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Transcription provided by Podhome.fm
Created: 1/15/2024 6:31:44 AM
Duration: 4904.203
Channels: 1

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McIntosh: Hey, sat stackers. Today is November 2nd, and this is episode 141 of generation Bitcoin. I'm your host, Macintosh, and today's episode is a conversation

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with

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Seth

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for

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privacy.

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Alright. Let's,

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let's do our price update.

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To our market update, and we will jump right on in.

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We've got lots to talk about today. We had a great conversation with Seth, and I wanna get right into that.

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Right now, as I record, the price of Bitcoin is 34,620

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three. That's

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34,623.

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And our block height

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at time of recording

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is

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814-784.

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I'm sorry?

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That's 814-874.

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TikTok next block.

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Alright.

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As I started recording earlier today,

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an hour ago or so, an hour and a half ago with

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Right as I sat down to record, I got

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a new block.

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1st one in over a day. Been a little slow

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and a little slow there for the old brains pool,

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but that's the way it goes.

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So,

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Anyways,

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our difficulty adjustment

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at this point

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will be,

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looking like it's going to happen.

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Oh my. Where is that? I can always lose track of this thing. There it is. November 11th

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2023.

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Of course.

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Right now, it's estimated to be 8.41%

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up. Man, I hope it is not.

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Our average block time right now, though, is 9 minutes and 14 seconds, which is why we would have that difficulty adjustment up.

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The pool is full,

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and

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sets are, blocks are expensive.

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Transactions,

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I should say,

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more expensive.

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Our hash rate right now, according to this 7 day moving average, 467.9

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x hash.

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Yikes.

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Keep on climbing towards 500.

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Man, could you guys slow down? And we are officially at 88%

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of our progress

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to the next having.

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How are things doing out in the market? Well, I told you the price.

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As of this recording. The price is good.

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We have not broken

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35,000

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at least significantly at this point. We have definitely been staying below it,

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and

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we're just kinda where we're at. I mean,

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Let's look at the chart here real quick. I don't think a whole lot has changed.

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I guess I was wrong about that bull pin.

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So it turns out I told you last time we recorded, we fell out of a bullpennant, which is true. You could certainly make the argument there was one there.

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But it

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It turns out that pendant is actually still forming.

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Very interesting.

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I would argue,

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we are getting towards the top of that. I do apologize.

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At the time, it made sense what I drew. I I really didn't wait long enough. It'd only been 3 days it'd been developing,

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so that's kind of my fault.

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But

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regardless,

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we've still got that $35,000

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and some change,

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kind of sealing.

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We've not broken through that, but it will not it has not fallen down.

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The Bollinger Bands are wide open. We could go way up. We could hit that 37,000

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before we if, like, if it just woke up today and said, we're going,

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and not even go outside the ball of your bands. That would be pretty sweet.

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It looks like though before the end of the week, there's a very good chance,

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we could break through. I think by next Sunday, we'll know one way or the other. More likely we're going up, but certainly one way or the other. Of course, as always, this is not marketing

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marketing. This is not trading advice.

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As always here on Generation Bitcoin.

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We

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dollar cost average. We do not

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try and time this market.

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I hope you are stacking sets.

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However you are doing that, of course, I talk about strike a lot. I would

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especially given today's topic

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mentioned,

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of course, your KYC ing yourself using that, but,

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but it's certainly a handy way to do that.

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Privacy is something here on generation Bitcoin that I think we're going to end up talking about more and more over the coming months

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and probably years.

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It's just too important a topic. It's something that a lot of people don't understand.

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And talking to Seth today gave us a great intro to some of the concepts. I've discussed a lot of this in the past.

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I wanted to have him on specifically to talk about this fence and regulation, which we did.

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But,

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He is a great resource for this kind of stuff, and we're talking about all the different places that he can be reached,

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read,

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absorbed, listened to,

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and so on. So we'll be jumping right into that in just a second. But, again, in general market,

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we're We're about ready to make a move. I'm gonna go ahead and say by Sunday,

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by the end of the day, Sunday,

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I'm thinking by the close of the week,

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it's gonna do something.

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So

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alright. So we're gonna go from here. We're gonna jump right into this interview. Again, it was a great interview.

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I really appreciate this. At the end, I'm gonna wrap up some things, maybe spanned a little bit on one of the topics that we were talking about. I don't feel like

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we discussed it enough. It's actually a new

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new thing for him, and I kinda wanted to pull that out

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and make sure you are aware of it. So enjoy this, and here we go.

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For our main section today, we're gonna be talking with Seth for privacy for we're gonna be talking to Seth. That's his handle on Twitter, Seth for privacy,

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about some privacy topics, about fencing,

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the regulation that they're attempting to pass right now that, in my opinion,

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is not a real good thing. I think he shares that thing, that idea. And then we're also gonna be talking about his other pursuits because he has a number of them.

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He looks to me like he's a really busy person. We'll find out.

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But,

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Yeah. Let's Seth, first of all, welcome to the show. Thanks for, thanks for being here.

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Seth: Thanks so much for having me, man. I'm I'm very excited to to chat through these topics, and I don't know. There's there's so many things kind of pressing in the world today that I'm trying to do what I can to help with. But a lot of that comes down to Kind of the the end user taking action.

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So looking forward to talking through this. I know a lot of this stuff can sound kinda depressing at at first glance, but I think there's some some good optimistic takes and some good action items we can we can take out of it. So looking forward to it. Great. I,

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McIntosh: I'm glad you've got some optimism.

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Maybe you could have a little bit for me. That'd be probably a good thing.

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Yeah. It's hard sometimes when you're looking at this this kind of stuff. It it can be, you know, frankly, depressing,

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because

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we we see these things changing, and and, you know, for those of us who've been around frankly since before, the Patriot Act, which was, done by,

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911.

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What it was initiated out of that, really. Mhmm. A lot of the privacy issues that we're having today. And I think I've seen you mention this that

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that they stem from that, in my opinion. So

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wow. Anyways,

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let's not get into all that quite yet. You've got a lot of other things going on, and I wanna talk about about those first. So first of all, you are a podcaster, so let's talk about that.

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Seth: Yeah. So I kind of have a a broad range of things that I do or have done in the space.

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So generally, I've I've had a good platform on on Twitter,

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now X, which I don't know if I ever get used to there being a new name.

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Focusing on essentially

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privacy

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and

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security

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education has been kind of my focus. I really got woken up to the need for personal privacy after reading reading Snowden's book,

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really about 2019, so relatively

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relatively new to the scene. And that that made me take a kind of a drastic shift in what I wanted to work on with my career, what I wanted to work on in my free time. And

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Out of that came me using Twitter as an educational tool, and then eventually launching my own podcast, which was called Opt Out. It is still

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up. I run the website and everything. I haven't recorded in a while just because

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work life and family life have taken over the the majority of the time I was using for that before. But,

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It's, I think, a a good resource, especially when starting the personal privacy journey there. But that's that's like a very quick background. We can get into kind of the work side of things and and where I've landed there if you want as well.

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McIntosh: Feel free to share as much as you want. I mean, your name is Seth for privacy,

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so

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I don't talk a whole lot about kind of my background in general. I'm a software engineer, but that's basically the extent of what I've told my audience.

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You're you're you're welcome to share whatever you wish.

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You do have some other things going on that you talk about on Twitter that we do certainly need to get into.

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So

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Seth: Yeah. Yeah. I can also expand the intro a little bit. So I I am Seth from privacy, but I I do show my face on on podcast video and that sort of thing because

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I do think that there's a a value in someone who deeply loves personal privacy and understands it, like, I think well and is able to to distill the topics down still being an approachable face, not just a pseudonym.

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I think that the the default approach for most people should be Pseudonymous or anonymous. It's just safer. It's it's better for for almost every aspect of life online, I mean, obviously. Like, the real world buying a house, etcetera. It's Not easy to do anonymously, unfortunately.

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But I've chosen to be a little bit more publicly facing. So for my work, in in my past, I've worked in IT. I won't go more detail than that. It's not not very interesting.

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But the the place that I've landed is I actually started working in the Bitcoin space,

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just over a year ago now. Okay. I jumped in and joined the team at Foundation Devices,

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who build Passport, which is a Bitcoin only hardware wallets. Very easy to use, very approachable, very security and privacy conscious,

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and then a mobile app called Envoy. So I jumped in with them initially as head of content. It's kind of expanded to to head of Strategy and marketing. But,

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really, the goal is bringing FreedomTech, which

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very simply FreedomTech as a as a category. It's just technology that empowers you, the user,

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Bringing that kind of technology to the masses, making it approachable,

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accessible, beautiful.

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Trying to kinda kinda bring a lot of what Apple has done, but do it with an open source ethos and no walled gardens and and all the other fun stuff that comes with a lot of the the Bitcoin ethos.

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McIntosh: Very cool. So I have not used the Foundation,

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product,

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at this point. So I can't really speak about it, but saying things like it's Bitcoin only,

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that's obviously a very good thing.

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Did you are are you saying that it's open source as well, the code for it?

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Seth: Yeah. Yeah. So we actually open source is at the core of everything we do. So we're, we're big about contributing back to any projects that we use open source code from. Okay. Contributing to industry standards. But when it comes to our products that comes down to being open source hardware and software.

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Cool. So there are some good projects in the space that are open source software, which is vital, and we're thankful for that. I mean, We we view any project that's open source, even if it's a competitor, as being a positive and an add to the space.

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But We focus on doing both open source hardware and software, both to minimize trust in us, so that there's there's nothing happening behind the scenes that that no one who understands the code or understands the schematics can't can't uncover and point out to to people to to warn them if we were trying to do something sketchy, But also so that, no matter what happens to the company,

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everything that we make will always be contributing back to the the the broader Bitcoin and FreedomTech ecosystem. So even if Foundation goes away. Everything that we've made will help to create better products for Bitcoin and further technologies, as we expand

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down the line. So it's it's a big thing for us that what we do doesn't just contribute to

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a regulatory moat or to to our income, but it it it contributes also to the broader ecosystem and and helps the the space as a whole. So that's why we focus on being open source hardware and software with with everything we built.

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McIntosh: Very cool.

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I did wanna mention, and you can correct me if I'm saying this

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improperly. I think I'm saying it at least close to correct.

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One of the definitions

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to go back, you talking about people being pseudo anonymous on the Internet and this kind of thing.

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Privacy is the ability to selectively reveal what you want people to know about yourself. Does that is have you heard that? Yeah. Okay. That's a it's a fantastic definition. It's usually my go to when I start to kinda describe personal privacy to someone. Right. And you choose

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to tell you put yourself on video, and I personally wouldn't have a problem with that either. I've never done video,

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a podcast, or anything like that at this point, but I don't have a problem with that. But you have somebody like,

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dear Gigi, and I hope I didn't butcher his name, but, you know, he literally does not show his face. And and that's his choice. He is choosing to not reveal that for whatever it doesn't even matter, whatever those reasons are. That's his choice. So I just I wanted to go back and kinda put a a bow tie on that and emphasize that

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for the listeners. It's something that I've mentioned in the past,

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and you reminded me of that when when you were talking about that earlier.

