Read_937 - When the Withdraws Start [FFR 115]

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Residents withdrew over 1.6 trillion rubles, or $19.7 billion in January, desperately turning to cash amid increased state controls. After the central bank doubled its suspicious activity indicators, automated red flags blocked up to 3 million accounts and payment cards in one month. The best in Bitcoin made Audible I am Guy Swan and this is Bitcoin Audible. [00:00:49] Speaker B: What is up guys? Welcome back to Bitcoin Audible I am Guy Swan, the guy who has read [00:00:54] Speaker A: more about Bitcoin than anybody else. [00:00:56] Speaker B: You know we are getting into a read. This one is from the Financial Freedom Report and there's some really, really good stuff to unpack. Well, good stuff and some bad stuff to unpack. Some stuff about CBDCs but and actually man, I just realized that in commentary there was something I was going to bring up that I forgot to bring up. You know I'll go ahead and hit it actually is one of the interesting things about the BRICS nations and their attempt to create a contradictory or a conflicting currency alternative currency regime to the US dollar is that it seems like they have there's actually no real future in it because they started as a [00:01:41] Speaker A: potentially gold backed currency. [00:01:42] Speaker B: And that's when I was like oh man, this is going to get really interesting really fast and then so quickly because it would actually force austerity because it would actually force them. None of them will be able to print money and none of them will [00:01:53] Speaker A: be able to issue debt endlessly. [00:01:56] Speaker B: They it immediately, hey baby. It immediately devolved into a basket of each of their currencies which just means it's the lowest common denominator garbage. And it already has kind of seemed to fall apart even though each one of them is still internally trying to push their own CBDCs and exert as much control as they can over their population. There's some interesting and unfortunate news items in this Financial Freedom Report about that. [00:02:26] Speaker A: But then there's also a little bit [00:02:27] Speaker B: of hopeful news items on that front but some really, really great freedom tech news and new developments. So we will get right into it. Don't forget to check out the links and the affiliates. I have a bunch of discount codes right down in the show notes and I will also have a link. I'm going to put them as a list on Bitcoin Audible on the website pickonaudible.com I don't know references or partners or something like that. It's a great way to help out the show. But also it's just I'm trying to get a collection of like all the services that I use and I really really like and trying to get an affiliate code for all of them so that I can just show you like, okay, this is my stack, this is literally all of the things that I have. And also if you use them, you can actually use them in a way that helps out me, that helps out the show, helps keep this content coming and hopefully gives you a discount. I do have a lot of discounts. I have like a bitbox discount, a cold card discount, a J discount and so you'll find all of that. Check those things out. And with that let's go ahead and just jump into the read again. This is from the HRF and it [00:03:32] Speaker A: is titled welcome to this week's Financial Freedom Report by the Human Rights Foundation. India's central bank is negotiating with up to five peers to expand its digital rupee, a central bank digital currency or CBDC, for cross border institutional and retail transactions, urging fellow BRICS nations to connect their respective CBDCs. This group includes Russia, where residents withdrew over 1.6 trillion rubles, $19.7 billion in January, desperately turning to cash amid increased state controls. After the central bank doubled its suspicious activity indicators, automated red flags blocked up to 3 million accounts and payment cards in one month. These cases demonstrate why Bitcoin is a vital tool for financial sovereignty under authoritarian environments. This week we highlight two new Freedom Tech solutions. The the first is a virtual private network, or vpn, built by early Bitcoin developer Marty Malmy. The tool uses nostr, a decentralized communications protocol, to establish direct encrypted connections between users devices. The second is Blackbox, an experimental system that combines local artificial intelligence, messaging and Bitcoin payments while running offline on a small hardware device. These tools give activists sovereign technical stacks to circumvent state surveillance, avoid financial blockades and maintain operations even during total Internet shutdowns. Lastly, we highlight a recent discussion at Pub Key in Washington, D.C. where human rights advocates Leopoldo Lopez, Berta Valle and Anais Kanimba discuss opposing