Quarterly Self-Custody Update – Q2 2026 with NVK | SLP751

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In this episode,  NVK rejoins me to discuss the latest developments in Bitcoin self-custody, hardware wallets, and privacy solutions, providing valuable insights for enthusiasts and practitioners alike.

Timestamps:

00:00 Quarterly Self-Custody Update

01:28 Sparrow Wallet Update & Silent Payments

05:41 Coldcard MK5 & Recent Firmware Updates

07:53 The Evolution of Co-signing & MuSig2

11:58 Liana & Nunchuk Wallet Updates

17:16 Cove, BlueWallet & Mobile Wallet Progress

19:09 BitKey V2 & Pragmatic Self-Custody

22:55 Open Hardware Wallet Project Updates

27:15 Merchant Payments & Bitcoin Commerce

31:19 Stable Balance Wallets & Self-Custody

36:38 Hardware Wallet Security Updates

39:07 ARCA: Personal Data Haven Explained

Links: 

Stephan Livera links:

Transcript:

Stephan Livera (00:00.738)
Hi everyone, welcome back to Stephan Livera Podcast. Rejoining me is my friend NVK and we’re gonna try something today. We’re gonna try a quadly self custody update. So NVK and I have pulled together a few items and we’re gonna just talk a little bit. So NVK, any kind of overall comments before we get into the first item on the list? Any broad themes you wanna touch on for let’s say self custody this last quarter?

Yeah, I mean I think I think real Bitcoin is hot again on Twitter, you know, like you know, for a little while like people were just like buying my stock, buy my stock, right? and and I I think it’s kind of like it’s always good for people to be reminded that there is a massive difference between real Bitcoin and you know, and like Bitcoin exposure through some stocks. Like nothing wrong with the stocks. I mean, you know, some people that works for them, but

You know, I I think for most people, especially people who are not seasoned stock traders and things, like they should just stick it to real Bitcoin, you know, like buy the thing, stick it in your code card, and then move on with your life, right? Like this is a long game. This is not you know what is it like it it’s not a get rich quick is a don’t get pulled slowly game game. What whatever it was, maybe I got this wrong. But anyways, yeah. Point is it’s nice to see

Self custody is sort of like, you know, being sort of called out again. Yeah, I mean, you know. Nothing like being a sovereign

Back into being cool being cool again.

Stephan Livera (01:28.846)
Cool. So let’s start. We’ll we’ll try to keep a good pace with it. I know we were we had Sparrow Wallet on our list. I know there’s some updates there. Now this is I also had a recent episode with Craig Raw where we spoke a bit about that, but anything you wanna touch on there on the Sparrow side of the house?

Yeah, I mean like you know, like they have like silent payments now, dust detection. w they’re like I mean Craig’s been doing a lot of work on silent payments, right? The the free get thing, which is like a kind of like a silent payment detection server, right? they they watch the index and then they find your payments. I think you mentioned to me that

Yeah, and I guess the i just the high level point I would mention for the listeners is Frigate adds like it’s like a thousand X speed up using GPU acceleration to quickly do the silent payment scanning. So that’s kind of a really interesting point because I think Craig sees this as like, look, one of the big problems in the ecosystem right now is a lot of people are doing address reuse. So what’s one way to help stop that? Hey, it’s silent payments. And I think the point he would make is going back to the early days, you know.

Changing from the kind of key pull ex approach to the H D wallets was kind of a lift too, but there were some downsides of H D wallets, but it was still a step forward. And I think he sees it the same way. Like silent payments is a step forward and it will reduce address reuse. So that’s kind of a good thing from from a perspective of if we can get more people to use that for donations or for exchange, deposit and withdrawal. So I think that’s kind of the key kind of takeaway there.

It’s a it’s a very cool spec, but it it’s a massive diff. Like it’s it’s like implementing silent payments is not trivial. it’s a big job. So that’s that’s why I think you’ve seen sort of adoption being very slow, especially from the hardware side. there’s there’s a lot to it. you know

Stephan Livera (03:18.86)
Yeah. And I think that’s the point w actually in the podcast I had with him, he mentioned that like basically hardware wallets could theoretically support salmon payments, but they have not yet. And as you said, it’s probably because it’s a bit of a a lift on on your side, especially you’re a hardware wallet, you know, guy, you’re a manufacturer yourself. so w I guess from your perspective, what are the main challenges you see there?