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Seth: Yeah. I I definitely, I love that you expanded that and to expand it a little further, because I also mentioned pseudonymity and anonymity.

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It's privacy is not either of those things. So you can be passionate about personal privacy and not be anonymous or even pseudonymous. I could be using my my full name, telling every everybody where I work, and just choosing to To preserve the privacy of specific details about my life.

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But I could also love personal privacy, take active steps towards it, and be seeking to be totally anonymous.

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They're not things that have to go one way or another. Anonymity is very different than privacy. And like you said, privacy is just choosing what you reveal, and you can choose to reveal as little as possible, which would generally be closer towards anonymity Mhmm. Or as much as you want, which could be just totally being out in the public figure. But even even then, you still Both have a choice for privacy or should have a choice for privacy,

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or not. It's it's really up to you, which is the, I think, the important distinction there. And

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McIntosh: not to get too crazy or conspiracy theory here, but I feel like,

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I don't feel like. I believe that this is something that is being

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trampled in the financial realm

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constantly over the last 20 years or so.

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We see a push

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for central bank digital currencies, for example. And

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I believe in large part that's because they want to be able to track every purchase that you've got, and people don't realize

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How much data can be gathered from that if they're not

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involved in even certain parts of the industry, which I've not been directly involved in

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advertising or this kind of thing, but

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I do understand how it works. I mean, they can piece together

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so much data and analyze it about Somebody, they can tell your your patterns and and all of this kind of stuff.

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And if you're using a digital currency,

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You have no ability of a nonprivate digital currency. Let me say that.

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That you have no ability to stop that. All of that data gets hoovered up. It gets pulled in to a database, and then it can be analyzed and, you know,

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sliced and diced and whatever later. So,

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anyways, the point to all that is when we push back on things like Bitcoin and say, no. We need privacy

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for for Bitcoin.

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We

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it's kind of the same argument about cash. I don't care

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who does what with cash.

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People do bad things with money regardless. Everybody's always like, Oh, well, the drug dealers use cash or the drug dealers use Bitcoin.

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I don't I don't care.

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That's not you

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You can't stop everybody from using something because of what somebody does with it.

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And,

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you know, I don't know. I'm just maybe I'm getting off on a rant here. No. But it does tie into what we're fixing to talk about with FinCym.

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Yeah. So Yeah.

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Seth: Go ahead, sir. I was just gonna just gonna say, like, I I think that's something a lot of people don't understand is that financial privacy isn't just like a small piece of the pie. It's not like you have your your digital privacy, your email privacy, your mobile phone privacy, your messaging privacy, and your financial privacy, and they're all equal. It's not really how it is. No. Because if if you you touched on it with CBDCs, but if someone has visibility into every single

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Minute detail of how you spend your money and where you receive money from. Mhmm. They know everything about you, basically. Right. They may not have explicit details,

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But they're gonna know who you meet with, where you eat, who you ate, who you drink coffee with that day Mhmm. Where you work, who you did a little work on the side for they're gonna know everything about you. So if you don't have financial privacy,

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basically, all of the other human rights that that you would otherwise have falls apart very quickly. It's it's It's really the core to me of of any kind of privacy.

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McIntosh: I get so frustrated

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when I go into the bank,

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and I need to send somebody some money and it's above a certain amount, which I believe in the United States at this point is is somewhere around $10,000.

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And they're like, well, what what are you doing

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with this? Why are you sending this person money? And I I

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Honestly, I want to scream in their faces. None of your blankety blank, blank, blank, blank business.

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But you can't.

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Right? I mean, I can choose to take my money out of the bank and

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literally carry it to whoever it is that needs it, but

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you're trapped in that system

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Seth: at least to that extent. You know? But Even if you did that, there would be a a nice report filed about you. Right. You withdrew all your money from the bank and did something with it that they couldn't track. You almost can't win at this system. And the thing is is They are assuming that you're trying to launder Monday.

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McIntosh: They are presuming

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that you're guilty. And I look at I'm not a constitutional

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scholar,

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but one of the amendments is

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you can't you don't assume guilt.

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Mhmm. Right?

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And people have privacy. That's another one. So,

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Seth: I mean, I I don't know. I don't wanna get off well, I mean, that's kind of the topic in the podcast. But Yeah. Yeah. But It connects directly. I mean, if you if you talk about this concept of guilty until proven innocent, the the Finsen

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Proposal that's come out

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perfectly aligns with that shift in how governments view their citizens' finances, which is that anything that doesn't meet this explicit and insane criteria.

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Right. Anything that doesn't meet those criteria are, for some reason, money laundering and evil. Right. And there's this presumption that you must be a money launderer unless to prove that you're not to us Right. Which completely flips the entire, at least, US judicial system onset.

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McIntosh: So for those who haven't heard. Can you go over kind of what we're talking about here with Vinson? So they came out with a

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proposed regulation, and I would say it's proposed.

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That has not been implemented,

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but, kinda take it from there and cover what the regulation is about,

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how people,

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Well, we'll go from there. Just

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Seth: Yeah. Yeah. I can definitely dive into it. So there's a there's a long blog post that I've written that will go probably more detailed than we'll go into today Okay. That, I I can send you, and you can link in share notes. Absolutely.

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The The crux of it is that the US government has shown that they want to prevent

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people from being able to use privacy tools when it comes to cryptocurrency.

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And this has been a it's been a long war that they've been waging Mhmm. Really over a decade now. They've been attacking privacy projects within the Bitcoin space, it's been rapidly ramping up in the last 2 years, really starting with the sanctions against Tornado Cash, which we don't have to get into in too much detail. But Very quickly, Tornado Cash is a decentralized privacy tool for Ethereum,

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that could provide strong privacy.

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A small part of its usage was,

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hackers supposedly from North Korea who stole funds within the Ethereum ecosystem

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and then use Tornado Cash to gain privacy.

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Fast forward, US government, they sanctioned the entirety of the Tornado Cash project, including their GitHub repos.

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One of the founders is arrested in the Netherlands.

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And then a year later, they ramped that up even more. In August this year, they indicted the other two remaining founders of Tornado Cash on charges of money laundering and money transmission,

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and are seeking, I think, 45 years in prison for the two of them even though they had no technical ability to prevent illicit usage of their tool. Right. So I have another blog post on that if you wanna get into kind of the the history there. But

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I think the context is helpful because for a lot of people, they saw this Fincen proposal, and they just thought it came out of left field. Like, where did this come from? Mhmm. This seems very, very detached from what we thought the US government wanted. But it's actually just a the next step in the the war that they've been waging against privacy tools for a while.

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But very briefly, essentially, what happened is FinCen

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had already had a proposal in place.

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It was very clear that this was written up before the conflict, in the Middle East happened. But they used this conflict in the Middle East to to be kind of the boogeyman for this proposal.

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And the the justification

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is essentially

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we need people who use privacy tools to be on a list because

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Terrorists use cryptocurrency for financing,

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their terrorism.

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McIntosh: Mhmm.

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Seth: Interestingly, they don't provide any specifics on How much cryptocurrency is used for terrorism, and there's been a a massive backlash over the past couple of weeks because the the main

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article that was used for this, that was used by senator Warren in in her comments

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was essentially totally false And 99% over attributed Correct. Cryptocurrency usage to terrorists.

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Mhmm. But all that aside, essentially, Fincen has said, because terrorists use cryptocurrency

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supposedly,

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we need to make sure that whenever people use privacy tools within the cryptocurrency space,

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anytime they interact with a a regulated entity, be it a bank, a cryptocurrency exchange,

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cryptocurrency service provider.

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Basically, anything that falls under US regulations.

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That need to have their information, all of it, including who they are,

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info about their their passport, Social Security number, whatever info you on file through the normal connect KYC procedures,

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and then send all of that info immediately along with info on where their funds came from, what privacy tool they used,

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amongst lots of other details. Package that up nicely and send it off to Finson immediately. Mhmm. So this is a big shift where even though Exchanges were using what was called KYC know your customer before where you'd have to, you know, submit a selfie and a a nice little video of you dancing with your passport or whatever to to get onto an exchange. That information wasn't sent to the government immediately. Right. Obviously, a lot of it ends up with the government, and the government can request it anytime.

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But with this new fence in ruling, whenever you use a privacy tool, all that information about you along with all of your history about what you've done in the exchange and any knowledge of on chain activity,

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Including privacy tool usage. It's immediately sent to the government, and you end up on a nice tidy list

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McIntosh: that apparently also happens to have terrorists and money launderers. Sure. Of course, because you're evil, and you used a money laundering service

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called a coin join.

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Seth: Uh-huh.

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McIntosh: So are they targeting

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a specific

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set of

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techno

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services like,

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I don't know. I'm trying to think. Samurai Whirlpool maybe,

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or are they targeting

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a technology

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like CoinJoin in general?

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Seth: Does that make sense? Yeah. No. That definitely makes sense. So the the target of the legislation, basically, how they define what they call a mixer, which I'll just called privacy tools because even the term mixing isn't as broad as their definition implies.

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Mhmm. Essentially, they're saying that

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Anything

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that

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provides

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privacy,

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no matter what,

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counts as a

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Cryptocurrency privacy tool, and that should be subject to these regulations.

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Specifically, they say,

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anything that facilitates transactions that obfuscate the source, destination, or amount Mhmm. Regardless of the type of protocol or service used. So they they do explicitly talk about some things.

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One of the specific categories they have sounds exactly like CoinJoin protocols, the Mhmm. The kind of broad protocol, not a specific one. Right. They don't name Wasabi or Samurai.

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They do name tornado cash because, obviously, the US government already has open legal action against TornadoCash. Mhmm. So they use that as as a precedent

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for bad people using,

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these services and thus because TornadoCash is bad, Every privacy tool is bad.

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So that's their their broad definition. But it's it's hilarious because they even

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Know that their definition is overly broad. If you look further in kind of how they want to define this, they say, Fincen acknowledges this definition is relatively broad. However, given the nature of mixing, Fincen deems the breadth of this definition to be necessary. Wow. They're encompassing

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every single tool that I can think of. And I would include the centralized mixers that we've had in the past in Bitcoin, things like Helix. There's a lot of other examples of those.

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Centralized coin join tools like Wasabi Wallet or Samura wallet.

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Decentralized tools like join mic join market or pay join seem like they would fit under this. Any kind of centralized instant exchanger, like fixed float or anything like that.

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Obviously, TornadoCash, they supposedly mention it. I would see decentralized privacy coins like Monero fitting under this definition and even decentralized exchanges because they they specifically talk about anytime you swap between cryptocurrencies

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that counts as a mixer,

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even though that makes no sense at all. That's it. Yeah. They include that as well because why not just lump up lump in everything?

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McIntosh: So this clearly is not a good bill or it's not a bill. This clearly clearly is not a good regulation.

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Mhmm.

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As an end user,

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how can we push back against this?

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Seth: Yeah.

