00:00 Hello, I'm Seth Simmons, and welcome to Season 1, Episode 14 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 found and leveraged, and where we encourage and inspire others towards personal privacy and data sovereignty. Wondering what drives normal people to focus on FOSS? In this episode, we're going to sit down with Q&A to chat about his journey towards privacy and the impact of FOSS along the way.

Welcome on to Opt Out Q&A. Hey, Seth. It's a pleasure to be on. Thank you for having me. I'm a long-time listener, a small-time fanboy, so, yeah, big fan of yourself and all of the previous guests that you've had on. I've learned a lot from, you know, both listening to yourself and all of the guests that you've had on chatting, and I like to think that I'm somewhat a product of them passing on their knowledge. So, yeah, it's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, I feel like I've told so many of the people that have come on, but a lot of the people have been in circles that both you and I run in and just in circles that I've been involved in on Twitter and other places, it's always such a pleasure to get to sit down and chat and just take the time to talk through some of these topics that I feel like we all do education on or focus on, but don't have the time to kind of walk through these things one-on-one.

So, we've been connected for a long time on Twitter and have been in a lot of the similar circles, and honestly, I've just had a huge respect for you and the work that you've been doing. You put out incredible content. You've been one of the few people who seriously focuses and cares on Bitcoin privacy specifically, putting out tons of amazing guides, and really have been one of the few bright spots in that space of really, really driving and making sure that people have what they need to use Bitcoin privately, and then they definitely have been expanding into FOSS and other privacy.

So, I'm really, really glad to be able to have you on and chat a bit. And for those who aren't familiar with you, do you mind just kind of introducing yourself for them? Yeah, definitely. So, yeah, I go by the pseudonym Bitcoin Q&A or just Q&A for short. As Seth just alluded to there, I'm just a bit like what Diverta said. I'm just a guy who likes Bitcoin, and I like it that much that I sort of saw a sort of gap in the kind of education space for Bitcoin, really, that as I, you know, since 2019, when I got sort of more seriously into the space, I just decided to start documenting my journey so that it could make other people's journeys somewhat less bumpy than my own was so that they can make less mistakes.

So, I started, you know, I created a very, very rudimentary website to start with. For a bit of background, I'm not a programmer, not a coder. I've only been delving a little bit into the command line in the recent years, and I'm very much a product of smashing my head off a keyboard for many, many hours and asking many, many questions in various different telegram rooms to sort of learn along the way. And yeah, so since 2019, I've just been putting out guides for Bitcoin and more specifically focusing on the privacy side of things.

And yeah, more recently, I started to work full-time in the Bitcoin space at a company called Foundation Devices. We make a free and open source hardware wallet that is completely air-gapped and designed to make it really easy to store your Bitcoin in a safe and secure offline manner. Awesome. Thanks for walking us through that. Yeah, I was glad to hear that you landed at Foundation. Your work needed to end up somewhere or you needed a chance to focus on it full-time.

So, I'm really glad that you have that opportunity and you're working for what seems to be an excellent company that really cares about FOSS and free and open source hardware as well, which is kind of an even more select niche in the space. So, it's been cool to see you there, and I'm definitely curious to learn more about them. I want to chat about them a bit more in the episode. I wanted to just go ahead and dive in and learn more about your personal privacy journey.

Obviously, I've seen a lot of your work in Bitcoin privacy, but I wanted to get kind of a broader picture. And so, I was curious what it was that woke you up to the need for personal privacy originally. So, I kind of already touched on it briefly in my kind of introduction, really. Before I sort of went headfirst into the Bitcoin space and started to mix within the circles that both you and I mix in, both in Telegram and things like that. I was the guy with the ring doorbell, with the Alexa, with the Apple Watch, with any name or any number of, you know, insert surveillance tech here that's designed to, quote unquote, make your life easier.

I had it. You know, I was that guy, basically. I completely didn't have a clue on the impact that this was potentially having or could have to my in the future. Started to really get involved in the communities, more namely the Samourai Wallet community, which I know yourself has spent some time in as well. Obviously, Samourai Wallet is a privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet, which attracts privacy-focused individuals. So, as I was just spending time chatting to these people to try and learn the Bitcoin tools, that naturally just spilled over into, you know, speaking about what other apps they've got on their phone or people sharing links of database hacks, of governments passing draconian laws regarding infringing on people's freedoms, to, you know, dragnet surveillance just to gain more control over the population, I guess, if you could put it that way.

So, I, until I got into Bitcoin, my personal privacy was non-existent. And then, you know, flipped to sort of three, four years later. And I'm sort of, like I said earlier, I guess a product of all of those people's good ideas that I kind of pick the ones that work for me. And I'm sure we'll get into the tools a little bit later on. So, I'm just slowly working my way to sort of close all of the loops, to take back my sovereignty with my own data and my own information, be that in and around Bitcoin or just, again, my own sort of being more in control of the data that I share with the people or entities that I choose to do business with, you know, when I'm interacting in day-to-day life or, more importantly, online as well.

So, I'm absolutely not an expert. I'm that guy that drinks from the fire hose, gets a lot of stuff wrong, but kind of takes two steps forward and then one step back. But the overall trend is that I'm sort of moving forward. Yeah, but we, honestly, we're all there. I mean, no one's taking two steps forward and never taking any back. And I'll share a shocking revelation that I'm sure will surprise people that I just yesterday got rid of Nest security cameras that I had set up around my house.

So, finally migrated to a solution that's not cloud-based and not obviously sending stuff to Google. But it's a process. And some things are harder than others, I've found, to actually migrate off of and make the jump. And I needed the cameras, but I obviously didn't want to send video to Google all day, every day. So, that was a slow process, but it's something I've just migrated off of. Yeah, I think the problem is when you're unaware of the, you know, some of the things I've just touched on in terms of database hacks, draconian laws, et cetera, et cetera, and you're just sort of blissfully going along daily life with all of this surveillance tech in and around your life, you become so entrenched into it, especially if you sort of, you know, you throw yourself into like the, sorry, the Apple ecosystem where they, you know, they've got a, they've got a device on your wrist.

They've got, they own your laptop. You know, you become so entrenched in it that it becomes like a support crutch. And the thought of not having Apple store your photos or not letting Google see all of your search history because you need access to, or you need them to store your files online on their drive for free. It's really, really scary to think, you know, how am I going to do without that? What's the alternative? Yeah. So, I guess, like you say, it's probably a never-ending journey, to be honest with you.

It's kind of a bit more of a cat and mouse chase, you know, as technology improves and as laws change. I guess we, it's just sort of a skill and a craft that we are always working to sort of improve with different tools and things that become available to us. Yeah, I think too, a big piece of it is just once you, once you realize how important privacy is, and once you start taking those steps, a big part of it is just that hopefully the things you're learning help you not to get sucked into another ecosystem or another product or another tool that is hard to escape and that is harmful to your privacy.

