SLP117 Pura Vida – Learning about Bitcoin Privacy

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Pura Vida of the Lightning Hood team joins me to share his perspectives and journey in learning about bitcoin privacy and putting it into practice with tools such as Samourai Wallet and Nodl. We talk about:

  • His journey of learning Bitcoin Privacy
  • How to manage your Bitcoin UTXO set
  • Coinjoining
  • Why Post Mix is underrated 
  • Other privacy tips

Pura Vida links:

Sponsor links:

Stephan Livera links:

Podcast Transcript by GiveBitcoin.io:

Stephan Livera: Welcome to the show, Pura Vida.

Pura Vida: Hey, Stephan, I appreciate you having me.

Stephan Livera: So Pura, I know you’re doing a lot of work. Obviously you’re more of a pseudonym, you’re not, publicly disclosing your name and stuff, but I know you’re doing a bit of work and you’re actually a moderator in the Samourai telegram chat group and also you’re active in the nodl chat group as well. But uh, yeah, I was really keen to talk with you, but let’s just start with a little bit of just a little of background on yourself, obviously without doxing yourself, just whatever you’re comfortable to say around how, how you got into Bitcoin and why.

Pura Vida: Yeah, sure. Um, I mean honestly, I was always a gold and silver guy back in the day. Always wanted to control my money. You know, I was never a big fan of the banks. One of my buddies, I guess it was probably back in 2015, talked to me a little bit about Bitcoin. Unfortunately, I was not one of the 2009, 2010 guys like all of us wish we were. But, yes so he started talking to me about it. We got online, started, playing around with it, spending it, trading it, doing things we shouldn’t be doing, probably on the trading side, but, now that I know more about it, but, you know, got into it and really started, seeing the value in it. And from there as the years progressed, the big bull market, we all rode up and rode back down and everything. Started really, I got involved in the, learned about Samourai Wallet, nodl when all these other awesome teams out there, probably, uh, 2017, 18, somewhere in that area. And really honed in on the privacy aspect with internet life in general. But I mean, with Bitcoin, that’s very important. We need that. So really got me focusing on, um, what we, what most people don’t think about him in this, in this space. So it’s, uh, it’s really cool to be involved there.

Stephan Livera: Awesome, man. And so tell us a little bit of your journey of how, maybe in the earlier days you might’ve just used random wallets, but now you sort of learned more of the ethos of running your own full node and connecting to your own full node.

Pura Vida: Oh yeah. So I couldn’t tell you how many wallets I’ve had on my phone. It’s been anything from bread before it was BRD. Um, I’ve had, you know, uh, gosh, I don’t even know what other wallets I’ve had on there. Just random Bitcoin wallets that popped up in the iOS app store cause I was using Apple at the time. Um, so I was, you know, we’re all pretty limited there on what, what we could get. Um, the functionality, well, Coinbase wallet too, you know, I mean that’s just unfortunately what was easy to use then. There really wasn’t many good ones out there. I mean, they were starting to pop up learning coin control and everything was important. So trying to figure out what, wallet gave you the full coin control, uh, what, while it lets you send it off their wallet to your own wallet.

Pura Vida: So started learning more on the hardware wallet side and really through that whole process, still not really thinking about the privacy side yet, you know, and that’s that’s a whole different aspect there. So, my journey was iOS based. Got, somehow I think it was, Andreas Antonopoulos chat, heard him talking about Samourai Wallet on one of his videos, went and joined the group and they really opened my eyes before I even started using the wallet on how privacy should function and work within the Bitcoin ecosystem and just in life in general. And how bad I was at it, honestly. And all of us are probably, I mean it’s, it’s unbelievable. So, got talking about, started focusing on samurai and I heard people saying, Hey, just get you a cheap Android phone and do, you know, get you $50 phone, a hundred dollar phone.

Pura Vida: Did that. Started playing with the wallet. Loved it. And eventually three Androids later got a nice Android phone and I haven’t looked at iOS since, right? So, I mean, that’s where I am in life with the, uh, the wallet side. So, um, after that, um, I was one of the first casa node guys. So right when Jameson tweeted that Casa was rolling out a node, I got on board, got involved there, really liked what they were doing, the whole lightning network thing. Um, how second layer solutions bring in privacy to Bitcoin it kinda clicked in my head a little bit how that’s an option as well. So I wanted to um, you know, join on the node in a box thing. I was running a full node for awhile. It was on a desktop computer, laptop or whatever. But there’s also a lot of, issues there you have with you’re running hundreds different software programs that you don’t know what they’re doing to different parts of the computer there.

Pura Vida: So there’s some threat factors or threat vectors you have to watch out for. And I wasn’t really thinking through that, nor was I doing a lot on a desktop wallet anyway. But, the node in all in a box, it’s own hardware doing it’s own thing really clicked in my head. So jumped on with Casa. Then nodl came out and I saw the power that nodl had. So got a nodl not too long after and ever since I’ve just been building so I’ve, you know, got multiple nodes electron started with Electrum personal server, learning about bringing, you know, controlling those keys, watch, verifying all your own transactions, not relying on block explorers to give you that information is very important. And from there, you know, you have BTC pay server, uh, availability. So, um, I’m part of the lightning hood team. So we had a store and all that. So we use BTC pay server with that as well. Um, but then with Samourai rolling dojo out, spun that up on a desktop, pointing it to the Bitcoin node on my nodl and now, in my mind, full fledged self sovereignty there. You know, I’m doing everything myself from verifying all my Whirlpool mixing transactions, through dojo, verifying all my mobile wallet transactions and then anything I’m doing with hardware wallets as well. So it’s a, it’s trying to start that full stack compatibility there.

Stephan Livera: Right. Yeah. And let’s break that down a little bit just for listeners who might not be as familiar. So typically a lot of wallets are basically calling out to somebody else’s server. And so the idea here is if you’re able to set up your own Bitcoin server, then you can do that in a way that’s more respecting of your own privacy. And you’re also not trusting because how do you know that, for example, if you’re trusting somebody else’s server, how do you know they’re not lying to you? Right. And so that is, um, where these node products can come in. And, uh, can you tell us a little bit about your process around setting up the nodl and then connecting that with your own, uh, devices?

Pura Vida: Yeah, sure. So, um, ketominer has done a great job building that product. So when you, when you get the box itself virtually plug and play, right? So you’re plugging it in, you log in, you can SSH into it. If you want to get rid access to it and do anything you want on the box outside of the, uh, the GUI or the, I guess the web, the web interface. But basically when you log into your web interface, set your password and everything you have access, you start by installing Bitcoind then right behind that, I always prefer to go with tor, run everything behind tor no matter what if you can in that aspect. Um, from there you can install LND and uh, the lightning network being in there. Um, if you want BTC pay server, you can do that.