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Yeah. And that's

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It's a tricky one. So if you are a US citizen, you can take the time to submit a comment

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and explain

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why you view the proposal as

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Illegitimate. Okay.

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And the the caveat there is obviously there's no

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explicit

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Control. We don't we don't get to vote on it or anything like that. We didn't get to elect the people that are part of Fincen in. Like, we we have no direct control

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as US citizens.

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But,

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supposedly, the comments are supposed to be considered and whether or not this will be,

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moved forward.

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And there's there's good efforts by people like Coin Center and and others who are helping to to set up this this comment system and helping people to better understand

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What these comments should look like when you submit them. It's something that I need to build out too for for our website freedom.tech

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to make it easier for people to submit comments.

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That's the I mean, that's really the only direct action you can take.

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But the I think there's some other very important pieces

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of of action that we each can take as well. I mean, one of them, even if we we do comment or don't comment, whatever, one of the things that we can do Very important is just raise social awareness around what's going on here. I mean, the the best thing for the government is that no one talks about this FinCEN proposal. Right. It just gets to pass in the shadows,

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And life moves on

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theoretically even though regulations continue to tighten around anyone who wants to retain any sort of financial privacy. Right. So we can really kind of, like, pull back the fog of war, pull back those shadows from from the people around us by just talking about it. Obviously, we each have different kind of spheres of influence. Mhmm. Different circles that we can talk about this and and make sure that people understand

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What's actually happening here, especially outside of the cryptocurrency space.

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Because like it or not, cryptocurrency users who would be deeply concerned about is a relatively small part of

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the world and and the the US populace.

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But if we can get a a broad consensus that we deserve financial privacy from our governments

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that can help to push back on this and and make it harder for

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the US government and specifically FinCEN to get something like this through because they they do still need our approval. They do still need our

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consent in one way or another. And if the masses are against something that they're proposing, they're they're much less Likely to try to force it through. Would this be something that say that either

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McIntosh: the house or the senate could come back and say you can't do this?

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Does that does that make sense?

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Seth: Yeah. I to be quite honest, I don't know what the next steps for this proposal are after it's approved or not by

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yeah. I I do need to do some more research on that, so I don't have an an interesting comment on the the next Steps here. I know that it waits for a 90 day proposal period,

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and then it moves on to be voted on, I believe, by the senate. Mhmm. But I I honestly don't know if I got my head, so I'll have to dig into that a little bit more. We'll we'll figure that out and and let the listeners know. Yeah. But it it's either that or there's gonna have to be court action

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McIntosh: at some point saying, you know, This is illegal. You're violating our privacy or or whatever the tact is.

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Wow. That's yeah.

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One of the interesting things that I see out of all of this is

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I I told my listeners

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either late last year or very early this year, like January 1,

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that I thought that 2023

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was gonna be a year of regulation. And I've been correct about that. Maybe not in really the way that I saw it

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in my head back then, but it's certainly been a lot of regulation.

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The SEC

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seems to be really cracking down on essentially

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alt coins.

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Okay. Casino coins. I like that term better than another term that gets batted around a lot. Yeah.

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Okay.

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Which is fine with me,

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because I believe what they're saying is legitimate, and I have looked at it. I'm not just spouting off what I've heard on Twitter.

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They

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they do fit the definition

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of securities and therefore they should be regulated.

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And when they whine about it, it just whatever.

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So

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they've looked at Bitcoin on the other hand, and the chairman has said this is a commodity. This is not a security. And

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In my thinking, well, it doesn't even fall under the SEC's purview at that point.

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But on the other hand, you've got this

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people like senator Warren primarily, although there are others who are just

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hell bent on

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killing

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everything. I don't I I mean, I don't even understand where it's coming from.

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She literally has people who are

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at least as, quote, progressive as she is, who are at this point saying, your narrative is all wrong.

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Bitcoin's not bad for the environment,

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you know, all of this kind of stuff, but she continues I mean, she was essentially behind this. Am I correct?

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Or a strong proponent of it.

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Seth: Yeah. A strong proponent for it and someone who's was pushing at the same time for anti crypto

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McIntosh: Legislation. Right.

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Seth: She made the same kind of claims around Hamas being heavily funded by cryptocurrencies

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even though that was absolutely disproven over the last week or 10 days.

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And so she has been a she's been a longtime

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hater of the things that Bitcoin.

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I mean, she she broadly it's cryptocurrency. It's not targeted towards Bitcoin, it seems. But Bitcoin is,

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along with maybe a couple others, are the the ones that are actual useful tools for freedom. Mhmm.

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I mean, the the the very transparent truth is It seems that the US government

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wants to have control over our finances. Right.

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Both surveillance control and actual

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Control and the ability to actually prevent us from doing things that we want with their finances. And that I think that's only a logical

404
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stepping stone for them. If a government already has vast amounts of power but wants to continue to consolidate power and grow

405
00:34:10.204 --> 00:34:21.380
Grow their control. Mhmm. The best tool to do that is through financial control. And as you mentioned at the beginning of of our pod, the CBDCs are the kind of the ultimate tool for that right now. Right.

406
00:34:21.920 --> 00:34:23.620
And the the only real

407
00:34:24.560 --> 00:34:25.300
kind of

408
00:34:25.840 --> 00:34:27.060
counter to CBDCs

409
00:34:27.760 --> 00:34:28.260
is

410
00:34:28.895 --> 00:34:39.830
Bitcoin is cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin that are actually decentralized and useful and can provide privacy. Right. It's only those things that can be used to counter Counteract the effects of CBDCs

411
00:34:40.290 --> 00:34:42.070
once they come because they will come.

412
00:34:42.370 --> 00:34:47.964
And so I think that there's a there's a concerted effort to slowly shut down the usefulness of cryptocurrency.

413
00:34:48.265 --> 00:34:50.285
I think, like, the the approach of

414
00:34:50.665 --> 00:35:07.765
Senator Warren is not something that will come to pass and that There will be, like, a a total ban on cryptocurrencies, especially not Bitcoin. Right. But I think what can happen is that that they understand that if we can't use these things. While preserving our privacy. If we can only use Bitcoin in a transparent,

415
00:35:08.225 --> 00:35:14.710
surveilled way where our our identity is attached to our transactions. Right. Where there's no privacy tools to be able to use to

416
00:35:15.250 --> 00:35:19.350
to prevent other people from viewing the things that we do without our consent,

417
00:35:19.974 --> 00:35:22.795
Then it loses the vast majority of of its

418
00:35:23.095 --> 00:35:24.954
its ability to give freedom.

419
00:35:25.415 --> 00:35:29.115
And I think that's the effort there is is rather than banning Bitcoin entirely,

420
00:35:29.760 --> 00:35:32.980
The goal is if you can strip away the privacy and strip away

421
00:35:33.520 --> 00:35:40.535
the the parts of the ecosystem that allow it to be used in a way that that cannot be controlled by the government or cannot be surveilled at the very least,

422
00:35:40.994 --> 00:35:56.725
then you can prevent it from being a tool that's used to to protect the individual from the overwhelming power of the state. And I I think, like, that's my overarching goal that I see for, like, senator Warren and and and broad broad swaths of specifically the the regulatory body of the United

423
00:35:58.165 --> 00:35:58.665
McIntosh: So

424
00:35:59.765 --> 00:36:04.985
I think that's overall, I think that's a pretty good summary of what's been going on. I would, I would encourage

425
00:36:05.445 --> 00:36:05.945
the

426
00:36:06.910 --> 00:36:07.410
listeners

427
00:36:07.710 --> 00:36:10.370
if they have any interest in this and they should.

428
00:36:11.630 --> 00:36:13.410
But we will have links,

429
00:36:14.005 --> 00:36:21.785
in the show notes to comments where you can go make comments for this. I would encourage you to take the time to go do that. Understand what's going on.

430
00:36:22.190 --> 00:36:26.930
It's now is really the time to push back. It's not after it passes.

431
00:36:27.310 --> 00:36:27.810
Yes.

432
00:36:28.994 --> 00:36:30.135
That would be a mistake.

433
00:36:31.875 --> 00:36:39.290
We're not it's all is not lost if if it does, but it would certainly be a It'd be a blow. I mean, it would be.

434
00:36:39.990 --> 00:36:40.570
I think

435
00:36:40.950 --> 00:36:49.695
the end result of of what you were talking about with If if all of this came to pass and they basically kinda make it where it's this surveilled

436
00:36:50.795 --> 00:36:51.295
state,

437
00:36:52.799 --> 00:36:57.619
The only role Bitcoin has in that is a store of value for things like these ETFs,

438
00:36:58 --> 00:36:59.140
which I mean,

439
00:36:59.815 --> 00:37:04.635
I don't care about them, but that's not really what Bitcoin was created for.

440
00:37:05.175 --> 00:37:08.715
And I think that's very important to keep

441
00:37:09.930 --> 00:37:13.789
in mind in all of this. You know? We lose so much

442
00:37:14.490 --> 00:37:17.470
if if this happens. And I know well,

443
00:37:18.085 --> 00:37:19.625
I wanna wrap this up,

444
00:37:20.085 --> 00:37:21.144
this part of it,

445
00:37:21.765 --> 00:37:24.644
I guess, by saying, I I know that Bitcoin

446
00:37:27.730 --> 00:37:28.290
I guess

447
00:37:28.770 --> 00:37:30.310
well, let me say it like this.

448
00:37:31.010 --> 00:37:31.830
I wished

449
00:37:33.250 --> 00:37:35.270
privacy had had a stronger emphasis

450
00:37:35.570 --> 00:37:37.974
in Bitcoin from the start. Absolutely.

451
00:37:40.195 --> 00:37:45.175
I know there's not a whole lot of emphasis on it. I know there are things that are going on.

452
00:37:45.980 --> 00:37:48.240
But with all of this stuff that we see,

453
00:37:48.700 --> 00:37:49.200
that

454
00:37:49.740 --> 00:37:53.920
the these attacks that are ramping up, I would love to see it. Unfortunately,

455
00:37:54.220 --> 00:37:54.765
I'm not

456
00:37:55.964 --> 00:38:02.785
with a software engineer that can code this kind of stuff. This is not my forte. I can't read through the Bitcoin core

457
00:38:03.380 --> 00:38:08.359
code and contribute and this kind of thing. But I would love to see more people get involved

458
00:38:09.540 --> 00:38:10.040
specifically

459
00:38:10.420 --> 00:38:11.640
in the privacy

460
00:38:12.585 --> 00:38:13.805
that, in my opinion,

461
00:38:14.265 --> 00:38:15.645
need to be built out

462
00:38:16.105 --> 00:38:17.645
as soon as is reasonable.

463
00:38:18.185 --> 00:38:22.630
Right? We don't we just like with all things Bitcoin. We can't rush this stuff.