And that can be a big part of it, is just not getting deeper, more deeply entrenched into those things like the Apple ecosystem can be a super important part of that journey. And so that then you can keep working on the things that you have left over that are hard to migrate from, but just being careful, you're not getting sucked into the latest and greatest TikTok or whatever the thing is today that, that is pulling people in. I think it also, it also helps as well that the, you know, in, in the last sort of five years, the alternatives to, to the,

10:00 sort of incumbent system have come on leaps and bounds and it's becoming less and less of a gap to jump across to rid yourself of all of the you know the normalities like Apple, Google etc etc it's I think the two are becoming they're merging ever closer which is absolutely a great thing for people who do choose that they want to I'll use the plug to choose that they want to opt out there you go name dropping I like it I'll send you the check for at the end for that one I thought I was supposed to send you the check for that yeah I also thought it was interesting you mentioned that Bitcoin and the kind of the Bitcoin privacy circle is what drove you towards privacy I can't remember how much I've shared of this or if I have shared this but it was the Monero community that really got me interested in privacy initially so it's interesting that which inherently isn't necessarily a privacy tool like it is a very important one but it's money first I think it's interesting that in those communities and in those ecosystems that can

be a push that drives people towards privacy I had never really seriously thought about privacy until the privacy conscious people in the Monero community had started talking to me about why it mattered why it was more important than just in Monero but in in all the tools you're using and all that kind of thing yeah I think it's um I guess it's the certainly the early adopters you know uh talking more than five years ago the type of people that were were attracted to these uh sorts of uh technology then are the I guess the people that you or I you or I are starting to become now whereas they they sort of saw the importance back then and they were the ones that were willing to to jump over the really really high hurdles to use the alternatives um and I guess that they well gladly that they've stuck around in in these various circles and that they they've started to to pass on their their ideas and their ethos and ideology onto people like you or I and um you know I kind of just want to pass that forward and and be that

next um person in the line to to to uh just to share ideas really because um otherwise I'd still be uh I still have my apple watch on and I still have my ring doorbell and my my election in the corner of my lounge and yeah yeah yeah you never know what impact you're gonna be able to have on people and it could just be a passing comment and a public chat room but you can have a serious impact when you you take things like privacy serious obviously it's not just privacy but things like privacy seriously and communicate that to people and take the time to engage in in real conversations and there's there's a lot of power there you know you never know who you're going to impact or what that person that you're chatting with is going to end up doing with that information yeah I think um the other thing that's that's making it uh much easier to sort of uh uh make people kind of wake up to to the need for for their to to look at their own personal privacy I think um governments around the world are doing a

fantastic job of uh of that all on their own and you certainly in the last couple years since uh the coronavirus history has uh gripped the world um in my personal circles you know I'm not talking uh within the bitcoin space I'm just talking within my you know in my immediate friends and family um this is purely anecdotal as well it could I could be completely uh out of the loop with this one but um a lot more people are asking questions and being more careful about the apps that they install um or that the the information that they're sharing um and it's really really great to see so I guess a bit of a tongue-in-cheek thank you to uh to all the people around the world for uh for giving us a little bit of a leg up yeah they've made the the initial convincing people why privacy matters thing a bit easier since they've they've just made their overreach so transparent in the past couple of years um which is both horrible and great that people can see that the things that they're doing and

why they need to start caring about those things both from the government and kind of corporate surveillance level so there's a lot of a lot of work that's been done there for us which is I guess a good thing plus wish we didn't have to be in that situation definitely definitely but um I guess with each uh each step that they take uh kind of in the wrong direction it makes people like your eye look less uh crazy to our um to the people that don't uh don't value this as much as we do at the moment yep look look less paranoid by the day it's how it feels so hopefully people do think I'm less paranoid every day we'll see um and I'm I I also wanted to just hear your thoughts about why privacy is so important to you today so I know you mentioned why you kind of jumped into it but what's keeping it in the forefront of your mind um well I suppose the the whole government uh COVID hysteria thing for me has as just reinforced it every day um I try not to watch the news but unfortunately you know it has a way of uh seeping its way into your life through conversations or you

know just walking past the tv uh and and you know like I said that the steps that they're taking to um uh increase their surveillance uh capabilities be that through proposals like central bank digital currencies where they can control your money and see where you're spending it to um uh enforcing people like google to to to do the I think funny enough this is your pinned tweet is it not Seth um where the the US government has uh ordered google to uh monitor certain keywords and feed that back to them um just just little stories like that that are unfortunately coming out on a week by week basis really that kind of reinforces my my uh biases towards the need for personal privacy and I guess that that keeps me um striving to improve my own but not only that is to striving to um you know look after my friends and family and make sure that they are um at least aware of the impact that certain decisions that they might make um even if you know I would say probably 60 to 70 percent of the time the conversations end in them not doing anything

um I I suppose for me uh I can be sort of safe in the knowledge that I've sort of done what I can um and I guess as time goes on I'm kind of less and less um sort of uh belligerent with it in terms of trying to sort of hit people over the head with a hammer repeatedly until they listen to what I say because uh I used to take that approach and unfortunately you know for me maybe it's the way I do it but it just doesn't seem to work so I kind of um wait for the opportunity to present itself uh and then kind of you know if there's a topic of conversation where people are talking about you know vaccine passports for example as one of the surveillance tools that the government's trying to implement um I will use that as a sort of springboard then to to say uh you know just to open the conversation about uh a different privacy technique or a privacy tool that they could use to to sort of combat that okay uh vaccine passports is probably a bad idea there's not a lot we can do about that unfortunately if they do get implemented

but um you know it's uh I use conversations like that to kind of uh to sort of shoe shoehorn in my my sort of uh yeah start of my conversations around it yeah I love that concept I mean there's there's very few chances to just completely change someone's mind on a topic like that but I think like like you mentioned it's important to look for those people who are kind of open and starting to get to that place where they care or they're like you mentioned commenting on something that that could be a surveillance nightmare or they're maybe starting to see how something like a vaccine passport could be detrimental to privacy and use that opportunity to just pitch in some information be helpful and and try to help pull them in um but then I think like we've we've talked about a good bit on previous episodes just making sure that we focus on having the tools and having the educational material and having the communities available when those people do decide hey like I actually I need to take this

seriously I need to start caring about my privacy and just making sure that those things are available and I think that's something you've done such an excellent job with in the the bitcoin space uh especially but um just having those those resources ready so those people that do wake up and those people you do have those conversations with they have somewhere to turn next rather than just kind of blindly stepping into the rabbit hole yeah yeah I very much um just a case of you know uh I'm interested in this sort of stuff um when the time feels right for you you know my door is always open um you know if you need to to ask questions or anything like that on these sorts of topics I'm I'm more than happy to help and that kind of softly softly approach works for some people uh I think unfortunately some people are just uh of that opinion of that they just don't care um yeah which is which is a little bit too sad uh or maybe maybe their their blissful ignorance is a happier place to be rather than worrying about the the next step that the government's going to take who knows um but yeah

it's you've kind of got to tailor your approach to to uh to the specific sort of personal group that you're dealing with really yeah yeah absolutely um and is there a particular roadblock that you see those people that you have conversations with struggle to get past when it comes to personal privacy um and then is there like any way that you try to motivate or prompt them to get past that roadblock yeah I think the the first one is that the the people that sort of do take on board what I say um may try to do too much too soon I'm sure you've probably had this answer before um but you know this and I and I'm guilty this uh too as well when I was sort of first starting out and taking advice from others um online was um you know you hear five different people talk about five different tools and you you you want to go and implement them

