Using Bitcoin Privately And Why That's Important

bitcoin privacy advocate. He's the co host of the Tales from the Crypt podcast, and we get into some really good topics today. We talk about privacy, talk about our privacy, why it's important, how it's under attack. We talk about, you know, the state of people, maybe not really carrying the pessimistic view, but also the optimistic view of how

I think technology could actually help that. We get into bitcoin not being as private as people think, but really being anonymous, how it's being you against us, and what we can do about it. We get into some tools and tactics and strategies that you can do every single day to not only increase your privacy and sovereignty, but really to benefit the entire community overall. It's a great podcast. It was one that I was really looking forward to doing for quite a while. I'm glad we were able

to do it. So let's just go ahead and jump right in. All right, everybody, Welcome to another episode of the Market Disruptors podcast. Today we are joined by Matt O'Dell um. He speaks a lot about bitcoin and privacy. Is the co host of Tales from the Crypt podcast, which is a great podcast I listened to all the time. You guys should check it out if you're not already. But he talks a lot about privacy. He's really caught my eye and I wanted to talk more about that

for you guys today. So welcome Matt, happy to be here in market all right, good? So um, yeah, So these are just really important topics. You know, with bitcoin, there's so many different topics you can get into. And and privacy. Our erosion of privacy and how bitcoin can help solve that is definitely a big piece I want to bring awareness to. Um, there's a lot we can

talk about there before we get too deep in. Just for anybody who doesn't already know who you are, want to just give us like a little background who you are and then how you got here what you're doing in the space. Yes, so, Um, I mean the easiest way to describe myself is I'm just a bitcoiner. Uh. You know, I fell into the bigcoin rabbit hole six years ago and I haven't looked back. Bitcoin is just completely absorbed all my thought processes. My whole life is

absorbed by bitcoin. Um. So, I like quickly found a place like in the in the educational realm of bitcoin, trying to sort through all the bullshit that we see. Um and Uh, I found Marty. So we do Tales from the crypt We do it once a week. We do a nice recap show. Um. I also created a tool for it's a dead man switch called final message dot io um, which is it uses bitcoin as as the payments uh and the payments levels so that you can pay without giving me any kind of identifying information.

Um and I. You know, I work a nice to be out job that I don't talk about that it helps me stacks. That's because I don't have to pay attention to the price perfect Um. Yeah, I think it was. I've seen a few people talking about it, but I think Francis Pollard is the first one I saw. You talked about kind of like how thinking about bitcoin changes, like even just the way that you think, right, it changes almost maybe your reality or whatever. So you said

that your thought processes have been absorbed. Would you say that it changes the way you think? Do you think that's true? Oh? Yeah, I mean absolutely. I mean I think, Um, you know, I I consider myself a realist and I was very pessimistic when I was younger. Um, I didn't really see like a solid way out for like the house of cards that has been built over the last forty fifty years. Um. And you know I, I guess you can see you see it a lot in my

generation and they almost feels like a lost generation. And Bigcoin really turned that on its head and gave me hope, UM, that there's improvements that can be made, that that we can actually do something, that that each of us has the ability to to change, um, how this world functions. Uh. And then on top of that, I when it clicked for me, I was like I just need to like my number one goal is just to get as much

bigcoin as possible. Uh So. And I also come from the um, you know, my dad told me at a very young age, like you shouldn't be investing in things that you don't understand. So when I all that combined, I was like, well, now I guess I gotta spend five hours a day on this here. I am. Yeah. Um, you know, I kind of have a similar story. I grew up, Um, I grew up in Texas. I grew up in Texas. I don't live there anymore, but you know,

really conservative of home. My parents were like grassroots political organizers. Uh grandfather's vets, fathers a VET. And you know I uh so I was super involved, you know, super interested

in politics. And around like two thousand and twelve ish eleven twelve, I got so disillusioned, kind of like what you just said, pessimistic, like there's just no chance, there's no there's no there's no choices that we have, there's no options that we have, and I'm just I'm over it, Like I don't even want to pay attention because it just kind of makes me mad. And then when you really when I understood bitcoin and what it really has and what it can do, all of a sudden, like you,