464
00:38:23.250 --> 00:38:29.030
It's way too important. But as soon as it's reasonable, we need to be moving some of these things along

465
00:38:29.385 --> 00:38:31.964
that will bake this into the protocol

466
00:38:32.505 --> 00:38:34.525
because we've seen so much

467
00:38:35.704 --> 00:38:36.204
acceptance

468
00:38:36.505 --> 00:38:38.204
at this point of Bitcoin

469
00:38:38.890 --> 00:38:39.390
that

470
00:38:39.850 --> 00:38:44.510
if, by the government, I should say, at least in the United States, that if

471
00:38:45.290 --> 00:38:53.575
we bake this into the protocol, I think I think it's game over. I don't I mean, if they can't tell what you're doing when you're transacting, then

472
00:38:54.035 --> 00:38:55
I don't care what

473
00:38:55.400 --> 00:38:58.300
Financial rules they make. You know what I mean?

474
00:38:58.600 --> 00:39:04.540
Yep. As long as they don't outlaw it. And if they do, then I guess I'll be an outlaw. I mean, I don't know.

475
00:39:05.405 --> 00:39:08.865
I I don't know. Probably shouldn't say that on the air, but

476
00:39:09.485 --> 00:39:10.945
but, you know, I mean,

477
00:39:11.645 --> 00:39:18.390
I don't I don't see that happening, though. To be honest, I mean, specifically, I don't I don't see that being,

478
00:39:19.250 --> 00:39:20.070
a rule,

479
00:39:21.090 --> 00:39:24.974
unlike I mean, Nepal, for example, they've actually outlawed cryptocurrencies.

480
00:39:25.435 --> 00:39:29.135
I don't I don't know if you've heard this, but it happened in 2021.

481
00:39:30.029 --> 00:39:32.930
And it was because stupid people were scamming people,

482
00:39:34.029 --> 00:39:34.930
not in Bitcoin,

483
00:39:36.190 --> 00:39:36.690
actually.

484
00:39:37.630 --> 00:39:38.369
You know,

485
00:39:39.815 --> 00:39:42.234
I don't think that's gonna happen here in the United States.

486
00:39:43.174 --> 00:39:46.555
We are getting a division between these casino coins

487
00:39:46.960 --> 00:39:51.140
and Bitcoin. And yes, scams can happen on Bitcoin. We've seen it in the past,

488
00:39:51.599 --> 00:39:52.099
but

489
00:39:53.440 --> 00:39:55.859
the entire thing was not set up as a scam.

490
00:39:56.805 --> 00:39:58.105
So there is a difference.

491
00:39:58.965 --> 00:40:00.185
You mentioned freedom.tech,

492
00:40:01.045 --> 00:40:02.325
your website. And,

493
00:40:02.885 --> 00:40:23.350
I guess it's a newsletter. Correct? I I I want you to talk about that. I actually meant to bring that up upfront and forgot. So since we touched on that, let's go ahead and Discuss that for just a second before we move on.



I guess it's a newsletter. Correct? I I I want you to talk about that. I actually meant to bring that up upfront and forgot. So since we touched on that, let's go ahead and Discuss that for just a second before we move on.  Yeah. Yeah. Before we do, I do wanna kinda touch on what you were just talking about. Okay. Absolutely. I I definitely agree. I mean, you're you're preaching with the choir when you when you talk about making

494
00:40:23.810 --> 00:40:33.375
Seth: changes to Bitcoin's protocol that improve the privacy. It's something something I've wanted for years, and it it's the main reason I got involved with Monero years ago, and I'm still a huge Monero fan is

495
00:40:33.835 --> 00:40:34.575
is that

496
00:40:35.329 --> 00:40:38.630
The protocols that bake in privacy at the base layer

497
00:40:39.170 --> 00:40:58.769
benefit far more people. Right. Because you don't need to understand even the need for privacy Right. To gain privacy, and it means that even people who don't care about personal privacy contribute to the broader privacy of those who do see that need. There's there's so many benefits there, and it it is something I would love to see come to Bitcoin. I I do think that at this point,

498
00:40:59.224 --> 00:41:03.724
Because of all the the institutional adoption and everything that people have clamored for Mhmm.

499
00:41:04.345 --> 00:41:05.805
Unfortunately, in my opinion,

500
00:41:06.270 --> 00:41:16.935
It's very, very difficult to get some sort of a sweeping change like that put into into Bitcoin at this point. I think it's difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. But I I I would say, I think the thing that

501
00:41:17.715 --> 00:41:24.455
that would help to put some pressure on those who do have the the ability, who do have the tools, who do have the influence

502
00:41:25.030 --> 00:41:32.405
Is to just talk about that you want Bitcoin to be more private. Just be public about your love for privacy. I know that it sounds a little strange, but

503
00:41:32.805 --> 00:42:01.349
I think that's one of the problems is that the most privacy loving individuals usually aren't on social media or aren't talking about these things actively. And so it can feel like there's not a desire for privacy within the Bitcoin space. Right. But I I think we have seen that start to shift publicly, but I think something where, like, Every every one of your listeners can can help by talking about how, like, hey. I would love to see Bitcoin be more private. Like, what are the things people are building here? What are the tools I can Today. What are some of the ways that you could see it being more private?

504
00:42:02.050 --> 00:42:03.670
I mean, I think the

505
00:42:03.970 --> 00:42:06.470
the approach that Monero has taken

506
00:42:06.795 --> 00:42:09.775
Is, like, the one of the safest

507
00:42:10.075 --> 00:42:15.615
and yet most effective approaches to bringing privacy to a to a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.

508
00:42:15.994 --> 00:42:19.280
Because, Really, to have strong privacy, you need to hide

509
00:42:19.740 --> 00:42:31.875
the sender, the receiver, and the amount. If you leave out any of those pieces, specifically if you leave out amount, Mhmm. It gets a lot harder to to protect any of the other things, because a lot of the the ways that you can trace cryptocurrencies,

510
00:42:32.390 --> 00:42:51.160
Even if it's hard to tell exactly who is sending money to who, if you can see the amount and you can follow the amount as amounts small amounts get peeled off, as change gets sent back, You can use that amount to be able to to unveil a lot of what people are doing even if the other things are hidden. That's why, like, if you use a coin joint protocol like Samurai Whirlpool.

511
00:42:51.460 --> 00:42:59.800
Mhmm. You have to use fixed amounts. So you enter pools that are a specific size. And the reason for that is so that if you're all mixing the same size input and output,

512
00:43:00.155 --> 00:43:15.155
You can gain privacy from it. But if you mixed different size inputs and outputs, different amounts of Bitcoin in each one, it would be trivial to trace through. So the the amounts is an important part. The tricky the tricky thing that comes into effect is when you talk about Bitcoin and you talk about hiding amounts,

513
00:43:15.795 --> 00:43:18.535
What that would mean is that the the simple auditability

514
00:43:19.155 --> 00:43:19.975
that has become

515
00:43:21.075 --> 00:43:30.109
important in Bitcoin circles, at least in in Bitcoin narratives Right. Would be lost. You would not lose the ability to audit Bitcoin. And that's a lot of the confusion

516
00:43:30.435 --> 00:43:35.575
Is that it it doesn't mean when you hide amounts like how Monero does it with what are called confidential amounts,

517
00:43:36.115 --> 00:43:38.375
you don't lose the ability to audit

518
00:43:38.900 --> 00:43:43.319
The amount of Bitcoin in existence. Interesting. But it does mean you rely on a bit more cryptography

519
00:43:44.180 --> 00:43:49.995
to audit the amount of Bitcoin in existence, And that would open up a potential risk for hidden inflation.

520
00:43:50.295 --> 00:43:52.955
That risk is very, very, very, very, like, infinitismally

521
00:43:53.335 --> 00:43:53.835
small

522
00:43:54.230 --> 00:44:05.375
Because the cryptography and the code is so well understood and mature at this point. Right. But there is that risk. So it it's hard to get that through when a lot of the narrative around Bitcoin is is how sacrosanct the 21,000,000

523
00:44:06.154 --> 00:44:11.135
Sure. Is. Mhmm. And this would put us, like I said, I I think an infinitesimally

524
00:44:11.515 --> 00:44:12.335
small risk

525
00:44:12.795 --> 00:44:16.880
that that that could be lost in some sort of a hidden inflation event.

526
00:44:17.420 --> 00:44:19.760
But the the privacy you gain from adding,

527
00:44:20.220 --> 00:44:23.684
the amount is is really immense, and it it enables so many other

528
00:44:23.984 --> 00:44:27.204
approaches to privacy to be built out on top of it. So

529
00:44:28.464 --> 00:44:38.790
McIntosh: I don't know if if you know the detail of this, and I'm not I'm not looking for minutia, but in general, how do they how do they hide that? Is it like a ZK roll up

530
00:44:39.525 --> 00:44:41.865
where the kind of the top level knows.

531
00:44:43.204 --> 00:44:45.385
You could you can buy cryptography,

532
00:44:46.325 --> 00:44:46.984
know that

533
00:44:47.350 --> 00:44:56.330
If I have this value at the top level, well, then all this other stuff has to be. It has to amount to that amount or whatever. But I just botched completely that explanation.

534
00:44:56.845 --> 00:44:58.385
I'm sorry. But

535
00:44:59.325 --> 00:45:00.385
does that make sense?

536
00:45:00.765 --> 00:45:05.010
Seth: Yeah. I think it's it's a it's a reasonable intro there. I think the so, like, for background,

537
00:45:05.310 --> 00:45:13.170
I have long been involved with the Monero community, and I do have a pretty deep understanding of this stuff. So I'm happy to happy to dive into that. Okay. So the the way that Monero

538
00:45:13.545 --> 00:45:15.885
hides amounts and the way that it maintains auditability,

539
00:45:16.825 --> 00:45:24.260
is that Monero uses something called confidential amounts to hide the amounts. Okay? Essentially, what that means is it's a it's a zero knowledge proof,

540
00:45:24.560 --> 00:45:31.415
which I know is a a big buzzword, but, that is what it is. It's a very simple zero knowledge proof where when you create a transaction,

541
00:45:32.035 --> 00:45:37.895
you also create a proof to go along with it that proves that the amount that you're sending in the transaction

542
00:45:38.450 --> 00:45:50.495
Is correct. They didn't generate any amount of Monero that that doesn't match the amount on the input side. Essentially, you're just proving that the inputs and outputs balance out And that no false Monero was created in the transaction.

543
00:45:51.115 --> 00:45:57.630
That proof is able to be verified in a way that doesn't reveal anything about the amount. Right. Miners can still check that there was no

544
00:45:57.930 --> 00:46:07.505
inflation, that you didn't try to cheat the system because they can take that proof and validate it with without knowing anything about the amount. That's where the zero knowledge proof part comes in.

545
00:46:08.285 --> 00:46:15.619
And so you're still able to audit individual transactions that way. The other way that auditability is maintained is that When you mine Monero,

546
00:46:16.080 --> 00:46:21.780
the actual coinbase output, the the amount of Monero that's created in each block, that is totally transparent.

547
00:46:22.194 --> 00:46:31.575
That's not hidden by confidential amounts or anything like that. So you can still do the the simple napkin math addition to see how much Monero has been created through the mining process

548
00:46:31.960 --> 00:46:35.260
just like in Bitcoin. There's actually no difference there, which a lot of people don't

549
00:46:35.560 --> 00:46:36.380
don't understand.