20:00 them all in a day and you know when you're first starting out and you're really really entrenched into the the sort of I guess I call it legacy system of you know you've got an iPhone and your photos are sent to the to the Apple servers etc and then you try and you know get on board with with Signal or the download Matrix and then you're trying to set up your own Nextcloud and you're trying to do all of these things and you're juggling you're spinning so many plates and you're just gonna you're gonna burn out and you're just gonna think do you know what this just isn't worth it and so my my personal advice really to people to sort of get past that roadblock would be you know because we're all we're all busy people we've all got jobs we've all got families we've all got young kids or whatever like that and just just pick one tool you know what is what is your biggest worry in terms of a personal privacy and let's say they say you know I'm worried that Apple's going to start scanning my photos because you know obviously that was a news headline from from this

year okay so say okay well um you know here's here's some of the alternatives uh here's the easiest way to do it you know they might um they might set up a Nextcloud that's hosted for them which you know is not perfect but it's a step in the right direction where they're sort of moving that away from you know the where they know it's going to be surveilled uh where they can sort of okay they're using the hosted Nextcloud solution but they're getting familiar with the Nextcloud uh ecosystem they might hopefully they they see that it's nowhere near as scary uh as as they might think it is to sort of manage that and then hopefully that might then lead them down the path further down the path where um they might look to set up their own hardware at home and host their own Nextcloud it's kind of just got to be a step journey later because if you just sort of switch off uh apple photos or google photos and then try and buy some hardware that you've never worked with before jump into the command line that you've never touched before to set up Nextcloud then it's going to fall over in a

matter of hours and you're just going to lose interest with it and just stay with the status quo yeah yeah i agree 100 i think it's it's really important that people i think i especially like that you focus on not just like this is the first thing you need to jump into but tailoring it to that person and letting them kind of decide like what what is your biggest worry with privacy and then here are some ways that you can approach um mitigating that risk or or implementing the solution that that fixes that and i like that kind of turning it into what do you care about most when it comes to privacy and then here are some of the tools that you can use to to work around that i think that's a really important and really good approach yeah i think um and again this won't appeal to everybody but i personally have sort of a list of um resources you know be that videos or or written text um on sort of various um topics relating to personal privacy or sort of data sovereignty um so that you know if it comes

up in conversation and we're in a bar you know um you know you don't want to sit there talking about um threema or Nextcloud all night because you're just going to bore them to death but just have a little chat about the conversation and say you know i've got a good article i've got a good video on that i'll send you the link just when you wake up tomorrow just go and watch that video read that article um and just sort of because you you've had sort of two touches then you've had that initial conversation and then the next day they might uh read read the the message that you sent them and they'll be like oh yeah we were talking about that that privacy tool i'm going to watch this video now and then you've sort of already had two two sort of goes at it then to sort of get it into their head um which is something else i found that that kind of works with some people you know it doesn't work with everybody but it's uh an approach that i i try and uh specifically normally if i if i'm out in a

bar with people because uh people have a habit of uh forgetting things when they drink get to make sure they have a tangible way to remember what you talked about yeah something that's been super helpful for me um that i learned from a person named named named de brune who's kind of prolific in the aero space he handles a lot of reddit posts and chat rooms and he's just like a wealth of knowledge um and i learned from him just keeping little notes on specific topics so that you can quickly reply with lots of good info with nuance with um just specific things that are very helpful for that specific topic or talking point or issue that's that's popular that you run into a lot makes it a lot easier to handle those people who come to you and have a question about something that you've gone over a hundred times you don't have to try to piece it together again and again but just kind of have that that set of things that you can use this set of like you said articles videos um maybe something personal

that you've written about it or that kind of thing to to kind of help guide them and give them next steps on that topic and saves you the time of having to dig up all those resources every time seems like such a simple little thing but it's been super helpful for me um one of the questions that i love getting to ask people and always curious where it where it goes but um just simply what's something that you feel like almost no one agrees with you on um so i'm going to make this um kind of uh bitcoin related so apologies to people who have listened to this who are not interested in bitcoin um and i would say it's not something that almost nobody agrees with me because the people that you or i mix in will probably uh well will definitely back me up on this one but um i would say that i'm absolutely in the minority where i say that uh no kyc bitcoin uh is a massively massively important tool that is uh unfortunately um forgotten about for the 99 of people that um are in the space um the the it seems that the the overwhelming majority are sort of more than happy to um to sign up to a

a koxc exchange to um give away their you know take a selfie with their driving license give away their social security number their driving license number all of their personal details just to have the convenience of being able to uh buy some bitcoin or what i suppose it's true of any cryptocurrency um to to buy with you know marginally more convenience um so uh i it's something that um anybody that follows me on twitter will know that i harp on about a lot probably to my detriment um in terms of people following me but i think it's really really important that um we kind of spread that message that um you know uh bitcoin is supposed to be a tool that enables you to make the payments that uh that they be in the government um don't want you to make so if your entire bitcoin stash has been bagged and tagged um to your personal name um your name might not be beyond the the public ledger uh the bitcoin ledger uh but as as uh most people who spent a little bit time in the in the space know the the ledger is

completely transparent you can see all the transactions inputs and outputs there are tools that you can use uh you know Samourai wallet is obviously a great option uh that you can use to obfuscate the um your transaction history when uh when interacting with bitcoin um and it's one of the the best tools available to do so um but if you're coming from a an exchange where you've given up all your details then um you know you might be able to put a sort of roadblock in your transaction history but you can't erase the um the kyc trace of you buying you know x amount of bitcoin on this exchange at this date for this price um you know no amount of coin join is gonna is gonna get rid of that and uh i guess in a sort of um i call it a doomsday scenario um where we have a massive uh government crackdown in the space where um you know personal uh self-custody might be outlawed or even worse we go through some sort of 6102 um order where um you know a confiscation or if you like um who do you think the government's going

to go to first to whose door are they going to knock on well they're going to go to all the exchanges and they're going to say give me a list of all your customers um and then the government's got a nice big fat list of uh doors that they can go and knock on to say yeah um yeah that bitcoin you bought yeah it's no longer yours now we're going to buy it off you for this fixed price and so buying from you know peer-to-peer exchanges where you don't have to provide your your um your information to to obtain this bitcoin um or earning it or mining it depending on your skills and expertise um is a massively important tool uh in the um in in having the ability to truly uh opt out using a tool like bitcoin in my opinion yeah i think that's it's such an important point and i'm thankful for people like you that are willing to lose some followers and lose some twitter clout by calling out the risks of kyc and the issues that are inherent to that and um i mean there's there's so many different ways that kyc

goes wrong and it's problematic i mean there's the you mentioned obviously the government angle which would be a horrific nightmare scenario of governments having a easy list of who owns how much bitcoin where they live full names everything like that amount of bitcoin they purchased wallet addresses all of that so that that process of confiscation or some sort of crackdown like that would be greatly simplified but then there's also the the non-government approach of these exchanges are not professional cyber security companies they generally well they have been hacked prolifically over the years i mean cryptocurrency exchanges are famous for how often they get hacked and how many issues there have been over time and when you give up that kyc info to one exchange or like many people and i've done this

