0:04

Store potentially. So realistically,

0:07

the bar for the Fed making a move either way is pretty high, and and the bar for the Fed to hike here is pretty high as opposed to them staying put. But since they executed

0:17

sort of transitory 2.0 late last year when they returned to this wishful thinking that inflation is moving down towards their target. I think they're now realizing that in reality,

0:28

the r star for this economy, sort of that neutral rate that is neither overly stimulative nor deflationary

0:34

is actually higher than something with a 2 handle on it, and possibly has a 3 handle on it. And so I think they're kind of moving towards that realization. But, ironically,

0:43

for them to be able to cut, they need to be adamant about Right. Not cutting. And that's just not something they seem to be able to Are you surprised there's not more volatility in the market given that we're now at a point it used to be that we were on we were all either on one path or the other. We thought they were either gonna raise rates at at a certain point, and then there was another point where we thought they were gonna be cutting rates. Now,

1:05

like you just said, we don't even know. Well, they don't even know. That's the reality of it. Right? They were so adamant about the fact that they were gonna cut. We were looking at the data and saying, look, they've just taken all fixed income returns from 2024 and pulled them into 2023,

1:17

and that inflation is gonna be stickier. And that's what we're seeing, but but this entire sort of journey has shown us that they don't really know what they're going to do. And in terms of volatility,

1:27

the equity market, I think, have tried to look past that somewhat. These rate expectations, although they're certainly, to some extent, baked into valuations. But I think they're looking past that and looking into earnings, which are continuing to be the bond market has set plenty of volatility. Right? We're seeing significant moves. Although, I would point out that the volatility we're seeing in the bond market is very much on par with the vol levels we saw pre 2,000. Absolutely.

2:23

Happy Bitcoin

2:24

Wednesday, freaks. It's your host,

2:28

Odell, here for another Citadel Dispatch,

2:31

the interactive live show focused on actual Bitcoin and Freedom Tech

2:37

discussion. I hope you guys have enjoyed,

2:41

this monster week of dispatches. We had a great dispatch on Monday with Carlos. We had a great dispatch yesterday with Kieran.

2:48

If you're listening later in the podcast feed,

2:52

feel free to take your time catching up. I I we ship as we feel here at dispatch. We don't,

2:59

you know, stick to a particular schedule.

3:02

Probably, we'll slow down the pace a little bit next week. Maybe I won't. Maybe I will. Not sure yet. But, anyway, guys, we have a great conversation today that's completely unrelated to our intro clip,

3:13

but I have a feeling some of the things some of the conversations coming out of Suitland over on CNBC

3:19

are gonna age in a in a quite crazy fashion as the years go on, and it'll be a great time capsule going forward. But we have a great conversation lined up today. We have a great guest. We have Ben Arc, prolific Bitcoin and Nasr developer,

3:35

maintainer and founder of the Ellen Bits open source project.

3:39

How is it going bad?

3:41

Yeah. Very good. It was an interesting clip.

3:45

Yeah. I think even though it's taken them a while to clock in onto to clock in onto Bitcoin and its value proposition, I do think there is a sentiment for not trusting whose hand is on the money printer and the limited hands which are on the money printer. So

4:00

it's good that that they raise questions around that,

4:03

and on inflation.

4:05

Yeah. So today is like,

4:08

I try not to pay attention to a lot of the shit, but today, like, I guess the Fed has some kind of announcement in 2 hours.

4:15

Yeah. So, like, at the tail end of our show. So that's what all the global market participants are all speculating on what a bunch of suits in a room are gonna come to a decision to, and, obviously, Bitcoin fixes that. It's kind of ridiculous how much the global economy hinges on

4:31

their opinions and how they want to proceed.

4:35

Yeah. It's all controlled. The I think Bitcoin,

4:38

the what it's most under, underestimated and and talked about property is

4:44

is apolitical, That's apolitical for an open source money.

4:49

And, as as as when you think about the US petrodollar and,

4:53

world reserve currencies, I've noticed that they've certainly ramped up the the attack on Bitcoin, I would say, which we've we've been seeing a lot of over the past week or so. And

5:04

they're they're terrified of it as a as a as a potential

5:08

option for people to opt out of the financial system into, and, they wanna stagger its growth. So I really feel post halving, this is this is when the gloves come off, and this is when the actual fight happens.

5:20

Before, it was just, you know, some sparring partners with some shit coins or

5:25

some malicious forks or what have you. But now, yeah, the gloves are actually coming off, and this is where we need to get our hands dirty and fight the bastards.

5:32

It really feels like that, doesn't it? Yeah. Certainly. I think what was happening with the SEC, because we're waiting for such a long time for the ETF to get approved, and it was kinda got kinda got to the point where there was no more excuses.

5:45

And I kinda feel that in the background, they had this strategy because they knew as soon as, you know, the the SEC approved these ETFs that all these Wall Street pricks that they they wanna get in Bitcoin. They wanna be involved in Bitcoin.

5:56

And now they have that mechanism to do that. All this liquidity is gonna flush flood into our our little pond.

6:02

And, you know, it's it's too big to regulate. So well, maybe not too big to regulate. But the the the next strategy now is to just try and control Bitcoin,

6:12

and try and, limit the contagion of Bitcoin as, freedoms freedom,

6:17

technology. And and that's what they're focusing on, particularly with their attacks on things like medium of exchange and but that's which is something we'll probably end up talking about because that's the area in which

6:27

I and a couple of others work in.

6:29

Yeah. I mean, we have a lot to chat about.

6:32

I guess well, first of all, shout out to all the freaks who join us in the live chat.

6:38

Easiest way to access it is by going to citadel dispatch.com/stream.

6:43

It's powered by Zap dot stream, which we talked all about yesterday with Kieran.

6:47

For some reason, it seems your Zaps aren't showing up. I I do I have received a couple zaps already.

6:55

They have arrived in my wallet, so don't don't worry. The sats were not lost. I assume Kieran broke something.

7:02

Hopefully, Kieran will fix it. So amazing man. Yeah. I'm being I'm afraid to ping him.

7:08

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's you know, it worked during Kieran's stream. So

7:12

he's like, he he only needs it to work when he's when he's on air. But, when it's when when he's not when when he's not the guest,

7:20

it stops working.

7:22

We were I was just off

7:24

air before before we got started about, sorry. What were we talking about? So, yeah, the the the the thing which,

7:33

oh, yeah. That's it. So delivering lots of content. So, obviously, you've been quite prolific this week. You delivered a lot of content and how satisfying that is and how, within Alan Bits and and the hardware stuff which we work on, I think a lot of the reason we got exposure and a lot of the reason we pulled in a lot of the developers,

7:48

into those projects was because we do a lot of tutorial and workshop videos. And more recently, I haven't I haven't made a video in, like, 4 or 5 months or something. I'm feeling terrible about it. And actually today, I sat down and the thing I was gonna build is a zap lamp, which which you should have. So every time that you get a zap,

8:05

we have a little lamp and it just lights up.

8:07

And it's just connected to a tiny little, you know,

8:11

$3 microcontroller. And that was the workshop which I was sat here, and I was trying to work on all afternoon, but I kept getting distracted.

8:17

So that will be the video which I check out,

8:20

hopefully, tomorrow or the day after. It's a very That's awesome.

8:24

Very easy project. It's like Lego. You know, it's just a couple of jumper cables, and then you can flash the software,

8:29

via the web installer. So you could set one of these things up. You could order the parts off off. I'm looking at cost you about product.

8:36

And then you plug it in. You can flash it, give it your public key,

8:40

and it connects to your Wi Fi. And then every time you get a zap, the light will light up. Up. So you could have that maybe in the background on. So I was just there dispatch. Pretty funky.

8:48

Well, what I think would be kinda cool

8:51

so, like, one of my projects is Bitcoin Park here in Nashville,

8:55

which is a community supported campus

9:00

focused on open source development and and Bitcoin and and now Noster,

9:04

right near the 2 universities. We had these 2 buildings right next to each other with tons of

9:09

rooms. And one of the issues with Bitcoin Park is we're trying to make it sustainable, but we just keep losing money. Like, we've lost a a decent amount of money.

9:17

And, you know, part of it is hopefully,

9:20

as Bitcoin continues to succeed and Bitcoin has continued to succeed, we'll get more and more donations.

9:26

So in, like, the back of my head, I always thought it'd be cool if in, like, every single room, there's, like, 25 rooms. If, like, in every single room, if we got a zap over a certain threshold,

9:36

like, if Bitcoin Park got a zap over you get, like, over 20,000 sad zap or something. Like, the lights flash in every single room. So no matter what you're doing, everyone knows it's like, oh, Bitcoin Park just can keep the lights on. There's a little bit longer.

9:49

Well, we have we have one of so the the the zap lamp,

9:54

maybe it's partly based on the Bitcoin switch. Bitcoin switch is very popular project. It uses the the same little microcontroller,

10:00

and and you can plug it into a relay. And then you have an annual payroll pay, and every time you pay it, you can get it to trigger something, you know, to get something to happen, you know,

10:08

turn something on, turn a vending machine on, or or turn a, a Jacob's ladder, whatever whatever you you know, it's I did it on, I went on Peter McCormack's,

10:16

live show, and I I I tried to hook him up to this electrocution machine so he'd let get it. Then we could have the, LNERO pays on the on the, screen behind us, and then audience members could pay to electrocute us while we were doing our panel discussion if they didn't like what we were saying.

10:33

And one of the updates to that more recently,

10:36

someone asked for, can't remember who it was, but I'd like to give a shout out. But whoever it was, it was a good idea, was that that you have a threshold. So instead of just paying

10:44

a set amount, you set a threshold and you say when it gets to that threshold, then trigger the event. So with the SAP plan, anything's possible.

10:52

That would be a pretty easy thing to implement,

10:54

that you have the the zaps,

10:57

like you say, wait for it to get to a certain amount and then you trigger the event.

11:02

And, yeah, it won't be that hard to add that in. Yeah. Yeah. So So Ben I've I've heard also great things about the,

11:09

what's it called? The the the the park the park you run. Yeah. We would love to have you here sometime.

11:15

Yeah. The Bitcoin park. Yeah. I've had a bunch of hardware dork friends set some stuff up for you. You think an arcade machine?

11:21

Yes. Yes. I mean, we do run an Allen Bits instance, and, the arcade machine is powered by it.

11:27

Nice. I think Yeah. We have a dope arcade machine.

11:32

This guy, George George George.

11:35

George. He invented by the way, he invented LNURAL. In my mind, LNURAL.

11:39

We were at the lightning hack day in New York, and,

11:43

I asked Christian Dacus on stage. I said, I really want because I had a candy machine thing which I was building and had an e paper screen. I thought, this is so goofy. I just want a static ln URL sorry, a static QR code I can pay to. So me and George worked together, and then he hacked into, Eclair. So Eclair would do a get request.

12:00

And then the get request would send back, an invoice. And then the wallet would say, do you wanna pay the invoice? And you'd say yes.

12:06

And then the next day showcased an arcade machine

12:09

with the static QR code on, paying it, and then triggering,

12:14

the the, you know, the coin to go into the arcade machine. George is amazing.

12:17

I actually spoke with him for him and it was him in for quite a while, and we talked about making it into a protocol.

12:23

And I actually I actually wrote I'm not gonna tell you where it is exactly or send you the link, but I actually wrote on the the Bitcoin mailing list,

12:31

a proposal for a standard for, wallets, lightning wallets. So they would, they could do a get request,

12:37

and get an invoice and then pay the invoice. And nobody nobody answered me. The only person who answered me was was Fiat Jaffe. And he said he basically just said that was a shit idea. And it was because they'd already started working on it. They worked on it for, for the channels. And I think he had the LNURO pay thing in his head, and he's like, this fuck is coming up with a similar idea, and he threw the sign off. And that was my first interaction with Fitch, Jeff. And then he goes That's fucking hilarious. Yeah. But George is great, man. I mean, what was really cool is,

13:05

is not that not only that it works. Right? But he, like, built this custom

13:10

case and everything. Like, it's wall mounted. It's beautiful. It's white. It's, like, super clean. It it looks very, very professional, and he custom built it for us at the park.

13:20

Yeah. He takes he takes being a hardware dog to another level. In his house, he has, like, a a milling machine

13:25

for, so he can put in a bit of MDF, and then the milling machine

13:29

will cut out an arcade machine, which you can, like, put together. He also made, one for the,

13:35

what's it called? Jacob crypto.

13:38

They had a, I can't remember the the one with fluffy pony, and, they had a conference in New York. Oh, yeah. What was it, like, magical crypto conference or something? That's it. That's it. That's it. He made an arcade for them with a custom game on,

13:50

with each one of their characters. Yeah. I played that game. Yeah. That's cool.

13:54

Okay, Ben. We've we've we've

13:57

we've gone on quite a adventure here.

14:00

Let's bring it back. Let's bring it back to basics.

14:03

Okay. Why Ellen Bits? What is Ellen Bits? Like, why should people care about your project?

14:10

So

14:11

Alan Bits came from, all the best,

14:15

things you build are informed by real world application and feedback.

14:19

I was working on a bunch of hardware projects, so I made, like, a little DIY point of sale. And we had it in room 77 in Berlin, and York there was accepting payments,

14:28

onto the little point of sale. My problem was, as a developer,

14:32

was that I had I used to make, like, 4 or 5 different versions of each project. 1 for core lightning, 1 for LND, 1 for a clear, 1 for OpenNode, 1 for LMP,

14:42

and some other custodial solutions as well. And I really just wanted some middleware as an API, which which I could put any funding source underneath, and then I could just develop for that middleware the API. And then that would speak to whatever funding source.

14:55

And then if I wanted to, for whatever reason, swap out that funding source wasn't working properly or whatever,

15:01

then it it wouldn't require for me to do any refactoring of my code, and I could just develop one thing. So that was the first, you know, core idea behind it, was just a middleware API.

15:11

The other one was it's funny because York's like this, like, crypto anarchists. Being in Bitcoin, pre Bitcoin, you know, he was fighting the good fight with the crypto wars and cypherpunks back in the day. Amazing guy. One of the most interesting people I've ever met.

15:22

And then he was like, oh, yeah, Ben. Something I really need

15:26

is, like, to export to CSV because I need to pay my taxes on all these beers I'm selling. So it's kinda funny. So he's like, at that point, node implementations is quite hard to identify what payments were. So the idea was it'd be nice to in that middle where when you receive a payment, say, you know, this is the bar,

15:42

and then have an export feature so you can just export CSV, bring it to QuickBooks, whatever.

15:47

So that's another application. And then, also, I really liked

15:52

the kind of when you start with something simple and then you make it more complicated. So I'd I'd use WordPress a lot in the past, and I was always really admired the architecture. You start with a very simple blogging engine. And then depending on what you wanna build it for, you know, if you're sharp or if you're a content creator, or we're selling this, we said we're doing this.

16:08

You just add the extra plug ins in. So I thought it'd be cool for us to have extensions because at that time, you know, like, we have lightning. It's this new amazing protocol. We're all developing all these goofy projects on top of it. Like, I made the first,

16:20

Eleanor withdrawal faucet, and I put it on the Internet, Sinclair Faucet.

16:24

And I didn't open source it. And if I had, it was really messy. And if I did open source it and if I did, like, make it available, like, people would have to go to the repo. They would have to install it. They'd have to, like, install it in whichever wacky way for whatever code base I'm using. So it made sense that all these product all these all these experiments, all these interesting

16:42

ways in which we can utilize these micropayments,

16:45

that they would be a a a sort of set where you could build an extension. And then for the use for the people you wanna share it with, all they need to do if they've got their business installed

16:54

is just install the add the extension and then enable the extension, and that's it. It's just a couple of clicks of a button, and we have access to that functionality.

17:02

Actually, going back to that, New York Hack Day, there was a I can't remember his name, but there was a guy then. He made us a jukebox where you could connect it to your Spotify account,

17:10

and then, you could have a software jukebox.

17:13

And that's one of the first Alan Bits, extensions we made. I reached out to him. He didn't wanna build it. He's busy, but I built it. And then just we just give everyone props in the thing. I think it's very important.

17:22

But, yeah, it's great. You just connect to your Spotify account. You you have a nice UI where you can your use users can select songs, pay for songs, then it it just plays on a device which you specify. So you could just plug in a phone, an old Android phone, or whatever into your bar speakers. And then you have a jukebox, which is amazing,

17:37

and, a very, you know, useful,

17:40

use case for micropayments, digital micropayments because, you know, Visa and all these other networks don't really,

17:45

don't really cater for that. So I go on a tangent. So yeah. So we we it came out of the maker builder community. It was quite interesting because I was actually in in Scotland when it was during COVID when I first started at the project.

17:57

And, I'm in the exact same place right now, which is which is which is cool. I've been back for a while. But, yeah, it was me, Fiat, Jeff, and a co few of us. We kind of cobbled together this piece of software where

18:08

you could use it as like a this is the other thing. Like, we wanted because we go to our conferences and we're we're shelling lightning.