I'm optimistic. Now we actually have a tool, and so it's like I think we have a fighting chance now, and so like I kind of was the same thing. It's like, well, I just want to try and push this information as much as we can, because because now we have an option, we have a tool. UM. I

like that. UM. I would say as far as changing the way you think, um, one, one thing that I've noticed is that it's super interesting to see what happens when you have a deflationary currency and what you're spending. Thoughts are like, right, all of a sudden, you're like, man, do I want to spend this money that could be I could park into bitcoin and could be going up in value, or do I wanted to spend it on something that's pointless? And probably you know, when you start

to really think about value differently. Yeah, I mean people people say like that's a uh, you know, it stops you from spending bitcoin in particular, but I mean I think it it leads you to be more frugal in general because even with my you know, my paycheck is in FIA, even with my USD, Like, if I spend that, then money that's not going into bitcoin, right, So you just, yeah, it makes you. It makes you question you know, short

term thinking versus long term thinking very much. So now that's that's a Kinseian argument, right, that says, well, that's bad. We we have to encourage spending. So there's a whole different train of thought or school of thought. I should say that people have to get into that we shouldn't

always spend, right, we should save. And that can be a whole another topic topic on its own, but it ends interesting and I think even like you said, with the generation and and uh being optimistic it it's encouraging for me to see a whole new group of people get into bitcoin for whatever reason, the tech or even just the money. But then like you've done right where you just digging on the research and you start going down these rabbit holes and it's created this whole awareness.

Like even the word fiat, right, wasn't even really used that long ago, right, it was a car. Yeah, it's a car. Yeah. So now you know, I love seeing this education and stuff like that coming out and that's really cool. So, um, what I really want to talk to you about today was just the privacy piece. Um, you know, I think it's it's but you have to kind of get into the philosophy aspect a little bit. But privacy is super important. Um, I agree, and obviously

you do as well. A lot of people think that bitcoin is private, and you know, it's one thing the talking heads talk about, which is why it's bad, right, people hide all these things. It's for drug dealers, blah blah blah. Tell me how you view privacy a little bit and why that's important for us. So, Um, I mean a lot of a lot of what is shaped by thinking in regards to privacy is where was the

Snowden revelations? I mean, and what what Snowdon brought to us was the thing of conspiracy theories, um to have you know, massive corporations around the world basically complicit with government spy operations on their own citizens as well, right, Um, so up until that point, I mean, I I think when you start to think about privacy, you have to think about who's collecting the information, how are they using

the information? Right? So, in a lot of these situations, if you trust the people collecting the information, there might not be many negative effects. Um. The Snowden revelation showed us that that we can trust the people collecting those informations. This information we can't trust, you know, at least like pre Snowdon, you thought like Google was fighting on your side. Apple, Apple was fighting on your side. Yahoo, all of them,

you thought they were all fighting on your side. And even if they were collecting the information they were you know, it wasn't part of a like a massive government surveillance operation. UM. You know, you could go obviously it's not great that you know, Google does target it adds to you and all this other stuff. That's a major privacy issue as

it is. But when you start aggregating all this information together, you start to really be able to map people and and see how they operate and how they think on the on a daily basis, um and and and when you when you take that in aggregate, it really becomes a super powerful tool to to control large amounts of people. Um, you can quell descent. You know, you can stop protests on just on a granular level to stop protests, but

you can quell all types of descent. I mean, we look in China and we see on um we chat there their number one chat app where everyone communicate like you just can't say certain words, you can't even communicate between each other. That's like a step even before protests. UM. So so it really comes down to um, are do you want to be a free person or not, because if you're if if you give up your privacy, you're no longer a free person in today's age because that

information can be used against you at any time. They might not use it against you now, they might not use it against you in five years. They may never use it against you, but they could at any moment decided to use it against you. Yeah. I love what Snowdon said. He had a quote that really caught my eye. And I think about a lot, which is those who say they don't have need a right to privacy because

they have nothing to hide. He's like saying, you don't need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say. And I think, um, like what you said, Maybe they'll never use it against you. I think they will. So, you know, what we've seen, and what we've seen is that we continue to have this division right and and

