Hey, it's Chris Black.
On this week's episode, I'm speaking with the pseudonymous founder and lead developer
of leading Bitcoin privacy wallet, Samurai Wallet.
We spent some time diving into the ongoing tornado cash controversy.
We talk about what it's like to exist in the world as a developer working on privacy technology
and a whole lot more.
We're going to jump right into that conversation after I thank my amazing sponsors.
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The one and only Samurai wallet.
Great to be with you, Chris.
A few technical difficulties, but nothing we can't get past.
I don't even want to dilly-dally with you, man.
I want to talk about the tornado cash thing first, because that's kind of what prompted
our conversation now.
And we've got a lot to talk about, but that in particular, yeah, I mean, that right there
was the thing where you and I are almost always in agreement on everything.
And then that came up and we had sort of differing views on what it meant for Bitcoin privacy.
And just to set the table a little bit, tornado cash, I don't know, did you read the indictment?
Did you read the 32 page?
Okay.
So it actually goes into some detail about what they're trying to do and the case they're
trying to present.
And if you're engaged with this space, no matter what side you're on, you read it and
you realize they're stretching, right?
They're trying to mold it into something useful.
But what it boils down to is the case rests upon the fact that tornado cash developers
hosted a front end that gave access to the smart contracts, convenient access, I would
say, that they launched a token that they profited from, that they supported a network
of relayers, which is a big deal, probably the biggest deal.
And the relayers allowed you to use tornado cash without exposing yourself on the back
end of it.
So if you're doing the withdrawal, it gives you a way to have a fully clean Ethereum account
to withdraw into, whereas it's much more difficult to do that without a relayer.
It's not impossible, but it's harder.
So those things, did I miss anything there?
Those were like the three things I think that they were like focusing in on.
I actually missed it.
In my view, the biggest thing and the only thing really that I think they have a case
with that's going to require a robust defense.
And that, of course, is the third count, the third charge, which is essentially the OFAC
SDN violation.
Right.
That's the one that has proof.
The money laundering stuff, we can talk about that, the MSB, whether it was or it wasn't,
it's very clear to anyone who has any understanding of FinCEN's guidance on exactly these things,
that it's not an MSB, that I think can be easily argued in court.
It's just going to rely on the Romans having a good defense team able to argue these technical
things and explain it to a jury.
The way I am-
The OFAC is going to be a little bit more difficult to defend.
The way I read it, though, is, and tell me if I'm wrong, but I think, you know, obviously
there was the OFAC thing and the money laundering thing, but the justification, they needed
a way to go after these individuals and make an example out of them.
And they realized that if you just do it on the basis of calling these smart contracts
money laundering tools, you're going to have a hard time because the developers were not
maintaining the smart contracts.
Once the smart contracts are deployed, they're deployed, right?
So like there's no ongoing work to-
It's very difficult to define it as money laundering or money service, money transmission
for the smart contract.
So that goes for OFAC too though, because if you're on the OFAC sanctions list, then
you don't need a front end.
You don't need a relayer.
You don't need any of these things to access those smart contracts.
So if they're using those smart contracts-
But they were used.
They were used.
That's the issue.
Well, okay.
So that's one thing that we haven't seen evidence about yet, right?
We haven't seen evidence that they use the front end.
Well of course.
And that's the important thing.
And I think why I disagree with many of the, and again, I don't think we disagree actually.
I think we disagree on the scope or severity of what it means broadly just because of the
stage we're at.
An indictment is, it means nothing.
To get an indictment, it's the prosecutor, a grand jury, and the judge.
The defense isn't there.
They don't have any idea about it.
And the standard of evidence is very low.
And the judge has to assume the prosecutor is telling the truth.
All of it, it's stacked against the, it's stacked so where the prosecution can easily
get an indictment.
So it means nothing.
What matters is what happens at trial.
And we see it countless and countless times where you have trumped up charges, charge
after charge after charge, and the indictment that never make it to trial.
We saw it with Ross Ulbricht where he was charged or indicted with murder for hire,
case in that, never made it to trial.
Completely was used as a way to sully public perception.
So these are things that we've seen before in non-crypto cases, the DOJ at work.
This is how they work and operate.
So it's important to say, okay, what is this?
It's just an indictment.
Let's look at the facts around what's being charged in the indictment.
When we see all of the money laundering claims, it's dubious.
It's dubious for many reasons.
We can get into it more in depth if you want.
But what's not dubious though is the fact that the tornado cash devs on the front end
implemented controls to check for sanctions violations.
And they could do it and they chose to do it.
And it's funny because in the press release, they actually, from the, I think it was the
FBI or it was the IRS or both of them, they say, they put in these front end sanctions
screening service, but did so knowing that this would be easy to evade.
So now they're in trouble for implementing an industry standard sanction service.
Because if you read the quotes that they used to come to that conclusion, they just said,
this is the best we can do or something like that.
They knew that there was no way for them to stop anybody on the OFAC sanctions list to
access the smart contracts.
And it's the best effort thing.
That's what you have to do.
You have to do the best effort.
And for a long time, best effort meant restricting when you see it.
And that's it.
That's all you can do.
And the thing is with sanctions law and OFAC, I mean, it's clear cut and it's severe.
You violate that, you're in trouble.
And it doesn't matter whether you're a business or a person or whether you're a U.S. person
or not, if you violate it, they're coming for you.
And that's the one I think that really has teeth in this.
And I think people are missing it.
They're focusing on the money laundering, which I think can be so easily defended against
just using FinCEN's own guidance and what the legal advice that we all in this industry
have got.
We didn't go into this blind as samurai.
We got legal advice to say, what about operating a non-custodial coin joint coordination?
And all we can do, because there's no specific law that says it, oh, non-custodial coin
joint is AOK.
That's not how it works.
You have to look at the guidance, the regulatory regime, the BSA, you have to look at the definitions
that money transmission and money transmitters are.
And your legal team says, yeah, you're clear or no, you're not.
And it's so clear cut to me that there's no money laundering.
There's no money transmission by both the Romans.
That's not what's there.
And I think that can be easily defended by a competent defense team, but they really
need help on the sanctions stuff, I think.
That's just my opinion.
Yeah.
The interesting thing is, like you said, best effort has been the standard.
And that's why you can have a website or a front end saying, this is not accessible
by citizens of this country or residents of this country.
And then you can use a VPN and get around it in three seconds because that was right.
It's like a commonly known thing.
But then you read this indictment of tornado cash developers and you realize that what
they're saying is no, best effort in this case would have been taking down the entire
website.
Like taking down, that was what they said.
