Speaker 1: So the big question is this, how do investors like
Speaker 1: us get access to the ideas, information, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: the right people that give us the tools and information
Speaker 1: we need to make informed and educated decisions to have success.
Speaker 1: That is the question, and this podcast will give us
Speaker 1: the answers. This is Mark Moss, your host. Let's get
Speaker 1: this learned. Welcome to another episode of the Market Disruptors podcast.
Speaker 1: Today I am joined by Justin Moon. He is a
Speaker 1: developer and an educator and he hosts build a boot
Speaker 1: camp where he teaches people how to code on bitcoin
Speaker 1: and build applications on bitcoin. And we get into all
Speaker 1: types of conversations, including ways that people can get involved
Speaker 1: with bitcoin. UM, so many different options. We talked about
Speaker 1: ways that people are building and what kind of options
Speaker 1: are available there, and then we get into security of bitcoin.
Speaker 1: We talked about bitcoin wallets, bitcoin security, bitcoin protocols, UM,
Speaker 1: what would be maybe the easiest way for big inners,
Speaker 1: and then what's more advanced ways as people want to
Speaker 1: grow their security UM. I liked what he said that
Speaker 1: complexity is the enemy of security, and so we talked
Speaker 1: about that and so many other ways to protect your privacy.
Speaker 1: It was a really good conversation with Justin. So let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and just jump right into it. Hey, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to another episode of the Market Distructors podcast. Today,
Speaker 1: I am joined by Justin Moon. He is a bitcoin
Speaker 1: developer an educator and uh, I'm really excited to have
Speaker 1: him on the show. Welcome Justin. Thanks for having me. Mark. So,
Speaker 1: I met you in Texas a few weeks ago at
Speaker 1: a bitcoin conference and you were given a talk about
Speaker 1: wallets and security and things like that. Really good talk,
Speaker 1: by the way. I appreciated that. Why don't you just
Speaker 1: give us a little background on you know, who you are,
Speaker 1: what you've been doing, and what you're doing in the
Speaker 1: space right now. So I'm a programmer by trade. I
Speaker 1: learned uh during college. I didn't actually study it in school,
Speaker 1: but I was so bored in school that I just
Speaker 1: picked it up on the side because it was fun. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so I've been doing for like five six years,
Speaker 1: and I got into bitcoin maybe eighteen months ago. Uh
Speaker 1: and uh, when I actually understood that it was it
Speaker 1: was a really good technical solution. I always thought it
Speaker 1: was it was probably smoking mirrors. But when I went
Speaker 1: and studied, I was like, oh wow, this is quite interesting. Uh,
Speaker 1: even if it you know, just on a technical level,
Speaker 1: even if it doesn't impact the world at all, it's
Speaker 1: like technically very interesting. So that kind of got me
Speaker 1: in there. And uh and yeah, so after about six months,
Speaker 1: I became frustrated with the difficulty of learning how bitcoin works.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, y'all you're just like chasing down random
Speaker 1: blog posts and uh, there wasn't really like a really
Speaker 1: many classes I could take to faciltate to just speed
Speaker 1: up my learning. So I created a little thing called
Speaker 1: Biddle boot Camp, which is like a six six week
Speaker 1: or so online bitcoin programming boot camp where we do,
Speaker 1: like very briefly, we we do like three or four
Speaker 1: main things. We make like a little mini version of
Speaker 1: the bitcoin network. We write it ourselves so you can
Speaker 1: see how the like mining and everything interacts with transactions
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, which is fun. And we do
Speaker 1: a little uh programming with the real bitcoin network, you know,
Speaker 1: connecting to all these peers, composing messages, reading messages, trying
Speaker 1: to do stuff like initial block download ourselves, which is
Speaker 1: kind of fun. And then we build the hardware wallet
Speaker 1: at the end. So that's my Biddle boot Camp class.
Speaker 1: And uh, an interesting thing with the Biddle boot Camp
Speaker 1: was that, Uh, a lot of people who are interested
Speaker 1: in it were like really bitcoin people, and they weren't
Speaker 1: very sophisticated programming wise, and this might apply to your audience. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I ended up creating a little thing called University,
Speaker 1: which is like a learned to code class aimed at
Speaker 1: people who are interested in bitcoins. All the examples involved bitcoins.
Speaker 1: So like when we're learning to do a loop, that's
Speaker 1: a common thing you do in in in programming, we
Speaker 1: do something repeatedly. Uh, we're trying to solve the question
Speaker 1: of how many times will the bitcoin uh subsidy have? Right,
Speaker 1: there's this happening every four years. So it's like a
Speaker 1: simple base gain out your problem and you can do
Speaker 1: it with a like a loop and programming to you know,
Speaker 1: just divide it until it reaches zero and you count
Speaker 1: how many times you do that. So it's it's like
Speaker 1: a lot of fun little exercises like that. So I'm
Speaker 1: sort of one of these advocates for trying to get
Speaker 1: people to understand a bit going on a little more
Speaker 1: technical level, uh, just because I think it's it's very rewarding.
Speaker 1: It reduces the chances you lose your coins, which is
Speaker 1: extremely important. I think the best self defense and bitcoin
Speaker 1: is education. Yeah, it's kind of like, was it that
Speaker 1: meme going around like they should just learn to code? Yeah,
Speaker 1: learn to code. I actually got suspended from Twitter for
Speaker 1: saying learn to code with some journalists, uh in the
Speaker 1: doghouse for forty eight hours, I think. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's uh. I mean, it's kind of a joke. And
Speaker 1: obviously it's not for everybody. I wouldn't like say, you know,
Speaker 1: like you know, my friends with you know, talk to
Speaker 1: safety and almost every once in a like who wrote
Speaker 1: the bitcoin standard for a great book, and like, I
Speaker 1: don't want I don't think he should maybe learn to
Speaker 1: code's got his thing figured out, you know, maybe it's not.