authoritarian regimes and the role of Freedom Tech in aiding their efforts. India Central bank pushes International CBDC Expansion India's central bank is negotiating with up to five countries to expand its digital rupee for cross border institutional and retail transactions. Currently in a pilot phase with 8 million users, the state controlled currency is being integrated into the Unified Payments Interface to accelerate international transfers and remittances, for which India has been the world's largest recipient since 2008. To scale this infrastructure, the central bank is adding offline functionality and urging fellow BRICS members to link their CBDCs into a unified network. Why this MATTERS India already employs financial repression to assert political control. Officials have frozen the bank accounts of opposition groups ahead of elections, used mandatory know your customer checks to block citizens from accessing funds, and tested a programmable CBDC to limit spending. Exporting this blueprint for repression risks expanding state surveillance to international payments. Record bank withdrawals as surveillance and account freezes surge Russian residents withdrew over 1.6 trillion rubles, or $19.7 billion, from banks in January, mainly due to declining trust in the state controlled financial system. This exodus follows a significant change in banking oversight as the central bank doubled the number of suspicious activity indicators, the digital signals that automatically trigger account freezes allegedly aimed at preventing fraud. These new criteria temporarily blocked as many as 3 million bank accounts and cards in early January. To tighten its grip, the Interior Ministry proposed capping cash withdrawals at 50,000 rubles or $615 for flagged accounts or while a $10,000 lifetime limit on foreign currency withdrawals was recently extended through September 9th. All these regulations reinforce the digital limitations on Russian savers, making physical cash one of their few remaining protections against state overreach. Hong Kong Police granted powers to demand device passwords Hong Kong police are now authorized to request individuals to surrender their phone and computer passwords under a new amendment to the National Security Law. Those who refuse to do so could face up to one year in jail and a fine of up to 100,000 Hong Kong dollars, or 12,773 US while providing false information may result in three years of imprisonment and fines of up to 500,000 Hong Kong dollars, or 63,800 in US the changes also allow officials to seize devices considered seditious without making an arrest. This is especially concerning for activists, opposition groups and civil society that are more vulnerable to state sponsored digital targeting and physical retaliation. Nicaragua Public sector workers trapped by state financial control In Nicaragua, the state payroll has become a tool for for total financial and social control, especially among doctors and teachers. The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo requires public employees to submit detailed asset declarations covering themselves, their spouses and their children, providing the regime with full insight into household finances. Dissent is met with immediate dismissal, while resignation is a trap for many, as those who quit risk immediate retaliation against family members still on the payroll. Nicaragua has lost over 4,500 teachers since 2018, and healthcare staffing has stagnated as experienced professionals are replaced by political loyalists. By manipulating the state payroll system, the regime has criminalized financial privacy, demonstrating that without financial sovereignty. All other forms of dissent are rendered impossible. China CBDC expansion to be explored in Hong Kong, China and Hong Kong regulators are considering upgrades to the digital Yuan wallet, China's CBDC to raise transaction limits and expand its use across borders for wages and supply chain payments. The proposed changes would introduce real time verification and replace the current system that allows limited anonymity for users who register with just a phone number. By requiring full identity disclosure, authorities would gain greater visibility into transactions as well as the ability to monitor or restrict them. This raises concerns about financial privacy for Hong Kong residents. Bitcoin and Freedom Tech News chapsmart New Bitcoin to mobile Money Feature Chapsmart introduced Merchant Pay, a new feature that connects global Bitcoin payments directly to Tanzania's mobile money system. With a simple link or QR code, individuals and businesses can receive Bitcoin payments from anywhere in the world, automatically converted into Tanzanian shillings and delivered via M? Pesa, a widely used mobile money transfer service. In other words, the sender pays in Bitcoin while the recipient receives local currency instantly on their phone. Why this