30:00 too in the past when i was getting into cryptocurrency you give that kyc info to multiple exchanges because this coin is here this coin is there this coin is there and then that information they have that they have that stored and they are there's a good possibility that that information will be leaked at some point um and that could come back to bite you in just as simple a way as maybe a hacker gets that info maybe they buy the info from someone else on dark web or something like that and then they have your full address they have how much bitcoin you own they have uh what price you purchased that purchased it at they have potentially wallet addresses and stuff like that they have ways that they could track you down and rob you hopefully not harm you but there are lots of different ways that could go wrong so there's there are almost infinite risks associated with keeping up kyc info when you're buying bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies and there's there's no real benefit because there's been some pretty fascinating research on how ineffective kyc aml measures are

in preventing fraud and other issues with cryptocurrency um so there's not really even benefit for the exchanges or governments but there's a huge huge loss to the individual people who give up their privacy because of those kyc aml measures yeah the the only person that that uh loses uh with kyc exchange is the little man you know it's it's the it's you or i or anybody listening to this um that like you say gets their their information um carelessly lost or hacked uh from one of these exchanges you know we've seen countless over the years i mean thankfully they they do seem to be coming um sort of uh less frequent which is a good thing um but i think also it's not just um exchanges it's uh anything that's kind of loosely um related to bitcoin or cryptocurrency and this is coming from somebody who works um a hardware wallet manufacturer but that's a perfect example of another place where you know if you're um buying with your real name to and getting the device delivered to your home address um if that uh that database um is hacked and i use an example one of the biggest uh hardware

wallet manufacturers in the in this the bitcoins well in the bitcoin anchor at the currency space uh ledger had a massive hack uh not too long ago where pretty much their whole uh customer list um was hacked with names full names full addresses um email addresses phone numbers uh and i think even the date that they purchased the device um so that was shared well it was shared anybody with an internet connections can go and get that list and so there's some pretty dire consequences here that you know um if you did get that device delivered to your home address there is very likely somebody with uh bad intentions that has that address list and they might be in you know um a local area of somebody that's on that list and decide that they might want to go and pay them a visit because you know it doesn't take a genius to work out if they've got one of these devices then they are very likely storing some cryptocurrency on it um and they might want to go and pay them a a visit with a rather large wrench or

a hammer to say uh hand over your device or i'm going to uh going to cause you some harm so the what what might seem like a really inconsequential decision to just put your name and address into a website to because it's convenient um could have some very very potentially uh dire consequences and i realize that sounds a lot like scaremongering but um these these stories do unfortunately happen and there's people that have been harmed and injured and held hostage um for for being a you know a public person um or having a sort of known address and being a you know um an advocate of of bitcoin and cryptocurrency yeah i'm glad you mentioned the the risks that aren't just like blockchain analysis risks they're just the real world risks that go along with it and those things apply to even more privacy preserving cryptocurrencies like monero just because you're using monero which by default gives you great on-chain privacy that doesn't protect you from still being a part of that list that says you

own this many monero you purchase them then then and then on this exchange here's your full name address all of that so confiscation would still apply to that just like the hardware wallet hack with ledger that you mentioned that would be just as dangerous to monero or any other cryptocurrency it's not it's not even a cryptocurrency specific thing it's just when you attach full name full address to something that has very clear value it puts you at risk um and the kind of the last thing that jumped out at me around that is that those peer-to-peer exchanges as more people use them they become more user-friendly they gain more liquidity so that it's much easier for you to buy and sell cryptocurrency on those exchanges things like LocalMonero things like Bisq um so the more people wake up and start avoiding kyc and start trading directly with other people via peer-to-peer exchanges like the ones i mentioned and there are others um those solutions improve and improve and improve and and they're they are getting better day by day there are new solutions like atomic swaps coming out that

help with exchanging between cryptocurrencies and um those things are improving and the more people jump into them the more they'll improve so it's definitely something where even if it's a little bit more painful for you right now jumping into that learning the ropes and contributing liquidity just by buying and selling like you normally would is super super important yeah i'll i'll be the first person to to admit as a massive no kyc advocate that the likes of Bisq and and local cryptos LocalMonero you know whatever peer-to-peer exchange that you want to use they are not as easy to use and get to grips with as a centralized exchange uh that is absolutely that was absolutely a fact um so you are going to have to go through a little bit of a pain barrier um but i guess that's uh one of the small prices to pay for um for to be able to purchase privately and i think um just to kind of echo what you said really about one of the one of the common sort of comebacks that i get is when i'm sort of sharing resources around these pay-to-peer exchanges

that people go on and just go um yeah there's no liquidity or um just typical answers like that is like you just said it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy really that the more people that use them naturally the more liquidity there's going to be um and i think um like say self-fulfilling prophecy the the network and the liquidity pool is going to grow um the the problem arises i guess really is when you you know some of the payment methods you still have to interact with the legacy system uh so if you're uh starting to do sort of uh larger volumes uh depending on your banking system if that's one of the payment options that you use then they might start asking questions so that you know it's not without its risks in terms of any time that you uh interface with the legacy banking system uh you're going to have to start to be careful so that's why uh options like cash um you know if you've got an atm near you uh you know a cryptocurrency atm they're a perfect uh option really um there's um there's options out there where you can do so with just a phone number which is

uh fairly easy to to spoof these days through services like textverified.com um but yeah it's just just a kind of uh brief sort of word of warning i guess is that yes the liquidity's uh not uh as sort of deep as we would like it uh it's getting there um but also just just be careful um if you do choose to choose to use sort of a bank transfer to do a purchase then just be mindful of you know how frequently you're doing that and um sort of the volumes that you're going to do it because uh unfortunately there are some banks out there that do start to sort of uh flag repeat payments to to different people um uh as sort of suspicious behavior and then they start asking questions so um it might be a good idea to have a second bank account if you can and just use that for your peer-to-peer transactions that's always a good approach yeah it's a really good quick way to learn that you are not necessarily allowed to do whatever you want with your money even if the things you're doing are legal and

are not illegal in any way but you you quickly learn that the money you think you have you don't really have but you only have if you use it in the ways that are approved by the legacy system which is a good little bitcoin monero red pill there uh you learn that the hard way oftentimes yeah i think the the final thing we're touching on on this topic i guess is the whole uh circular economy piece um you know if you don't need to um uh interface with that legacy banking system at all if you can earn uh in your chosen uh currency of choice and then spend that with with merchants or you know if you're making purchase online if there's merchants where you can use that currency then uh that whole circular economy piece you're removing that that uh the biggest um hurdle i guess in in terms of the legacy banking system by just not having to deal with them at all um now it might seem completely the thought of that might seem completely alien to some people going well you know i've you know i've

i've got a fiat job i i don't have any extra curricular skills who's going to pay me in bitcoin um but uh all i would say to that is if a numpty if a high school dropout like me can do it then i think pretty pretty much everybody's capable of doing it even you know even if it's just in small amounts you know you've got to uh you've got to start somewhere yeah yeah it can be as simple as just when you go out to eat with friends and someone gets the bill paying you back in cryptocurrency that can be a simple way to start that circular economy that doesn't require any extra skills but you can start to kind of take on different different tasks and handle those things over something like bitcoin as frequently as you can and that can be a good way to introduce friends to that and start to build that out and start to just actually use cryptocurrency between peers rather than through central exchanges and that kind of thing

40:00 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, and 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, we're hoping 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 slash sponsors. I did want to, I wanted to circle back to what we talked about a little bit earlier, where you talked about some of the kind of privacy mistakes or issues that you realized you made in your past that you regret. I just wanted to see if there were any others that kind of pop out at you that you've gone through. I think you have kind of a good normal scenario that you've walked through that's good for people to hear.