people are more polarized than ever. And so I think no matter which side you're on, pro life or pro choice or Democratic Republican or whatever, it doesn't matter which side you're on, there's gonna be somebody on the opposite side. And so there's always somebody who's gonna want to discriminate you against that because of one of your decisions. And and and then maybe you know, especially now with it being stored forever, something that you may have done the

past could could be there forever. Yeah, Let's say you pissed someone off that's empowered ten years down the line. They can just pull up all your text messages that you've ever sent. They can just take it to pieces. You know, maybe there's some little there's so many intricate laws, I mean in America, but think about worldwide. But they can just pick up something and be like, you know that was illegal, you did that wrong. Let me throw you in jail. You know, blackmail, all types of blackmail.

People don't think like porn habits, you know, stuff like that. Yeah, And what happens is is, uh, you know, when I start to worry that people are going to be listening and watching, then I start censoring myself what I say. And then when I start censoring myself what I say, then I starts censoring myself what I think. And when I start to censor my thoughts and creativity, guys, And that's a massive problem. Yeah, I mean, it's very intertwined

with free speech. I would say because I mean, without privacy, it's really hard to have, like I just pretty much impossible to have free speech. Yeah, so it seems like it's under attack. We see, Um, you know in Hong Kong they've been having these these protests which you mentioned. Uh I saw you tweet I think today yesterday about these kids being spied on at school the China social credit system. So do you feel that this is like it's getting to be a bigger and bigger problem now.

I guess survey or technology helps that. Yeah. I mean I think we're just to put my pessimistic hat on again. I mean I think we're kind of we're kind of screwed. Uh uh in terms of the like encroaching surveillance state, I mean, it's here we can push back. Um, we can use tools that will help us. We have like the rise of like the encrypted messengers, which is really good, which we saw basically the onus is basically the Snowden revelations. But now we have like signal, um, you know, WhatsApp

added encryption. Who even knows if that's legit or not. Um, you got like Telegram, key base, we have we have some we have more tools. I mean, look at I message, I message is isn't is the number one in messaging app in America. I'm pretty sure it's got full encryption on it. Um. Does the US government able to see it? Possibly? But like at least everyone else can see it. Um.

So there's some glimmers of hope there. UM. But the stuff like the facial tracking and UM traditional payments tracking, I mean, I think we might have already lost that battle. I mean what you were talking about with the schools is is like classic UM, classic government and like corporation playbook,

where you basically the parents are scared of school shooters. Right, So you play on that fear, and then you go completely over aboard and you install facial recognition throughout the whole school, and you map all the kids and you're able to see where they move, who they talked to. UM, they have government, if they have school issued computers, you track all their communications on the computers. And and that's where we saw on a larger scale with the Patriot

Act Actor September eleven. Right, so you have September eleven, you put a bill up that just destroys everyone's rights, and you just call it the Patriot Act because everyone scares as hell. Yeah, that's the best way to get someone to give up their rights is to scare them. And I think maybe the quote isn't. They can't really tell who've said it, but I think Jeffer Center or Frank Benjamin Franklin said right that those who are willing to give up freedom for privacy deserved either you know,

some something to that regard. And and so people are willing to give that up because they're scared. They want protection, but he says they deserve neither. And that's ultimately what you get. You don't get protection or privacy or freedom. Um. Yeah, recognition isn't. The facial recognition of schools is not going to stop school shootings. No, And look if you look back even you know, the overreach that we have at

the airport's. I mean, if you've the fly out of l a X takes three hours, you know, and it's like none of that what they did would have stopped that, you know, whatever happened on nine eleven. So, um, I agree with you on that. Yeah. Literally, they solved the vulnerability of nine eleven by reinforcing the cockpit doors and telling the pilots they weren't allowed to go into the cabin if something happened like that solved it. That's all

they had to do. You couldn't get into the cockpit, no one could, no one, No one could take over the plane and fly into a building. That solved that. Everything else is just security theater designed to and you know,

a rotor civil liberties. And also I think it's even it's even more sinister than that because it kind of, um it like builds in this default that people get used to that that you know, they go to the they go to the airport, and they're used to just having no rights whatsoever, just getting completely searched zero like, so they're like they're setting us up there. They started adding facial recognition and for like check ins and stuff.

