[00:00:00] McIntosh:

Welcome back to Satoshi’s Plebs for episode 223. I’m McIntosh, and there will not be a condition today. He is, on his work trip. Today, we’re gonna be talking to Seed Signer from the SeedSigner project. I did an interview with him. I think it was late last week. It may have been Friday if I’m remembering correctly. And today, we’ll be discussing that. So before we do that, we got a few things to cover. Our current block heights right now is 911,069. Alright. So that’s, as we start recording today. Don’t really have a whole lot to report this week. I talked to Kenshin, a couple of days ago or yesterday, and, he’s super busy, of course. And I’ll let him talk about his trip if however much he cares to.

I’m not sure honestly how much he said, so I don’t wanna be talking about it very much. But, looking forward to having him back soon. And, as for myself, probably the biggest thing was I put together probably, the only thing I really did this week outside of work was put together a proposal, that I’ll be pursuing. So we’ll see how that goes. Lots of work, of course, but, you know, it’s what it is. Our supporters this week heard from one of our longtime supporters who we haven’t heard from in a bit, and I was was glad to hear from them. Good old hypersensitive Osiris sent us 500 sats and had this to say, hi again. I moved to the Italian countryside with my soulmate a little over a month ago.

Sold most of my, Bitcoin to buy 1.1 hectares hectares, of land with dozens of olive trees, mature fruit trees, nut trees, and woodland for a bargain. Suffice to say that we have loads to do here, but I am still checking in every now and then and back to stacking sets to build up my BTC once again. Abra ab Abbracci. Oh, that must be Italian. You guys are y’all do this on purpose, don’t you? It means, like, hugs or embraces. And I hope I said it close to being right. Abbracci. Very cool. Alright. Well, now I guess we’ll learn Italian or at least I will. I think Kenshin may already know it.

I can’t remember, to be honest. Maybe at least a little bit. Alright. So not gonna do a whole lot of intro here. This was a great interview. The second time I’ve interviewed SeedSigner. If you’d like, I did a interview with him back in well, let’s see. Almost exactly two years ago, actually. Episode one twenty six, the Seed Signer Project, DIY for the masses. And Seed Signer went into his background a fair amount on that episode. We did not delve into that so much this time. If you’re interested in his background and what makes him, I feel, almost uniquely suited for this project, take a listen to that. He talks about his background and how he kind of his life before this project. So it was a very interesting interview that time. It was a very interesting interview this time as well. Of course, we discussed their new project, which I’ve been hinting at, for quite a while, which has been released. It’s a small run type thing at this point.

And, as I said in the interview, I’m planning on getting one as soon as I can. I think they would be, it’s time to upgrade mine, essentially, and it would be very nice to to have that. So, without too much further ado, we’ll just jump right on in. Hey, guys. We’re gonna interview Seed Signer from the Seed Signer project. We talked to him before. It’s been a while, and then I saw you at the Bitcoin conference last year. Right? Did you go actually this year, to to the one in Vegas?

[00:04:37] Seed Signer:

Yeah. So we got to meet in Nashville, and I was at the one in Vegas. It was a little bit different experience like they always are. But, Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:45] McIntosh:

I did not go to that one.

[00:04:48] Seed Signer:

Was that for ideological reasons, or was that just a bad timing or something else?

[00:04:53] McIntosh:

Maybe both. That was the first Bitcoin conference, the Bitcoin conference that I had been to in in Nashville. And frankly, it was a little overwhelming. I’ve talked about it on the podcast. I’m not gonna say I’ll never go to one again, but, I think I’d much prefer local or maybe a little more specialized things, like maybe mining. Like, there’s the bit bot block boom conference over in Austin, that they do every year. You know, I don’t know. Just it was nice to meet a bunch of people, but, frankly, man, there was there was a lot and Vegas was even worse and, yeah, I don’t I just don’t wanna go to Vegas period. So Yeah. I I can’t blame you there. I mean, for me, the opportunity to connect with,

[00:05:42] Seed Signer:

you you know, people who are aware of Seed Signer or people aren’t aware of Seed Singer and stuff, it it’s a tremendous opportunity. But Right. It it is like I I would call the Bitcoin conference, and I have a a soft spot in my heart for, especially all of the Bitcoiners that helped put that on. I’ve gotten to know a lot of them over the years. Mhmm. Unfortunately, some of David Bailey’s business dealings distract from the incredibly great work that they do as well as, you know, some of the things that managed to find their way into the conference.

When you’re operating at that at that scale Mhmm. I imagine it’s kind of hard to clamp down and keep things Bitcoin only. Plus, I don’t know. I’m I’m gonna sound like the the the Bitcoin company apologist here, but, I I know I I talk to a lot of people who organize events, and some events just never happen because it’s so hard to, make ends meet and cover all your costs. Right. And I’m sure that’s a factor in some of the two. Anyhow, as I was saying, that is, like, the pinnacle Mhmm. Of fiat Bitcoin event if I had to call it something.

And not Fiat in terms of, like well, there are a lot of Fiat bankers there these days. But just in terms of culture, it’s just Mhmm. Is it there’s, just high time preference kinda stuff everywhere there and but there is signal there. You just have to be tuned in to the right people and the right, you know, sort of, the right channels there, I guess, is is one way to say it. Yeah.

[00:07:18] McIntosh:

Well, I’m glad you got to go. I know it’s important for y’all’s project to give as much visibility to it as possible. So, I hope that y’all got to talk to a lot of people.

