00:00 I'm Seth For Privacy and welcome to season two, episode three 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. In season two, we're taking a look at some of the privacy-preserving tools, FOSS projects, and privacy-focused companies in the space to get a better understanding of what they do well, what their limitations are, and what we all can do to help drive their tools forward.

Have you been wondering how you can manage to use Bitcoin privately? This episode, we're going to sit down with Samourai Wallet to chat about their incredible FOSS Bitcoin wallet. Welcome on to Opt Out, Samourai. Thank you for having me, Seth. Really happy to be here. Yeah, man. I've been a huge fan of Samourai Wallet for what feels like years now. It may actually not be that long, but it seems like it's been a while that I've been using and following Samourai, and just really, really feel that y'all are one of the last few bastions of a pro-privacy focus in the Bitcoin space, and y'all really do push the memo hard on the need for privacy in a space that tends to move away from that over time.

So I'm super glad to have you on to learn a little bit more about Samourai myself and introduce listeners who may not know what Samourai is yet. But for those who haven't heard of you, do you mind just introducing yourself a little bit and telling us a little bit about what Samourai Wallet is? Sure. Yeah. Well, I just go by Samourai Wallet or The Intern or Wallet Guy, depending on which community I'm acting in. I started Samourai Wallet in 2015 with my co-founder, who is known as TDevD or Samourai Dev, and it was just the two of us.

We had both gotten into Bitcoin around the same time, late 2012, and we had both around the same time quit our fiat jobs to go work on Bitcoin full-time in early 2013. So we were kind of in the space, and we were both interested in the whole idea and user experience and kind of just brave new world of Bitcoin wallets. So we both heavily shared that interest. And, you know, in your intro, you mentioned, and it's very, you know, it means a lot coming from you, that you regard us as one of the last bastions of Bitcoin privacy.

Well, in 2015, when TDev and myself decided to start Samourai, we started it because we felt like the privacy angle and the privacy emphasis was starting to wane in Bitcoin that early. And we felt like there were no bastions of privacy left. So if no one was going to do it, we should, you know, instead of complain, we should do it ourselves. That was really the impetus to starting Samourai Wallet. And I hope that we've succeeded to some degree. Though the landscape and the situation and the state of the community and whatnot is completely different now in 2022 than it was in 2015, we saw the early signs.

And Samourai was very much a response to what we perceived as a lack of emphasis on privacy and the importance of privacy. Yeah, that was very early on in the space and especially early on to be quitting normal jobs to work in cryptocurrency. Yeah. Pretty bold move. Tell me about it. So there's definitely some worries there when you made the jump, but it's awesome to see that you've been able to just persist in that and not have to revert back to a normal job and have been able to make that really work for you.

Yeah, it was definitely, you know, it was a risky move, but I wouldn't do it any differently. Let me just put it that way. Yeah, it's definitely, when the opportunity is there, it seems like something that is absolutely worth it from the people I talked to who have gotten into the space. Yeah. And you touched on like the focus on Bitcoin privacy that you've had for now seven years, which is crazy. But what was it that woke you up to the need for personal privacy around that as well?

Oh, gosh. Well, I think I was just made that way. You know, from very, very early on, I've always been a relatively private person, you know, even from my family and what I like to keep, I keep to myself and keep my own information and my own business to myself always have. I was always one of those people who, you know, believed that the state, the government, was able to monitor our communications through the internet way before the Snowden revelations.

When the Snowden revelations came out, it was kind of like just confirmation to what I had suspected. And that kind of, I guess, radicalized me. And that's roughly around the time I got into Bitcoin as well. Maybe. Yeah. So it was, it all kind of just kind of collided together. And what I saw with Bitcoin was a way to opt out of that surveillance system. And I know for Monero guys, I'll laugh at that. But, you know, it was one, it was the first game in town, at least, you know, an electronic currency that wasn't centralized, that couldn't be taken down by the state like all the other ones that had come before it.

And I understood the implications of that. And I think I just wanted to, you know, explore what that meant further. And more importantly, be involved and be a part of that, you know, that movement, that shadow economy, that promise that I saw in Bitcoin. Yeah. And I think that's one of the coolest things that I've seen as I've kind of followed you in the Samourai Wallet community is the serious focus and really sticking to the ethos of building out parallel economies and building out a shadow economy and it not being just kind of another, we just want to get rich quick and dump Bitcoin up to people.

But you really, I think you see the power that Bitcoin brought and the reasons that Bitcoin was created originally. And I mean, back when you got into Bitcoin. I wasn't unique then. I mean, I would say 90%, if not more, of the entire Bitcoin community was like that. There was no real emphasis or thought placed in the market price. You know, there had been some swings here and there, you know, in the early days from like, you know, a penny to a quarter and stuff like that in terms of market price.

But it wasn't, you know, the first real swing that we all experienced was when Silk Road got busted and Ross got arrested and there was a huge, like a huge dive, you know, I think it was down to like 50 bucks or something. And then next day, there was a massive rally. And that was like the first time we saw, you know, real price movement in this asset. And the thinking kind of got perverted to, you know, oh, I can, you know, to the trading mentality.

Oh, I can make, you know, I can make returns on this. And of course, you're denominating returns in fiat, fiat returns on this. So you saw a small minority is still at the time of that type of thinking. But the main emphasis was on the fact that this is, well, as you said, a parallel economy. And that was what was so exciting and important. And all of the innovation of the time was around. Yeah, and that's, I mean, that's really where the power of cryptocurrencies lies.

I mean, it doesn't really matter if you're talking about Bitcoin, Monero, whatever. The real power is in being able to build a system that can exist despite or in the middle of or around the state and not have to worry about censorship or hopefully not have to worry about surveillance to provide that alternative tool that we never really had before something like Bitcoin came around, which is such a... And that's, you know, that's the exact same reason why I'm not like so sour and down on the DeFi guys.

Because, you know, I think the decentralization of DeFi is overstated perhaps. But looking past that, these guys are doing things without permission. Like the whole ethos is not about getting permission to do what they're doing. They want to try to build something, you know, on a different... in a whole different realm than what anyone else is doing. So I applaud that kind of thinking and I applaud the, you know, the motivation there and the fact that they are doing it, you know, putting aside all the technicals of it.