Speaker 1: It's just like my point is, it's not for everyone.
Speaker 1: I think I think a lot of people should try
Speaker 1: it because what I love about it is, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I love the space. We both love the space. I
Speaker 1: believe it's gonna be one of the most you know,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest technologies to really change things up.
Speaker 1: And so there's gonna be all types of opportunities and
Speaker 1: and if you want to get involved, I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: you want to do marketing around bitcoin or right content
Speaker 1: around marketing, or maybe you want to code. And so
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of different areas that you can get
Speaker 1: in depend on what you're what you're you know, interests
Speaker 1: are or whatever, but in your background. But I'm curious, So,
Speaker 1: like you're teaching people how to write code and then
Speaker 1: code on bitcoin, but um, they're not actually changing Bitcoin.
Speaker 1: They're not working on bitcoin core. They're working on is
Speaker 1: it like products that would be on bitcoin or working
Speaker 1: with bitcoin like stacking on it. Yeah, So there's a
Speaker 1: distinction in bitcoin development. There's a distinction between application development
Speaker 1: and protocol development. Right. So the protocol is, uh, it's
Speaker 1: just a sort of rules, right, and the Bitcoin protocol
Speaker 1: is like an abstract set of rules. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: there are different software programs that attempt to like execute
Speaker 1: and enforce these rules, right. And so the oldest one
Speaker 1: is we call it bitcoin core or the Setoshi client.
Speaker 1: It's the thing that Setoshi made, uh. And it was
Speaker 1: really started out as really like a proof of concept, right.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of an ugly piece of code sort
Speaker 1: of hacked to clearly hack together by one person who
Speaker 1: was you know, didn't didn't didn't have the resources available
Speaker 1: to attempt such an ambitious project and was just sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, continued to be nursed along for a few
Speaker 1: years until he could get uh some external interests. But
Speaker 1: still it's it's sort of like, uh, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like sort of an ugly UH program, I think, just
Speaker 1: because it's very hard to change because any if you
Speaker 1: make a mistake, the network splits, so you know, the
Speaker 1: developers have to be very very conservative. And some other
Speaker 1: protocol implementations or something like btc D. This is a
Speaker 1: version of an implementation of the Bitcoin rules UH created
Speaker 1: by roast Beef the the or. He's one of the
Speaker 1: people who made it, and he's the guy who makes
Speaker 1: the l n d UH Lightning protocol implementation as well
Speaker 1: Lightning Labs. He's the CTO of Lightning Labs. There's another
Speaker 1: one called li Bitcoin. There's a number of these UH
Speaker 1: protocol rule implementations, and then there's application development, right, so
Speaker 1: that's like your Wasabi wallet or your electron wallet, or
Speaker 1: your treads or or maybe like bitmax or backed or
Speaker 1: anyone of these exchanges are on ramps. Also like lending products,
Speaker 1: the fa basically thing that interacts with bitcoin. I mean
Speaker 1: it's an Apple. Yeah, that kind of like like the ice,
Speaker 1: like the iPhone, and you have like your ILS application,
Speaker 1: which is the core, and then you have all the
Speaker 1: apps that you can install on them that can do
Speaker 1: any number of things exactly. And but the big distinction
Speaker 1: there is that anyone can work. It's very hard to
Speaker 1: actually work on the iOS operating system. You gotta go
Speaker 1: get a job at or at Apple. Uh. But with bitcoin,
Speaker 1: you you can work on the bitcoin core project. And
Speaker 1: I've had a few students make small changes to it
Speaker 1: because the codes there and if you notice some bug,
Speaker 1: you can just kind of update it and eventually your
Speaker 1: change will get in if it's a good change, hopefully,
Speaker 1: And so so yeah, that's the distinction is you have
Speaker 1: the people who are working on the actual rules. Well
Speaker 1: there's there's sort of like three pieces. There's the people
Speaker 1: who work on the software that like executes the rules,
Speaker 1: the people that build applications on top of it. But
Speaker 1: then also like the one group that I don't really
Speaker 1: mention is the researchers. They're the ones that think about
Speaker 1: how the rules should change. Right, so segue for example,
Speaker 1: was this uh way that the rules changed and uh
Speaker 1: it took a ton of thought, and this is a
Speaker 1: change in the abstract rules of bitcoin, not any piece
Speaker 1: of software that executes those rules. So it's sort of
Speaker 1: like the three different pieces. And I focus more on
Speaker 1: the application development. But I think most, or I would
Speaker 1: say many people who get in involved in bitcoin probably
Speaker 1: start on the application side, like how can I play
Speaker 1: with bitcoin? Right? And as they get deeper, they might
Speaker 1: move towards more of a protocol developer and sort of
Speaker 1: the most advanced as a researcher, where you trying to
Speaker 1: think about everything holistically and improve the whole beast. Sure,
Speaker 1: but I think for easy comparison sake, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of people think about building apps for the iPhone
Speaker 1: and the Android, but they're not thinking about trying to
Speaker 1: build a new Android or go work with Android. They
Speaker 1: just want to make an app for it. Yuh. But
Speaker 1: I guess it's a little bit unique. Bitcoin is a
Speaker 1: little b unique in a sense where it's open source,
Speaker 1: so anybody could just build whatever they want on it, versus,
Speaker 1: like you said before, like the Android iOS, those are
Speaker 1: not open source, so you can't just build anything, right,
Speaker 1: it has to be permissioned and within when it's the
Speaker 1: other big difference that's so out of our Bitcoin is
Speaker 1: that it's not like the open source is not just
Speaker 1: that you can work on it, but it's so easy
Speaker 1: to copy and make a copycat, right, Like trying to
Speaker 1: make a copycat of Android is like absurd because it's
Speaker 1: it's so hard to market it, right, But bitcoin, you know,
Speaker 1: you make an alt coin and try to market it
Speaker 1: to people, Well, it's it's very easy and you just
Speaker 1: like light Excuse me, lightcoin took forty five minutes to create, right,
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's it's one of the tough things
Speaker 1: about bitcoin development is there's a huge in sign up
Speaker 1: once people become sophisticated enough door with it to go
Speaker 1: and copy it and compete with it. Uh, just the
Speaker 1: one I like your point, but that's the one distinction
Speaker 1: is it's like you get, it's just so easy to copy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I've heard it. I've heard it said where
Speaker 1: you know, because bitcoins open source and then you can
Speaker 1: build whatever applications you want on them, and then you
Speaker 1: could start building on top of like other applications. So
Speaker 1: a lot of times these other applications may be open
Speaker 1: source as well, and then it's almost like stacking legos,
Speaker 1: so then you can kind of combine other applications to
Speaker 1: make a new application kind of a thing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was just playing with BTC bas server. That's the it's
Speaker 1: a project. It's like a merchant processor that is self hosted.