Pura Vida: Uh, when the, when the nodl first rolled out, uh, you have Electrum Personal Server, which is basically a back end option to not use the Electrum servers. Um, because it’s a speculation, but we’re all pretty sure that ChainAnalysis has some Electrum servers out there. And I damn well know in the beginning I was, I’m sure pinging back in the day, pinging Electrum servers without even paying any sense to that, you know, not even thinking about it. So, um, so running EPS and now he has Electrum X on there, which that actually takes a whole basically transaction history. So when you log on, your transactions come up almost immediately, which has been really nice. Um, so when you can run a lot more wallets on there, and you’re also not putting your Xpubs into Electrum personal server. So when you do electron personal server, you’re putting your Xpubs on there and you know, that’s, that’s a risk factor, I guess exposing those Xpubs. Um, you know, if somebody malicious somehow got into your computer or something and it’s all those Xpubs, again, it’s just exposing things you don’t want out when it comes to

Stephan Livera: Bitcoin privacy, I think there are different parts in the life cycle, if you will, right? Because you’ve got acquiring the bitcoins, and storing the Bitcoins and spending those Bitcoins. Maybe if we think of it in terms of acquiring those Bitcoins, there are different ways to do that obviously. So you could buy it in cash in person using things like Bisq or hodlhodl or you might, use a KYC exchange and some people might do a mix afterwards. What, what, how do you think about those ways of acquiring Bitcoin and then what should listen as we thinking of when it comes to their Bitcoin privacy and what they’ve just done in terms of how they acquired those Bitcoins?

Pura Vida: Sure. So honestly, it all comes down to a threat level in my mind, right? So most people out there are going to go with what’s easy. It’s going to be a KYC, nice interface quick. The fees are not bad. So your Coinbases, and I’m just speaking in terms of localized to me, but Coinbase, CashApp. Um, gosh, I don’t even know, uh, you know, even just a standard exchange, right? If they’re doing a little trading, you can buy on there however, uh, send money to Gemini. And buy that way, right? So it depends on your threat level. If you don’t care, you’re in it for the trading. By all means, do whatever you want. Again, not your keys, not your coins, right? So buying on an exchange, KYC, what you’re doing is they will report you to whatever tax authority you’re in.

Pura Vida: They might, they might not give you your reports, but they’re watching and they can find that out, right? So you’re other options. You got bisq, completely decentralized exchange. It’s a great product. The liquidity’s a little off and on, depending on where you are. Right? Um, but, but it functions, it works. It’s great. Um, hodlhodl, I’ve never personally used, but it looks, seems to be a really good, good option out there. And, you know, Local Bitcoins before they started really hammering down on the KYC was great. Luckily I met a guy that I can do cash trades if I ever buy Bitcoin, which I don’t do. I can do a cash trades with him if I wanted to or anybody could do that if they know. So the threat model though, what you have is your UTXOs. They don’t, when you met, when you put them into a wallet, let’s just, we’ll use Coinbase for instance.

Pura Vida: You want to buy 150 bucks worth of Bitcoin. They’re, they’re going to send you a transaction, so you want to send it to your hardware wallet. Okay? It goes off Coinbase, your hardware wallet. Just say Trezor or Coldcard. Well then another day you have your Samourai wallet. You found the guy that’s got 150 you just do cash transaction, right? You send it to that same hardware wallet. If you’re not thinking about it, you actually have a $150 in Bitcoin in one is say one UTXO. That hasn’t been tied to your name in any way, but once, let’s say you want to go buy something and you’re not really thinking about, you have enough Bitcoin but you’re not thinking how you acquired that Bitcoin and then you need to merge those UTXO to give this person $250. You have now just implicated yourself in a merged transaction that now somebody looking on chain on the block chain or chain analysis looking back, they will link your Coinbase transaction to your non KYC transaction, right?

Pura Vida: So if that doesn’t matter to you, by all means do what you wish. But how I look at it is to protect yourself in those cases. Keep a separate, either a separate wallet. Um, if you use Trezor, you can have multiple wallets on the same Trezor device. You could do passwords for you. If you use Samourai wallet, just spin up a different Samourai wallet if you want. Um, but keep them separate. If that’s easiest way for you not to merge transactions, have two different wallets for KYC versus a non KYC and then you don’t risk going through that issue. Right. Um, from there, I always think like the Samourai guys say every spend should be a coin join, right? So mix all your coins. It’s not that expensive and it enhances your privacy. It’s not the end all be all, but it enhances your privacy and also enhances other people’s privacy out there. It just, it helps build that ecosystem of constant mixed coins where it breaks up the heuristics of blockchain analysis. Right. So I think that’s a really good habit to be in.

Stephan Livera: Yeah. So let’s break that down a little bit. So my listeners, so listeners, if you haven’t already, make sure you go and check out episode 78 with Samourai wallet where we spoke about Whirlpool. So Pura, or did you want to just talk through your thoughts on using Whirlpool? What does that look like? Uh, for the listener, just for those who aren’t as familiar with it?

Pura Vida: Sure. So, um, right now Whirlpool is on a, basically it’s a desktop wallet. Um, they also have a client version, which is more for more advanced users. I would say not very soon, but soon. They’re going to be rolling out the mobile whirlpool wallet, which is gonna open it up for everybody and be great. But right now, um, you need to have a Samourai wallet, mobile wallet to use Whirlpool, right? Because what you’re doing, that wallet, that mobile wallet is what actually, you know, that’s your private keys and everything. And that’s what you have to link to the Whirlpool interface. So when you spin up the interface, which you can use on Mac, Linux, Windows, I believe as well, it’s a real easy to use interface and you’ll have basically a payload. Well, I’m not gonna call it a payload.

Pura Vida: Basically an encrypted, string of numbers and characters that you paste in from your mobile wallet into the interface. And it loads the UTXOs you have available. So from there it’s pulling all the information, all the UTXO open, unspent UTX that are,sitting in the main part of your wallet. And then inside there you can do what’s called a Tx0. So that’s the initial transaction, right? So from there what happens is you click that and what ends, if you click it, you set your fee. You can do a high fee. If it’s a high priority transaction, you can select the high fee, mid range fee and a low fee. With the way the mempools been. It’s been pretty easy to get low fees to go through there, it’s been nice.

Stephan Livera: Sorry, just to clarify, with the TX zero, can you just explain what that’s doing? Or I a, it’s a cutting up into the pools and it’s taking the fee. Do you want to just explain that part?