[00:07:29] Seed Signer:

Yeah. And it’s it’s always an amazing mix of as I said, people have heard of Seed Signer or use one and people have never heard of it or they’re new to Bitcoin or, you know, they they have their Bitcoin on exchange and they know they need to get off, but they don’t know where to start or how. So it’s like, the the opportunities to connect with people are are tremendous. But I’m I’m admittedly, I I’m not gonna try to drive the conversation here too much, but I’m curious about your your Bitcoin in person experiences. Have you been to any other conferences? It it sounds like that’s a no based on what you were saying. No. Not really. I go to our local meetup,

[00:08:03] McIntosh:

and I have been for quite a while. Mhmm. But I guess I don’t wanna say I was a closet Bitcoiner, but, I mean, I’ve been involved with Bitcoin for a long time, but Mhmm. It is only reasonably recent the last couple years that I’ve kinda come out of

[00:08:19] Seed Signer:

that. So I just got back from last week or the week before.

There’s an event called Lake Satoshi in I’ve heard of it. Michigan. Mhmm. And I would say that’s almost as far as, like, an anti anti Bitcoin, conference as you can get with it. You know? It’s it was just great people, great signal. We did it a little bit differently. For people who haven’t heard of it or don’t know, it’s, put on by an awesome Bitcoiner in Lanesburg, Michigan Mhmm. Who invites, you know, people onto his private property, and he has, a small lake there that people people bring campers, some people sleep in their cars, some people sleep in tents. There’s tons of RVs and stuff, and it’s just an amazing atmosphere.

We we approach it a little differently because my family goes up to Michigan and camps along the lake every summer for a week, and it just happened to be the week that we were I I probably would have made the trip separately, but we decided we didn’t wanna move our campsite twice. So we camped Long Lake Michigan where we usually do and just made a day trip to Lake Satoshi. But for anybody who hasn’t, you know, been there or looked into it, like, highly recommend it. Credit One. I would love to see and I’ve certainly not been to that one. That is a long way for me.

[00:09:33] McIntosh:

But, I would love to see more events like that spread across, well, not just The United States, but across The United States.

Right? Because for a lot of people, frankly, it’s hard to travel, and it’s hard to take time off from work and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And I would always encourage people to go to there’s local Bitcoin meetups within most people’s range in The United States. But, you know, those type things like Lake Satoshi, they’re important. So I’m glad you got to go. That’s awesome.

[00:10:11] Seed Signer:

And I I also think the local meetups are so expensive because when Bitcoin starts to at at the larger scale events or on Twitter or at the bigger scale stuff, suddenly, they have to have sponsorships and different incentives take over. Yep. And at a local meetup at, you know, maybe a local bar or restaurant that hopefully accepts Bitcoin or something like that. Like, it’s it’s just a much more pure person to person cut out the BS kinda thing. I I yeah.

[00:10:41] McIntosh:

So alright. We need to jump on into this. Of course, we are gonna be talking about the Seed Signer project, which is a hardware what would you call it? A a signing tool? Is there’s a word for it that you like to do.

[00:10:56] Seed Signer:

A lot of people refer to it as a hardware wallet, but if we’re gonna be precise with the language, I’d call it a signing device.

[00:11:02] McIntosh:

Right. So it is a signing device. We use it to to manage our Bitcoin, and we’re gonna get into all that. But before we do, I want to go into your background because I actually think that’s very important for why you’re involved with the project and what you bring to the project, which I just think is phenomenal. So

[00:11:23] Seed Signer:

Yeah. So I have an interesting background. I’ll I’ll be brief about it. For fifteen years of my life, I was a police officer, local cop who had a very unique sort of career path and assignment. For the majority of my career, I was working in a digital forensic lab doing forensic examinations on digital media devices. So Mhmm. A lot of desktop computers. I’m dating myself a little bit in terms of when I started, but, computers, tablets, mobile phones, you know, loose media items and stuff. And, I worked for, kind of a regional task force that performed digital forensic examinations for other law enforcement agencies at the local, state, and federal levels. So everything from, you know, a small rural county sheriff’s department or small suburban police department, up through three letter federal agencies and, you know, testifying in rural, county court cases in different parts of the Midwest up to, you know, appearing in federal court as, an expert witness and everything in between.

Mhmm. And that was actually how I discovered Bitcoin was, an invest most of my work involved crimes against Schiller, but there was all sorts of other investigations that, we performed at the lab. And one investigation either in late twenty twelve or early twenty thirteen was, a case that another examiner was working where a local kid was mining Bitcoin and buying drugs with it. And that was how Bitcoin first came out of my radar, and that’s what sent me down the rabbit hole and, you know, with Bitcoin talk back then into Reddit and, you know, reading everything I could about Bitcoin and kind of following it for as long as I’ve had. But I feel like my my work history, I’ve since retired. In in 2019, I was super blessed, and I was able to step away from the law enforcement career and be a stay at home dad. Mhmm. And, but I feel like my training and experiences in digital forensics gives me a unique perspective on information security.

And in Bitcoin, basically, it comes down to managing secrets, in the form of, master private keys. So Right. That has kind of been my path into, what I do with the Seed Signer project and, I guess, in the larger Bitcoin space.

[00:13:54] McIntosh:

Okay. Very cool. And so you started a project. You can you explain really briefly, like, how did you come up with the idea for for the Seed Signer project?

[00:14:06] Seed Signer:

So I came to the Seed Signer project through another project called the Spectre DIY. And Spectre, people may or may not have heard of it, is was one of the earliest, wallet coordinators or wallet softwares that supported multisegg.