matters as the Tanzanian regime tightens restrictions on foreign currency, tools like Chapsmart offer a crucial avenue for activists and nonprofits. By using Bitcoin as a neutral channel for value transfer, these groups can receive international payments without depending on banks or state controlled financial systems. Coinswap update integrates Taproot support and simplified interfaces Coinswap, a decentralized protocol that enables Bitcoin users to gain privacy through collaboration, released a major update. The new version introduces full support for Taproot, a Bitcoin upgrade that introduced Schnorr signatures, improving privacy and other features. It also makes the protocol easier to operate with a cleaner interface for monitoring swap history and balances. Among other improvements, the developers stated that the marketplace where users connect with swap partners is now more stable and reliable. Additionally, Coinswap launched a new public website alongside the update, serving as an entry point for non technical users approaching the platform for the first time. NOSTR VPN encrypted private connections enabled Early Bitcoin developer Marty Malmy released NostrVPN, a tool that allows users to manage their own private networks without centralized accounts, centralized servers, or reliance on any single company. Unlike commercial VPN services that handle connections on behalf of their customers, NostrVPN uses Nostr, an open and decentralized messaging protocol, to coordinate encrypted connections directly between a user's own devices or trusted servers. This makes it a decentralized alternative to tools like tailscale for Internet access. Users can route their traffic through a paid VPN service of their choice or host their own server, keeping full control over the setup. In either case, Malmi, Satoshi, Nakamoto's one time collaborator, continues to ship innovative Freedom Tech Lightning Network Splicing Feature to lower fees and improve access, developers have officially added the splicing feature to the technical standards of the Lightning Network, a second layer built on top of Bitcoin for fast, low cost payments. Previously, to transact over the network, users had to open and close payment channels each time they made a payment, which cost extra time and fees. Splicing allows users to adjust their balances dynamically while keeping a channel active. These payment channels act as digital corridors, enabling the network to settle instant transactions without recording every small move on the main Bitcoin blockchain. By streamlining fund management and slashing fees, splicing can help transform this infrastructure into a dynamic financial tool that capable of scaling for millions of daily users. Blackbox an Experimental Kit for Offline AI Messaging and Bitcoin Blackbox is an experimental tool that combines local AI messaging and Bitcoin payments into a single system that works offline. It runs on a Raspberry PI device, a low cost portable computer the size of a credit card, and uses long range radios to send data directly between devices over over miles. Bypassing cell towers and WI fi, these radios form a mesh network acting like a digital bucket brigade where messages hop from device to device to extend the signal's reach. By combining an internal AI model for technical queries, a decentralized message relay, and a Kashoo Ecash wallet for private Bitcoin transactions, the platform ensures that communication and trade remain possible even even when Internet access is restricted. Why this Matters in places facing state imposed Internet shutdowns or infrastructure collapse, Blackbox provides a vital alternative to centralized systems. While still experimental, this technology points to a future where essential digital tools remain functional and secure even when the Internet is restricted or unavailable. MIT Bitcoin Expo 2026 Freedom for All Edition the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, announced its 2026 Bitcoin Expo, scheduled for April 11 to 12 at the State center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Featuring a lineup of developers, privacy advocates and advocates for freedom, this year's theme, Freedom for All, highlights Bitcoin's role in defending human rights worldwide. The event features Afghan entrepreneur and human rights activist Roya Mahboob, who is defying the Taliban's ban on girls education by building offline learning apps, encrypted underground study networks and A global robotics program. MAHBOOB also teaches women and girls to use Bitcoin as a tool for financial freedom. Her participation highlights how the Expo is increasingly focused on real world use cases where Bitcoin supports education, resilience and human rights under repression. HRF is proud to support this Bitcoin gathering. [00:16:36] Speaker B: So there's something interesting here and I [00:16:40] Speaker A: had a thought while I was reading [00:16:41] Speaker B: this financial freedom report, especially in the [00:16:44] Speaker A: first section about Russia and when they [00:16:48] Speaker B: were locking down on capital controls and [00:16:51] Speaker A: in January they had almost $20 billion worth of withdrawals to cash. Here's the interesting element about this is as we move into a cashless society, the pressure like I think a lot of the push for CBDCs will come as a response to people trying to exit. [00:17:11] Speaker B: And this is a good example and [00:17:13] Speaker A: the same thing with India is this attempt to either front run or react to people dealing with the increasing financial and political uncertainty. And it sucks because in the US [00:17:26] Speaker B: I think a lot of people are [00:17:27] Speaker A: still complacent about this sort of thing. And cash is becoming extremely rare these days. I don't even, I have like kind of some cash set aside almost as like an emergency. But I know there are places that I go to that literally may not even accept it. [00:17:42] Speaker B: Maybe that's not the case. Maybe I'm assuming because I don't see a cash register or have ever seen [00:17:49] Speaker A: anybody make a cash payment. [00:17:50] Speaker B: But I'll be perfectly honest, there are a lot of places where I think [00:17:53] Speaker A: if I went here, could I even pay with cash or is that even, [00:17:57] Speaker B: is that even legal now? Is the U.S. is that like a thing you have to take legal tender? I wonder how that works. Anyway, I suspect it to become a bigger and bigger problem and a bigger [00:18:07] Speaker A: and bigger headache to have cash. As time goes on, it has become [00:18:11] Speaker B: a bigger and bigger headache. [00:18:12] Speaker A: However, the interesting thing is that jack and square and block and everybody has just auto turned on or at least this is in the process of rolling out. Has auto turned on the bitcoin and lightning acceptance into all of their terminals, which this is this huge barrier for [00:18:35] Speaker B: me that's just driving me crazy. [00:18:36] Speaker A: Is there a handful of places that [00:18:38] Speaker B: I really, really love that I go to all the time? [00:18:40] Speaker A: They even know me. [00:18:41] Speaker B: And every single time I just kind [00:18:42] Speaker A: of like casually bring up do you, [00:18:44] Speaker B: you know, you guys want to accept bitcoin and lightning? You can just, you literally just go [00:18:48] Speaker A: into your settings and press a button and turn it on and you will, you will receive dol. It will be no different. And they're resistant to it. [00:18:56] Speaker B: They don't, they don't get that it's that easy. [00:18:59] Speaker A: They don't get that they're not touching it. Literally at the coffee shop, at my [00:19:03] Speaker B: in laws, they, they got, they just, [00:19:08] Speaker A: they were so resistant to it. And I'm just, I'm just like, literally you're not going to touch anything. [00:19:12] Speaker B: It's okay. [00:19:13] Speaker A: Like all you do is you will hit a button at the end that will say bitcoin instead of credit card or dollars or whatever it is and it will show me a QR code and I will pay. You will never touch anything. It was like, well, our owners kind of older and I don't think they want to mess with any of that stuff or have to figure it out. And I'm like, no, no, no, you don't have to, you don't have to figure it out. You know, if a payment ever doesn't work, you just get them to use credit card or something. But to turn it on, to activate it, you don't have to know or do anything. You don't have to worry or think about bitcoin. I will do that. That is on my side. I am the only one who has that frustration or benefit, whatever you want to call it, but still doesn't. It doesn't. I never get through to them. I've literally not even gotten a single merchant to sign up and I have [00:20:00] Speaker B: asked quite a few times. So the fact that it might now actually be activated by default is actually really, really cool. [00:20:08] Speaker A: And importantly, back to the context of Russian withdrawals and India cracking down and [00:20:16] Speaker B: trying to make more use of their cbdc. China doing the same thing and trying [00:20:19] Speaker A: to push more CBDC use inside of Hong Kong. When cash is harder and harder to use, it may end up being that bitcoin and lightning actually has a similar [00:20:30] Speaker B: user experience or similar friction that cash [00:20:34] Speaker A: does and is explicitly a way to withdraw and use quote unquote, digital cash. Like if this becomes more common and I can easily pay with bitcoin and lightning at places that I go to [00:20:47] Speaker B: and we end up in a similar [00:20:48] Speaker A: situation as Russia where you have capital controls or limits or all that stuff, I would just, I would move it all into bitcoin. Granted, I don't have