Speaker 1: You can uh, you know, for like ten five ten
Speaker 1: bucks a month, you can run it and accept bitcoin
Speaker 1: payments on your e commerce stores. It's like for my classes,
Speaker 1: I accept payments in bitcoin using this, and you don't
Speaker 1: have to trust a third party, which is really nice.
Speaker 1: You actually hold the keys to the bitcoin yourself and
Speaker 1: you run it on a computer that you control. So
Speaker 1: it's it's sort of like goes along with the ethos
Speaker 1: of bitcoin to uh do the verification yourself and not
Speaker 1: trust third parties. And within this BTC pay server application,
Speaker 1: there's all these little apps and so one of them
Speaker 1: was one to like export your your invoices to quick books, right,
Speaker 1: and so at this point these are both free, open
Speaker 1: source products, but it is so you're starting to see
Speaker 1: this sort of like stacking of uh. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's the BBC PAS server has its own little app
Speaker 1: store kind of inside, which is pretty cool. Uh, And
Speaker 1: I think you're gonna see a lot more of that,
Speaker 1: especially as uh you can create you can turn these
Speaker 1: little projects into businesses as bitcoin becomes more popular, especially
Speaker 1: if the developers continue to build stuff open source, right,
Speaker 1: so BTC, paser ever built it open source, which allows
Speaker 1: people to now start building on top of it. Um
Speaker 1: I think I guess once people start trying to close
Speaker 1: it off and keep a proprietary then maybe that slows
Speaker 1: things down. Yeah, yeah, I mean you can definitely see that.
Speaker 1: Like I guess the company like Costa Gems tends to
Speaker 1: I guess they have some some some of it open source,
Speaker 1: but a lot of quite a bit of its uh
Speaker 1: close to uh. Some some of these companies are trying
Speaker 1: to make it more like a walled garden, which always fine,
Speaker 1: especially if it might be hard to like build on it,
Speaker 1: but especially if you can audit the code. Uh like
Speaker 1: if if as as a bitcoin user, you always want
Speaker 1: to demand open source, not because you're gonna go and
Speaker 1: read the code, but just because you can sort of
Speaker 1: assume that a popular thing where the code is on
Speaker 1: the internet is going to have some people like justin
Speaker 1: over here, who's gonna migaul and trying to see if
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with it. And if there is, tell
Speaker 1: everybody and so that that that's the thing that's really
Speaker 1: powerful about open sources that you can sort of the
Speaker 1: more popular is you can assume more people are sort
Speaker 1: of looking at it and they're trying to like attack
Speaker 1: it and figure out ways to break it. So like
Speaker 1: that's a nice thing about the Treads or the whole
Speaker 1: firm where everything about it is is a pretty open store.
Speaker 1: And you know, and it's been that way for about
Speaker 1: four years. So uh, as your your average non technical
Speaker 1: users should find some comfort in that fact that a
Speaker 1: lot of these sort of like hacker types are competing
Speaker 1: with each other to break the treads or and they
Speaker 1: struggle to So that's that's a really nice thing, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's a good segue. I wanted to jump into
Speaker 1: UM talking about security. So you mentioned COSA and then
Speaker 1: obviously treads or UM. So at at the bit Block
Speaker 1: Boom conference, you were talking about security and different types
Speaker 1: of custody and wallets and whatnot, and I think you
Speaker 1: you basically, I mean, I guess if you want to
Speaker 1: break it down into two big buckets, you have self
Speaker 1: custody and then you have someone else holding custody. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then you have shades of that like a cosa
Speaker 1: where there's like maybe some shared stuff, but you either
Speaker 1: have someone do it for you or you do it yourself, right,
Speaker 1: and then if you do it yourself, you have a
Speaker 1: couple of different options. So what are your what are
Speaker 1: your thoughts there? Yeah, so, uh, I guess the big
Speaker 1: distinction is uh sort of about really owning bitcoin versus
Speaker 1: having financial exposure to bitcoin. Right, So there's a number
Speaker 1: of ways to get uh. To own bitcoin, you have
Speaker 1: to you have to have control over a secret number.
Speaker 1: Basically it's a huge secret number, like eighty decimal places,
Speaker 1: and that having control over a certain secret number like that,
Speaker 1: it's so big you can't guess it. It would take
Speaker 1: the you know, the age of the universe to guess
Speaker 1: and check whether you your guess was correct. That's the
Speaker 1: security of a That's that's what it means to really
Speaker 1: own bitcoin is to have control over one of these
Speaker 1: secret numbers. And that's what a treasure's entire job is
Speaker 1: to safely, generate, store, and interact with this big secret number. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the cryptography and cryptocurrency. So so that's what it means.
Speaker 1: Just to own bitcoin is to to control that number yourself.
Speaker 1: But it's scary because uh, you know, if your software
Speaker 1: has a problem, it might try to steal that number,
Speaker 1: or uh, your software might not generate it in a
Speaker 1: in a good way to make it sort of easily guessable.
