Straight, No Chaser
Understanding Freedom through Money, Technology, Economics and Philosophy
Straight, No Chaser
Monthly Round Up 4: Freedom Needs Better Defaults: Self-Hosted AI, Community Custody, And Paying With Sats
We trade war stories about AI coding that dazzles then stalls, and show how self-hosted LLMs and agents can reclaim privacy and time. The talk shifts to real-world Bitcoin: QR payments across South Africa, M-Pesa bridges in Kenya, community custody with FediMint, and a world-first open secure element from Trezor.
• AI tools that impress early then hit walls
• Self-hosted LLMs on Start9 for privacy and resilience
• Defaults and data: using AI to summarise terms
• Local hosting versus cloud trade-offs
• FediMint community custody experiments and limits
• Money Badger scaling Bitcoin at 700k+ South African merchants
• Safety gains with Tando bridging Bitcoin to M-Pesa
• How Bitcoin scales via existing rails and “change in sats”
• Breez Time To Build challenge and OpenSats grants
• Trezor Safe 7 with open secure element
• China’s e-CNY, BRICS, and why neutral money matters
If you haven’t bought your tickets yet, what are you doing?
You can get 10% off your ticket if you use the code OKIN
https://za26.adoptingbitcoin.org/
https://trezor.io/
https://x.com/BitcoinEkasi
https://x.com/OKIN_17
https://x.com/OrangeSaaS
https://bitcoinonly.io/
https://www.useorange.com/
https://btcpayserver.org/
https://btcpay386617.lndyn.com/login?ReturnUrl=%2F
Links:
www.bitcoinforbusiness.io
X: @gavingre
X: @BTC_4_Biz
Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net
NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta
Hey everybody, welcome to the show. This is a straight no chaser podcast where we talk about human freedom through money, technology, philosophy, and economics. This is our next episode of the monthly round, and we have a full house today. We talk mostly about tech, which is awesome. There's so much tech news that's been happening in the past month. Little bit of political stuff, but really this is a show about the massive advancements that are happening in tech around the world. Bitcoin is a tsunami that is small but moving and growing rapidly. I think you guys will like this one.
SPEAKER_05:We have some interesting uh uh banners going up uh along the routes for the G20 guys cruising around Joburg. I think there's something about the most traditional something country.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, solidarity solidarity is uh it's put up some big banners, haven't they?
SPEAKER_05:Yes, and then we've got some politicians running around um uh being very pleased at how quickly they got them down, and then everyone sort of say, well, now can you focus on the potholes and the other things like SPTV?
SPEAKER_06:So and that'll be the strice and effect as well, right? Now everyone's gonna go and Google what they took down, everyone's gonna go search, and then be like, oh, we see why they took them down.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and if I if I kind of know these guys, this is probably just a taster to get everyone kind of uh ready for the main event, and I'm sure they're gonna have a bunch, probably as the motorcaders crawling down the road, they'll probably have a whole pile of them just coming out like place too quickly before anyone can stop it. So they're pretty smart, these guys.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, so I mean the context of what they're doing is they put up banners saying that South Africa's got the most racial laws on the books in the world, over 140 race-inspired laws on the books. So the solidarity movement put up a massive banner uh on one of the highways from the airport to the convention center, uh stating as much. Classic troll. That's great.
SPEAKER_05:Crazy times, man. Well, welcome everybody.
SPEAKER_02:I'd love to see a photo of that. Where where is that? I'll send it to you. Where did I see it yesterday?
SPEAKER_03:Please do.
SPEAKER_05:Nicolai, you were gonna say something.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, I was gonna say Herman needs to stop calling me a tech expert. He's he's gonna get me in trouble.
SPEAKER_02:Compared to me, you are definitely a tech expert.
SPEAKER_01:You you you keep telling people things like that, Herman, and then we see what you're busy with, okay, when we come there to put in a case, and you're doing some techy things yourself, my brother.
SPEAKER_02:No, it's only because I don't mind pain, dude. I uh I cause myself immeasurable, immeasurable suffering by attempting to do things I'm completely underqualified to do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's how we become qualified.
SPEAKER_05:Exactly, exactly. I've been messing around with this uh whole vibe coding thing using these AI um whatever, I don't even know what you call it. Some some AR thing to build me an app. And uh man damn it, uh you you you get your prompt and you spend a week on a fantastic prompt, and 20 minutes later it builds you something that's about 70 or 80 percent of what you want, and then the first few corrections, it it does it like brilliantly well. You go, flip, this is amazing. This is like this is like golf. This is like that one great shot. You just hit one great shot after another, and then you hit a point where it just simply will not do it. And you think, damn it, man, but I've asked you to do more complicated stuff like half an hour ago and you did that. Now you can't do a simple thing like move a button from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen. So uh anyway, I've nearly dropkicked my laptop a few times this week. Um so I'm least techy, I'm probably the least tech okay around here. Um so I've got that and my age against me. So you guys have to like lead the way.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, learn to code, they said, eh? Learn the vibe code. Vibe code, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:I mean, it it's I I think I did see something um where the guys were saying like every seven months it sort of quadruples in um ability or capacity or processing power or something. And I have seen one one iteration change come through, and that was markedly better. Uh, so I guess it's just the way of it. In a year's time, it'll probably move that bloody button from the top to the bottom first time without six prompts later.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, you know.
SPEAKER_06:Oh no, sorry, Ricky, go. Well, it's a question for you, actually, Oaken. So on the Start 9 server, you can self-host an instance of um uh GPT. Um, and I'm pretty sure there's gonna be vibe coding tools on there soon enough as well, open source stuff. Have you played around with that at all, like using your own self-hosted GPT?
SPEAKER_01:Well, okay, this that's a twofold answer that I'll have to give you. Firstly, what you what you can do on Start 9 is you can host what's called Free GPT, or what's called Free GPT, which is basically like um, yeah, so it's it's hosting your own. What you do is you download the the large like language model, whichever one you want to use, through the interface, right? It looks like a web UI. So you just literally say, okay, I want to download Lama 3 or GPT 4.5 or Sonnet 3, whatever, right? So literally, when you go to select your models, it'll give you the option to go to OLAMA, where you can get literally it's a copy button. You just click the copy button and you paste that into the field on your start line, and it will literally start downloading that large language model. Then when you go to the interface that looks like Chat GPT or chat function, you literally choose which one you want to chat with. But this is now a model hosted on your server, not one that you're interacting with that is hosted on Google server. Or so it also depends on which model that you download. Some of these are free ones that you can get, others you have to pay with, and then of course you have to attach your API key. But there are ones that have already been trained to so you could literally take your computer with no internet access, right? But um, let's say you're hosting uh a virtual machine with start nine in it on your computer, you could go and have a conversation with LLMs in the bush, you know, on the top of Table Mountain or whatever. You could literally go and have this conversation with your computer, and that's that's a lot of the power that's there. So that's the first answer. And there will be more coming. Um, because again, this is just what about compute power though?