that much in dollars anyway. I already am pretty much all bitcoin. But that would be seen as like, oh wow. No, this is, this is how I can get my control back. And it'd be interesting to see this like slowly develop as, as you get more technological adoption with this type of [00:21:10] Speaker B: tool or this type of. With cryptographic payments, you know, and actually this brings me back to Chapsmart and a few other things is I can't remember who I was talking to that told me about this, but there's a [00:21:27] Speaker A: pretty common payment system these days, not in the US where the receipt actually has a QR code on it for you to go and push a payment to the merchant with the amount and all of the data in it. And I'm surprised that that hasn't. That's a really cool system. And what's funny is that this is, this enables a. There's a service and I think Chap [00:21:53] Speaker B: Smart is, which is talked about here. It sounds like the same type of [00:21:58] Speaker A: service or at least very similar in concept is what this actually means is that you can use an app. [00:22:06] Speaker B: And somebody was telling me about this because they were saying they basically live on a Bitcoin standard and it's only because of services like this. And there's just this one particular one that is very popular and very easy to use is you just switch over to that app and you scan the QR and they automatically just pay with their credit card. It's like the service itself pays with the credit card or a debit card of theirs. So you just don't even know the [00:22:30] Speaker A: debit card that's paying for your meal. And it's purely, purely possible. You can't see, you can't do this [00:22:37] Speaker B: in the US because everything's a pull payment. [00:22:39] Speaker A: And even in this situation, you're technically [00:22:42] Speaker B: a quote unquote pull payment from a, [00:22:44] Speaker A: from the back end perspective. But from the front end, you're scanning a QR code and you're approving, you are manually sending the payment. Whereas in the US you give your [00:22:53] Speaker B: card, they go back and they scan [00:22:54] Speaker A: it, they punch in the amount and they pull the payment. And what's funny is that they then also still have to come back and give you a receipt. Like if you're in like a restaurant [00:23:02] Speaker B: or something and ask you to put [00:23:04] Speaker A: in a tip and then sign. So it's not even done yet. It's like this weird pending payment setup which is actually an extra step. Like if you did a QR code, [00:23:13] Speaker B: you'd solve that by putting all that, [00:23:16] Speaker A: the payment as one step in the process. So it's actually funny that the QR code system would actually be much more efficient. But it might be just that mobile [00:23:26] Speaker B: payments and integration with that is so bad in the US or just lagging behind that it doesn't seem necessary and [00:23:37] Speaker A: it would immediately also [00:23:40] Speaker B: it wouldn't work [00:23:41] Speaker A: broadly speaking among all customers. [00:23:44] Speaker B: So you'd still have to have the other as an option. [00:23:47] Speaker A: But it's also like, you know, it's [00:23:49] Speaker B: like a software because backwards compatible, you could easily have the QR code so that people could pay or if not, you come back and you get their card, which is the same thing we do with, you know, cash and card. [00:24:01] Speaker A: Anyway, you have both as an option. But it's crazy how small the dynamic change is. But because you can display or because [00:24:09] Speaker B: you can share the payment information and [00:24:12] Speaker A: the invoice details with a QR code, [00:24:15] Speaker B: how quickly you could immediately just make [00:24:17] Speaker A: this like, you can immediately just turn this into a way to pay for a service and then someone else pays Bitcoin for it. [00:24:26] Speaker B: And that's what this thing, that's what [00:24:28] Speaker A: this tool was doing is somebody else literally pays your meal or pays your [00:24:33] Speaker B: bill, whatever it is, and you pay [00:24:36] Speaker A: them Bitcoin, boom, you can immediately live [00:24:39] Speaker B: your whole life and everything you do and all of your day to day [00:24:43] Speaker A: expenses in Bitcoin and nobody even knows. But it's because of the push infrastructure [00:24:51] Speaker B: of already having fiat payments as QR codes. And I just really, really wish that was more widespread. [00:24:56] Speaker A: I wish that was available in the [00:24:58] Speaker B: US because that would save me a [00:25:00] Speaker A: lot of trouble where there are still [00:25:04] Speaker B: other frictions or I want to go out and about and use Bitcoin day to day. [00:25:09] Speaker A: Granted, fold kind of solves most of that problem. [00:25:12] Speaker B: So you know, without fold, Fold basically [00:25:16] Speaker