That was really what they were curious in exploring. And you can think of it as, like, Sparrow before Sparrow was Sparrow. Sparrow’s very popular these days and for good reason. It’s a it’s a great application. But Specter kinda predates Sparrow in terms of being a a laptop or desktop based software that was something that people use to they could set up single sig wallets and, of course, interface with hardware wallets and such. But Multisig was really, Specter did a lot to give average Bitcoiners access to Multisig when it was more something that was really only accessible to institutions before that with BitGo or other, institutional service providers. So, Spectre, the the software program on the laptop and desktop computer also had kind of a side project that was called the Spectre DIY, which was, a signing device that is a separate kind of handheld computer that was, designed to be offline and have some security, protocols in place that made it such that you could create or load private keys onto it and use it in conjunction with this other, you know, Spectre desktop program. Right.

And so the Spectre DIY was, I would call it, a signing device. I know that later on, I think they allowed you to persistently store private keys in the device, but I don’t think they did that at the beginning. I’m not gonna, like, time our reputation on that. But, anyhow, so I discovered the Spectre DIY device. I was looking for a new setup for my Bitcoin, in security. You know, my cold storage, I was looking to redo my cold storage. Mhmm. And I really wanted to be using, multisig, but as I said, it wasn’t something that was widely available at the time. So I have a little bit of a tech background, discovered the Spectre DIY thing, started interfacing with some of their contributors.

And me being a cheapskate, the Spectre DIY costs, at that time, probably about a 120, a $130 to build. And I had been tinkering with, Raspberry Pis at the time, and it occurred to me that I could build, you know, something that had basically the same basic functionality as a Spectre DIY, but at a price point of 25 or $30 instead of a 125. So, I’m not a coder by training. Digital forensics is really a different skill set, but I do have a little bit of a a background in coding. So I wrote the first, versions of SeedSigner, and this is pre AI. So it was just me fumbling with, Udemy and YouTube videos trying to figure out why my code didn’t compile or didn’t run correctly, but was able to put together enough of a proof of concept with the hardware that demonstrated what was possible. And, thankfully, several other people over the years since then have come along and Mhmm.

Also recognized the potential that is in the platform, the hardware, such that I I haven’t, submitted code to the project in a few years now. It’s it’s people who are much more talented and experienced programmers that than I that are doing the majority of the coding. But that’s essentially discovered Spectre DIY and thought, like, we could do this maybe a little more cheaply, and then it’s evolved into also doing it in a more, user friendly sort of way that that the seed signer is for those who haven’t seen or used one, it’s something that after you build one, I feel like the feedback I get from most people is that it feels more like something you would have bought rather than built yourself because we have a certain level of polish with the user interface, and the user experience.

Right. So yeah. Anyhow.

[00:18:21] McIntosh:

Yep. It’s a great product. I just FYI, I do use one, that I bought a while ago, and, it’s been it’s been great. I use it a couple times a month. So alright. So let’s talk about seed signer project. You know, what are you guys doing? Where are you going? How can people help? Etcetera.

[00:18:47] Seed Signer:

Right. Really, SeedSigner, we’re we’re in this kind of unique, place in the Bitcoin ecosystem in that there is no SeedSigner company. It is purely just a volunteer open source software project. So we it’s software that’s designed to run on very specific hardware. Mhmm. But our contributors, you know, really just write code and documentation and that kind of stuff. The if if people well, obviously, if they wanna build one, we provide all the information about where you can purchase it. And there are there are people in different parts of the world that sell Seed Signers that they’ve built and then, resell to others.

But the project itself is purely a volunteer software project. So we don’t have, like, the hardware wallet and commercial sign device companies. We don’t have a marketing budget or, you know, a way to, pay for necessarily boost at conferences or sponsorships or to run commercials on podcasts and stuff. So Right. Seed Signer, what I’m getting at is something that propagates throughout the Bitcoin ecosystem on a peer to peer basis, which means that it happens more slowly Typically. Mhmm. Typically and and more organically, which I think is a good thing. But I bring it up because it’s something that we’re always working on. We’re always trying to, incense and encourage people to share the project with others, and this happens at meetups, in a lot of cases, like the meetups we talked about before.

So really just the push of, like that that’s a big part of my role with the project these days is just getting the hardware into people’s hands and continuing to explain the value proposition of SeedSider and that whole bit. So that’s a continuing, ongoing part of it. But probably the biggest development that we’ve had since, the last time you and I talked and Mhmm. It’s somewhat recent within the last few months as we’ve expanded into a bunch of new languages, with Seed Signer. We started with you know, it was an English only software platform for the longest time, and then eventually we got to Spanish. And then with this latest release, we’ve included, I think, about a half a dozen new languages, German and, I’m gonna blank on them. German and portug German and Portuguese, and then some experimental, I I believe Chinese is an experimental language on there. So we’ve really kind of all at once exploded into several languages, and it’s neat to see, you know, because I’m the person who who manages the seed signer, social media profiles. And it’s neat to see people from increasingly Japan and South Korea and people in Brazil and other places, where you saw a little bit of Seed Signer activity before, but it’s it’s really starting to grow, I think, because people now have the ability in a lot of these places to use the device in their own native language. So it makes it not something that’s either for people who are, you know, functionally fluent in English.

It’s it it can be more for people who don’t have the language skill, and they can interact with it in their native language, and it it hopefully is more intuitive.

[00:22:17] McIntosh:

I you know, learning to use a signing device like this, for a lot of people, I would say most people, is intimidating already. Doing that in a language that’s not your own, if it were me, it would be terrifying. Sure. I’m gonna put my money on this, but I can’t really read what it says. You know? It’s like

[00:22:42] Seed Signer:

Yeah. Yeah. That is That’s awesome. Totally fair.

[00:22:46] McIntosh:

Maybe not to go too deep into this, but how on earth are you doing that? I mean, obviously, people are contributing these translations, but is it like an automatic build or something to add that to the different

[00:23:01] Seed Signer:

parts of the menus and things? Right. Without going too deep into the technical details, it to some degree, we’re, required rewriting portions of our code base so that Mhmm. It it accommodated a set of just English phrases and accommodated, placeholders for multi language phrases. Right. Right. And then we use a third party platform called Transifex that is, it’s a platform that is basically designed for this express purpose of facilitating multi language translations of software, primarily software, I think. Right.