SPEAKER_06:No, what about compute power?
SPEAKER_01:So, this is the thing. So this is the thing. Free GPT isn't currently built out to be using like um GPUs, right? It's it's still using CPU um power, so it depends on how much you really want to do um and and what what hardware you have that you're running it on. Again, I have also like ran uh uh LLMs locally on my laptop via using Olama and a Docker container, whatever you know, like setup, and you just go to a local dot you know, dot local account, like localhost.whatever uh ports, and then literally I'm using or interacting with it without using command line. You can also do it via command line. This is how I use Gemini now. I use it via command line. Um it's so it's so much better. Don't do that. You see, guys, this is a classic Ricky move. This is the second part to my answer, right? So, what I do is if I'm gonna use like a propriety other uh uh AI, like an I'll use like Gemini in command line, two reasons. One, it it it you interact with it um with the files like in within the folder that you are uh launching Gemini in, right? So now it has context, you just do the forward slash in it, and it continues to have context over sessions. So when you switch off your computer and you come back, you don't have to go copy and paste a whole lot of hey, remember when I told you this and you shouldn't already know this? None of that. It gets all of the context from a markdown file that it continuously updates. So all of the actions that you've taken in that folder and asked it to do is part of that context, so you just continue the conversation. So that's one really good reason, and it saves you on tokens. There's no, oh, you ran out, and when you do run out of tokens, it just asks you, do you want to go to the free like version of this uh uh model? And then you can do that. So there's a lot of reason to use it. Um, but again, um back to the start nine thing. There will be a lot more. It is, it is so you you you need to know what you're using this folder, what's in this folder? Please don't do it with a folder that has like your credit card details and your like I shared earlier that that that whole post about how how Gemini has been activated on the back end of Google. So now every interaction with your email, your calendar, all of that is being read currently until you go switch off the feature. So when you go to that link, it tells you how to switch off the feature so that it's not being trained. Same thing with your Twitter. If you don't switch off the feature feature, then Grop is being trained continuously on your DMs, on all of your interactions, your likes, what you search, all of that. Um, if you don't switch off those features, they're on by default. So you gotta do that little bit of work.
SPEAKER_00:Um I hope I answered your question.
SPEAKER_06:That's why he's a tech support guy.
SPEAKER_05:So I wanted to ask you about that, Nikolai. Um, and thanks for posting that up. Uh I was actually curious as to what was behind there, and I think you've answered that. So, you know, I remember, you know, 20 years ago, uh, you know, this cloud computing thing was sort of just coming up. Maybe it was a bit longer, 25-30. I can't quite remember. But um, you know, at the time everybody hosted servers, companies hosted servers, data on site, and they were looking after their data. Um, somehow we all got convinced that cloud computing was the way to go. And sure, it's convenient, super convenient. You know, you just simply don't uh you simply don't lose anything. You just log in again and all your stuff is there. Um, but now it sounds like privacy is becoming like an issue again. Um, do you think we're going full circle back into locally hosting, like you said, LLMs on your uh download them, use them, companies going back to an on-site service, uh server-based approach?
SPEAKER_01:Good question, Gavin. Like, so for me, I I would say that's definitely what we should be doing. As many things as you can self-host, you should self-host. Again, um, this goes back to the conversation of how your data is digital oil and you should treat it as such. So when you're using, you know, the whole um there is no cloud, it's just somebody else's server, like that is like, okay, yes, it's true, but it's it's it's something that we need to um emphasize or put more emphasis on because a lot of people still don't get it. The fact that what you're doing is you're saving your documentation, your loving loving pictures and all of that on somebody else's computer, right? That somebody else is a corporation, yes, and they they have checks and balances to make sure that it's encrypted and all of these lovely things, but they get hacked all the time. Like they're these things are honey pots for hackers because they're like, hey, what can we get when I'm there? What can I get if I'm inside, right? Now, why are they hacking Gavin Green's like server that's sitting at wherever it's sitting? Like, why are they hacking you specifically? And then going on to hack Ricky, and then the the it's just worthless, right? Like they can get a lot more by taking on a telecommunications company, taking on uh a health registry, you know, that has all of the records that they can actually exploit. So when when something like that happens, you have to think, okay, cool. What by going back and making it easy for people to self-host? Because this is the other thing of start nine, but it's not just about self-hosting. How easy can you make it so that even a 60, 70, 80 year old, you know, can say, hey, I I've got a server, I switched it on, I followed the instructions, went to start.local, set it up, took the the the dot local name that they gave me. Mine are always weird, by the way. I've got one called folder tuner right now, right? Folder dash tuner.local. I've also got another one called vintage dot bodies. Like I always get the craziest ones. And then, like, literally mine is hairy teeth. Look at that. Yeah, look at look at stuff like that. I've got local spam as another one of my test ones. But anyway, so like you throw that into your browser and boom, Bob's your uncle. You sign in with your password and you just go along. And you go to Marketplace, you download services, you install, you read the instructions, and now you're able to self-host things in Nextcloud instead of using Google Drive. Um, you know, and I love Nextcloud because any any device that you have, whether it's you have an Android and an Apple device, you download just literally like uh Nextcloud notes, and that's attached to the one at your server, everything updates in real time, right? Things like that. Hosting your own password uh generator and manager, all of these things. It's really, really fun, firstly, to learn. And secondly, like it makes you realize how much of your data and privacy you outsource to these companies, right? Because you are the product. They they literally have all of this data on you, and you wonder why they're able to give you advertising that you were like, I didn't speak to anybody about that. Yes, you did.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, man. So I I wholeheartedly agree with you. And I'm on a bit of a mission to start removing uh cloud services from my life and uh hosting Nextcloud, and I've got uh three servers running at home and backing up photos and all that sort of thing to it. Um the thing that worries me though is these um features that you have to turn off seem to come on by default. You know, there's an update, everything gets flicked on. Um they might mention it on page six of the 25-page terms and conditions. You now need to tick. Uh nobody reads that stuff. Uh everybody just ticks the box to carry on because it's right in the middle of when you're writing that email. You haven't got time to now read terms and conditions. You just want to get on with what you're doing. So the average user is has got no hope of retaining any form of privacy. If all these things by default are switched on, share everything, pass out everything. Um I mean, it's just a nightmare. Uh and it almost leads back to uh getting people to use a different form of payment. Uh just to circle this a little bit back to the Bitcoin thing. I mean, you know, uh Google Workspace has been around for a long time, Microsoft Office has been around for a long time, and most people just leave all the default settings there. Um so how much hope do we have to get people to be aware of this and to take action about it, to teach themselves how to do this and not just go along with the hood? Sorry, man, that was a long question. I don't even know what the question was.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, great, great question. I got I got the gist of all of it. But um, so especially in the Bitcoin space, this is a conversation that um was or is being continuously had on Twitter when it comes to the debate on what is spam, what is not spam. Um it's it's the it's the it's the debate around defaults mattering, right? What you make a default, people will, as you rightly said, they will leave the defaults. Most people, over 90%, will leave the defaults in place, right? Because they're like, ah, it works. And that's the thing of convenience. So it's it's an educational process of reminding people, right? Not not taking it as if they never knew, but just reminding them that every time you click, I've I've read the terms and conditions, and haven't read the terms and conditions, right? You're allowing the defaults to be the defaults, and thus you must play along. So that's the first default that you can change is even if you don't have time to read the terms and conditions, guess what we have now? We have so many different AI agents, throw it in there, tell it to explain it to you in no more than two paragraphs, to point out the the big details that you, as a privacy-concerned person, would like to know. And it will literally even tell it to give you in table format, it'll do it all for you. I would suggest perplexity for this. I'm not sponsored by them, but because they are a research-based AI tool, I really enjoy using them for things like this. And I implore everybody, especially athletes, musicians, artists, creatives of any kind, uh business people, take your contracts. Terms and conditions is a contract that you are clicking yes on. Throw it into AI models and agents and ask it questions. Let it educate you on what's going on. You don't have to read the whole 25-page document. You just have to have a 10-minute, maybe five-minute conversation and find out exactly what this means for you. And that's how we should be using these tools. So, firstly, it's about understanding yes, defaults matter, but at the same time, people need to take ownership of their lives, their data, and their responsibilities. Um, and that's what we should be talking about.