18:14

We wanted a way that people could scan a QR code and then have, like, a funded lightning wallet on their phone. So,

18:19

like a web wallet, you don't have to install any software or anything. If you want, you can install this progressive web app, whatever. Like, you just don't you can just get it open and it's just and you can use it then for the experiences at the conference which we built.

18:30

So those are the concepts. So we just it ended up being

18:34

this very simple, lightning wallet

18:37

which you can certainly receive funds from. You can also make create as many wallets as you want because that was another annoying thing about nodes at that time is you couldn't,

18:45

it was hot. You only had one account. So I built an ATM. And if the ATM's got the the administrative rights to be able to send money to somebody,

18:54

then if I'm using it on my notes, it's gonna have, like, my admin macaroon or something. So, that sucked. So the idea is that you can insulate exposure to funds by having all these multiple wallets, so they've all got their own API keys. So if you start with a simple wallet, And then,

19:06

if you go to extensions, there's then a whole bunch of extensions there which do all sorts of these interesting,

19:11

things. And and the great thing about it for a developer, if you put it in your stack, is,

19:16

every time you install one of those extensions, you then it then comes with its own API.

19:21

So, save your I don't know. We have some casinos using Allen Bits. Right?

19:26

And save one of these Swiss companies. There's a couple of, Swiss these, you know, these these Fiat on and off ramp rails where you have to do KYC.

19:33

There's a few of those which are, building extensions for lmbits.

19:37

Well, like, that API then becomes available to these casinos. They could offer that fee on an on an off ramp via that service to their users

19:45

through their own UI. And, yeah. So it works really well as a as a a piece of software you can put in your stack if you you're building an application on top. And you get you keep getting all these amazing extra bits of functionality

19:56

added in potentially if you wanna install those extensions,

19:59

by these all these extensions being contributed. And then it also just works really well as a web wallet as well. So yeah.

20:05

So it was all it was all informed decision making from, like, real world use case, which is actually how you should build stuff. You know, you should you shouldn't just sit there trying to think of what people might need. You should, you know,

20:17

build something which is useful either for, you know, someone you know who's using this technology or or maybe even yourself who's you you want something. And it's kind of one of those projects where

20:25

as soon as someone wraps their head around how it works and how we can just add these extensions which do different things,

20:31

quite often somebody's got a great idea for an extension.

20:34

And then more often than not, if they haven't got the development,

20:38

ability, then if they just propose that extension to put out there in ether and somebody comes along and we'll just build the extension.

20:45

So yeah. So it's it's like a WordPress for your node. Start with something small, the wallet, and then,

20:51

extend it into whatever direction you wanna extend it in. And, because of that, we've always been,

20:56

because we had PHF as well in the project as well, and he's obviously started the I think our protocol was working on that. We always kind of had, like, the cutting edge,

21:05

Bitcoin lightning stuff. Like, we had all the Alenorale stuff

21:08

integrated into Alenorale bits really early on to be able to build on top of it. We also have the hardware scene because I'm into hardware stuff, and I kind of help everyone to cultivate, like, a build and make a scene in in Bitcoin so that all the hardware dorks, we're all involved in in Alan Bits as well. Pretty much like any guy, like, working on, like,

21:25

random hardware projects. It's usually like Alan Bits at the back end.

21:29

Yeah. Because it's useful. And, like, we've built stuff for ourselves, like the Switch thing, and then there's a gazillion different use cases you can do for that. Right.

21:37

And, it's great, man. Every time I go to a conference I was in Madeira,

21:42

and, what's his name? The b c map guy. Nathan. Nathan?

21:46

He his his daughter was there. She made, like, you know, one of those got one of those claw grabber games where she can get on, like, you know, cheap callback grabs about 30 quid. And she'd retro she just added one of these little microcontrollers, and then you paid to play, and then you got to play at the core grabber game. Like, it's great. This is great what people come up with.

22:03

Couple of people have built vending machines. Oh,

22:07

Lee in so we have a great group. It's on Telegram. But if anyone's interested in joining us, please do. So it's Makerbit's on Telegram.

22:14

Lee, one of the most active users in there, he built this great it's more recently this this it's just an ad board. So it's a little screen.

22:23

And then the idea is you can just send to an L and you're on pay and has comments so you can add the comment in. And when you put the comment in, it will say the thing on the screen, which is cool. But you can also I add an image URL, and it will display the image as well. So the idea is that you could just have pay as you go advertising. So you could maybe have some of these at a conference

22:40

and then have those pays or, like like, for yourself for the park, you could have some of these up. And then if people wanna you know, if there's an event on they know there's an event on, they could pay to advertise on those on those boards. You might get some sketchy stuff on there every now and then, but I don't know how we get around that really in these,

22:56

permissions to build environments. But yeah. I mean and that so the the unit he's built, it's, like this is the other thing. We we always

23:03

probably because we're spending our own money, like r and d ing all this hardware, we we tend to go as low as we can when it comes to the price point.

23:10

So that project, I think, is like $10, you know, to make one of these little boards. And at some point soon, we'll have, like, a web installer for it, and,

23:18

it'll be as easy as I needed the projects to set up.

23:21

So, yeah, the the builder maker scene, I think, in in Lightning and,

23:26

the hardware side is is coming along so much. And that permissionless development,

23:31

that enthusiasm, and that camaraderie between developers is passed on really well into the the Nostra

23:36

ecosystem as well. So

23:38

so, I mean, what I hear is that, like, Ellen Bits kind of had, like, a very iterative process. It started quite simply, and then

23:45

you had this way to make extensions, and then all of these extensions got added on top. How how many extensions are you at at this point?

23:53

We got 40.

23:54

But Okay. I mean, a lot of those have been contributed.

23:57

Maybe 40. 40 3, 4, 5. We got a bunch of them. So but the way it works with Alan Bits is this is amazing. So Vlad Stan, he's the, developer,

24:07

incredibly talented developer who works in lmbits,

24:09

and he built our extension architecture. Because before, we would just package all the extensions into lmbits to kind of pretend that you're just enabling them, but they were just all packaged in. It was kinda bloaty. He pulled them all out. And then so they all live on their own repos. They've got their own issues or in poll requests.

24:24

And then you create a release to the extension. Each extension has a manifest file, so it's a JSON file. You put that in your element bits, and then it gives you access to that,

24:33

extension to install it. However, the the issue is when you install element bits first time, you don't want all these, like, sketchy extensions which haven't been vetted and might be doing something bad. You know? So we maintain,

24:47

in the Allen Bits organization, we maintain, a big manifest file. So if you want it so when you first install LMBits, you get access to, like, 40 extensions.

24:55

Those releases have all been checked by,

24:59

like, at least 3 of the core developers working on LMBits,

25:02

to make sure it's not doing any funky. And when you submit it, you

25:06

you you take a hash of the zip of the release

25:08

so we can verify exactly what is being pulled,

25:12

and what people are installing into their l m bits. So it's it's a very

25:16

it's one of those things which, like, the underlying mechanics of a project. Because, I mean, lmbits was always an amazing application, but for a long time, it was shitty software.

25:25

But now the software has really come along and the architecture of the software has really come along. So so it it's it's,

25:31

it's it fulfills our original promise of your

25:35

those extensions are vetted. If you wanna install some sketchy extension, you can.

25:40

But it means that if you're running out on bits, you're probably just only gonna install, like, 3 or 4 extensions,

25:44

which you need. And, that just minimizes even though we've added the extensions, that always minimizes the attack factor because you've just got less code in your node.

25:54

The the cool thing as well, which, Vlad has been working on more recently. So these extensions get contributed by often by, you know, like, a weekend warrior developer.

26:02

He's, you know, partners bugging him because he's like or she's like, you know, cry grinding away on the the computer outside of work time.

26:10

And, they offer them for free. But, Vlad's actually added no one's built one yet, but we've we've got the it's built out so people can actually charge for extensions. So one of these weekend warriors could build an extension, stick it on, submit it to the vested extension list. It'll be packaged in with, well, you know, it'll be there visible so people can install it with every every element that's installed. And when you go to install it, it will just ask for you to pay x amount, you know, 1,000 sats, 10,000 sats, 20,000 sats. But for a developer, that's really exciting because you can, you know, you can make an extension in a day. And if it's a good idea, you know, there's, what, 1,000 Nellenbits installs out there, and a bunch of them are gonna install it. They might pay, like, 10, 20000 sats each, which I don't think they'd begrudge because they value,

26:51

the extension they're installing. So I feel like added with that added incentive of paid extensions,

26:57

that that will have, like, a bit of a Cambrian explosion when it comes to people

27:01

developing extensions and other bits. But we had to build 1, because we've all been too busy, but that's on the list of things to do is build a paid extension to show that it's possible to charge for extensions.

27:12

Yeah. Kinda like an app store. Yeah. So, basically, like, we're not reinventing the wheel.

27:18

We're just following WordPress. We just copy WordPress. That's how WordPress works. You know? They're just free extensions, paid extensions.

27:24

Yeah. And if you want, you can install some sketchy extension, you know, which someone passes you over in a Telegram group, but they recommend that you don't do that. You know?

27:32

So, I mean, we have,

27:35

so at its core, like, Ellen Bits is like

27:42

like, a programmable custodial wallet, right, that people can self host.

27:47

Well, that's the that's the other thing. So the the one of the sorry, because there's so many, like No. There's so many there's so many elements which go into making while embeds became the big thing was, like, me and Fitger for that time, you know, we're running notes and stuff. And we're like, this this is hard. People aren't are gonna struggle with this, and we we need an Uncle Jim model.

28:03

And at that time, there was OpenNode and LMP.

28:06

So there wasn't really, like, a diverse choice in custodians you could use. So the idea was you could decentralize the custodianship in the if you make this thing easy for anyone to run, they could run it for themselves, their families, small community, or the whole world if they want to, or they could run it for a business.

28:22

But the great thing about it is, when we move

28:27

to nodes being easier to run, which I strongly feel we will one day get to,

28:32

Alan Bits, you know, works great if you're just using it for yourself, like Right. And, and running it yourself. So we just work hard trying to make it as easy as possible for people to run themselves, and we recommend that people run it themselves rather than you somebody else's. But, yes, you can offer, like, a custodial open node type solution

28:49

to the world if you want to. So first of all,

28:52

you know,

28:55

good memes are are viral and and and

28:59

copied and and have a life of their own,

29:03

similar to open source software. So I don't pretend to have ownership

29:07

over this particular meme, but,

29:09

I do I do have a very strong claim that I invented the term uncle Jim.

29:16

Oh. And it was on Rabbit Hole recap. It was on podcast.

29:20

I do not have an uncle named Jim, because I don't wanna dox any of my uncles. So I it was the first name that came to mind.

29:27

And we were just having a conversation. And I will say that when I originally

29:32

coined the term, I was not referring to

29:36

custodial services. It has kind of moved into this custodial realm,

29:42

is is is how the community has kind of taken it. But, originally, it was like running an Electrum server.

29:48

It was, you know, running, like, different back end stuff that wasn't necessarily, like, holding custody of funds. I think that it does.

29:56

It it changes it changes

29:59

the liability responsibility that you are sharing with community members,

30:04

whether that is a family member, like an uncle or, you know, some kind of community leader.

30:10

You know, I maybe where Bitcoin currently stands right now,

30:15

self custody tools need to, you know, greatly improve, and they have greatly improved, but maybe they need to improve further.

30:22

But me me personally, like, originally, like, it was like, you know, someone ran the node, and this was on chain. Right? Like, maybe not everyone's running a node, but someone's actually running the node, keeping an actual copy of the blockchain, verifying everything.

30:36

And then people connect back to that is, like, a way a way for us to scale in in the short term. And then with Lightning

30:43

and the difficulties with running self custody Lightning, particularly, like, just the

30:49

just the core foundational difficulties of liquidity management

30:53

and on chain fee burden, it's kind of morphed into a little bit of

31:00

a custodial meme, which is a little bit odd. But I I just felt like it's worth it's worth mentioning how that kind of came about.

31:08

Yeah. And I still I'm amazed when I just hear people just say uncle Jim. Like, it's just like, I literally just came up with it in a random fucking episode, like, 3 years ago or something like that. That's very nice. You need to you need to write a Wikipedia article. See if that's I mean, I don't really care. I don't need to have, someone someone out there needs to do a Wikipedia article. Good memes shouldn't be owned.

31:26

There's, like, a bunch of people trying to, like, trademark StayHumbleStacks ads. Like, they can all go fuck themselves. Like, I'm not gonna defensively trademark it.

31:33

No. But you can it's nice to have a historical claim that I came up with that thing. I mean, look, I I know it, and that's enough.

31:41

I know it, and that's enough, and and people can go back and verify if they want. All the records are out there in the public.

31:47

Yeah. I mean, so we have we have, a bunch of Ellen Bits users, and they'll install Ellen Bits, and, like, their kids will just have wallets on their Ellen Bits node, you know,

31:57

on their server. So that that Yeah. I mean, if it's make sense. You know? If it's a father gym model,

32:03

you know, maybe, like, that makes more sense. Like, they literally have custody of the children too. Like, the whole child is a custodial relationship.

32:11

Yeah. I don't know I don't want my uncle to be able to rug me. Like, to me, personally, like, that's that's a bridge too far. And if I'm the uncle, which you I usually, in these conversations, we're the uncle.

32:23

Like, I don't wanna be able to rug my nephew.

32:25

No. And I don't wanna have that. I like, what if I accidentally rug him? Yeah. It's not it doesn't even have to be intentionally malicious. Like, what if I fuck something up and he loses his money? Like, I don't want that on me. I just wanna verify the chain and provide, you know, basic services to my family and my community.

32:43

Well, this is this is the great thing about lmbits,

32:46

is that, yes, you can use it in that way,

32:48

but it works great if you're just running it yourself. And then, ultimately,

32:52

for me, that's the goal is everyone runs any you know, we don't want any trusted third parties. No one should have a trusted third party. They run all of their own shit, and we just make it easier to run. When it comes to lightning and running a lightning node, like,

33:05

human beings don't tackle things until they're real problems.

33:09

So having, like, low a synthetic low fee environment because the whole world isn't using Bitcoin Right. Means that no one really worked on scaling Lightning, things like channel factories,

33:20

sufficiently. And, also, just like so, like, a good example is in lmbits. If you install lmbits on a lightning note, like an LND or a clair or c lightning, there's a node manager in there. So you can go in there. You can open a channel. You can connect peers. You can do that sort of shit in there. The reason we added that, right, it wasn't because, you know, we're trying to be feature rich. It was just because we had

33:41

a certain node management piece of software, which I don't wanna diss on too much, but it's kind of bloaty. And every time we spun it up, it would crash our server because it's so bloaty.

33:49

And we're like, okay. So now we have to build our own node manager. And this is like this is about a couple of years ago. And I'm thinking at that point in time, I was like,

33:56

how have we got to this point where there isn't a decent node management UI to the point where we're having to build our own node management UI into Ellen Bits. Like,

34:05

that just it shows how how much more we need to build

34:09

on on bit on Lightning. And then so, like, more recently when we we did have some high fees from the ordinal stuff,

34:16

people started, like, this that great project, Bolt. Like, Bolt almost died as a project.

34:20

And then when, we started to get high fees, people realized actually how powerful Boltz is for looping funds in and out of, Lightning to balance channels.

34:30

And because of that, if that project's thrived and now it's a very important part of, you know, any sophisticated node management,

34:37

topology, like using, autumn you know, swaps,

34:41

trustless swaps, It's a very powerful tool, and now they have liquid to lightning support. So you can hold a liquid balance.

34:48

And then to swap into lightning, it costs, like, you know, 100 sats or something. So for balancing channels, it's great.

34:56

And, again, in other bits, now we're gonna have to build in into our node manager,

35:01

because we have a Bolt's extension because DNI, Bolt's developer, also works in other bits.

35:07

So, anyway, we show this great Bolt's extension. So now we will build that into the node manager at some point so we can have some sort of automatic channel rebalancing

35:15

mechanism, and probably build in a liquid wallet as well. But, yeah, it's humans not really working on stuff until it's a real necessity, and scaling is one of them. So when humans have all these Bitcoin when we haven't worked on scaling

35:26

lightning, And then when we suddenly

35:29

hit, you know, high fees, and everyone goes, oh, Lightning doesn't work. It's broken. It's too hard to run. It costs me too much subchannels.

35:35

It's like, no. We haven't built that shit. Like, we're 5% in. We've done 5% of the work. There's 95% more work to do.

35:41

So

35:42

I agree. First of all, on talking about,

35:47

pressure, basically, every dispatch is a a a live pressure test of ZapStream.

35:54

So I messaged I messaged Kieran during this episode, and he's fixed zaps. Zaps are showing now. And as you can see on the screen, the zaps that previously came in are also showing.

36:05

So shout out to Kieran for for fixing zaps, and thank you, Freaks, for continuing to support the show.