They said that as long as you ran this website, you were not making best efforts to stop these
hackers from money laundering through the smart contracts that you deployed.
So that's why, just to loop it back to our tweets that we were going back and forth on,
that's why I see this.
There was only one tweet.
Okay.
There was one tweet.
Yeah.
And then we're just like, let's talk about it.
No, I got you.
But the idea here is where I'm coming from, not just with you, but with any developer
that touches privacy tech in this space.
I think that this is coming from a place of how do we attack privacy?
How do we attack, how can we retrofit a case to chill people out of developing this kind
of stuff?
And so it's not just the tornado cash guys had a token and ran relayers and it's not,
that's just convenient.
They made it easy for them almost to put this indictment together.
But it's about if your privacy tools used by anybody that the government doesn't like,
whether it's for a good reason or bad reason, it could be a North Korean hacker or it could
be somebody who posted some anti LGBTQ2IA plus SSS tweet that the government really
hates and now they want to keep them from escaping their financial CBDC or whatever.
It's like whatever it might be.
If the government doesn't like them and they go on a list and they use your privacy tech,
then you are culpable.
And whether it's tornado or samurai or wasabi or any other tool out there.
So that's where I was coming from.
That's been true forever though, since sanctions and SDN and OFAC is what it is.
Like I said, you do a best case basis, best effort basis.
Yeah, but that's the point here.
Best effort was them stopping the service, like going, doing whatever they could to stop
it.
That's what they want.
Again, what the prosecution and the government wants doesn't necessarily mean they're going
to get it in court.
Really there's a lot of things at play here.
But yeah, I mean, I agree.
I would even argue that tornado cash ultimately was a wrong decision personally, I would say,
but they went above best effort by contracting with Chainanalysis to offer the real time
screening on their UI.
That's more than best effort.
They went above and beyond.
Now maybe they still thought that it was easy to evade and maybe it is, but it is above
best effort, I would say.
Well the idea of evading it was like, okay, Lazarus Group had all this crypto in an ETH
account.
That ETH account goes on the OFAC list.
Chainalysis keeps a list in a smart contract that Tornado is checking against for every
transaction.
So if they were to operate out of that wallet, out of that account, it would have been blocked.
But because of the way Ethereum works, and this isn't Tornado's fault, this is just the
way Ethereum works.
You can just send it to a different wallet and OFAC won't have time to catch up and keep
up with all these wallets.
You could send it to two or three or four or whatever.
And then you can use that through Tornado because there's an infinite number of Ethereum
accounts that you can generate.
So same with Bitcoin, right?
If you just need to hop at one away, but you guys think that you need to hop at one, two,
three, four, five away.
And then at what point is it on the operator?
How many hops back do they need to look?
Exactly.
So that's why it makes no sense.
Okay, but this is like where I get hung up and why I want to talk to you because like
you were kind of dismissive of this as as relates to Bitcoin privacy.
And a lot of Bitcoiners are thinking like that too, like, oh, Tornado launched a token,
they had relays and that's why this is happening.
But there's so many parallels.
I mean Samurai Wallet.
I didn't say that at all.
I think what I what I was disagreeing was you should bring up the tweet or you should
because I don't really remember it.
But I think the main claim that you that I was disagreeing with, I believe, was that
Tornado Cash is more decentralized than any privacy tech on Bitcoin.
I believe that's what the claim was that I was disagreeing with.
There may have been a secondary claim in there, but I don't or statement that I don't really
remember it.
And I think that it's that's an I don't outright disagree.
But I think it's more nuanced than that.
Well, I'll tell you what I meant.
Sure.
Go.
Yeah.
So OK, so the tweet said no matter how much you hate Ethereum, it's critical that every
Bitcoiner understands this fact.
Tornado Cash on Ethereum is far more decentralized than any privacy tool on Bitcoin that currently
exists.
If Tornado loses this case, then privacy on Bitcoin is very screwed.
And just to add some color, you know, my point was that Tornado Cash smart contracts on Ethereum
cannot be stopped by the developers.
They could throw the developers developers in jail, pull off their thumbnails, pull out
their teeth, kill their family, you know, do it, rape their grandmas.
And they still wouldn't be able to to shut down those smart contracts.
The only way to stop the smart contracts from functioning as as mixing services or whatever
you want to call them, even though that's that's questionable, too, because of the way
it works, it's more like a lockbox almost.
But the only way to stop it is to fork Ethereum.
Right.
So the validator network would have to would have to do that.
And it's completely out of the developers control.
So contrast that to coin join services such as Samurai Wallet.
And you have a situation where, you know, they can't stop it.
But you know, you guys can.
Right.
Am I wrong about that?
You can stop your service if you're forced to.
Yeah.
So we can stop coordination in the same way that the tornadoes cash does could stop the,
you know, the UI, right.
They could stop building the UI.
Well, you can't use Samurai Wallet.
Ethereum would continue without the UI.
And in the same sense that anyone else who wanted to coordinate could continue coordination
without us.
So it's like I said, I don't disagree with you because you're right.
The Ethereum state machine, et cetera.
It's different.
But one coin joint coordinated coin joint isn't the only privacy tech on Bitcoin for
first.
There is peer to peer coin.
There's decentralized coin join, which we're working on right now.
There's you know, there's a host of well, there's even decentralized coin join from
join market, though it's not, you know, very effective.
The building blocks are there, though.
So I think the statement's too broad.
I do like, you know, with the added context of what you were saying in terms of it not
being able to be shut down without a fork.
I do understand what you meant.
I still would say it's just too broad of a statement, but it's a tweet, you know, so
that's exactly what it is.
It is a tweet.
Yeah.
You know, so I didn't take that as a major disagreement.
You know, I think that you're right.
If this case is lost, it's a major blow to I mean, it just goes far beyond Bitcoin or
crypto or Ethereum or whatever.
It's a major blow.
I don't think they will win again, assuming a competent defense.
They'll win on the money laundering charges because that's just going against every, you
know, years and years of of case law and guidance.
It really makes no sense to me why that's there.
So it's like I for me, I just get so nervous for anyone who's developing privacy tech in
this space.
And I have been for a while.
And we talked about it last time we did a podcast or whatever.
But I just don't see a future where every single developer that's developing this kind
of tech and it doesn't matter why it's being developed.
I mean, I know and I'm a user of this tech.
I use it to preserve my dignity as a human being.
You know, I use it because I understand that I have a right to privacy that I was born
with and it doesn't mean privacy just from my neighbor.
I mean, it doesn't mean allowing the government to see everything I do, but just not, you
know, the guy down the street.
That's not my idea of privacy.
My idea of privacy is I can do what I want with the things I have and the things I earn
and nobody else should be allowed to see it unless I allow them to see it.