SPEAKER_06:I think on this, what I'm really looking forward to is the self-defense AI agents that you're going to be able to deploy soon enough on your own start nine server, for example, your own home server. That's an AI agent that handles all of this stuff for you. Like, so for example, whenever new terms and conditions are presented to you, your AI agent reads through it, it makes a decision, it then gives you the cliff notes, you know. Um, like instead of using on your phone, instead of using um true caller, which I believe may well be the heart of all of the phone number leaking. Uh but yeah, anyway, that's another kettle of fish. But you have an your AI agent that runs on your phone, and all of your phones, your phone calls come through the AI agent. So it answers them, it then blocks people, it tells us a footsack if they're trying to sell you something like it does. You know, the AI agent handles all of it. So this is gonna be super cool where we've got agents that can do a whole bunch of this stuff for us, and you run it all locally that will free up so much of your time and mind space, and you'll know that these things will get done with close to 100% accuracy every single time, as opposed to you having to read through the terms and conditions and like you're tired, you know, making decisions.
SPEAKER_01:Ricky, you can do that right now. You can do that, it's just not as easy to do that right now, but you can. You can use something like NHN, you can use perplexity to tell you how to set up your NHN workflow, and then literally use that workflow to have any calls screened like that through WhatsApp, through whatever. I mean, it is very possible. It's just as you said, not easy, it's not as easy yet. So it's getting made easier. I I did hear that somebody was packaging NHN for Start9 Labs as well. So everybody is along this wavelength of what you're thinking of, like, yo, some of these things I don't need to deal with, these scammers and these emails and what like yeah, it's coming, it's coming for sure. And it's already here, but it's becoming easier.
SPEAKER_06:Yep, I just set up N8N on on Monday, actually. Super cool, very powerful program. Um, but yeah, when that gets good, when that's on Start9 server, I'm very excited about that. And for those who don't know what a start9 server is, you should definitely look into it. Um, this is the easiest way to set all this stuff up. It comes pre-installed. A lot of it you just single click install these packages. Um, Oaken does tech support for them. So it's a game changer, absolute game changer. Plus, you can host your own Bitcoin node, run your own Bitcoin node, all your own all your own self-sovereign stuff.
SPEAKER_02:Are we allowed to tell people about uh about the federation that we that we set up recently?
SPEAKER_06:I don't know who set up, I don't think so. I don't I don't know anything about this.
SPEAKER_02:No we've been we've been playing we've been playing around with uh with setting up a Fedyman federation. Sounds like you're an unlicensed money transmitter to me. Yeah, I'm saying we were playing around with it. I'm not saying we were successful. Um I'm not saying it's actually it's actually happening. I'm just saying we were playing around with it, and it's uh it's fascinating to see how how easy it is. It's like click a button and there you go. Um I mean it was it was allegedly, yeah, allegedly. It wasn't it was not pain-free. The process uh the process did involve a lot of hiccups um and uh a lot of back and forth and a lot of looking at at logs and um uh uh reading shit that I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. Um but uh relatively speaking, considering what the thing is doing in the back end, um, which is coordinating um uh the the setting up of what as I understand it is basically like a very elaborate multi-sig um multi-sig uh wallet that uh receives funds and issues eCash tokens uh in exchange for the funds having received, and then lets anybody with uh with a compatible wallet connect to that. It's uh it's a very, very complex thing uh to have.
SPEAKER_06:So what you're saying hypothetically, allegedly, if true, is that on a Slightline server, you can hypothetically go and download this um package from the marketplace, which is the Feddy package and run a Feddy Mint, and then set up your own Fedeman federation, um which you can use to run your own community bank, you know, or your own essentially it's a it's a it's a community custody lightning wallets where people don't have to trust some faceless lightning company on the other side of the world, they can trust their local community guardians to protect their funds. And if there's enough people running um wow, that sounds super powerful. Uh it'd be a shame if people found out about that and did that themselves.
SPEAKER_02:And what I'm yeah, what I'm trying to say is that considering how complex the operation is, uh that's happening in the background, it's uh it's quite impressive. I mean, it's it's nowhere near simple enough for the average person to go out of their way to do this. Um, there's there's a huge amount of work that will have to be done to get to a point. No, no, no, dude. When I talk about average people, I'm talking about average people. I'm not talking about your average Bitcoiner, I'm talking about average people. So your expectations to the to the kind of person who's not going to bother listening to anything you have to say until the financial system comes crashing down. Uh the average the average person uh is not gonna do this, but considering how complex the whole operation is, it is it is beyond impressive um to see how this thing just runs on a self-hosted server. Um and you know, there was a bit of troubleshooting involved, and like I said, it's not actually up and running. We were just playing around with it. Um we haven't done anything illegal yet. Um but uh the point is that it's it's it's it's actually it's it's I I was very impressed to see that this thing, yeah, this thing is running and it's coordinating between, I think we had four four people test that out. We couldn't do it with seven, we tried with seven, and it was too many. Um and so we we went down to four and it it actually it actually worked at some point for a little while. Um yeah, very very impressive. A huge amount of progress um has been made, I think. And I just I don't I don't I don't see uh how this is not going to uh have a huge impact going forward if if it can just be simplified a little further.