The heart is in the right place there. And there's a lot to be said for that. You know, the heart needs to be in the right place. So I see that with them. And it's like any, like you said, any of the cryptocurrencies, Monero included. As long as the emphasis is there on not tying into the existing system but creating a new system,

10:00 system yeah um then i you know i'm with you in spirit yeah i definitely think that's where the the most value is and the most opportunity for for people to really gain kind of quality of life out of out of what cryptocurrencies can offer especially things like like bitcoin and monero and definitely did not expect uh you to mention defi today so that was a shocking mention but i think there's definitely a lot of fascinating stuff that that has been done i mean just like the rest of the cryptocurrency space there's obviously a ton of scams and get get rich quick schemes as well but there's some really fascinating things being built out and like you mentioned it's not a asking for permission regulator first kind of situation and like i said i i think the decentralized aspect of it is overstated and that may may tend uh you know show to be the downfall of it you know any of these centralized systems that have come uh before way before cryptocurrencies way before were you know captured and shut down because they could be and that was really the whole

innovation of of bitcoin hey you can't shut this down this is you know this is like liberty reserve but you know you can't send a guy to jail uh this is this is going to be you know something cool there so so i think you know hopefully the i i don't know the tech well enough on ethereum at all uh so but hopefully um the builders are protecting themselves from that kind of uh vector of attack uh because if if they're successful then they will be targeted uh if they can be you know so hopefully they're taking precautions on that and and and prioritizing building tech in a way that's at which which is truly decentralized um and if they are then i think you know they're doing good good work yeah yeah those those people who decide to build things out in a centralized way or decide to not do things as at least a pseudonym or something like that definitely do risk either being forced to fold into the existing system or just being shut down entirely um but those people who are doing it right it's it's definitely

exciting there um and i'd love to kind of jump into into Samourai wallet and start chatting a little bit about sure about it and about um just kind of what users can expect from it um and first question is just really what would you hope that users of Samourai wallet get from using it what's kind of the core thing that you're hoping that they uh they get by by picking up downloading Samourai wallet and starting to use it for bitcoin well if they yeah if they if they install Samourai wallet and they use it to interact with their bitcoin whether that be to store it or spend it um what they will be getting uh just based on the defaults that we have is a experience in bitcoin that where their privacy as it relates to their on-chain activity is at least considered by us uh and and every decision we make in the app uh how it functions what you can and cannot do all come down to the impact of what you're trying to do on on the public blockchain uh so they they'll what we hope is that our users will be able

to have the peace of mind that if they use the tools as um you know properly um that they're going to have a level of privacy on the the bitcoin network that they won't get with other wallets yeah and i think just like like any tool that's built with a a focus on privacy or at least with with privacy as a core piece of it building out those same defaults and guiding users into the right usage is such an important thing and i think that's a key feature in Samourai is that that y'all know what some of the serious ways that that users can harm their own privacy or cause issues are and you've built in tools to automatically shift users away from those things and and try to prevent that as much as possible obviously a user can still if they really want to they can screw things up but y'all have made it as hard as possible which is is super super important and is something that is is vital to any good privacy tool to build out those same defaults not assume that every person who comes into to using the tool

knows the ins and outs of every aspect of it but make sure that those people who who aren't familiar with everything still get really good privacy defaults so i've i'd love to to see that throughout my use of Samourai and seeing other people on board and into that yeah yeah exactly precisely and you know you shouldn't you shouldn't be paranoid when you're interacting with your your money right like you shouldn't be sitting there worrying um about who's going to be able to peer into your your broader your finances uh and it's an unfortunate uh reality that it it's easy to to trip up in in bitcoin uh and to um you know if you're not educated on the matter if you you know you you don't know what you're doing and it's possible that you will screw things up along the way um so whatever we can do to try to lessen that from occurring we do um we think about things that you know just won't cross the user's mind um you know for example if they have a a certain type of a um utxo on like best 32 address and they're going

to pay a uh p2sh address you know if the change of that transaction goes back to best 32 that's very almost certainly the the um the change output so an observer looking at the blockchain uh at that particular transaction could note okay i know that's the change output because that's the same type of address that was paid from um in Samourai wallet for you know since like 2016 or something we came up with um like type change outputs so the the wallet will automatically return your change to a address that is the same type as what you uh the address that you paid to so the change output when looking at the blockchain is less obvious you know uh so these are things that just don't cross most people's minds um we they cross our minds and we made a it made it a feature out of it and enabled it by default so if a user you know wants you know to not have that happen they have to go in and turn it off um it's little things like that so we hope that the little details the same defaults like you said

give them a basic more private experience when using bitcoin uh and as their understanding and as their confidence grows the wallet kind of grows with them there's a bunch of tools and and functionalities within the wallet that you don't have to use but it's in you if you use the wallet enough and your natural evolution and your curiosity you will start to use them and and these all enhance your privacy every single feature that we've put into this this application is all about maximizing uh your your privacy when you use bitcoin every single feature you know we have such a small team that that um every every single thing has to be planned out you know in a broader kind of vision of what the wallet does and there's no room for um for anything that doesn't match that vision yeah yeah and uh for for listeners who aren't as familiar with bitcoin uh he mentioned utxo which is just an unspent um transaction output and that essentially you can kind of think of it like a a bill like a 20 bill or something like that

would be an amount of bitcoin that's a single output that you spend um and then obviously you mentioned two different script types or address types in bitcoin um which most users are not going to be aware of the different types of addresses right there and that's why building out a default like y'all did which i actually didn't even know that that was a default feature within Samourai um but building out a default that protects against that specific way to surveil bitcoin transactions is very important because almost no user who steps in and picks up Samourai well and uses it is going to understand the difference between address types and know that if they're sending and the change is coming back to it yeah and they shouldn't have to yeah absolutely it shouldn't be something that people have to know to be able to use bitcoin privately which is is huge um you mentioned how you've built out features throughout and how you've kind of slowly iterated with a small team and um i'd love to just hear if there are any

specific settings or features that you'd that you'd recommend that listeners jump into um initially once they start becoming familiar with the wallet sure yeah um i would i i think the first big um big feature that they should get acquainted with is whirlpool um which is uh our coin joint implementation um the re the reason i suggest whirlpool is because i think it has the easiest onboarding um it's it's pretty straightforward in terms of what the user has to do which is not much you know they just have to they have to select which of those outputs are those bills that they want to add into whirlpool um and once they add it in it kind of does everything by itself at that point um and and it's the most it's the single most powerful feature in the wallet when it comes to giving you giving your your coins a a fresh start um so basically completely disconnecting any past events that might have been associated with those coins um to their future activity

20:00 And I think for the majority of users, they're coming in from probably a centralized KYC exchange. That's how most people are getting Bitcoin these days. Unfortunately. Well, it's a massive, massive issue. I'm sure we'll get into it. But it seriously undermines the whole pseudonymous aspect of Bitcoin, which in 2012, you could look at it and go, this could be a privacy nightmare. But it's totally it's pseudonymous. So there's no identity associated.

Well, that's completely eradicated by now, you know, but we'll get to that, I'm sure. So so you're coming in from a KYC exchange. That KYC exchange knows where you send the Bitcoin to, obviously. And they can make a very good assumption that that is your address. And in fact, they might make and that might not be an assumption because they've made you verify that it's your address. Depending on the exchange. Right. So so your centralized exchange that has your identity information most of the time, more than you would need to record to provide to a traditional bank.

They know that you left the exchange and you went to this address. They know that for a fact. And if they're using, you know, a blockchain surveillance tool like Chainalysis, they share that data with Chainalysis, who shares it within their broader network. So your information is subject to being shared by, you know, companies that you don't have any business with. It's essential. It's essential that you break the link at that point. Right. So that you don't want them to keep being able to track what you're doing with that Bitcoin with varying levels of confidence as it gets further away from that hop that they know it was it was you.