A lot of the airlines yep I Marty says this a lot on our podcast that the airports in America are like very much a testing ground. That that's what we think. It's very much a testing ground to uh, to erote our privacy and our our liberties further. Yeah, it's definitely desensitization. Like you said, right, we're getting used to it, and I mean you have no rights. I mean you if you mess up even standing in line. I mean, they have the right to you know, who

knows what they're gonna do with you there. But I think, as you said, you know, it's it's, it's it is. It is easy to be a pessimist to see this, uh, you know, encroachment or this continual growth in app Um, I'm kind of, uh, I'm kind of starting to think a little bit optimistically, and I want to see what you think about this. So, um, you did mention that, you know, we do kind of have this rise of

encryption apps, which is pretty cool. Um. I think it's been kind of a perfect storm because on one hand, you have people today who think they don't need privacy and they're willing to give up their privacy for freedom. So people don't care about it, and at the same time, we have technology making it easier. So it's like this perfect storm to make it worse, but at the same time that the same technology is also giving us a way out. So you talked about messengers and messenger apps

and whatnot. But what I'm starting to see is I think really the big piece was this Facebook scandal, this data scandal, and people starting to realize that holy crap, my data is being compromised. We have all these data breaches and whatnot, and I'm almost wondering. I'm thinking that we might start seeing big corporations. We've already seen Microsoft jumping in to try to offer privacy back and maybe

they maybe that might be a competitive edge. Maybe we'll start to see big corporations start to compete on that and really help push that narrative. What do you think about that? I mean, we've seen it. Apple kind of stumbled into it, but they've they've solidified it and made it like a key pillar of their marketing, the privacy st angle, which is good to see. UM. You know, I, as you just said, Microsoft is also pivoting to be more privacy focused. UM. I like to see that. I

think the market is demanding it. Um. It comes down to the Snowden revelations again, though do we trust those people? Is there any way to verify it? There's no way to verify it. Um. So because we're talking about you know, we're talking about closed source software here where you can't you can't even look at the source code. We don't know what's going on. Well, if we see like what Microsoft did right with I on putting it on a block on the on the bitcoin blockchain. Maybe, yeah, I mean,

I just it comes down to trust. I think they're all complicit. They can all get pushed behind back back back rooms and just forced with legal uh you know, legal ramifications. Uh. The thing is, UM, I do agree that right now, more people care about privacy than they've ever that that I've ever cared about in the history

of the world. I mean, partly because we have more people in general, but it's it's trending up right, and as we put more information online, there will be more leaks, there will be more compromises, there will be more people that directly get their civil liberties stepped on. Um. And people will wake up one at a time, you know. But the question is where when they do wake up, is it gonna be too late at that point? Right? We have to make sure that that we don't you know,

just completely fall off the cliff before that. Yeah, And I think so, well, you know, we'll transition into bitcoin because that's the big piece. And I really believe that you know, bitcoin is you know, is a lot of things. Um. I think a lot of us believe it can be a new you know, monetary base layer, But I think

it almost solves every problem. So for example, if the government didn't have unlimited, unlimited spending, if the government didn't have unlimited spending, they probably wouldn't have unlimited overreach in technology either, right, So if we could limit their spending, we could limit their overreach at the same time. So

maybe it helps that. Yeah, I mean I think it all goes hand in hand, right U. I mean when you when you start to talk about things like censorship, resistance UM in terms of bitcoin, I mean, you need to have the the supply needs to be transparent, you need to have a known monetary policy, which in bitcoins cas is very simple, it's just fixed UM and and because otherwise, like I think censorship comes in into play as well with with um inflation or something like that.