But we use Transifex, and Transifex, by the way, has, an open source program. So if you have, you know, some sort of software that’s verifiably open source and nonprofit, they give you access to their platform at no cost. So that’s Very cool. Very that’s a very cool, feature of their offering that we’re able to leverage. And so Transifex is kind of this coordination platform where if someone is interested in translating Seed Signer for a new language, they essentially sign up with an account on Transifex, and then they, I don’t know the exact words in the user interface, but they basically apply to become a member of the project, and they submit a language request for, name your language Bulgarian or something. Right.

And then once on our end, you know, the new language is approved so we can just avoid, you know, duplication of languages and stuff like that. Once the language is approved and the person’s assigned to be a coordinator for that language, we generally need one or two coordinators per language, and then we like to have two or three reviewers for each language just to get multiple sets of eyeballs on translations so that, you know, they can be as good as possible because not everything is easy to translate with Bitcoin being a new technology, and people often disagree about what the right way to express a seed phrase is in a different language or the nuance of the language. But, anyhow, once, language is approved, the translators are basically presented with a list of English strings that they’re tasked with translating into their native language, and they enter those, correlated transact translations rather.

And, at that point, the reviewers come in, and our lead developer, Keith McKay, has done some, some amazing stuff such that once the translation gets to a certain point in the process with Transifex, there are, pixel for pixel renderings of what they’ll look like on the seed signer screen that are generated and reviewable in another GitHub repo. And so that also helps us with issues around the user interface and fitting, you know, what could end up being longer strings, then we may wanna use you really don’t you can review the the translations just for pure information in terms of what they convey, but it’s also useful to review them as they would appear on the screen to make sure that, you know, it’s not taking up too much text or Right. You know, something like or that, you know, the the characters from a a given language are rendering on the screen in a way that’s readable, etcetera, etcetera. So, we have a pretty good process around it, and that’s how we were able to get these first, you know, six or seven languages through.

[00:26:27] McIntosh:

Very cool. And we’re

[00:26:29] Seed Signer:

I I would imagine, we’ll probably see at least another three or four, in our next release, that being a few months out. But I think we’ll just slowly see more and more languages, you know, implemented on the platform, and, hopefully, that just gives more people access to what we think is a a great tool for doing Bitcoin cold storage.

[00:26:54] McIntosh:

As I said, I’ve used SeedSigner for a while now. It’s it’s been a I don’t remember exactly when I bought it, but it’s easily been over a year. It’s been a couple years, and, I love it.

But I wanna give you a few minutes to talk about what makes Seed Designer great. I want you to talk about what because I believe, personally, it is different than other devices out there. And, you know, you you can talk feel free to talk about that. What what sets it apart?

[00:27:24] Seed Signer:

So one one thing that is probably I don’t know if it’s obvious or not, but is the ethos of the project. So Mhmm. There’s nothing wrong with companies. There’s nothing wrong with for profit companies. Absolutely not because that’s how so much of the work gets, grown and developed. But our ethos is a little bit different in that, as I mentioned before, it’s purely an open source software project. So we don’t have incentives in place around, you know, selling devices so that we can cover costs.

[00:27:57] McIntosh:

Right.

[00:27:58] Seed Signer:

We we accept donations, and that’s the primarily way that our contributors are rewarded. But our contributors generally work on, you know, the the features and the improvements that they think are important to the platform. And to some degree, that’s a that’s a free and open source software scratch your own itch thing. So Right. If if a new feature is important to one of our regular contributors, it has a much higher chance of being implemented than, you know, what might be perceived as a less important feature that maybe is more of a nice to have instead of a we need this kind of thing. You know, we’re something that may not be useful to the great majority of people doing cold storage. So the first aspect of of your, question is just the ethos of something that is collaboratively built by the Bitcoin community in the same way that kind of you can think of the Bitcoin protocol as being built in a volunteer consensus driven kind of way. So everybody’s fighting and fuss oh, sorry.

[00:28:59] McIntosh:

No. I don’t know what you mean.

[00:29:01] Seed Signer:

We haven’t had, like, a a great schism or anything yet, but but there are forks of seed signer out there that people use. So it’s Oh, man. In that way, it is similar. Right. So the first bit is just kinda the general ethos and and the collaboration mechanism. The second thing that maybe makes Seed Signer unique is, a a different set of security trade offs.

[00:29:28] McIntosh:

Okay.

[00:29:29] Seed Signer:

When you compare it to something like a commercial hardware wallet, like you would think of with a Trezor or a Ledger or a Coldcard or any of those other, commercial wallets or signing devices.

[00:29:41] McIntosh:

Okay.

[00:29:42] Seed Signer:

So a big part of that has to do with, what what I’d refer to just broadly, and it manifests itself in a lot of ways, but supply chain risk. Okay. So from the point at which not just, you know, the hardware itself being manufactured, but from the point at which the subcomponents that make up the hardware are identified that they’re going to be used to build a Bitcoin hardware wallet. That is the point at which supply chain risk begins because the subcomponents themselves could be could be subject to some sort of compromise. And as Bitcoin becomes more valuable and grows in market cap, the incentives for people to find really creative ways to attack Bitcoin holders, you know, to attack wallets.

The incentives for those grow and grow to the point that it’s a relatively recent thing in the last year how the it it’s presumed that the Israeli Mossad was able to launch an attack on Yep. With via the pagers.

[00:30:51] McIntosh:

It was Iran. Right?