Well I I mean like it’s just the amount of code you have to write to support it. It’s like equivalent of supporting like Miniscript or supporting, you know, Moosig. It’s like it’s gigantic. So that means it you know, like with hardware, especially secure hardware, like you can’t just like, you know, add gigantic like code changes, right?

Because you have limited memory to begin with or how

the security, the security concern, right? I mean, like, you know, for the software wallets like Sparrow, like the the concern about security is a lot lower, right? Because you know, it’s already assumed that the computer is kind of compromised, right? So the security assumption there is that like he will depend on hardware wallets to keep the seeds secure, like real seeds, right? Maybe you have some some seeds with less money there, but you know, for your real money you do it multi-sig or you keep it in a hardware wallet or both, you know.

So so the like when it comes to software wallets, like you have more design space and more sort of leeway to to adopt like this gigantic code changes, right? On the hardware side, you know, like you have to be ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra conservative. So it takes it’s gonna take time. It it is definitely on our list, by the way. We we have we have it there. I really wanna support it because it solves a lot of payment problems. Like

Speaker 1 (05:00.856)
For example, for open stats, right? Like it would be great if we just had like, you know, a a payment

Right. You could tell each of your grantees, Hey, give me an S P address and we’ll send it to you that way. That’s right.

you know, and and many such cases, right? maybe we can even have it on the coin kite shopping cart, you know, like it’s just like a coinkite payment address, right? i i it’s a very interesting proposal, it’s very good, it’s just a lot of software to write to support it. So but I think it’ll happen, I think it’ll come.

Well we’re there, might as well talk about the cold card side. any updates there? I know the big one this quarter would have been MK five, right? Your new device. any any updates you want to add on the cold card side of the house?

I mean, you know, we released Mark V. I can’t remember if we talked about it in the last show. It’s just, you know, it’s like a a good evolution of it. It’s a much better case. Gorilla Glass. The keyboard is amazing. There’s NFC is much better on it. It’s just like a it was like a very good evolution for Mark V. on the softer side, there was a release for both Mark V really, Mar and Q, which was BIP 322. So proof of reserves.

Speaker 1 (06:12.514)
This is really cool. You can scan and then bam, you have a proof of your reserves without doxing, which is really cool. And then with stores, so for example, if you have old paper wallets, this is for OGs really. So old paper wallets.

So with wallet import formats right this for people.

we support importing that into because the the problem was this: like people would get like open dimes or old paper wallets and stuff, and then they would rely on you know computers which they can’t trust to to move say a thousand coins from an open dime, like many such cases. and then we’re like, you know, this is not great. So let’s support importing that with straight into the cold card so that you can sign it from the cold card to sweep those funds. so that.

That’s sort of like supporting a lot of OGs there. and then transaction input explorer. So that helps that as well. And then the edge for more adds Moosig2. So MooseIg2 is in my opinion the the winner of the sort of like the more scripted type transactions. I I think I think it’s actually like it has more adoption than mini script, it has more adoption than most of the options.

it is the standard that Big Go uses. So we have a lot of enterprise users, a lot of like large holders that use Big Go, co-signing with cold cards using MoSig2. and and then there’s like a bunch of other scripts out there and a bunch of other things going on. I I think it’s like a good spec. it’s still on edge, it’s new. Implementation and sort of going forward with that.

Stephan Livera (07:53.474)
Yeah, actually it reminds me, I I remember speaking back in the day, maybe two or three years ago, I did an episode with Brandon Black, Reading Code, and that episode was actually about how BitGo got Music2 support. So it’s kind of interesting to see sort of the Yeah. And the you know, the evolution over time. yeah. and then so I guess actually just on that, like I guess we’re getting into this policy cosigning kind of area, right? Like, do you see that as a big evolution or a big

Let’s say more and more user more and more people are going to start using this kind of cosigning style or no?