But I also was just curious, what prompted you to move past those, maybe those specific mistakes and change your approach? Oh, yeah. Well, mistakes, I've made all of them, literally all of them. So, like I said earlier, you know, I used to have an Alexa, I used to have an Apple Watch, I had a smart thermostat. I even had smart light bulbs. I went the whole hog. More, I suppose, on the personal things that we haven't talked about. I only started to use a VPN service, again, since I've sort of gone down the privacy rabbit hole.

So, you know, moving back further than sort of four years ago, you know, everything I did online was my ISP saw every single thing. I'd never even heard of the Tor browser. I just thought that that was something that criminals used to go and buy guns and weed and hit men. Never used the Tor browser. When I first came into the Bitcoin space, I was searching my addresses on a public explorer with no VPN, which is, you know, terrible in terms of kind of Bitcoin privacy.

You know, not only does my ISP know my address, as well as the hardware wallet manufacturer whose default wallet I was using. Yeah, so that was another one. And using my home address to order Bitcoin-related tools, you know, early hardware wallets, they were all ordered to my home address. I didn't even know what a PO box was. So, like I say, I've made all of them, and I'm sure they'll be very, very common to a lot of people listening to this. So what prompted me to sort of move past them?

I guess it would be just getting involved in the communities that I've spoken about and speaking to people specifically around the Samourai Wallet ecosystem and the sort of the ecosystems that are close to them as well. It's just absolutely just, you know, I'll hold my hands up, absolutely just being a leech in terms of knowledge and just learning from other people that had made probably most of the mistakes that I've just gone through, but they'd made them earlier than I did.

They'd already taken steps to improve and to sort of rid themselves of the mistakes that they've made in the past. So I guess, like I say, just thankful for those sorts of people, they know who they are, that have sort of dragged me along, kicking and screaming along their journey with me. And I've picked up a few things along the way. And I suppose another piece as well would be, I'm a massive podcast fan. So more specifically, obviously, generally speaking around Bitcoin, but that kind of sort of, there's a lot of things that, you know, they don't always just talk about Bitcoin.

You know, privacy does come up, not quite as frequently as I would like, which is why I go on podcasts and talk about it. But, you know, people like Matt O'Dell talking about, you know, get rid of Alexa. You know, I've got a lot to thank for Matt and I know you've had him on recently. So just people like that, explaining the risks in an easy to understand manner that sort of isn't scary. And I guess, which is, you know, kind of what I try and do now as well, just to hopefully pass that on as well.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I just want to specifically call out that when you're interacting with people, and I know I mentioned this a little earlier, you don't really know what impact you're going to have on them. And the person you're talking to could be a Q&A. And I mean, just to be completely honest, like the privacy and Bitcoin educational material that you've put out and the work you've done is absolutely some of the best in the space, if not the best in the Bitcoin space.

And yet you, I know you have a more kind of a normal journey. You're not, you don't claim yourself as being super technical, but just the work that you've done out of that, it was very much not something where you just leeched and then ran off with that information. Like you took that and you ran with it and now you're kind of sharing that with maybe the next generation of people who are privacy aware and then focused on those things. And you've done a ton there.

So I just want to remind people when you're having those conversations with people, it may seem pointless or maybe the person doesn't seem like they're taking it in at first, or it seems like you're just constantly having to work on the kind of the little things that you've been past for a long time in your privacy journey. But you never know what you're going to be able to do with that information. So doing those things in a way that's not scaremongering, that's not kind of a paranoid and fear-driven approach, but really kind of taking the time to take people who are clearly curious and clearly wanting to take privacy seriously under your wing and really kind of just mentoring them and sharing with them the tips and tricks that you've learned can have such a huge impact on just their lives personally and on potentially the lives of tons of other people, thousands of other people.

Who are going to read their future educational material and be taken under their wings as mentees and just lots of different ways that those simple conversations can have very broad, very long lasting impacts. Yeah, I harp on about community a lot when I go on podcasts, especially around sort of people's educational journeys. And what I will say is that I guess I suppose probably part of the reason that I've been able to learn so much from others in the various communities is the fact that I was willing to put the work in myself as well.

You know, you can't just turn up to one of these rooms and just say, you know, teach me about privacy. You know, you've got to go in and, you know, specific, you know, if you're having a particular issue, you know, and you just go into one of these, the telegram rooms or you ask on Twitter and say, you know, I'm trying to do this thing and it's broken. Nobody's going to help you. Nobody's going to help you. You know, you need to be, you need to go in, you know, have a bit of finesse about it.

You need to go in and say, okay, here's what I'm trying to do. Here's the steps that I've taken. And here's where I'm getting stuck. Kind of show people that you've, you've taken as many steps as you can first and people will be much, much more open to sort of giving you their time, which as we know is really, really valuable to, to, to walk you through and hopefully get you over that next hurdle. So yeah, community is absolutely huge, but you've got to be willing to, to, to put the work in as well yourself if you're sort of serious about taking the next steps and, and, and sort of increasing or being more sovereign and private.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's critical advice in the privacy space and really in any kind of support scenario, honestly. And there's lots of, lots of places where people will just take the time to do everything they can, document what they've tried and give clear information to the people who are trying to help. There's so much value there. And that, that also is so essential in the FOSS space because it's normally not companies and support teams and all these different groups that are willing or able to dedicate the time to kind of dig into the issue for you.

So bringing as much info as possible is, is very, very important. And was it, was it that same kind of group of Bitcoiners that helped to spark an interest in FOSS for you? Or was that, was that kind of a different revelation or a kind of a different timeframe? Oh, no, definitely. It was, it was a Bitcoin thing. And, and, and, uh, uh, the same, uh, sort of ecosystem. Yeah, definitely. Um, again, before I got into Bitcoin, um, much like the Tor browser and a Raspberry Pi, didn't have a clue what they were.

I also didn't know what, what, um, open source meant or, or free and open source software. Didn't have a clue. Didn't have a clue why it was important. Um, it's very, it's very much something that I've, uh, sort of, uh, learned to, to understand and, and see the, the value in, um, over the last sort of couple of years when I've been speaking to various people and interacting with the various tools and products. To the point now where, um, I specifically with, with Bitcoin related tools, but also more widely outside that as well, when I'm, uh, looking for, uh, a tool to do a specific job, I will always look for free and open source software options first.

Um, and in the very, very unlikely, um, scenario where I can't find a suitable FOSS tool to, to fit my needs. Only then will I look to look to more, uh, proprietary options.

50:00 And I just think the FOSS community seems to be somewhat growing. But I will be happy to go on record and say that, unfortunately, and I don't know whether this is just a Bitcoin thing. Hopefully it is and it's not sort of spreading elsewhere. But there seems to be a bit of a whitewashing of the term FOSS and what it really means. There seems to be people that are happy to just say, well, you know, the source code is viewable. So it's FOSS, which, you know, as people like yourself, Seth, will know that that's unfortunately, well, not unfortunately, that is not the case.