Speaker 1: So there's there's some pitfalls there. So on the other
Speaker 1: side is financial exposure to bitcoin, right, and so when
Speaker 1: you're getting financialists exposure to bitcoin, you don't have all
Speaker 1: the benefits of like, let's say, being able to cross
Speaker 1: a border with your bitcoin in your head. You know,
Speaker 1: to memorize uh twenty four words and cross the border
Speaker 1: with uh, with your net worth in your head. That's
Speaker 1: like one of the most amazing things about bitcoin. Uh,
Speaker 1: you don't you don't get the privacy benefits, you can't
Speaker 1: transact with it, uh, number of other things that you know,
Speaker 1: in the case of a government crackdown, you you you
Speaker 1: you aren't sure you'll be able to keep your financial exposure. Uh.
Speaker 1: So so some of the ways you can get financial
Speaker 1: exposure are you know some of these like products uh, like,
Speaker 1: I mean the big one is by quote unquote buying
Speaker 1: coins and starting them on an exchange. What you own
Speaker 1: at that point is an iou you do not own bitcoin.
Speaker 1: You own an IOU that represents bitcoin, and if the
Speaker 1: exchange you're working with when completely insolvent tomorrow, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: ever get those bitcoins. And this would happen in Mount
Speaker 1: Docks for example. So these are people who had financial
Speaker 1: exposure bitcoin but didn't own them, right, And a lot
Speaker 1: of people think those exchanges are like banks, but they're not.
Speaker 1: They're not. They're not insured. Yeah, well, and then even banks,
Speaker 1: right like banks, uh, you know, they're insured up to
Speaker 1: a point, but if the banks ever go completely insolvent,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna get all your money either or whatever.
Speaker 1: The way I like to look at it is that
Speaker 1: everything in life has risks, everything has trade offs, right,
Speaker 1: and we always have to wait with those tradeoffs, and
Speaker 1: those risks are and you know, just like in the
Speaker 1: old days, maybe people kept cash at home and put
Speaker 1: them in the mattress or put it in the walls.
Speaker 1: But the risk with that is that you know, your
Speaker 1: house burns down, someone steal as you, robs you whatever,
Speaker 1: or you can put in the bank, but then the
Speaker 1: risk is, I mean, what if the bank doesn't give
Speaker 1: your money? And so today kind of the same trade off,
Speaker 1: like I can custom my own bitcoin UM, but that
Speaker 1: that carries risks if I do it wrong, if I
Speaker 1: get hacked, if I lose my password. I could have
Speaker 1: someone stored for me, which probably is does a better
Speaker 1: job of security, So the security risk kind of goes away,
Speaker 1: But then there's risks that maybe they don't give me
Speaker 1: my money when I want it, or they go and
Speaker 1: solve it. Like you said, yeah, you don't get all
Speaker 1: the benefits of bitcoin if someone else, if you just
Speaker 1: have this, It's like it's about that other people will
Speaker 1: find these benefits compelling, but you yourself don't get the
Speaker 1: benefits because you're you know, you're just using a third party. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what are what do you think are I know
Speaker 1: you've done quite an extensive review on a lot of
Speaker 1: these different hardware wallets, UM and and and different ways
Speaker 1: to secure it. So what do you think are like
Speaker 1: the kind of the first steps that someone should make
Speaker 1: that are pretty good without going to overboard. So my
Speaker 1: point of view is that, uh, like when I think
Speaker 1: back to when I first started to use these hardware
Speaker 1: wallets and software wallets, and I think about all the
Speaker 1: mistakes I made. One alarming thing is I was always
Speaker 1: using real money, right Like I was, I was learning
Speaker 1: how to use it with real money, and if I
Speaker 1: made a mistake. I don't think I ever made a
Speaker 1: real mistake. I got really close a couple of times,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, if I would have made a mistake,
Speaker 1: I would have lost for money. And so the biggest
Speaker 1: thing I think of is that if if you really
Speaker 1: want to commit to learning how to use this asset
Speaker 1: in a safe way, uh uh you know, to to
Speaker 1: to basically have your own Swiss bank account in your pocket, right,
Speaker 1: think that's what it is. Uh. If if you want that,
Speaker 1: then you have to commit some uh time and energy
Speaker 1: to learning. And the best way to learn is to
Speaker 1: use bitcoins test network. It's called test net uh test
Speaker 1: not is you is uh? And this is what we
Speaker 1: do in my Huddle boot camp to class to teach
Speaker 1: people some of these self custody fundamentals. Uh. Test ne
Speaker 1: is a a clone of the Bitcoin network that is
Speaker 1: intended to be used by software developers like myself when
Speaker 1: we're building applications. And so every almost every wallet supports
Speaker 1: test not because the developers want to test it when
Speaker 1: they're you know, making changes. They want to test that
Speaker 1: it works without having to risk grow money. But test
Speaker 1: that has a is also very nice if you're trying
Speaker 1: to learn how to use these products, because you can
Speaker 1: screw up and not lose any money, which is fantastic.
Speaker 1: But all the all the hardware wallts, all the software wall,
Speaker 1: it's work exactly the same, whether using test net or
Speaker 1: the real bitcoin network which we call main net. So
Speaker 1: that's the big thing I would recommend is is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, look at it as sort of like maybe
Speaker 1: a couple of months process of learning and just start
Speaker 1: uh downloading wallets and playing with them using bitcoins test
Speaker 1: new And one of the important things I would practice
Speaker 1: doing is practice like, uh, practice like losing the wallet. Right,
Speaker 1: so all you have is your your your seed words. Right,
Speaker 1: we have these like twelve or twenty four words that
Speaker 1: represent that secret number I was referring to earlier. You
Speaker 1: can practice like deleting the wall and figure out how
Speaker 1: you can get those test not bitcoins back from this words. Right.
