Read_920 - Criminalized Self-Custody [FFR 92]

[00:00:00] Speaker A: I've been keeping a really close eye on authoritarian regimes and how they frame the criminalization of self custody. I think we're going to begin to see these dominoes fall and the examples that they set and their relative success or failure, I think will begin to inform what the Western world does. As the conflict between the traditional financial system and the bitcoin world continues to build up more pressure. If we don't pay attention, we're likely to be blindsided. And if you think they'll have restraint, I think you're making a grave error. The Best in Bitcoin made Audible I am Guy Swan and this is Bitcoin Audible. [00:00:57] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:01:03] Speaker A: What is up guys? Welcome back to Bitcoin Audible I am Guy Swan, the guy who has read more about Bitcoin than anybody else you know. We've got a great episode today, brought to you by Leden IO this is where you can get bitcoin backed loans. You want to make an investment but damn, you don't want to sell bitcoin when it's down. Like right now. You don't want to deal with the horrors of paperwork and filing and background checks and every other stupid thing in the world. When you're talking about fiat credit and monthly payments and all that stuff. You can actually just get a very simple like day of funding for a bitcoin backed loan at Ledin IO, pay it off whenever you want, no monthly payments if you don't want them. You can pay more or less, no fees, refinance to extend it, you name it. It's all easy. Check it out. Links and details right in the show notes. Also a shout out to pubkey app that's P u b k y dot app from Synonym. I really wish I was done with this little project because I really want to share it with you. But I'm vibe coding something I think is going to be really cool so stay tuned on that. But if you are a builder and you want to re decentralize the web, they have built a protocol stack for everything. Literally. Check it out. Next, if you feel groggy and you haven't gotten nightshades, if you are not dealing with your light health, you have no you cannot complain because it's probably because you're looking at your stupid screen way late at night and you're not getting green and blue light blocking glasses. You don't know how important that is. Go to get chroma co I've got a discount code Bitcoin Audible but also they have some holiday discounts right now. So it's a really great opportunity. Use my links to all this good stuff right down in the show. Notes. It's so easy to get to. You just don't even know but we are getting into a read today. This is actually from this is one of the Financial Freedom reports from the Human Rights Foundation. I started saving a bunch of different ones, but this one had a number of different things that I just really wanted to dig into. So I was like okay, actually, rather than bullet bullet pointing from a handful of different ones, I thought this was a good one. And it's also got a couple of tools that I did not know about and have not yet dug into that I'm really excited to dig into now because I misunderstood what they were apparently. So we'll get into that in the take after the after the read as well. So without further ado, let's get into today's read and it's titled Criminal Self Custody from the Financial freedom Report number 99 by the Human Rights Foundation. Today we reflect on the financial repression so many face around the world and how brave and creative minds are pushing back In Belarus, a new decree signed by authoritarian Alexander Lukashenko expands law enforcement's power to freeze financial transactions, deepening the regime's intrusion into people's private financial lives. In freedom Tech News, BlueWallet has re implemented Lightning Network support using Arcade. This innovation strengthens access to fast, low cost self custodial payments for users in repressive regimes worldwide. We close with a new tutorial from BTC Sessions who released a 15 minute crash course on Sparrow Wallet, a capable tool for secure permissionless Bitcoin self custody. With that, let's turn to this week's developments. [00:04:36] Speaker A: Law Enforcement Empowered to Block Financial Transactions Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko signed a new decree granting law enforcement agencies broader authority to freeze financial transactions. The new rules increase information sharing between payment service providers and law enforcement agencies for free drug related investigations. The Investigative Committee and the Ministry of Internal affairs can now directly suspend any financial transactions for up to 10 days if they suspect they are connected to drug related offenses. The decree amends an earlier law that enabled several government agencies to freeze bank accounts, deposits and e wallets for up to 10 days for unlawful activity. The amendments further solidify the regime's ability to surveil and restrict everyday financial activity, a mechanism Belarus has repeatedly used to target activists, journalists and civil society organizations. [00:05:39] Speaker A: Financial Repression of Human Rights Organizations Tunisian officials have intensified their crackdown on civil society, targeting human rights and refugee support organizations with an escalating mix of asset freezes, banking restrictions, and legal orders to suspend their operations. Banks have delayed or blocked foreign funding, closed accounts without explanation, and demanded onerous documentation for financial transfers that have led to months long payment delays. These financial choke points have forced