If they're able to inflate the supply, if they're able to do all this other stuff, and if you don't have a native token, then we can't use this technology to transfer value in the first place, right because then you know, and all these stuff that like oh we'll create a token that's like backed by gold or something like that. You need to have a company that has like a warehouse that's filled with gold and you have to trust them that they're saying that there's actually gold

in the warehouse or whatever. Right, So that requires trust, which which bitcoin doesn't. So we have bitcoin and it can be a lot of things. I think we can talk about it today in in the sense of privacy and so, you know, it's one it's one thing to have like your your web surfing information taken when you think about privacy, or your travel information taken. But when you get access to the financial data, that's got to

be the most private of all. And so that's essentially what is potentially you know, it's at risk here right where we're going to a completely digital currency um and then they have access to all the financial records. And bitcoin is not really as private as people think. Um. You want to maybe just explained that for a minute. I mean I would say I would say they already have all that information. Um or like our our current system is like pretty much digital as it is to

begin with, it's all being tracked. It's all not just by the government, which is absolutely tracking. You know, you do any kind of thing that when you go into a bank. When I go into a bank, I don't feel like a client. I feel like a criminal. I feel like they're constantly looking at me trying to figure out, like what am I doing with my money? Should I report them to the government, Should I do this? Should I do that? Um? And then you have the corporations

that track you. All the credit card companies are tracking you, like the discount sites, all this stuff. They're all tracking your payments. Um and yeah, and and bitcoin is is is hope among all of that mess. Now, Bitcoin as it stands, if you just use it naturally, it's not

private at all. I mean it kind of. I mean, I guess it's a it's a step improvement in some ways, and somewhat anonymous in some ways because if you if you get if I like give you cash and you pay me bitcoin, then you're the only person who knows that address is mine. Right then I can pretty much spend it anonymously, but you know where I spend it on. So it's not fully right, it's not fully private, but like no government entity or something else would be able

to tell. And then then I, unless they use these chain analysis type software, is they start tracked. Now you give to somebody else who then it's tracked in their ky seed and then they somehow piece all this together. Right, but the only person who knows I paid you cash for that bitcoin is you. So but but then the step backwards is is that all these transactions are being stored on this a mutable ledger that could presumably we were hoping, will last for hundreds of years, where every

transaction is shown on this ledger. So if you if you make a mistake in the future where somehow you get connected to a line of transactions, they might be able to go back and give you ship for things you did ten years in the past, fifteen years in the past, use that to make judgments against you and persecute you, uh, seize your bitcoin, seize your wealth, do all this other stuff. Um. So it's it's a really

tricky situation. UM that doesn't have a perfect solution because, as we said earlier, the the fact that the that the ledgers transparent is also a major benefit. Um. There are but there are starting to be some options. And that's where really where I want to get into. And I know you you kind of talk about on Twitter. Um, you know with Sabi Wednesdays, you talk about that. So there's there's an option with Sabi I know there's a

couple of other options that are out there as well. UM, maybe you can just kind of tell us what the SABI Wednesday is and how that can help people, um with some of that privacy. Right. So with SABI is an implementation is a is a piece of software that runs in your computer that implements uh something they're calling charming and coin joint, which is coin joint, which is a m I think was developed by Greg Maxwell. Uh is.

Basically the idea is that you can and a trust minimized fashion, you can combine your coins with a bunch of other people. So like let's say we all put in a hundred dollars like ton of us, and then the hundred dollar bills go to different people, right, so you can't tell, you know what one of ten got it, but you don't know who who have the ten got which one. Um, so it breaks that trail of transactions that's in the ledger that shows transaction to transaction to

transaction to transaction. Now, the issue here is if you only do with ten people, then it doesn't really help you that much, right because you you know it's one of ten, So you've got to do with more people, which is one of the reasons why I've been pushing with Saby so hard is because it doesn't really work well. And unless the more people we get, the better it works,

the faster works. Um. And it's still not a silver bullet because you have, um, all it takes is the problem with privacy is that all it takes is like one or two mistakes and you can just everything could just go get thrown out the window. So it takes a lot of education and a lot of there's a lot of nuance um. And I've been trying to educate as best as possible. UM. And yeah, I mean it. It's it's not with Sabby is has coined it is not a new idea. With Saby has made it easier

than ever to do it in a pretty private fashion. Um. You know. They it requires the central server their implementation to coordinate the round where everyone combines. But the central server can't take your money, and it all runs through tours, so the central server can identify you individually on on whose output and whose input. Um. You know a lot