But they can make some very damn good guesses. A feature like Whirlpool breaks that history right then and there as soon as you enter into Whirlpool and you have a fresh start. So I think that's the single most important feature that a user can kind of get acquainted with as they as a after they install the wallet and get comfortable with things. Yeah. And it's it's improved greatly over the time I've been using Samourai as well. I think especially the the recent UI rework that y'all did on the the Whirlpool, the gosh, can't talk Whirlpool features.

Yes. Right. While it are a drastic improvement, it made it much, much simpler and clear what's happening when you. Yeah, that was that was the goal for sure. You know, we had about a year, maybe a little more than a year of data from users in terms of them communicating to us, whether it be complaining in the Telegram rooms or support channel or just, you know, the confusion that you see on Twitter and that. And, you know, we take note of it or I take note of it and I say, OK, I need to make this process a little clearer for them.

I need to do this. And so the latest update that just came a week ago, put all of those learnings and understandings into into action and has a brand world plus a brand new UI, which is a lot better. Like you said, it's a lot clearer as to what's going on with your coins when once they enter into Whirlpool with with and hopefully reinforcing to the user that there's incomplete control of their coins still like they haven't sent their coins away to some service.

Your coins are still right there in their wallet. Everything is is non custodial. They retain complete control and reinforcing that, I think, was a major, major aspect and a major confusion with. The first release. Yeah, I think that could be a big misunderstanding when people are first approaching the feature like coin join as they when. So for some clarity for listeners aren't familiar with coin join, essentially what you do when you perform a coin join, at least in the Samourai approach, you commit your specific input, your specific bill or amount of bitcoins into a transaction.

You sign and then you join in with other people. It's up to four other people, five total. And then you all sign together on a single transaction, but you never give up custody of funds. No one in the transaction ever gives up custody of funds. You retain that throughout the whole process, but you essentially just work together to, like Samourai mentioned, to break that history that's happened before that coin join transaction. You're able to really disassociate that from any future use of Bitcoin.

But you never have to give up control of your Bitcoin. So it's a huge step forward over centralized mixers that we've had in the past in Bitcoin where you could send in your Bitcoin to someone else. They would mix it up with a bunch of other people's Bitcoin and then they'd hopefully send it back to you. But obviously there are tons of those that just walked away with funds because it was an easy way to prey on people and steal Bitcoin. But in an approach like Samourai Wallet and most coin join approaches, you're not having to give up custody at all.

So you retain that, but you still get the strong privacy benefits of really breaking that deterministic link between the old history of your coins, whether those are from a Know Your Customer, a KYC exchange or not. It's still such a huge advantage to be able to break that history and start fresh, which is a huge thing in Bitcoin and really essential. Like whenever I recommend someone who wants to use Bitcoin, I will never recommend that someone uses Bitcoin without coin joining at some point.

And obviously I specifically recommend Samourai Wallet. It's what I use and what I recommend that people pick up when they approach Bitcoin. But it's definitely, I think it should be kind of the modus operandi of anybody who's approaching Bitcoin. You should coin join as early as possible. Yeah. As early as possible. As soon as you get the coins, you should really make a habit of coin join as part of your routine, right? So let's say you have an automatic buy set up or something every month.

After you do that, after you take delivery of the Bitcoin, they should go right into Whirlpool. It's just the effects of KYC, especially on the main chain, are devastating for Bitcoin privacy. Absolutely devastating. And it provides an insight into your financial activity that is completely unprecedented. You know, we have in the United States anyway, we have banking secrecy laws. There is no banking secrecy laws for the blockchain, right? Anyone can peer in and see what's going on.

And if you have, if your adversary has any information on your identity tied to a specific UTXO or coin or bill, and you don't take proactive measures to break that link, they can track for a very long time what you've been up to and link together, various other bills that you may be in your wallet and build a profile on you. That is just, it's scary. And we all should be actively opposed to this type of thing. And one way that you can make a difference is by using the technology.

Using the, you know, then there's no reason not to. Like, as you explained, it's not custodial. There's no risk of you losing funds. There's really, nothing can go wrong. It's just a, it's a good idea. Yeah, absolutely. It should be the way everybody approaches using Bitcoin. And like you mentioned, the defaults in Bitcoin outside of something like Samourai can really lead to a worse situation than we've ever seen in the financial world. Yes. A lot of people don't really grasp.

And I love that you, you mentioned that and brought that up because I think it's very important that people realize that the, the base way that Bitcoin works can be very dangerous to privacy. But thankfully there are tools like Samourai that can, can help you choose to, to opt out of that transparency. That's, that's the default in Bitcoin and really start to gain some, some privacy for your own transactions within Bitcoin. And the more people who step up and start doing that, not only does everyone else who's mixing coins via Samourai Wallet gain a greater anonymity set and a greater pool of people to hide in, a greater crowd to hide in.

But obviously it also means that there's better funding for projects like Samourai Wallet. It means that there's a harder, a harder time for regulators and governments to put pressure on any kind of CoinJoin tool because the more people that use it, the harder it gets for them to kind of try to put their, put their foot down and cause problems. So there's, there's a huge advantage to really coming in numbers. So if you're using Bitcoin, I really hope that you are using Samourai Wallet and really kind of learning and actively seeking the best ways to, to use Bitcoin.

And I'd love to kind of shift here and talk about some of the limitations that, that maybe exist in Samourai Wallet and just some things that users should be aware of. Maybe that Samourai Wallet can't do for them, or maybe some, some gotchas and in usage, just anything that kind of jumps out at you that, that you'd like users to be aware of there. Well, like I think the first thing, and it's true for any, any Bitcoin wallet, not just Samourai Wallet, but any, any Bitcoin wallet that is not connected to your own Bitcoin node is connected to someone else.

30:00 So in the case of Samourai Wallet, it's connected to nodes that we operate and host in Iceland because they traditionally have the best data protection laws and have a reputation for denying much more powerful governments the ability to snoop on their servers without at least proper court orders, which is not this true for most. So our nodes and our servers are all hosted in Iceland. But if you're connecting to Samourai Wallet and not connecting your Samourai Wallet to your own Bitcoin node, you're trusting our Bitcoin node to do two things.

One, to not log your IP addresses and whatnot and your information. And two, to provide your wallet with true and accurate information from the blockchain. So, you know, both of those can be mitigated. And we try our best at least on the first issue of having to trust that our servers aren't logging your IP address. We were the first Bitcoin wallet to build in Tor to the wallet, not rely on a third party installed app like Warbot or something. Actually building Tor to the wallet.

So all the user only has to just flick a button to turn on Tor and everything gets routed through Tor. So that's a mitigation against logging if we were logging, which we do not. And then the second is truthful, accurate information from the blockchain. And that's relatively simple to check against. There's plenty of block explorers out there and plenty of other competing wallets and you can check against. So that's less of a concern. But those two things the user should keep in mind.