You know, just because the source code is viewable, that doesn't make it FOSS. And unfortunately, there does seem to be a bit of a whitewashing of the term to kind of people piggyback off the good name that FOSS has. And the ideology around FOSS, people, unfortunately, trying to sort of change the narrative to mean to just, you know, source viewable, which is sad. And it's good to see that people are pushing back on that. And I just hope that that continues, that we don't sort of lose that true sort of ideology and the importance of it.

Do you mind breaking down just quickly what free and or personal software is? If it's not just source viewable, like what makes it unique and makes it different than that? It's essentially what source viewable is first and foremost. So can you read the code and audit that this tool is doing what it says it's doing? You know, that might not be the case for somebody like me, a complete Luddite who wouldn't know a piece of code if you hit him in the face.

But the point is that I know there are people out there that can do that if they want to and are more likely to because the project is FOSS. So that's the first thing. The second thing, you know, the free as in freedom is that essentially anybody can take this code. Anybody can modify it to do what they want. Anybody can redistribute it or sell it. That is another paramount for that. Now, there is some nuances around the licenses, which are kind of a little bit above my pay grade.

So the sort of TLDR on it is that there's sort of the MIT license, which essentially grants the ability to do anything you want. You can take this, you can modify it. You can take it and close source it and then sell it if you want to. And then there is the sort of GPL string of licenses where you can do all of that. You can go on, you can sell it, you can modify it. But when you do that, you have to make it open source again also. So people commonly refer to this as a copy left license where, like I say, you can do anything you want as long as what you put out is also open source.

So it kind of ensures that the open source virus continues to spread, if you like. So somebody can't just take it, put it into a black box and then just make a profit off it, basically. So that's my sort of rough understanding of the importance of FOSS. And the same goes for hardware as well, really. Yeah, thanks for breaking that down. The intricacies of open source licensing are far beyond my pay grade as well. So it's not something I can expand on too much for people.

But it's definitely something I'm trying to learn more about. But I think that key piece that you mentioned is that it's something that's free use. And it's more than just a technical thing. It's also really an ideology and something where people are willing and friendly to people who want to take and improve that project and move it on. And forking is completely fine. And that's something where so much growth has happened in the ecosystem because of people being able to just fork a project and make it slightly more one way or another, slightly unique to them, focusing on a different specific user.

There's been so much value out of that ecosystem. But thanks for thanks for bringing that down a bit for us. I think just to kind of cap that piece off as well is that specifically, again, around the Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency ecosystem is, you know, people are storing their life savings in this sort of stuff and using free and open source software that, you know, if there's a piece of software that's got a completely open and permissive license.

And again, I use Samourai Wallet as an example, but there's loads of others. It does seem to be a trend in the space. There's going to be more people that are able to view the code or contribute to the code that are going to be willing to do that because of that permissive license. So that project or the space as a whole benefits from that. And, you know, these tools become more secure, especially when we're talking about people who are, like I say, storing their life savings in these tools and these projects.

The more eyes on the code, the better. The more people that are contributing or willing to contribute to that project. The whole space benefits from it. Whereas if there is a closed source license, there's much fewer people that are going to be willing for obvious reasons to even take a look at that code because, you know, what incentive have they got to do that? They're not sort of going to gain any benefit from that. So it's just the whole sort of out in the open thing just kind of draws people to it.

And, you know, we've seen perfect examples of that in the last, you know, 10 or 15 years since the cryptocurrency space. And, you know, obviously, I only sort of spin in the Bitcoin circles. But the rate of growth in this ecosystem where a very large part of it is free and open source, the growth has absolutely exploded. And hopefully it continues. It's really good to see. Absolutely. It's been a huge part of what cryptocurrency is and what Bitcoin is, is open source code.

So it's been a huge part of that growth. And it's allowed for a lot of other inventions and a lot of other app players to be built on top like Samourai Wallet. And it's definitely a key thing to so many pieces of the circles we're involved in. But I think a lot of people underestimate how many of the things that they use daily exist because of FOSS and because of the ideology of FOSS throughout the years. Yeah. Yeah. Super, super interesting to learn more about that.

And I love that that's been a focus for you. And I was also curious, you've done a ton of work on education in the Bitcoin privacy space. And I was curious if that has been something as you've been working on educational material and getting to know other people who are doing education and just kind of driving and more than just helping your own privacy in Bitcoin, but trying to help others. Has that been something that's driven you to an interest in broader personal privacy and maybe towards education on broader personal privacy?

Yeah, definitely. I would absolutely love to write more guides that are kind of less tied to Bitcoin, I guess, really. It's just a case of there's not enough hours in the day, unfortunately. And this year, I, like I touched on earlier, started work at Foundation Devices, which is a startup company. And we are a very small team and we're incredibly busy and we're working really, really hard to push out the best hardware and software that we can. So the time that I've got to write about the things that I love is somewhat diminished.

A couple with that alongside some pretty big changes in terms of my family life this year. My free time has taken a massive, massive hit. So the cadence at which I was cranking out guides has taken a nosedive off a cliff, unfortunately. So hopefully that's going to change in the future. And yeah, definitely. I really do want to start to write more about the privacy tools that aren't strictly tied to Bitcoin as well. It's just a bit of a juggling act at the moment, shall we say.

I 100% understand with a young kid and wife and just all the other complexities of life, including full-time job and everything. It definitely gets tricky to have time for those extra things, even when you're putting out so much content around Bitcoin privacy. So to expand even further than that is definitely, it's tricky. But I would love to see that from you. I think that'd be super valuable. And even your stuff around CalyxOS and the guides you put out around that have been super helpful.

So I definitely would be fully on board if you have time to put out more content around that. I'm sure it would be super appreciative. Your work is excellent and speaks for itself. Yeah, recently I've been for foundation. I've been getting into a bit of video editing and stuff. And I found quite a bit of a passion for that. I wouldn't say I'm very good at it at the moment. But I think if I do, my free time does miraculously free itself up over the next 12 months.

I think I'd like to explore more into some video tutorials, things like that. I just think it's a really great model. And equally, like I say, it's just something that I enjoy the process of going through and doing the filming and the editing. Obviously, I don't go on camera as I'm a nim. But I think you can still get some great information across without needing to put your face on camera. So it's something that I am hopefully going to explore. So if I can do that around some privacy tools, I think that'd be great.

And I'm looking forward to finding some time to be able to do it. Yeah, yeah, I will definitely be keeping an eye out for that. That'd be great.

1:00:00 That'd be awesome to see. You mentioned a few times Foundation, the company you've started working for. Would you mind just kind of sharing a little bit about what working for a kind of FOSS, and I don't know if you can say FOSS, but free and open source hardware, first company like Foundation has been for you. And then maybe just a little bit about what Foundation does. I know you gave a little intro earlier, but I just wanted to get the chance for listeners to learn a little bit more about that because they obviously were able to win you over and get you working for them and putting out content for them.

So excited to hear more about them. Yeah. So starting work at Foundation was very surreal and very much a dream come true in terms of the ethos of the company around free and open source hardware and software. And obviously my more recent allegiances with trying to maximize my exposure to FOSS and minimize my exposure to anything, everything else. Really good timing. I've really, really enjoyed it. We've got a really small team. We are, I think there's just 12 of us at the moment.