550
00:46:37.080 --> 00:46:39.500
But the so when it comes to the transactions,

551
00:46:40.095 --> 00:46:42.195
I mentioned how confidential amounts work.

552
00:46:42.495 --> 00:46:45.635
The the only risk there is that if the cryptography

553
00:46:45.935 --> 00:46:58.765
behind that zero knowledge proof Or the implementation of that cryptography is flawed. Mhmm. There is the potential for someone to be able to create Monero out of thin air And hide it. Again, it's like that's a an infinitesimally

554
00:46:59.145 --> 00:47:01.965
small risk because the actual cryptography that's used here

555
00:47:02.560 --> 00:47:08.500
is, I think, over a decade old at this point. Very, very well understood. And when it comes to 0 knowledge proofs,

556
00:47:08.960 --> 00:47:09.780
very simple.

557
00:47:10.400 --> 00:47:17.485
So it it's It's a very, very, very small risk, but that's where that little bit of risk happens is if someone can create a proof that's fraudulent,

558
00:47:18.345 --> 00:47:23.790
but that looks like it's legitimate to minors and anyone else the chain. That's where the risk comes in.

559
00:47:24.730 --> 00:47:25.230
McIntosh: Interesting.

560
00:47:25.850 --> 00:47:26.350
I

561
00:47:26.810 --> 00:47:30.415
I'm aware of Monero. I don't think I've ever actually owned any.

562
00:47:30.975 --> 00:47:38.115
And I knew about the, the privacy benefits of it, but I've, I've never heard the details of this. Is there some

563
00:47:38.810 --> 00:47:44.270
resources that we could put in the show notes as well in case somebody wants to dig into that any deeper.

564
00:47:45.744 --> 00:48:04.234
Seth: Yeah. Definitely. I mean, the I'll send you some some links to some point, but the simple get Monero.org website is the kind of Official, but unofficial since there's no official company or anything behind Monero. It's the that's the main website to get started on, but I can send you some other resources as well. Okay. Very cool.

565
00:48:05.255 --> 00:48:06.154
McIntosh: Yeah. Unfortunately,

566
00:48:06.855 --> 00:48:07.914
I think that

567
00:48:09.414 --> 00:48:12.154
well, it's certainly possible that that could be implemented

568
00:48:12.589 --> 00:48:17.970
into Bitcoin. And maybe if things get bad enough, it will be just as a defense mechanism.

569
00:48:19.950 --> 00:48:20.450
Unfortunately,

570
00:48:20.750 --> 00:48:29.214
I think certainly in the current climate. I don't think it would necessarily go over so well if somebody's been proposing that merge request or whatever.

571
00:48:30.260 --> 00:48:33
But, it's good food for thought. Now

572
00:48:33.460 --> 00:48:41.625
given the current constraints, how can people what's the best way for people to protect themselves, to speak. I would assume it's CoinJoins.

573
00:48:41.925 --> 00:48:42.425
Correct?

574
00:48:43.765 --> 00:48:46.425
Seth: Yeah. Yeah. When it comes to Bitcoin, I think the

575
00:48:46.805 --> 00:48:47.365
the best

576
00:48:48.460 --> 00:48:53.920
So I kind of view it as 2 2 things. The the first thing that you need to protect yourself against in Bitcoin

577
00:48:54.460 --> 00:49:05.715
is having your identity connected to your usage of Bitcoin. And that That one can seem the most daunting to people, but I think that once you actually take the plunge and use some of these methods to acquire Bitcoin

578
00:49:06.340 --> 00:49:22.305
without giving over your ID. Mhmm. It's really not as difficult as it seems at first, and it's very refreshing to know that your identity is not directly connected to exactly how much Bitcoin you own and everything you do with it. So the the avoidance of this KYC that we talked about earlier

579
00:49:22.765 --> 00:49:34.009
is the the biggest step towards privacy in Bitcoin that you can do. I mean, if you're if you're gonna do one thing, it's just stop using Coinbase, start using HODL HODL or BisQ Right. Or AgoraDesk. There's lots of options.

580
00:49:34.465 --> 00:49:37.765
Because that means that even if someone sees your activity on chain,

581
00:49:38.065 --> 00:49:47.150
there is no way for them to directly attribute your identity to it outside of, like, physically seeing you, knowing who you are, and watching you make a Bitcoin transaction.

582
00:49:47.849 --> 00:49:53.905
So it's it's a very, very important first step, and that gets you miles ahead of the vast majority of Bitcoin users

583
00:49:54.445 --> 00:49:54.945
and

584
00:49:55.565 --> 00:50:03.220
gets you out of the vast majority of the dragnet surveillance that happens today. So that I think is the first and most important step. Once you've done that,

585
00:50:03.680 --> 00:50:06.420
really the best tool today is samurai wallet,

586
00:50:06.800 --> 00:50:12.585
or Sparrow wallet, which is, made by someone else, but it's a desktop wallet that's absolutely fantastic,

587
00:50:13.285 --> 00:50:16.745
and incorporates a lot of the privacy tools of samurai wallet. Okay.

588
00:50:17.270 --> 00:50:21.530
And they yeah. Their their approach is just it's it's proven. It's time tested.

589
00:50:21.990 --> 00:50:28.235
Works very well. They've got a lot of good people behind it. That's that's normally the way that that I push people for privacy on their

590
00:50:29.495 --> 00:50:33.355
McIntosh: time. We have an entire episode actually about the p2p,

591
00:50:34.700 --> 00:50:36.480
exchanges essentially, like.

592
00:50:37.500 --> 00:50:45.775
So, the listeners can go back and look at that. I will include that in the show notes as well. My show notes are gonna be really long this time, and that's cool.

593
00:50:46.155 --> 00:50:46.395
But,

594
00:50:47.035 --> 00:50:55.160
very good. Very good. That'll get people started. Do you maybe do I don't I have no idea. Do you have, like, a YouTube channel? I guess you probably don't.

595
00:50:56.340 --> 00:50:59.704
Seth: Yeah. So I don't. I have a a blog called Set for privacy.com.

596
00:51:00.165 --> 00:51:13.820
Okay. It has a lot of stuff and a lot of links out. I don't have a YouTube. It you do well, I have a YouTube channel for my podcast. It's an audio only podcast. So to be clear who are looking to go further into this, and I would strongly encourage them to do that.

597
00:51:14.760 --> 00:51:15.500
McIntosh: You know,

598
00:51:17.224 --> 00:51:21.325
I'm just trying to get as many resources as possible. I would add 1 more.

599
00:51:22.185 --> 00:51:23.005
I'm on,

600
00:51:23.464 --> 00:51:23.964
Bitcoin,

601
00:51:24.665 --> 00:51:25.165
and

602
00:51:25.780 --> 00:51:28.680
It's a great way to get KYC free Bitcoin.

603
00:51:29.220 --> 00:51:29.720
So,

604
00:51:30.900 --> 00:51:33.560
I'm supporting the network. I'm earning some corn,

605
00:51:33.995 --> 00:51:35.535
and I have KYC

606
00:51:36.235 --> 00:51:39.675
free Bitcoin at the same time. So I love it.

607
00:51:39.995 --> 00:51:43.970
I would point that out as an option. I know that scares a lot of people.

608
00:51:44.510 --> 00:51:46.210
It's really not that hard.

609
00:51:47.790 --> 00:51:50.210
But, yeah. Very cool. Alright.

610
00:51:50.665 --> 00:51:51.165
Awesome.

611
00:51:51.865 --> 00:51:55.885
I, oh, I have 1 last topic, and then we're gonna wrap up.

612
00:51:57.545 --> 00:51:59.885
I've been trying to figure out how to say this.

613
00:52:01.610 --> 00:52:03.950
Bitcoin Twitter, it can be very toxic.

614
00:52:05.610 --> 00:52:11.465
I think, frankly, the security people on Bitcoin. Twitter may be even more toxic.

615
00:52:14.725 --> 00:52:17.385
I will say you do a great job

616
00:52:17.690 --> 00:52:18.430
of managing

617
00:52:19.290 --> 00:52:24.349
these things when people get their feathers ruffled about something that you've said

618
00:52:24.650 --> 00:52:25.950
and this kind of thing.

619
00:52:26.945 --> 00:52:28.725
Why do you think though

620
00:52:29.105 --> 00:52:35.925
that, is it because people are just I my guess is it's because people are so passionate about privacy.

621
00:52:37.809 --> 00:52:43.145
Why why is it like that? I mean, it it can be frankly off putting to people who are kind of

622
00:52:43.785 --> 00:52:45.405
looking at that from the outside.

623
00:52:46.185 --> 00:52:47.325
You know what I mean?

624
00:52:48.345 --> 00:52:52.940
Oh, yeah. It's like mommy and daddy are yelling at each other. What am I nice to do.

625
00:52:55.240 --> 00:52:58.975
Seth: Oh, I, Yeah. This is a this is a topic I have thought

626
00:53:00.175 --> 00:53:03.235
A lot of a long time about this is something I've

627
00:53:03.615 --> 00:53:05.135
interacted with a lot. That's

628
00:53:05.855 --> 00:53:12.470
it's something that's one of the most saddening parts of being in the cryptocurrency space and being in the privacy space because both have a

629
00:53:12.950 --> 00:53:17.165
especially when it comes to privacy in the cryptocurrency space. There's a there's a very

630
00:53:17.865 --> 00:53:18.365
toxic

631
00:53:19.545 --> 00:53:20.045
maximalist

632
00:53:20.585 --> 00:53:25.150
holier than thou attitude that is common. And it's really unfortunate because

633
00:53:25.789 --> 00:53:28.210
The the approach that many take in the space

634
00:53:28.910 --> 00:53:36.885
only dissuades people from taking actionable steps towards personal privacy. Because when you're first starting to to realize, like, hey. I need

635
00:53:37.185 --> 00:53:39.445
I need to improve. I need to take steps here.

636
00:53:39.745 --> 00:53:51.559
But you start to wade into the resources, and you realize that there's this feud that is going on where people are name calling and doxing each other and yelling at each other on Twitter, and you're seeing this back and forth.