36:11

I I agree on the fee environment thing too. I mean, there was people, like, 8 months ago just 8 months ago, people that should have known better were, like, operating under the assumption that we'd have 1 sapper bite forever,

36:26

which is fucking insane to the point where, like, I was getting shit on for being like, no. Fees are gonna go up. Like, I thought we all agreed that this makes

36:34

complete logical sense. Like, what do you guys just live in in a completely

36:38

illogical world that you think fees will always clear? And now people are starting to realize that.

36:43

But with all this said right.

36:46

It's it's fucking awesome how easy it is to self host Ellen Bits,

36:50

and a lot of people do it, including myself in the park. I do it for the park.

36:56

The you also have a demo server,

37:00

which I guess is you guys are hosting it, and and some people have built stuff on top of that. But where I'm going is we have Tony in the live chat. One of the coolest parts about dispatch

37:08

is our live chat, is our ride or die freaks. We have Tony Georgio of immunity wild in live chat. And he's asking,

37:14

I really hope the trend of people trying to run custodial services on top of Ellen Bids ends before more people lose money. What is your response to Tony?

37:24

Run it yourself. Like, well, this is the reason we make it easy to run yourself is,

37:29

because we don't want people using other people's Allen bits installs.

37:33

We want we want people to run themselves. So our demo server, which we've had, running for 4 years,

37:39

that runs our dev branch. And we do testing stuff on there. We test stuff on there.

37:44

And we've consistently said to people, please never use this thing with real funds. But you know what people are like? They want something which is easy, and then they end up using it. So we keep saying, please don't use this thing. Please don't use this thing. Please don't use this thing. And no one listens to warnings. It doesn't matter. No one listens to warnings. And then

38:00

yeah. And then so we had a a a recent episode where,

38:03

we were testing something on the demo server, and then we lost some money. And we're like, we have to turn around to everybody and say, look. It's a demo server. It's fucked. We have to reset the demo server. And everyone's really frustrated, and they're like, wait. You shouldn't be using this thing in production. Like, please don't use it in production. That's why there's all these disclaimers all over it saying don't use this thing.

38:22

So, but, anyway, from that experience, it's been very cool, actually. We've built a whole bunch of unit tests for AlanBits off the back of it. And then, also, the idea is now is how do we build Alan Bits to the point where even if you go in and, like, hack around with some of the core files and then fucked it up,

38:38

you know, on your own install, if you if that's the way you're inclined, you wanna pack away,

38:44

then can we have, like, a whole bunch of security gatekeeping features

38:48

where even with a compromised

38:51

core install of a corrupted Allen bits, they could only ever take too many too much funds. You know? It only ever take a certain amount of funds. So there's a whole bunch of stuff which we're building around that. Yeah. But I personally lost some money on on our demo server and because I'd I'd put money into,

39:05

to make the node, you know, liquid so we could have, like, decent channels and stuff. So, personally, for me, it stung even though I was pre you know, every time every single go back to any talk I've ever done. I'm gonna do this. You know, I'm doing a talk. I'm like, right. Well, I'm gonna use a demo server. It's just a demo server. It's just for testing. Please don't use it with real funds.

39:21

And then and the amount of people I would bump into and like, at a conference, and they say, I'll build this thing. And I'm like, oh, you're running your own bits. They'll be, oh, I'm using the demo server. I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? Please run your own bits.

39:32

Don't use the demo server. So, people say that that demo server should be running on testnet, but I'm like, I kinda feel that it should

39:41

nothing's really tested until it's run on mainnet.

39:44

So, yeah. So we've gone and we've added a whole bunch of more disclaimers to make it even more obvious that people shouldn't use it.

39:50

But, yeah, it was it was an unfortunate and sad episode, which was bound to happen,

39:55

at some point. Do you see Tony's response? Tony, by the way, if you wanna, like,

39:59

if you wanna join us in the audio portion, you're welcome to

40:05

come join us. You're always welcome.

40:08

But Tony Tony's like he's saying it's not really his concern isn't really necessary demo server situations,

40:15

but, like, real like like, Bitcoin Park. Right? It's like Bitcoin Park is running in Ellen Bits, And then, like so someone somewhere is self hosting Ellen Bits.

40:25

And then they're building on top of that, and they're building, like, some massive

40:30

custodial service. Well, like, how do you think about that? I mean, obviously, like, you're building up for a software. You have, like, people can run it. Totally. This is beat beat beat it's beta software,

40:41

and

40:42

a lot of software rolls out in Bitcoin,

40:45

and claims, you know, to be production ready, and it's not. So we're not we've never claimed to be production ready.

40:51

This is why we pulled out all those extensions. So we can actually go

40:55

like stick. He works on Ellen Bits, Satoshi Labstick sometimes, and he's got a whole bunch of, you know, charcoal motherfuckers in in Prague who we're gonna give it to them to audit core, element of core and really try and probe and attack it in every which way direction. And we're gonna do that regularly.

41:11

At some point, when we get that for us is when we we step out into production. Right?

41:17

But the the one of the things which people find valuable with something like Allen bits is any

41:22

piece of software you build on top of a lightning node offering some sort of service on the Internet or whatever,

41:28

or offering to to users. Out the gate is gonna come with a whole bunch of vulnerabilities, which a lot of us already know about.

41:36

So there's we've we've run our own server, and we've been testing the software for, what, like, 4 years now? So you've got 4 years' worth of hardening. You've got these extra security tools you're building, so rate limiters,

41:48

IP blockers, a watchdog tool which we've been working on, which is where

41:53

you keep an eye on the node funds. And if the, you know, if the comparison between node funds and the funds on your LLM bits becomes too disjointed, it will shut the server.

42:01

Kill switches, and then a whole bunch of other stuff which we're gonna build. Because we realized so we added some security stuff.

42:08

I mean, obviously, it's been hardened and, you know, we've always been developing out of it, so it'd be as as as as you could trust the software so you're not gonna lose funds.

42:17

But we then started adding some just some security features to it just, you know, just for our own peace of mind. And now that's kind of becoming a big part of LMB. It's like I said, like,

42:26

you want something which has multiple gatekeepers, so you have rate limits on how much a wallet can can can spend a day or a user can spend a day or,

42:35

how many users can be created. Like, all this stuff is built into

42:39

you know, if you look at, I don't know, any traditional

42:43

service on the Internet, whether it's money transmission or whatever, like,

42:47

they will build all that stuff into it. But it it it it's with adam bits being free in open source, you can pull that in and you can just benefit from all those security features immediately.

42:57

And the the software itself, you know, we have, like, development branch. We have a main branch. We have release candidates. So we work on the development branch, and then we create a release candidate. And then we test the software. We run on things like the demo server. Lots of other people test it for us, which is amazing. And then only when we're certain that it's it's even though it still beats software, even though we're certain when we're certain that it's, stable and no one's gonna lose any money and it hasn't got any vulnerabilities,

43:19

that's when then it gets merged into main. And then when we merge into main, we then create a release for it.

43:24

So being in beta, like, you know,

43:27

this is funny because we're in beta, and, technically, that's a position where you can be a bit more reckless and move faster with software. But,

43:35

because people are using the software in probably ways they shouldn't,

43:39

and, treating it like production ready software,

43:42

We we've become very conservative when it comes to our our development,

43:46

model and, and approach as well. So I mean, I imagine

43:50

I imagine you feel a lot of pressure with that. Like, there's gotta be a lot of pressure there. Like, how do you do you guys have, like, a vulnerability disclosure process? Like, how, like, how does that work? I mean, if you have It's like, 40 extensions that you're, like, kind of vetting and approving

44:06

So with an extent and this is the so yeah. Good point. So with extensions,

44:10

we need a permissions system, I think, with extensions where it can only create invoices or it can only read or it can or it can,

44:18

pay out as well. So that that would be a a good way to limit what an extension can actually do.

44:24

But because the extensions are quite simple and the framework's pretty simple, it's it's easy to look through an extension to make sure it's not doing anything funky.

44:32

Only when it starts spending money, you know, if you got, like, an lnurl withdraw type extension.

44:36

And then you need to go in and make sure the big thing with lnurl stuff is race conditions. It's always been race conditions. And,

44:44

again, if you build an ln URL with draw system on on top of your own into your own software stack, you're probably gonna have race conditions in there,

44:51

because channel like, fixing some of that stuff is hard and making it work well is hard.

44:57

So, you know, we we we know what we're looking for, and then it takes 3 people, 3 of the core devs, to vet an extension

45:04

and then, merge it into the vested extension list.

45:08

And it's not if it if it's an extension in particular which can spend funds, it's not something we take lightly. Like, it it we we comb through that code. And, actually, this is what slows

45:18

the submission of extensions down a lot is the fact that,

45:23

you know, someone someone contributes an extension, which is great functionality,

45:28

but the the code is quite bloaty, and it's, like, more or less it's really hard to kind of look through all the code and then vet it. So

45:35

that experience for us as well, you know, we've we've we're we're building,

45:39

in the vested extension, there's a whole bunch of, like, you know,

45:42

advisories that if you actually wanna get your extensions vetted, that the code needs code needs to be clean. You know, I need to have linting. You know, you need to

45:49

format the the the code so we can read through it easily. And then I think more of that stuff is gonna become mandatory,

45:55

maybe to the point where each one of like, because our our own extensions, which we maintain, again, we have, you know,

46:02

3 people need to approve something before it gets merged in, and,

46:05

you need to be able to see, like, well written PRs in start extensions.

46:09

So often with the extensions, like, the big the the large majority of the work is when they submit that first version.

46:15

But then when they submit a new version of that extension to the vetted extension list,

46:20

we can check the change log, and we can see, you know, what they've changed. And then that becomes a little bit easier.

46:26

But, yeah, it's a very time consuming bit of work,

46:29

vetting those extensions. But there's ways in which we can make that easier. You know, we can,

46:35

there's ways in which we can because often in in other bits, there's a lot of code duplication.

46:39

A lot of that could be replaced with, you know, some configuration JSON

46:43

file or what have you. But it's

46:46

a it's a it's a constant learning process,

46:50

which just creates, you know, a hardened piece of software, which you which you can use. But, obviously, still now we are in beta, so use it with caution and limit the amount of extensions you install.

47:00

And, you know, please don't use the dev branch unless, you know, you wanna

47:05

help test, on a on a on a on a server or,

47:09

or you're just, you know, reckless or whatever. Just please just use the the releases which we release because a lot of work goes into those.

47:16

Do you get a lot? Yeah. It's like it's like if you're making fucking hardware wallets, you know, if you're, like, building trezels, if you're building card cards or whatever,

47:23

like, that's scary, you know, the amount of money in which people pop out. Anything you touch anything that touches money, man, is extra scary.

47:30

Yeah. And developing for it is really scary. So it's it's it's it's it there is definitely, like, a lot of responsibility on our shoulders.

47:39

But, yeah, it's that's just part of Bitcoin, isn't it? That's just, you know, that's the thing we work on. Yeah? Do you get a lot of vulnerability disclosures? I mean, I assume you must.

47:48

No. Not really. So we have, this is all part of the the the thing in which we've been building out. So, yeah, we have we are like, with this one on the demo server, you know, it didn't affect any other installs,

47:58

it's something we have written a disclosure for which we're about to publish. In the past, they were always

48:04

it's kinda like if we're testing vulnerabilities on our if we're testing the stuff on our demo server and then we find a vulnerability but doesn't actually touch anyone else's server,

48:14

Like, there's there's not really many point in in saying what the vulnerability is. So we haven't had any of those.

48:21

But we have so we haven't had any, you know, vulnerabilities outside of that because that's our testing environment. Right?

48:28

So when it comes to, disclosing vulnerabilities, it's something we're working on is is is is create a better disclosure process,

48:35

and documenting them as well. So this will be our first. Like, even though, again,

48:40

no no one should have been running that software apart from us,

48:44

then, we're still gonna disclose it because, you know, people are kind of annoyed that the demo server went down, which was in myself included.

48:53

But That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So it's all it's all part of the process. It's all part of the learning process.

49:00

Yeah. I mean, you're kinda figuring it out as you go.

49:03

Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, it's so, like, as I said, Ellen Bits was always an amazing application sheet software.

49:08

Now the software has caught up to the application. It's become a really good business piece of software.

49:12

And that's off the, you know, blood, sweat, and tears,

49:15

from the incredibly talented people working out of it. It's more and more

49:19

I'm redundant. I'm like Gavin and Treason. Like, I'm this you know, I Maybe a bad metaphor.

49:25

But I'm I I mean, in the in the I'm just I'm not as talented as the other people working on L&Bitt stuff. So, like, I should just focus on working on some creating some fun extensions and the the, you know, the content, you know, creating the video content, creating some proof of concept type stuff. But when it comes to actually developing on core,

49:43

like, I have to and this is cool as well. Like, how you know,

49:47

I started the project and, for a long time, I was kinda, like, lead maintaining the project, I suppose. But now, like,

49:54

I really have to, like, work very hard to get committed,

49:58

and and to get, like, people to agree to merge a bit. My because usually my code's a bit shitty, so they they come back with loads of requests for me to change it.

50:05

So then I have to change that code. So as a as a project, I think

50:09

this is the coolest thing about with the free open source project, when you get to the point where you become made redundant because it's pulled in so much other talent, you know.

50:19

And you have to kind of, like, reassess what you're where you are in the project and where you can contribute and add value.

50:26

And for me, it's probably the, you know, workshops,

50:29

going to conferences, doing workshops, videos, tutorials, those sorts of things, shelling the great work which people do. But when it comes to actually contributing to core, yeah, I'm pretty redundant now.

50:38

Ben, did added something. It took me fucking ages to get it in.

50:42

Ben Ben, did you hit your mic or something? Like, I'm hearing, like, mic interference or You're on my face. Sorry. There we go. I was rubbing. Okay. Yeah. I didn't wanna stop you. You're on a roll.

50:53

Yeah. But, I mean, like, Alan Bits, great stuff comes out of Alan Bits. So,

50:56

one of the yeah. One of the one of the extensions I was working on here

51:01

was a marketplace extension when I was in Scotland when we first started Ellen Bits, and it was Diagon Alley. And this idea was a resistance. So I I like the the Pirate Bay model in that you can't take Pirate Bay down because people just keep spinning up Pirate Bay. So I thought it'd be cool if, you know, with marketplaces

51:15

where, the marketplace itself is a very dumb front end client,

51:19

and then the data is sort of maintained and stored by the the user, the merchant, and the customer.

51:27

And there's this idea of sensory resistance, fire resilience.

51:30

And, again, no one cared about this idea apart from PHR. I thought it was cool.

51:34

And, that, had a hand in the development of of Nosta. So, you know, Nosta generalizes some of those concepts

51:41

out. And, so as soon as the, you know, Nosta

51:46

project kicked off, I was I was I was in there straight away, and I was working on Noster things. Oh. But it's kinda great that

51:53

Go on. Ellen Bits, you know, in history had

51:56

had that that was was was helped

51:59

the creation of something like Noster.

52:03

Yeah. So I wanna

52:04

I wanna talk about Noster. But before we talk about Noster, we've done about an hour on Ellen Bits. I wanna,

52:12

I want what is the future

52:15

what what does the future hold for Ellen Bits? Like, how do you think about Ellen Bits going forward? Hardening, man. Just like I think building out so one of their security tools we've added is to use we don't got a UK user manager feat,

52:27

Dash yet. So DNI has built this incredible user manager dash partly off the back of this,

52:32

exploit we had in the demo server, because we wanna be to be able to easily see all the wallet balances and then see if there's like a random wallet we shouldn't have in, you know.

52:41

You wanna be able to, like, easily flick through wallet balances. So that's being built out,

52:46

but it's more hardening and then and just just creating making the the code more cleaner and then also making it you just gotta make it really easy for people to contribute extensions. I think I would like to see some,

52:56

kind of easy config JSON files, which do a lot of the building of an extension. There's actually 2 versions of alambis running for a while. Fairjaff made a Go version as well, which used Lua files to build Lua files to build, extensions.

53:08

And that was really cool, like, you could because you could rapidly prototype an extension in, like, you know, half an hour. And that's kind of where I wanna see extensions get to.

53:17

So just more of more of the same, really. And then, building up the secure the security suite as well.

53:25

And, I I personally have a big passion for Nix,

53:30

and The secure hardened Linux distro?

53:34

Yeah. Reproducible builds. So if you're running if you're running software on computers and it's money software, you generally want it to run-in the way which the developers intended.

53:44

So, we had a Next developer NextOS developer help us,

53:49

build the flight for lmbits. And,

53:52

because you have this this amazing project, which is, Nix Bitcoin, which which not enough people care about, but they really should care about it because it's the we have all these different node implementations,

54:01

and all these different approaches for running nodes.

54:04

The issue is that the software runs, you know, using Dockers. And with next, like, the the reason it's declarative and reproducible is because every single dependency,

54:13

you need to specify versions. So if we're pulling in like a dozen dependencies into Allen bits, quite often in software and this is quite scary when you think. You'll say this version of this dependency or anything higher is fine.