[00:30:52] Seed Signer:

I don’t think I don’t think it was Iran. I think it was Or was it the Hezbollah? I I believe it was Hezbollah. Okay. Either way But any They did. They intercepted

[00:31:02] McIntosh:

the supply chain for the pager parts. Right? And Right. Basically took them in the bombs. It’s crazy.

[00:31:09] Seed Signer:

Yeah. And so if if that’s kind of a a great example of, you know, a supply chain issue, and I’m not sure where that happened along the supply chain if it was a software thing or if they, you know, were able to modify or swap out some of the hardware components.

But, anyhow, as Bitcoin grows, at the factory, it’s known that that is going to be eventually a device that’s used, to interact with private keys that may or may not protect a large or a small amount of Bitcoin. Right. And then we also have kind of the last mile sort of, supply chain attack stuff where people will receive you know, maybe they ordered a Trezor from Amazon, not realizing that that’s not a good idea. Right. And there are pictures, you know, that that you can look up on Twitter or elsewhere where they’ll receive a device that on the outside looks fairly much like it’s a Trezor. But if you open it up, it has modified internals.

Mhmm. And it’s designed to, maybe lie and wait for a while until you’ve deposited some Bitcoin onto it, and then it allows the attacker to extract a private key and steal the money. Or it could just be something as simple as, doctor documentation that comes with a hardware wallet that says instead of creating a new, private key, when you turn the device on, enter these seed words and some people are not sophisticated enough that they’re they’re gonna offer this. So Mhmm. All of these are kind of ways in which different supply chain attacks can manifest themselves. Seed signer is a little bit different in that instead of using, specialized hardware that does offer some advantages, we use general purpose hardware, very specific general purpose hardware that kinda selected for specific technical characteristics.

And instead of, building a device that is kind of a digital vault for your private keys that attempts to securely store copies of your private keys. Mhmm. We build a device that instead is designed intentionally not to remember anything when you use it. So Right. The trade offs are different in that one. I’m as I mentioned before, you know, a hardware wallet is like this digital Fort Knox for your private keys. Seed signer, when you remove the power from it, is engineered not to remember anything. So it puts more responsibility into the hands of the user. Right. So they need to think more carefully about how they’re physically securing the analog copies of their private keys.

Right. The one other thing that’s that’s really critical for the model that’s different from hardware wallets is, hardware wallets do some degree of software authenticity validation. And what that means is that if you were to accidentally download a malicious version of the Trezor software, when you attempted to load that onto the device, if you have an authentic device, and that’s that’s somewhat of a big if because the fake Rolex problem is a real thing. But if you have an authentic device, it will identify that, the software you’re trying to load on it is inauthentic, and it will either prevent it altogether or it will give you some very stern warning. Whereas with SeedSigner, it’s this is another thing that users take more responsibility on for onto themselves where they need to, make sure that they’re downloading the Seed Signer software from an authentic source and then go through the steps. A lot of people don’t do this, but go through the steps, to validate that the signature of the software matches a signature that’s been published by representatives of the project via our PGP key.

Mhmm. And so it’s Seed Signer is is encouraging people, you know, as long as they’re comfortable, to take on more responsibility for themselves Right. Instead of trusting a company to validate the software for you and to keep your your key safe and that sort of thing. I I just wanna do quickly a third area. So first, it was just the general ethos. Second was, some of the trade offs in terms of the security model. And then third is, this isn’t specific to the device, but seed signer we we very strongly encourage multisig as an approach to Bitcoin cold storage. And not that other hardware wallets aren’t compatible with multisig or you can’t use them in multisig, but Seed Signer is really designed with multisig in mind from the beginning. And that’s one of the advantages of as I said before, the device intentionally doesn’t store your private keys. And so because it doesn’t store them, it opens up the possibility of being able to use a single device to manage multiple private keys. Right. So if you’re someone who’s curious about multisig or who doesn’t have, you know, hundreds of dollars to spend on multiple hardware wallets, you can get started with multisig with just one signing device Mhmm. And still have, a a pretty darn robust security posture. So I would say, the third kind of maybe differentiating factor for seed signer is that we are a multisig first. You can still use a sig seed signer for single sig wallets, but we are designed really with multisig in mind as a as an integral part of the Bitcoin cold storage, you know, process, I guess.

[00:36:46] McIntosh:

Okay. I always, you know, explain it this way. Right? You’ve got this little device here, and I can hand this to you. You could use it. I could hand it to anybody, and they can use it. And there is no fear that they will take my Bitcoin.

[00:37:04] Seed Signer:

There’s one caveat I would say with that. Why is that? How is that? And that is, you you know, and I always lecture people about this when, because I sell devices at conferences. Mhmm. And so I will load software onto the memory card. You can think of the memory card if you think of the Seed Signer as just a tiny computer, the memory card is basically the hard drive. Right. And so if I was a sneaky evil person, I could put malicious software under the memory card That’s true. Pass it off to somebody else.

Now, I’m very much on board with what you’re saying in terms of the it’s it’s a reasonable proposition to share the devices, but I always just say that with the caveat that That’s true. It’s best it’s best practice that, people should have their own memory card and make sure that the the software they’re putting onto the device is, authentic.

[00:37:54] McIntosh:

Right. But, you know, you you take the QR code Mhmm. With your seed phrases. That’s that’s the private stuff that you store off. Right? And this is this is just a hunk of metal that, you know, runs a Raspberry Pi.