And so that's why I use the tech.
I see it as dignity because I think that being forced to give that right up is being forced
to give up your dignity.
You know, and so I think that the problem is I don't see a future where everybody in
the space who's developing this kind of stuff and telling the government to basically screw
off when they come knocking isn't attacked.
You know, and so it's like that's where I get worried and it's not even it's not even
just the privacy tech.
You know, right.
Yeah, you expect it.
But I guess a question for you is like where like what does the future look like?
I mean, do you just keep doing what you're doing in the same way and be out here doing
podcasts and stuff like that?
And like, do you just keep doing that until like, are you at the point where you're just
like F it?
Like, I'm just going to go with it and see what happens.
Or is there like some kind of a plan, you know, to further decentralize in a way or
to for, you know, to increase OPS sec over time?
Like, what does that look like for you?
Or is it not if it's not something you even want to talk about?
I totally understand that too.
But that's where I get curious.
We're definitely not quitting.
I mean, again, you many people seem surprised that the state would, you know, do this, go
after make these claims, go this broad.
We're not surprised.
Of course, they want to discourage the type of software we're building.
We knew that going in in 2015.
So no, that it's not discouraging us from it.
We're not doing anything illegal.
We have a, you know, at least in the United States, we have a constitutional right to
publish the software that we want to publish.
It's already, you know, well, it maybe hasn't been tested, but it's assumed that software
is code of speech.
You know, and the last time that was brought up, the government actually folded because
they didn't take it to the courts.
That was the Bernstein case.
They didn't take it to the courts because they didn't want precedent.
So they just left it.
They dropped the case.
So you know, because that's, that's a dangerous, that's a dangerous thing for them.
And it's a powerful thing for us.
So you know, we're not going to stop doing what we're doing.
You know, we're as far as I'm concerned, we're trying to maintain the status quo of
what what type of financial privacy you're able to obtain or have been able to obtain
traditionally, you know, so with cash, for example, or even even traditionally in the
bank, you know, traditionally, the government can't just go to the bank and say, let me
see the financial history of XYZ without a without a court order or warrant, etc.
So at least the very least, we would like to be able to replicate that on the on the
public blockchain.
It's not an easy feat, but it's at least interesting to work on.
And who's the state and who's the government to say what we can work on?
So no, no, absolutely not.
We're not quitting.
What in terms of decentralizing, I think it's something we've been working on prior to
all of this prior to the original arrest of of Roman last year.
We already had begun the process of decentralizing coordination of Whirlpool as obviously it's
a a vulnerability point that we'd like to eradicate because as it is right now, the
government guidance of FinCEN 2019 says that we're not money laundering.
It's very clear we're not.
There's no custody.
There's no control of funds.
We can't transmit funds if we, you know, if we don't have the private keys, the user
has to transmit, etc, etc.
So yeah, you know, but that can change.
And this this case, you know, if everything goes wrong and these guys lose and the money
and on all counts, for example, things change, right?
The landscape changes immediately.
And we want to be we want to be ready for that, of course.
And we're well advanced on that.
And the other you know, the other thing is we have a large user base of people that run
their own notes.
They use a software that we produce called Dojo to do that, meaning they run a dedicated
piece of hardware already with a Bitcoin note on it and, you know, with a snap of a finger,
all of these Dojo nodes could become Whirlpool coordinators instantly.
You know, so you immediately have hundreds if not thousands of different coordinators
out there with a software update.
You know, so we're not concerned about the changing landscape.
We expected a fight.
The fights here.
We're going to keep making the tech that we make.
Is the Dojo coordinator thing going to happen for sure?
Is that like a fallback?
Oh, no, no, it's happening.
We're decentralizing Whirlpool.
Regardless, not a fallback plan.
That's kind of always been the plan.
But you know, as you know, we do things incrementally.
We're a small team.
So how's that?
How's that going to work?
Is it going to it's going to function as one coordinator, but it's going to be sort of
P2P across the nodes?
Okay.
Sort of like a torrent style.
Okay.
Yeah, one liquidity pool, many, many coordinators.
So you know, and that's what that's what the Whirlpool centralized coin joint currently.
The centralized aspect of it is message passing.
And that's to take encrypted packets from your client and pass it out to the other participants
in your coin joint transaction.
The server can't read the messages it's passing.
It's not broadcast.
You know, it's not transmitting.
It's just passing packets around.
That part is really the most centralized part of Whirlpool.
We want to get rid of that part, obviously.
And that's the part that we've made tremendous strides on in terms of decentralization.
Obviously, it's more, you know, there's more pressure to get it out there and finish now,
but it has been something we've been working on for for quite a while.
What do you think are the odds that that you are going to get the the tornado cash treatment
at some point in the future?
Like what do you think are the odds of that and like, how does that?
How do you reckon with that in your head?
Like, are you nervous about it or do you just feel like you're so prepared for it?
You're ready for the fight?
No, I mean, yeah, I think anyone would be nervous about that.
I don't think that I'm not known to the people with these powers that be.
I think that if they wanted to come and give me really harsh treatment and come and take
me out of my house, my underwear, etc., they could do it in a heartbeat.
I'm not worried about it per se.
I think that I would like to hope that someone would come like, you know, want to talk about
things first.
What exactly are the capabilities of the platform, etc., before going to that treatment?
But you know, if it happens, it happens.
We do have plans in place, contingencies in place for those types of events, you know,
all sorts of contingency plans.
I'm not going to get deep into them, but you know, I maintain that I'm not doing anything
illegal.
I have legal advice and I'm not doing anything illegal.
We've had legal requests come to us before that we've been able to pass to our attorneys
and our attorney was able to successfully explain, you know, the nature of our software
being non-custodial, being that, you know, you can connect to your own node, etc., that
the request that they were making wouldn't be possible to fulfill those types of things.
So no, I mean, I don't think we're doing anything illegal, so I don't expect anything, you know,
but I wouldn't be surprised if something happened.
I mean, look, it would be stupid to be surprised, like, oh, I can't believe it.
Yeah, I'm just wondering if you think it's an inevitability in a way or if you think
it's of a low likelihood.
It sounds like you're more on the low likelihood side.
Well, I think that if things change and there's clear violation of the law, the law changes,
I mean, and we didn't change and we were violating the law, then yeah, I'd expect it.
I don't think we're violating the law, so I can't imagine why they would come and, you
know, do that, and if they did, then again, we do pay lawyers for a reason.
We have them on retainer.
You know, we'll fight it, obviously, but that's what you do when you're charged with something
you didn't do.
You fight it and you hope for the best.