54:27

And then when it builds the software, depending on what other software is on your computer,

54:30

it will then, you know, go fetch version of that dependency or or whatever dependency fits in with the other dependencies.

54:38

And that's scary because then you're you're effectively running root, which no is vetted.

54:42

Someone could have taken control, and this has happened in Bitcoin before. Someone could have taken control of one of those dependencies and added an exploit in there.

54:49

With Nix, you have to specify exactly

54:51

which version of each dependency you're using. So that's very important. Right?

54:55

If you're running money software, it needs to be declarative and reproducible. And for me, it's a big passion of mine that I think that the ultimate node for me is a NICS based node.

55:04

One of the things we built for Bitcoin plus plus in Berlin last year was a demo,

55:09

used bit because NICS Bitcoin has all these main likes. So that's by Jonas Nick, the,

55:14

Yep. Nikola, the the the the core developer who's one of the the brightest people I've ever met.

55:20

And he he's the the lead maintainer on Chip. But he's got some great Bitcoin as he would and and and help help

55:25

maintain all those flakes. The idea is that you could just literally,

55:28

as a node, you can just piggyback off nix Bitcoin.

55:33

And all we are doing is adding a UI

55:36

so people can easily enable and enable different features of the software, which is on Nex Bitcoin. So you have BT pay server and Idle Lightning and Electrum and a bunch of other pieces of software on on on core whatever on, on next Bitcoin. So we actually built into this was this was me, like, partly trolling Christian Ruzel because I think Raspberry Place is my favorite Node project. And I was like and they have all these Bash scripts for running all this software. And I'm like, can you please just use Next? Because I because if you try and run NextOS on your computer, like, it's the experience is gonna suck because it's kinda complicated. It's gonna be hard for you as a user. Unless you're

56:10

a techy user, then it's great. But if you're running a node, there's a very specific piece of

56:12

hardware and software you're running on. It's using a particular piece of hardware you're using,

56:16

installing particular software. So we made a a UI. So in Allen Bits, you literally just had, you know,

56:23

apps as a menu item when you clicked on it. And then you had, like, b t c pay server. And then when you clicked, like, install, it just would go over to nix bitcoin,

56:32

pull in the flake, rebuild the system, and then, boom, you got p c p server.

56:36

I'm not sure whether that's something lmbits should do,

56:40

as a as a piece of software because, generally, we're kind of higher in the stack. But I certainly would like to, you know,

56:48

encourage some other node, system or build or whatever to like, Raspberry Blitz to switch to a NICS based system.

56:56

And I so so that's something I really wanna see is is is people yes. We'll build that out so it works.

57:02

And then, ideally,

57:04

it should be a simpler, more cleaner UI, you know, without the the whole of Alan Bits installed,

57:10

for to to have that experience. But that's something I personally wanna see, this year being built out because I think it'd be very powerful.

57:17

I

57:20

Civil dispatch episode 42,

57:22

back catalog of Civil dispatch, was all about Nix Bitcoin.

57:27

Sweet. And if I recall correctly,

57:30

I think we might have done, like, 45 minutes of troubleshooting to get them

57:35

their audio to work, because they were running next.

57:39

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Well, you're you're not gonna do a booking podcast on your own, are you? That's that's this is what I'm saying. Like, it's so

57:47

funny. I was like, I appreciate Nix. Nix is good. Maybe you should go to the Apple Store, buy a MacBook just for this episode, return it afterwards. But we got it we got it sorted, and they I think they might have come in by their phone, but it was a really good conversation. So if you haven't listened to that, still dispatch 42 way back in the analogs of,

58:06

of dispatch history. Ben,

58:09

one more question for you. I have one, but On on that, I would just like to say that I think that next Bitcoin is the most important project in Bitcoin, and everyone should definitely go check it out. Just just one more More important than Bitcoin Core.

58:21

Okay. Not that's important. It's Bitcoin Core. Fair enough. But you made an absolute I've got Bitcoin. Oh, yeah. You caught me there. Once you do thousands of hours of podcast, you know no absolutes. You stop making absolutes.

58:34

The I was just being a dick. I was being a little bit of a dick there. NYX is is everyone should check out NYX. It's an incredibly important project in general, and the NYX Bitcoin

58:42

as a derivative that is Bitcoin focused

58:45

is quite awesome. And I do agree with Ben that rasp the Raspberry Pi Blitz project is

58:49

fucking badass. And there's a episode with them as well.

58:54

But I'm not Stefan, so I don't remember the exact episode numbers. I actually looked up which one was Nick's while he was talking about it. But, anyway, Ben, one last thing on Ellen Bits

59:04

before, we move on to Noster because I love Noster, and I really wanna talk about Noster.

59:13

You know, one of the things that I've been really focused on,

59:17

and I've spent hours

59:20

and 1,000 maybe 1,000 hours, probably a 1000 hours cumulative,

59:24

maybe more, actually, focused on this

59:28

problem, which is the sustainability of open source projects. And and,

59:34

you know, we have opensats.org now that's providing,

59:39

providing grants, a 100% pass through grants to open source projects. But open source projects have difficulty. Open source projects are beautiful because they're viral in nature. No one controls them. Mhmm.

59:50

And and there you can build on top of them without permission and you can constantly iterate and improve.

59:58

But there are issues with sustainability in terms of

1:00:01

funding, support, getting contributors. How do you think about, like, sustainability of the Ellen Bits project, like, going forward? Like, how you how you keep it going? How you make it

1:00:11

possible that this is actually, like, a generational project and not just

1:00:15

a 5 year, 10 year project that kinda

1:00:18

fades?

1:00:19

Yeah. No. That's a very good question. So a massive shout out to OpenSats.

1:00:23

And, we actually made a point of adding them to the to the the GitHub repo. And then also,

1:00:28

if you download and install element bits in the supported by section, which has,

1:00:33

like, a a link to our shop where we sell some hardware stuff to try and make a little bit of money, We also have an affiliate with, Trezor, so we have that there. And then the other one is OpenSats, you know. So a huge shout to OpenSats because they gave us a grant.

1:00:44

And, we have built so many great things off the back of that grant.

1:00:49

And, I think the OpenSats project, for that reason, is so incredibly important,

1:00:55

to fund all these open source developers. And there are business cases for a lot of these open source projects,

1:01:00

but you need to get the software kind of built and then also build, like

1:01:05

again, for us, not reinventing the wheel. It's WordPress. You know, like, the WordPress

1:01:11

maintains a a good relationship with the free and open source community in WordPress because they they never did that thing where they they they create a business. This often happens with great free and up well, less so now, but it happened a lot in the past with free and up great free and open source projects, is they would create a business and they would create this, like, enterprise version of the software and then a community version. And then the community version is the shitty version, and it pisses off all the free and up resource developers who use all that. And And then the enterprise version is like this paid version, and it costs loads of money. So but WordPress managed to get the balance right in the they have this free enterprise software, which you can easily go run. You can run it yourself, and then you can access all its features.

1:01:47

However, you can go to wordpress.com and spin up a WordPress if you want. So they have, like, a software as a service, solution. So we have that in Alan Bits. We have we've been building out this. Again, we've been testing,

1:01:58

we've been in testing for, like, a year. But it's we have a Kubernetes cluster, and then you can provision an Allen bits install. It costs 21 sats an hour, which at one point was $5 a month, but now it's probably about 20 or $30. It's actually really expensive.

1:02:11

But, so we need to bring that down. But the the yeah. So you can go spin up an Allen bits there, and then just pay hourly. So you have an l m and you'll pay for that. The the user experience of actually spinning up an l m bits, just the UI

1:02:23

is a bit shit. I I mean, it's not shit. It's a mate. It's good. But we've we've again again, we've built so Vlad's built this incredible, like, user experience for logging in and then being able to manage all your lmbits installs.

1:02:35

That's cool. Like, I've spun up lmbits before just for a meetup. And I spun it up for 2 hours, and then I've killed the server.

1:02:42

So I've used it to, like, you know, power some gizmos or whatever, and then I've killed the service draft. And that's the I I like the idea of these, like, ephemerals

1:02:50

instances, which you can just Right. Spin up and crush. Yeah. People use that. That's great. So that's our wordpress.com,

1:02:56

you know, spin up WordPress. The other way in which the

1:03:00

the because we have a business on for LMBits, LMBits Inc,

1:03:04

and the the the products which we we just copy in WordPress, we have the marketplace of extensions.

1:03:10

We vet those extensions, and the majority of them are free. We have this paid extension system we've built.

1:03:16

If you put in a paid extension to the vetted extension list,

1:03:20

the, you know, the Allen bits vetted extension list, then we take take 10% of you know, if someone pays 10,000 stats, we'll take 10% of that. We haven't actually built a paid extension yet, but, again, I mean, so for for WordPress, the company It's like the Apple App Store model kinda. Yeah. Kind of. Terms.

1:03:36

Yeah. And, like, you can just yeah. Exactly. And, actually, you can go use somebody else's list of vetted extensions if you want to.

1:03:43

But we're kind of in that position where, you know, being the organization and being the developers actually work on the software that we can maintain this list of extensions.

1:03:51

And then Ellen Bits Inc would then get the 10% of those,

1:03:54

of those of those sales for those extensions. So it's basically like WordPress. You know? Like, you have the everyone can access that, those vetted plugins.

1:04:03

But, WordPress take a cut of that. And Automattic, the company which owns WordPress, that's a $7,500,000,000

1:04:08

company. Like, it's got a small company. And it got there nice in a really nice organic

1:04:13

way, over, you know, over a decade or a couple of decades.

1:04:19

And so yeah. So I think Alan Bits is a very has a very sustainable,

1:04:24

potential business arm built on it.

1:04:27

And, we are actually going for a seed raise.

1:04:31

We we're very modest as well. We don't

1:04:33

we're not. I see a lot of companies in Bitcoin land where they get these huge raises, and then they kinda chase their own tails trying to build big companies and employing too many people. And we're not like that. We're all kind of old, and we don't wanna fuck around with any of that. We just wanna build the the products and then roll out products and and refine them. So we we're just we're just with our seed. We're just going for enough to do that, which is,

1:04:55

a lot less than a lot of other companies ask for when it comes to razors. But that would be for Ellen Bits Inc.

1:05:02

And, this is a nice transition actually into the nosta stuff. Ionnostar.com.

1:05:07

And, Do you own nostar.org

1:05:10

as well? I own nastar.org as well. I'm like a nastar domain troll. We'll talk about that in a moment. Okay.

1:05:16

But it's like,

1:05:19

what do I do with this nafstar.com thing? And I'm thinking I wanna kind of offer service. I want, like, a a relay service so you can pay $5 a month to spin up a relay, something like that. Right? So we have it. So in our end bits, as I said, like, we we tend to build out stuff quickly.

1:05:32

And, like, early on sorry. Early on with Nosta,

1:05:36

we built a a relay extension. So you can do it's a one click relay, and you can actually charge people to use that relay. It has a,

1:05:42

you can have an allow list for,

1:05:44

for public keys and a a Through Allen Bits.

1:05:47

Through Allen Bits. Yes. So it's just an extension on Allen Bits. We also have the Noster client extension, which is amazing because that means you could actually connect Noster to any extension.

1:05:55

We haven't really, you know, unlocked the power of that extension, but it it's it's very powerful extension. And we also have the, Nosta market extension as well, which,

1:06:03

again, is mind blowingly cool that I can buy you me me and you can have a,

1:06:08

I can buy something from you. We can actually run the software both locally,

1:06:12

and, it can just all be done through Nosta. But we'll get on to all that stuff in a moment. But, anyway, so I am nost nosta.com,

1:06:20

and it was kind of like it's like, what do I do with this domain?

1:06:24

Is that a protocol domain? And I was thinking, well, yeah. It should be just be a protocol domain because at that point, I didn't. So, originally so what happened originally is let's go back. It's for transition since the stuff. When the community was very small, there's about 20 people in the community.

1:06:37

And, I was working on so so I built built the 1st Twitter client, the 1st Nosta Twitter client. And, which looked like Which one was that? It was called Nosta Twitter, I think. Okay. So it was it's it it it was it turned into Branel. It turned into Oh, Branley. Branley. Yeah. Branley. Branley. Yeah. It turned into that. Do you have any issues with key

1:06:56

generation on Bradley? Like, has there been any disclosed vulnerabilities on key generation there? I mean, this is this is the the I start I mean, when I started Nostra Twitter, that had a lot of vulnerabilities.

1:07:06

I don't think you could run it on Nostra now because it just crashes. But anyway, sorry. I just made it I mean, the reason I ask is because

1:07:14

the pub key I use

1:07:16

was generated using that client. So Oh, really? Serve me familiar.

1:07:21

Ask ask Jeff about that one because I'm surprised they haven't been rugged yet. I keep waiting for the rug.

1:07:27

Probably not. Shout out to you for building the client that generated my private key. Well, I started. So I,

1:07:35

I, then we were building Nosta clients, but they were all pretty ugly. So I I literally just cloned Twitter, like the UI. Yeah. And then you could post. You could put emojis in. And then and then also the DMs as well. Like, that's why we made this is the thing about Nippo 4, and they're sticking Nippo 4 hate such as yourself. Like, people don't understand. I was like, oh, I want DMs in the Twitter client because you have DMs in in Twitter. And I fear Jeff was like, I hate DMs. We shouldn't have DMs. I'm like, what DMs? People like DMs. We should have DMs. And then so,

1:08:02

we just did, like, the the most generic, you know,

1:08:05

pretty hard. Wilhelm Duff. Well, I mean, it's it's encrypted.

1:08:09

Anyway,

1:08:11

so People like DMs. You are correct that people like DMs. People like people like DMs. Taran Nasdaq DMs fucking suck.

1:08:18

Well, I mean, they're encrypted. All I can see is that I'm talking to you. They can't see what we're talking about. So whatever. And, like, for some stuff, they're grabbing But if one of our keys gets compromised, they can see everything

1:08:28

after that. Yeah. Yeah. But, like, so if it comes to

1:08:31

yeah. Exactly. So we want we want we want bad DMs, and and that the DM problem is a problem which requires a lot of time and for a lot of bright people to work on. I agree. But at that particular point in time, it was me. So Right. And and it was I had, you know, a few days where I wanted just to knock out the the the NIP 0 4. So we made the NIP 0 4, and then, it was me and, Stefan, the German developer of Fusion

1:08:54

44. And we were it was funny because we were, like, sending the first DMs over the each other. Oh my god. It works. So, you know, it looks like DMs. And then now when I'm DMing people, I just think it's cool that we were the first to to do that.

1:09:06

Anyway, so I made the 1st Nostra tweet client, and then the

1:09:09

all of us, anyone I think anyone who gets involved with Twist with Nostra, no matter how early,

1:09:15

they instantly see the value and this thing's very powerful, and it could do really well. So nosta.com

1:09:22

was for sale at that time, but it was, like, $4. So I was asking everybody, please, can somebody buy this domain? Because if we don't get it, then somebody else will get it, and that'll suck.

1:09:31

And that was true for nosta.org as well. But noss.org was, like, a 10 or something. Anyway Well, like 10.50?

1:09:38

No. No. It's like £10. £10 or something. Right? So That one's a cheapie.

1:09:42

Yeah. That was a cheapy. Yeah. But I saw that come for whatever reason. Maybe if it's just, you know, a short domain, like, it was expensive. Yeah. It's 5 characters. It's a 5 character.com.

1:09:50

Right? There is Exactly. Got a floor price. It's like an NFT.

1:09:54

Is that I was gonna I was gonna say it's like an NFT. But the the the so, I asked for a while for someone to buy it. No one bought it. And then eventually, I was like, fuck. So I sold, like, a Bitcoin and a bit to buy it because back then, a Bitcoin was, like, $3. Oh, shit.

1:10:07

Yeah, man. So I bought it and then and then I I sat on it, and I was like, okay. It's there. It's secured. And I also had nostar.org

1:10:15

as well. But no one cared about Nosta. I I I was working on that bit, so I I I would always say, like, I should probably stop everything and work on Nosta. But at that time, I was working more on bits, and I was like, I didn't have to work on the Nostra stuff after the Twitter client.

1:10:29

So I did the first talk on Nostra, I think, in HCCP.

1:10:32

And then I would chill Nostra a lot, but I didn't really work on it. But, anyway,

1:10:36

I I kind of forgot to renew the nastar.org

1:10:39

domain, so that that went away. But I still had nastar.com.

1:10:43

And then nahstar kicked off, and I was like, cool. I've got the domain name secured, and I wanna do something with this domain. But then I was like, well, I can't really do much with it because it's also acting as a protocol page because

1:10:53

lost.org, some domain trolls got it. So I get in contact with the domain troll and, yet, I asked if I can buy lost.org, and he's like, yes. Like, $300. And I'm like, okay. I'm gonna be able to buy $200. That's a lot of money. So I spent about a year

1:11:06

haggling with this guy, and I managed to get it down to a reasonable price, which

1:11:11

is still a lot more money than, you know, a lot of people feel comfortable parting with domain. But it was important that northstar.org

1:11:19

is that protocol.