organizations to shut down core services, including women's shelters, support centers for refugees and asylum seekers, and hotlines for survivors of domestic violence. Using financial repression, Tunisian officials have quietly but effectively weakened civil society groups providing vital services. [00:06:34] Speaker A: United Arab Emirates New law passed to regulate self custody tools A sweeping overhaul of the UAE's financial regulatory framework has potentially placed many Bitcoin and self custody tools under aggressive controls. The new decree expands the definition of surveilled financial activities to include digital assets, introduces stricter licensing requirements, and creates criminal penalties for unreported financial services. The law now requires prior authorization for offering, issuing or facilitating a licensed financial activity directly or indirectly. Open and permissionless technologies such as self custodial wallets or privacy tools may fall within its scope in context. Paired with threats of imprisonment and potential massive fines, the decree discourages innovation and restricts access to open financial tools. In practice, it undermines financial privacy and autonomy, as well as the ability of civil society to transact freely. Venezuela Hyperinflation and Growing digital asset use. [00:07:50] Speaker A: Venezuelans are bracing for hyperinflation as the Bolivar rapidly loses value. The country's central bank stopped publishing inflation data last year after Nicolas Maduro's fraudulently claimed victory in the 2024 elections. International institutions project 548% inflation in 2025 and 629% in 2026, while some economists warn the rate could exceed 8,800%. Inside the country, the detentions of economists and a former finance minister have left few willing to challenge the regime's official narrative. @ the same time, major retailers are increasingly accepting digital assets for payment. The head of the country's national association of Supermarkets, Italo Atencio, projected that digital assets will account for 10% of all grocery transactions by early 2026. Kenya government used social media to suppress protests A new Amnesty International report documents how Kenyan officials systematically deployed technology, facilitated violence to suppress youth led protests against corruption and new tax hikes. Over the past year, officials and state aligned actors launched coordinated online harassment, smear campaigns and surveillance targeting Gen Z organizers. Amnesty documented deaths, arrests and enforced disappearances of protesters, with many incidents following online threats or state sponsored trolling designed to justify police action. Recommended Content why Bitcoin is Freedom Money Reading by Guy Swan in this narrated edition of Alex Gladstein's Journal of Democracy essay, why Bitcoin is Freedom Money Guy Swan walks listeners through how financial repression has become a core tool of modern authoritarianism and why Bitcoin is emerging as a lifeline for those targeted. Drawing on examples of Afghan educators, Cuban dissidents and democracy activists in Togo and Belarus, the piece shows how censorship resistant money helps people receive donations, pay staff and save, even when authoritarians manipulate financial systems. Financial Freedom Webinar Bitcoin for Nonprofits HRF will host a free three day webinar from December 15th to 17th guiding human rights defenders and nonprofits on how to use Bitcoin to resist state censorship and financial repression. Sessions run daily from 10:30am to 12:00pm eDaily time and are designed for all experience levels. The training will be co led by Bitcoin educator Ben Perrin, BTC Sessions and Financial Manager at the Anti Corruption Foundation Anna Chekovich, who will share practical tools for receiving donations, securing funds and sustaining activism when bank accounts are frozen or surveilled. Bitcoin and Freedom Tech News BlueWallet Lightning Network support added via Arcade. [00:11:02] Speaker A: BlueWallet, an open source and self custodial Bitcoin wallet, re implemented support for the Lightning Network using Arcade, a programmable execution layer for Bitcoin. The Lightning Network is a fast and low cost payment layer built on Bitcoin and designed for everyday transactions. Its reintroduction signals progress for access to self custodial lightning tools. Why this matters with this integration, bluewallet users can use more accessible Bitcoin payments to making donations, cross border transactions and peer to peer payments harder to stop in authoritarian contexts. Bitcoin Home Miner finds Solo Block A home miner running a Bitax Gamma, a small open source bitcoin mining device, successfully mined a solo bitcoin block block 924,569 and earned 3.146 bitcoin plus transaction fees. A solo bitcoin block is when an individual miner discovers a valid block on their own and receives the full block reward, a statistically rare outcome given today's network difficulty. The miner was contributing less than 7th s in total, making the win an unlikely but powerful demonstration of accessible open source mining hardware like Bitaxe, which enables individuals in authoritarian regimes to participate in mining without relying on centralized bitcoin mining pools. Why this matters as more people experiment with tools like Bitaxe, Bitcoin's mining landscape becomes more distributed, resilient and resistant to capture by authoritarian governments, ensuring it remains a means of financial freedom for society. Bull support for Crux added. [00:12:50] Speaker A: Bull Wallet, an open source self custody Bitcoin Wallet added native support for crux, the community