I guess a major limitation is that Samourai Wallet is only available on Android. So if you're an iPhone user, you're kind of shit out of luck there. Let's see. You know, I see a lot of users get confused, especially around when they first join into Whirlpool. One of the most common kind of vague questions we get is if I add my coins to Whirlpool, they're private now. And it's like, how do you actually answer that question? What do you mean by privacy?

Did you get those coins from a KYC source? If so, you know, coin joining won't erase that. You know, that exchange will always know that you bought those coins and they will share that with your government's tax office. You know, so there's all of those types of situations. Like just using Samourai Wallet won't magically make your Bitcoins private. You have to, you know, you have to do a little bit of work yourself, too. But we, like I said already, we do try to implement same defaults, which give them the best shot.

I think, I mean, I think that's pretty much the big things. Let me know. I mean, you're a user. Is there any shortcomings? No, I think those are definitely the key ones that people need to be aware of. I mean, I think the only other one I mentioned is just that if a user, like withdraws from a centralized KYC exchange, Whirlpools, and then sends the funds right back to the same centralized KYC exchange, they're not going to gain privacy. It's going to be clear that those are the same coins.

There's some other things just like that, just that you should continue to opt out of KYC exchanges as much as possible. Because the key issue, not the only issue, but the key issue with Bitcoin usage is when you're connecting your identity to on-chain transactions, it's extremely dangerous, even if you are taking other steps. So, and that's not something, obviously, that Samourai can prevent. So, that's not really a specific thing with Samourai.

It's just something that people need to be aware of, and obviously something that you harp on as well. I mean, I definitely think that the most kind of divisive and most brought up one is the server hosting. Obviously, you'll host the backend servers for Whirlpool and for the wallets to use by default as well. Yeah. But you also provide a way for users to actually self-host that as well. Do you mind talking a little bit about Dojo and ways that people can actually remove that limitation and not have to worry about you providing good information or you logging it to kind of do it themselves?

Yeah, absolutely. So, we created a backend server that sits on top of Bitcoin Core. We started development on this in 2015 when we started Samourai Wallet. And the existing solutions that were available, which at that time was primarily bloom filters for mobile wallets, were inadequate for what we needed. So, we started building this server and eventually became known as Dojo. We released this software, I think, three years ago now. It's free and open source.

It's exactly what we run on our servers in Iceland. It gives the user the ability to run that exact same stack on their own, whether it be a spare desktop PC they have lying around or a single board computer. They can run this software, connect their wallet to it, and completely bypass our servers for everything. Yeah, and all communication runs over Tor, even when you're using your own Dojo server, which is very important as well. Yeah, so it only runs over Tor.

So, if you're not connecting to our nodes and our servers, you can do that over Tor or you can do that over ClearNet. When you're running your own Dojo, you have to do it over Tor. Everything goes over Tor. And that's for privacy reasons, but also because you don't have to worry about opening ports or networking or fiddling around with IP addresses, which most users won't be able to do. But they can, you know, run an installer on a Raspberry Pi or something or a pre-purchased, you know, plug and play node and scan a QR code and connect their wallet to it with, you know, everything happening under the hood, a Tor hidden service being sprung up and connected to.

So, no fiddling around with ports, just a QR code scan and your wallet is connected. And, you know, it can accommodate if you already have a Bitcoin node, it can accommodate that. But it's designed for going from nothing to a full sovereign stack. So, it will automatically, you know, install Bitcoin Core. It will automatically give you a block explorer that you could query. It will automatically do a bunch of stuff that gives you the ability to connect your wallet to it and keep track of your wallet.

Or your family's wallets as well. You can give your Dojo information to a friend and they could use your hosted Dojo as a way to, you know, query their wallets as well. Yeah, it's definitely, it's a lesser talked about feature of Tor and a really important one is that it does simplify the process of hosting things because you don't need to forward ports. You don't need to figure out dynamic DNS and you don't have to figure out your home IP and all this information.

You just spin it up, have the hidden service, and you have that address that you can always use no matter what network is in front of it. So, it's a huge part of Tor that most people don't realize or don't talk about, but it really does help with simplicity. Even if you're not caring about privacy, it can be a super useful tool to help simplify the process of hosting a service like that. And you'll also, you allow people to run a desktop app for Whirlpool as well, right?

Which that you can connect to your Dojo and that basically allows you to offload the mixing process, the Whirlpool process from your phone to that desktop app, correct? And then that way people can mix and keep their phone open and keep the Samourai app open and all that. Exactly. So, you know, for like the casual user who's maybe mixing once every couple months maybe or even less than that, the mobile app is completely, you know, it's completely fine.

You open it up, you'll get your first mix within a matter of minutes for the most part, and then you leave it open for a little while and you'll get some remixes. For the more power user, we definitely recommend running the desktop app of Whirlpool because you'll be connected all the time versus what just when your phone is active, right? And if you're connected all the time, you have better chances of getting selected for free remixes. So we didn't really touch on how Whirlpool works too much, and, you know, we don't want to get too technical.

But one of the important aspects of Whirlpool and the architectural decision of Whirlpool is that remixing. So you've mixed one time and now you have a new.

40:00 bill, right, of your coins, remixing should always be free to incentivize people to, one, you know, do it, and two, to keep their coins in the pool for as long as they can. More remixes you're involved in, the greater your anonymity set, but it's a kind of a quirky and unintuitive feature of the way it's architected is that even if you're not included in that mix, that particular remix transaction, you still benefit from that remix transaction that you weren't a part of because your bill is indistinguishable from the bills in that remix.

So there's a probability or a possibility that you were the person in that remix when you're looking at the entire anonymity set. So even just keeping your coins in the pool there, you're benefiting. But by getting these remixes, you're benefiting even more. So the desktop app allows you to get more remixes just because you're connected more reliably and for a longer period of time. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a really nice feature and something I've used heavily. And like you mentioned, like you get good privacy from the initial mix, but it's a great way to get additional privacy and just kind of slowly build that privacy over time, keep the privacy fresh by remixing for free. It doesn't cost anything. Again, it's non-custodial, just like all the other mixing.

So it's just a really nice way to help other people because you're contributing to other people's anonymity set and helping to provide them privacy. And you're also gaining a benefit as well, all for free. So it's definitely something that if you can do that, it's a huge advantage to yourself and to the Samourai Wallet ecosystem as well. So it's important that people do jump into that if they can. Obviously, you don't have to do that. You can just mix once and call it a day. But remixing is a great feature. And I love the approach that's been taken there. I think it's a great, great way to build out incentives around mixing and really incentivizing people to increase the liquidity of those people who are wanting to mix in pools.