Pura Vida: Correct? Yeah, sorry. Yeah, so basically what it’s doing, we’ll just use a, we’ll just say 0.5 Bitcoin for example. And let’s say you want, they have three pools. Right now you’ve got a 0.5 Bitcoin, you’ve got a 0.05 Bitcoin pool, and then you’ve got a 0.01 Bitcoin. So what happens is when you click that Tx0 is, we’ll just go to the 0.05 Bitcoin pool samurai takes a 5% fee, which is 5% of the pool size, right? So we 0.05 would cost you 250,000 satoshi so 0.0025, Right? That’s the fee. You mix unlimited after that. So once you pay that 5% fee, whatever UTX is, go in there, mix on limited until you spend them on the other side. So you have their fee, it’s gonna break up into, in this case, it would be nine pre-mix UTXOs.

Pura Vida: So what they’ll do is nine UTXOs will go into your premixed part of the wallet. That’ll be 0.05. And then at the very end, they’ll have a minor fee associated because those pre mixers, those who have not mixed yet have, they’re the ones basically paying the mining fee for each Whirlpool transaction. So you’ll have a small mining fee associated with each of those nine transit or UTXOs. And then, you have your change output that does not get mixed. So that’ll be the breakdown of what you see in the actual transaction. You’ll also have what’s, uh, it’s, it’s basically an op return code in there, which is a an unspendable transaction, but it’s, where inside, you can see a note. So for instance, we’ll use the S code. A samurai wallet gives, uh, every once in a while they’ll have a 15% off your Whirlpool for two days maybe. Right? And that, that is translated into that return code there. So you’ll see that on blockchain.info. So did I explain that right for you? So you’re breaking that initial that TX zero into those subsets.

Stephan Livera: Gotcha. And then I think it’s important to note that difference because that’s a slight difference in the way, say wasabi mixing happens where Samourai has that structure of having that initial Tx0, which I think creates an additional separation, whereas the wasabi, it’s, it’s sort of mixing straight away. And I think this comes down to the structure of the mix and how the solution has been architected, if you will. Right?

Pura Vida: I would, I would agree with that. And without going into a ton of detail, I don’t want to knock the other, but the, the way samurai structures it is basically once you Tx0, it doesn’t matter. I mean it matters, but if you merged a bunch of KYC and non KYC coins before you mixed into Whirlpool, you do a Tx0, it goes in to a premixed way. Once it’s out the other side, they’re broken up. The heuristics has been broken, right? The way it Wasabi the way the wasabi structure is, is, you know, you’re doing, you’re, you’re putting all these UTXO you have in and there you say you want to do anon set of a hundred or something. They’re pulling from all those UTXOs until each of the one, each of the UTXOs [inaudible] Right. But they’re all constantly intermixing with each other throughout that. And I don’t believe in that structure. It breaks it up completely. Right. Does that make sense?

Stephan Livera: Yeah, I get you. Um, yeah. So again, I don’t want to like start at a debate or anything. Um, but I think it’s just a different structure and, I think that part of it, to me, it makes a little more sense in terms of how that’s done. Um, but I could hear an argument the other side, right? So maybe a person who’s, let’s say, the argument might be okay, well fine, but with RB has a much higher number, a higher number of users and therefore that helps, uh, you know?

Pura Vida: correct. Yeah. In each mix, right? Yeah. So that’s definitely a separation there. So it’s, it’s a preference thing at that point. I think, you know, in the end, the way it’s broken up, it’s nice the mixes go quick. Right? So once you, and that’s, that’s another thing, once, once you start mixing it and the liquidity’s there, it’s flying through until you know, you’re out of pre mixes and then, then you’re waiting. So once you mix your transaction goes out, each one of your UTXO outputs is identical. So they’re all going to be 0.05, can’t tell the difference. That’s where you get the zero deterministic link, which is nice. And then you can, as long as you leave them in that wallet, they’re just continually mixed and you’re not paying more fees on that side either. So that helps the cause a little bit.

Stephan Livera: Right. Yeah. So that’s, I guess once it’s into that pre-mix, as you mentioned it, it then, once enough users are available in the pre-mix, it does a cycle. And there are certain rules that Samourai wallet applies, such as, you know, no previous TX or I think it’s, there’s certain rules about, uh, what will be allowed to be mixed into the same mix, obviously to preserve.

Pura Vida: Correct, you won’t ever see from the same TX or UTXO, yeah.

Stephan Livera: Right, right. And then so as you were mentioning, there’s the freeriding part, which is essentially as you have already done a mix and you can just sit in there and then some new person who comes into pre-mix, they might be the one who wants to do a mix and they will pay the minor fee associated for that. And then you just get a free ride mix out of that.

Pura Vida: Correct. Yup. And you’re providing liquidity for everybody new coming in. Right. I mean you’re just adding liquidity, enhancing your anonset cause every mix you’re, you’re just multiplying that, that breaking away further from that initial Tx0. So, um, it’s helping the ecosystem and it, and it goes quick once, once people are in there and doing it. It’s a quick mix. So, yeah, absolutely.

Stephan Livera: Gotcha. And now let’s talk about the post mix spending part of this because I think this is another part where it seems to me like the Samourai approach is a little more wholistic in this from what I’ve read and what I understand because Samourai wallet is essentially trying to push the user down pathways where they’re less likely to screw themselves over by accidentally merging a post mix UTXO with a pre-mix UTXO. So as I understand with samurai, while you’ve got that menu and then you go into post mix spend, I think right now that’s a temporary thing until it will, um, yeah, the UI fixes up or is iterated further. But my understanding then is Samourai also tries to get the user to basically do a Stonewall Stonewallx2 or cahoots spend coming out of the post mix. So can you just talk to those ideas a little bit?

Pura Vida: Postmix spend is underrated out there. People are like, what the heck is that? Or what do I, you know, what do I need to be thinking? Right? So coin joins are great, but if on the back end you’re not paying attention to how you manage those UTXO going out, you, you could complete, I mean, you basically wipe out anything you’ve done in the beginning. You just made that point very clear there. So I think the post mix spend extremely important on what you do. And ergo BTC, has done a phenomenal job on Twitter using the KYCP.org site and OXT.Me and looking at different mixes from both Whirlpool samurai and just spends in general and seeing how all these posts mix spends can really screw up and create links back to, to what your initial spends were.