Speaker 1: So you're so you're basically stimulating a disaster, right, so
Speaker 1: you can sort of like simulate and uh practice going
Speaker 1: through these sort of disaster scenarios and uh, that way,
Speaker 1: if if you do this, you know everything that everything
Speaker 1: that that that could go really wrong, and you've sort
Speaker 1: of practiced how to, uh, how to recover from that,
Speaker 1: and you know what what mistakes are fatal and which aren't, uh,
Speaker 1: and you can do all this without ever risking row money.
Speaker 1: And maybe you get halfway through and you say, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a't for me. I'm just gonna you know,
Speaker 1: leave my coins with a third party. But I think
Speaker 1: I think, uh, I think, you know, we need to
Speaker 1: look at like, you know, I think different people need
Speaker 1: different levels of security. So I mean, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to secure hunt it dollars with a bitcoin, your security
Speaker 1: protocol is gonna be a lot different than if you're
Speaker 1: trying to secure a million or ten million or a
Speaker 1: hundred million, and so um, you know, maybe maybe if
Speaker 1: you're only dealing with a hundred bucks or a couple
Speaker 1: hundred bucks, maybe you don't need to go through all that.
Speaker 1: Maybe just put it on a truas or it might
Speaker 1: be might be might be good what putting on a
Speaker 1: trust or at that point it's too expensive because that's
Speaker 1: just where as much as your coins are worth. That's true.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think, yeah, so that's a
Speaker 1: good point. You know, you get started with just it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the idea of good off zero
Speaker 1: with uh, you know we tell people, we tell no
Speaker 1: connors like good off zero at least have like a
Speaker 1: dollar worth of it kind what you know, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not rational to have zero dollars a bitcoin. You should
Speaker 1: at least have like one dollar. Uh and what we
Speaker 1: same way if you own some maybe maybe just move
Speaker 1: a couple of your coins off in exchange, a couple,
Speaker 1: you know, small percentage of your coins often exchange and
Speaker 1: practice holding that yourself. Yeah, So do you think it's
Speaker 1: kind of like we have like heart we have we
Speaker 1: have software wallets or hot wallets, right that we could
Speaker 1: download from the app store, and there's dozens of those. Probably.
Speaker 1: Then we have like a hardware wallet whould be like
Speaker 1: a treas er ledge or cold coin, which is an
Speaker 1: actual like a hardware like USB device that I could
Speaker 1: store it on and that so that like maybe level
Speaker 1: one is like just downloading an app and storing it
Speaker 1: in there. I mean there's so many today, Um, some
Speaker 1: that make it super easy to send your bitcoin, like
Speaker 1: drop it, um, you know, ones that pay you back
Speaker 1: like Glali, and then there's you know, all kinds of
Speaker 1: other ones. Do you do you mess around with those
Speaker 1: at all? Or do you think that's just you should
Speaker 1: probably skip right past that and go right to a
Speaker 1: hardware wallet. I I, uh, I just find Dusktop apps
Speaker 1: easier to use, honestly. Uh So, I I got started
Speaker 1: using Electron because Electron is quite easy to use. But
Speaker 1: I think the idea of starting with a mobile app.
Speaker 1: But one nice thing about mobile apps is you can
Speaker 1: like scan QR codes much easier, so like you never
Speaker 1: have to worry about typing it in wrong. You just
Speaker 1: scan the QR code and you know, you it's a
Speaker 1: little it's a little bit more ergonomic. So yeah, either
Speaker 1: a Dusktop software app or a software wallet or a
Speaker 1: mobile app are great places to start. And you know,
Speaker 1: you just practice sending sending back and forth. I mean,
Speaker 1: like one of the other things you can sort of
Speaker 1: learn about is just like the different fees you pay.
Speaker 1: I think most people, uh, you know, after being in
Speaker 1: bitcoin for like a year, they realized that you don't
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if your transaction confirms and twenty minutes
Speaker 1: or not. Most of the time. Most of the time
Speaker 1: that confirms in a week, you're happy. Uh, And so
Speaker 1: you you know, you learn to pay a much slower fee.
Speaker 1: At a certain point you can pay you know. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I think many of us overpay on the fees on
Speaker 1: our fees quite substantially. So it's like, you know, just
Speaker 1: to start start playing with a little dials that the
Speaker 1: software wallet's using. I think. Yeah, I think one of
Speaker 1: the best ways to understand bitcoin is to just play
Speaker 1: around with it and try to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: after you're after your transaction is created, you know, go
Speaker 1: and put that I D into maybe block stream dot inflows,
Speaker 1: block explorer, uh and and go try to look at
Speaker 1: it and understand what the block explorers telling you. You know,
Speaker 1: like your transactions are much more interesting than like a
Speaker 1: transaction in the abstract, so you can sort of like
Speaker 1: look at yours and try to understand what's actually going
Speaker 1: on there, and you'll see some terms you don't recognize.
Speaker 1: Google those. I think that's one of the best ways
Speaker 1: to learn about that point from from the beginner's point
Speaker 1: of view. Yeah, Now, what about when you're using a
Speaker 1: hardware wallet like a treasure or a ledger, when you're
Speaker 1: doing those transaction and I mean, I guess you have
Speaker 1: to log onto their website connect your wallet, and so
Speaker 1: then it's running all those transactions through their servers, right
Speaker 1: and and maybe the next step would then be to
Speaker 1: use those hardware wallets, but then how the transactions run
Speaker 1: through your own server? Yeah, so this is a tricky Uh,
Speaker 1: this is something I'm actually working on right now. Uh So, Yeah.
Speaker 1: The default way is that you're using apps that they
Speaker 1: make for you, and so the trader off there is privacy.
Speaker 1: They will know every transaction you ever did, and you
Speaker 1: should probably assume that they're going to sell that at
Speaker 1: some point information because it's very valuable. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they won't, but you should probably assume that they will.