I'm not going to live in fear, like, I'm not going to do this because, oh, they might come
after me for it.
Well, that means I might be doing something, I might be on this something, like, you know.
So that's how you think about it.
It's because that's what I'm, I'm more concerned than you are about this, it seems like, which
is interesting, but it's, you know, I guess what I'm trying to figure out is how you,
why do you do?
I mean, I know what your normal answer is, but why do you do this work knowing what's
at stake and knowing what the risks are?
Like, why do you want to keep going?
Well, what the hell else would I do?
When I go work at a, you know, like in an office?
I mean, is it about like make a, make like a banking product?
I mean, it could, you can't go back like to, to, no, it's too important.
You know, the, when I got into Bitcoin, I mean, I got in hard, right?
Like, not like, you know, the, the brain dead idiot laser eyes that you'll find on Twitter
today.
Like I came in hard on an ideological perspective.
And again, this is pre-Ethereum pre-Manera.
It was just Bitcoin and Bitcoin was all there is.
And you know, I'm still into the promises that Bitcoin offers, though more jaded, of
course.
But you know, I'm still ideologically really, there's a strong passion there for, for what
Bitcoin can offer.
And I think does offer if you're able to, you know, utilize it in a certain way and
you're able to, to, to, you know, use the tools and extricate yourself somewhat from
the system.
The, the promise is immense and building the software to make what I want to see happen.
There's nothing, there's nothing quite like that.
You know, really.
So I, and the fact that it's used and, and enjoyed and, you know, an essential tool for
so many people more than I ever thought.
You know, I just, yeah, like I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to stop doing it
just because it's so interesting and fun.
But two, like I've never, I've never since, since I was really small, I've never been
good with people telling me, no, you can't do that.
You have to do this.
I kind of, if I want to do something, I'm going to, I'm going to do it.
And that's the same with this.
So I just, it's just the reality of it.
I hope nothing like that happens.
If something like that does happen, I'm prepared to deal with it and fight it.
And I think that, you know, we'll be able to fight it hopefully if it does happen, but
I don't think it will.
I don't think it's, it's, it's, it's highly likely.
I think it's possible, but not highly likely.
Let's see what happens with this case.
Yeah.
Why do you think most people use Whirlpool?
Most people are using Whirlpool to get the smallest bit of privacy on a public ledger.
You know, I like to explain it to people the best way that I can explain it, because most
people are coming from a KYC source, right?
So they're, they're, they're buying on Swann or, or some other KYC platform exchange or
something like that.
And they're entering Whirlpool from there, the majority.
And the reason they're doing it is the same reason or the same, to obtain the same level
of protection that you would get from your bank when you withdraw cash from an ATM, right?
Like you can withdraw a hundred dollars from the ATM.
Your bank account knows that you have that hundred dollars.
They know who you are, but what you do afterwards with that hundred dollars, they have no visibility
in it, right?
You could go all over, you know, you could do whatever you want with it and they would
have no idea.
They just know you took out the hundred.
That's what Whirlpool can offer those people who are coming in from a KYC source.
And what business is it of the KYC source?
What business is it of your exchange to know where you're spending your money or where
you're spending your funds, you know, after you've withdrawn it from their service?
It's none of their business.
And then, you know, the other, the other thing I like to explain to people is with a open
ledger like Bitcoin, no matter who you're paying, whether it be like, you know, a small
value barista or a high value, like, you know, car dealership or whatever, the person that
you're paying can look into your financial history.
And that's not something that anyone in their right mind would ever accept in, you know,
the quote unquote real world.
You know, that's absurd.
Like if you used your visa to pay for like a coffee at Starbucks and the barista could
see all of your subscriptions, what, you know, your only fans, you're like, it makes no sense.
No one would accept that.
So Whirlpool and PrivacyTech on Bitcoin right now is trying to, because it's not happening
on the protocol layer, trying to figure out app level solutions to what we consider, you
know, a privacy problem.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess another way to look at it though, and the way that I'm sure some in
the government would look at it is it's a way to subvert the effort to, you know, to
kill privacy by the government, right?
So the government came up with these KYC AML requirements sometime after 9-11, right?
And the idea was we need to treat everybody like a criminal because there might be some
criminals out there.
How else are we going to catch them if we don't look at everybody?
And so all of a sudden all these financial institutions are required to track every dollar
that's moving through them and who it belongs to.
So the idea here is that, you know, Coinbase or Binance or whoever you're using to buy
crypto knows exactly who you are.
They know where you live.
They know what you look like.
Your Bitcoin address is associated with that face, with that address, with that name.
And when you transfer it out of that exchange, it's still associated with that face, name,
and address.
And it is again and again, you know, because they're so sophisticated with analytics now,
they know who you are at all times.
So Samurai Wallet, sorry, Whirlpool and CoinJoin in general is subverting that work by the
government to impact your privacy in that way.
So now the way that the laws are structured, the onus is on the companies, right?
It's on the financial institutions.
It's not on me or any other user to report to the government, except for taxes, of course,
to report to them how we're spending money.
But do you think that, do you share my view, which is that, you know, as the future unfolds
and as this gets more and more frustrating for the government, and as we get closer to
things like central bank digital currencies and digital dollars and stuff like that, do
you think the onus is going to switch?
Like do you think that this is going to basically, do you think that this is going to become
illegal?
Do you think that enhancing privacy on an opt-in basis as an end user ultimately is
going to become, you know, either whether it's the regulation or a congressional act
or whatever it might be, eventually it's going to become illegal to subvert the will of the
government in this way?
By the end user, you mean?
Yeah, yeah, by the end user.
I sure should hope so.
You hope so?
Yes.
What a, what a indictment of the success if that's the case.
If Whirlpool and CoinJoin and all of these privacy tools are such a, are so big of a
threat to the, you know, to the broad market that you have to ban them outright, because
if you ban them outright, you know what happens.
Huge surge in use.
Black markets and gray markets now are aware of this thing that they can use and they will
dominate it.
It's what, you know, what happened when they banned alcohol, prohibition, right?
They created the, they created the mafia control of the distribution of liquor, right?
Cartels, et cetera.
So and liquor was rampant, you can get it.
So that's the same thing.
Yeah, that would be, that would be a stunning thing.
I can't see it happening.
No.
I can't see how they could get away with that constitutionally.
It would be challenged immediately.
That's I don't think they'll be as overt as that.
I think what will happen, because you're right, that that's the goal.
The goal is for the, you know, the reporting in real time on a transaction by transaction
basis.
That the state has never had access to and they want it.
Very clear.
And I, you know, I think we are in agreement that the vehicle for that is the CBDC.