1:11:20

Well, so you got it. So I got it. Yes. You paid for it out of pocket. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So I so I so I went through not disclosing how much you paid for it?

1:11:29

No. In Bitcoin terms in Bitcoin terms, was it less or more than nasa.com?

1:11:35

More.

1:11:36

Oh, no. No. Bitcoin. In Bitcoin terms, no. No. Less. In Bitcoin terms, no. No. Less. No. No. There you go. Bitcoin.

1:11:42

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's what it should say. Yeah. Well, I shouldn't spend Bitcoin, of course, but there we are. It's something that's one of the addresses. I mean, you spent the Bitcoin and some change for nostril.com.

1:11:50

So Yeah. Okay. Anyway, continue. Sorry for your opinion. Yeah. So now I have them both. And so I'm like,

1:11:57

I don't want to do with this noster.com thing, I think. Well, to be honest, I I'll just fuck it. I'll see if I can sell it to one of these, like, people in Noster who are good.

1:12:05

So I kinda put it on the market. I've put out this Noster thing saying, oh, I'll sell it, but it's it's $5,000,000.

1:12:10

Was that just for Jack Dorsey? Were you just hoping Jack Dorsey would buy it for $5,000,000? Like, I I was like Who else who else is, like, a good person in Noster that's gonna sell it for $1,000,000?

1:12:19

But there's a few people, and I'm like Okay.

1:12:22

So so I'm like so I'm like There's no shot in LA. I was buying them for $5,000,000. I'll tell you that. Well, I was just like I was like, if if if

1:12:29

I'm not gonna sell it to anybody. But if it's if it's someone like that, like a Jack Dawson, it's of course, he would do great things with that thing. And, like, he'll do more with it than I'm doing with it currently

1:12:40

Nosta. So I was like, okay. Okay. We'll leave you know, I'll put it out there. So I put it out there, and then the shitcoin just got in contact, and they're like, yeah. We'll buy it for $5,000,000.

1:12:48

And I was like, shit. That's a lot of money. But, no, I can't do it. So I couldn't sell it. So then I'm stuck with this thing. So I'm like, okay. I've got this thing. I wanna make it useful. I wanna do stuff with it. I can't I haven't got the time to make, like, a a a whole business or project for no star dot com.

1:13:04

So I'm like, okay. I'll because we build a lot of this stuff in Alan Bits anyway, like the relay and nip we have a NIPO five extension for selling NIPO fives. I'm like, we could just sell some nip0 fives on nostril.com. We can make some nice relays. People could spit up you know, make a paid relay service or whatever. Chuck it on. And we also got the noster signer device, which we built the first signing device.

1:13:22

And, BC is while he works in Ellen Bits. He's built the,

1:13:26

hardware and site bunk, which is fucking awesome. No one no one cares about enough, but it's amazing.

1:13:31

And there's also the Nostra IoT stuff we've been building as well. So a lot of those things we can, you know, we can sell on on us.com. So, like, okay. What I'll do is I'll just give that to Ellen Bits.

1:13:40

Not give give, but, you know, I have Bits owns it. Well, it has sort of sole commercial rights to do anything commercial on it. And, yeah, I mean, what yeah. Are you you're like are you you're a cofounder of Ellen Bits? Were you, like, 50% owner of Ellen Bits Inc?

1:13:55

I mean, I'm the founder

1:13:56

of Ellen Bits Inc. So you're a 100% owner most most of all? Well, I won't go into too much detail. But, no, I mean, it's just asking personal questions. There's a few judgments agreements in there because, obviously, you know, if you're someone like Fiat, Jeff, is very is very is very important to the Island Bits, the island bits project. So there's a few yeah. But I'm not saying but But I'm asking, like, did you just you, like, sold it you sold the commercial rights to yourself? Or

1:14:21

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's also the thing. Well, it's well, yeah. I mean, it's like it's more,

1:14:27

if if we if someone's gonna do anything commercial on

1:14:30

on Right. So this is why it's important to get nasa.org. So nasa get secure that as the pure protocol. Does that work? The bitcoin.com versus bitcoin.org debate all over again. I wanna become I wanna become the Roger Vergnost, and that's it. See. No. You dude, you're horrible with metaphors. You're like, you call yourself Gavin. You call yourself Roger. Yeah. Yeah.

1:14:48

Yeah. If you never need any advice on metaphors, I'm happy to provide. But those are horrible metaphors for yourself. I was it's obviously I'm obviously joking. I don't wanna be the Roger of of Nostra, but

1:14:58

it's certainly a domain we should be doing something useful,

1:15:01

and isn't doing something useful. And we can by adding that to kind of the lmbitsinc

1:15:07

package, it gives us an excuse to work on us the stuff and then also, like because, again, this is the cool thing about lmbits. Everything we do feeds back into the this is why WordPress works, you know, because it feeds back into the the software. So buyers offering those commercial services on lostar.com,

1:15:23

it means we work more on that Relay extension. It means we work on the Nostar IoT stuff. Like, we have the hardware skills, like, we from the, the Bitcoin stuff. So now we can build some of the IT things as well and the signing devices and those sorts of things. So, like,

1:15:36

there's the it it it'll help incentivize and propel some of the development in the North Star area of of of LMBits. Right. So,

1:15:44

I mean, there's a lot there's a lot to unpack here. So first of all,

1:15:51

the noster.com situation where you first offered it for sale and now

1:15:57

sold commercial rights are in Ellen Bitts.

1:16:00

And now you have some some different commercial things that are happening on nastar.com.

1:16:05

I have noticed that Fiat Jaffe has has

1:16:09

been promoting, like, certain tools that are hosted at at, like, metadata.noster.com.

1:16:15

Like, there's, like, [email protected].

1:16:18

Yep. The array the arrangement I had with FitJaf, because obviously, Nostra is his protocol, his thing which is built. Well, you know He can

1:16:25

He's not in control anymore. Yeah. But he can exactly. But he can host whatever he wants on any on so he has, like, access to the CloudFront and can use any subdomain. And he can he can edit the the the main page, and if he's not happy with any commercial shit we do on there, then,

1:16:40

we won't do it.

1:16:42

Is that true? Like, I mean, I'm not gonna ask you to speak for Fiat Jack, but, like, I I am gonna put out the disclosure that he will be on the show later.

1:16:50

Not not today, but he's constant he's a constant guest on the show. Yeah. I absolutely do. He's happy about everything that's happening with nostril.com. Like Yeah. So, basically, he he can he because it's he can do

1:17:01

I mean, I wish you could co own domains because if you could co own a domain, then We can. It's a shitcoin.

1:17:07

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that yeah. Whatever that the handshake or whatever that shit is. But the the no. I mean, there's some good anyway, there's some good computer science and well well, yeah, don't go too much in stuff. But the the,

1:17:18

he has full reign over

1:17:21

some domains and stuff because, obviously, you got all these great tools being built in in Nosta. And nosta.com is where a lot of people land and is you know, because the SEO shit, like, it's it's it's useful. So he can just put whatever he wants with any subdomain on there.

1:17:33

And that's great because it means that again, it makes I just wanted I just want all I want is for that domain to be useful. That's it. You know?

1:17:41

And and the ways in which I said before

1:17:45

would make it useful, but then also using the subdomains on it would make it useful as well.

1:17:51

So then noss.org should just be very

1:17:55

and this is so, like, noss.org should just be the stats that we have. So when I got noss.org back, I created a group with me, Rabel, Victor from Amethyst,

1:18:04

Elodie, and, oh, bloody hell. What's that? And then we were the ones who kind of thought of, you know,

1:18:13

helped build the the noster.org page up.

1:18:16

And just kinda like a landing page. It's like, nostr is an open protocol. Like, here are the different apps you can this is how it works.

1:18:24

Yeah. And then to nostar.com

1:18:26

at the very top, it hasn't yet, but it will say it'll have a big fat button, and it will say, if you wanna know about Nostar, this is the protocol. Or this is not not there was that link to the repo, but, it will have a link going straight to the org. And then it'll it'll very clearly specify that, you know, this nostar.com has some commercial activity on it, but all,

1:18:46

you know, in the vein of helping build out useful stuff. But, like, right now, nasa.com is, like, kind of doing a similar thing that nasa.org is. Right? Like, the homepage of nasa.com is, like, kind of It was. I mean We're an open protocol. Like, this is how it works. Yeah. Because

1:19:01

documentation. Yeah. That's because, I mean, I got nos.org, like, a couple of months ago, and I haven't done anything with nos.com since. Yeah.

1:19:09

But they're gonna diverge is what you're saying.

1:19:12

Nosta.com will be more commercial

1:19:14

and Yeah. It's well, it's just gonna have some commercial activity on it. But, again, it's that fine balance. If if it if it goes too far, then that's a problem, isn't it?

1:19:24

But if it's if it's useful stuff, like, you know,

1:19:28

selling diagnostic signing devices and insect bunkers

1:19:31

and relays and nippo fives and just the other thing. Like, if we're offering, like, an a nippo 5, you know, a lot of people aren't gonna run their own domains or whatever. They're not gonna run their own nippo fives. And if they're gonna use somebody else's nippo 5, like,

1:19:43

it'd be it's it's useful that there's, like, a company behind it which is gonna maintain that and is gonna run it properly and professionally. And you can, you know, somewhat trust that it's because people become dependent upon those nippo fives in in some way or another. Like, it's, you know, it's part of their profile. So,

1:19:58

there's definitely I mean, we haven't. This is me spitballing right now. These are all the things I thought about in my head. But,

1:20:04

Are the nippo fives one time payment, or are they subscription?

1:20:09

Well, we haven't done it yet, but the nippo five extension is a one part a one time payment. But I think it's probably just gonna be a subscription. It should be a subscription. I talked to Kieran about this yesterday.

1:20:18

Domains are a subscription. Yeah. It probably I mean, so I like,

1:20:24

so something I something I've always liked the idea of is

1:20:27

withdrawals, like creating an annual withdrawal. Because we in our in our extension, we can limit it by time, so you can only you can you can use it as a faucet. So you can make an annual withdrawal. You can hit multiple times, but then you can add, like, a time factor to it. So for me, like, I could create

1:20:41

it seems like I could be able to create an annual withdraw

1:20:43

and then, set a time limit. So it's, you know, once a year or whatever, then you can use the LNUR withdraw to pull some funds from. So then we could have that LNUR withdraw and then or or, I mean, people could still probably pay in fear as well, whatever. Like but it'd be quite cool, like, if there was some bundle service where you could if you go and you're interested in us, so you could buy a Relay, an EPO 5, and then,

1:21:02

I know, you get something else as well. But, yeah, there's certainly some interesting, like, products and stuff we could build for that.

1:21:11

The IoT stuff, I think, is huge for Nosta, and I've I've I've been looking forward to building more IoT stuff on Nosta. Well, I mean, we'll go let's go deeper. But before we go deeper, I just have a question for you. So, I mean, you've been,

1:21:26

I I you're pretty outspoken

1:21:30

socialist, I guess. And,

1:21:34

obviously, you love free and open source software.

1:21:38

So how I'm curious, like, how you circle that square.

1:21:42

What copy left software? With with with, like, the with the commercialization

1:21:48

of Ellen Bits Inc. Yeah. And

1:21:51

and I'm not I'm not coming at this from, like,

1:21:53

an aggressive anti point of view. Like, how do you how do you how do you think about that philosophy

1:22:00

with the commercialization of ellenbits.inc,

1:22:03

ellenbitsinc, and the commercialization of noster.com?

1:22:07

Like, how do how do you think about it? I'm curious how you think about it. Well, like you said, I mean, we we currently exist in a world where it's quite hard to make things like cooperatives and have them work well.

1:22:18

Okay. It's getting easier. And actually, some of the technology which build we're building, like the

1:22:23

micropayments technology, makes those sorts of things more possible.

1:22:28

But when it comes to I think when it comes to if we're gonna go deep into it, I suppose Yeah. Let's go deep. Deep into it. I'm down. It would be it would be,

1:22:36

do you defend all forms of private property in the same way

1:22:41

Yes. With the same with the same tools. So the the right to own another person, do you defend that?

1:22:47

I mean, slavery? Yeah.

1:22:50

No. I mean, I think slavery is probably out of the question. Like, people probably should own slaves. Okay. What about the right to own a big fat corporation which, like, has a full monopoly and then exploits all everybody, all the workers? I think that's that's probably okay.

1:23:04

That's probably okay. What if there's an alternative? So what if you have so this is the thing It's probably where my line is.

1:23:10

Okay. So this is this is the Because the the the the employee can ultimately go somewhere else. Okay. Okay. Got it. They have freedom of they have freedom of choice.

1:23:19

Do they actually okay. Well, we could come back to that one more time. But the Okay. The when it comes to the means of production for a social network, is Twitter better than Nosta?

1:23:29

No.

1:23:31

Why? Because,

1:23:34

I I mean, I I I think ultimately

1:23:39

It should be a commons. No. I mean, I I think if you have a central point of failure, you have a you have like, the the public square can't be owned by a company

1:23:50

because it's not a public square. Like, it just will not happen. Like, there'll be censorship.

1:23:54

There'll be manipulation. It'll just be an inferior product.

1:23:59

Yeah. Like, it's just an inferior tool for

1:24:02

people. Yeah. That's why I think Bitcoin wins. Right? I think it's because if there's a centralized control over money, it'll be a worse money.

1:24:08

Yeah. Yeah. So If you can change it and get corrupted, and and humans are naturally, in a lot of ways, greedy and corrupt, and you have to have a system to be done. They're operating companies are operating in certain jurisdictions or certain legal

1:24:21

or, you know, incentive

1:24:22

Run by humans. Centralized humans. Yeah. So if we can make a commons of something like a social network, could we make a commons of something like an Amazon? And would that be better for people as opposed to having Jeff Bezos leeching

1:24:36

1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 of dollars and becoming the full world's on his way to becoming the world's first trillionaire? Is there a more efficient way of doing that there? The world's first trillionaire is gonna be Satoshi. But

1:24:45

Okay. But it's the

1:24:46

The world's only millionaire measured in real money is Satoshi.

1:24:51

Yeah.

1:24:52

So I think that I think the point I'm trying to get

1:24:55

is that, personally, I love, you know, the the the if you've got, like, an SME or if you've got a company or if you've got it's it's like checks and balances. It's like, is there an alternative way to doing something? Can this be something which is like, we we are held as a company and and checks and balances by the free and open source community. We couldn't possibly piss them off for us. The whole thing like, someone just forks the project and then, you know, like, the the

1:25:19

so that's why I would work with with Allen Bits Inc.

1:25:22

I'm a I'm a I'm generally opposed to big fat multinational corporations which,

1:25:27

exploit people. I don't like those. I agree. I I think they're very aggressive. And I think that corporations as we move into the future,

1:25:34

those types of corporations well, the the invisible hand no longer

1:25:39

applies, Adam Smith's invisible hand, because they they operate I mean, like, the entire

1:25:44

structure of a corporation is is is to,

1:25:48

remove those human ties from the owner to the to the worker.

1:25:53

So, you know, if you've got someone who owns a coffee house or a bar and have people who've been working for them for 10 years and then, you know, their kid goes to university or they need an operation or they need something, like, they'll give them some extra shifts. Maybe they'll pay them a little bit extra. They give them some time off. Like, there's that level of human empathy, and there's that human relationship within that mode of production. But when you get to the corporate level, like a big multinational corporation,

1:26:15

you lose a lot of that and and and intentionally because

1:26:19

your profits are very much pegged to how little you have to pay to the people who are actually building the things which you're selling. So that

1:26:28

I don't I think it's a misnomer to

1:26:31

defend all forms of private property in the same way because you have these big fat multinational evil corporations.

1:26:37

And then you have, like, the local business owner who

1:26:41

has some restaurants and some bars and whatever else in their local community, and they have that invisible hand. Like, they have they're aware of the impact they have on their local community. They have those human relationships with the workers who work there.

1:26:52

And, yeah. No. I I don't agree that all forms of private property are the same. But so I mean production. I mean, I think

1:27:01

I think the problem with big fat multinational

1:27:04

corporations is that they own our government.

1:27:07

Like, I don't I I don't think they're they're actually competing on a free market. I think, like, if they compete in a free market, then there's actual competition, and then people get a better solution. Yeah. Because like you say, it's the reason they own the government is because it's so the whole the whole purpose of the Well, we my point is is we don't live in a free market. Like, the Bitcoin is the closest thing we've ever seen to a free market. FOSS is Yeah. Is our path to get there outside of Bitcoin.