Pura Vida: So, um, so to get into the post mix. Yes. So you have a Stonewall option and samurai wallet even in, uh, the Premix side had a Stonewall option. So basically what they’re, the basic gist of that, it’s trying to, what it would do is, I don’t know the exact how it’s formulated, but what it does is let’s say I want to send a 0.1 Bitcoin to somebody, you typically with a stonewall you need to have at least two times the amount you want to send because what’s going to get sent to an address is going to be an output. They’re going to have an identical output to what was sent. And there’s also going to have two more identical outputs but different than the first two that are going to be in the post mix or in that basically there’s post send, TXOs. So You’re going to end up, let’s say four UTXOs two of each are the same with each other.

Pura Vida: And what’s that? What that’s doing is giving you plausible deniability on what is happening or what has happened. So it’s a really nice, it breaks up, you know, chain analysis on what they’re looking. You can’t, can’t tell for sure what somebody’s spending there. So it’s a really nice option. And like you said, post-World pool, that’s if your wallet, you, your UTXO set can handle it. You will be almost not forced, but you’re basically essentially the wall. What’s gonna make you do at least a Stonewall if possible. So, um, and one thing we didn’t even bring up before Stonewall, you can manage the UTXO single as well. So if you want to send each one one by one, you can do that. And again, that’s a really nice way to make sure you’re not gonna merge them as well, especially if you’re going to cold storage or something.

Pura Vida: So, um, so yes, you can do single, you can do a Stonewall. The Stonewallx2 is basically you’re coordinating with say a friend. Now again, you’re adding a trusted third party, that’s a friend. But they will see in that structure, they’re going to be able to look back on the block chain and they’ll know two of them are theirs they’ll know two are yours, right? So they can back trace at least so far and see something. So you’d have to add a little layer of trust in there. So make sure you know that. But again, it’s going to create a similar output to what the Stonewall does. You’re just using somebody else’s UTXOs along with yours to again further break up some of that, uh, what, you know, chain analysis we’ll look at and see.

Stephan Livera: Gotcha. And uh, do you want to just talk through what a stowaway is? Now my understanding there is you, this is if you are spending to another Samourai user and this is basically like a, like a Payjoin that does not reveal the actual amount spent.

Pura Vida: Correct? Yes. So this actually ends up just looking like a regular transaction essentially. So it is, it’s very similar to a PayJoin. Um, you are doing it with another samurai user and again, you’re having that layer of trust in there. They are going to see the UTXO so definitely keep that in mind. But, it honestly, it looks like a no, none of the outputs actually match what is being sent, which is really cool when I’m not a too big of a math guy. It’s amazing to me how these guys build this stuff and you know, make, make all this happen. But yeah, it’s a very good way to break up. Um, you know, what chain analysis is going to look like or any, any, anybody looking back on the blockchain is going to see. So yeah, that’s a really good option as well. And Samourai doesn’t charge anything for those, those services. That’s just something you can do. The only thing you’re going to do is end up paying a little more miner fee because you’re, you know, you’re, you’re doing a little bit higher transaction costs there,

Stephan Livera: so. Gotcha. Yeah, no, that makes sense. And in terms of how it’s actually done, uh, I’ve done, I’ve tried it with a friend as well where basically you, you craft a transaction together with that other person, right? And so you would do it by sharing the QR codes. Can you just talk through that process?

Pura Vida: Yeah, you can do QR codes. Um, off the top of my head, I want to say it’s a five step process. Um, I believe when you’re going back and yeah, I believe it’s a five step process. It’ll end up being either QR codes with each other. It could be, basically text blobs that you can piece back and forth to each other. So you and I across the world from each other could do this easily if we wanted to through an encrypted chat. Right. So we could, and I’ve done that with a couple guys and it’s worked great. So again, every once in awhile you’ll find that it doesn’t work if somebody’s UTXO set isn’t set up for it too. So you have to make sure somebody has enough mix of coins in there to be able to handle the value of the transaction going through as well.

Stephan Livera: Got it. I’m sorry, could you explain that part a little bit? So that’s one part where sometimes when I’m testing with a friend, I wasn’t able to construct it because as I think as you mentioned that the UTXO’s weren’t configured in the right way or they weren’t enough there to craft or construct that transaction. Could you just outline what are the, some of the guidelines for that?

Pura Vida: That’s a good question. You might stump me here, but to mind. All right. So, like I said, kind of Stonewall, you have to have at least double the amount that you’re, it’s, it’s gonna need at least double the amount that you’re wanting to send. Right? So if your UTXO set. So you want to say 0.1 but you only have 0.15 it’s not going to Stonewall. Right. And it’s going to be similar with, um, the stowaway. I just don’t know how the breakdown of the UTXO set is, but my, my assumption is if you have a, if we want to do one that’s a, you know, again, 0.1 but I hold 0.75 of it, uh, or 0.075 of it. It isn’t going to work because there was not enough mix of UTXO’s you’ve got on your side to complete that stowaway. So I, does that make sense?

Stephan Livera: Yeah, I got ya. I think, yeah. So it sort of comes down to how inputs you’ve got there that you can put into that you can contribute to that little transaction.

Pura Vida: Both have to have a certain, the amount of inputs there that that will function together to create that, the output the way it needs to be. Yeah, correct. I just don’t know the values of what each side needs to have.

Stephan Livera: Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a little bit beyond us mathematically and technically. Okay. So one other point, I guess this is the point where I think it’s difficult right now, but will hopefully become easier because right now, theoretically if most people are using Samourai’s back end, they have, obviously they would choose this tradeoff so that for whatever reason, but they’re doxing their coin to samurai. Right. In that sense, right. Samurai knows who they are, what their coins are. They don’t necessarily know your identity unless you tell them, obviously. Um, but then hopefully if more people start using Dojo as the back end, then this problem starts to go away.

Pura Vida: Yeah. So Dojo, when they, I released that to everybody that, that was great because what we basically all have an option to have out here is our own full samurai backend, right? So what we have, what they released is identical to what they use, what their servers are. Now there’s are a lot larger because there are thousands of people are using them, right? So, but the software itself, it’s the same. So what they do, I mean they’re, they have a log, they have X pubs. They know all the transactions going in out. Like what you said, they know nothing about us unless we give that information to them. Right? So they don’t log IP’s or anything. So again, it’s a threat level thing. If you’re more comfortable relying on their server, just like you’re more comfortable relying on the Trezor web wallet or just, you know, it’s a threat level thing.