It's the best vehicle they have for it.
But if that doesn't work out, you could do a pretty good job by co-opting Bitcoin and
having a pretty good idea, you know, of the transaction graph.
If the majority of the UTXOs are KY seed.
So you know, I think that's the goal.
Absolutely right.
I don't think they're going to just ban it outright like that.
I think that would not be in their best interest in what they're doing, trying to achieve.
Yeah.
We're, we're seeing, we've been seeing the government get more and more creative, I would
say over the past three, four years, as far as how to achieve these things that they know
are unconstitutional and that they know are illegal.
You know, we saw a lot of it during the COVID stuff, right?
Where for instance, I'll give you an example.
The government, the government didn't want you to fly without a mask.
Right?
So this was a decision by the government.
They didn't want you to be allowed to get on an airplane without a mask, but they knew
that they couldn't legally tell you that they couldn't have police officers at the gates
kicking people off planes with that didn't have masks because it's not in their purview.
They don't have the authority to do it.
They don't have the constitutional authority to do it.
And it would have been challenged.
So what they did was they went to the airlines and they had the airlines do their work, right?
So they can, they can get on a conference call with the airlines, just like they did
with social media, with Twitter, Facebook, et cetera.
Conference calls with the airlines and said, look, this is what we're doing.
You're not going to let anybody on your plane without a mask.
And the airlines say, okay.
And then the airlines enforce it.
Right?
So it's, it's the same point.
You don't need the hard approach.
You have the, yeah, the same thing with the vaccine mandates, like with the vaccine.
Like, so nobody from another country could enter the United States on a plane without
having a vaccine, a up-to-date vaccine.
The government can't do that.
But what they did was they had the airlines checking before people get on the plane.
Right?
So it's like, so now bring this over to, to money.
And you start to realize it's not even going to be about the government, you know, banning
this or that it's going to be a, how can they co-opt financial institutions?
How can they co-op different, you know, wallet makers and stuff like that, which is, it's
not going to be that hard and already doing it with exchanges, especially in the EU.
Right.
So that's how it's going to go.
You know, I mean, and what do you think about like all the efforts to, to, I mean, it seems
like there's especially in Europe right now, efforts to make self custody basically illegal
unless it's connected to KYC.
Right?
So how's that all going to impact?
This is how we first connected Chris.
I believe it was around the, the AOPP.
Right.
Proposal in the EU for your listeners, that was a protocol that would ease the, the KYC
burden, make it easier for the end user to, to fund their cold storage from a KYC provider
in the EU.
And we argued against this because it was essentially a seeding of territory by these
non-custodial wallet developers implementing KYC requirement into something that has never
had any business having KYC, which is self custody, total self custody, meaning you own
the private keys and many wallets and services signed up for this.
Most of them not, they weren't thinking about the implications.
You know, they didn't, they didn't do it maliciously.
They just thought, oh yeah, this will be, make it easier for my users, which it would
have easier to comply.
Right.
But right, by, but by making it quite quote unquote easier for your users, you're normalizing
the fact that you're sending KYC information every time you use self custody.
And we're talking about Trezor.
We're talking about, what other big wallets were there?
I remember there was a bunch that were signed on.
I think like, you know, a couple of the hardware wallets, Trezor, Bitbox, I believe.
Yeah.
A bunch of a relay with sign.
You know, there was a bunch of services, mostly EU based, but some, some, I think blue wallet
as well.
So, you know, there, right.
And it wasn't malicious that they just didn't think about it.
Well, it was adversarially about it.
Their argument was, you know, from their point of view, because they would have implemented
this into their device or their wallet and it would have given like their user then could
basically connect directly to their exchange in a way through, through signing messages.
And then their exchange, you know, which already knows their name, their face, their address,
et cetera, through KYC, their exchange would then be able to assign that name, address,
et cetera, to this self custodial Bitcoin wallet on your Trezor or in your digital wallet,
whatever it might be.
So from the point of view of the wallet makers, the wallet devs, they're thinking, well, you
know, they're going to need this because this is becoming the law.
So I want to make their lives easier because if I don't, then they're going to have a harder
time complying with the law.
But the fact of the matter is that the law didn't even exist yet, as far as I know, like
the law was almost didn't exist.
The law was almost like predicated on this happening, right?
So it's like this big circle.
There's two, there's two things I want to bring up.
One, the law didn't exist.
Right, because each each member state of the EU has to implement the law in their own parliaments.
So the law did get passed in the Dutch in the Netherlands.
And luckily, there are still some people left in Europe who have a backbone.
And one of the oldest exchanges in Europe and definitely the oldest, I believe, in the
Netherlands, BitTonic actually fought this and took it to court and got a ruling that
this was against the Dutch constitution and got thrown out immediately.
You know, so that's still worth fighting these things, not just bending backwards and complying,
especially when there is no law.
But also as a independent wallet developer, as someone who publishes open source code,
if your stuff is open source, I'm assuming it is, you know, you have no obligation to
enforce the law of the state.
You're not an enforcer.
Right.
You know, so so yeah, I mean, I don't I can't imagine why one would go, yeah, that sounds
like a good idea, other than they not thinking about it and saying, oh, that will make the
experience nicer for my user.
I get it.
OK, fine.
But, you know, we're in an adversarial environment and you need to think about these things adversarially.
And what do you know, what do the the seeding of territory, the seeding of ground, what
it means?
Because you brought it up earlier, Chris, about the money transmitters and and KYC and
how it came about after 9-11.
It actually came about in 1970 with the introduction of the word money laundering, which is a new
word.
Didn't mean anything other than now here's a creation and this is what it means.
And banks and hedge funds and all that sort of stuff actually started having to do basic.
You know, they started having to try to prevent money, this new money laundering crime.
Then by 1999, we have now what are called money service businesses.
By 2011, you have now money transmitters and what that means.
And then by 2019, you now have, you know, what are how this pertains to crypto and stuff.
So this is slippery slope.
This is exactly what it means.
The minute you see territory, the minute Congress passed the BSA in 1970.
The slippery slope started.
And now where we're at, we're talking about CBDCs that contract every payment that you're
making on demand.
It all to stop a crime that was invented in 1970.
It's absurd.
It's madness.
And by accepting that framing, you're accepting your enemy's frame of mind and they're setting
the terms of your engagement.
You know, it just makes no sense.
Well, it makes sense from the point of view of a company that wants to maximize profit
and wants to maximize revenue and wants to give its investors their return that they
expect, you know, their VCs and whatnot.
But you know, it doesn't make sense from the point of view of a principal developer who's
willing to put principal over profit, who's willing to-
Short term profit though.
You know, that makes it true short term.