637
00:53:52.025 --> 00:54:00.525
What do you think people are gonna do? I mean, people are either going to just have to blindly pick because they're not gonna have to wade through a feud. And so they may end up using a tool that's

638
00:54:01.030 --> 00:54:06.810
malicious or not nearly as, competent or run by people who are happy to to cede ground to the state,

639
00:54:07.270 --> 00:54:14.875
or they just say, nope. I'm out of here. And, unfortunately, I have many, many, many, many, many instances of people

640
00:54:15.255 --> 00:54:17.755
in in my DMs and signal messages, etcetera,

641
00:54:18.310 --> 00:54:20.570
Let's say, look. I tried to wade into,

642
00:54:21.910 --> 00:54:30.265
making my my phone more private, but then there's this whole drama that I don't understand about Graphene OS and other stuff going on. Or I tried to wade into making

643
00:54:30.725 --> 00:54:55.335
my Bitcoin more private and gaining some financial privacy, but this there's this whole, like, green versus red thing, and samurai hates It's Wasabi, and Wasabi hates samurai. And I see them fighting all the time. And Mhmm. It makes people go, I'm just I'm not even gonna bother. Like, it's not worth my time. I can't go through this. I can't wait through this. And it's really disappointing as someone who is extremely passionate about bringing people into the world of personal privacy. Yeah. And it's something I've tried to fight back against. But

644
00:54:55.790 --> 00:54:56.530
If I knew

645
00:54:56.910 --> 00:54:58.210
if I knew why

646
00:54:58.830 --> 00:55:00.530
this was such a problem in the space,

647
00:55:00.830 --> 00:55:06.065
I would hopefully have solved it already. Right. But it's something that I I haven't been able to figure I think

648
00:55:06.605 --> 00:55:10.625
the kind of the assumption I make is just that the people who are building the the truly

649
00:55:11.405 --> 00:55:12.704
state resistant tools

650
00:55:13.390 --> 00:55:15.970
Are understandably under a lot of pressure. Right.

651
00:55:16.270 --> 00:55:20.450
And so it it leads to a lot of a lot of paranoia and a lot of

652
00:55:21.185 --> 00:55:22.885
Kind of defensive toxicity.

653
00:55:23.265 --> 00:55:23.765
McIntosh: Right.

654
00:55:24.305 --> 00:55:30.540
Seth: I that's the only thing I can really think of beyond just the fact that Many, many people who are absolutely brilliant also

655
00:55:31.160 --> 00:55:33.580
suffer in other areas Mhmm. And have some struggles.

656
00:55:34.200 --> 00:55:41.155
It could be that, but it it's really hard to say. So many individual cases of this that, obviously, it's it's certainly not a one size fits all thing, but

657
00:55:41.535 --> 00:55:46.850
it's tricky. I wish I knew the answer. It's something that I I try to fight against and try to avoid the

658
00:55:47.390 --> 00:55:56.985
toxicity and yet weighed into these things to help people understand the the tools at their disposal. But it It gets messy, and it's something that has to change if we want the average person to be able to jump in,

659
00:55:57.285 --> 00:56:02.470
see the need for privacy Right. Find the route the road to getting to those things and actually using the tools.

660
00:56:03.030 --> 00:56:04.970
McIntosh: Well, I appreciate your level headedness

661
00:56:05.270 --> 00:56:10.730
in all of this. I and I mean that. And I I'm sorry I sprung that on you. It was not No.

662
00:56:11.030 --> 00:56:12.975
Seth: It's It's a good question. But yeah.

663
00:56:13.435 --> 00:56:14.895
McIntosh: I I what I genuinely

664
00:56:15.195 --> 00:56:18.175
was curious as to your thoughts on that. So,

665
00:56:20.060 --> 00:56:23.280
as I wrap things up, one of the things I always do

666
00:56:23.820 --> 00:56:28.480
is I ask the people who I'm interviewing what their favorite book is. I'm a reader,

667
00:56:29.644 --> 00:56:39.110
And I love, for one thing, to find new books to read, but it does help me to understand where people are coming from. I've gotten some very interesting answers,

668
00:56:39.570 --> 00:56:40.310
to be honest.

669
00:56:41.410 --> 00:56:42.630
Some quite unexpected.

670
00:56:43.490 --> 00:56:51.484
Yeah. So I'm gonna ask you. You can pick 1 or a couple. I I can't have a whole list, but a couple of your favorite books.

671
00:56:52.420 --> 00:56:54.200
Seth: Okay. That's that's tricky.

672
00:56:54.900 --> 00:57:00.455
I'll give you so I'll give you 2 that are maybe recency bias Okay. That I've really liked.

673
00:57:01.175 --> 00:57:01.995
One is

674
00:57:02.615 --> 00:57:10.315
the Dune trilogy, which I know has become kind of in vogue with the Dune movies, but I was a very late comer to those. You're talking about the original. Correct?

675
00:57:10.839 --> 00:57:17.740
Yeah. Yeah. Dune, Dune Messiah, children of Dune, the the ones by the original author, not the sun. And when did you first read those?

676
00:57:18.744 --> 00:57:20.684
Maybe 2020 Okay.

677
00:57:21.224 --> 00:57:21.724
Great.

678
00:57:22.025 --> 00:57:26.605
Mhmm. Yeah. I missed those somehow when I was growing up and and reading sci fi.

679
00:57:27.590 --> 00:57:31.130
On the other end, I'm a big military history buff. Mhmm.

680
00:57:31.510 --> 00:57:36.730
And I just recently went through a 3 part series on the Pacific War by E and W Toll.

681
00:57:37.315 --> 00:57:46.375
With you. I don't know the name of the series off the top of my head. Look it up. It was absolutely fantastic, and it's, kind of opened my eyes to a different part of World War two.

682
00:57:47.059 --> 00:57:49.559
I'm I'm in this weird place where I'm very anti

683
00:57:49.859 --> 00:57:52.680
war and kind of anarchist slash cryptoanarchist,

684
00:57:53.059 --> 00:58:02.555
but I have a passion for military history. So Yeah. Yeah. I don't really know what that means about me, but I I still really like reading military history books. So We are allowed to have

685
00:58:04.370 --> 00:58:04.870
McIntosh: Schizophrenia.

686
00:58:07.330 --> 00:58:09.350
Seth: The paradox of man. I I would

687
00:58:09.650 --> 00:58:12.565
McIntosh: honestly put myself in very much the same boat.

688
00:58:13.365 --> 00:58:16.825
As I have gotten older, I've I've I've gotten a lot more

689
00:58:17.204 --> 00:58:19.580
antiwar for one thing when you have kids,

690
00:58:20.140 --> 00:58:22.300
and then your kids get to be the age where,

691
00:58:22.940 --> 00:58:31.655
it's one thing for you to go off to war. It's another one is your kids. That puts a whole different perspective on it. And I've learned a lot, frankly, over the last 20 years,

692
00:58:33.075 --> 00:58:35.310
that It's way too long for this podcast

693
00:58:36.170 --> 00:58:37.070
to go into.

694
00:58:37.770 --> 00:58:38.270
But

695
00:58:38.650 --> 00:58:40.350
I grew up I mean,

696
00:58:41.095 --> 00:58:46.555
One of my favorite movies is Gladiator. I mean, you know, and I do watch I mean, like,

697
00:58:47.174 --> 00:58:51.420
every once in a while, I pull out, the Tom Hanks movie about storming,

698
00:58:51.720 --> 00:58:53.820
Saving Private Ryan, you know,

699
00:58:54.200 --> 00:58:54.940
for example.

700
00:58:55.320 --> 00:58:57.480
Mhmm. I tend to watch a lot of,

701
00:58:58.120 --> 00:59:00.300
more stuff centered around World War 2,

702
00:59:01.145 --> 00:59:02.105
frankly, because I

703
00:59:02.745 --> 00:59:05.245
even though that war was caused by finances,

704
00:59:06.025 --> 00:59:06.845
to be honest,

705
00:59:07.625 --> 00:59:15.650
I believe it least was a legitimate war. I mean, there was there was a Yeah. A threat. There and there was an existential threat going on.

706
00:59:16.155 --> 00:59:21.775
Seth: One of the few that's So even though relatively reasonable. Frankly, people caused that war,

707
00:59:22.235 --> 00:59:23.455
McIntosh: and set it up

708
00:59:24.010 --> 00:59:26.190
essentially without being too conspiratorial.

709
00:59:28.570 --> 00:59:32.030
That is a war that frankly I would have I would have signed up for

710
00:59:32.795 --> 00:59:40.095
knowing the consequences of it. You know? I don't wanna get too philosophical about all that, but, yeah, that's I I understand that,

711
00:59:40.809 --> 00:59:53.755
certainly. Do you have any other others? You've mentioned Snowden's book. Maybe we should that may not be your favorite book, but let's go ahead and throw it in. What is this book called? Absolutely. Yeah. I only let that one out because I mentioned it earlier. That's for me, that was the

712
00:59:54.135 --> 01:00:02.910
Seth: the key to understanding personal privacy. Okay. I went from Absolutely no care in the world about personal privacy, Google Homes in every room in my house,

713
01:00:03.530 --> 01:00:06.895
and all the all the spyware Spyware you could possibly spend money on Right.

714
01:00:07.735 --> 01:00:20
To suddenly turning around and replacing everything in my home and confusing my wife why suddenly all our electronics are missing. It was a it was quite a revelation for me and and a good one. Mhmm. I went a little too deep on personal privacy initially,

715
01:00:20.460 --> 01:00:27.815
but I I finally came around and found a little bit more level headed approach. But for me, that was the the book that really opened my eyes. Great.

716
01:00:28.835 --> 01:00:29.335
McIntosh: Dune,

717
01:00:29.714 --> 01:00:30.035
was

718
01:00:31.830 --> 01:00:34.090
Might have been the 1st sci fi book I read.

719
01:00:35.670 --> 01:00:41.335
And at the age I was, I was quite young. It was Mhmm. It was I actually did read the whole thing.

720
01:00:42.535 --> 01:00:49.700
When I came back, when I was in my late teens, I reread the the first 3 books, which were the only ones that were out back then.

721
01:00:50.420 --> 01:00:57
And, I have read all of them except the very latest one that just came out a few months ago, if I'm not mistaken.

722
01:00:58.955 --> 01:01:04.175
Frank was definitely a much better writer than his son. They have different styles.

723
01:01:04.875 --> 01:01:10.070
Mhmm. I'll say that. I haven't read any by the sun yet. I do enjoy them, but

724
01:01:11.010 --> 01:01:14.550
they are different. I I like how they fill in the backstory.

725
01:01:15.775 --> 01:01:16.915
If you read fantasy

726
01:01:17.535 --> 01:01:18.195
at all,

727
01:01:18.735 --> 01:01:22.355
I would strongly encourage you if you've never read Tolkien's works,

728
01:01:22.779 --> 01:01:26.160
to read Oh, yeah. The Hobbit and then the Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion

729
01:01:26.539 --> 01:01:29.440
and and then go out and read all of his son stuff.

730
01:01:29.900 --> 01:01:32.079
Okay? Because it's very similar.

731
01:01:32.925 --> 01:01:33.405
I

732
01:01:33.805 --> 01:01:40.305
there will never be any so I'm just gonna fanboy for just a second. There will never be an equal for a token in my opinion.

733
01:01:40.799 --> 01:01:41.859
Seth: I would agree with that.

734
01:01:42.160 --> 01:01:45.059
McIntosh: Frank Herbert is the closest thing that there is.

735
01:01:45.520 --> 01:01:50.435
And by the way, kids, George r r Martin, not even in the ballpark. Okay?

736
01:01:50.735 --> 01:01:53.795
So I'm sorry if I just offended half of the audience.

737
01:01:55.570 --> 01:02:00.310
I have read 1 or 2 of his books, and, frankly, I just couldn't stomach anymore.