1:27:34

The the point of the point of a the capsid's amount of production, the ultimate goal if you remove the human element

1:27:41

is accumulation of capital. Right? When it comes to accumulation and accumulation capital,

1:27:47

despite the damage you do to the environment, despite the damage you do to people, it's just accumulation of capital, ruthless accumulation of capital. And now I'm not saying because, obviously, first principles blah blah blah. Like, humans shouldn't act that way. So

1:27:58

if that's the goal, then and if companies and corporations currently own government now, if you got rid of governments and you have your free market, why wouldn't that big fat corporation just create another government? Because it needs that monopoly over resources.

1:28:15

I mean and that's that's just big capitalism. So, like, they however which way you go, if you have these big, faceless corporations,

1:28:22

you end up with state capitalism, which is the same thing which had basically US Assad wars. Capitalism isn't capitalism.

1:28:28

No. It's not. That's the thing. It's not actually a proper food market. Almost like it's almost like the thing we get blamed off, isn't it, with the the, you know, the the the lefties where you're like, oh, socialism is gonna work this time, isn't it? And it's like, okay. Capitalism is gonna work this time. Is this is this is

1:28:42

this like, me for me, the idea of working towards, you know, cooperatives and stuff, that's cool. Like,

1:28:48

it can we make a decentralized Amazon? Can we have an off to markets? Can they work in such a way? And I think there can be a business model associated with it. Like, I think people I mean, the point I was coming from is, like, I think you can actually ethically monetize false projects.

1:29:02

Like and I think you can do it in a sustainable way. And I I think I think the the issue that we've had up until this point

1:29:11

is that we haven't had tools that enable individuals

1:29:15

to affect effectively defend themselves and to to affect their will onto larger entities.

1:29:22

And I don't think that I don't I don't think that is socialism, though. I think that is radical

1:29:29

Radical free markets like as effectively like free markets that cannot be stopped. And I think that's where humanity really flourishes.

1:29:38

And we just have never seen it, and we're about to see it. And all of this is the pain of us

1:29:44

going through that transitionary period of seeing that.

1:29:47

Yeah. I mean, I I would say that,

1:29:49

the if if there's a commons,

1:29:52

then if your if your if your goal is to accumulate capital,

1:29:56

then you wanna they want the tragedy of the commons. You wanna control the commons. You wanna control the resources.

1:30:02

Whereas something I think we've just gotten to a point where the technology exists, where

1:30:08

a lot of these big corporations could be replaced by free and open source protocols and, like, public key cryptography. And,

1:30:15

I think that's what we're exploring with Nosta that, actually, this, like,

1:30:19

international, like, communication platform or something like Twitter, that shouldn't really be owned by a company. That's it's something we should be a a a a commons. And as a commons, like, people are free to operate within it.

1:30:32

But don't try and control the commons because if you do, the commons is gonna turn around and give you a big bitch slap. Like, we have in Bitcoin, all the people who try to control Bitcoin, like like like Roger Ver.

1:30:41

So we have to actively this is the thing about, like this the point of the tragedy of the commons is it always ends up being co opted and controlled by somebody.

1:30:48

Whereas we know in Bitcoin that, actually, no. If we as the users or the plebs, if we kick up a fuss, like, if we

1:30:55

have some control over the software and over the the data, then actually we can

1:31:00

take control. We can we can stop that tragedy happening, and we can stop someone caught in the commons. That's the thing I'm interested in. When it comes to,

1:31:08

like, lefty motor production cooperatives,

1:31:11

for me, if you're an open software, if you're an open source software, it's a it's a a communal effort of people working together on a project. I think you're right. I think that you can monetize,

1:31:20

a free and open source project. But is that there's a power dynamic which doesn't exist just on a normal proprietary piece of software. So this is the reason we have free and open source. Let's go back to Richard Stallman.

1:31:30

Like, the reason we have free and open source software is because these companies try to control and copyright all the work which was done by computer scientists and developers. And Rich Stallman was like, that sucks. We need a license where, actually, you can apply it to your software, and then you can share that software. She's used to sharing software with his friends if they wanted a piece of software.

1:31:48

And, the whole free and open source movement to me is is showing that, actually, like,

1:31:56

IP and ownership over software.

1:31:58

There's a better way of doing it. And, if you have if your company's entire,

1:32:03

like, like, in product and and and the thing which you're,

1:32:07

helping people access via for profit or for profit company,

1:32:10

if that's relying upon their free enterprise community. I think there's this paradigm which just doesn't exist in another type of company where, yeah, absolutely, you can monetize that free enterprise piece of software.

1:32:20

So I'm in agreement. I'm in agreement. But,

1:32:25

I mean, I don't I don't know if we agree. I mean, I definitely respect you, but, I mean, I think free markets solve everything.

1:32:33

Mhmm. They solve most things. I just spoke in an absolute.

1:32:37

Okay. But

1:32:39

I I mean The problem is in a free mark. So if you have a common if you have a a free mark which is operating in the commons, like Bitcoin

1:32:46

Yeah. If somebody tries to control Bitcoin

1:32:49

Right. That sucks,

1:32:51

doesn't it? But they can't.

1:32:53

Yeah. Would it be better sir? Would it be best The key the key piece there is the FreedomTech component. Right? And up until this point,

1:33:01

it's been very brutalistic, and it takes very a lot of years. Right? Because because the key FreedomTech

1:33:08

piece that people had was, first of all, move with their feet,

1:33:11

and second of all, different levels of weapons throughout humanity. Right? Whether that was, like, the steel spear or

1:33:18

now, you know, guns. But but now we have software that actually empowers individuals, and it levels the playing field. It actually

1:33:27

it is actually the check and balance that, like, makes free markets possible that they don't get captured and stop being free markets.

1:33:36

I think the goal for you and I,

1:33:38

both, we agree, is greater liberty for people, isn't it? Correct. 100%. That's all I really care about. Now and as anarchists, because we're both probably anarchists, so we both could be defined as anarchists in one way. I I like local governance.

1:33:52

I think, like, communities should govern themselves in noncorrupt ways with proper checks and balances. Agreement. I'm in agreement.

1:33:59

But, as anarchists,

1:34:02

we see that you need to shed light on any power structure

1:34:06

and and and see whether it's entirely necessary. And if it's not necessary, get rid of it. And I agree. And I agree. And that applies also to, you know, to stay in government and everything else.

1:34:14

But for me, it also applies for big evil corporations as well, faceless multinational corporations.

1:34:19

And I wanna replace them with free and open source software and protocols.

1:34:23

Damn right. And, Yeah. And I think that's we any Bitcoiner, I think the the

1:34:28

the we're all essentially anarchists in one way or the other, either coming from a right anarchist or a left anarchist. Like, we're anarchists.

1:34:36

So we just want we want we want

1:34:39

decisions to be made more locally. We want

1:34:42

people to have more control over their own staff,

1:34:45

and over their local communities and and whatever. And then we want that scaled up. And then when it comes to our cooperatives, that's essentially what a cooperative is. You're flattening the management structure and that hierarchy, but cooperatives are very difficult. So one of the things we built in so me, in coming from through that left lens and liking the idea of cooperatives,

1:35:05

An extension with built in in COVID was,

1:35:08

DJ livestream. So CryptoCloaks made,

1:35:12

did a set, and then they had a QR code on screen, and then they could pay. And then if you it would split the payment between producer

1:35:18

and DJ. Right? And then us in the Ellen Bits community, we're all excited about this idea of split payments. Yep.

1:35:24

So you could set up, you know, a a coffee stand. Actually, this has been done by some of the El Salvador guys. Chorizo Coffee, I think it is. And they're in Italy, and people could buy coffee. And the coffee producer

1:35:36

So at point of sale, when the bag of coffee was bought,

1:35:40

the Chorito Chorito Cafe got some of the money, and then a percentage was sent to the actual coffee producer in El Salvador,

1:35:48

instantly. And they they were explaining to me the how much more it's like 10 x the amount of money which they would usually make because from, like, an unbanked producer,

1:35:59

to, you know, a a bank society and

1:36:02

people buying stuff in wherever, that transition obviously, there's a lot of, rent seekers who do take a little cut. Right? Right.

1:36:11

A million low, man. Yeah. Exactly. But that concept to be now split payments is is so, like, you can have, like you know, you can sell coffee on this. And then, you know, at point of sale, I get x amount, you get x amount, someone else get x amount. And then you you you you found that out. And it's the the Prism guy guys have worked on this idea, this concept that, you know, maybe I go in the future, I go and buy a laptop in in in the shop,

1:36:34

if shops still exist. And at point of sale,

1:36:37

you know, like, supply gets a certain cut and distribution gets a certain part and r r and d gets and manufacturing gets a certain cut. And then when it goes to manufacturing, that payment splits against the different departments of manufacturing. So it's and then to the different factories or whatever.

1:36:59

And and and it's and tiny little pieces of money. Like, it changes the way in which people can be paid. So that

1:37:05

cleaner on the shop floor is just streaming sats from sales of laptops, right, instantly.

1:37:11

And then just the the the the the stream starts slowing down. They start getting less sats. And they're like, why why why am I getting less sats? And they're like, okay. Well,

1:37:19

the decision was made that, you know, we would pour more money into r and d. And,

1:37:24

this will be good because, you know, in a few months' time or what year's time, this will pay off, and we'll have new products. And then we will get more sats streamed in. So for now, the the sats are gonna slow down, for you and as the cleaner on the factory floor. What I I think that does, just that new payments technology it's funny because we just build this stuff, and then we play around with it in a goofy way. We make some goofy projects or whatever.

1:37:46

But we don't realize the actual impact of what this could have on the way in which humans produce and sell things. For me, that's in this incredibly you can create this incredible scaled up cooperative where

1:37:57

the, the cleaner becomes socially awakened because

1:38:01

they can they can put social pressure or maybe they could vote on what what different each different department,

1:38:08

what percentage they have of that pie, which ultimately goes into their pocket.

1:38:13

And, Yeah. It's a that's a fascinating concept for me that that and that's that gets me excited. And I think it's important in Bitcoin,

1:38:21

that we're not all looking from the same lens. We're looking through different lenses and and from different perspectives

1:38:25

on how this technology

1:38:28

can liberate more people and make give more people more more freedom and control over their lives. And for me, that, you know, is a is a by building more efficient tools for building better cooperatives. It's a tooling. You just need the right tooling.

1:38:41

Currently, we're, you know, we're relying upon, like, a hierarchical

1:38:44

power structure in a big fat corporation because it works. You know, just like but you could make the same arguments for slavery. You could say, well, slavery works. You know, why don't we just stay with slavery? And so, actually, that kinda sucks. Like, we don't we don't really wanna control people. We should probably pay people. And then it's like, okay. We'll pay them the minimum serves, you know. We'll just have them live on the land, and we'll pay them the very minimum. So that kind of sucks too. Maybe we should, like, like, you know, make it so people can actually, you know, better themselves and contribute to that means production.

1:39:08

And then and then we have, you know, the

1:39:11

it gets better. Like, the world gets better, and the way we produce stuff gets better. And I think that Bitcoin can have a hand in that. And I'm looking at it from that perspective. And and, you know, maybe you think that corporations are fantastic and we need more of them and you're looking at it from their perspective. I don't know.

1:39:25

I mean, I think if you empower individuals, like, it kinda all works itself out. Absolutely. I agree completely. A public key crypto is the technology.

1:39:35

Like, often this is a funny thing about Bitcoin is do you remember if I don't know how many years ago it was now? Fucking, like, 10 years ago or something. There are all these talks by, you know, Andreas and Soft did these talks about how you can make

1:39:47

the blockchain Uber and blockchain this and blockchain that. And it's like

1:39:51

people fundamentally understood that this tool this collection of tools

1:39:56

could be used to build different ways of doing things, like a different way of doing Uber where the taxi drivers get more of the the value as opposed to Uber, the company.

1:40:05

But they conflated that with blockchain

1:40:08

blockchains. And I think now people are like, oh, no. Actually, it's public key crypto. And that's the cool thing about Nosta. It's like

1:40:16

it's showing that, actually, if you empower users with control over their data just by enabling, you know, raw public key crypto,

1:40:23

then a lot of things are possible. And Uber is a good example. Like, a Nostra or Uber would be great.

1:40:29

Yeah. I mean, so that brings me

1:40:33

to my next question, which is why Noster?

1:40:37

Like, why why do you focus so much time on Noster? Like, why are we not crazy people

1:40:43

for being so obsessed with Noster

1:40:46

and, seeing it blossom into a

1:40:49

beautiful global protocol?

1:40:52

It's just such a simple,

1:40:54

paradigm. It's paradigm shift. Before, it was smart server dom client,

1:40:59

and now we're smart smart client dom server. Right? We just got these relays just passing share around.

1:41:05

And by having that, you're taking power away from the server admin, whoever's running that server, and you're giving it to the people who are actually the the people who are actually using the clients,

1:41:15

so you're empowering people. And that's done when they can only be done through public key crypto. And, actually,

1:41:19

we're just a little bit ahead of the game. Like, the reality is the whole world is gonna have to use key crypto natively because CAPTCHAs are gonna get too hard. Password's gonna get too ridiculously hard. Well, the CAPTCHAs are literally training the robots.

1:41:31

And then the robots get better, and then we have to do more ridiculous CAPTCHAs. And then the humans like me, I I'm struggling with CAPTCHAs now. Do you know what I mean? It's almost getting to the point where we can't do the CAPTCHAs. So it's it's public key crypto solves our stuff. And, like,

1:41:44

we're gonna this is the like, when Beast, Black Coffee, he's built the,

1:41:48

Nsec Bunker. And I'm like, that concept of having your private key on a small dumb device

1:41:54

connected to your Internet at home, which is actually signing messages. Yeah. Some hardware signer.

1:41:59

Yeah. Some sort of hardware signer thing.

1:42:01

Like, as the because the world which is just there's no other way of solving those problems for public key crypto. Like, people just getting used. And then people are like, oh, no. People aren't ready for it. It's like, yeah. They are. It's not that complicated. They have a private key. I have a public key. Keep the private key safe and assign you Driving is way more difficult.

1:42:16

Yeah. And walking Having a child having a child is way more difficult, and and somehow we have to rely on that for humanity to continue, and we've done it. Yeah. Exactly. Flourish. Yeah. You shouldn't underestimate the learning ability of humans.

1:42:30

But, yeah, people will just get used to it. They'll get used to having signing devices, and maybe there'll be devices they plug into stuff or maybe there'll be devices which they just have on at home.

1:42:39

But the we're just ahead of the curve when it comes to accessing

1:42:43

crypt because we're used to it as Bitcoins, aren't we? So it makes sense that something like Nasdaq would come out of a a Bitcoin community,

1:42:50

because we're we're used to public key crypto.

1:42:52

But then So I have this belief that

1:42:55

Nasr is like so back in the day, I mean,

1:43:01

both me and you, I think, have

1:43:07

been active in Bitcoin for longer than

1:43:11

you usually remain sane for.

1:43:14

In early days of Bitcoin, like, one of the big things that I I would hear all the time is

1:43:19

is Bitcoiners

1:43:22

are, you know, ahead of the curve. And then

1:43:25

as Bitcoin adoption increases, like, Bitcoiners will have more purchasing power,

1:43:29

will have more time on their hands to do things. And then as a result, there'll be all these different kind of child projects

1:43:37

that aren't directly necessarily related to Bitcoin, but are championed by Bitcoiners

1:43:42

that then make the world a better place.

1:43:44

And to me, Nasr is this first Bitcoin child project that is, like, there are Bitcoiners

1:43:51

around the world that saw the need for a

1:43:56

interoperable, open, permissionless, censorship resistant communication protocol,

1:44:01

and have essentially championed it and built it out and continued to do so.

1:44:06

And but would you agree with that? Like, I to me, the one of the most fascinating parts about Nostr

1:44:12

is is there are haters that are, like, there's too much Bitcoin and, like, the Nostr social media lens. Right? Because Noster's way more than social media.

1:44:20

But to me, like, that's a feature, not a bug. Like, the fact that this is, like, a Bitcoin child project, like,

1:44:26

arguably the first Bitcoin child project

1:44:29

is why one of the reasons I'm so optimistic,

1:44:32

Nastur.

1:44:33

Yeah. No. No. I am in agreement. It's funny because early on in the Telegram group, if you spoke about Bitcoin too much, you actually a couple of people got booted off the Telegram group for speaking about Bitcoin too much because we were like, we don't wanna put people off when they come into Nasdaq. They don't wanna think that it's just a whole bunch of Bitcoiners.

1:44:50

But the problem is it's like a it's an upward bat uphill battle because Bitcoin and Nasdaq go so well together, and most of the people who are using Nasdaq are in fact Bitcoiners.

1:44:59

But yeah. No. It's it's absolute it's to me, it's another one of Satoshi's genius moments is by having this deflationary currency.

1:45:05

You create these people who get enriched, and then they feel the need to commute to pull back their energy and and and their and their resources into this thing which enriched them.

1:45:15

And it's why I think a lot of Bitcoin success,

1:45:18

happened was because all these people were able to,

1:45:21

you know, quit work and work on Bitcoin projects.