built firmware that turns generic computing devices into fully stateless air gapped signing devices for Bitcoin self custody. With this integration, users can pair Bull Wallet with inexpensive off the shelf hardware to create their own secure Bitcoin signers. Why this matters Most users in authoritarian regimes cannot purchase top of the line hardware devices, so the ability to create one's own using widely available parts is critical. Bitcoin Upcoming sovereign edition from December 15th to 17th, open source developers will gather in Taipei, Taiwan for the next edition of Bitcoin, a three day conference dedicated to the frontier of Bitcoin development. This edition's theme, Standing Sovereign, emphasizes peer to peer exchange, self custody and tools that allow individuals to transact freely without intermediaries. The event offers a hands on space for developers, educators and activists to deepen their understanding of how sovereignty focused tools can expand financial freedom worldwide and will focus on bringing in developers from authoritarian regimes across Asia. Nut November Kashu E Cash Hackathon Nut November, a month long community driven hackathon on the Kashoo E Cash Protocol has returned with a 1.48 million Satoshi Prize pool and an open invitation to developers worldwide. Throughout the month, Freedom Tech developers have been building and shipping new ecash tools, mints, apps and infrastructure improvements. If you're a builder, there's still time to participate, contribute and submit projects for a software ecosystem that provides privacy preserving digital cash to dissidents worldwide. Why this Matters Events like this help expand the Cashew ecosystem, inspire new protocols and applications, and lower barriers for payments with privacy protections that vastly exceed what is available through traditional Bitcoin or even Lightning networks. [00:15:06] Speaker A: Bitcoin Recommended Content Sparrow Learn the best bitcoin wallet in 15 minutes with BTC Sessions, Bitcoin educator Ben Perrin or BTC Sessions released a new 15 minute crash course on Sparrow Wallet, a trusted and feature rich Bitcoin wallet for self custody. The video walks users through setting up a hot wallet, sending and receiving Bitcoin, recovering a wallet from seed and integrating Sparrow with cold storage. You don't actually have to live like a homeless person to keep your bitcoin. Keep stacking but not sell when the price is down at some point you can't drive the car that's worth more if you send it to recycling than if you tried to sell it because it's just not always going to work and a mattress on the floor is not going to get you a girlfriend. You can get a Bitcoin backed loan from Leden IO and Without selling your bitcoin, you can just have a modest upgrade. You don't have to get a king bed with a fancy headboard that goes all the way to the ceiling. Just get one with some legs and a nice sideboard that goes around it. And you obviously don't have to get a brand new car, but you should get one that doesn't have a window crank. Let's go with the buttons man. It's 2025 and you can do this without a complicated credit check or any of the nonsense or the horrors of fiat credit world. You can get a simple and dumb easy bitcoin backed loan with ledn. You can even get a discount on the interest rate with the link that I have right down in the show notes. Pay it off whenever you want. Refinance if you want to extend it. You don't even need to pay monthly payments if you don't want to. It's totally up to you. Don't be reckless. But if you want a girlfriend, don't be stupid either. Upgrade your life without letting go of your bitcoin Leden IO so I've been thinking about so this Financial Freedom report. I've been watching these pretty closely. I keep up with this newsletter pretty well and. [00:17:00] Speaker A: One of the things that I'm really interested in and also just kind of generally nervous about or on the watch for how they start to criminalize custody. Because we're going to see that that's why I named the episode this is because I think we're going to start seeing these. [00:17:21] Speaker A: Dominoes start to fall. And it's critical to watch the authoritarian regimes for how they go about it because they will likely be the test cases, the examples for other governments to follow and for the quote unquote free world, the Western world to try to figure out how to morph to basically push in that direction as much as possible. What will be the excuses? What will be the frameworks? How will they make it ambiguous so that they can basically extend what the make it vague enough that they can actually take as much power and much control out of what the law says, but make it appear as if the spirit of the law is somehow restricted, even though they were vague enough that they can essentially take as much power as they need to. And I think so far the UAE in this specific law about self custody, which is basically trying to cover that the act of self custody, the the tools themselves and the act of using them falls under the category of a regulated financial activity and thus you cannot do it without the licensing. So the licensing and the surveillance are built in. And if you are engaging in something that they refer to that they have labeled as financial activity, then you will basically receive criminal penalties for, for engaging in unlicensed activity by running your own node and having your own self custody wallet and having, using a privacy tool that doesn't follow the regulatory, what the regulatory environment says the laws are or the, the situation is for how you should report and how you should engage in