Pura Vida: So, but for those that want full coin control for themselves, and be assured that they are watching their own backend, they’re controlling everything from the buy side all the way to the spend side without leaking that information running that samurai dojo server is the way to go. And what it does when you log on when it’s installed and they just rolled out the partnership with the nodl, I’m sure you saw that obviously, and that’s, that’s gonna be a phenomenal tool right there. All in one box. But what, what you do is you actually pair using a QR code, through, the, the interface all over Tor and what it does, it appears your wallet. And then from that side you can select if you want to use your BitcoinD as the back end, you can use the, Oxt.me API as the back end for doing some re scans and everything. That’s an option you can set up there. Um, but from there, everything you’re doing is being run on that Samourai back in there. Just very similar to how Electrum X works. EPS works just for, but for Samourai wallet. So, you’re controlling everything in house and Whirlpool as well, you know, all that’s being done right inside your scope of stuff.

Stephan Livera: Yeah, that’s great. And I’ve got a nodl as all, so I’m looking forward to the dojo coming on that. And I know as you mentioned, there is the new premium level nodl and Samourai collaboration, which is the red one obviously runs faster and.

Pura Vida: faster. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right.

Stephan Livera: So one other thing, I think it’s also good to talk about how people should be segregating their coins. So they might have cold storage and they might have day to day spend. What are your thoughts on that?

Pura Vida: Gosh, there’s so many ways. You’ve done a lot of good videos lately, with this, with multisig and cold storage, got cold card there. I mean, there’s so many options. It’s almost too many options, but um, so it really, um, well threat level for one thing, how much Bitcoin you have, right? I mean, if you only have quarter Bitcoin, it might not be worth going out and buying a Trezor and doing all this setup for if you’re not planning on keeping much more than that. But for those that have one, five, 10, 20, 100, thousands, right, you want to have a pretty full set up or be assured, you know, through multisig, um, through your own personal set up glacier protocol. You know, I mean, you can go many different levels with this, to decide what’s right for you. But, um, you know, in this space, not your keys, not your coins, right?

Pura Vida: That’s, that’s an important narrative. We all spit out there and understand. But to our own detriment, that can be bad as well because you’re in full control of those coins at that point. And if you aren’t paying attention or you do something wrong, you lose your seed words or you forget a password, they’re gone. Right? So, how I look at it is, you know, samurai wallet specifically, that’s the one I would use, or I use, you keep what you need to spend. You have to have what you’re mixing because that is part of, you know, the mix process. You can set samurai wallet up basically as a cold storage hardware wallet because it can actually be done offline. When you do set up a, there’s some videos online that you can go through. So you can set it up, get a wallet on there, throw it enough safe or whatever and let them leave it on or keep it plugged in and let the thing keep mixing if you wanted to.

Pura Vida: Um, from there you have hardware wallets, you’ve got your multisig. Everything. Hardware wallets I think are important. You know, there’s, I think the Coldcord is my favorite. I don’t know what your thoughts are there, but I like the Coldcard. I like the Partial Signed Bitcoin transaction portion to that. Um, I think that’s, uh, the air gap way is the way to go. Um, the secure element of everything they’re doing. There is the right way to do it. Um, Trezor’s has got a great, done a great job. They finally went Bitcoin only on some of the firmware, uh, which I think’s really cool. It closes off some of those attack vectors and I believe I heard somewhere they are rolling out a base, they’ll get away from that web interface and have a desktop style application. Did you hear that as well?

Stephan Livera: Yeah, yeah. They are having, they’re going to be coming out with Tresor. Sweet.

Pura Vida: Yeah. Trezor suite. That’s it. So, um, you know, having the cold or having a hardware wallet for basically the bulk storage is not a bad way to go. I think multisig as it simplifies, Casa’s done a great job, honestly creating some simplification there. You’re also adding a layer of trust a little bit, um, in there because you’re doxing, a little bit of your information of your public or your xPub information. So they’ll, they could technically see what you have, but they offer a good solution for those that maybe aren’t so technical, technically savvy, to control and keep those Bitcoins safe. Right. I’m sorry, I might have got off topic.

Stephan Livera: Yeah. Yeah, no, I think, yeah, well, I mean we were just talking about the segregation, so I think it’s also from a privacy point of view, you might want to take extra care around what coins have been KYCed and then spent into your cloud storage, that sort of thing. And whether you would like run that through a mix before spending into cold storage, that kind of thing and then have a smaller amount obviously that you keep on your phone for day to day use, let’s say.

Pura Vida: Gotcha. So yeah, I went completely off topic there. So in my mind, right, the segregation, if you’re using a KYC exchange, unless you’re planning on spending that Bitcoin right away, I don’t, you don’t necessarily have to mix it, but when you go to spend, I think you should mix it. I think every coin that’s out there should go through a mixer, it’s not that expensive. It enhances privacy for everybody involved. And, you’re breaking if you don’t have to spend that KYC point up, you put it through a mixer, what comes out on the other side. You broke that off. You kind of broke that away from that initial KYC because a little bit, because they don’t, they can’t automatically assume that those UTXO on the other side are yours. Right. So anything you put through that mixer will break up a little bit, but necessarily, do you have to go to cold storage that way, no, but if you’re looking 20 years from now when fees could be a lot higher, doing it now might be a better time.

Pura Vida: Mix it now go to cold storage. Right. So it really depends what kind of long term output you’re looking at there as well. Um, but like you said, don’t keep it all on a mobile wallet. I don’t think that’s a safe way to go function. So anything you keep on the mobile wallet, the nice thing when Samourai rolls out the mobile Whirlpool, you don’t have to mix it right away. If you go, if you need to spend a little bit, you’ll be able to push a button mix, it goes out on the output on the other side and then go ahead and spend it. Right. So you have a couple minutes there that you need to wait for the mix to happen, but then you’re spending on the other side. So you don’t necessarily have to mix right away. But I do think it’s very important that you do mix your coins before you spend because again, you’re enhancing not only your own privacy but everybody else involved too.

Pura Vida: Right. And another example, let’s say you are buying and selling bitcoin in person and you’re doing cash trades.

Pura Vida: Sure.

Stephan Livera: Uh, at that point, the other, the counterparty could essentially look on the blockchain and try to trace back. Theoretically,

Pura Vida: I didn’t even think about that. Good point. Yeah, absolutely.

Stephan Livera: This is another reason why you might need to think about doing mixing before or after. Let’s say doing this kind of castrate. If it’s like a less trusted counterparty, let’s say.

Pura Vida: Yeah, you might not know the person from, you know, anywhere. And if you, if you took it out of a 10 Bitcoin UTXO and he wanted to buy 0.5, he knows you got nine and a half sitting there. So that’s a, uh, that might in his term be a good reason to follow you home. Right. So that’s a very good point.