1:45:25

And, similar in Oster similarly in Oster as well. We got a whole bunch of people. We've been lucky enough, you know, to

1:45:32

get have make a little bit of money on Bitcoin or whatever and and be able to actually, like, pour all of an energy into into Nostra.

1:45:39

I do think that it still puts people off. Like, I do want more Nosta social clients to,

1:45:45

you know, have, like, a a user journey,

1:45:49

which doesn't assume that they're gonna be Bitcoiners. Because I was at the Human Rights Foundation. They also have Freedom Forum thing, and we're onboarding

1:45:54

human human rights activists. And,

1:45:58

clearly, they see the value proposition. They're like, oh my god. This technology is incredible. We can use this. It's amazing. And they download an lost client. They start spinning it. They start using it, and then it just loads of Bitcoin and stock in Bitcoin stuff.

1:46:09

And it puts them off, and they don't wanna use it. And it's like, it would be nice for them to access Nosta.

1:46:14

And, you know, you you I know you say what what you're interested in or you you're not instantly pointed to a whole bunch of Bitcoiners to follow.

1:46:23

So I kinda wanna see more of that. I mean, I think

1:46:26

I I think that's just

1:46:28

the phase we are in the adoption cycle. I mean, it it it's just it's a pain point that's gonna exist. I would say,

1:46:36

I mean, I've worked with the Human Rights Foundation for over 5 years now, training activists on how to use Bitcoin,

1:46:43

other related freedom tech, you know, message encryption, whatnot, using the Internet in a private way. And I will say that

1:46:53

for a lot of them, the argument I see

1:46:57

is not necessarily the Bitcoin argument that that that people are talking about Bitcoin. The argument I see is that most of them are,

1:47:05

for better or for worse, US aligned,

1:47:08

And they trust Elon with their private information.

1:47:11

And this idea that that, you know, you're sharing your IP address, you're sharing potentially.

1:47:17

I mean, let's be honest, like, it is incredibly

1:47:21

empowering that I can sign a message with my private key and prove that it's me

1:47:28

and undoubtedly me. It is me. Right? I I have not altered this text. This is my text.

1:47:35

And with Blossom, like, this is my media. This is my audio. This is my video.

1:47:40

But that becomes especially if you're fighting an authoritarian regime,

1:47:45

that can become potentially toxic data

1:47:48

that you can never delete from the Internet. Like, that that is out there forever. Like, part of

1:47:53

I mean, if it if it if it matters at all, it's out there forever. Like, part of the value prop of Noster is, like, the robustness

1:48:02

of of data integrity, which from a human rights angle

1:48:06

can actually be it it it's a sensitive thing. Like, It's something that people should be very deliberate and careful about,

1:48:13

in terms of what they're putting out there. And I think that is probably, from the human rights angle, the bigger issue. But I would agree that, like, other communities

1:48:20

the homestead community or other things I find interesting,

1:48:24

like homesteading, you know, firearms,

1:48:28

Like, a lot of these things is, like, do I really want signed messages attached to me that are potentially attached to my IP address if I don't understand how VPNs work or I don't understand how Tor works?

1:48:38

And instead, like, let me just trust Elon with that information because I don't think the US government's gonna fuck me. I'm not saying that. You know? Unfortunately, for better or for worse, I love America.

1:48:48

I love this country. I love the people here. I want the best for this country.

1:48:52

The the big one of the biggest threats to my my family is my own fucking government, which is unfortunate.

1:48:58

But I would say for a lot of these human rights activists,

1:49:01

the American government in their threat model is, like, number 6,

1:49:04

number 7. Right? Like, they really care about the Nicaraguan government

1:49:09

or the Russian government or the Venezuelan government or the Bolivian government.

1:49:13

And the US government is actually their ally. So, like, in the threat modeling,

1:49:18

sharing that information with Elon, who then gets pressured to share with the US government, isn't really the biggest deal for them.

1:49:25

Can depend. It can depend because, obviously, in history, historically, there's been a lot of, meddling in in a lot of poorer regions by the US. And,

1:49:32

there's a lot of people who wanna operate outside of the the I mean, the the trying to capture their perspective. As an example. You know, it's it's some one of the best things they can do is is is release themselves from US and Argentina, particularly in Central and South America because it's not all roses. But,

1:49:47

then one of the great things about Nostra is you can, in fact, have multiple keys,

1:49:50

and that's easy to do. And more and more people need to make use of that.

1:49:56

But, yeah, it's, I don't know. I mean, I always feel like

1:50:00

as a as a freedom technology, Nostra is is more important to them than than Twitter is.

1:50:05

But, absolutely, you have to teach that. I mean, obviously, it is. I think Nostra is incredibly important. I think Nostra is is part of the equation that makes sure that my kids and my grandkids live free.

1:50:17

And I think Bitcoin's a a portion of that. I think Noster is a portion of that. I think, you know, whatever comes next is gonna be a portion of that. I think the greater FOSS,

1:50:27

ecosystem is a a key aspect of that. Yeah.

1:50:32

But I'm just trying to, like when I talk to them, like and I capture that perspective, like, that that is

1:50:38

I and I hate speaking for other people, but that is that is what I hear. What I hear is

1:50:44

I'm not worried about the US government. Okay? And Noster

1:50:50

represents

1:50:51

I am. Some potential security leader. Like Julian Assange to the US government. I'm terrified of the US government. This gave me more than anything else.

1:50:59

The, I think that Bitcoin's,

1:51:02

is it obviously came out as cypherpunks,

1:51:05

and, there's that great half any quote of this technology, which can be used to control us, can actually be used to free us.

1:51:11

And, Bitcoin is a you know, it's it's it's

1:51:15

because we have public key crypto, and not just because we have public key crypto.

1:51:19

And it's like, what else can we build with public key crypto?

1:51:22

IoT. That's the thing I've mentioned a few times.

1:51:26

Me and BC and a couple of other people have been experimenting with IoT.

1:51:29

I've never really had IoT in my house before because I don't want corporations

1:51:33

and governments nipping,

1:51:34

on me. Alright. Because it's really just IoT and its

1:51:38

existing status quo framework is essentially just

1:51:41

surveillance software with a nice marketing spin that's gonna do it. And the t's and c's are terrible. But yeah. No. It's, someone's once said that even George Orwell didn't predict that we would buy the listening devices. Yeah. We've got ridiculous. They he thought the government was gonna force you to have a wiretap in your home. Instead, people buy it and then brag about it.

1:52:01

They brag about it. So, like, check out this beautiful Alexa I have or check out this ring doorbell camera I have that spies on me and all my neighbors.

1:52:08

Yeah. It's fucking insane. We live in a way bigger dystopia

1:52:12

than George Orwell predicted. He was wrong. Yeah. I mean, I know he's dead, but he was wrong.

1:52:18

Stranger than fiction, as they say.

1:52:21

But, no, with Oster IoT, it's so simple. Like, I'm literally DMing. I know you don't like DMs.

1:52:26

I'm literally DMing As currently designed.

1:52:29

A light switch in my house and saying, you know, turn on light. I'm jamming my solar panel batteries. My my my my batteries are stored in the energy from my solar panels. I'm saying, what's the readout from the solar panels? And it's just sending back an integer.

1:52:41

And it's, the simplest

1:52:45

I mean, again, you're tapping into that permissionless development

1:52:48

environment, which is the one of the most important parts of Bitcoin is anyone can develop for it. You don't need permission. You can make a point of sale. You can make a hardware. You make whatever you want. No one gives a fuck. Right? And in seminarities, permissionless development environment. When you tap it into that, like so the the the example we did, it's just like a simple github.io,

1:53:06

you know, web page or front end, and in it, it's just it looks like IoT software.

1:53:13

And you can turn stuff on. You can turn stuff off, and you can read measurements, and you can do all the things you need to do with IoT for basic IoT.

1:53:20

And, and it's done it's done in such a way where, you know, you can send it through a public relay if you want to because it is encrypted, and you want to communicate

1:53:28

to your light switch. But if you want, you could also spin up your own relay, and that's not that hard to do. Like, the

1:53:35

there are free open source IoT solutions out there, so MQTT is the big one. But it requires you to run a server at home and then use WireGuard to open ports and all this other shit, which normal people don't wanna do. With an Oster IT stuff, like, the thing we're developing at the moment is just a plug socket

1:53:53

where and the the the experience

1:53:55

is that you get the plug socket. You scan a QR code. You connect to the actual plug socket itself. It has a web portal. In there, you put in your, you put in a public key,

1:54:05

and then you put in your Wi Fi details. And, actually, the public key itself, we could probably extrapolate that. So it's just using the public key from the thing. But you anyway, so you scan the QR code. You put in your Wi Fi details,

1:54:15

and then, you put in the public key for the the thing. And then you can and that's it. And you can just

1:54:22

turn stuff. And it's amazing just to have on your phone, like, a switch and be able to turn things on and off. And there's no gnarly TNCs.

1:54:29

There's no government. There's no corporation. And it's almost one of it's another it's one of those moments where when you actually interact with it, you're like,

1:54:37

this new paradigm of smart client dumb server,

1:54:41

if it just existed for IoT because I I mean, us us

1:54:45

taking control over hardware is so important.

1:54:48

Because if if it if we don't take control over the hardware, we are gonna just step more and more into that dystopian future where everything is controlled.

1:54:56

But us taking control of the hardware, it it would justify the creation of NOSA just for that experience,

1:55:02

of having, you know, IoT, which can be done in a way which is has permissionless development environment and is, you know, sensory resistant

1:55:10

and, and and privacy centric as well. And, yeah. So that's

1:55:15

that's a that's a that's a thing which I really wanna build more stuff for. And then also the marketplace thing as well is huge for Nosta. But, really, I mean, it's just Nosta is really just public key crypto, real public key crypto, relays, and RobSockets.

1:55:27

And it's like, what can you build with that? And the whole plethora plethora of things. But it's cypherpunk technology, isn't it, like Bitcoin? It's another cypherpunk

1:55:35

tool part of the toolset which we can use to liberate people.

1:55:40

Yeah. No permission required.

1:55:43

That's the key. You could do cool stuff as well, like the like the zap plan I showed. Like, it's a gazillion different so one of the things I was wanting to build with,

1:55:53

Zaps, I wanna have a a an ATM where I can put money in, and then it just zaps me the money. So that's something which we wanna build as well. It's like more hardware on top of Nostra as well.

1:56:04

But, yeah. We're just we need these tools because, obviously, we've all seen it more recently.

1:56:10

Like, the samurai guys, there there's an assumption of how free we are, but a lot of it's just a veil.

1:56:16

And then all too often, that veil gets removed, and it's like, no. This is how free you are, motherfucker. We can just put you in jail.

1:56:25

So we need solutions like that so, we can have privacy. It just goes back to the siphon manifesto. Have you ever read you know the siphon manifesto? Of course. So many people have. So many, like, OG Bitcoin. I've I've spoke to a Bitcoin who's been in Bitcoin for such a long time. I hadn't read the siphon manifesto

1:56:39

the other day. About you talk about

1:56:43

6 paragraphs or 8 paragraphs or whatever it is. So much. That is, like, paid for 33 years or 3rd

1:56:50

1993. So 31 years

1:56:53

more relevant than ever.

1:56:55

Yeah. And it's still

1:56:56

super impressive. All the documents we have, all the ways in which you can explain Bitcoin. If anyone ever says to me, why Bitcoin? I send them the Cipher manifesto. So I just read that. And then they read it. They see the date, and they realize that because this is a big important point for for people who don't really understand the impact of Bitcoin and why it's important. It's it's it's how old it is. They just think it's like this new Internet door key or, like, like, English. Right? This is decades. This is Yeah.

1:57:21

Centuries.

1:57:22

Yeah. I mean, the the cyberpunk manifesto is decades, and it's incredibly oppression. But this is a fight that is

1:57:30

centuries old.

1:57:32

And the fight is attacking all the traditional power structures.

1:57:37

So I think It's individual empowerment.

1:57:39

Yeah.

1:57:41

The the big thing which people are starting to realize now that, actually, those traditional power structures now they know that Bitcoin can't be stopped,

1:57:49

that they are gonna try and control it and and limit its growth. And I think that's why you're seeing a lot more proactive,

1:57:56

attacks from from government.

1:57:59

And what are your thoughts there? I think it's like now's the time. Like, now's the battle. Like, this is the battleground. Like, but we need to rem

1:58:08

this because I I said this, I went to cheat code that Pete McCormack said. I said, like, Bitcoin is just to these we need to remind ourselves the battleground we're on.

1:58:15

We need to, like, appreciate that a lot of people within our ecosystem are compromised and are probably a probably agency workers. And I'm not being a fucking,

1:58:24

like, I'm not being a conspiracy theorist in thinking like like the cypherpunks were heavily infiltrated. Because they were fighting the crypto wars, weren't they? So they they want to just pry for those who don't know, maybe in the audience, that

1:58:35

the reason that you have, like, HTTPS,

1:58:39

that you can just send data over the Internet encrypted,

1:58:42

and securely and privately is because

1:58:45

the cypherpunks, people like Adam Back,

1:58:48

fought the wars against cryptography,

1:58:51

fought a war against the the the, the control of cryptography by the US and by UK government.

1:58:58

And then Bitcoin came out of that scene because it came out of the cypherpunk scene.

1:59:03

And, the the site there's a there's a great story. I think it was like,

1:59:08

who wrote the Cypher Sites site? Eric Hughes. Is he the Cypher Manifesto guy? Yeah. Yeah. May 1993.

1:59:14

We're almost

1:59:15

exactly 31 years.

1:59:17

They had they had conferences. You know, they would meet up and have a conference.

1:59:21

These cypherpunks.

1:59:23

It was, like, 40 of them.

1:59:25

Yeah. There was a story nobody.

1:59:27

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, nobody that. And there was a story that that that, I think it was like Hughes was on stage, and he goes that because they have name tags, you know, in the conference.

1:59:36

And they said that you can tell who the agency people are at these conferences because they're the only people who actually wear name tags.

1:59:43

And at at that point, the whole like, the audience all look around, and there's these 2 dudes in the in the audience who'd been there for the whole conference. And they had the name tags. And they've been asking people probing questions.

1:59:53

And they all looked around at these 2 guys, and these 2 guys apparently just stood up and walked out because they were, like, cover blown. But then so why so they they fought this incredible

2:00:02

war for us to have access to cryptography on the Internet so we can actually have privacy.

2:00:07

And it was heavily because for that reason, of course, like, the agencies are involved. They're heavily infiltrating. Right? Why would they then say, okay. Now you're just now you're just working on

2:00:16

apolitical, sensory resistant private private

2:00:19

private private privately centric money. Now we'll we'll get up, and we'll walk out, and we'll just leave you guys to crack on with the money part of it. It didn't happen. Like,

2:00:28

they can they stayed with us in the community. They continue to be just the, you know, the randoms at conferences turning up and asking probing questions. But I would argue that now we're at the stage where we're at the point where some of the people on stage

2:00:42

have have been, you know, could be co opted and, are working with agencies or publicly agency members themselves. Like, I don't think it's just conspiracy

2:00:49

conspiratorial to think that that we are directly challenging traditional power structures,

2:00:55

and things like, you know, the USD, world reserve currency.

2:01:02

So I think we need to wake up to that fact,

2:01:04

be a little bit more on guard, particularly when it comes to to

2:01:09

anonymity and privacy and those who wanna remain anonymous. You know, like, maybe they shouldn't go to some events.

2:01:15

And, Yeah. Like, we need to more Bitcoiners. We need to be aware that we are on a pretty scary battleground right now, and and we are gonna get attacked.

2:01:24

So

2:01:26

I agree. A lot of time back there. First of all, I was wrong.

2:01:31

It's March 9, 1993, not May. So we're

2:01:35

officially more than 31 years

2:01:38

since Eric Hughes, published the cypherpunk manifesto. Everyone should give it a read,

2:01:45

if they haven't yet. I mean, I agree. Like, obviously, there's there's a lot of attention here.

2:01:54

You know, Satoshi famously

2:01:56

walked away from the project privately,

2:02:01

when Gavin Anderson,

2:02:04

decided that he was gonna go give a presentation from the CIA.

2:02:09

And that was over 10 years ago. So attention is obviously here.

2:02:16

I think it what is almost more dangerous

2:02:19

than, you know, intentional spooks or whatever you wanna call them in the Bitcoin community

2:02:25

is there is a a a large subset of the Bitcoin community

2:02:31

that is growing, that actually wants to see

2:02:37

privacy eroded. Yeah. That that that that calls it they don't call it,

2:02:43

an attack on Bitcoin. They call it a regulatory clarity.

2:02:48

Regulatory clarity. We're we're we're clearing out the bad actors.

2:02:53

And that is just natural incentives, and I think that is to be expected. It was unavoidable.