A: serves that purpose for me because I, [00:25:18] Speaker B: I have a debit card that I can essentially put Bitcoin on. But it is still like two to three steps when if I was being lazy or didn't really care or think about it, I could just, you just get a QR code and scan and pay lightning. Like it would just be really easy. [00:25:33] Speaker A: And specifically you have cash again, you have cash. You literally have genuine digital cash. Something that you have total control over. That on your end is entirely decided by you what level of autonomy or risk you are willing to take. And you can pay or utilize any payment service or wallet, custodial, non custodial, [00:25:59] Speaker B: self hosted, node swap service, privacy service, ark payment, [00:26:08] Speaker A: state chain payment like Spark [00:26:10] Speaker B: Breeze SDK doesn't matter. [00:26:13] Speaker A: Anything at all that you want on your end is up to you. And on their end they see or experience no difference. They would just receive a payment like any other setup. And that is really the power of lightning. Even though you have this massive bootstrapping problem that has been slowly but surely chipping away. [00:26:35] Speaker B: And speaking of lightning, actually the fact [00:26:37] Speaker A: that splicing was added, I'm surprised it took this long. I don't know, I don't know how the, you know, what level of [00:26:47] Speaker B: like checking and rechecking and checking a third time goes on with the basically standards [00:26:56] Speaker A: in the lightning network. But I am surprised splicing has been [00:26:59] Speaker B: so slow to adoption because splicing is [00:27:02] Speaker A: such an obvious tool to me or [00:27:04] Speaker B: obvious feature is that closing and opening a channel. In fact, this was actually written wrong, but I just went ahead and just read it the way said users had to open and close payment channels every time they made a payment, which is just, I think it's just a flub. But obviously what it is is if [00:27:22] Speaker A: you exceed your available balance inside the channel. [00:27:27] Speaker B: So if you have like a hundred dollar channel or 100,000 sats channel, whatever it is, and you want to receive 200,000 sats or you only have 20,000 [00:27:35] Speaker A: sats on the receive side of a [00:27:38] Speaker B: channel because it's like an abacus or whatever, right? Is that you have some funds that you can receive and some funds that you can send. [00:27:43] Speaker A: And if you send a bunch, you can receive a bunch afterward, but before [00:27:48] Speaker B: you do so you can't receive anything, right? [00:27:50] Speaker A: It depends on which side of the abacus, the, [00:27:55] Speaker B: the tokens or the dots or whatever, or which side of the channel your funds are on. [00:28:01] Speaker A: Splicing, normally to change the liquidity, to [00:28:05] Speaker B: change the available balance one way or [00:28:08] Speaker A: the other inside that channel, you have to literally close the channel. [00:28:12] Speaker B: You have to publish the channel to [00:28:13] Speaker A: the chain and wait for the funds [00:28:17] Speaker B: to return to you, then start a [00:28:20] Speaker A: new channel with the same person [00:28:24] Speaker B: and a new balance. Like, you know, pull in funds from [00:28:27] Speaker A: a different direction or a different location [00:28:30] Speaker B: and reopen that channel and continue moving forward. Whereas splicing is essentially pulling in that [00:28:37] Speaker A: extra input to add at the exact same time and then closing the channel paid to the opening of a channel in a single thing. [00:28:46] Speaker B: So you're, you're combining signatures, that one third data overhead of a new transaction is gone. [00:28:53] Speaker A: It's just way more efficient and importantly, [00:28:57] Speaker B: it's a way better user experience because [00:28:59] Speaker A: you're not waiting for multiple things or thinking like wait, there were multiple payments, like what's happening a closing and now there's an opening. There's like a bunch of steps involved [00:29:08] Speaker B: and ambiguity to the user. [00:29:10] Speaker A: When splicing is just, oh, you just [00:29:15] Speaker B: had to pay an on chain transaction to get more liquidity or to get [00:29:17] Speaker A: more get more Bitcoin in there in your lightning balance, which makes perfect sense [00:29:23] Speaker B: and importantly is, I think it makes it a far more. I think just generally that type of [00:29:29] Speaker A: interaction and operation in the back end really gives it this sense of being a pure liquidity network, which is what lightning is. [00:29:37] Speaker B: Right? It's a network for payments liquidity. [00:29:41] Speaker A: It is a payment network on top of Bitcoin. The money and all transactions are liquidity adjustments. [00:29:47] Speaker B: And having a single