Yeah.
And I think so because the value proposition, as far as I'm concerned in Bitcoin, isn't
a corporate captured KYC network.
That's not where the value proposition- we can do that already without a blockchain and
it can be way better.
That's not where the value proposition lies.
So I think that by pursuing that and saying, yeah, we're going to do whatever it takes.
And this is, I mean, it's a common mindset in the space that a, you know, KYC, no privacy
type of network is more valuable, digital gold network or whatever is more valuable.
I disagree.
And I think that that will play out.
The thing is it's 2023 and I don't know that most Bitcoin holders and users agree anymore.
I don't think they have to.
It doesn't matter.
The largest economy in the world is the black market and Bitcoin maybe has an end gray market
for that matter.
And Bitcoin maybe has a fraction of a percentage of that market, that usage, you know, and
if things are, you know, as bad as you and I presume, I guess, think they are in terms
of human freedom and privacy, that market's only going to grow because human beings demand
basic freedoms and privacy.
It's just a human thing.
And you may not think you need it, this and that until you really suddenly realize, oh,
shit, I do need that.
And as more and more people realize that and COVID woke up a lot of people, the masks,
you know, the mandates that woke up a lot of people, the truckers in Canada that woke
up a hell of a lot of people.
You know, these events keep happening.
These people are going to be woken up and they're going to go, oh, I actually I do need
privacy, because it's not actually about, you know, stopping North Koreans this and
that.
It's about stopping me from expressing my political opinion.
It's about me stopping me from saying that I think, you know, the election was a sham.
It's shit like that, you know, and, you know, I see the value in censorship resistant digital
cash.
That's what I came into Bitcoin for.
And you can't have censorship resistant anything without privacy.
It's impossible.
Yeah.
My concern is that the people you're talking about, they'll wake up when it's too late,
you know, and by then all of these other companies, all of these, you know, the treasurers and
wasabi of the world will have kowtow to government will have become the sort of endorsed adopted
tools for how to use crypto.
Tech like yours will become, if not illegal, then it'll become pirate ship, you know, pirate
bay like of crypto, right?
And pirate bay is still online.
It's still online.
But it's, I mean, it's, you know, who knows what the domain is today versus tomorrow.
And you know, trying to, it's resilience.
See, you know, let me ask you something.
Do you think, because I get this a lot.
I think that there's a lot of people in this space who think, what are you worried about?
We're always going to be able to access this tech.
We're always going to be able to use this tech.
If we have to, well, I'll move to some, you know, island somewhere together and start
a new country.
And you know, it's like, what, you're gonna go to the Citadel and whatever, you know,
it's like, okay, I understand that point of view.
And yeah, I think I'll always be smart enough to be able to look out for myself to a certain
extent.
But if COVID taught me one thing, it's that the tyranny of the majority is going to affect
us no matter how much non-KYC Bitcoin we have, right?
Because the tyranny of the majority can lock you out of a grocery store and you can't buy
food for your kids.
And the tyranny of the majority can keep you from entering a hospital when you're in the
middle of a heart attack, you know, and leave you to die on the sidewalk if you don't comply
with, you know, certain orders.
So it's like things like that.
I think that people get a little bit naive when they say, oh, well, if our privacy tools
become niche and pirate and this and that, then we'll still be able to survive versus
this should be the norm, right?
This should be normalized and this should be, and I think that's what we're getting
to before, like why we're pushing back on AOPP with, you know, when it's being adopted
by huge players in the space like Trezor, you know, and they don't understand like why
we're pushing back and they call us an annoying minority, you know, a vocal minority.
But in reality, it's about like what you said before, it's about, it wasn't even a law yet
in 99% of the world.
Like a couple of countries are trying to do it, but then Trezor wants to normalize it
for all the countries, right?
And all of a sudden all the countries have access to this nice handy dandy tool that
Trezor or whoever developed, you know, or the AOPP, you know, group or whatever they
were called developed.
So it's, it's, to me, it's like fighting to just have that pirate ship at the end of
it all is, is self-defeating versus trying to constantly just remind people.
And it's a losing battle.
I admit it.
It's fully, it's losing battle.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, you know, look, the only thing you can do, well, that we can do is, you know,
what we can do is build software.
Okay.
And if people use it, people use it.
And it doesn't matter what the broader land, we know where the trend is going.
I think you and I agree on that.
And there's no, there's not going to be a, you know, a hero that stops the, the, the
pendulum from swinging that way.
It's going that way.
So whatever Trezor is going to do, Trezor is going to do, whatever Wasabi is going to
do, Wasabi is going to do.
The, the, the broader landscape is going to be more captured, more controlled.
We've been warning about this, you know, for years since like 2016, you know, so it's not
a surprise to us.
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's been listening to us because we've been saying,
look, that's happening.
This is happening, you know, and finally we're here.
But it doesn't matter because if, as long as the tech does exist, those who are aware
and need it will have access to it and will be able to use it.
And I'm not, I don't care about the mass audience.
I don't care about, you know, mass adoption.
Not there to cater to that.
I don't, I don't ask for it.
I think it brings more problems than good right now.
All I'm doing is building software that I know works because I need to use it myself
and other people are using it.
And that number grows day by day.
So, you know, it's hard for me to be bearish about things when I see the numbers, when
I see people using Whirlpool, when I see it all.
If things, the worst things get for, you know, people, the better things get for the samurai
tech because more people need it.
Right.
What do you think about like-
That goes, that plays into why, why I don't stop.
Like, if I, if we stop this, who's working on this shit?
Right.
Well, that's, that's nobleman.
I mean, it's, I know, you know-
Well, it's also selfish because I want to use this.
You know, I build the tools that I want to use.
No, I mean, you're a humble dude when it comes to this.
Like it's, it's, it's, it's brave.
It's noble and it's principled.
And it's like, it's so rare in the space these days.
You know, this, this whole, the whole cypher punk idea is just, you know, fading quickly.
I think, you know, as far as like, as a percentage of, of who's in the space and the way that
they think.
And even with this current drive chain debate and all this stuff going on with Bitcoin,
it's like, I, frankly, I'm surprised it's as far along as it is.
I kind of stopped paying attention for a minute.
Next thing you know, it's like this heated debate with should Bitcoin be-
It seems really contrived.
I mean, I don't, I haven't followed along at all.
I'm not interested.
It seems incredibly contrived to me.
Paul's been talking about drive chains for years and years and years.
Many years.
I don't see what the big deal is now.
You know.
Well, the big deal is, is VCs want it, right?
It's like, yeah, you know, and there's money there, you know, like Luke is getting paid
to develop this stuff, even if-
Yeah.