Speaker 1: So if you care about your privacy and you don't
Speaker 1: want basically, uh you don't want uh it to be
Speaker 1: public knowledge which coins you own, then you'll probably want
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to connect to your own
Speaker 1: node of some sort. And the the easiest way to
Speaker 1: do that in out is using the electrom wallet and
Speaker 1: something called electron Personal server. This is uh it's basically
Speaker 1: something that can connect Electrome to your own full node.
Speaker 1: And this is not really for non technical users, honestly,
Speaker 1: it's and even I don't really enjoy doing it. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's like a glue to to connect these two
Speaker 1: different programs because electrom knows how to work with harder
Speaker 1: wallets and uh, but it does it generally. It talks
Speaker 1: to uh third party servers which are are probably also
Speaker 1: leaking your privacy. This is one of the things. The
Speaker 1: deeper you go down the rabbit hole, you you you
Speaker 1: learn about all these different places where privacy is leaked.
Speaker 1: That's sort of like a lot of the advanced usage
Speaker 1: a bitcoin is around using it without leaking your privacy.
Speaker 1: And so there's a new class of things that user
Speaker 1: interfaces that will connect directly to bitcoin corps. And I'm
Speaker 1: working on one called Junction. I hope to release it
Speaker 1: either tonight or tomorrow. I made like one release a
Speaker 1: week or two ago. But I'm making a desktop app
Speaker 1: uh and so that would connect directly to your own
Speaker 1: full node uh full note meaning like your bitcoin core
Speaker 1: running and it and it goes and verifies every one
Speaker 1: of the transactions, so I can see what you what
Speaker 1: your balances are. Uh. So so there's a new class
Speaker 1: of this, like an interface that someone could use to
Speaker 1: connect to their their full node much easier. Yep. So
Speaker 1: so it's it's an interface to to do uh. It's
Speaker 1: an interface that connects hardware wallets to bitcoin core, so
Speaker 1: you can use your hardware wallet together with bitcoin core
Speaker 1: and UH you can also use your hardware wallet and
Speaker 1: a multi sig set up. So this is the idea
Speaker 1: with multi sake is you can have multiple keys control
Speaker 1: your bitcoins. You can basically split your bitcoin up to
Speaker 1: be controlled by let's say three different of these secret numbers,
Speaker 1: and you only need two of them to participate in
Speaker 1: order to move your coins. And so the beauty of
Speaker 1: this is that it removes a single point of failure.
Speaker 1: Something you could just totally lose one of those, uh
Speaker 1: and you'd still be able to recover your funds because
Speaker 1: as long as two of them still remain. Uh. So
Speaker 1: this is this is the focus of my junction project.
Speaker 1: Had I had a long talk with Ryan McDonald from
Speaker 1: a COSA at at at the bit block Boom conference
Speaker 1: and they offer you know, multi stake two or three
Speaker 1: or three or five, and you know it's like, if
Speaker 1: you have a hard enough time keeping track of one key,
Speaker 1: does having three keys just complicate things? Like now you
Speaker 1: have three points of failure? Well, I mean, yeah, there's uh,
Speaker 1: there's Uh, well, you don't have three points of failor
Speaker 1: because if any of them, any one of them can
Speaker 1: fail and you're still okay. Uh there, I mean there's
Speaker 1: sort of a yeah, there's sort of an interesting question here, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, another thing some people do is they, you know,
Speaker 1: make cop you know, have you'll have like split your
Speaker 1: coins between five different wallets or you know, three different wallets,
Speaker 1: let's say, and uh and you know, try to treat
Speaker 1: these separately. And so the nice thing about that is
Speaker 1: if you lose one of them, yeah, you lose that
Speaker 1: whole wall, but you don't lose all your coins, right,
Speaker 1: so but you know, uh so, so there's sort of
Speaker 1: a there's sort of a debate between whether you should
Speaker 1: sort of us have a couple of different storage strategies.
Speaker 1: None of them are perfect, but you might lose some coins,
Speaker 1: but you'll you'll minimize the chance you lose all your coins.
Speaker 1: The other point of view is that you should really
Speaker 1: put a lot of effort uh into one storage strategy,
Speaker 1: make it as good as you can, and put all
Speaker 1: your coins in there, uh and just really make sure
Speaker 1: that that doesn't fail. And that's the point of view
Speaker 1: I would tend to go with but that's maybe more
Speaker 1: because I'm an advanced user. Yeah, I go with the
Speaker 1: option one personally, as as my as I've grown, I've
Speaker 1: added more hardware wallets, and I think maybe that's because, um,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm afraid of either hardware failure or like hacking.