Yeah. 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 slash sponsors. I did want to just quickly, you don't have to go super in-depth, but I did want to quickly give you a chance to touch on what other tools out there are you sure competitors or alternatives and then maybe what makes Samourai Wallet better or unique in some way. Okay, sure. So the in Bitcoin non-custodial coin joins, you have Whirlpool, which we've discussed, which is you need Android for. Even though we have a desktop app, you still need the Android app to access it. Although now we have Sparrow Wallet, which is a desktop app, works on all the major desktop platforms, which has actually incorporated and implemented Whirlpool into their wallet. So you actually don't need to only have an Android anymore. You can do it on desktop via Sparrow Wallet, and that will be used in the same pools as our users. So it's a co-mingling of wallet users there. It increases the anonymity set even greater. And of course, our server has never seen those UTXOs. So it's completely foreign source. Really good. But so besides Whirlpool

on desktop and on mobile, you have JoinMarket, which is quite old. It's been around for a while. JoinMarket started around the same time as Samourai Wallet, as far as I'm aware. Development on it started around the same time. We've done an in-depth analysis on... Well, I say analysis, but we actually we actually broke it on JoinMarket. There was a user who made a Reddit post back in 2015, I believe. He... I think the short story is he had some Bitcoin stolen and he was able to track the Bitcoin into JoinMarket. And he was... He posted a bounty on Reddit and said, "If anyone can help me figure out where these coins are gone, I'll give you this amount." It was largely ignored. No one really responded to it. We came across that post last year or the year before and launched an investigation to see if we could figure out where these coins went. We figured that if we could figure it out, it would be a positive... It would be a positive experience in terms of figuring out how new techniques for tracking Bitcoin on the blockchain and

it would make our offering stronger. So we ended up figuring it out, figuring out a new attack that could be used on JoinMarket transactions. I believe it... I believe it was named the Total Recall attack. And anyone who's interested can read a free report on research.oxt.me or... Yeah, research.oxt.me. So I... You know, it's a good system, but it's aged and it hasn't really been kept up to date in the sense that fundamental blockchain analysis hasn't been paid attention to in favor of a lot of real cool innovation on like decentralized order books and fidelity bonds and stuff like that. They've done a lot of interesting stuff there, but haven't really focused on what I consider the meat and potatoes of it. And then of course you have... The other downside is it's mostly command line anyway. So it's kind of, you know, preclude a lot of people from using it.

Then of course you have Wasabi, which anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that Wasabi is completely broken. We've attacked Wasabi, you know, multiple times from every level in terms of the absolute travesty of CoinJoin transactions they leave on the public blockchain to a... We reviewed their code and figured out that coin selection was deterministic and not random. Major issues like that. I would highly recommend people avoid Wasabi at least until they've launched their new version because the current existing version they still have out there and released and maintaining is just insanely broken. So that's it in terms of the CoinJoin options for Bitcoin.

Yeah, there are not a ton. There are not many. No. And my criticism is not meant to be, you know, taken in any other way than we've looked at this stuff on chain. So anything I say is verifiable by looking at the blockchain. Especially when I say Wasabi is tragically broken, just, you know, all you have to do is look at one of their transactions. You can count the number of address reuses that happen within that transaction. You can count the, you know, sometimes you have the same address on both the input and output side of the transaction. I mean, these are just glaring, glaring issues that, you know, shouldn't be happening.

Right. And we at first thought it was, you know, civil attacks and we thought it was some outside, you know, maybe a chain analysis company who was attacking it. But at this point, we just think it's it's uttering competence because none of it's been fixed. And, you know, we bring it up and we get attacked for it. So, you know, we've stopped kind of bringing it up. But, you know, how many times can you beat a dead horse? It's broken. Yeah. And it's important that people understand when a tool that's claiming privacy does have issues like that. So bringing those things to light is very important. And I am curious to see if the the new approach that was always building out is built out well. I definitely have concerns based on history, but it'll be interesting to see if that provides a solid coin join solution.

I have concerns based on history and based on what I've seen of the protocol and the comments from the company. I think that they're making some questionable decisions, but we'll see when it gets released.

50:00 we're going to be looking not just because they're a competitor, but because we need to understand the landscape, right? Like we need to adversarially look at everything, including our own stuff and see, you know, are we able to get through this? Are we able to break this? Where are the weak points? And all of those data points get put together to create a better product and a better software for the users. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely agree. And just one quick comment on JoinMarket before we jump into some listener questions.

It's just that I think it's a really cool project and they've obviously been pretty early on in the space and have done some great work. But like you mentioned, I think that one of the key issues, at least for me, is that the UX, the user experience around using JoinMarket is much more complicated at the moment. I think there have been some attempts to improve that, but I don't think there's been a ton of movement there. So it's definitely something that can be used.

And I actually haven't read y'all's report on breaking JoinMarket. I'd never heard that story before. Yeah, dig into that one. It's called the cold case files or something. But the stark difference between the JoinMarket response to that report and Wasabi's responses to their reports was incredible. As far as I understand it, the JoinMarket client was, or algorithm was updated to make it so that that total recall attack wasn't feasible anymore. So he immediately went to work and said, yeah, you're right on this.

Or I disagree with your analysis in this way, but I do recognize that this is a problem and here's the fix for it. So that's all we wanted to see. You know, we're not trying to score points or embarrass anyone. You know, we're confident that there's plenty of people looking at our stuff and we would hope that they would, you know, let us know if we did something screwed up. Yeah, exactly. And that's the response you would hope for from a privacy tool and really from any kind of FOSS project.

If someone exposes a weakness or a flaw in the system, they jump in and want to fix that and want to work with the person who's found the issue. So that's great to hear that they did correct that and do actually care about that. Absolutely. And it's always good to have alternate implementations of a tool. Like non-custodial coin joins are vital to Bitcoin privacy. So as much as I love like Samourai Wallet, and obviously that's what I use, it is important that we do have alternative implementations.

And it's also just important that the implementations are free and open source so that they can survive, they can continue, even if the core people behind them are... And they can grow. Like we saw with Craig and Sparrow Wallet, like, you know, he didn't ask for permission. He implemented it because it's all free and open source. And, you know, he could have hosted his own competing coordinator if he wanted to. He just chose to tie in with ours because it was better for everyone's non-set.

But, you know, the fact is that's a competing implementation of Whirlpool. And you have no idea how psyched I am to see that. Yeah. Yeah, it was absolutely amazing to see that that was released and that he was willing to integrate that first of all and then did it very successfully. And I think it was important that he chose to latch on to the existing mixing liquidity in Samourai. I'll definitely need to get him onto the show and chat about Sparrow.

Oh, absolutely. There's a ton of awesome stuff happening there. And it's great to see more people jump on the bandwagon and see the need for privacy and not only see it, but really take aggressive action to do it with or without permission. Definitely a huge win for the Bitcoin space. Today, I mean, he's implemented not just Whirlpool now, he's implemented Stonewall X2, which we didn't really get into. But as a brief summary for your listeners, it's a coin join transaction.

But instead of Samourai acting as the coordinator and, you know, making sure all the signatures are collected, it's a peer-to-peer coin join between you and one other person. So prior to Craig at Sparrow Wallet implementing this, it was only available if you had Samourai Wallet. You could do these coin joins with another Samourai Wallet user. Now you can do it with another Samourai Wallet user or another Sparrow Wallet user. And seeing these tools take off and grow like this, one, is very fulfilling, you know, as a developer and provider of software.