of centralized mixing services. That was the issue is that the centralized server could you were trusting the centralized server no one else could tell where your transactions were going as long as that centralized server was actually being honest and and not doing it. And they that those centralized servers can take your money with with SAVY, they can't take your money, um and and they it's pretty hard for them to tell who you are because it all runs through tour and so you need to get more

people to use it. But but it's it's not something you can do after the fact, Like you have to basically, not only do you have to coin join now before you send other transactions, you have to keep on You're gonna have to keep on mixing like you're gonna have to keep on coin joining in the future otherwise um like,

transactions will get linked you. Again. If you said, like if you put a donation address up for this podcast, and you say, you know, send me bitcoin on mark to this address if you like the pot um that address now is connected to you, and any transactions to and from that address could presumably be yours. There's a safe assumption to be made there that they're yours. If you then send that to your main wallet or something, then we we all know how much bitcoin you have

in that main wallet. So you just have to constantly be doing coin joints. Um. I guess with lightning that there's there's potential there to reduce the need to remix, but it's yet to be fully seen how that what

those implications will be. And I know there's also like Samurai wallet now has their whirlpool and I saw like they have like they they made it seems like it's pretty easy, like with the new app that they have, and um you can stack it on like the nodal lid not a lit or whatever, So it'll be Samurai will be much easier than they're in Vata right now.

So it requires software that you run in your computer, which is what Wassabi requires to but in the future, in Samurai while you'll be able to just open your phone, click, start mixing and it'll just it'll just handle it for you. Um. So I mean the way it should works. Every time I received bitcoin would be mixed, and before I send it, I mix it so it's in and out right. Yeah,

just constantly, you just have to constantly be mixing. And like for your cold storage, like you would have to do a situation where any any transactions you sent into cold storage have to go through coin joint before they get to your cold storage, and then when they come out, they should go through coin join again otherwise on the on the outward. Uh so both like if for your cold storage, you should insulate it with cold coin join on both sides, if you if you're adding to it

or if you're removing removing from it. Yeah. Now I've been interested in this because you know, they use this word fungibility, which means, you know, one bitcoin should be equal and it should be equally tradeable, um, like a dollar is, and you know something crazy like I don't know, ninety dollars have cocaine on them or whatever, but like

nobody seems to care about that. But supposedly a bitcoin becomes tainted, and I think jane Aalysis and other firms actually like kind of great bitcoins, and they could say these bitcoins aren't as good as other bitcoins and that

messes up the funge ability. So um, in order to kind of prevent that or preserve this fungeability where all bitcoins are equal, then we kind of need everybody to participate, as you're saying, right, So then if everybody were to mix their transactions, then all the history gets erased, and then all bitcoins could be equal. Again. I mean I think there's like a there's like a critical mass number. It doesn't have to be like everybody. Um, there's like

a critical mass. And we have you know of bitcoin in circulation or something. I have a history of coin join at some point, right. Uh. You know, because because the main argument against the fungibility, the main argument with funge ability is concerned is that, um if if you send bitcoin right now to an exchange and that and that bitcoin has a history of let's say like a dark market or something. Maybe you didn't even use a dark market. Maybe someone who had bitcoin five people down

the road used it for a dark market. You got tipped for your podcast, and now you have some dark market bitcoin, and you send that to coin base, right coin based entertained analysis on it, they say this is a silk grow bitcoin. They freeze your account. Right, that's an issue we can't that's that that destroys bigcoin as a useful money. Um And because for you imagine, one of the beauties of bitcoin is that it reduces friction

in terms of exchanging exchanging money and goods. If you have to deal with that, there's so much additional friction there. I mean you have to literally chain analysis all your tips as you as you bring them in. You gotta do that. Do we see that happening today? Yeah? I mean they they're doing it right now. If there's like

an obvious connection. Um. So, so if you use coin join in between there, they and you do it effective, you do it enough rounds, you're patient about it, you actually like cross your teas and stuff, and you send it. There's no way for them to tell where that bitcoin came from. So if we have like bitcoin users, bitcoin transactions are running through coin join, um it will become ridiculously hard for them to enforce. So so then so then the issue there is what ms if they say, well,