any financial activity. So essentially the software itself is being claimed as a service and since you are running your own service, you have to then go about comply with all the regulatory restrictions. Now the only one I'm, other one I've noticed that I feel like is really kind of creeping that way, unless I've missed one somewhere in this, but I feel like I keep up with it pretty well. Um, but is Russia and they haven't actually attacked it explicitly, but they've done a lot to push, push out the use of unlicensed and basically squeezing it to, to attempt to make it so that if you don't have a paper trail and you aren't using some sort of licensed entity and especially in how much it's centralized energy and required reporting and stuff for bitcoin mining, it's basically trying to separate, put up a big wall between you know, quote unquote official Bitcoin and, and dark Bitcoin, so to speak, so that you're incentivized to. Not the, the friction between the two is trying to trap people so that they have to stay in the KYC world and that it's a real pain to get out. And if you do have Bitcoin out of that world, it's a really, it's a huge pain to get back in. So rather than them actually banning it outright, they're, they're simply trying to heavily disincentivize. They're trying to make it onerous for users to deal with Bitcoin sovereignly to essentially keep the, the, the bitcoin and crypto economy, whatever you want to call it, kind of trapped in the tightly monitored state approved channels. And of course it's all being framed as anti crime and anti drug and anti scam. And we've seen the exact same thing in Belarus and Thailand because they're, they're doing it basically around okay, well we're going to block transactions and legally normalize the practice of law enforcement. Just basically having broad monitoring capabilities, the ability to see into everybody and what everybody's doing to stop all of the drugs and human trafficking and such, so that they can block payments that, that look suspicious. I think probably a next step for regimes that are doing that sort of behavior is to begin to criminalize or especially if they're, they're beginning to block payments or they're trapping or locking down, you know, fiat bank accounts and stopping transactions that look suspicious. Like this is before someone is charged or found guilty of a crime, they're preemptively shutting down the access to money. Well, it's likely that they go the same route, kind of a combo of what the UAE or Russia does under the same public safety banner. Anything that comes from self custody, any Bitcoin or crypto that comes from a place that isn't within the easily surveilled, easily tracked kind of fiat or traditional financial landscape will probably start getting shown or listed as suspect from the outside from the outset. So the suspicious activity won't be, you know, are you buying drugs right now? The suspicious activity will be somebody just sent $30,000 worth of bitcoin from an address that has no paper trail, that is connected to none of our state approved exchanges. And none of the things that we have a backdoor into that is suspicious. That's, that's going to look like, take walking into the bank and asking for $30,000 in cash. And they will likely treat it the same way from a legal standpoint. And then they will immediately, you know, freeze your bank account and be like, oh, you know, file a report, where did this come from? Explain to me what you're using this for. Basically justify the fact that you own this, prove your innocence rather than us having the obligation or need to prove your guilt. And I think another big framing that they will likely use, especially in the Western world, will be about financial stability, especially as things get more and more volatile and the situation with the debt gets worse. There will be far more civil unrest and political turmoil. And we'll likely see this, we'll see this start to play out in. This is what I think we're seeing in the EU and the UK with, you know, arresting people for tweets and Facebook posts. Basically, as things get more and more heated and the pressure starts to build up, they'll get more aggressive about what they're attacking and they'll desperately look for scapegoats. They'll, they'll try to make it look like, oh, the economy's bad because everybody's a meanie on Twitter. And they'll need distractions like blowing up stories about, you know, how social media is destroying everything and it's rotting everybody's minds. And that'll keep home sales and the inflation numbers out of the news cycle for an extra couple of days and they'll get to implement their KYC social media, which turns into digital ID for everything you do on the web very, very quickly. The good news is this is exactly the sorts of pressure that forces bitcoiners and builders to solve boring problems, problems that, that basically need to be sorted out before we can even enter. Or really think about the days of a bitcoin standard and actually being completely unbanked because there will be insanely mundane things that we take for granted. Or you just think, you just think, oh well that's, we'll just integrate with the fiat system to get this to work. But we will find ourselves in a place, or at least many places in the world will find themselves in a situation where they don't have those options available to them. And they'll have to be build the mundane things. And none of this revolution actually occurs until we build all the boring shit. And this actually brings up another interesting thing. A conversation that I've been having recently is so my brother's wife is Iranian and