But two, it grows the, you know, the usefulness of the tool. And it wouldn't be possible unless it was free and open source. Yeah, absolutely. It's such a vital piece of everything that's happening in the space. And anyone who's building out tools on privacy, I hope that they push in every way possible to be free and open source because it's a key piece of making this able to last, making it able for people to see those features build out things that build on top of it or customize it to a specific need that they have or other people have.

There's just so much value in being FOSS overall. And it's definitely something we've harped on a lot on the show, but always want to reiterate that, that it's a huge win. And anytime you see a project focusing on FOSS and really carrying that ethos forward, that's something that should be applauded and really appreciated there. And I want to quickly switch into some listener questions. Got some great ones on Twitter and wanted to chat a little bit about those.

The first one is one that's kind of near and dear to my heart because I've focused on it a little bit and collected some data on it. And we've touched on it a little bit with kind of KYC exchange usage. But it was basically just, do you see any issues due to blacklisting or censorship of users who are opting for more privacy on Bitcoin via a tool like Samourai? Because obviously when you use Samourai Wallet, when you mix, it's something that you're choosing to do kind of outside of the default in Bitcoin.

So have you seen any issues around blacklisting coins or issues with KYC exchanges or anything like that when people do choose to gain more privacy on Bitcoin via Samourai? Broadly, no. So we do our own internal testing on some of the larger centralized exchanges where we'll send that over a freshly mixed post-mix UTXO directly from post-mix account, right? So one hop backwards is the mixed transaction. And we're doing that to test and see if we get a letter or an email or our account gets shut down.

And we've been doing that since the start of Whirlpool. And to date, you know, none of the large centralized exchanges have cared. We have seen reports from some users on the smaller KYC exchanges. And we're talking like real small who seem to be over-complying for whatever reason that they believe it to be advantageous for them to do. Maybe they want a banking license in New York or they want the, you know, the bit license, I mean, in New York. And so they go above and beyond what they are required to do.

Maybe we've seen one or two reports about that. But for the larger exchanges, we don't see any kind of prejudice against CoinJoin UTXOs or Whirlpool UTXOs because currently they're not looking for fingerprints of odd transactions, for example. They're looking for proximity to sanctioned activity, whether that be darknet markets, ransomware, you know, anything in some cases gambling or pornography. So anything that's against their terms of service or is sanctioned or OFAC sanctioned address.

So they're looking for proximity to one of those clusters. If you have a good CoinJoin implementation, like I believe Whirlpool to be, there should be absolutely zero proximity to any, right? History is completely fresh. We've seen poorly built CoinJoin implementations. I've been referenced already on this podcast that had a serious problem with centralized exchange accounts getting shut down. We put that down to the fact that the composition of these CoinJoins is so poor that there is a connection, a proximity to sanctioned addresses or sanctioned activity, even after you've done the CoinJoin in these implementations.

So it's not an issue with CoinJoin. It's an issue with the implementation that leaves a certain amount of taint or proximity to something that the centralized exchange would object to. So we haven't really seen it with Whirlpool. We've seen it with some other CoinJoin transactions, but we don't believe it's because of CoinJoin. Certainly, legally speaking, there's nothing illegal about using a technology like CoinJoin. It's completely legal, at least in the U.S. and most of Europe, I would say.

The bigger issue, I think...

1:00:00 But yeah, the bigger issue lies with the smaller companies who are trying to break into the sphere and are over-complying. Yeah, I love that y'all are actively testing that too to see if your users would be affected by something like that, at least as much as you can. Yeah. And of course, we also have, sorry to cut you off, but we also have Ricochet, which is a feature in the app. So if you use one of these smaller KYC exchanges, for example, and you know that they have an issue with mixed coins, right?

Just blanket ban on CoinJoin. This tool is designed to add multiple hops of additional history to your coins so that at a certain point, if you're looking, for example, eight hops back, the probability that those coins are, or the person who's depositing are associated with that drops significantly. And they probably aren't even checking that far back. Like our research has shown they check at most five hops back. So we add five hops of history. You know, there's little tools like that that you can actually use within the wallet if you're worried about, you know, exchanges having an issue with your coins.

But yeah, we haven't really seen any large scale issues with Blacklist and using Whirlpool. Yeah. And I think two big things there. I mean, one is that hopefully a technology like CoinJoin and a tool like Samourai Wallet would actually give centralized exchanges and chain analysis companies and those kinds of people kind of a way to opt out of needing to enforce KYC or needing to enforce issues around the actual chain history of your coins. Yeah, it shouldn't be if you're using privacy tools well, though, in theory, obviously, that doesn't mean that's how it will be.

But it should kind of give them a way out because they can say we can't tell anything about where this is coming from. So we don't know that it's bad and we can't know that it's bad. So we can just kind of blanket assume that these are fine and let them happen. So thankfully, that's kind of overall, it seems like that's been the regulatory approach. But I think that should be the way if a tool is providing solid privacy and you have no way to track it.

And you're also doing the other things that unfortunately you're required to do by shadowy banking walls. Hopefully that would be a way to allow you off the hook and let you kind of opt to help your users and not have to comply around that. But thankfully, I think people need to like need to remember that these people are running a business, right? And the business only really works if people are allowed to use the service. So they want as many people to use a service as they can.

They don't want to get a compliance ding, right? And they don't want to, so they have to do, they have to, they make a good faith effort, right? So they contract with Chainalysis or some other intelligence agency because they do it all and then they can tick that box. But, you know, people need to remember that these guys aren't there to spy on you, not the exchanges. Chainalysis is, but not the exchanges. The exchanges are there to extract money from you.

And I think that the more checkboxes that they can tick off saying, hey, we didn't see anything. We looked. We did. We gave it a good faith effort. They're going to do it, especially the larger ones, you know. So I think you're absolutely right in that. And I think that a lot of them would prefer to receive post-mixed UTXOs because there's no flag. There's nothing. It's good. It's green, right? And then it goes right through compliance and now they're making money on fees.

Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully that will be, that will continue to be the path forward. And hopefully that will be a way that exchanges and entities that need to comply with these things, unfortunately, that they'll be able to kind of take that, take that out. But the other kind of key piece is if you don't use these centralized KYC exchanges that do have to comply with, with local laws and deal with all of these kind of KYC AML laws, you don't generally have to worry about blacklisting or censorship or having to explain yourself or anything like that.

So building out these parallel economies that we talked about a little bit here and that we talked about quite in depth in previous episodes of opt-out is so important because you actually remove any kind of interaction with the normal banking world that causes these issues. So you remove that entirely and no, no person, at least not right now is going to be doing chain analysis on your tokens or your coins to see what you've done with them in the past and deciding whether or not they should accept them.

No merchant is generally going to have the resources to do that. So you can kind of remove that issue entirely. If we start to, to really create these parallel economies that don't rely on the state that, that don't rely on the normal kind of old legacy banking system. So that's, that's a hugely important piece too, is the more you can opt out of those things, the less and less you actually have to even care about any kind of these regulations causing you issues or something.