SPEAKER_06:So the implications of this are that if if a you live in a country where the government makes bans Bitcoin or bans self-custodial lightning wallets, for example, and you can only get into the app store that are custodial with KYC or whatever, there is now a solution for people in their own community to run lightning wallet infrastructure that people can connect to via Feddy and not have to rely on custodians that are outside of their community. So you can have this in an antagonistic environment. You can run a lightning wallet infrastructure that people can pay Lightning Invoice with, they can well, it's it's all lightning, right? But it's a it's an e-cashment. Um really good privacy guarantees.
SPEAKER_02:Unless you're dumb enough to announce that you're doing it, no one's gonna know that you're doing it.
SPEAKER_06:Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but but also but also the thing is the thing is how you do it and why you're doing it, right? So community-based uh uh um crowdfunding, right? And then utilizing that community-based crowdfund for and and and throughout that community is not illegal. It's also how you phrase things when you talk to these people that make them change things. So, so a lot of these things, like now, I don't know when you guys uh attempted to to set up that pediment, but we we we tested it out last week, and uh the process is pretty much copy your own key, send it into the group chat, and then everybody just copy everybody else's and add it, and that's it's set up. Um it's become even that you don't have to run your when we tried it out. You you didn't have to run your own um Bitcoin node for this, you can use a custodial one, or you can run your own one on on your device. Um so they are it is changing. There is a developer group where where the guys that are actually working actively on the package and on updates and taking feedback from the community are on the start 9 um uh support groups. So it is gonna become a lot easier. Um, community banks for Bitcoin will I just see it as a future. I don't see if we're going to go into all of this ETF and and and you know, um Bitcoin Reserve, Treasuries, we're gonna have Bitcoin community banks come up at some point. And this is how they will be most likely able to come into the forefront is by saying, hey, we're gonna take that church leader, we're gonna take this hoo-hoo-hoo, we're gonna take all of these people that are outstanding people within the community, and they are going to be the guardians of that fediment or that federation. This is because again, as we know, not everybody feels comfortable holding their 12 words or the 24 words, and some people have dementia, and there's a lot of different factors that come into play here where some people will say, Hey, I need it to be a custodial solution for me. It's just the best for me. And uh, we have to be able to accommodate those people, and I think this is something that could do that. Yeah, just some uh it's not illegal, it's just frowned upon.
SPEAKER_02:No, sure, but just some interesting feedback on that for you. Um, so we have a we have a FedEd developer in the group that helps set us, help us set this up. And apparently, apparently, even when he was running the uh the the Federation on his own machine, uh it wouldn't work with more than four guardians at a time. So we tried we tried seven, um, it didn't work, and we tried again and again and again. And and we thought it was connectivity issues between the the different nodes, um not being able to connect one to one another. And after trying it several times, uh the the the Fedement developer uh ran this uh on his own machine where all four guardians was basically running on one machine, and even in that instance, he couldn't he couldn't set up a federation with seven people. So for some reason the maximum number is four at the moment. Um but once once we dropped it down to four guardians, it was super simple. It was just like it was literally like you say, copy paste, there you go, boom. Um, but then you know that is super simple talking from the perspective of somebody who is interested in this stuff to begin with. Um so yeah, lower your expectations down to to normal. For a normal person, this is gonna have to be on an app store on a on a on a on a mobile device. That's that's all I'm saying.
SPEAKER_06:App stores are the devil. App stores is where all of the censorship's gonna happen, unfortunately. Like they'll they're the ones are gonna they're gonna call the secret police on you for the things you're doing. Um, I just I have no no faith in them. You know, if there's if something can be co-opted, if it's centralized, it will be co-opted. Um and so that's what we're seeing happening with the with the app stores. So um, yeah, I don't know. It's some at some point there's there's gonna be have to be responsibility taken by people to be self-sovereign, and they're gonna have to get their you know, roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. Um, I mean, how do I mind you and I it's been very uncomfortable for you and I to like learn all this tech this tech stuff because we're not you know techie as such.
SPEAKER_01:But like compare where you Ricky, how do you how do you claim not to be tech, Ricky? That's weird.
SPEAKER_06:I literally heard you claim you're not techie 10 minutes ago, and then you told us about the command line. But this is the thing, right? You you think you're not techie, and then you take a step back and look what you've actually been able to do, and you're like, okay, I'm much more techy than the average person. And it's just because, like, when I started my Bitcoin journey, I was like not taking it off. Um, and then it kind of forces you into it, you know. You kind of have to start learning how to do this stuff. So one day I'll learn how to use a command line. I have begrudgingly used it here and there before, but it's it's uh very uncomfortable for me still.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, hey man, back in the day, that's how you had to run your lightning node, bro. You had to learn command line to do that stuff. I had to learn it so that I could figure it out. Even just even installing like a Bitcoin node. I had to learn, like, okay, how do we use terminal so that I can get this thing? Get clone? What are we doing? What is this thing? Like all of those, yeah, bro. It's a journey, though. It's a cool journey. Everybody should go on their journey. It's a nice hobby to start with, and later on you can make money off of it, maybe. Hopefully.
SPEAKER_02:But realistically, not everyone is gonna do it. I think there's a small number of people that will. The rest of them, I mean, I I had this conversation with someone yesterday. I was at a I was at an event in Plate where I don't know what the hell I was doing there, but at um a room full of asset managers uh from all across the country. And um a lady who used to be in the asset management space, who's now a Bitcoiner, invited me to come and talk to this this room of people. And it's just reminded me that, dude, nine 90% of people will will never even bother asking the question until everything goes to shit. Uh, and that's that's just the reality of the situation. We can't we're we're fooling ourselves and we're being naive if we think the majority of people are gonna voluntarily go on this journey um unless there's absolutely no other option available to them. Um that's just human nature. Um, I hate to be the negative person, but uh you know it's like it's like Ricky said, app stores are gonna shut this down, and that's why most people are never gonna use it, because most people will only use it if it is an app on an app store. So that kind of, you know, yeah, anyway.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, no, I heard uh I heard a great um saying the other day. Uh guy was saying most people want to be safe, they don't want freedom. And that's literally what it is. Uh they will give up as much freedom as they need to give up to be told that they're now safe. Um, you know, it's just how the state just continually gets bigger and bigger.
SPEAKER_06:Uh anyway, another thing with Benjamin Franklin, to quote Benjamin Franklin, you'll give up security for you'll give up freedom for security and you'll end up with neither. Because the state, if the state gives you security in exchange for freedom, it's not giving you security, it's giving you a prison. Like if if perfect, if an absence of freedom, if it was a spectrum of the absence of freedom gave you perfect security, then prisons would be safe places. But they're not. You have zero freedom and very low security in a prison. So that's really what you end up with. You end up in a prison. So people, and but to Hanuman's point, it doesn't take a hundred percent of people to do this. It takes a very small intolerant minority to actually move change the world. Five percent is more than enough. And I think we've already, you know, if you look at the Bitcoin community, we're already at that point now where you know people are the intolerant minority is large enough and kind of just doesn't cave on things, you know, ideologically, just keeps pushing pushing.