so we talk to their family and her family is still in Iran. And so we've gotten in bunch of chats and ended up talking and we keep a pretty constant stream of conversation going with a lot of people in her family. And one thing I've realized that I hadn't thought about because you know, when you buy a hardware wallet in bitcoin and a lot of them are interested in bitcoin and they even talk about how you don't even really have to sell bitcoin around here because the, the local currency is such crap and the dollar is so on, the capital controls are so bad that dollars, dollars actually carry an entirely different price. Like they're not like horribly poor inside the country. The country is actually pretty self sustained, like they're not a third world country. But while dollars are extremely abundant everywhere else in the world, the capital controls into and out of Iran are so bad that dollars are actually super scarce. So because of this they carry a far, far higher price. There's way more value density with the exact same dollar inside the country as opposed to outside the country. But as I've just generally talked to them, they, they talk about, you know, general interest and, and how, you know, a lot of them try to get around things and who they talk to and what they hear. But then it hit me that I was just thinking about it one day I was like, you know, where do you get. Because you, you know, when you get a hardware wallet, you want to buy directly from the manufacturer. It's super dangerous to buy something. You know, there's tons of reports of, you know, people buying ledgers off of Amazon, but that have been compromised. The firmware has been changed and then they boot them up and you know, run the seed and generate a seed and, or even dumber is they're like given a seed with a ledger that's already set up and the user doesn't even know that this is the case. And then they put, you know, Bitcoin, they put money on it and it's gone. Well, here's the thing. If you're in a country under extreme capital controls and being sanctioned, you can't buy a cold card from Coin Kite, you can't buy a ledger, you can't buy a Trezor wallet. The only thing you have are resellers who are smuggling stuff in and out of the country and your options are basically nil. This is exactly why something like Bull Wallet and Crux, which they talk about in this Freedom Report, are such a big deal. And this is why I love the seed signer and stuff too. Because you forget about software. You can get in and out of a country, but hardware is difficult. The second you're talking about something physical, you're in a very, very different environment. So it made me respect how important these, the, these open source firmware that you can just turn a generic device into, into a stateless, air gapped signing device for Bitcoin. Like for anybody listening to this from the US or the UK or Europe or whatever, we don't really have to think about that, right? That's not, that's not really an issue for us. We can just buy whatever we want. And for me that idea is just cool. Like I have a seed signer just because I like Seed sign. It's just a cool device. I loved them hack with stuff and just tinker with options. And I want to build a Spectre wallet because it just looks pretty dope and I haven't gotten around to actually doing the project. But I mean I like bought my pieces for my seat signer from a, from Tab Comp in Georgia. I did it in the, I bought it straight from the guys, which is the most like trusted setup. Like I should get my own and then put my firmware on it and stuff. But like I didn't care. Like I'm, I just want a cool device. But for A lot of these people, in a lot of these situations, you're talking about a life and death or a. [00:29:22] Speaker A: I can save capital versus I'm just, I'm getting demolished. Like the level of paranoia and scrutiny that you have to go through to be careful about these sorts of things. Having an open source firmware and a way to just turn generic hardware into, into one of these devices is a godsend. Like it's a, it's a make or break sort of thing on, you know, potentially, potentially being able to save up enough money to actually get out of the country one day. But I just have a lot more respect and. [00:29:58] Speaker A: I guess. [00:30:00] Speaker A: A clearer window into exactly how important those types of tools are and why it is that. You know, I've always, especially when I would read about this stuff in the Financial Freedom Report, be like, oh yeah, that's, I mean that's really cool. But I never really thought that like that like literally might be. There may be no other option for a lot of these people and especially with self custody likely going to be more and more under attack and anything that gives the user privacy under more and more attack and the bridge between the fiat world and the bitcoin world essentially being gatekept really, really heavily, it's more important than ever that we actually have usable and accessible tools for those who literally just have to be on a full bitcoin standard. Because the legacy option, the fiat option is so destructive, it's so utterly like life sucking that there's just no, there's no realistic alternative. It's either be a slave or live entirely on a bitcoin standard, entirely on bitcoin tools and entirely in a bitcoin economy. Now, one thing that I wanted to hit and I haven't, I haven't read Alan Farrington's. Alan Farrington has another piece, Only the Strong. It's like, it's like a follow up to Only the Strong Survive. And it talks about Arcade. And when I first read the title and was about to get into it, I thought Arcade was