I like I generally think that and I can see this from like our users, from our competitor users. Reality is like, you know, having a a metal plate plate with a seat on it is like, you know, ultra easy for most people. Like they, you know, people have held a secret before or like a bar of gold before. You know, you stick that in a drawer in an envelope. For most people that works, you know. And then just adding a passphrase to it, like super easy as well.

And then you can stick that in a safe deposit box. That works as a chain of custody for most people for you know inheritance for other purposes. it is ultra simple. That’s the thing. It’s like you’re not relying on a third party for co-signing. You’re not relying on, you know, like multiple devices on your desk to sign. Like, you know, like just operationally, it’s so easy. so I think for most people, that’s where we’re at.

and and then, you know, of course like if you’re running a business, if you have more cosigners, if you have like substantially more coins, then yes, then like either Mo Sig2 or straight up multi sig, you know, P2SH type, you know, i is sort of like very viable.

Stephan Livera (09:39.486)
better choice too. Any thoughts on while we’re there actually, because this is also recent, I did an episode with Arbed Out and he came out with Sigbash recently. And I’m sure you’re you’re probably you you might have seen it. Any thoughts on Sigbash as kind of a another form of a cosigner using like ZK proofs of things to try to give yourself to give people sort of covenant like functionality without covenants? Any thoughts on Sigbash?

Yeah, I mean like I think it’s very cool. I again I think the problem is this like a lot of this very like these are good specs. They’re fairly mature conceptually. Like new technically, right? Because they just got implemented, but like they’re fairly mature technic conceptually. The problem is I think a lot of them arrive late. So

so you think it would have been better if it came a few years ago? You think there’s like a path dependence that like the industry’s already formed on certain ideas and they wanna just stick on those ideas instead of going this other way with Sigbash?

It’s just is just too many people already have their their coin. And remember I like for every new cohort of users they’re gonna have like less coins.

That’s true. So the whales are already Yeah, most of the whales are already

Speaker 1 (10:51.79)
Like you know, remember there was the like the fish, the crabs, the whatever was like the s the different size of

Yeah, the shrimp and the dolphin, whatever the

Exactly. Whatever SeaWorld explanation was. But the the point is like the adoption waves come and people have substantially less coins, like and and it’s like power law sort of size differences.

But I guess we’re talking like not just at the individuals, but like what about businesses? Maybe they’re ’cause I know like even like Anchor Watch and w some of these other guys, they were looking at Sigbash maybe from a business use. So maybe it’s not at the individual kind of hodler level, but like businesses might see a use of that.

Right. I I think I think when you get into like a more complex custodial solutions, right? Because you know, you you have a lot of checks and balances in a corporation or whatever, a treasury like that, I think you might see some of those things. But then on the other side, you know, like i i like those corps also choose to do things they’re the least novel as well. They’re very conservative when they come in.

Stephan Livera (11:53.214)
So they’re also just going to music too, they’re just doing straight multi sig, they’re not gonna do the fancy stuff.

I I really think the path dependence analogy is the best for this. Like I I think it’s it’s you know, we’ll see it. Maybe some novel products will come into the market that just do it like so well and s for like very specific case scenarios that just sort of like take over for that specific

Yeah. That maybe it enables a whole new use case. Maybe it’s like integral to the business case to the use at all. So maybe in those cases it’ll be it’ll really find some legs there. And in other cases, look, people would just default to what they already know and and are comfortable with. so let’s move on. what about Liana? So I think they came out with a new version fourteen. Any updates you want to share on the Liana side?

I think so.

Speaker 1 (12:35.096)
So they support multiple wallets, which every wallet should support multiple wallets. That’s my biggest gripe with a single wallet type wallets. Everybody needs more than one wallet, right? Like, you know, you need your spending, your cousins, your you know, this, your dad, your dad, your dad. Like you need multiple wallet support, right? Like it’s it’s like multiple bank accounts. Like you under your login savings, your spending account, like whatever. Yeah. You need multiple accounts. and then safety net.

recovery key product I’m not super familiar with. I imagine it’s something they host. and they change their dust defaults. Everybody’s lowering their dust defaults.