we'll just blacklist anything that is coin too. Right, It's a question I was gonna ask, Right, so how does that band look like if I are you saying that it just immediately used coin join? Are you saying that, you know, what does if I just send it send a bitcoin back to myself to a bunch of different addresses and like do like six hops and the coin joint happened, you know, seven transactions ago. It wasn't a recent transaction did I do the coin join? Did you

do the coin like? Who? Who did that coin join? Do I have to? So once we hit a certain threshold there, um, I think those concerns really go out the window because you have UM, it'll be so easy

to just move into coin join. And even if the exchange says the you know, we're not going to take an immediate coin join and you just put a couple of hops in there and then you send it on UM, that should destroy should new to those those sponge ability concerns UM, And I think I think from the exchange's point of view, the services point of view, or the podcast hosts point of view, receiving bitcoin like I would rather receive bitcoin where I couldn't tell where it came from.

Why do I want the liability of knowing exactly where that bitcoin has been where it's going? Like? Why do I want to know that? That just puts me bigger, That just gives me a bigger issue. So I think, I think, yeah, I think services and you know, merchants and stuff will will encourage it. I think they'll prefer

to receive coins that have going through coin join. That was one thing I heard at the Bitcoin Friends um, a couple weeks ago, is they said, kind of, it's it's almost like our responsibility to kind of to to remove that history right to make sure that they can only see one transaction back. And if they could only ever see one transaction back, then it gives us back to that digital cash, which is basically what cash is.

And you know the argument, I mean, I whatever their argument about, like money laundering, I guess is is somewhat relevant, I suppose, But I mean, if you think about it, like banks have been find hundreds of billions of dollars for money laundering. All the money that we use has been laundered at one point probably right or or high probability. Um, And there's just no reason why I should have to carry that uh that that around so just because they can,

I mean, it's it's kind of ridiculous. I mean, yeah, I mean, the number one tool for money laundering is the US dollar. But like no one or I mean, I guess people have one of the reasons, I'm bullet tramp big points because people have been arguing the effocacy of cash. They don't want they want to get rid of cash. Yeah, so so we're gonna need a digital

little equivalent. But yeah, I I I mean I think the money laundering argument is a is a weak argument, and it is one usually leveled by people that trust the state because basically, I mean, the definition of money laundry is like doing with your money something like your government doesn't want you to do with your money. Yeah, yeah, all right, now, um, we have a couple of other options.

Just real quickly. You've mentioned about lightning. I know, uh, lightning kind of you can do some kind of private you know, peer to peer transactions. I think blockstream now what they're green, they have like confidential transactions or whatever, So you think that also helps. So like I could mix them that I have offline that you and I can do confidential transactions back and forth, and that kind

of mixes it up even more. Yeah, That's what I'm saying, is like imagine, like just trying to imagine like what a coin joint band could look like, right, Like I I I don't see how you can enforce it because like imagine you go coin join and then you go into liquid the liquid side chain. Then you send a couple of transactions as they have confidential transactions, so the balances are blocked but not to and from who's going

to wear and then you pull out of liquid. Now all of a sudden, your your bitcoin is a history of liquid that doesn't have a history. You've got different bitcoin than the coin joint. Well, like how do you It's or like you go into lightning, You you fund the lightning channel, you send some lightning payments, you close up the lightning channel, Like is that a coin joint transaction? Now?

Like it gets really it turns into basically like if they wanted to bandcoin join their banning bitcoin self custody altogether. You can't withdraw bitcoin, you can't deposit bitcoin. It's just the number in your t d amrit rate account. And then I mean at that point we have bigger we have bigger issues. Yeah, and I think they're they already kind of want to do that, right even with this new f a t F deal where they want to like you have to send the transaction details and whatnot.