Pura Vida: Um, so yeah, I would definitely agree with that. So that from a non KYC tree point, yeah, definitely mix before you’re sending them as well. So absolutely.

Stephan Livera: Just thinking off the top of my head, I mean, you can mind Bitcoin, although probably not a lot. Probably not a high percentage of my listeners are Bitcoin miners. Yeah. Maybe some of them and.

Pura Vida: not too profitable for most of us probably.

Stephan Livera: And I guess the other way is obviously earning Bitcoin, right? So if you’ve got BTC pay server or you know, um, you can obviously earn Bitcoins and that’s probably one of the best ways.

Pura Vida: Yeah. Lolli, you’ve got Getpei, you’ve got, you’ve got a ton of ways out there. But again, so to your point there, you’re earning them. The lollis the Getpei’s, the ones that are giving me cash Bitcoin back, they, you’re willing to them in a way because they’ve got credit card transactions or something going on there.

Pura Vida: So there’s a linkability for sure. And people think KYC, Oh, if I give a driver’s license, that’s KYC, but credit card or bank card “ah, they have got no idea” they got everything on you. Right. So anything that you associate, any kind of credit card with or whatever, run those through a coin join for sure. Because you know you want to break that up there. Like you said earning through BTCPay, lightning, our lightning hood site, you know, stickers or whatever. I mean people are sending us coins from wherever, but yeah, you definitely want to mix it because those people can look on the chain and see where it goes in and see what’s there. You want to break that up and not show that to everybody. I mean it’s, it’s just something we all don’t think about, but it’s extremely important, you know?

Stephan Livera: Right. Yeah. And hopefully with lightning and as lightning increases in adoption, then that will automatically bring a lot of privacy just through that fact. But they will still be channel open, channel close. And there may be something that an outside of may be able to infer from watching your channel opening and channel closing.

Pura Vida: Sure. Actually I thought I was, I think I tweeted it earlier, but, so all these change outputs that come from mixing, right? So Whirlpool, use Whirlpool for instance. But Wasabi has the same thing, the whole coin, the whole UTXO. set can’t go through the mix, right? There’s always gonna be, there’s a fee going in, but there’s always going to be some change that comes back because nothing in the world’s perfect in that case. Right? So what do you do with that change that’s still linked to your past history? So let’s say KYC or whatever that’s still linked there. And so you have a whole subset of little pieces of change. Well, you got to really think about do you want to mix, do you remember first off, are you labeling your transactions? That’s important, right? And if you aren’t, if you just go through and just merge all those premixed transaction or the change transaction, there you go.

Pura Vida: You just linked a bunch of mixes that you just put together, right? You don’t link the other side but you at least the length that you did a bunch of mixes. Right? But one thing you can do that I’ve used that works really well is you can take those small bits of change and put them into lightning using zigzag or using submarine swap, some of these tools that actually take on chain and swap it into lightning for you, you’re using a service, you pay a little fee, but you, you miss going into that, the open up channel phase, you just go right into lightning. So that’s a really good tool. Right now at least to get rid of some of that little bit of change you have.

Stephan Livera: Right? Yeah, that’s, and that’s a difficulty as well. I’ve noticed, I think Samourai are aiming to come out with something on this. I think the function they were calling it mix the change. So they might have something in future on that.

Pura Vida: Yeah. Can I think it’s going to be like cascading pools or something, right? Where it just kind of funnels its way down. But yeah, they’re talking about the change, I’m sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephan Livera: And I think that’s, to me, I think overall, again, I don’t want to like sound like I’m shitting on other things, but I just, to me it seems like the Samourai solution is a little more holistic in that it’s considering the actual post mix part as well. Whereas if I were to go and try and teach someone, Oh Hey, use this, I’ll be mixing. Then I’ve also got a, like, it’s so easy to make a mistake with postmix out of Wasabi right. Now I do recommend people to use [inaudible] just as a wallet if they just, if they’re a newbie and I just want to Coldcard and Wasabi.

Pura Vida: It’s a great wallet that.

Stephan Livera: I am a little hesitant at this point to recommend wasabi mixing. Yeah. But yeah, and now to be fair, people could also throw back and objection and say, well, right now, not that many people on Samourai are using dojo and therefore that means a lot of people are trusting Samourai’s servers. So you know, there’s, no one’s perfect in this. Right. So I don’t want to come out like –

Pura Vida: It’s a trade off. It’s a trade off then, you know, and it’s just what, what works for each person individually. Right. And that’s how you gotta look at it.

Stephan Livera: Yeah. And, and I guess we’ve also got to consider there is the OG Join Market mixing. Right. So that’s like, that’s like the hardcore

Pura Vida: personally used it. I don’t know if you have, I’ve never personally used it. It looks, seems really cool, but, and I know there’s a, there’s a maker feature. A market maker and Taker feature where you can actually earn doing it. I’ve just never tried it myself.

Stephan Livera: Yeah. I haven’t got around to it as well. But as I understand you can do very large or larger mixes on join market, although I haven’t, I haven’t got to that yet. But yeah. So I think those are some good, tips for the listeners in terms of if they’re thinking about Bitcoin privacy in terms of transaction graph. Uh, I guess we might talk about a little bit from an IP point of view. So this is things like using Tor, maybe being careful about, when you use a block Explorer, if you look that up from your home IP, then obviously they can infer that this IP was interested in this address, et cetera. Do you have any, any, any points to add around that?

Pura Vida: That’s a learning curve consistently, right? I still catch myself doing stupid things on that front. Right? So like you said, I think the use of Tor in block explorers is in my mind, almost imperative. Um, like you said, if you’re using Firefox, it’s set up to your IP, maybe even a VPN, right? While VPM still walls that IP, right? So, um, once you do that, you look up a transaction. Okay. They know it came from you. Well, let’s say you look up another transaction from a cold storage while you just want to say, I just want to check on my coins that are in cold storage. Well, shoot, now they know that IP looked at this wallet and this wallet, right? And even for tor, believe it or not, it’s the same way. If you don’t change your identity between transactions. And you look up, now granted onion, right?

Pura Vida: So onion routing it hides it a little better. But if you don’t change your tour identity in between looking up at a transaction, you can still somebody I’m sure out there not me, but somebody out there could probably dig through there and say, okay, this, this Tor relay, this tor however it’s set up, they looked at this transaction, then five minutes later the similar route looked at this transaction. Right? I mean it gets that deep and most of them, I mean heck, I forget to do it sometimes, but it’s a constant learning curve you got to go through. So, yeah, switching, switching identities in between transactions. I think’s important step in the right direction for everybody. It’s going to be a habit change for most people. Um, but you can open and maybe just switch between a couple of different explorers. If you’re looking up a couple multiple transactions, just go between a couple explorers, use blockstream.info, use mempool.space, or whatever you want to do.