actually an implementation of ark because it's a R K, a D E and I thought it was referring to ark, but I don't, I do not believe it actually is, or at least it's not the same. It's not at all the same company or. [00:31:47] Speaker A: System. But there is a public beta live for Arcade and it is, it claims to be an operating system for money. It's. It basically is fully programmable without needing wrappers, bridges, anything like that. Now, I don't know. I May have already said something incorrect about how this relates to ark, but I'm, I haven't really dug into this, but I'm very interested. I really want to see. This is going to be something that we'll have to devote an entire episode to. But the fact that this is this enabled. So Blue Wallet was using this, right? So I'll read the little section that we did from the report. So Blue Wallet open source, self custodial Bitcoin Wallet re implemented support for the Lightning Network using Arcade. A programmable execution layer for Bitcoin Lightning Network is fast, low cost, blah blah, blah blah. So obviously we know what the Lightning Network is, but I did not know and I don't quite get how Arcade and Lightning are related that basically you can use Arcade to, to, to implement Lightning, you know, like so I, I, I have not worked that out but that when I read that I was just like wait, what? Because that's interesting because that's a, that's an entirely different setup. Like that's not a normal, like oh, we just, we're using LSP and we're implementing Lightning or we're using the Breeze SDK. This is a new way of creating allowing self custodial Lightning network and they have reimplemented support using Arcade. And so now I have like a whole new framework that it's like crap. So how does, how does this thing do it and how does it differ and how does it integrate? But it's interesting, it's interesting because. [00:33:46] Speaker A: You know, it's, it's crazy to me that people are just like, oh, Lightning Network's not done and doesn't scale forever and all this stuff and pay attention, like pay attention. Lightning is winning so freaking hard and there are so many different things that are beginning to work easier and easier. And I've been talking to people who are actually building stuff and how they're going to implement it and they're talking about like okay, we actually figured out there's, there's another tool with Spark and Breeze SDK in combination that actually allows you to have a Lightning URL with and this is actually hosted, but it's hosted non custodially which is massive. Like, like the host doesn't have access to the keys, but they can host a server for you and you can have a Lightning address so that you can just boom, boot one up and you can immediately receive Lightning payments and it does splits and place splicing on the back end automatically so that your node is actually managing if you don't have enough liquidity, you just turn it over to a Bitcoin payment, you add liquidity. And I also know a number of other tools that are going to start making self hosting much, much better. I hope to be a part of building some of the tools that are going to make self hosting much better. But wholesale version 2 is out now and we've been talking with Matt Hill and Start nine. We, we already laid the groundwork for a lot of different things that we wanted to do. Way back when the very original wholesale had come out because I had been using it pretty religiously and I still, I, even to this day I had been using it, but the new version is so, oh my God, it's like night and day. I finally have like saved connections and I can run stuff and, and the only thing that's like really kind of a headache is the iOS version. And it's purely because I can't run it in the background. So I have to basically go start it and open it back up again every time I go back to the app. Whereas using it on the back end, if I wanted to use it in an app, which is actually a little vibe coding project that I'm working on, is I can just put, as soon as I bring up like, let's say it's like Zeus Wallet, right? I can actually bring up Zeus Wallet. And as soon as we're in the, the main loading screen, it's booting it up, establishing the connection in the background and then voila, I'm up and there's my wallet. And this is over clearnet. This is encrypted over clearnet using the hole punch protocol, the pair stack. There's no tour delay. It's fast speeds. Like, this is seriously a huge, like we're getting these tools and when we start combining these and using these very cleverly for what devices are online and we can get around the fact that, that you need DNS to keep, you know, quote unquote, online services always online that you can just use it. Like I can use my Linux machine and my Start nine as my host. And it doesn't have to be over Tor to actually quote, unquote, provide me a service or to receive payment. It just changes the game. And again, this is, this is one of those examples of the mundane things, the mundane and difficult things that need to be built to make this, the, the act of using these things across multiple devices seamless. It makes speaking that language ubiquitous. And everything, every single thing that keeps getting added, every, every new protocol, every new tool that keeps getting added to the bitcoin stack and added into the new applications. Every one of them pays to a Lightning invoice. Every single one of them speaks Lightning. Roy Scheinfeld was absolutely spot on that Lightning network is the payment language of Bitcoin, of the entire bitcoin ecosystem. It is the web that connects all of this together. Lightning is the world wide