738
01:02:00.690 --> 01:02:02.320
But Uh-huh. Regardless,

739
01:02:03.875 --> 01:02:09.655
very good stuff. Frank has a lot of thoughts. It's well and I will say this.

740
01:02:09.955 --> 01:02:11.255
They're hinted at

741
01:02:11.710 --> 01:02:14.450
in his books. His son unpacks

742
01:02:15.070 --> 01:02:18.850
a lot more of the kind of the computer side of things, okay,

743
01:02:19.654 --> 01:02:22.634
about how things may develop down the road

744
01:02:23.095 --> 01:02:23.595
and

745
01:02:23.974 --> 01:02:24.875
the implications

746
01:02:25.255 --> 01:02:26.954
that can come about through

747
01:02:27.255 --> 01:02:27.755
through

748
01:02:29.119 --> 01:02:31.460
technology advancing, which it's going to.

749
01:02:31.760 --> 01:02:32.900
I mean, it's undoubtable,

750
01:02:34.400 --> 01:02:40.895
or whatever the word would be. So, anyways, I will I will stop there, but great list. I will add those.

751
01:02:41.674 --> 01:02:51.609
Probably what I should start doing is putting these links on Amazon so when people buy them, it helps the show out. You betcha. For now, I will just make links to them,

752
01:02:52.285 --> 01:03:00.865
and and we'll do that. Is there anything else you wanted to share with our listeners? First of all, I really appreciate you coming on. I appreciate your time. It's been a great conversation.

753
01:03:01.619 --> 01:03:04.839
But is there anything you wanted to leave our our listeners with?

754
01:03:05.619 --> 01:03:21.630
Seth: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think first, thank you. So glad to be able to come on and Chat about what I view as really important topics and and also just chat about fun topics. I think it's it's it's good that you blend in a little bit of, a lighthearted topic at the end there. So grateful for that. I think the only thing I wanna leave people with is

755
01:03:21.930 --> 01:03:24.750
is just that if this kind of piqued your interest about

756
01:03:25.164 --> 01:03:27.805
Open source tech, about privacy tools, about,

757
01:03:28.204 --> 01:03:32.545
this specific fencing proposal or the the indictment on Tornado Cash.

758
01:03:33.079 --> 01:03:38.460
That's a big focus for me recently is kicking off and driving a new publication called Freedom.Tech.

759
01:03:38.839 --> 01:03:41.645
Okay. Starting as a blog, gonna be a podcast as well. Great.

760
01:03:42.285 --> 01:03:45.645
And just go there. Take a look at what I've written so far. We have,

761
01:03:46.125 --> 01:03:49.665
multiple new contributors jumping in to to start to write about

762
01:03:50.010 --> 01:03:51.150
All things FreedomTech.

763
01:03:51.450 --> 01:03:52.750
I think it's going to be,

764
01:03:54.330 --> 01:03:59.425
hopefully, the most useful single resource For staying ahead of the curve when it comes

765
01:03:59.965 --> 01:04:02.224
to empowering human freedom when it, through technology.

766
01:04:02.525 --> 01:04:11.410
So really excited for that. I would definitely recommend taking a look, and that Goes much deeper into a lot of the things that we talked about today. Great. Yeah. We just covered the surface.

767
01:04:11.710 --> 01:04:13.490
McIntosh: I always encourage the re the

768
01:04:13.870 --> 01:04:15.434
readers. Sorry, guys.

769
01:04:15.974 --> 01:04:16.714
The listeners,

770
01:04:17.575 --> 01:04:19.035
you know, dig in.

771
01:04:19.335 --> 01:04:25.570
We're we cannot cover everything. There's just no way. But, yeah, that's awesome. I appreciate your time, Seth,

772
01:04:26.270 --> 01:04:28.850
and we're gonna wrap things up right there.

773
01:04:29.474 --> 01:04:31.255
Alright. That was a really great conversation

774
01:04:32.515 --> 01:04:33.015
with

775
01:04:34.435 --> 01:04:40.130
with Seth. So I hope you enjoyed that. We're going to move on from here

776
01:04:41.230 --> 01:04:42.609
to our supporters.

777
01:04:43.470 --> 01:04:46.369
We do have some support this week. While I'm

778
01:04:46.725 --> 01:04:49.225
finishing opening that up. I would like

779
01:04:50.405 --> 01:04:51.625
to point out that

780
01:04:52.085 --> 01:04:55.465
as a way of supporting the show and as a way to earn some sats,

781
01:04:56.080 --> 01:04:56.900
you can

782
01:04:57.840 --> 01:04:59.140
you can create clips

783
01:04:59.520 --> 01:05:00.500
of the podcast.

784
01:05:01.840 --> 01:05:08.765
For the current episode, if you were to go in and make a, you know, at least a 32nd to 1 minute long clip or so.

785
01:05:09.785 --> 01:05:11.965
Post that on fountain as an example.

786
01:05:12.630 --> 01:05:23.775
I'll boost that back 500 sets. If it's an older episode, it would be 300 sets, and that's a way that I can get visibility for the show. It's a way for you to earn some sets as well. You provide value,

787
01:05:24.075 --> 01:05:26.495
and I provide value back for that. So,

788
01:05:27.115 --> 01:05:28.975
I would love to see people taking

789
01:05:29.275 --> 01:05:29.775
advantage

790
01:05:30.155 --> 01:05:31.400
of that

791
01:05:33.940 --> 01:05:36.920
so who are these supporters? These are people who,

792
01:05:37.619 --> 01:05:42.385
have taken the time to get a podcasting 2 point o app or to go to

793
01:05:43.085 --> 01:05:44.464
the new podcast apps.com

794
01:05:44.924 --> 01:05:47.345
website and look up our podcast

795
01:05:48.350 --> 01:05:54.210
and boost to show support for the show. They do this to, you know, get a message,

796
01:05:55.630 --> 01:05:56.370
to us,

797
01:05:58.275 --> 01:05:58.775
to

798
01:06:00.195 --> 01:06:00.695
just

799
01:06:01.234 --> 01:06:07.589
a lot of times, they don't even have a message. It's just a boost just as a way to provide that value back for the value that they're getting,

800
01:06:09.010 --> 01:06:11.750
from the Generation Bitcoin podcast. So,

801
01:06:12.289 --> 01:06:17.365
we also have streaming as well. I Cannot take the time to go through all the people who stream.

802
01:06:18.705 --> 01:06:23.505
Eventually, we will get to the point where we will not be able to cover all the people who support and,

803
01:06:24.099 --> 01:06:26.520
boost, and we'll have to provide a cutoff.

804
01:06:27.460 --> 01:06:31.160
We're not there yet, so this is everybody who's boosted.

805
01:06:32.255 --> 01:06:35.475
And let's see here. I should be almost to it.

806
01:06:36.095 --> 01:06:39.875
I'll be glad when I get moved over, and I can just do this in helipad.

807
01:06:40.410 --> 01:06:42.750
Would be great. As of now, I'm still using.

808
01:06:46.010 --> 01:06:47.230
Great tool, but,

809
01:06:48.375 --> 01:06:49.675
I would much rather.

810
01:06:51.095 --> 01:06:53.115
So our 1st boost came in,

811
01:06:53.655 --> 01:06:55.115
from Karen at Mere Mortals.

812
01:06:56.109 --> 01:06:58.849
He just finished up his value for value,

813
01:07:00.109 --> 01:07:03.890
podcast season. I think it was our 3rd season. It was a great season.

814
01:07:04.645 --> 01:07:06.744
Well worth taking a listen to

815
01:07:07.445 --> 01:07:13.224
to learn more about the value for value ecosystem that we're building here on podcasting 2 point o.

816
01:07:13.940 --> 01:07:14.440
And,

817
01:07:14.980 --> 01:07:17.880
as I you know, I talked about my mom,

818
01:07:18.660 --> 01:07:19.560
last Thursday,

819
01:07:21.060 --> 01:07:23.320
or excuse me, last Saturday,

820
01:07:24.805 --> 01:07:25.785
on that recording.

821
01:07:27.445 --> 01:07:29.545
And, she recently passed away.

822
01:07:30.405 --> 01:07:33.200
I think all of these are kind of about that.

823
01:07:34.700 --> 01:07:36.160
So bear with me, please.

824
01:07:36.540 --> 01:07:37.520
We're doing okay.

825
01:07:39.714 --> 01:07:40.695
It's a process,

826
01:07:41.315 --> 01:07:41.795
and,

827
01:07:42.115 --> 01:07:43.955
you know, we'll we'll be alright. But,

828
01:07:44.595 --> 01:07:47.895
yeah, we're we're still kind of in the middle of it. It's actually

829
01:07:49.290 --> 01:07:54.990
Wow. It's been almost exactly a week from right now. That's crazy as I finish up this recording.

830
01:07:55.664 --> 01:07:56.404
So condolences,

831
01:07:56.785 --> 01:08:03.270
Macintosh. My mom took a turn for the worst this week, and I also don't think I'll be fully prepared for the end. Best wishes.

832
01:08:03.990 --> 01:08:07.290
Thanks, Karen. I appreciate that. I appreciate your support.

833
01:08:07.590 --> 01:08:10.890
It was 2022. It was row of ducks, and thank you very much.

834
01:08:11.555 --> 01:08:14.135
Yeah. I'm a I'm afraid you won't be regardless

835
01:08:15.875 --> 01:08:16.535
of when.

836
01:08:19.130 --> 01:08:24.990
It's just the nature of it. You know? I think after 10 years, you would have thought I would have been prepared for it, and I was

837
01:08:25.450 --> 01:08:26.350
to an extent,

838
01:08:27.315 --> 01:08:27.715
but,

839
01:08:28.355 --> 01:08:29.575
but not completely.

840
01:08:32.355 --> 01:08:32.855
So

841
01:08:33.155 --> 01:08:33.655
hypersensitive

842
01:08:34.115 --> 01:08:34.615
asaurus,

843
01:08:37.680 --> 01:08:40.420
sent in a boost of a 1,000 sats,

844
01:08:41.120 --> 01:08:46.165
and it was just a heart. And I appreciate that. I got the message. Thank you. I appreciate

845
01:08:46.545 --> 01:08:47.605
that very much.

846
01:08:48.705 --> 01:08:51.285
And we got another 1,000 sats

847
01:08:52.065 --> 01:08:52.565
from

848
01:08:53.265 --> 01:08:53.765
Radrac

849
01:08:54.840 --> 01:08:55.340
c.

850
01:08:55.960 --> 01:09:05.304
It's r a d r a c s e. I don't know how I'm supposed to pronounce that, but he said he or she said, Man, I'm sorry for your loss, and thank you. I appreciate that.