SPEAKER_01:And they're loud, and they're loud. You must be loud, you have to be loud about these things, otherwise, the people at the back of the room cannot hear you. And that's the truth. It's it's it's you're gonna need people that are willing to stand there and say, hey, we need to do this, we need, and even though most won't, like Hermann is right, like Ricky said, 95%, 98% right now probably won't. But if we can get that 98 to 95 percent, which means five percent are doing it, just that little bit of shift will do more. And especially, and I'll be honest, like uh, like I was saying earlier with with the scams and stuff, like oh, that was that was another conversation, but like with the scams that have been happening throughout the last two years in Namibia, and how many of like telecommunication companies being hacked, the Ministry of Health being hacked, you know, and all of this data being moved onto the dark web, showing people, hey, and that's when I come out with my oh, whoa, I told you, I told you your data is oil. Stop giving it to these people. The KYC thing is a problem because now they have your data. And the more you say it, a few more people start liking that post, you know, than two months ago, now more, because they their auntie got scammed, their mother got scammed, they got scammed, whatever. They start thinking more and more and being like, oh, wait, uh, let me actually look at this Bitcoin thing. Maybe my bank account isn't as safe as I thought it was. Let me start looking at, you know, but there must be somewhere where somebody is the crazy guy in the middle of the street yelling these things. So they're like, hey man, that guy was actually right. Let me go have a conversation with him, and then you can let, but they need somebody to be making noise. So please don't stop making noise about anything privacy oriented and your data.
SPEAKER_00:We need to make noise.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, 100%, man. Um, I would give you a round of applause. I'm gonna find a applause sound clip and I will chuck it in there at that section, Nikola. That sounded awesome. Um, something that's worth uh noting news in the past month was uh Jack Dorsey's been a busy, busy boy. Uh two things that have popped up is uh the Square, uh his Square point of sale terminal is now handling Bitcoin transactions. So that's sort of on an institution, well not really institution, more of like a retail scale uh or commercial scale. And then his uh BitChat app seems to be uh spiking in uh downloads every time there's a little bit of an unrest somewhere around the world where the government starts shutting down social media. So that's super interesting to see a guy come at it from sort of both sides there. Um I wonder how long it will take for shops and Visa and MasterCard and banks and these sort of guys to uh one day go, hang on, you know, we've got these Bitcoin Rails that are now running all these payments. Uh, why don't we just go straight to Bitcoin? Um, do you think that's gonna come from store owners? Um I mean, the banks collect fees on it, Visa and MasterCard collect fees, so they're certainly not gonna uh advertise that thing. But uh maybe it's the one loud voice in the room that's telling people uh hey, you know, you don't need to go through these third-party payment providers that take their 3% scale.
SPEAKER_04:Sorry, I forgot to end with the question.
SPEAKER_05:I just finished with a statement. Sorry, boys. Uh look of confusion was crazy. But um uh yeah, so uh the whole uh bit chat thing. Uh I just saw something now as well. Um in Afghanistan, they have like shut down the internet for the entire country. Um I don't know if that's still ongoing. Uh it looked like they started off um in different sectors and different territories, and now they've just shut the whole thing down. Um, I mean, how flipping wild is that? You know, people say what happens if the internet the internet gets shut off. Well, uh anyone got any news? Anyone hearing anything coming out of there?
SPEAKER_06:Uh let me just check in with my relatives in Afghanistan. Um no, sorry, I haven't got nothing to tell me.
SPEAKER_00:I wanna I want to make a comment up on Afghanistan.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. Um I want to a comment on the on the square on the square thing. Um I the the the few conversations I've had with people um from the US about this is that and and I spoke to Ricky about this as well. Man, the the the IRS is is they they they are they are ruthless. It's uh it's a whole different animal. Um I don't I don't think we we understand just how hectic uh hectic tax tax collection in the states uh and how uh how hectic the the enforcement is there. So I don't I don't know how much of an impact this is gonna have unless they get some sort of uh um some sort of uh an exemption for for small transactions for people to actually make payments in Bitcoin because you know with without well with some exception, but but the the the comment that um that uh that tax implications is the reason people don't spend Bitcoin is a very is a very common common uh comment from from some of my American friends is that well the reason I don't spend Bitcoin is because of because of tax. Um and you know, we're in in South Africa we just don't really care about it. Like, you know, I had a had a brief conversation with one of these um uh sort of people in this uh at this asset management uh event yesterday where I I made the point uh by taking out a packet of uh fishermen mints that I bought uh using the Money Badger app. And uh I said, Look, I just I just paid for this using Bitcoin. And the you know the hand shot up in the crowd and said, Well, what what about what about tax? And I looked at the person like, what what do you mean? Like this is 30 Rand, who cares? No one and and and it's a very it's a very easy thing to say in South Africa. We just have this, we we just sort of have this attitude of like, well, we couldn't really care less about that sort of thing. But in the States, people really do, really do care about it. And the little bit of the interaction I've had with the IRS just tells me that there's gonna be very little adoption of payments in Bitcoin unless unless there's an exemption um uh from the authorities to allow uh certain uh certain transactions uh below a certain value to be exempt exempt from from tax implications. Um I mean it's great to see, obviously, uh, but I just don't know what the effect's gonna be.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, look, in South Africa, the capital gains tax exemption annually is 40 presently is 40,000 Rand in gains or losses, right? So if you are spending Bitcoin up to the value of 40,000 Rand a year, you don't have to worry about it because it's exempt. So that's one answer you can tell the finance bros. Um but you know they're we have to the only way that Bitcoin becomes like a medium of exchange is by using it as a medium of exchange. So like the the the like um store of value bros are just trying to they're just gonna end up with with gold again. That's all you're gonna end up with. And then this revolution was for nothing. Um because it'll be co-opted and cucked and eventually tucked away neatly in a so-called vault where they can just produce paper bitcoin and finalize them and and screw the whole thing over again. So you have to use it as money. Um and for for people that tell me, you know, oh, what about couple of games? Just stop being such a cuck, honestly. Like, you know, just stopping a bitch, um, figure out how to do KYC free. And like otherwise we end up in a Sorwellian surveillance panopticon. Right.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I just want to echo what Hermann was saying there. My experience in the US was uh people are very cautious, very, very cautious. Um, it's actually interesting to see. Uh a politician will say something, and the next day that the behavior has changed. Uh it's just amazing to see that. You know, for good and for bad. Um, so interesting one. Uh let's see how how it happens. But you know, South Africa now, you know, Money Badger have got what is it, over 700,000 um uh uh stores that are now able to accept it. I mean, that is I mean, we must be streaks number two.