transaction to quote [00:29:50] Speaker A: unquote, adjust the liquidity to adjust the [00:29:53] Speaker B: amount of capital allocated in or out [00:29:56] Speaker A: of any particular account, any particular channel, [00:29:59] Speaker B: or toward any particular group of user, any particular route or location on the network makes sense from a. [00:30:08] Speaker A: It just conceptually makes sense on top [00:30:10] Speaker B: of just being obviously more efficient and more user friendly in seeing what is going on. I just think that's a really cool development and I think that's gonna add a lot to the user friendliness of not only using lightning, but also just [00:30:25] Speaker A: kind of building with lightning. [00:30:27] Speaker B: If splicing is just kind of the way to add or take away liquidity like I always kind of thought it should have been, I was surprised that it wasn't adopted almost immediately. I think it was Phoenix that started splicing first and it really did just kind of simplify everything. And it was a great. I was surprised by how seemingly little of a thing made what felt like a big difference to me. Maybe that's just because I'm a nerd and I care about how the back end of these things work. But another one on just specifically from this article is the whole nostrVPN. Marty Malmy in particular has been building like a bunch of really cool stuff. He just built TreeHash. What is it? TreeHash, GG or something like IO? I'll see if I can actually find it. Or hash tree. Hashtree. Jesus Christ, I'm terrible. Just start typing random things into your browser URL and see if you find something. But it's a. It's a nostr based P2P sharing, like file sharing and stuff, which is really cool. And anybody who's listening to this knows that I'm. I'm into this recently and I have. That's a huge thing. And I've been focusing on trying to figure out how to make this user friendly so that the user doesn't have to know or think about that they're doing peer to peer file sharing. They just have sharing that works and doesn't have a platform at the center. And then he also built this nostrVPN like just some really, really cool tools and also just a really clever way. Like, I think it's super important to utilize these various tools and things that we have in the way that they are best utilized. [00:32:13] Speaker A: But importantly, don't over subscribe. [00:32:16] Speaker B: Don't force everything to be on nostr. Use NOSTR for what NOSTR is good at. Don't force everything to be peer to peer on the pair stack. Use the pair stack for what it's good for. Don't force everything to be on pub key. Use it for what it's good for. Like that sort of thing. [00:32:35] Speaker A: And of course not all of this [00:32:36] Speaker B: stuff plugs into each other perfectly. You know, like if you're using the pair stack, you have to generate a different key for NOSTR than you do with the key that you do for Hypercore. But that's not always like a huge deal breaker. There's not always like a huge barrier. And sometimes you can just create them alongside of each other and they, they both kind of do their separate jobs. But we live in the age of vibe coding, guys. [00:33:00] Speaker A: Like we can build all of these tools. [00:33:03] Speaker B: And I know that because I have been building a tool and I don't know jack. Like I cannot develop. I'm probably half decent at architecture and I know my way around networking and the terminal and that sort of thing, [00:33:16] Speaker A: but I cannot write. [00:33:19] Speaker B: I could not write you five good lines of code. I could maybe do some bash scripting if you put a gun to my head and I had to come up with something, but it would not be very functional. It would be like. It would be the dumbest of dumb bash scripting yet. I have a Pear Drop app that I have essentially vibe coded almost entirely on my own, built on the Pear stack and it freaking works. [00:33:43] Speaker A: It works really, really well. [00:33:45] Speaker B: It is the number one thing that I use. In addition to pair Sync, which I've just recently gotten, these will kind of be modules. I don't think I'll have a tool for. Well, maybe I will have a tool for all of them because they're different purposes. But like this is. We have found ourselves in a place where we can literally build anything that we want to build. And it just takes time, dedication, thinking about it and not accepting that the AI that you're right just because the AI says you're absolutely right. That is probably the biggest thing right now that drives me crazy is AI will just agree with you. And don't, do not take it like maybe even hash the idea out with another human who has their own opinions and isn't like a jackass who's just going to blow smoke up your ass and tell you that you're right on every dumb idea that you have. It's crazy too because like, that's how you make the AI successful, right? Is