Well that’s the function of price, right? Although hey, yes, right now we’re in the bottom of the bear. Well hopefully with the bottom of the bear, maybe we’re going who knows. But obviously over time some of these numbers have to get changed in terms of dust limits and things like this. And then nunchuck. So also, you know, those guys are doing really pushing on the miniscript stuff, taproot multi sig, also the AI side of it. So I thought they that was interesting that they put out an AI agent C L I. now

On one hand you could be like, Well, I don’t want AI touching my coins and stuff like that, but obviously if you restrict it in certain ways and it’s kind of time sandboxed. any thoughts on d you like this kind of non chuck AI C L I for your Bitcoin?

Yeah, I mean I I think it’s cool. Like, you know, they added the taproot multi sig, some on chain time lock inheritance more options, I guess. The the I Gentec AI CLI is interesting. Like I can see some people using it, starting to use it. I’m not sure yet what the format of something like that is gonna be. Coinbase has their what is it, four two X or whatever? Was their Shitcoin?

Stephan Livera (14:25.94)
And there’s a bit of a competition there, right? Because i you know, there’s L four two like the lightning one and then there’s Coinbase’s base thing and everyone else’s everyone’s got their own idea that they’re trying to push. and then maybe it’s a distribution.

Controversial opinion. Yeah. get your tweets ready. I think that the agenc payments hype is gonna die down this next couple quarters. I think the agentic craze that happened with with OpenClaw and Hermes is gonna sort of slow down a bit in this this next part of the year. I think

Pretty.

Stephan Livera (15:02.552)
so not just agentic payments, but just like even the open claw and hermez thing, like agents in general.

It’s a lot of fun to play with. I think a lot of people are finding out that’s also a little too convoluted still. I I think like we got

So you’re saying it’s kinda like it’s not quite there yet in terms of practical usage?

It is for very technical people, but most very technical people I I know that know AI well end up not using like autonomous agentic AI that much. They just use like moats like you just do everything especially through your like agent, like a coding agent harness.

As in like you’re just manually prompting it. That’s right. But like if you’re smart and you know what you’re doing, you you kind of manage it that way instead of having

Speaker 1 (15:47.206)
Or like people have like some coordination. I I find that most people using the the sort of open clause style agent agentec AI thing is like it’s more people who are not technical because they they you know they don’t know how to code or they don’t know how to use the the CLI that much. So they ask their agents to do the thing for them or to to coordinate the thing for them. I think what we’re missing is like

a couple more cycles of advancement on that part just to make it a little bit more a little bit less like glue.

So it’s kinda like you see some long term value there, but it’s not

It’s huge value. No, no, no. It’s it’s huge, absolutely huge value. It’s just that like it’s too brittle, right? Like the stuff breaks too much, and then people end up wasting too much of their productive time fixing it, right?

Well, our friend Brad Mills is always basically always posting about this. So he’s like it seems like every second tweet he’s like every second post he’s like, Hey man, my thing broke down somehow and then here’s how I’m gonna try to fix

Speaker 1 (16:52.078)
But I I think like one more to sort of like Hermes is already getting much better. I think open claw is like crap. so like we are like say two, three quarters away from it being substantially better and then also just like easier ways to deploy it so that you’re not like, you know, like spinning your discs trying to figure out how to do stuff. it’s getting there, but like we we definitely went through like a slight sort of like hype cycle, right? Like like a peak.

Now well the classic, you know, Gartner hype cycle like the over inflated expectations and the drop and then it slowly

We we are now going up again, but slowlier.

Okay, cool. Let’s move on. We got Cove as well, so Praveen is doing this you know, phone wallet that can pair with a cold card and stuff. any updates there?

so blu so cove is my favorite sort of like easy phone wallet to send people to. it’s like it’s got a lot of like really nice advanced features for people that need it, but it they’re sort of like tucked away or they’re sort of like invisible, but they’re there, which is nice. You know, it supports all the things that I think a phone wallet should support. and you know, and he keeps on pushing out that’s open SATS grantee, by the way.