web of Bitcoin. And every single network, Cashew, Ark, Arcade, state chains, Citria, whatever, whatever crazy thing anybody builds is not going to be useful at all unless it is paying to Lightning invoices, unless it is integrated into Lightning. And that's a huge deal. And I think anybody thinking that Lightning has to be at the end or everybody has to have their own Lightning channel, or Lightning has to be able to scale to 30 billion users or something just doesn't. I think you're missing the forest for the trees at understanding that this is the universal payment system that is onion routed, that is private, that is the unicast layer for Bitcoin. And it will connect any and all networks that pop up on Bitcoin. And it already has a critical mass. If you create a new network or a new protocol on top of Bitcoin, payment or otherwise. Payment or programmable layer, whatever, doesn't matter. If it's not plugged into Lightning, it's already dead in the water. I don't think people respect that. We've actually already gotten to that point and that's just a big deal. And so I want to dig into Arcade, so keep an eye out for that one. I'll actually probably preface it by reading Alan Farrington's piece on it, just because I actually haven't read it yet. And so I'll get the audio version out for that, check out for that read and we'll get an opportunity to dig a lot deeper into that idea or system. Maybe, maybe we'll do a show on it too. I'll try to get in touch with somebody who can kind of break that down and answer a lot of questions for me. A quick shout out to Chroma. That is Chroma. GetChroma co is their website. If you spend every day feeling like you got hit by a truck and like you have no freaking energy and you work in front of a screen all day long, I'm gonna give you two pieces of advice. One, first thing in the morning when you wake up, go outside. Even if it's cloudy and crappy, go outside and stand in the actual light, not in front of a window. Go out and stand in the light for 10 minutes and then two get some blue and green light blocking glasses and put them on every night at sundown while you're looking at your screen. This will be like a magic trick for your hormones and energy levels. Chroma's glasses are the nightshades and I have a 10% discount and I think they have an even bigger discount right now for the holidays. But use my link right down in the show notes and check them out. They are all about light health. A shout out to leden IO for bitcoin backed loans so that I can invest in my life without having to sell my bitcoin to synonym and pub key for the tools to re decentralize the web. Stay tuned. I've got a vibe coding project that I'm actually really excited to share about this. And lastly, a shout out to the HRF for their amazing work and the report that we read today. But I think one of the most valuable things about these about the report that is probably underappreciated is just the collection of tools and just how much information, how valuable that information is. Because if you can squeeze that through some capital controls or through a sanctioned border and get someone not to be able to, you know, buy from Coin Kite because the government said they could, but that they can get generic hardware and they can build their own hardware wallet, that's just a really, really powerful. That's a, that's a really powerful thing. Subscribe to the newsletter and it'll be a great reference later on. I've actually been doing searches through my email. I just have like, I have a folder called the Database and I literally just search for tools and stuff in it because I know I have all of the freedom reports they have. They've actually hit 100 now. The report number 100 was the last one that came out. I'll link to that actually, if you haven't read it or kept up with it. But that should do us. We got some really great stuff. I got a show with Matt All Borg from PPQ AI that might be out this week. I can't remember exactly what the schedule is or if we already have one in the bag that we need to get out first. But this is such a cool service that I've been using and specifically because I just brought it up to him while we were talking, I was like, dude, we should really do a show about this. Not only did I want to pick his brain about a few things, but I've already canceled a few of my AI subscriptions and I am so sick. I'm just the number of subscriptions I have to try to make use of all these various tools has just gotten out of control and this has done such a, such a huge step in actually moving me away from that. So I really wanted to dig into it on the show and I think it's a. I think you guys are really going to like that episode. So stay tuned for that. That's the next chat and shout out to the Audionauts. You guys are dope. And I've actually got a nice little clip for everybody in the audionauts. We stayed for a little bit after and talked about some non public things that we wanted to share just with the crew. So you guys stay tuned for that one. A huge, huge thank you to everybody who stream sats, who zaps on Nostr and Fountain and who support the show, who share it out, leaving reviews, sharing it out with friends, sharing it on social, you name it. These go not only a long way, but they are literally the only thing that grow this show because I don't really do anything else. So it means more than you know. Thank you so much. This is bitcoin audible. Don't forget to subscribe. I am Guy Swan and I will catch you on the next one. And until then everybody, that's my two sats. [00:43:08] Speaker A: The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool. William Shakespeare.