So very cool. Alright. So we’ve already talked about the languages. So I I know that’s new for y’all, and then sounds like it’s going great. But I know that you’ve got something else new that I am super excited about. As someone who frankly has vision issues, I found out about a year ago that I’ve got cataracts. And, you know, it’s it is what it is. But the one thing that I don’t like, and I’ve been honest about this, the one thing I don’t like about the seed signer is the size of the screen. I I understand why it is what it is, but at the same time, I’m somebody who’s willing to pay a little more, to get a larger screen that’s easier for me to see. Now I don’t think you were listening directly to me about this, but somewhere along the way, y’all came up with the idea for what?

[00:39:15] Seed Signer:

Yeah. It’s it’s something that I’m calling the Seed Signer Plus. It’s not an official part of the project, I guess, at this point yet, but, it’s basically just an alternate display hat. So the original seed signer build used, a company called Waveshare in China makes these extremely small, controls. So basically a screen and some buttons and a thumbstick, and it’s a little, you know, circuit board that’s designed to fit on top of the Raspberry Pi, and it’s explicitly designed for the Raspberry Pi zero. And as I received more feedback, because there are multiple pain points outside of just the, the screen size, although that was the primary one that a lot of people cite. I started to think, what if we used a different display hat that was designed from the beginning to be a seed signer? And maybe we can address some of these pain points with, the WaveShare display hat. I mean, the great thing about the WaveShare hats is they’re probably 10 to $15 a piece, and they’re really ubiquitously available all over the world. So that’s part of the secret sauce of, making it such that people really in remote parts of the world can still find the pieces to build a Seed Signer and build one. But what if, we were designing a different display head that was intended to be a Seed Signer from the ground up? What sort of things would it have? So the first is a larger display.

And the second is there was a lot of friction around the thumbstick for some people to where the the earliest versions didn’t even have anything that covered the thumbstick, so it it was kinda painful on your thumb because it’s this little directional nub. And even the later implementations that were more comfortable weren’t very precise in some builds. So instead of in the the plus board, which is just a new display hat, that you can use to build a Seed Signer, instead of the thumbstick, we’ve implemented a simple it’s called a d pad that people would probably be familiar with from, like, a Nintendo controller or something like that.

Another pain point we tried to address was, using USB c instead of micro USB. So the original Seed Signer used, micro USB cables. I believe that’s the right designation. I think it is. Yeah. Which are becoming a little bit more difficult to find these days, whereas USB c is a a more it’s a newer, you know, hardware connection type, and they’re more ubiquitously available. So we added a USB c, and then we also moved the, moved the USB connection from the top of the device where it seemed like it a lot of the time, it felt felt like it was in the way when you were trying to hold it up to the bottom of the device where it just kinda dangles there, and it seems to be a more natural position. Maybe not for everybody, but it seems to be a better position. And then the last thing was, the memory card slot on some of these devices.

It’s been a little bit of a pain to use. It’s gotten better with the the milled aluminum ones. I think you have an earlier one where you have to use you have to use Yeah. A tool to extract the, memory card. So with the new display head, it’s not built into display head, but the Seed Signer Plus form factor incorporates a spring loaded memory card, so it’s just a a simple quality of life improvement. But I wanna get back to the screen because, I too am a dude in in in the second half of his forties who is starting to experience ice. That’s why I kinda chuckled when you mentioned it originally because I you never think it’s gonna happen, and then suddenly everything’s you know, your arms aren’t long enough to get things to where you can read them.

[00:43:07] McIntosh:

Right.

[00:43:09] Seed Signer:

But another great thing that comes with a larger screen is the opportunity to make the QR exchange process more efficient. Because with, a larger screen, we can actually cram more information into each QR frame. So, it’s not something that’s been implemented fully in the software yet. But in the next version or two of seed signer, I think we’re gonna see some significant improvements in QR efficiency and moving information from the seed signer back to either your mobile phone or your, computer. That is that was generally where there was more friction in the process because you have to hold the signer still, you know, if if you’re using a webcam in a very specific Right. Location sometimes. And I think that the larger screen goes a long way to, remove friction from the the the information exchange process.

But, anyhow, so this new Seed Signer Plus is really centered around, a new display hat, that is used with the exact same other internal components that we’ve always used. So the same Raspberry Pi Zero that has the, guarantees around air gapping because there’s no Wi Fi, there’s no Bluetooth on board, and the same guarantees around statelessness because the software is still just running in memory on the device. Mhmm. And then the same you know, you can find them on AliExpress for 4 or $5. It’s just an inexpensive camera module that we use to Right. You know, get information into the signer. But I’ve, been getting some really great feedback on them.

I I took some to the conference in Vegas with me, and I’ve since added them to my online store. And there’s probably about 70 or 80 out in the wild right now, and I’ve been getting really good feedback on them. So I think it’s can gonna become a thing to where it makes sense to scale it up, and they’ll we we should be seeing more and more of them from some of these other sellers. One of the great kind of also opportunities with, the plus display hat is it gives us the opportunity to bring in, some money to reward our longest and most active contributors.

Mhmm. So I’m on the verge of having, a larger batch of these boards made, and I’ll be offering them to people who sell Seed Signers in other parts of the world. And built into the cost of what I sell them for will be a donation that goes to both our, our lead maintainer, Keith Makai. Mhmm. I’m sorry. Lead developer, Keith Makai, and then our lead maintainer, guy named Nick. And both of them are basically the longest running, people that have been working on the Seed Signer project along with me. So this is a great opportunity, to really direct some value back to them. It’s it’s still not gonna Yeah. You know, nobody’s gonna become a millionaire off this. It’s not gonna reimburse them for all their time. But Right. It’s just a nice way of, buyers being able to kinda say thank you. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:46:22] McIntosh:

Yeah. Exactly. So I saw it on your website last night when I was looking. I am a few months off, I think, from getting one, but I am planning on it. Looking forward to it. But, is there anything else that you wanted to share before we wrap up?