Well, that was funny.
I saw, I saw that and it just goes, I mean, I've been calling, I've been warning about
Luke for years as well.
This is not the first, like people talk about all the crazy shit Luke goes on about, and
I'm not even going to get into that because I don't think I make, you know, I don't care
about what he believes, religion and stuff like that.
But he has proposed some monstrously bad ideas, including a, you know, a dev tax on all Bitcoin
transactions, you know, seriously proposed at a time, like where he was having money
troubles, like shamelessly talked about his money troubles and then propose this idea.
Outrageous.
And then, then now the, the admission that he, you know, is willing to take money for
bad ideas and, and if you will champion bad ideas for money, shocking, but not really
who was behind those ideas.
Same thing with Peter Todd, he had the same revelation.
These people, you know, you can buy them off.
These is a, with, you know, with friends like these who needs enemies.
Well, it's to be fully expected though, by the way, we're talking about Luke Dash Jr.
In case anybody's wondering.
In this stuff, I've been talking about this for a while too, is the incentives that are
being offered to developers.
Like every, or most core developers are getting paid by somebody, you know, and there's a
variety of sources of funds, but there's nothing stopping a major company, a big exchange like
Coinbase or even a government from incentivizing core developers to, or even new developers
to come in and start to, to bring sway and not just to develop, but to sway opinions,
right?
To put together campaigns.
I mean, this is the problem that Bitcoin has.
The problem is when the government wants to accomplish something, they're not going to
just stop at developing some code and hoping you adopt it.
They're going to try to brainwash you.
They're going to use the power of the media to, to turn the country against you.
And they're going to, you know, I mean, we haven't even seen these, anything like this
in crypto yet, but we did see it with, with healthcare and with the pharma.
And we, we got to experience what I think we're going to see in our lifetime with, with
crypto.
I don't see any reason.
Agreed.
If Bitcoin does continue to achieve goals and success and adoption, I don't see any
reason that the government wouldn't try to co-opt it, try to fork it, try to bring its
own, you know, devs into it somehow.
And then potentially, yeah, I mean, you know, someone say that there are already kind of
spooked devs, right?
That are in there.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying it like that.
I, I, I've been called a spook so many times, you know, it's so old.
I don't really call people that.
But, but it's less about spooked devs and, and just more about, well, we know from the
Snowden leaks, that's what they do.
They embed, they embedded people in AT&T, for example, they embedded all these tech companies.
They would, you know, why wouldn't they have a core developer there?
Why wouldn't they have, you know, a CTO at a, you know, a prominent software company?
Like, of course.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's that, then you take it to the next level when it becomes a national
story, which it will like, and this, this again, to loop it back, this is where I get
nervous.
I get nervous because, you know, this privacy software we're talking about, including Wasabi,
by the way, even with their block list or whatnot, it's the same story as with Tornado,
right?
Like they're doing kind of the same thing, aren't they?
Where they're just blocking sanction addresses, but like you go a couple of hops away and
they don't know, like, so it's the same thing.
So it's almost like this whole Tornado thing should prove to them that they're wasting
their time with that nonsense.
It's theater.
Right.
Which the government now sees through.
And it's not going to protect you.
Exactly.
It's like either go all the way and just go full on KYC and become an exchange in a way,
or just, or just, God damn it.
Just argue it.
Just fight along with the rest of us here.
Like it's like,
Well, again, well, in Wasabi's case, again, no law that required them to do it.
Nothing.
They, and this is their own admission.
It's not me saying this.
It was their CTO explaining that it was a, you know, a, a compliance step that they were
taking without there being, you know, there's no law in place to say they have to do it,
but they want to do it because they believe in compliant coin join or whatever.
Yeah.
Whatever bullshit, but, but okay, fine.
That's the business decision they made, but there was no law.
Let's just be very clear about that because people get that confused.
And as far as we're concerned, as long as there's no wall and as long as you have, you
know, you've done the research, you have lawyers and the course they do, and you say, are we
breaking any laws?
And they go, no.
You go, okay, then we're not going to do this.
What happened to people saying no to the government?
You're allowed to say no to the government.
You know, yeah, the government can request anything.
It's up to you to say, yes, I'm going to cooperate.
I'm going to help you.
I'm going to do this.
Or you can say, you're going to need a court order for that.
You make it sound so easy.
Well, no, but it's, it's not that it's hard.
It was the de facto thing to do for so long.
You need a spine to do this.
You need a spine.
You need to, you need to be willing to put principle ahead of profit.
That's for sure.
And they're not willing to do that.
They're not willing to risk their, their livelihood, their family, their, you know, they're not
willing to put things on the line.
Like you are.
And saying no to the government isn't risking your life.
It's not like you're going to go to jail.
It says get a court order and they have to come back with a court order that you then
you have to comply.
Then you've done everything you can.
Again, there's been like, I don't know what it is in the last 15 years, 20 years, this
kind of perception change in the relationship between the individual and the state and between
the core, definitely between the corporations in the state.
That's clear.
Yeah.
Cooperation is, is very clear, but you know, like that shift is not how it's always been.
And I find, you know, I guess it's, it's old man shit, but you know, you look around and
go, I wish these people realized that this is not like just, just 10 years ago, it wasn't
like this.
Right.
So because you're principled, like you're so principled, you, you're blind to this.
I think like, it's like everybody around you is willing to comply and they're willing to
comply for self preservation purposes because they're scared of what will happen if they
don't.
And also by the way, they've got investors, they've got VCs, they've got all these advisors
telling them what they need to do to maximize profit.
And crypto has eyeballs on it, like no other industry.
Right.
So like, you know, we're under the gun laws are coming.
We know that eventually, and they're trying to get ahead of it.
They're thinking like, well, maybe if we just do this, this will become the law.
This will become good.
And they're trying to write the laws ahead of time.
Right.
So, you know, there's nothing wrong with seeking profit.
There's nothing wrong with investing and anything like that.
That's all good stuff.
And in fact, it's very hard to build a good product without there being a profit incentive
because profits, one of the best ways for you to gauge whether your customers are appreciating
or not what you're providing.
Right.
So profit is not an issue.
No, but the huge-
It's just like, yes, we differ on what the value proposition is.
Here's where you differ.
You differ in that you are not willing to use your users' rights as a bargaining chip.
You are not willing to trade away the rights of your users in exchange for the preservation
of your project or your business or whatever it might be.
But others are.
Others are willing to use my privacy and my rights as a bargaining chip and they're willing
to negotiate with them.
And that's, that doesn't, it doesn't just go for wallets and stuff like that.
It's also exchanges.
It's anybody who's engaged in this space.