SPEAKER_06:Number one, definitely number one.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah. I mean, beyond any other country in the world. We we must be way beyond that. Um, I mean, Herman, what you're doing there uh about grassroots adoption. You know, I have to laugh, you know, when people say, you know, Bitcoin will never be money, and then you just say, oh, well, let me show you a thing or two. Um, I mean, you you just cannot get better examples than what we have in this country. It's absolutely insane. Um, I'm so hopeful with this thing. Uh, it is incredible. I I think the the politicians don't yet know what has arrived. Uh it's gonna take a while longer, but this movement, this wave is like it's already a tsunami that's like 30 centimeters high, 500 kilometers away. But this thing is moving towards the the shore, and it's just gonna get bigger and faster uh as it gets here.
SPEAKER_01:So so the the the crazy thing is if you think about it in context, right? Uh going back to the square discussion, there's also another, just before I give you the full context, but there's another it's another point to what what Jack did that a lot of people aren't speaking about. It I found this out. Uh I was on uh a live stream with Joe Nakamoto yesterday, and the square um terminal allows you to also um basically receive Bitcoin so for the cash. So as the as the the actual merchant, if you pay cash, I will actually receive Bitcoin, which bypasses how I need to go buy Bitcoin at exchanges. I don't know how, I don't know how he's doing this, but it is a feature that there was a screenshot and everything that Joe showed me. And I was like, this is insane. Because that's not just saying, hey, I can accept Bitcoin at my terminal, it's saying I can accept Bitcoin but actually receive cash, I can receive cash and then actually receive Bitcoin. Uh so all of that is to say that in that context, if you look at what's happening in South Africa, firstly, Money Badger has activated uh the ability of more merchants to accept Bitcoin than Stripe has, that then Block has with this, with this or Square has, sorry, with the square terminals. There's more places now through Money Badger in South Africa, like merchant wise, that can accept Bitcoin than is currently activated through the square terminals, which I think is amazing. But then you need to look at the Africa-wide context because the fact that South Africa still doesn't have mobile money the way that Impesa exists in Kenya, and Tando was able to do that. Anyone with an Impesa number now is able to receive Kenyan shilling while you pay Bitcoin, that's that is the missing leg that will literally help all everybody in Africa, right? Because of the way that mobile money works, it firstly um it's it's not as safe to do it via a mobile money to mobile money transfer because you get all of my information. And this has happened in Kenya where people were women were being stalked, you know, the information was being given out to police or whatever uh groups because the when I receive a payment from you via empesa, I see the sender details. When you do a payment via tando, though, those details don't exist because I paid Bitcoin through the tando rail and you got uh Kenyan shilling via Empesa. So now it's safer to actually pay via tando to an empesa number than empesa to impesa, which also brings back the conversation on how you engage governments and these different uh um policy makers when having the conversation to say, wait, do you understand the safety implications and and and um benefits that come with using a technology like this over what currently exists? And it's not just about money, it's about how we also take privacy and security into account. And then you know it starts being a thing about using the wording of the mandates and all of those things. But yeah, I think I think what's that square thing was a great thing, but it should be taken into context of like what money badge is actually achieving in South Africa, and that also needs to get the context of like the amount of tech and and and knowledge and you know expertise that is on the African continent right now to be able to develop something like you know, an tando, uh money badger, and and push these things forward. So I'm I'm looking forward to what we develop that does the same thing that that square terminal can now do. Because that's amazing. I want to be able to receive Bitcoin while you pay cash.
SPEAKER_02:Uh to be honest with you, I think uh I think what Money Badger is doing is is uh is more impressive um because they they don't require any hardware specific hardware to be in place at uh at the store. I mean the the lady I paid, um I mean I I did I did three transactions yesterday using Money Badger, and um none of those people uh needed to have any special hardware from a particular company uh in place for me to use Money Badger. Money Badger is the sort of um uh ubiquitous thing that uh just allows people to use Bitcoin without there being so I mean with with Square, you've got to have the square terminal. Uh if you haven't got the square terminal in the US, then then that's not gonna work for you. Whereas with Money Badger, you don't need anything from Money Badger as a merchant.
SPEAKER_01:Wait, you need one thing. You you need you need the merchants, their their hardware, to be an a uh QR code enabled, otherwise you won't be able to use the money badger latch on with it. That's why we can't use money badger in Namibia. So even though we have terminals, we don't have QR codes. That's the only thing that's necessary.
SPEAKER_02:I understand that, but that's not the point. The point is that they don't need anything from Money Badger. The merchants that are receiving payments um uh don't don't need anything from Money Badger. Money Badger doesn't have to go around installing new terminals, etc. etc. Um the the the the the the the thing I wanted to comment on actually is um and I realized this again yesterday uh in in a conversation with somebody is that um you know what what we've what we've done with building a circular economy um here in in the township and what other people have tried to replicate and have replicated in in different locations around around the world and Africa is that I don't actually think Bitcoin scales very well that way. These are little tiny pockets of examples of where we might be going one day. But the thing that scales Bitcoin to to potentially millions of people is tools like Money Badger and Orange, with what Ricky and them. I met I met your um I met uh your your partner yesterday, Devon, for the first time. Um met met in person, really cool guy. I had a long conversation.
SPEAKER_06:He's a customer, customer of ours.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And uh he's uh he's he's got some interesting plans um that uh we'll chat about offline. But um I think I think those types of tools with with what you guys are building, with what Money Badger is building, that's that's how Bitcoin scales. Um with what Square is doing, that that's how Bitcoin scales. You give give a give a merchant the option to receive uh fiat payments but convert that into Bitcoin rather than rather than receiving the fiat, for example. Um that's a super interesting uh super interesting use case. Um you know, for example, maybe maybe somebody will one day come up with a with with a solution where you can in South Africa where you can uh pay pay at the till uh with fiat but receive your receive your change in SAT um with a QR code on the till slip that you scan with a lightning wallet, and then instead of getting your change, small change in useless coins, because I I don't know I don't know who still uses coins. Like when whenever I need coins uh to pay a car guard, I don't have them. And whenever I call whenever I get coins, I don't need them. So I end up just wasting metal because that's what happens to them, they get lost um either under the car seat or you know the kids take them and they play with them and they end up in the garden somewhere. I think they change in SATS rather than rather than useless coins. Things like that. I think those types of tools are actually the way we scale, we scale Bitcoin. Um as much as I as much as I um think what we've done with the circular economy building is a great example, it's it doesn't it doesn't scale very well. It's a very, very, very uh intense uh on the boots on the ground type of thing that you just I don't I don't see how you how you uh you know gather the resources to to scale that to thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It's too it's too intense. You need you need tools where people don't even know they're using the tool uh to scale to scale Bitcoin. Um and Money Badger and Orange. And I mean I I only know really know Money Badge and Orange. I'm not too familiar with uh stuff in other countries, but the one other example I can think of is the M Pesa counter, sorry, the tando counterpart in uh Latin America, where they have um where they've got uh bull bitcoin that uh that has the you know gives you the ability to pay people with their mob their version of mobile money, those types of things. Um really, really cool tools for scaling, scaling Bitcoin.