[00:46:39] Seed Signer:

No. I have to make sure we, we get one of them into your hands soon.

[00:46:43] McIntosh:

Yeah. We’ll get we’ll we’ll do that. I I wanted to mention one last thing, before before we wrap up. I mean, you can literally go to seedsigner.com, which is your main website. Right? Mhmm. And you can scroll down and it literally will tell you how to build a seed signer from the parts. I mean, I think there’s links there as well, like, to the different parts. Maybe there’s not, but It is on

[00:47:17] Seed Signer:

It’s amazing.

In the hardware section of the web page. So you just to emphasize this for people who may not know or aren’t familiar with the project, there is no need to interact with us at all. You don’t need to buy anything from us. You don’t need to register. You don’t need to provide an email address to download the software. We, detail everything that you need to build one on ctenor.com in the hardware section of the website. We even have links to, high time preference Amazon or low time preference AliExpress. And, we provide all the documentation around the software if you wanna download it or even if you would like to build the release yourself.

And then we even have, a Telegram community where if you have questions or something’s not working, you can come there and it’s I don’t wanna oversell it, but we have a pretty strong Telegram community. No. It’s a great Telegram group. I’m part of that group, not that I’m the reason

[00:48:15] McIntosh:

any part of making it great. I have asked multiple questions, from things like like, you mentioned about the, you know, the the SD card. Mhmm. I could not figure out. I’m like, what on earth is going on? I I couldn’t make it eject, whatever. And I went and asked on this. Somebody’s like, well, you use the the little thing. Or I’d I guess I lost the tool, but you can use, like,

[00:48:43] Seed Signer:

a like a paperclip. Right? Yeah. Toothpick, a a pen. Like, really just what I need. You know,

[00:48:51] McIntosh:

super helpful. Like, I’ll get on in the middle of the night because I’m a night owl, and I’ll ask a question, and somebody will answer. It’s be like crazy. It’s like, don’t your people sleep?

[00:49:00] Seed Signer:

Yeah. And it’s another, great thing is, I won’t say we have no spam, but if you’ve been into some of the other Telegram groups for some of the other projects, there is just you put one message in there, and there’s eight people responding, and half of them are sketchy sort of things. And we Right. For some reason, have been able to sidestep that stuff despite having, you know, 2,500 people in there. So

[00:49:27] McIntosh:

Well, as always, it’s great to have you on. I appreciate your time. I appreciate what you guys are doing over at the project. I always tell people, you know, here on the podcast, we don’t take, sponsors.

Not even if you offered me money, we would not take it. I I just can’t operate that way. It’s not right from a journalistic perspective. But I will promote things that I use personally, and this is one of the main things one of my main Bitcoin tools. And I do it pretty consistently. I think if you go back and listen to the episodes, every few episodes, I’m talking about my seed signer because there it is. It sits right on my desk, Mhmm. That’s just the reality of it. So, anyways, I appreciate it. Do you have anything to wrap up with?

[00:50:27] Seed Signer:

Nothing specific. I I just wanna say thank you for having me on today and for Of course. You know, sharing sharing the project with people that listen to you and helping us spread the word about, you know, what we’re working on.

[00:50:41] McIntosh:

Awesome. Well, you’re certainly welcome. I I appreciate everything that you guys are doing over there, and it was great to meet y’all last year up at I met you and Keith both there at at, Nashville.

[00:50:52] Seed Signer:

And hopefully, sometime again soon.

[00:50:56] McIntosh:

Hopefully. We will see what we can do. Alright. Thank you.

[00:51:01] Seed Signer:

Alright. Appreciate it.

[00:51:04] McIntosh:

Alright. Thanks again, Seed Steiner, for that great interview. I appreciate it, and, look forward to catching up with you the next time I get to see you. All that being said, it was a great conversation. I appreciate Seed Steiner’s time. And who knows? Maybe in a couple years, we’ll have him back on the show again.

As always, of course, we didn’t pay him to be on the show. He didn’t pay us to be on the show. Whenever I talk about SeedSigner, the project, the hardware, you know, we’re not being paid for that. That is literally what I use. Kenshin does not at this point. I don’t know if he has any plans on it, but I love it, frankly. I think it’s a great tool for single sig and multi sig, Bitcoin treasuries, especially, like, for your family, this kind of thing. Let’s see here. What do we got left? News and notes. There was a huge announcement. It turns out, I didn’t exactly know how it was gonna go and didn’t say anything last week, but it happened one week ago. So we didn’t have the information anyways when we were recording, but, Block’s company, who’s Jack Dorsey, who’s the guy who used to own Twitter and, sold it to Elon.

He also has Cash App. He also has Square, a number of different products, a number and actually, both of those now support Bitcoin. He’s very much involved in the Nasr ecosystem. A while ago, and I don’t know how long it’s been, but I would say at least a year, probably longer, they announced that they were working on a Bitcoin miner, which I was excited about. But since there wasn’t a whole lot of information to go on, you know, we just had to wait. Well, they are done. They have released their first product or they’re in the midst of releasing it, really. And it honestly looks really good. They call it the proto rig or proto mining rig.

If you go to proto,pr0to,.xyz, They have a website there. They did a big, like, forty five minute long, I don’t know what you call it, rollout announcement, whatever that was put on YouTube. There’s a link to it on their website, right there at the very top. It says missed the proto rig and fleet reveal. Watch the replay. You can take a look at that. It’s a little sales y, but worth the listen. This is actually probably one of the most significant events to come along since whoever it was created the first shoebox ASIC. What do I mean? There’s a very standard size shape to all of the current miners, almost without exception. There’s a couple of newer ones that are rackable. They’re like three u in size, which if you’re been in a data center, you know what that means.