851
01:09:06.324 --> 01:09:06.824
Again,

852
01:09:08.005 --> 01:09:10.585
as well means a lot. And then,

853
01:09:11.125 --> 01:09:11.625
Berno,

854
01:09:13.350 --> 01:09:21.530
sitting in another I sitting in a 1,000 sat boost and said, I'm really sorry to hear about your mother, and I wish you the best. And thank you, Berna. I appreciate that. So,

855
01:09:22.835 --> 01:09:24.055
we in total

856
01:09:25.395 --> 01:09:29.175
let me go ahead and total this up real quick. We're always looking

857
01:09:29.635 --> 01:09:30.535
for the month

858
01:09:32.020 --> 01:09:33.880
to, to get a total of 25,

859
01:09:34.900 --> 01:09:42.114
250,000 sets, but roughly $50. I'm gonna have to actually adjust that, I guess, as the market goes up,

860
01:09:43.775 --> 01:09:45.315
you know, to account for

861
01:09:46.255 --> 01:09:47.155
for inflation,

862
01:09:47.599 --> 01:09:50.260
for price inflation anyways, a good kind of inflation,

863
01:09:51.360 --> 01:09:52.179
of Bitcoin.

864
01:09:52.960 --> 01:09:56.260
So, I'll probably start looking at that fairly soon.

865
01:09:57.305 --> 01:10:01.885
So in total for this episode, we looks like we had right around 66100.

866
01:10:02.425 --> 01:10:03.325
It was 6542,

867
01:10:04.860 --> 01:10:06.080
after Satoshi

868
01:10:06.380 --> 01:10:09.600
stream took their part, which is supposed to be 1%.

869
01:10:10.620 --> 01:10:11.600
By the way,

870
01:10:11.980 --> 01:10:13.920
speaking of inflation of price,

871
01:10:14.725 --> 01:10:15.225
Earlier,

872
01:10:16.005 --> 01:10:17.145
I was talking about

873
01:10:17.685 --> 01:10:19.305
good chance we could break 35,000.

874
01:10:20.965 --> 01:10:25.330
By the way, as I do this part of the recording to wrap things up tonight,

875
01:10:26.110 --> 01:10:32.930
our block time. I'm not gonna put this in the thing in into the show notes, but just to give you a

876
01:10:34.085 --> 01:10:35.625
idea. It's now 814918.

877
01:10:37.445 --> 01:10:37.945
814,900

878
01:10:39.365 --> 01:10:39.865
and

879
01:10:41.020 --> 01:10:41.520
eighteen.

880
01:10:42.860 --> 01:10:44
We're now at 35,730,

881
01:10:46.700 --> 01:10:47.680
and I believe

882
01:10:48.460 --> 01:10:49.200
we touched

883
01:10:49.695 --> 01:10:50.195
36,000

884
01:10:51.215 --> 01:10:56.115
or at least came very, very close to it. Let me double check my little chart here.

885
01:10:57.190 --> 01:10:58.650
Oh, I should have it right here.

886
01:10:59.030 --> 01:10:59.530
Actually,

887
01:10:59.990 --> 01:11:01.050
yeah, 35,992

888
01:11:02.710 --> 01:11:06.305
according to this chart. So really, really close to 36,000.

889
01:11:07.165 --> 01:11:08.625
It does look like

890
01:11:09.805 --> 01:11:11.344
there's a strong possibility,

891
01:11:11.725 --> 01:11:14.705
I think, that we're going to stay above it.

892
01:11:16.060 --> 01:11:17.760
We closed above 35,000,

893
01:11:18.219 --> 01:11:19.840
so that was certainly good

894
01:11:21.260 --> 01:11:22.239
for the day.

895
01:11:23.094 --> 01:11:26.155
And in fact, I brought that up. It was 35,441.

896
01:11:29.175 --> 01:11:37.510
So all that's happened in just the last few hours, and that's what Bitcoin will do. This is why we DCA people. Don't try and figure this out. Just know.

897
01:11:38.425 --> 01:11:43.565
Hey. We break this down into 4 year cycles. We've got this whole happening thing. We've got

898
01:11:44.185 --> 01:11:47.325
institutional adoption. We've got more adoption by people.

899
01:11:47.670 --> 01:11:50.570
You know, number is going to go up over time.

900
01:11:51.269 --> 01:11:57.375
There you go. I don't know what that number is going to be. I don't try and predict that, but it will go up.

901
01:11:58.335 --> 01:11:59.315
Ladies and gentlemen,

902
01:11:59.695 --> 01:12:00.995
the next 2 years

903
01:12:01.455 --> 01:12:02.355
between now,

904
01:12:02.735 --> 01:12:03.715
November 1st,

905
01:12:04.415 --> 01:12:04.915
and

906
01:12:05.860 --> 01:12:07.480
at the end of December roughly.

907
01:12:07.780 --> 01:12:11.160
Please don't quote me on this, but somewhere in the Q4 at least

908
01:12:11.620 --> 01:12:12.280
of 2025,

909
01:12:13.515 --> 01:12:14.655
We are going to be

910
01:12:15.435 --> 01:12:17.215
in the bull market part of this,

911
01:12:18.475 --> 01:12:25.869
and it's gonna get crazy. And it's not just gonna be Bitcoin. We're not gonna be talking about all the other stuff. But as Bitcoin goes up,

912
01:12:26.170 --> 01:12:27.949
you always see these other altcoins,

913
01:12:29.375 --> 01:12:30.355
casino coins

914
01:12:30.815 --> 01:12:34.675
follow along, and that's fine. They will get blown out

915
01:12:35.295 --> 01:12:35.955
over time,

916
01:12:37.350 --> 01:12:38.410
but here we are.

917
01:12:38.950 --> 01:12:43.370
So buckle up. Be prepared. I'm going to keep repeating this

918
01:12:44.615 --> 01:12:46.235
over the next several years.

919
01:12:48.455 --> 01:12:48.955
PCA.

920
01:12:49.415 --> 01:12:49.915
Alright.

921
01:12:50.855 --> 01:12:54.390
So that's the end of that. I do appreciate all of that support.

922
01:12:54.850 --> 01:12:59.075
There's a there was not any breaking news other than price go up.

923
01:12:59.875 --> 01:13:00.375
Right?

924
01:13:00.755 --> 01:13:01.735
Nothing really

925
01:13:02.195 --> 01:13:15.050
this week. I'm gonna kinda skip that section because we're getting kinda long. There's a lot of links in the show notes this week. Seth had a number of links. I've got Finsen stuff in there. Please take the time to go and and

926
01:13:15.429 --> 01:13:15.929
comment

927
01:13:16.425 --> 01:13:20.445
about Finsen. If you if you are knowledgeable enough to understand

928
01:13:21.225 --> 01:13:25.725
that they are trying to take our privacy, that this is an overly broad act,

929
01:13:27.270 --> 01:13:27.770
that

930
01:13:29.670 --> 01:13:32.330
frankly, this is supported by the constitution.

931
01:13:33.244 --> 01:13:34.704
Please go comment on that.

932
01:13:35.165 --> 01:13:37.105
Okay? They need to hear from us.

933
01:13:37.485 --> 01:13:38.864
So there's a number

934
01:13:39.324 --> 01:13:55.055
of links in there. I made a couple of links to the blog post that we were talking about that Seth had written, and that's actually on his Freedom Tech site. There's a lot of great information there. I put Seth's links in here as well. Seth for privacy

935
01:13:55.755 --> 01:13:56.415
on Twitter,

936
01:13:56.875 --> 01:14:05.330
his foundation link and his freedom tech link. If you're on Twitter, I would advise you to follow those. Plus, I also put a link to the

937
01:14:05.790 --> 01:14:06.690
peer to peer,

938
01:14:08.025 --> 01:14:09.165
decentralized exchange

939
01:14:10.425 --> 01:14:11.405
ways to buy

940
01:14:11.705 --> 01:14:12.205
Bitcoin

941
01:14:12.585 --> 01:14:13.085
anonymously.

942
01:14:13.625 --> 01:14:18.600
Okay? So Take a minute. Maybe you don't normally go through that, but go through the show notes,

943
01:14:19.300 --> 01:14:32.014
and click through some of those links. Take a look at that stuff. Alright. So we're gonna wrap this up. Generation Bitcoin supports podcasting 2 point o. We are a value for value podcast. We do not have sponsors. We do not have

944
01:14:32.540 --> 01:14:33.680
sizing. In that way,

945
01:14:34.140 --> 01:14:35.440
I do not get steered

946
01:14:36.220 --> 01:14:36.720
incorrectly

947
01:14:37.420 --> 01:14:51
because somebody is paying me some money. You can support this podcast in 3 different ways through time, talent, and treasure. If you wanna support the podcast and have some time or talent, I got a lot of stuff. Shoot me a message on Twitter, please. I'm on McIntosh

948
01:14:51.300 --> 01:14:55.320
Fintech on Twitter, or you can email me at McIntosh at jendashbtc.com.

949
01:14:57.365 --> 01:15:00.905
If you wanna support the show with your treasure with Bitcoin,

950
01:15:01.845 --> 01:15:03.385
and please, of course,

951
01:15:03.820 --> 01:15:08.560
You can do this through your strike app or whatever. This should not be the coin that you're saving.

952
01:15:09.100 --> 01:15:11.040
God forbid. But you can,

953
01:15:11.505 --> 01:15:17.125
instead of going and buying a Starbucks, which is now almost $7 from large Starbucks. It's insane.

954
01:15:17.985 --> 01:15:29.190
I remember when it was five thirty five. I shut up, grandpa. That was 2 weeks ago. It's I mean, it's almost there. It really wasn't that long ago. It was 5.35, and now it's 7.

955
01:15:29.535 --> 01:15:33.395
Five thirty five because of our taxes. It was, like, $5 plus the taxes.

956
01:15:34.015 --> 01:15:34.515
Anyways,

957
01:15:35.615 --> 01:15:36.115
sorry.

958
01:15:36.470 --> 01:15:37.930
Get that little rant in.

959
01:15:38.950 --> 01:15:41.770
Instead of doing that, buy $5 on strike

960
01:15:42.390 --> 01:15:43.050
in Sats.

961
01:15:43.485 --> 01:15:48.704
Send that to your Bitcoin wallet, whether that's an Albie wallet or your fountain app or whatever,

962
01:15:49.005 --> 01:15:51.824
and support your favorite podcaster or podcasters.

963
01:15:53.180 --> 01:15:54.800
Try not to be too discriminatory.

964
01:15:55.500 --> 01:16:04.935
I'm only gonna support 1 purse. There's a lot of podcasts out there. If you listen to more with 1 podcast you should be and getting value from them. You should be supporting more than 1.

965
01:16:05.474 --> 01:16:05.974
Anyways,

966
01:16:06.835 --> 01:16:08.054
if you like the content,

967
01:16:08.470 --> 01:16:14.330
Most of all, I would love it if you would just tell your friends about Generation Bitcoin podcast. You can give us a review,

968
01:16:15.190 --> 01:16:28.730
whatever. Or tell people, hey. This is great. Awesome. That does help too. Alright. Thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful, and I would love to hear from you. I'm on Twitter at Macintosh Fintech. Like I said, I'm on Mastodon at Macintosh

969
01:16:29.110 --> 01:16:30.890
at podcast index dot social.

970
01:16:31.270 --> 01:16:35.425
Hey. Stay humble, friends. Go out and make it a great week. I'll talk to y'all

971
01:16:36.045 --> 01:16:36.945
next Monday.