibly effective at, which is transactional privacy and for people to keep holding most of their savings in Bitcoin if they choose to do that as well and then be able to swap it back and forth without having to go through KYC and all that mess.

It's a very powerful thing. So as someone who's almost like everyone was obsessed with like the silver and gold Litecoin and Bitcoin analogy, really, the analogy was cash and gold. Yeah, I think that's a much more apt one. I think that's how a lot of people view Bitcoin and Moneros. Moneros for spending, Bitcoins for saving. Awesome. Well, thanks for diving into that more. I know that's can be a touchy topic with people in the in the Bitcoin space and others.

But I think it's at this point, I'm just ready to be canceled. So I don't think you said anything too bad. I think I think they'll let you I guess we'll find out longer. Yeah. Awesome. Well, just a couple of the kind of normal questions we walk through here. I wanted to get your take on some of the tools that you use regularly to opt out that you'd recommend others to take a look at. And then and then why those tools? Well, I fucking love Calyx. I mean, we had a whole conversation.

We had like we went for like two and a half hours on Calyx. Yeah, it's a long one. I think people should really care about their phones. I mean, I think people shouldn't care about like people shouldn't use their phones as much as they use them. I think Calyx is dope. You need mobile phones. You want the mobile phones to be as secure as possible, as private as possible. So you should use something like Calyx. You should use something like Graphene.

I think Calyx or Graphene. Graphene is probably a better privacy security tradeoff. But Calyx is more usable. So that's what I use. You can actually use it with real apps and make the tradeoff balance that works for you. So I really like Calyx. I love I love Signal. I think it's just very user friendly and easily accessible. I so I have Calyx. I have Signal. What other tools do I use? I like Aegis for two factor authentication. I really like Threema for chats.

But like you're not going to get many people to use Threema with you. A good one for like chatting with people who are already deep into privacy circles. But it's not like I don't have any like normie friends on Threema. Yeah, I would add Matrix to that same sphere. Matrix is dope as fuck. Use it for as much as I can. I don't know. What else do I use? I love Pop! OS. I like fucking red pilled like the majority of Bitcoin Twitter privacy circles on Pop! OS.

And I will take credit for that. I was there before Seth was there to your audience. You were. A lot of the reason I got into it was because you red pilled all the all the big corners on it. Jeremy was following me before you had him on the podcast. You got me on a coup on that one. I love that every false project always has to go through drama, by the way. I know that Jeremy just had some. Yeah, I love System 76, but they're not a false project.

I mean, I guess they make hardware. Still a tool. That's good. Yeah, System 76 is good. Tor is okay. We just rely on it. What else do I use? I think...

2:00:00 Samourai's dope. I fucking love Samourai. I love Sparrow Wallet for Bitcoin. Sparrow Wallet is fucking fire. The recent work has been really cool to follow along with. I've never actually used Sparrow, but it's been great. It's so good, dude. Really start caring about privacy. I think it's the best Bitcoin wallet available, unless you need mobile, and then you should use Samourai. I don't know what Moon's license is, but I love Moon Wallet on mobile.

I guess I should know that. I think they're open source. That's two U's. Yeah, I was going to say that's M-U-U-N. I don't know. My whole world is open source. I try and only use open source projects. F-Droid is a great replacement app store where you can get open source tools from F-Droid. Yeah, if an app I want to use or a project I want to use is on mobile but not in F-Droid, it gives me pause. It's almost becoming a must-have for me. It's true.

F-Droid is a little bit of a bitch to work with, though. I've heard it's absolutely awful, actually. On the project side. So don't dismiss a project if they're not an F-Droid. If they just provide you a straight APK, don't be like, they're dead to me. That's a good point. I haven't gone through the process of setting up an F-Droid repo or anything, but I have heard that it's very difficult to set up and maintain. It's not good documentation. There is definitely a big part of it.

Yeah, they're like little bits, they're a little bit of dicks about that. I don't know like what they're doing over there. I really like Tudanota for email. Tudanota is, you know, their app is open source, but they're like a hosted email, encrypted email. Yeah. But their open source Android app is fucking fire. It does not rely on any kind of Google services. I have a full set of tools that I recommend at citildispatch.com slash help. So just go check that out.

Awesome. Well, that is a great list. You covered kind of all the main bases there. The big thing is the phone, man. The phone is like, everyone's just walking around with the surveillance thing in their pocket. Like just think about it. Don't wear the Apple watch, guys. Like you're wearing the Apple watch. I was having like a conversation at like three in the morning with a bunch of like hardcore Bitcoiners that care about privacy and I will not dox them.

and two of them had Apple watches on and I realized like 25 minutes in and I was like, you're just like sitting here with your hands on the table, just like holding the wiretap up to my mouth. I think the mobile side is definitely one of the most important, if not the most important, but the tricky part is it's also, it's the hardest hit to convenience, I think, out of many of the tools. Yeah, because it's the most important part. Yeah, yeah. It's definitely true.