I think, Um, I love this. You know the statement that says, though, um, you know your government banning it is even more reason why you want it or need it, right, so um, they almost just kind of pushed that use case. It really the whole argument is is kind of ridiculous anyway, where Okay, it pushes terrorism and it pushes drugs, well, should drugs even be legal? And I mean illegal anyway? Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot put in my body? Like, So that's that's a

that's a whole different argument. And terrorism, I mean, come on, who's the largest supplier of terrorism? Is my little transaction is actually helping terrorism? And those are a lot of topics as well. The number one tool for terrorists is the US dollars. Once again, you know, we come back to I do think, to be completely frank, like, I think we will see a terrorist attack in like in the future at some point and they will say they funded it with bitcoin, and they will use it to

crack down a bitcoin I bet you. I bet you. The number one tool for terrorism is not dollars. I bet you. It's mobile phones. Yeah, they love mobile phones, but I bet they're using I bet they're using cars too. I bet cars is probably a big tool they use. I mean, come on, right, like they probably use airplanes. I bet airplanes are big tools that terrorism uses. I mean, we could just go on and on and on, you know,

I mean they were, they were talking. I remember they were the realest in European attacks that were being leveled. They used it to try and fight encryption, say that you can't use encrypton chat apps. And like all the all the terrorists on the ground, they were using burner phones. They were using no encryption whatsoever. They were just using burner phones. Yeah, we can go on and on and on,

but we'll go ahead and wrap it up. I know we're getting along here, so I know you've put out a bunch of good resources for people that want to get more into into this in the privacy um, and maybe I'll link to some of those in the show notes for everybody. UM. I don't know if you could just kind of recap really quickly, maybe like a couple of things that you think so you know, coin joining with Sabi or or Samurai, having your own NOE, using a tour browser. I mean, just a couple of things

real quick. Okay, let's try and we'll try and to still it. Well, let's try. So I think right now, the best simplest and like the best bang for your buck in terms of simple to uh private uh is is you and all of a sabby on your computer. You use that from now on to connect to your hardware wallet. It supports the top three hardware while it's

cold card, Ledger, and treasure UM. So one of the issues when people connect with their harder whilet they don't realize if they if they use the treasurer app or they use the Ledger app, they're sending all their transactions and data through Ledger and treasure servers. So I am I have no reason to believe that they're collecting that information and using it against us, but they could presumably

you have to trust them. So you connect your with saby to with your hardware wallet, even in light mode, if you're not running your own note it's way more private. And even better is if you run your own note UM with saby automatically connects to that UM if you're running it on the same computer, and if you're running it on a different computer, you can connect it to UM, you can connect it to your with saby, And the beauty there is is you get sovereignty benefits because you're

verifying all your transactions yourself. And it's additional privacy because UM just just the way you're getting all the blocked out you're getting all the transaction down and not just your own specific transaction, so it gives you some additional privacy. UM and then mix and within with Sabi. It's really really easy to mix your coins and with Sabi, you just queue them up for coin joint and UM and

just mix those around. You know. The thing is like, don't be scared of it, because even if you suck it up, it's like way better. You know, don't like just jump in and use it for like life and death situations without properly learning about it. But if if you're just like a normal person that just wants to reclaim your privacy back, it's a net benefit. There's there's no there's no situation where you use with SABI and

you lose more privacy than you've had before. Right, It's really the point I want everyone to pick up is not just about your privacy. It's for the whole ecosystem. So, um, let's not be so selfish where everyone, you know, we're always thinking about ourselves, but think about the ecosystem as a whole. And and and by doing these things, you're helping everybody. You're helping the bitcoin community. Yeah, the more

people that use it. The better it gets, the faster gets, the harder it is for them to enforce any kind of coin join bands or stuff like that. So it's really important. Yeah, awesome, Well thanks for that overview. UM, I'll find some of your resources and link to those in the show notes for everybody that wants to know more about that. Um. But yeah, good stuff about privacy. Hopefully everybody enjoyed that. I'll go ahead and link to

Matt stuff and so you can follow him. He talks a lot about these and links to two more resources and stuff like that. UM, so we'll call it with that. Thanks for joining. Thanks, Thanks very much, Mark, happy to be here. Hey, if you like this episode of the Market Disruptors Podcast, please help us take this to the top of the podcast charts. Just please do me a favor and rate review and subscribe. Taking fifteen seconds to just leave a quick review goes a long way and

helping us reach more people and disrupt more markets. I really appreciate you listening and I'll see you next time on the Market Instructors Podcast. FO