make a whole bunch of people think they're smart. But God, that's the thing that drives me crazy about more than anything is it tells me absolutely right? And then I find out I'm wasting my time on like this whole direction and then I run into where it causes a problem and I'm like, oh Jesus, I shouldn't have done this. And I'm like, I shouldn't have done this. [00:35:01] Speaker A: He's like, you're absolutely right, you shouldn't have done this. [00:35:03] Speaker B: Just shut up. But anyway, that aside, this is the time to be building things and I think, you know, it's up to us. We're the ones who care about this stuff, right? We're the ones who care about the Nostra VPN and did we get a tool to get around the CBDC and Chaps Smart. Did we make it so that people can live on a bitcoin standard? And you know, people don't even know that the customer is using bitcoin and they have coin swap and taproot support and all of that stuff. We're actually in a place where people who are not developers can actually integrate and build these things. And I would say that if you're building, build very small, very modular and task specific, like extremely specific things and [00:35:53] Speaker A: utilize all of the SDKs, the development [00:35:55] Speaker B: kits, the like Breeze SDK and these other tools that people have built to [00:36:02] Speaker A: get the results that you want. [00:36:03] Speaker B: Because I really hope, I think I've already said this on like the last Freedom Report that we read, but I hope to be on the Freedom Report soon with Pear Drive and maybe Pear Drop first, but with a lot of the tools that we're building because I do think it makes a huge difference. In fact, we were talking with and have been working with some guys from Iran who are contributing and excited about the project. And I was working with them and I thought that was a great, it made a great example for how to [00:36:38] Speaker A: make use of the software. [00:36:41] Speaker B: And because they're, they're under, they're behind what they refer to as the Black wall, right? Is they heavily, heavily censored and scrutinized Internet and their Internet is being cut off regularly by the regime and during, you know, protest and during the, while the war has been going on Connectivity has been garbage. And while we were working with the [00:37:06] Speaker A: very first version of Pair Drop, they. [00:37:13] Speaker B: So the Iranian regime basically has a system set up that if it notices any generic web socket connections to non white listed things, like you can basically only connect to certain things. And if it notices any direct connection websocket connection, it takes about like 15, 20 seconds or so, sometimes quicker than that. And it will just shut them down, every one of them. And obviously peer to peer stuff is a generic UDP and or WebSocket connection. And so we were having that exact same thing happen with pairdrop. We were trying to share a movie just to see if we could get [00:37:50] Speaker A: a large file across the firewall, right across the. [00:37:55] Speaker B: The censorship. And what was really cool is because it kind of work, it basically works like Torrance is that if I deliver some to let's. Basically I had my brother in Canada, we had two guys, A and B [00:38:09] Speaker A: in Iran and then I am in [00:38:11] Speaker B: the US and so if I download, if my brother in Canada downloads a little bit and then each of the two guys in Iran download a little bit and then the connections get shut down from me, they can still download [00:38:27] Speaker A: each of their pieces from each other. [00:38:28] Speaker B: Like it basically creates a network immediately between everybody and we're just consolidating, make sure everybody has all of the pieces of the file. And it was funny because we're watching the connection list and connections are just like firing off, right? I'm connected. I'm not connected. I'm connected. I'm connected to somebody else. Okay, who's this? And we're like reading out public keys like who's 578 J21 and we're all on a call together and it's just, it just. It was machine gun connections up and up and down, up and down, up and down. And every single time files were. [00:39:05] Speaker A: Some chunks of the file were moving and it literally took like two minutes. And everybody had the movie file even [00:39:13] Speaker B: across the Iranian firewall. [00:39:15] Speaker A: And I thought that was pretty dope. [00:39:17] Speaker B: So I'll close this out that I [00:39:19] Speaker A: think we have the tools to solve [00:39:21] Speaker B: these problems and to actually get around this, we just have to build it. So do it with that. I'll catch you guys on the next episode. And until then, that is my two sats. [00:39:48] Speaker A: Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws. She has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity. Leonardo da Vinci.