That's why. It's the hurdle, but there's so much value there. If you can, if you can, The hurdle is always the convenient part. Like Google accounts in general, like Google Calendar, super sticky. That's horrible. They know everything you're doing if you're using Google Calendar. Yep. Everything you're doing, you're talking to, what files are coming out of those conversations and talks. And yeah, it's a nightmare, which hopefully more people will wake up to, but it is definitely worth, worth diving into.

And that Citadel Dispatch, I think it was CD34, was I think a really good walkthrough of really from top to bottom mobile OS privacy. So I hope more people will go and jump over and check out Citadel Dispatch and check out that episode in particular if they want to start taking it seriously. You knew it was good because a bunch of drama resulted from it. That's how I gauge how effective my education is being. The more upset people get whenever I release something, the more I know it's ruffling feathers and doing something good.

Well, last question I had for you, Matt, was just what advice would you give to someone who's just starting to realize the need for personal privacy? Simple improvements work. Unplug your Alexa, unplug your fucking Google Home, take off your Apple Watch, go buy a nice Casio. That's what I'm wearing. You can have a good watch without it being connected to your phone. Stop using social media as much. I know I sound like a fucking hypocrite, but all I use is Twitter.

It can be a useful platform, but it shouldn't be your watch. It can be useful, but you shouldn't be scrolling Instagram. You don't need Snapchat. You don't need LinkedIn. Well, maybe you need LinkedIn because you have a fiat job still, but try and not need it. Get rid of it. Fucking, they're all surveillance platforms. You don't need Facebook. If you haven't looked at your Facebook in 45 days, just delete the fucking thing. Like, you're not looking at it.

Just get rid of it. Tell them to delete all your data. They will not delete all your data, but tell them to, you know, like, at least do that step. Try and reduce Google Maps usage. I'm telling you, go buy a Garmin GPS for your car. They don't connect to the internet. They're like $300. They work really well. You can actually still get traffic data. It goes through the FM radio waves. And they don't know where you're located. So, it's passive. So, just fucking do that.

Get rid of your Nest camera system. Your ring. If I walk up to your fucking house and I'm on camera because you have a ring doorbell and it's going straight to Amazon servers, what the fuck are you doing? Like, just don't do that. Like, consider not doing that. The little steps. Don't send your information to a DNA database. Like, little things. Little things make a difference. At scale, they make a massive difference. They make a massive difference.

Care about your privacy. If you don't care about it, our grandkids are going to be in a horrible fucking place. If you're not going to have kids, okay, fine. My grandkids are going to be in a horrible place. Like, do it for my grandkids. I just, I, it's the little things, guys. It's the little things. They will make a big difference in the long run. And, um, don't get dis, don't get disillusioned about it. Don't get number five. Don't get disillusioned about it.

Like, you're, we've never been in this point in history before. We've never been in this point of history where so much surveillance is happening on a constant basis. It's happening by corporations. It's happening by governments. They're working together in a lot of situations. And, it's going to get dark before it gets light out. And, we can reduce the darkness if we make small steps today. Yeah, I think that's excellent advice. And, so many of those things you mentioned, they seem daunting at first.

But when you actually take that step, you realize that so much of what you've been sold and told about these products and services is really not reality. And, you realize that the reliance you think you have on them just isn't really true or is even getting in the way of real relationships or real life or, uh, a lot of different, a lot of different, yeah, just a lot of different aspects, you'll realize that there's a lot more benefit even than you may recognize it first when you start to take that, take that dive.

So, hopefully more people will take those steps and those are really good starting points for people to jump in. 100%. Well, thanks again for coming on, Matt. It was a, it was a pleasure. I'm glad this one turned out to be a long one. I, I expected it, but, uh, always, always love just all the different topics that get into whenever you have a chance to chat. So, grateful for it. The pleasure was all mine. Thank you for having me, Seth. I look forward to having a conversation with you again soon and, uh, hopefully I'll meet you in person for the first or second time.

Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Opt Out. If you did, please take a moment and subscribe to the podcast or if you're already subscribed, share it with one friend or family member this week. As always, you can check out the link to the guest's content and contact info as well as links to all of the tools we discussed in today's episode. Now get out there and opt out this week. This week's project to help you opt out is CryptPad, a FOSS encrypted by default storage and collaborative document editor.

It's easy to spin up via Docker among many other methods and provides a great alternative to Google Docs that's privacy preserving for all users. I host a public instance that's free to use at cryptpad.sethforprivacy.com so take a moment and check it out there if you have a need for collaborative document editing, Kanban boards, whiteboarding, or even a bit of private storage. You can use it without an account if you want or sign up without needing email or any other personal information to keep track of documents, share them easily, and store up to a gig of files.

Check out the section in the show notes on CryptPad for more info, including how to donate to them if you enjoy the service. I'm very thankful for excellent alternatives like CryptPad, so be sure to show us some support if you can.