Speaker 1: So if somehow it got one got hacked or one failed,
Speaker 1: um I only lose a fraction as opposed to all
Speaker 1: of it. Yep. Yeah. So the the the idea with
Speaker 1: hardware wallets, just to kind of back up a little bit,
Speaker 1: is that you know, like let's say, like right now,
Speaker 1: no one's really trying to hack your bitcoin because anybody
Speaker 1: who knows about bitcoin uh and is a is a
Speaker 1: nasty person, is probably focused on other scams, right. They're
Speaker 1: probably trying to make these some of these uh kind
Speaker 1: of scamming I C O S or something where that
Speaker 1: you know there's nothing there and they're just trying to
Speaker 1: sell you vaporware. Uh, and so that's sort of a
Speaker 1: scam is beginning to go away. Uh. Maybe they're doing
Speaker 1: like ransom attacks right where they just shut your computer
Speaker 1: down and demand bitcoin stuff like that. But eventually if
Speaker 1: bitcoin s price goes up a lot more, uh A
Speaker 1: lot of these easier scams are going to go away,
Speaker 1: and the only scam that remains is actually taking people's
Speaker 1: bitcoin and so uh, Like there's a lot of ways that, like,
Speaker 1: if you have a wallet on your phone or your computer,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of ways that a wallet like this
Speaker 1: could be just could be compromised. Like one of the
Speaker 1: big ones is, let's say, uh, viruses and stall all
Speaker 1: on your desktop. That is a key logger. It logs
Speaker 1: every key stroke you have, and so it waits until
Speaker 1: it sees key strokes that you know represent the password
Speaker 1: to your to your account or your your seed or something. Uh,
Speaker 1: it can just go and and steal that run off
Speaker 1: and steal your coins. Uh uh. Let's like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a number of ways that h a a uh
Speaker 1: program running on a desktop computer can be compromised. The
Speaker 1: reason why we like harder walltz is that they're very simple. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're like the simplest possible computing environment that can generate, store,
Speaker 1: and interact with a Bitcoin private key. And so just
Speaker 1: because the environment is so simple, there's like less places
Speaker 1: for ghosts t hide, so to speak. Right, there's less
Speaker 1: places for a virus to pop out of the woodwork. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they only communicate They attempt to only communicate with
Speaker 1: the rest of the world over a very simple channel
Speaker 1: the USB wire or in some cases like a micros
Speaker 1: D card or a QR code. Uh. They attempt to
Speaker 1: only communicate over to the rest of the world over
Speaker 1: the simple interface. Uh. And it's just like reduces the
Speaker 1: chances that they, like your normal computer is communicating with
Speaker 1: the world to the internet, maybe through your like you know, uh,
Speaker 1: like three different ways to plug stuff into it. There's
Speaker 1: just all kinds of ways that it can connect to
Speaker 1: the external world and that a virus can get inside.
Speaker 1: So that's the big value proposition of a hardware wallet.
Speaker 1: Got it, And and unless somebody actually takes physical control
Speaker 1: over it, it's pretty much impossible and then be hacked. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not impossible. Like there are versions there, there are
Speaker 1: like people have hacked hardware wallets, uh remotely. I can
Speaker 1: think of like two of them. Two verb two things.
Speaker 1: Like one of the scary things is if if somebody
Speaker 1: installs a virus on your desktop computer that's connected to
Speaker 1: the internet, uh, and they can send if there's some
Speaker 1: imperfection and how the USB communication works, Like there have
Speaker 1: been examples where you could extract the bitcoin seed from
Speaker 1: the device without actually having physical control atlas. But the
Speaker 1: thing is these are all demonstrated in the lab by researchers,
Speaker 1: and none of these my knowledge I've ever been exploited
Speaker 1: in the wild. So yeah, in general, the rule is
Speaker 1: they need physical access to the device in order to
Speaker 1: get your your key off of it. Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: then you feel I mean, and you, like I said,
Speaker 1: you've done some research on this, I've seen seen your work.
Speaker 1: But I mean, so you feel that overall, like a
Speaker 1: basic hardware walle it is probably good enough security for
Speaker 1: the average person. Um if they and then and then
Speaker 1: maybe to step it up is then to start trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to communicate with their own server. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it sort of depends what your goals are.
Speaker 1: If you really want, like some people really need, uh
Speaker 1: you know, privacy, uh, And so just like think about
Speaker 1: that's one of the big things, like how who do
Speaker 1: I care if everyone in the if the government or
Speaker 1: if uh some foreign power or something or like some
Speaker 1: some like do I care if everyone knows which coins
Speaker 1: I own? Right, That's like one the first questions you
Speaker 1: should ask, uh, and if if you if you do
Speaker 1: really care about that, then you're gonna need to do
Speaker 1: a lot more research because it's it's that's parts tough. Uh.
Speaker 1: But for the average person, if if you don't really
Speaker 1: care about that, uh, then yeah, just using a harder
Speaker 1: wall with treads ors website or ledgers app, it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: And the one caveat is just make sure you have
Speaker 1: backups of your seed because like most people think, Like
Speaker 1: when I encounter the Harvard Wall, I thought, Okay, I
Speaker 1: just need to keep track of this harder wallet, and uh,
Speaker 1: you get into situations we were talking about this earlier
Speaker 1: where you need to upgrade the software. It's called firmware
Speaker 1: on the harder wallet, and uh, this is scary because
Speaker 1: if if that goes wrong, it can destroy your private key,
Speaker 1: it can destroy your bitcoins. You need a backup, right,
Speaker 1: And I think this is this is one of the
Speaker 1: tough things about uh, Like this is one thing that's
Speaker 1: a lot of people in neglect. I almost screwed this
Speaker 1: up the first time I attempted to do a harder wallet.
Speaker 1: Just make sure you have backups. You can have like
Speaker 1: redundant copies of the back up and also hardware walts,
Speaker 1: you know, in a fire or something that's going to
Speaker 1: be lost. You can also explore storing these backups and
Speaker 1: something that might be a little more you know, fire
Speaker 1: resistant paper or steel or something. But you know, you
Speaker 1: don't go to overboard like a lot. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people get caught up and try to optimize
Speaker 1: it so much that, like, you know, they're there, that
Speaker 1: they try to find some strategy that could like survive
Speaker 1: World War three, but then they never figured out and
Speaker 1: so they leave their coins in something that's a lot
Speaker 1: less optimal. Right, So so yeah, simplicity is the enemy
Speaker 1: of security. So you want something that's simple and that
Speaker 1: like five years down the road, when you forget how
Speaker 1: it worked, you can still get into it and move
Speaker 1: the coins. I love that quote. Simplicity is the enemy
Speaker 1: of security or no, no, complexity is the enemy of security.
Speaker 1: Sorry I got the wrong. Complexity is the enemy of security.
Speaker 1: Simplicity is the the ally of security. Complexity is the
Speaker 1: enemy of security because if you're overcomplex over your own
Speaker 1: skill level, you actually do yourself more harm than good.