SPEAKER_05:So you know um what comes through for me is that every area has its own opportunity, every country, every district, every region. So, you know, here in South Africa, we've got this QR code, and Money Badger just said, man, we can just we can do magic with that. Um in Square in the US with Square, they've got four million uh point of sale units out in the marketplace. So instead of trying to do something different with a QR code that no one in the US would really know what a QR code is, um they're just activating it on an existing terminal that those store owners have already. So it it's making it easy that they don't have to download new stuff, uh uh be educated. So, you know, uh the the impetive example that uh Nikolai mentioned and Haman, you yourself mentioned as well, um, you know, with Tundor integrating into that. And I think that that is exactly where it's gonna come from. One of the points our chat uh I made a note of was uh I see Breeze has got a developer challenge here where they are they've got a 25,000 US dollar prize pool, and the challenge aims to bring Lightning Network payments to everyday software. So they're basically doing exactly what we're talking about. They're sort of saying, hey guys, find something that's working your area that people use, that people love, and what can we do with Bitcoin or Lightning or something on top of that existing thing? And I think that is that is amazing. That is the way to do it.
SPEAKER_06:I think that's a prime candidate for this, like having different workflows, different AI agents pay each other in Lightning is like a prime use case.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so so two things. That's another one that I'm gonna have to now touch on because you voted up because L402 is that one. But uh to what Gavin was saying, um man, why'd you make me think about L402 now, Ricky? Um what Gavin was saying with the oh, with the time to build challenge from Breeze. So I actually sat with Roy uh when we were uh in Nashville, myself and Herman. And uh uh when I was talking to Roy about this challenge, what I enjoy about it is firstly, just just to clarify some things, you need to find an open source project, right? It has to be an open source project that you that you are trying to integrate Bitcoin payments into. They have to have a good amount of stars on GitHub on the open source project. So if the place the thing is only got two stars and hasn't had any activity in the last year, you can't use that as what you want to put forward as your entry. It has to be an active project, at least in the last six months, that have like some type of a commit or something that shows activity. And then you need to get this change merged into the project. So the project maintainers actually have to say, yes, this is great, a great feature that we'd like. And that you thank you for already having done the groundwork. We will merge this into our project. That is how you actually qualify. Now, for the money, but there's also residencies that people will get. So as an aspiring developer or as a developer, um, you will be able to also work with um other developers within the industry that are working at Bitcoin companies. So that will also be another opportunity. Um, I think this is things like this, as Gavin, as you pointed out, are amazing in the fact of bringing forth the creativity and ingenuity of the people in these different regions. So I think there's over like 53 countries that are already taking part in this thing across all the different continents. I've just come from uh uh last week, I had a meeting with um uh a lecturer at the Namibian University of Science and Technology to tell her students about it as an opportunity. I've spoken to the head of like over 200 developers as a developer group uh in Namibia that I've told them about it because again, if people don't know about these opportunities, they can't go out and say, hey, let me go and check out if this is something for me. Now that 25,000 US isn't going to one individual. It's it's split up in 7,000 US for the top-ranging products, uh, 5,000 for the middle, and I think 3,000 for the lower ranging ones. But again, there is more funding. In my mind, there's more funding than the 25,000 if the projects are deemed, you know, like really well done and all of that. I think that more than one would be able to get that prize money. So there are communities that are taking part. Um, you can also contact the guys via the telegram group. There is a telegram group to add your community and to register people underneath you if you need to. Um, if if they don't have the ability to or the drive to register themselves, you can register them and then help them push through their ideas. Um, so I just wanted to say that it's a great, great opportunity. I think everybody should take part in it.
SPEAKER_05:Awesome, man. Thanks, Nikolai, for the clarity there. And I think just on that, I didn't want to let this opportunity go by without mentioning the open sats announces fourth wave of Bitcoin grants. Now, this could be something that you could sort of just chat on a little bit as well, please, if you don't mind. Uh yourself, Nikolai. Uh I figured you would have you would be the guy with some info in there, or did I just hijack you?
SPEAKER_01:Herman. I think it's Herman. I think Herman is is more clued up on what happens with grants and things. Um I've only ever received one grant from uh Gizer. Uh I received the Gizer grant uh I think two years ago or something. But um I did speak with some of the, or I was present while some of the guys from Open Sats were having discussions. Um OpenSats gives out quite a bit of funding every single month, I think, or every second month, uh, as opposed to some of the other grants, like HRF gives out, I think, um, with this type of grant structure once or four times a year, sorry, once a quarter. And OpenSat, I think, is more frequent and the amounts vary, I think something between 20,000 to like 80, 80,000, 100,000. I mean, they don't, I haven't actually seen how much each grantee has got has received, but that's generally the range I think that um people are are getting um the grants at now. Some of these grants they come with different stipulations, especially with open sets. Mostly it's your project has to be open source, it has to be Bitcoin uh associated. Um there's a couple of things like that, right? So it's not just, hey, here's free money, everybody can come for a grant. It's are you pushing um to further things like safety, security, privacy, uh, bitcoin adoption, things like that, uh, education-wise or technical-wise.
SPEAKER_00:And um yeah, um that's from what I I know, I speak under correction. Maybe, maybe Herman has or Ricky has more to add to that.