Stephan Livera: Yeah. I think the other way that it will go is just people will learn to use their own block Explorer, right? Like if they.

Pura Vida: Correct.

Stephan Livera: Right and then that way you can just safely look up as many times as you want and not worry about changing cycling through IDs all the time. If you can run your own

Pura Vida: Right now it’s a little hard to set up, there’s a few out there that have come out. I haven’t done one. I know the new nodl, or the new upgrade that’s coming that will be coming, not necessarily the box, but ketominer’s rolling out an upgrade that’s going to have a block Explorer built in. So I know Electrum X was a big part of that because it needed that history for, for that block Explorer.

Stephan Livera: So, yeah, that’s right. I’ve got an episode so I’ve recorded it, but I haven’t released it yet. Um, but I’ll be releasing that with, the guy who created myNode and myNode actually has its own block Explorer. So that’s another privacy win. Yeah.

Pura Vida: Nice. Awesome

Stephan Livera: Um, but there are some other ways you can get owned as well, right. Like email notifications. I think that’s a really, you know, just no brainer. But at the same time there’s a security part there as well. So let’s, so let me walk through the example. So I go to a KYC exchange, I buy the Bitcoins on there and then I withdraw them to my own address. And then guess what? They send an email notification saying, Hey, Stephan, we’re withdrawing X, Y, and Z number of Bitcoins to this address and now your email provider has your, knows that address.

Pura Vida: How many people are using Google out there, right, for email. Holy crap. I mean, good gracious, you know it’s yeah, no I didn’t even, yeah, that’s it. I mean that’s a very valid point because now that’s all logged, in that email server they have and who knows? You can get broken into there and that’s where mixing comes in, right? You take that, put it into your address, mix it, send it somewhere else. Right. And break up that, break up that trail that you started with an email. Right?

Stephan Livera: Yeah. Right. And I guess, look, I mean there’s different views on this point. I’m sure if you hear some people in the community or in the Bitcoin world, they’ll say never use KYC exchange and others who will think of it more like, no, just you can buy on there and mix it afterwards. Now some may say that’s a harmful mindset. I’m sort of, I’m sort of on the fence there. I think there is a need for some of these KYC exchanges for different purposes, but there’s also a need for some of the no KYC exchanges as well.

Pura Vida: Your side with that, it was a recent episode you published. I know you were kind of going back and forth was it Bisq? The Bisq one maybe. Yeah, yeah. Where, you know, some, they were like, just, just don’t do the KYC, but there’s a need for adoption. I mean they, they’re KYC, but they, they, they help build, I mean, gosh, Coinbase when it first came out there, while it was slick, easy to use, right. It just, it’s something I didn’t think about, but it was easy to buy, you can get it, get it off, do your thing. But again, like you said, there’s a need for it, but then once you’re comfortable and you understand how the process works and you feel like you want to go to that next level, that’s where you take that, that reliance off of KYC exchanges and go to something like Bisq or hodlhodl, cash trades, you know, whatever. There, there’s a lot of options out there. You just got to hunt a little bit for it. Right.

Stephan Livera: And, uh, let’s talk, I guess about privacy outside of just Bitcoin itself. So for example, with your phone, some SIM cards require KYC, do you have any thoughts on ways to protect yourself there? Yeah. So this, and again, this is for me, this is the newer side of privacy for, for me and I, I’ve learned, I will credit the Samourai telegram chat for this. They like just over the last couple of years, just listening to these guys talk and chatter about privacy in general really opened my eyes to, you know, everything from, you know, cell phones to SIM cards, how it all ties everything back to you. Right? So, for instance, on a cell phone, iOS is pretty, is it? Um, to my knowledge, pretty safe phone, right?

Pura Vida: It’s locked down pretty good. Um, just like a Mac computer. I mean, those things are tough to really, you don’t see guys maliciously creating code for them too often, right? But you’re also limited. But with, with Android you can, basically using something you can root phones. Now, I wouldn’t recommend just going out rooting a phone and putting a Bitcoin wallet on it. Right? You know, the Samourai wallet guys, they say, always make sure to have a hardened operating system like GrapheneOS where it’s, it’s hardened all the way down to basically I harden all the way down to the secure, I wouldn’t say secure element, but there’s only certain phones they’ve built this operating system on like the pixel, right? So, it’s locked down as much as you can lock it down, right? It’s all use an Android open source, um, code.

Pura Vida: And then from there you can, basically customize and do anything you want. So you can, de bloat your phone at that point. No Google, um, you’ve basically wiped it down to a browser, F droid for downloading. Uh, you can always use aura, which is, gives you access to play store. So you can get other apps if you want them, but you’ve worked it down all the way to text, phones, a browser, what is bare minimum as you want to go. Right. Um, but from there, you mentioned SIM cards, so I think it’s hard to get them nowadays, but I think the UK has no KYC SIM cards, which you can get fairly easily. And what you could do is use Bitrefill with Bitcoin. A lot of guys living off Bitcoin out there, um, they don’t want their phones tied to their name.

Pura Vida: So what they’re doing is using SIM cards, topping it up with Bitcoin, and there’s no, uh, there’s no connection to you. And all these chat apps we all use, you know, telegram, WhatsApp, which I wouldn’t recommend that telegram. I think signal, they all ask for phone number, right? So if you’re going through all these privacy steps and we’ll use telegram for instance, we go through all of these privacy steps, we all have nyms out there, we’re all being as safe as we can, but then we just give telegram our phone number, right, our actual phone number. Um, you’ve just inadvertently given a server somewhere in Russia, I think telegrams out at somewhere over there, access to your phone number, right? Who knows are they going to go sell it, are they going to go come looking for you? And then you can pull up a phone number up on Google and I’m sure you’d find somebody address pretty easily. Right? So I mean it’s that easy to dox yourself. So there’s really a lot of things depending on your threat model that you need to really look out for. Um, in that aspect as well.

Stephan Livera: Part of it though is a, there’s a bit of a social network component to this as well, right? Obviously with Bitcoin there’s a lot of telegram chat groups. So then you kind of have to use telegram even if you might prefer to use something else. And I think at this point it’s fair to say nobody has really hit the holy grail in terms of ease of use, encrypted all end to end and like not doxing your phone number as well. I think it’s pretty much, nobody’s got that.

Pura Vida: I would agree. I would agree. You can. I think there’s a, some of them have got about 80% there probably, but the convenience or the mass adoption of that service is there. Right. I who posted it recently was it Jameson. Somebody posted a spreadsheet of all the different, chat apps or whatever.