Speaker 1: There was a talk that Andreas on top of this
Speaker 1: did uh that I saw where you basically kind of
Speaker 1: said the same thing and I said, what's what's the
Speaker 1: best security protocol? And it's like it depends on you, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you need to have the best one that's that's up
Speaker 1: to your technical standards. If you go over, then you
Speaker 1: put yourself in more risk, right, So I guess that's
Speaker 1: kind of and that's why I like, I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: I jumped aground a little bit talking about this like
Speaker 1: practicing on testing up, but that's where I really like
Speaker 1: this point of view, like uh, and this is this
Speaker 1: is for people who aren't going to store more. But
Speaker 1: the nice thing about like playing around with some of
Speaker 1: these things with that with either along you know, you
Speaker 1: could also use as a normal bitcoint but just very
Speaker 1: small amounts. But you can play around until you get
Speaker 1: to the point where you're like, okay, this is above
Speaker 1: my head, right, like this is where I can't go
Speaker 1: further right, and and then like you can just by
Speaker 1: playing around and sort of reaching it's okay, I can't
Speaker 1: do much more than this without help, and then you
Speaker 1: know that's where you can say, okay, well this is
Speaker 1: my area I feel comfortable with, right uh. And you
Speaker 1: can do that by just like practicing playing around with
Speaker 1: small amounts and see where it starts to get a
Speaker 1: little sketchy and well you don't understand everything that's going on. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well good stuff. I mean, like like you talked about
Speaker 1: the story, I mean I ran to the same problem.
Speaker 1: I plugged in a wallet and it needed a firm
Speaker 1: more update and I couldn't find the backup phrase because
Speaker 1: of whatever reason. And it was it was a scary situation.
Speaker 1: Luckily I got out of it. But it's definitely like
Speaker 1: a wake up call. We're like, wow, that was a
Speaker 1: close call. I could have lost everything. I need to
Speaker 1: do better next time, and hopefully everybody can just stay
Speaker 1: out of that trouble from the first place. Which you
Speaker 1: really wanted some kind of a playbook, right, Like imagine
Speaker 1: like picture yourself in five years, three years, two years,
Speaker 1: opening up your or whatever, your little treasure box, right
Speaker 1: and you see this like harder wall. You forget how
Speaker 1: it even works or something. These words you don't know
Speaker 1: what they mean. You really want some instructions or something
Speaker 1: in there. It's kind of described how to uh, how
Speaker 1: to uh what to do? You problem is then it
Speaker 1: would be a would be robber gets that and they
Speaker 1: know what to do. That's that's also true and everything
Speaker 1: has these like tradeouts. I think of it, you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of think of it sometimes like in the
Speaker 1: in the old West days or they maybe during the
Speaker 1: gold rush, right, they would go bury their gold and
Speaker 1: they'd make a map to it, right, and like the
Speaker 1: map was like they're private key kind of a thing, right,
Speaker 1: only they had the map and like that was where
Speaker 1: the gold was, um and and it's kind of like that,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, then where do you keep that map?
Speaker 1: And then how secure is that map? Right? And and uh,
Speaker 1: kind of the same age old problem that we have
Speaker 1: today a couple hundred years later. And I mean another
Speaker 1: way to think, Another way I think about this is that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're really bullish on bitcoin, if you
Speaker 1: really think it's it's going to work, there's like a
Speaker 1: number of ways you can bet on it, right, And
Speaker 1: one of them is to just buy the asset. But
Speaker 1: you know, not everyone has a lot of extra capital
Speaker 1: sitting around to buy it, or to buy more than
Speaker 1: they have now, like maybe your max out you don't
Speaker 1: want to expose yourself more financially. Well, there's other ways
Speaker 1: you can sort of bet on it too, and I
Speaker 1: think one of the best ways, but there's two like
Speaker 1: ways I try to help people bet on At first, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you can learn to do programming, uh, Like
Speaker 1: these bitcoin programming skills are going to be massively in
Speaker 1: demand if the world moves to this is our money.
Speaker 1: Another way is to just learn, like slowly learn about security.
Speaker 1: Right if the war, if private keys become something that
Speaker 1: everybody sort of understands and interacts with, these these sort
Speaker 1: of operational security information and security skills are gonna be
Speaker 1: really useful, uh, And they take time to learn, so
Speaker 1: you can so you can sort of view this as
Speaker 1: like an investment, and it actually has a bet on bitcoin, right, like,
Speaker 1: if if bitcoin does well, you're gonna see a significant
Speaker 1: payoff from learning the stuff. Yeah. I mean basically, just
Speaker 1: like you would put your money in hoping that it's
Speaker 1: worth more in the future, but like why not put
Speaker 1: your time in hoping your time is worth more in
Speaker 1: the future. So exactly, Yeah, either one is a bet
Speaker 1: on the future. I like that, and they're different bets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great point. That will that will wrap it
Speaker 1: up on, which I think brings us right back to
Speaker 1: um the kind of things that you're teaching, right, teaching
Speaker 1: people to code and teaching people to build applications. So, um,
Speaker 1: I'll definitely make sure that we link up to that
Speaker 1: in the show notes for anybody listening. Um. But I
Speaker 1: just love that, right, Like, yeah, you don't have to
Speaker 1: just put your money in, put your time in, put
Speaker 1: your skills in, um, and we can all work to
Speaker 1: kind of build this thing up together in our own
Speaker 1: unique ways. Take it slow too. You know a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff. It's like, you know, you look at
Speaker 1: bitcoin is like this long term project, right, don't don't
Speaker 1: be in a hurry trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: use it, how to you know, how to work with it.
Speaker 1: It's like I think a lot of times, just take
Speaker 1: your time. This is like a long project, right, We're not.
Speaker 1: It's not a race, it's not a sprint. Cool all right,
Speaker 1: justin well, good stuff. UM. Like I said, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: link to that stuff down there so people can follow
Speaker 1: up on that. And I appreciate your time and teaching
Speaker 1: us a little bit about security. Thanks a lot, Mark,
Speaker 1: Take it easy. Hey, if you like this episode of
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