It's an essential piece. I mean, that, that is the piece that keeps, that makes Bitcoin's woeful privacy acceptable, right? If, if, if, if your UTXOs are, or your addresses are, are just random, you know, strings of characters and that's all they are. You know, yes, there's still things to worry about in terms of tying coins to an entity, but that entity isn't known, right? You, there, there's a pseudonymous system. As soon as you get rid of that very, very weak, thin veil, it becomes a massive, massive nightmare.

So, so prioritizing that, that second economy, a side economy, um, prioritizing, you know, non-KYC Bitcoin, if you can find a way to do it, um, prioritize earning in Bitcoin and changing up your, the way you think about this from a tradable kind of investment asset to a, uh, you know, you're the money that you require to live freely. You know, uh, once you make that mind shift, you start to unlock what this whole thing was about. And that is such a cool and a cool feeling.

And I think it's actually one of the reasons why we have such passionate users. Cause they all, they come in there, they're into Bitcoin. They're into this, they kind of get the idea, but not really a hundred percent yet. And as I start using the software, as I start hanging out in the community, as they start chatting and talking and learning, their mind is opened to what this really is and how subversive this technology actually is. It's not a wall street investment.

It's not, you know, a number go up, get rich quick thing. This is a fundamental change to, um, not even a change. It's a fundamental increase in the potential for, for freedom. Um, if we seize it or, or it's a massive, massive nightmare to human freedom. We haven't figured it out yet, which way that it's going to go, but you can take steps. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that, that, that fragile pseudonymity that Bitcoin does provide isn't nearly as much of an issue.

If we build out these, these parallel economies, if you're a part of a super economy, and like you said, earning Bitcoin, spending Bitcoin, using it directly with people rather than having to rely on these kind of state systems. So it's a, it's a huge part and it really does alleviate a lot of the privacy concerns. It's still not ideal, but it really can alleviate most of the issues there, um, along with using privacy tools like Samourai Wallet. Yeah.

Um, another, uh, I think interesting listener question that we got was, uh, someone was curious to see if you've, if you've had kind of an increase in adoption of Samourai Wallet and if you've seen just kind of generally an increase in a privacy, um, focused community that's, that's been building up, um, recently. It wasn't like a timeframe, but maybe just kind of recently, how have you seen things going with, with adoption of Samourai and the privacy community generally?

So with the adoption of Samourai, we've seen growth every, every year since 2015. So it grows and gets bigger every year. Uh, we have more users, more, more usage. Um, so on, on that front, I think it's very positive. Um, sometimes it's easy to get down on the, on the broader state of, of the community in terms of the, uh, the privacy community. Um, but it's, that's, that's the story since forever. You know, the privacy community is a niche community, right?

Because the, the mass market, they enjoy all of the benefits that the privacy community have, have achieved, whether it's the privacy community of the, the old cypherpunks, uh, whether it's the encryption guys, whether, you know, there's all, you know, there's all sorts of benefits that the common folk are, are, are benefiting from, um, without being in the privacy community themselves, right? They don't, they don't know they're a part of the privacy community.

They just enjoy the, those fruits. Um, so it's a niche community. Uh, I, our community grows. And I, I, I think that, um, the, the passion level in our community is, is, is really great. We have a very passionate

1:10:00 base. And these are people who care. They really do care. And they not only care, they rely on it. They rely on the software and on the technical innovations that come to either, you know, to run their lives, to pay for their stuff, to run their businesses, whatever they may be. And, you know, that's a cool thing. It's more than just people who have installed the app and maybe open it up every once in a while to check, you know, check things out. These are real active members of the shadow economy. And that's what makes it kind of a cool place to hang out.

I think overall people do want privacy, whether they're, you know, in the niche or not. So it's a market that will only grow, especially as cryptocurrencies gain more popularity. Yeah, I love that you mentioned earlier too, just that when people are joining the community around Samourai, like they're, they're generally getting kind of converted to a privacy mindset and starting to understand the value in circular economies and parallel economies. And there's just, there's so much power in the actual community that's around a tool like Samourai Wallet. And that's around a group of people who have a core ethos that is so vital, like the Samourai Wallet team has, obviously, that you have and like the community around that that's formed around Samourai has, and that only continues to grow as more people get pulled in and they start talking to people and they get support from people. And there's so much value there. So I'd love to see the community around Samourai Wallet grow. And a lot of the reason

why I am where I'm at with where I'm at with privacy and, and why I care about these things is because of people who are actually in the Samourai Wallet community. There's a lot of my background and history that actually comes from that. So there's so many people who've had a huge influence on me from that community. So there's, there's, there's so much power there, often beyond the actual tool that's being used, but the communities that form around them are awesome. And I'd love to see that the Samourai Wallet one just really continued to grow and thrive and continue to teach other people about what, what really is important and what Bitcoin really can be. Well, thank you very much. Yeah. I mean, it's all been organic. That's what's so cool about it. You know, I started the, the telegram because I was, I, I was seriously worried that Twitter was gonna, you know, ban my account because I said, I, it was when I defended the rights of neo-Nazis to transact on Twitter. It was, you know, it caused such a

shit storm. And it was, you know, I don't remember what year it was. It must, it must have been like 2017 or 2018. Caused such a shit storm that I was really worried that they were gonna nuke my account. So I set up the telegram as just a place where I could post, you know, announcements, updates, and whatever that, whatever I use Twitter for. And it just grew very naturally from there. And, and some great personalities have surfaced and made themselves known and, and, you know, diverter springs to mind with his mining for the streets guide that really kicked off home mining that inspired the Kano Alchemist who's also in the community to do his, his home mining guide. So it's really, and you, of course, you have a max who, who's gotten to the privacy phone, um, CalyxOS, like all these, these things that have sprung up organically from that group. It's just been so cool to watch. Um, and you know, I, I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't, it was just, it was a natural thing and it was great.

Yeah. That's there's 3000 people in that telegram room right now. I just checked. So it's awesome to see how, how big that has grown and how it really is just a, it's a grassroots thing. Like there's no, no marketing team, nothing like that. That's kind of, uh, inorganically building that up. So grassroots. Oh yeah. No, there's definitely no marketing team. I think, uh, any marketing team would, would either quit or refuse to work with us. Uh, it's a, it's a small, it's a very small team. Um, I'm, I'm the guy on Twitter. Uh, T dev is the guy behind controlling the strings and all the development stuff. Um, we have a couple of core contributors and some, some other contributors that contribute when they can, you know?

Um, and it's, it's very small. We, it's one of the, the issues that we've had is since we've, since we started, even when it was just me and T dev, we were putting out like a lot, you know, we were, we were basically not sleeping, you know, we would have a couple hours of sleep at night and we did that for two or three years, just pushing out the, these ideas and trying to get the, the wallet, uh, to a state where it was like feature, uh, complete in the terms of what we had envisioned for it. Like when we sat at the pub that day and just, and like, you know, discuss what we wanted us to do. Um, so we, we pumped out so much stuff that people have thought, oh, they must have a lot of money behind them. They must be a big big team, you know? And it's like, no, the, the exact opposite. It's, it's a very small team.