2:02:59

And I think the beauty of Bitcoin is that it's incredibly hard to change by default,

2:03:04

even though it's permissionless, which is a crazy concept. Right? It's like you have this permissionless system that is incredibly difficult to change by default.

2:03:12

But I think that is the reality we we stand with today,

2:03:17

and and it is something that if for whatever reason you're not aware of it, I think if you've listened to civil dispatch, if you listened to Rebel recap,

2:03:25

if you paid attention in any kind of way, like, you should not be surprised by this.

2:03:30

But that's the reality we live in today.

2:03:33

So there are plenty of people that, like you said, are on stage,

2:03:37

at the big conferences that I don't think are necessarily, like, paid, employed by governments.

2:03:47

But but they unknowingly,

2:03:51

support the same narratives and the same strategies

2:03:55

that they're trying to employ?

2:03:59

I would say that there's probably a bunch you are paid and,

2:04:03

in bed in bed with government just because it may

2:04:06

you know, you get some light high here who wants to be successful, and then they get approached. They say, look. We'll cut you some breaks. We'll feed you some competitive info. And then, also, you get to think of yourself as a spy like James Bond, and there's some egos who would totally buy into that. I agree.

2:04:21

Yeah. So we have to be aware of that. But the the,

2:04:25

now it really is like for them is how do we control Bitcoin. We do. And for them, it's making it just like a Wall Street Play thing.

2:04:34

Just that's all it is. It's a store of value Wall Street Play thing. It's no longer a medium of exchange. We shouldn't use it as a medium of exchange. It doesn't make sense,

2:04:43

because that's that's the thing they're truly scared of is a political medium of exchange,

2:04:49

because people could start trading

2:04:52

stuff. Governments could start trading in this thing, which is apolitical and and can't be coerced and stopped by other governments.

2:05:01

So yeah. It's no. It's funny. I heard one of the talks. I was watching one of the talks from cheat code. I think it was Cali had his mask on when he's on stage. Yep. And Orange mask. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then someone in the chat was like, oh my god. Another Bitcoin and a mask. They they make they they make Bitcoin look so, you know,

2:05:21

dark and, you know, why why is he wearing this mask? It's so ridiculous. And I'm just like, oh, but, damn, man. Like, the the Bitcoiners have changed. Like, there are some people here, like you say, who they wanna I don't know. They feel legitimizing Bitcoin is by

2:05:34

making it more transparent, and more regulated.

2:05:38

And it's a it's a slippery slope. But, ultimately, all they can ever do is just stagger growth, so whatever.

2:05:44

Like, the growth of it as a a medium of exchange,

2:05:47

all they can do is is slow that down. And then also it's it's removing the trusted third parties. That's the thing they're truly terrified of because,

2:05:54

that's how people are empowered, you know, by the

2:05:58

the the the banking industry, controlling the production of money. And that's the thing which they wanna they wanna they don't they wanna stop from happening.

2:06:08

And all they can ever do is is just slow the growth of that. But, I mean, they're they're certainly, you know,

2:06:14

making the effort to do it, and it's, yeah, it's well within their interest. Because, I mean, it is you know, it's Bitcoin exists to disempower them. That's why that's why we're here. So

2:06:25

yeah. So it's it's, it's we we got some

2:06:30

rough rough battles ahead, I think.

2:06:33

The way I like to look at it is,

2:06:38

the way I like to look at it is is darkness was inevitable.

2:06:46

And Bitcoin, Nasr, other FreedomTech,

2:06:51

like, should result my expectation is it should result

2:06:56

in the darkness, being a a smaller, less harsh period,

2:07:03

before we reach the light. Yeah. But but if if if you, like, just took out like, pretend Bitcoin doesn't exist, pretend Nasdaq doesn't exist, pretend the greater false ecosystem doesn't exist,

2:07:15

We were still gonna get the darkness. Like, it was still gonna be bad.

2:07:19

It's gonna be less bad. I think it'll be less bad.

2:07:23

But to those of us that are

2:07:26

front and center and public faces,

2:07:31

We have our work cut out for us. Like, it's not

2:07:35

Yeah. It's not gonna be necessarily great.

2:07:38

No. This is gonna be this is gonna be when it gets hard, I think. Yeah. It's the it's the it's the it's the correct tooling. It's like the printing press, isn't it? Like, you have widespread widespread

2:07:46

democracy because the printing press was invented so people could actually, like, you know, communicate

2:07:53

with each other. And then and then more people could read,

2:07:56

because you didn't you know, the Bible wasn't such a Right. The Bible was easy. It's a print for people to access, and then they didn't have to trust the the the priest who was telling them what the Bible the bible the priest would stand up and tell everybody that in the Bible, it says everyone was a sheep and needs to pay a sheep tax and give them some money. And then, finally, when people got access to Bible, it was like, well, actually, this isn't this isn't correct. This is bollocks and empowered people. So you get the right tooling that empowers people and,

2:08:20

and, just like, the Internet empowered people.

2:08:23

And now we've got the access to public key crypto, which is empowering people.

2:08:28

And then it does directly attack

2:08:30

those power structures which have built their power base on

2:08:34

centralization and of control over data.

2:08:38

But yeah. Yeah. It'd be it'd be interesting to see where we all are this time next year because it's only the beginning of the year, really, and,

2:08:47

crikey, there's been a lot going on.

2:08:50

All I can say is,

2:08:53

it's all about the ride or dies. It's all about the ride or dies. The overwhelming majority of people can essentially be treated like they're robots with flesh skin.

2:09:05

And you have to focus on the rider dies, and the rider dies need to stand together.

2:09:10

What's that? Because without us, there's there's nothing. What?

2:09:13

What's that? Sorry. The the the the right what?

2:09:16

The rider dies.

2:09:19

Ride or die. Oh, ride or die. Ride or die, man. You're either in it or you're not. You're either

2:09:25

you're either a part of the movement or you're not. And I I this whole idea of, like, mainstream adoption or whatever,

2:09:32

majority just robots with flesh skin.

2:09:34

And they're not actually they're not a part of it. They're benefiting from it. Yeah. And

2:09:43

they might have an opinion, but they're not actually part of the movement.

2:09:49

And time is scarce. Time is the only thing more scarce than Bitcoin.

2:09:54

And you gotta focus on the rider dies. You can't you can't focus on anyone else. It's just it's it's not worth our time.

2:10:02

But it's key that the that that that we actually stand together. That we actually

2:10:08

say no. Like, it's we we will not fucking

2:10:12

do this. We're we we will not be a part of this,

2:10:17

oppression, and and we want the world to be a better place. We want our kids to grow up in a better world. We want our grandkids to grow up in a better world. We want the light to come through the darkness

2:10:29

sooner. That is what people should care about, and the overwhelming majority of people don't care about, but a small subset do.

2:10:38

And I am purely focused on the small subset.

2:10:42

Like, that's all that that matters. And I've gotten a lot of shit.

2:10:46

Matt, I mean, I I have a lot of respect for Beauty On. Beauty On called me out. He was like, how can you delete a 200000

2:10:53

person Twitter account? Because I just don't give a shit. Those people don't matter.

2:10:59

They matter, but they they don't matter to the movement. They they're not they're they're not bought in. They don't have skin in the game. What matters is the rider dies. If there's

2:11:09

I I I think the numbers on Nostra are actually,

2:11:13

better than the numbers that a lot of Nostra people say. But even if it's just 10,000 people, even if it's just 20,000 people,

2:11:22

they're the ride or dies. They're the ones who actually care and and wanna push this moving forward, and and and they're the people that that we actually need to stand together with.

2:11:30

They're not you know, the others are are,

2:11:34

you know, just zombies. And they're unfortunately, maybe they won't be in the future. I expect them to figure it out eventually and see the need and and move forward. But right now, they're just completely

2:11:45

irrelevant.

2:11:46

The the the ride or die Huddler type,

2:11:50

in it, you know, the that

2:11:53

bedrock like, the reason Bitcoin has value is because that bedrock increases in size, doesn't it, of ride or die puddler

2:12:00

in it for the long game? And then, you know, you come in for whatever reason. Right? And then you realize, actually, this thing

2:12:09

can have impact to make the world a better place.

2:12:11

And then, actually, there's a whole bunch of bunch of different ways in which you can contribute. You can create content, or you can,

2:12:18

you know, create a business or you can create a print up a source piece of software. You can contribute to a piece of software. Or you can do this. You can do that. You can just running software, whatever. Like, you start to realize that you can

2:12:29

have impact. And I think for a lot of people,

2:12:33

a lot of humans, when you live in,

2:12:37

representative democracy structures, less direct democracy structures, you feel disempowered.

2:12:42

Everything's the same status quo. People the rich people get richer, and the poor people get poorer. And so the world's going to shit in a handbag. And you don't really see any which way in in which you can have, like, positive impact.

2:12:54

And then you when you what for whatever reason, I think you stumble across Bitcoin,

2:12:59

it's like a bug which niggles in your brain,

2:13:02

and then you realize that you you can have positive impact. And then that's a social a social awakening. It's it's a it's it's a point in which

2:13:10

you realize that you're you do matter. Like, you are part of the thing which makes the network work. You are a user, and the user is important.

2:13:20

And, yeah. So I I I the the the the robots,

2:13:24

they awaken, and they become part of the ride or die bedrock, which all this shit sits on top of.

2:13:32

But, yeah, I mean, props to props to props to deleting that Twitter account. I'm not yet I've not yet done it yet, and I feel like such a twat when I my social followers do you have on Twitter?

2:13:41

Like, 2020 19,000 or something. I deleted a 200,000

2:13:45

plus It's amazing. Twitter account with a free blue check. You got Yeah. It's amazing. Delete. Be the change you wanna see in the world. Yeah, man. Yeah. I haven't yet done it. And my thumb sometimes default to Twitter, and I'm not. And, legitimately,

2:13:57

my Nostra experience is better.

2:14:00

This is what which I think is incredible is I am not sacrificing anything by using Nostra

2:14:04

more. No. I I use Amethyst, and it's a it's a bare user experience. Like, the the Twitter user experience, particularly with since Elon's taken it, like, it's it sucks.

2:14:13

And, but I just I it's like when I if I've got a project and I wanna show the project, I'm like, oh, I should probably post it on Twitter and then and then Delete it, Ben.

2:14:23

Until you do, I have that over you. Yeah. You do. And when I saw fate after this, well, I was like, man, that's Did he really?

2:14:30

Yeah. I deleted his Twitter account. I got that I got I got that stubborn Brazilian to fucking delete his Twitter account. He did it? Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. He did it. Oh, yeah. I can't wait to tell my grandchildren.

2:14:40

There's there's peer pressure. I feel I feel I have to do it. Maybe I'll do it

2:14:44

this week. I'm not on the list. Delete to worry about it. Ben

2:14:48

Ben, this has been fucking awesome.

2:14:53

Before we wrap, I wanna get your final thoughts. But before that before that, I just wanna thank the freaks who joined us in the live chat.

2:15:01

You guys make this show really, really unique. You guys make this so special.

2:15:06

Completely unmoderated, uncensored live chat. You guys are are partially the hosts alongside me, so thank you for joining the live chat. And huge shout out to the freaks who continue to support the show with Bitcoin,

2:15:17

whether that's through Fountain, Breeze, other podcasting 2 point o apps, or through the ZapStream.

2:15:22

We have no ads responses here at dispatch. This is purely value for value. So if you find value, thank you for sharing your value.

2:15:30

We had a big, big donation since yesterday.

2:15:34

I mean, this has been a big week for dispatch, just

2:15:37

episode, episode, episode. But we had Natgas Immersion sent

2:15:42

100 k sats through podcasting 2 point o. So thank you, Natgas Immersion.

2:15:46

I appreciate you. But, yeah, if you don't have stats to spare, easiest way is to share the show with friends and family.

2:15:55

Every podcast app, search Cylinder Dispatch.

2:15:58

YouTube, till we're banned, Cilla dispatch.

2:16:01

Nope. No longer using Twitch. All the links are still dispatch.com.

2:16:06

We're on YouTube until they ban us.

2:16:09

The YouTube usually doesn't include the end video depending on how,

2:16:14

but hurt, the individual artists are that I'm sharing their music

2:16:18

to a wider audience. They should be grateful.

2:16:22

But with all that said, Ben, this has been fucking awesome.

2:16:25

One thing I would love is for you to agree to come on more often. Would you agree to that?

2:16:32

No, man. Yeah. Totally. It'd be another it's it's always wacky to me that I've not been on it. I was like Yeah. Or just you know? But I feel like we could talk for hours. Like, we're we're 2 hours and 15 minutes in, and, unfortunately, I do have something I have to deal with in 13 minutes.

2:16:49

But I feel like this has been we could go on forever and ever. So I would just rather if you were just a repeat guest, like, this would be a great deal for me. Yeah. Totally. And we can I can I can show you the the some of the stuff we've been building?

2:17:02

The,

2:17:03

I think more and more like you say, with

2:17:06

a hell of a lot of new people coming into to Bitcoin,

2:17:09

I think that I've noticed that a lot of us who've been here for a while, we're all

2:17:14

talking off the same sheet. Like, we're all we're all here for the same reason.

2:17:17

And, yeah, it's great to speak to a a, you know, a Bitcoin who's been around for a while. And

2:17:23

not saying that anyone comes in new isn't doesn't have value to add. Of course, they do. And thank you for thank you for being here. And the cool part of the movement is you can come in fresh.

2:17:31

Yeah. It's important. Like, your contributions matter.

2:17:35

Yeah. Ben. But it's always a pleasure to speak to someone who's been around for a while. So, yeah, thanks for having me. What did do you have any final thoughts for the audience before we wrap?

2:17:44

Not really. Just thanks for being here. Continue to, like, try and contribute in every which way you can. One of the best ways in which you can contribute to,

2:17:53

software and hardware is just to run the stuff and and play around with it. And then if you find any issues, feed them back to the software projects.

2:18:00

That's an amazing and then also join the community groups. So in LMBbits, we're on Telegram,

2:18:06

LMBbits, and then Maker Bits as well is also on Telegram. They're nice communities.

2:18:10

Man, that's one of the first things we with Nosta, like, the idea was the first thing we're gonna build, the first client we're gonna build was a a Telegram alternative. So we could actually take the Nosto chat off Telegram and put it on the Telegram alternative. And,

2:18:23

I'm yet to kind of really see that, but, I I hope that happens soon. But, yeah,

2:18:28

just get involved. Get your hands dirty. We're all in for a bit of a fight over the next year. And,

2:18:34

you know, if we all band together, ride or die in the trenches

2:18:39

with our bayonets ready to take on the fucking

2:18:43

the man. Yeah. Fuck the banks and fight the bastards.

2:18:46

That's it.

2:18:47

Damn right. Well, Ben, I appreciate you. Thanks for joining. Thanks for all the work you do. And,

2:18:52

to everything Satoshi in the comments,

2:18:55

if Elon makes Twitter a nostril client,

2:18:58

I will be incredibly proud of him, and I will be happy to see it. But I do not expect that because he wants power and control.

2:19:07

And, those who tell you otherwise are just enjoying

2:19:11

the reach that his algorithm is giving him giving them momentarily.

2:19:16

But he can take it away from them at a moment's notice, and that's why we use Nostra, and that's why we use FreedomTech.

2:19:23

Thank you, Ben. And, till next time. I do appreciate you. Thank

2:19:31

you. Many times must the can and the balls fly

2:19:57

before they're full out of band.

2:20:22

How many years must the mountain exist

2:20:27

before it is washed to the sea?

2:20:32

Isn't how many years

2:20:44

a time must a man turn his head

2:20:48

and pretend that he just doesn't see?

2:21:26

One may have before

2:21:29

he can hear our people cryin'?

2:22:05

Love you freaks. That track

2:22:09

was Bob Dylan blowing in the wind.

2:22:12

I believe it was recorded 1963.

2:22:18

Lest you think, this is a new fight, that we're a part of.

2:22:24

It's been going on for decades, centuries even.

2:22:29

Freaks. I have no specific

2:22:35

plans for what the next dispatch is.

2:22:41

I'll probably have 1 or 2 next week.

2:22:43

In the meantime, I did a great series in partnership with Bitcoin Magazine called Freedom Money.

2:22:50

I've it's come to my attention that some of you have not listened to it. It's with human rights activists around the world.

2:22:57

So I I'm I think I'm gonna put that on the podcast feed.

2:23:00

Six great conversations. You can search for the original by just searching Freedom

2:23:07

Money. Maybe add Odell on YouTube,

2:23:10

and it should come up. But I think I'm gonna throw it on the feed as well

2:23:16

because why the fuck not? That's what matters.

2:23:21

But until next time. I love you all,

2:23:25

and stay humble in Stack Sats. Let's see if I can actually do a raid

2:23:32

because I failed yesterday. I I know I did. So I'm gonna send you guys all to no good radio because that dude's a ride or die.

2:23:40

And he did a great job, with the redesign of,

2:23:46

seal dispatch art. Thank you. No good. I really do appreciate you.