So we are very much in startup mode where we work really hard with a really small team and we get an incredible amount of work done. Our core, we've only got one product on the market at the moment, which recently sold out, which is a really great sort of signal from the market that we're on the right track. We make a hardware wallet for Bitcoin only designed to be able to create and store your private keys in a completely offline manner. We do all of our communication with wallet software.

You know, we don't ship with an app. You can, we just make sure that we are compatible with every open source app possible. So that, you know, the user basically buys a device off us and then we don't know anything about them. So that's very much close to our heart that we absolutely don't want to know anything about our customers other than the fact that they've got their device and that it's working properly. So we make sure we work really hard to make sure that we're compatible with all of the great pieces of free and open source wallet software out there that work with hardware wallets so that the user is free to make that choice whether they want to interact with Blue Wallet or Sparrow Wallet or Spectre Desktop.

They've got that choice. So we do sort of all of our communication back and forth. Either you can do the micro SD card shuffle, as I like to call it, where you can pass transaction data back into. Or the sort of default is via QR codes. So you can just sort of scan QR codes from your computer and then the device will show a QR code and you can scan that back in with your computer's camera and you can pass transactional data that way. All of this is designed so that you don't need to connect the device physically to your computer, which may or may not be infested with malware.

We know that, you know, 90% of the population are not great with their computer-based security. So there's a very high likelihood that a lot of computers out there are malware infected. So we kind of create that. Our device enables that physical air gap where private keys don't need to touch any online device that may be insecure. So, you know, when we enable people to be able to store, you know, what might be to them a significant portion of their wealth in a really secure method that is easy to use, that's not really scary.

You know, there isn't loads of menus and it's not a sort of imposing piece of hardware. It looks good. It feels good. So we kind of just want to bring that to as many people as possible, really. So, like I say, we recently sold out. So we're working hard on our batch two device, which is due to ship in February. So we're working hard on sort of finalizing the improvements on that. And thankfully, with the supply chain issues that the world is seeing at the moment, we've already secured the hardware that we need.

So we're not sort of at risk to fall prey to the impending doom of the supply chain lottery at the moment. So, yeah, we're sort of plugging away at the moment and we're taking pre-orders for our second batch of devices. And one kind of just sort of little anecdote that I just wanted to share that I want to share it because nobody's done it yet is that if you pre-order from us and you pre-order with and you pay in Bitcoin, we're due to ship in February next year.

If you do that today and it's $199 worth of Bitcoin, if when we ship in February that Bitcoin price has increased and let's say that $200 worth of Bitcoin is now worth $400, when we ship, we'll ship you the device and we'll also ship you the difference back in Bitcoin as well. So you haven't lost the exposure to the Bitcoin. So we're kind of very, you know, people listening to this might be thinking, you know, that's ludicrous. How can you sort of, that's a terrible business decision, but our pre-orders are absolutely flying and telling us that this is a really good decision.

So I appreciate that it's not kind of a privacy piece, but I just wanted to share it because I think it's a really great idea. I wish it was my idea, but it wasn't. It was Zach, our CEO. Yeah, I've really enjoyed it. I've got to know Zach a little bit just in saying back and forth. And I love the vision that Foundation has. And I think it's important that people see that FOSS and FOSS-centric companies don't have to be like nonprofits or it doesn't have to be a project that has no company behind it.

Like there are ways for companies to actually care about free and open source software and actually care about their customers' privacy while still making money and earning a living. And so it's cool to see what seems like a very well-run company there. Obviously they got you on board and you're very much someone that I respect, but it's been great to see their approach to each of these things. And I love those unique ideas like that of making sure that people who buy aren't regretting their purchase or regretting spending the Bitcoin at that point in time because Bitcoin is still a relatively volatile asset.

So it's a very fascinating way to approach handling sales in a volatile asset and helping to just kind of sewage any simple fears that people may have around that. It's a fascinating idea. Yeah, just one final thing to share as well that it's obviously won't be sort of common knowledge, but even in the background, we're having a massive shift in our sort of infrastructure so that all of the tools that we use that are not public facing, we're making sure that as many of those as possible are also free and open source.

So we're implementing our sort of customer interfacing sort of support ticket system and a knowledge base called FreeScout, which is a free and open source piece of software. We've just recently implemented that. We're on the cusp of moving ourselves over to NetCloud as well to host files and all of our company documents and things like that. So it's not just the public facing stuff. We're not just doing it for show to get the FOSS advocates on board.

We're actually living and breathing it and sort of practicing what we preach in the background as well, which I think is really important and just shows that we're not kind of, we're not all talk. We are genuinely FOSS enthusiasts and we do really think that it is the future. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It seems like it's not just a marketing ploy, which is refreshing to see because so many people and so many companies are willing to, I feel like, say whatever it takes to kind of get people sucked in, but it seems like it's something that runs much deeper and is a core part of the ethos behind foundation.

So it's been something great to learn more about them. Thanks for giving us a little kind of intro into what they do and a look behind the scenes into how foundation operates. Well, last couple of questions. I wanted to give you a chance to share just some of the tools that you use regularly to opt out that you'd recommend others to take a look at and then why those tools specifically. So there's probably going to be a lot of repeats from your previous guests here.

Obviously I've touched on, you know, my obvious bias of foundation devices and Samourai Wallet as well. Those are my two sort of Bitcoin tools of choice. Outside of Bitcoin, much like yourself, I'm a massive fan of PopOS. I recently, two days ago actually, just took delivery of my Star Labs laptop, which most people listening to this have probably never heard of. It's a British company. It very much seems like the kind of UK's answer to System76, where they are sort of making sort of a Linux-first laptop, which is easily upgradable.

You know, you need one tool to take it apart to upgrade the RAM and things like that. Comes ships with Core Boot and talked perfectly to most Linux distros. So I've just been getting to grips with that. And first impressions have been absolutely incredible, really great piece of kit. So I'm looking forward to getting to grips with that a little bit more. But for people that want to check that out, that's, I think their website is starlabs.systems.

It took, I'll hold my hands up, it took a very, very long time to be delivered. Again, I think it was due to the supply chain issues. I had to wait seven months for it to be delivered. So just be prepared for a little wait. But I will say that it's a very, very nice piece of hardware. Yeah.

1:10:00 Outside of that, in terms of apps, I'm a big fan of Threema, which is an end-to-end encrypted messaging protocol, which, funny enough, we organized tonight's talk via, didn't we, Seth? Yeah. Also a massive, huge fan of a piece, well, a tool called Unohost, which I know you had Diverter on to talk about as well. Yeah. And for those that haven't heard that show, Unohost is a free and open source platform that you can install onto pretty much any piece of hardware that you want, laptop, desktop, Raspberry Pi, virtual private server.

And it's kind of like an app store for free and open source apps. So you can install Unohost on, like I say, any piece of hardware. And from there, you can install, you know, one-click install a password manager like Bitwarden or Standard Notes, which is sort of an encrypted cross-platform notes application. And you can also, another big one that I'm a big fan of, and I do actually run my own server, is Matrix. Another one that I know you're a fan of as well, which, again, is like a Matrix, for those that haven't heard of it, is kind of a federated messaging system where you can think of it like what Mastodon is to Twitter.