SPEAKER_05:Well, well, thanks, Nicolai. Handled like an absolute pro. I threw you a curveball, you caught it flying through there with one hand, stayed on your feet, and flicked it back. So what a champ. Um, probably final thing I thought might just be worth chatting about. Uh, we are getting close to time, but um it looks like uh China, central bank, they seem to have sort of uh fired probably first shots in terms of properly taking on um uh a go at global reserve currency with their digital yuan. Uh it sounds like they've got other countries that are testing this thing: Thailand, UAE, Saudi. Um, so that's kind of interesting. And they're starting to um uh talk about or maybe having even used uh digital yuan for cross-border trade. Um, I mean, there's been talk about this for a while. I don't know how this is going to affect BRICS, if BRICS are going to be sort of uh forced to go this route or how it is, but I think this is the first real big sign of uh the Chinese coming up and saying, okay, uh, we think we have an answer to this. Um Ricky, I know you normally follow sort of geopolitics quite well. Uh thoughts on this?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, so it's an interesting, interesting play from China. Um, obviously, for them, settling their foreign trade in the US dollar is not really a good strategy um or a good idea for them to do. Obviously, with as uh hostile as the US is towards China um and many other players in the world, um, they kind of need to do something. So it makes sense they would want to use their their own currency. Uh, I don't know if people notice about China, but they've got two currencies, like an internal and an external Chinese yuan. So internal is Renumbi and our external is yuan. Um, and so what they're what they're doing is allowing people to settle trade with them in their own currency, which makes a lot of sense if uh countries are are importing things from China, right? Um But so if you can import goods from China and then pay China in Yuan, that's all well and good. But if you are not exporting goods to China, how do you actually get hold of the Yuan yourself? So you've got to go buy them on the external market. And I don't think China is too keen on that. They've seen, they understand what happens when you the world reserve currency. Um, the Chinese are very smart, they've been around as a civilization for 5,000 years. Um, they've seen many world reserve currencies come and go, and they understand that it's a blessing and a curse. Sure, you are able to get the senior edge of printing money and you know be able to export your inflation, but what it does is it ends up hollowing out your manufacturing base, and your your country turns into a service-based economy, um, which is what happens to the US, what happens to the UK, what happens to Holland. Um, so yeah, it's a blessing and a curse. I don't know if China is actually that keen on being the world reserve currency. I don't think it's really their play. Um, but they're in this dilemma where they can't be relying on the US dollar um to be the way they settle their their trades in. So yeah, this is why they floated the idea of the BRICS currency. Um, I don't know where that's going. Uh obviously the US is super hostile to this. In my mind, all roads lead to Bitcoin. This is like, you know, if you want a non-political money, you can settle international trade and Bitcoin is the money for enemies. Um, so yeah, we'll see, we'll see where it goes. Uh, China has not historically over the past 50 years really been uh imperial power in the sense of imposing their view on other nations militarily, like the US and the British Empire and every other empire before. The Chinese are taking a different approach, um, which is more as a partner and more collaborative, um, issuing loans, then seizing assets that are those that back those loans. I mean, people can make what they want of that, but at least they're not bombing women and children. Um, so yeah, I think China's got an interesting approach of how they do this. Uh, we shall see.
SPEAKER_05:Cool, man. Thanks. Always appreciate your comments on that because you I think you you definitely know what you're talking about there. I know none of that stuff, but uh always good to hear. Uh, guys, we are about up on time. Um, quick one round, Robin, closing thoughts. Maybe start with you, Ricky.
SPEAKER_06:With our one super, super important development. Hadriman and I had the privilege of going to the Trezor launch of the new Trezor Safe Seven a few weeks ago in Prague. I know Oaken's upset, he can go. Um, it was literally like an Apple launch.
SPEAKER_00:So upset, so upset, damn it.
SPEAKER_06:It was, I mean, the Trezor team absolutely pulled out all the stops. It was literally like an Apple product launch. Um, and they gave all of the attendees one of the new Trezor Safe Sevens, which are not available for sale yet, but I have one over here. Uh, very cool. But the most important thing about this, there's Harman's one there. Why this is so cool is they, Satoshi Labs, which is the parent company of Trezor, have developed Tropic Square, which is the world's first open source secure element. And it's got the open source secure element in this device. Now, for those who don't know much about hardware wallets, essentially 80% and 90% of them all run on secure elements, and it's this little chip inside the device that stores your secrets, your private key. It's generated and stored within the secure elements in here. But up until now, you've had to do trust me, bro, with the secure element manufacturers. And Trezor knows that those secure elements are not secure because they themselves have hacked some of them, and they took it to the secure element manufacturers years ago and said, Yo, listen, guys, these things are hackable. Um, but they were under NDA, so they couldn't tell anyone about it, and the manufacturer did nothing about it. So that then inspired them to go and develop their own one. And they haven't just developed their own one and made it closed source, they've open sourced the whole thing. So this is a world first. Um the applications are massive beyond just hardware wallets, uh, phones, for example, um, have secure elements in them. So, yeah, what the guys in Prague uh at Satoshi Labs and Traser pulled off is super, super inspirational. Um, this is not just like a cool interface and uh you know a cool new wallet, it's a whole new revolutionary approach to how you store private keys um on your secure element. So, yeah, shout out to Traser, super cool.
SPEAKER_05:Uh, when are those gonna be available, by the way?
SPEAKER_06:They're available on pre-order at the moment. They'll probably start shipping in January, February. Um, but until then, I think Harman, you and I are the only people in the country who go on, right?
SPEAKER_01:Ha ha only two in Southern Africa, you you get you uh man, I'm so angry at you guys. I'm so angry at you guys. Like I so wanted to go to that event. Um, but yeah, shout out to the Schengen Visa people at the embassy for not giving me an appointment, you bastards. Um other than that, I'd like to say it's been uh uh good day to have a good day. Uh I wish everybody go out there, learn something new, learn to do a little bit of vibe coding if you have to. Uh use AI to your advantage, throw in those terms and conditions and let it you know, let you know what's going on instead of you saying, Yes, I read it. Just get it explained to you.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and that's it from my side.
SPEAKER_02:Um, yeah, man, I don't know. I think um only thing I'd add to that is something we haven't mentioned at all, which uh we probably should. Uh we're getting towards the business end of uh uh finalizing arrangements for our third annual adopting Bitcoin Cape Town conference. Um, and it's a project that I'm very uh very proud to be involved with. Um it's a lot of thankless work. Um, nobody earns anything from it. Um other than the joy and the pleasure of uh getting together with a bunch of uh people who all want to try and spread the good message. Um so yeah, if you haven't bought your tickets yet, what the fuck are you doing?
SPEAKER_05:Cool, man. I will um put that in the the link to the website to get tickets and the show notes on that, as well as the treasure stuff. That's super cool. Um also just to point out, I think that Bitcoin uh adopting Bitcoin tickets are Bitcoin only. Uh you have to pay in Bitcoin. So if anyone has not actually bought used Bitcoin before, go buy a ticket. You'll get your first chance to fling some sats around.
SPEAKER_01:Also, also, uh Max was was was nice enough to give me a discount code so you can get 10% off your ticket if you use the code OK. Hey, that's OK I N. Go and get your tickets now.
SPEAKER_05:Sweet. Awesome guys. Um, thanks for your time. Appreciated it always. Um, I think it was good chatting about tech news, more tech news than political news. Political news is never uh positive. Tech news is always positive. So we had a lacker chat about that. I appreciate it. Uh to all you non-techy guys, you really did a great job. Um, your mother should be proud of you. Thanks, boys. Um, we will see you uh at adopt uh yeah, see you next month and then adopting Bitcoin after that. Have a lacker one.
SPEAKER_06:Lucky guys. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers. Cheers, guys, have a good one.