Stephan Livera: Yeah, Jameson posted it. I think this other guy was tweeting about it. I forgot his name as welll, unfortunately. Um, he’s not a Bitcoiner, but I think he’s like a privacy guy. But anyway, I think at the top of that list there was riot matrix and I think Wire was pretty high on the list. It wasn’t the top one. Um, but yeah, I guess those are ones to consider, but at the same time it’s all well and good for you to go on and set up on these things. But if nobody else is there, well

Pura Vida: You’re chattin’ with yourself. So I doubt, it’s kind of funny. I downloaded Riot. I did after I saw that I’m like, ah, Riot, and the purism guys use riot and I’m looking at it and I’m like, Oh this is great. Who the hell do I talk to? There’s nobody there to talk to. Right. So I’m back to telegram again and then it’s like I got to go sell people to come to Riot if I wanna use it, you know? So I don’t know. What do you think? There will be a Holy grail in that aspect anytime soon? I mean that’s

Stephan Livera: maybe not, maybe not anytime soon, but if we were to get enough of a community momentum around something, then maybe we could push people to go to Riot or I dunno, one of these, one of these apps, right? Yeah. Who knows? But then the other challenges as well is what if it gets superseded later and people are getting fatigued from having 7,000 different chat apps on their phone. So,

Pura Vida: Yeah, yeah. I think part of it, I mean the real issue honestly is, um, got the cell providers, I’ll be honest with you, the way they’ve got it set up. Um, we have to use SIM cards for the most part, right? I mean it’s getting a lot better. A lot of places where you can go, voice over IP and things like that, which that’s great. But you can’t do that fully yet. That once, uh, I was reading once 5G gets out there, I think it’ll get to that point where you can basically do without SIM cards, right? And then you’re at a hardware level battle to create that phone. Like the purism guys, the librem five or something that is, has hard kill switches on the microphones, the cameras, but yet they have the full compatibility to be able to utilize a spectrum like that. And then you could essentially do without SIM cards and then we’re in a different game, you know? I mean, that’s where it opens up the door for a lot of these chat apps. The encrypted ones to really, I think take off and people utilize them.

Stephan Livera: Yeah. What about your thoughts on using a nym online? Now within, I guess I’ll just offer some quick thoughts on myself. I think within Bitcoin it’s, it is useful that there are some people, you know, like me, just real name, real face, they’re out there just to kind of give newbies a face to look at and you know, but then for people there’s also a lot of value to having anonymous or pseudonymous nyms. Can you comment on your thoughts there and any tips around using a nym and keeping some privacy in that way?

Pura Vida: I’m still working my way around this one, right. Online nowadays, nyms I think are important, especially in our space because we all have a belief on where this space is taking us, where it’s going, where the value will be. And I think we’re a very small subset of the ecosystem or the world in general. And when people wake up to what Bitcoin is and the potential of it, it could really harm some people out there if they aren’t, you know, paying attention a little bit, or being safe with what they do. So I think nyms are important. Um, it’s extremely easy. Even if you have in them to dox your nym. Um, I’ve done it multiple times without really thinking about it. And again, you’re linking against some numbers and different things that maybe, you know, your friends might not care, but you know, other people will see Facebook, all these Instagram, all that kind of stuff.

Pura Vida: You’re, you’re putting your face out there. You’re putting your information out there. You need to think before, um, you know, people need to just think what’s more important, right? You’re gonna give up some convenience. You’re going to give up. I haven’t had Facebook for four years now and it’s been liberating to say the least. And, um, but you’re giving up some convenience and socialization in that aspect because you’re going behind, in my case, a PayNym, you know, the little PayNym robot face, right? I’m going behind a little robot face that, um, you know, I express out on Twitter and different places, telegram and different places. Um, and you’re creating almost a separate personality for yourself. But in the end, I think it’s important for the protection of yourself and your family in some cases, to do that.

Pura Vida: And people do it in a whole, in many different ways, right? Sometimes they just create a fake name, fake account, on emails. You can, you can easily do all that. I just, you look, I mean, you remember what happened, the Jameson right out there and I think it was in North Carolina where somebody new found out where he lived and sent the SWAT team there, just called some bullshit on him and sent the SWAT team there. And yeah, dude almost got killed by the SWAT team for nothing. Right. Just because somebody got pissed at him or whatever it was. I mean, it’s dangerous. It’s kinda, you know, you gotta watch that. So I think people need to think about it and think, think what’s important and, you know, go from there and decide if it’s, the right thing to do for them.

Stephan Livera: Did you have any parting thoughts to share with the listeners in terms of things they should think about as they’re going on that journey of improving their own privacy?

Pura Vida: I would say just go online, join chat groups, listen to podcasts, ask questions. Believe me, I’ve asked a ton of questions and I’m learning every day. I mean, it’s an experience to go through the journey. My wife looks at me and goes, are you crazy? Something, you know, I mean, she’s like, what the hell are you thinking? I’m like, Hey, just let me do my thing. You know, but it’s one of those things just, just learn from people because believe it or not, all these nyms out here you see in these chats, they want to help you, right? I mean, they, they, they value, we’re all in this together. In the end, you know, we’re all fighting the same thing that, you know, well my world, the government and all that crap, all the BS they put down on us, we’re all out here to create a more liberating society, I guess, where we can function together.

Pura Vida: So we’re all in this together. I would just pay attention. I mean, your, everything you’re doing’s just phenomenal. Um, people just need to listen to the podcast. They’re driving down the road. I mean, sitting in for two hours, going to work, put some darn podcasts on instead of listening to Miley Cyrus or whatever, right? I mean learn, it’s a, it’s an experience. Um, catch, go on Twitter, go on Bitcoin, Twitter specifically because there’s a lot of good people on there that just, there’s more, there’s more than you can read in a day, right? So it’s important. Just go on Twitter, go on telegram, join the samurai group, join the nodl group, join whatever group out there and just learn from people. Cause there’s all over the world. You wouldn’t believe what people are doing and going through, to keep themselves safe, private, and, uh, you know, keeping it going. So, yeah.

Stephan Livera: Fantastic. Well, look, thank you very much for joining and I think the listeners will get a bit out of listening to your journey.

Pura Vida: Yeah, no, I appreciate you having me. Hopefully, , I didn’t ramble too much on stuff, but, uh, yeah, I hope, uh, yeah, just check out everything we talked about, I think, I think people will enjoy going down that rabbit hole a little further. So gives them something a little different to look at.

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