And those haven’t made a whole lot of headway, to be honest. Now maybe it’s too early for them, but but this unit is different. It’s expandable. It is it’s built like it it very thoughtfully. A lot of good engineering went into this. There was people involved that came over from Apple, from the Apple hardware side. And if you look at this rig, you would not be surprised at that. It will work as both air cooled, meaning, just a normal you put it on the rack and it’s got fans that run, that kind of thing, And immersed, so you can put it down on this. I think it’s called dielectric fluid. Basically, it’s a fluid that does not, transmit electricity, and they use that to keep it cool.

So it literally sits in this bath of liquid. It’s kinda crazy, actually. Gamers have been doing this kind of thing for a while to, like, overclock their systems. Well, Bitcoin miners are kind of going the same way. It helps in a number of ways even though it is more expensive. The fluid itself is not cheap. It’s not crazy expensive, but still it adds up. Right? But there’s a lot of really good stuff on this miner. The hash hashboards just kinda pop in and out. You can pull a hashboard out. So a hashboard is kind of the main component of an ASIC miner. You can pull it out while the unit’s running. They’re standardized components.

They powder coated the chassis, which I thought was fascinating because you look at these other machines, and they look cheap, and they act like they’re cheap. This is not. This looks more like a like a Mac Pro, and I don’t mean in shape necessarily, just in kind of the fit and finish and feel of it. I don’t know what the price is. They’ve not announced that. They didn’t announce the specs. They said 14.1 joules per terra hash, which is not industry leading, but it’s very low. I think the lowest is a bit main rig that’s, like, 12 something.

But there will be benefits in system upkeep in maintaining these systems. They’re also very compact. This unit is 12, kilowatts. It’s 12 kilowatts. And so what that means is you get about 819, I think. 819 terahash in a unit that’s the same size as two regular shoebox units. It’s amazing. A lot going on there. So I would if you’re in mining at all, I would recommend you check it out. I am strongly considering this, frankly, for my, for my future purchases of miners. And, so very, very interesting. That was kind of the big news, if you wanna call it that, for the week. But I would recommend that you take a look at that. There was a few other minor things. Zeus had a new beta version that came out, for example.

Not you know, again, it’s summer. Things are kinda slow. No major announcements, although this certainly was. In the, show notes, I’ve also included a link to seed signer stuff. And so there we go. Alright. As we record, our Bitcoin price is a $112,313 and €96,647. I’ll throw that in for Kenshin and our European listeners, even though he normally takes care of that. Our price last August 21 was 61,175, which means we’re up 83.59 percent, certainly down in terms of percentages and down overall, from last week. While I’m talking about price, you know, last week, we were saying, basically, we thought that we were due for a big push up. Obviously, that did not happen. We’re actually down for the week, of course, by, like, a good amount. We did hit a new all time high right after we recorded, if I’m remembering correctly. I think it was right after, not right before, to a 124,000.

But then, you know, whatever bad news, it doesn’t matter. Price dropped. We’ve gone down to a 112, which seems to be holding very steady. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but this is literally why we preach DCA. You know, we get it’s fun to get on here and kind of speculate and say, well, it looks like it’s gonna go up. We don’t know. Don’t be betting on that kind of stuff. You do not know what’s going to happen. And if you start thinking that you do, you need to check yourself very carefully, because you most likely, almost assuredly do not. And eventually, you will get caught, just DCA, whether that’s daily, weekly, just DCA.

Use the strike app if you can, which that is expanding. I think they’re now down in Australia. There was another big place they were in. I cannot remember. But, you know, whether it’s strike or something else, somehow else, just DCA, figure out what it how much are you going to invest to Bitcoin and just do that. Don’t worry about the price. If you’re worried about it, zoom out. Look at the price over the long run. We’re still going, guys. This is still this is not the end of the bull run. This is not the end of anything. So please just relax.

Alright. Our Bitcoin market cap right now, we are down a little bit, $2,200,000,000,000. Gold market cap also down a little bit, $23,200,000,000,000. So right now, we’re sitting at 9.7% of the Bitcoin versus gold market cap. So, you know, down a little bit there as well. Overall, it’s frankly been a pretty disappointing week, but as we like to say, it’s cheap sats. Always something good to keep in mind. Right now, the network is operating at about three sats per vbyte fees, 240, 214 megabytes of unprocessed transactions, about a 111,000, 700 transactions have not been processed.

Alright. Again, I hope you like this. This has been a little bit different, but, I thought it was a great value. Satoshi’s Plebs is a value for value podcast supporting podcasting two point o. We don’t have ads. We don’t have sponsorships. Just honest Bitcoin content. I deliberately avoid sponsors because even if I love a company like SeedSigner and I freely claim that, Taking their money would influence my opinion. What if something goes wrong with that company? I would hesitate to warn you. Instead, I ask, are you getting value from this show? Support it through time, talent, or treasure. Help with chapters, transcripts, future projects. Just ask.

Jump in our chat room. We haven’t been live for the last few weeks, but we’re gonna get that set back up. Just be great to have people in there. Stream stats, boost with messages, even a 100 sats saying great show or you suck. I’ll read it either way. It’s always great to hear from our listeners like hypersensitive Osiris. Check out the apps at podcastapps.com and support independent Bitcoin media. If you like the content, I would love it if you would tell your friends about the podcast. That is the best way for us to grow. This week’s music is Horizons of Hope by Jah Bong. Any boost or streaming of sats during that song will go straight to the artist. Thanks for being here. We hope this has been helpful, and we would love to hear from you. Find all of our contact info at satoshis dash plebs dot com. Stay humble, DCA those sats, and have a great weekend.

We’ll talk to you all soon.