And, and, um, you know, we, we were, uh, scraping by for there for a while. It's looking pretty rough. Um, now, nowadays we're able to fund development with the Whirlpool fee, uh, for the most part. So we're still very frugal and still a small team, but at least we're not, you know, scraping by. Yeah. Yeah. I did want to touch on that a little bit. Um, I had one more listener question. I do want to get to, but, um, you just mentioned that Samourai development is funded through, through Whirlpool fees. Um, is there any kind of like funding or sustainability that's kind of that you've built into Samourai Wallet or how do you guys manage to find the two of you obviously working full-time in this and keep the project going?

So we, um, well, when we started Samourai Wallet, we weren't full-time. We were still full-time in, in other companies. Um, but we, we each put, um, like a Bitcoin a month into a common fund to, to start the, you know, start the wallet off. Okay. And of course, a Bitcoin at that time was very, you know, like, you know, low price. It wasn't what it is today. Um, by the time we were able to go full-time and, um, we took very, very, very modest, uh, salaries so that we could keep those, those Bitcoins that we had saved up, um, for paying for servers and stuff like that. Um, we, we got some, uh, small investments from like-minded individuals who were into what we were doing.

Um, and those guys really are the, the real MVPs. Um, yeah, I think back on it and I was like, what, what, what crazy risk these guys took on, um, you know, a wallet company completely unproven, you know, it was completely questionable whether a wallet could even monetize, um, at that time. And, you know, they were, they weren't, they didn't care about that. They just wanted to see this technology, um, be, you know, reach, reach the market. And so we, we got some investment from, um, from like-minded individuals. And since then we took, um, we took investment in 2019 from a, um, um, a publicly traded company in Canada. Um, so that was like our first, um, you know, outside the, the scope of the, you know, individual, uh, investor. And that was, uh, cypherpunk holdings.

And they had, uh, you know, I met with them, I chatted with them. I was, I made sure that we were on the same ideological wavelength and I felt comfortable doing it. And we were able to hire some people and really push development further. And that's when we were able to finally wrap up, you know, Whirlpool finally able to wrap up Dojo and get it out to a wider, um, a public audience. And, um, just at the end of 2021, we took on, um, another infusion from, um, 1031 ventures, which is, uh, a Bitcoin only, um, uh, VC fund that, uh, you know, again, met with the guys, talked to them, made sure that we were on the same wavelength and what we're trying to do. Like, and, um, that's going to be able to hopefully allow us to expand a little bit more, um, get maybe hire another developer, uh, and be able to continue pushing out stuff for the foreseeable future.

That's awesome. That's awesome that you've been able to, to get that funding for a tool that's so focused on privacy and so kind of against the grain in the Bitcoin space. Yes. So I'm glad that you've helped. A lot of work. Yeah. A lot of work. Um, you know, especially how, you know, our, we're very, uh, um, we're structured in a very non-traditional way. Um, we, you know, completely, uh, some of our investors don't even know our names. Um, you know, so there's a lot of, there was a lot of barriers to a traditional kind of investment environment. It just wasn't going to happen, you know? So the people that were attracted to us, um, you know, there's something wrong with them as well. Just like there's something wrong with us. Let's just say it like that, you know, they're built, they're built different, you know? Um, and that, that's the most important thing when you take on investment is that you guys are aligned ideologically. Um, both my co-founder and I saw, uh, prior to Bitcoin in the,

in the dot-com era and during Bitcoin, what VC money can, can do to a company.

1:20:00 And we were very, very adamant on not allowing that to happen at Samourai. Yeah, yeah, definitely seems like that has been a good thing so far and not shifted the focus. And it's clear the ethos hasn't changed around Samourai. So I'm glad to see that y'all found good ways to continue to grow what you're trying to do and really to fund and sustain that. That's so, so important. And that's a tricky thing in the FOSS space and in the privacy space as well.

So it's very important that you find good ways to do that without sacrificing underlying fundamentals, without sacrificing ethos, which it seems that you have to have very, very hard lines, I'm sure. Yeah. Last couple of questions for you. I have one more listener question that I know there's a lot of interest in this, at least in the Monero space and seems like it in the Samourai space. But someone wanted to know if there are any updates on atomic swaps within Samourai Wallet for people to be able to swap at least like Docs Exchange and that kind of thing into Monero within the Samourai Wallet.

Obviously atomic swaps are still very much in progress on the Monero side. There's not a ton finished there, tons of work being done there. But a listener was curious if there's any updates on your view of atomic swaps within Samourai and the work being done there. There's no updates other than, you know, we're still committed to the planned functionality. We're hoping to have the ability to perform atomic swaps within the first half of the year.

Like you said, it depends on the Monero side as well. But it's definitely a planned, it's planned. And when we have something planned out, we do it. We make good on it. So just keep your eyes open. It will definitely be in the wallet. It's just a matter of time. Awesome. Yeah. And that's for those who don't know, atomic swaps are essentially a way for you to trade Bitcoin from Monero or vice versa without trusting the other party. So you can perform that swap without having a chance that you lose your funds.

The other party can't steal them. It's a way to be able to swap that without needing any information about them, without using a centralized exchange and without causing privacy concerns or those kinds of things. It's a huge step forward and a decentralized and safe way to swap cryptocurrencies without having to involve an exchange. So it'll be a big step forward. There's two main implementations of atomic swaps between Bitcoin and Monero being worked on.

There's Farcaster and then there's one by the commit team. But definitely a lot of exciting stuff there. So I'm glad that's still something that's on your radar and in your backlog. And definitely a focus. We'll see that when it does come to fruition. And y'all very well may be the first to implement that, which would be huge for giving people options when trying to preserve their privacy. Yes. It's such an important step, atomic swaps, that we don't understand what the negative attitude towards them from some Bitcoiners.

You know, this was kind of like a holy grail thing back in 2012, 2013. I don't get it, but we're, you know, I don't have to get it. I'm putting it in my software. Yeah. Love it. Last question for you, dude, was just how can listeners jump in and help support what you're doing with Samourai Wallet? You know, the best way to support us is to use the software. You using it and gaining from it is how we, you know, how we function, how we support ourselves.

You know, we always will take donations, but, you know, donations are not a sustainable way to keep a software project going long term. We've seen too many fail that way. So use Whirlpool, use all the other features and that's enough. And it will be good for you too. Awesome. Well, thank you again so much for coming on Samourai. It was a ton of fun for me. I learned a lot here that I didn't even know. And I'm really glad that listeners will be exposed to what Samourai Wallet is, what you're doing with it, your ethos and the community that's behind it as well.

So thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule. It went a little bit longer and I think there's just a ton of great info in here and great discussions. So thanks again for jumping on. Really happy to be here, Seth. Thanks for having me. 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.

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