It's the DeFi apps.
It's the VCs.
You know, it's everybody who engages in this space.
They are using our rights as bargaining chips.
So they're saying, you know, like Coinbase or whoever they're taking, saying, okay, you
can have some more user data and in exchange, you're going to let us do, you know, run this
out layer two or whatever it might, you know, and it's just this constant negotiation and
where the fucking pawns, right?
So that's the difference.
You're not willing to do that.
You're not willing to play that game or at least you haven't thus far, you know, and
they are, and they are seen as better in business because that's what business is.
Business is today.
Business is about how far will we let the government go while still maintaining our,
our profit margins, you know, and that's, that's what it boils down to.
And you are the minority.
You do understand that, right?
Oh yeah.
Obviously yes.
Well, I think we may be the minority in terms of the type of project that we're building
and yeah, you know, we certainly prioritize principle over profit every single time.
And you know, going back to what you asked me before, am I worried about, you know, getting
the, you know, the tornado cash treatment?
I think it would be, if it did, God forbid happen.
I think it would be funny because you know how they always show how much, how you've
been enriched by this operation and you have this amount of Bitcoin.
They could see the amount of money I have lost in this pursuit of being a self-funded
thing.
So that would be, that'd be nice to have a, an accurate accounting of.
Yeah, no, it's so we were certainly not prioritizing profit or anything over principle.
And yes, I understand that that's a minority thing, but you know, all I, all I, this is
all I want to do, you know?
And if we can do it and not rely on, you know, outside forces telling us how we have to do
it, we'll do it for as long as we can and we can, we can keep doing it for now.
So we will.
Amen to that, man.
I think, you know, it's, it's just so rare in the space to have that kind of attitude
and actually act upon it.
You know, and you got all these other projects and the VCs like a 16 Z out there, you know,
where Mark Andreessen is Mr. Libertarian when he's talking on Twitter.
But then you, you see all this stuff that they're doing the way they're lobbying, the
way they're, they're seeking regularly seeking regulation.
They're actually proactively trying to work with regulators to create regulation because
it's smart for business, you know, and they're not fighting, they're not pushing back.
They're not trying to preserve our rights.
They're trying to preserve their business, you know, so he's out there, Mr. Loudmouth
Libertarian on, on, you know, when he's doing interviews, but the way the company acts is
completely different.
He doesn't walk the walk, you know, and you're a rarity in the space and I wish there was,
there was more like you, man.
I mean, it's, it's, it's, the future would be a lot brighter if I think if we had more
principled actors in the space and not to say there aren't many, there's still plenty,
especially on the development side with Bitcoin, there's still plenty of people out there who,
who get it.
But I just, money talks, man.
It's money talks for users, for devs and for the lawmakers and for the regulators and for
the courts, unfortunately.
So that's the kind of stuff that I think we have to watch out for.
But anyway, I've kept you over time and I think this has been a good chat.
You know, before we go, one last question.
Sure.
What do you think the future looks like for Bitcoin as far as, as far as mining goes?
I don't know how much you follow that space, but as far as, you know, my big concern right
now is that two pools, Foundry and Ampool control 50% of the hash rate right now.
Both require KYC in order for people to get paid, you know, and in my opinion, that means
that they're basically government controlled whenever the government wants to control them.
Yeah.
What do you think about that?
Could that have an impact on what you're doing down the road?
It could have an impact certainly on, on everyone down the road.
We've seen periods like this before, certainly not with, you know, like a KYC because it
wasn't just, we didn't think about it back then, but we're a couple of companies have
had the majority of the hash rate.
It tends to even itself out over time.
As long as it's possible for other entrants to enter the space, you know, that's, that's
the best, that's the best defense that we can, we can come up with because, you know,
what can you do?
You can't stop someone coming in and running a compliant miner and, you know, just pumping
money into it.
And I mean, I even think Satoshi talked about this on some of the early Bitcoin talk messages
message, message board posts about this type of attack.
And yeah, it's certainly feasible.
It's a type of, but, but what you have to hope is that the ability to join a pool, for
example, and, and move away hash rate from a miner who's not, who's not including transactions
that you want or you think should be included to someone, to a different miner is important.
And we, I think with Marathon, was it Marathon who planned to censor non-compliant transactions
had to like very quickly within a day, you know, turn around on that decision after a
huge backlash from pretty much unanimously as you're trying to break Bitcoin.
Right.
So, yeah, I mean, I don't get involved in the mining side of things too much.
You know, the privacy side of things is so complex a topic already that, you know, I
think the mining side is you have to be equally as, you know, experienced and knowledgeable
and I'm not quite there yet.
Yeah.
I just bring it up because I think it's becoming intertwined.
You know, I think that, um, Oh yeah.
Any, you know, any area they can attack, they're going to attack.
Yeah.
And we're talking about censorship of transactions.
We're talking about, you know, um, now, of course it's a permissionless network.
And anybody can mine.
Um, so it's highly unlikely anybody can be completely banned, you know, from Bitcoin
through this method, but it can, it can impact, you know, processing time confirmation times.
Um, there's a lot of different things that can happen.
Um, well, what would happen there is so like, let's say they wanted to ban Whirlpool transactions
to these compliant miners or whatever.
It would just mean that we now have to have an off band kind of relationship with the
third biggest pool or the fourth biggest pool or combination and agree and make a payment
to them out of, you know, out of bands to include these transactions in.
Um, and yeah, it will, it will, um, impact confirmation times and usability and experience.
It can make it annoying that, but you know, if, if it's a valid transaction, it's a valid
transaction.
And if, if a miner isn't going to include a valid transaction in the block because it's
against their rules or whatever, then there will be another miner who will, uh, just may,
maybe a little inconvenient.
Right.
Something to watch.
All right, man.
Well, Hey, I appreciate all your time and all your work and all your principled efforts.
So thank you so much and, uh, we'll do it again sometime.
Take care.
I hope, I hope your viewers weren't expecting like a big showdown or clash.
I didn't realize we had a debate.
I was just disagreeing.
No, no.
You know what?
Uh, I mean, we don't line up on every issue.
I don't think, and I don't think we did here.
You know, I think it's, um, but the important thing is that we're able to have the conversations
and that there's a, there's a higher overarching idea here that we definitely do agree on,
which is that privacy is dignity and we all deserve it, you know?
And, um, I think that, uh, that's the most important part that I wish everybody in the
space could line up on because they definitely don't.
We might deserve it, but you certainly have to fight for it.
Yeah.
You don't just get things cause you deserve them.
You have to take them and privacy like any other right has to be taken.
That's right.
Well, thanks again.
My pleasure, Chris.