Matrix is to kind of Telegram, I guess. It's kind of the sort of decentralized alternative where users can have their own, they can host their own server and they can host their own rooms on that server as well. And, you know, multiple people can use the same server as well. So it's kind of a decentralized answer to a messaging protocol. Yeah, I think we both have communities on there. You have one on Matrix, right? That you host. Yeah, I host my own room and I've got, I've host my own server and I've got my own sort of Bitcoin-focused chat where people can, it's geared towards people coming to ask beginner-focused questions on coming to learn about Bitcoin.

And I know Diverta hosts his own room as well, which is Bitcoin-focused, but there's loads of different communities out there as well. Yeah. So I sort of, I host my own server and sort of offer, you know, anybody that they want can kind of sign up using my home server. Obviously, there comes with a little bit of trust in that, that they've got to sort of trust me to not sort of de-platform them. But I do that in the hope that, you know, it might red pill just a couple of people to think, well, hang on a minute.

I'm no better off here if I'm using Q&A server. So I like Matrix and I like the ecosystem. I like these chat rooms that I'm in. I'm going to look into one of my own server. You know, it won't be for everybody because it is a slightly larger barrier to entry and it's absolutely not a requirement. But I think by hosting my own server, hopefully it might get a few more people to do the same and sort of add to the decentralized network or decentralized nature of that network, really.

And I guess finally as well is a big fan of Mullvad VPN, which again, I know that you use as well. Obviously, you can, there's no names account. You just have an account number. You can pay with Bitcoin or can you pay with Monero as well? Not directly. They, I think, partner with a really cool digital store called, I think it's Digital Goods Proxy Store. The URL's kind of hard to remember, but basically you can buy a voucher for using Mullvad with Bitcoin or Monero on that store.

And as far as I know, that's an official partnership, but it's the way that I've bought my Mullvad subscription. And I've sent codes to several others and had several other people buy it through there. So I think that's the only way to do that with Monero, but I think they do accept Bitcoin directly. They do. Yeah. Yeah. So a big fan of Mullvad. Very easy to sort of get on board. And in terms of sort of your online privacy, it's a very, very much a sort of quick win to sort of protect yourself from, you know, your ISP from tracking literally everything that you do online.

So, you know, I'd probably say if somebody's out here at literally square one and listening to all the mistakes that I made and saying that, you know, that sounds like me right now. I'd say Mullvad is probably a really good option to look to take your first step. Really low barrier to entry and quite big, you know, you get a lot of reward from quite little effort as well, really. And I suppose just finally to cap off the tools that I use, I've actually, because I got so many DMs and questions about this, I stuck a page up on my website.

So it's to basically list all of the different tools that I use in terms of computing, Bitcoin related communication, mobile apps, things like that. So if anybody's interested in literally every single little thing that I use in terms of privacy and force, if you go to bitcoiner.guide slash toolkit, literally every single thing is there. So that'll be a completely sort of exhaustive list of all of the tools that I've sort of grown to learn, to use and to love over the past couple of years.

Yeah, once you have had a conversation with a few different people about what kind of things you recommend, you learn very quickly. It's helpful to just keep a list. And if you do have a public blog or something, make that list public because it's a great way to bring people, bring new people in, but also just saves you so much time if you can just point them towards the list. And yeah, I'm looking at your page right now. It's a bajillion things on here, all nicely categorized.

It's a super, super good resource. Definitely will post that in the show notes. Awesome. And last question I have for you, man, is what advice would you give to someone who's just starting to realize the need for personal privacy? So I'll start with an apology. I'm going to repeat myself here, but it is worth repeating. Keep it simple. Start small. Don't try and take on the world in a week because you're going to fall over and get involved in the communities.

Don't be afraid to ask for help, but just make sure that you've kind of had a good poke around yourself first. And, you know, again, don't be afraid to make mistakes. If you're starting from absolute step zero, the chances of you making a mistake that are going to make things worse by just trying one of these privacy tools is very, very slim. So don't be afraid to have a go. And most of the apps that, well, especially on that list that I've just spoken about that's on my website, 99% of them are completely free.

So you've got absolutely nothing to lose other than, you know, an hour or two of your time by just trying it out to see if you like it. But, yeah, just choose one sort of aspect of your sort of privacy life and sort of focus on that initially. Yeah. And just don't be afraid to ask questions. I always cringe when I say this, but there's no other way to say it. But my DMs are open. And I'm, you know, I absolutely hate saying it, but I'm more than happy for anybody listening to this that kind of wants to take the next step to take back their sovereignty and their privacy.

More than happy, just ping me a DM on, you know, Telegram, Twitter, Matrix, anything like that. I'm more than happy to help. But, yeah, just don't let perfect be the enemy of good. That's another diverted quote that he's going to berate me for copying. But there's a lot in that. And, you know, essentially it just means just start. Just pick something, just start. Nine times out of ten, it won't be as hard as you think it's going to be. Don't let, you know, the decision making of which thing to choose first to sort of.

I guess I suppose you call it analysis paralysis, wouldn't you? Just get started. Get involved. Ask questions. Don't be afraid to make mistakes and just get started. Great advice. Well, thanks so much again for coming on Q&A. Great to finally get the chance to chat with you directly and kind of jump into a lot of topics that I've seen you talk about or seen you involved in, but haven't gotten to talk about as much directly. So really, really great chance to get to dive through those things.

And for those listeners who want to follow up and maybe communicate with you, what are the best ways for them to do that? If you just go to my website, which is bitcoiner.guide. My list of resources is there. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, all of my contact methods are there. Reach out to me on any single one of those. And happy to get in touch and communicate. And just want to cap off by saying that thank you to you, Seth, as well for putting your content out.

I really love reading what you put out. And obviously, the podcast has been massively influential for me since you've started it. So fun fact, it's literally the only Bitcoin-related podcast that I listen to. So you're top of the pile. So yeah, I just want to say thanks for doing what you do and keep it up, man. Yeah, man, very, very grateful for the opportunity to make this podcast and interact with people like yourself and just try to kind of give back to the community and then hopefully prompt a lot more people to take this seriously and start taking some real actual steps.

So very grateful for this opportunity and thankful to be able to chat with you today. Have a good one. Thanks, Seth. Take care, man. 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 content.

1:20:00 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 one I'm sure you're all familiar with, Pop OS. I've had several guests on who have mentioned it at length, but I wanted to highlight it again as it's been a huge breakthrough for me. Pop has enabled me to, much more easily than I expected, transition entirely to Linux on both my desktop and laptop, and break free of Windows and macOS. Pop integrates a very clean and optimized version of GNOME with mini presets and custom apps and settings to make GNOME a much better overall experience, for me at least. It also bundles their own GUI App Store that simplifies the process of installing apps, whether natively or via flat packs, enabling a much easier process of installing all of the tools you're used to or want to switch to. I've even been able to transition the little bit of PC gaming I do to Pop using Steam Play and Proton, which was a complete surprise to

me but has been a pretty seamless experience for all but a few of the games in my library. If you've been wanting to make a jump to Linux, I'd highly recommend checking out the links to Pop in the show notes. We're listening in to my special episode with Jeremy Soler from System76, where we discuss both their hardware, open source firmware, and Pop OS headlink.