Speaker 1 (18:12.246)
And yeah, I mean, you know, they just exit beta for Android. they support now I think iCloud backup. It’s like the the you know, it’s the phone wallet I wish existed, it exists now. I think it’s a good sort of like separate vein from Nunchuck. So Nunchuck’s very powerful, it’s got lots in there, it’s a very good wallet, but then like Cove is sort of like a bit simpler, I can just send new people there.

they can get their their job done, you know, like I use it myself for a bunch of stuff. I think it’s great. Like I think phone wallets is like always nice to have like some some different take on it, especially for UX. and yeah, it’s a good wallet. yeah, so they have they did a full UI refresh. They have a very large user base. you know, very decent phone wallet as well. I I think the hardware wallet support there is pretty sort of like weak.

Blue wallet, they’ve also got an update.

Speaker 1 (19:09.356)
But that’s not their sort of like their their target, right?

That’s not their main thing, I guess. Yeah. But I mean, I think for the for them they’ve been around for years and years and for a long time they were kind of like a default recommendation for a lot of people. So I think that you know it’s kind of in this industry, if you’ve been around for a while, then you tend to you can build up a you know, a a user base or whatever over time. BitKey. So that’s a big one. I know they’ve got a new device version out because the main criticism of BitKey V one was that it doesn’t have a screen and right so this is

concept of clear signing and knowing what you’re signing. So I think that’s the big that’s probably the big new one that it actually has a screen. So that’s cool. any other thoughts on the new bitkey second version of the the device?

They still don’t support real unilateral exit so I can’t recommend.

Yeah, I think they have this emergency exit kit, but

Speaker 1 (19:58.562)
Yeah, I mean you know, like it’s one of those things, it’s like a classic sort of like corporate solution to things where it’s like, you know, we have this thing, but it’s really more for marketing, like, you know, they’re still deploying like the the the firmware for the thing is auto update, so you’re essentially at the mercy of them for all the legs, right? So they control the server, they control the app, they control the firmware. So that’s not great. and then, you know, it’s okay for noobs, but then like you can’t unilaterally exit either without the APK that they control and release.

Like I think the original idea was to have a script like that like for for sparrow or something like that that would sort of like help you exit in case they are no longer or ’cause it’s very common for big corps to kill projects, right? Like it’s not selling. Well great, kill it, right? and and I you know, I’m scared of, you know, people getting shit out of luck there, you know, or they’re considered terrorists now or whatever, right? Like it’s

I’m probably not as against it in the way that I think if it helps someone self custody that would otherwise not have, you know, it’s better than nothing. It’s better than leaving it on an exchange.

For that I agree, but then just use like, you know, Cove. You know, and back up to iCloud. Th there is no difference.

So you would rather they just have a phone like a straight phone hotball to use? Yeah, I guess I yeah, I yeah, I it’s sort of

Speaker 1 (21:15.432)
And and back up to iCloud.

That’s the target market, right? Like if the target market is like people who have like low BTC and just need a place to get started, I mean then then just use something something you don’t even need the hardware.

Yeah, I guess. And I guess the other thing with BitKey is they obviously ’cause they’re a block pr product, then it’s gonna be I I believe it’ll be integrated with like Cash App and things like that. So then the you know, the Cash App, let’s say the noob who buys Bitcoin on Cash App can like it’s all kind of in a slick integrated interface. So maybe that’s also like it’s because of their distribution, right? Because block, square, cash app

I wish they made a a like a Bitcoin wallet where like they don’t need the hardware. Because like if if you’re if you have like noobs buying fifty dollars worth of Bitcoin, right? And you’re gonna force them to buy a two hundred and fifty dollar hardware wallet to to be able to self-cust it’s just like it’s just weird. Like it just doesn’t make sense. Like the like the type of security, the type of price, the type of integration. you know, maybe it will in the future. I mean like I I just hope that they add the you know the

the proper unilateral exit sort of solution.

Stephan Livera (22:25.836)
Yeah, I mean like yeah, in theory I I I agree with that point, but I think also at the same time we have to remember the the pragmatist angle, of course, because look, we can talk about, you know, kind of Bitcoin wallets and things that we know about in our, let’s say, world. But don’t forget, what what are some of the biggest wallets out there? Like trust wallet by Binance or maybe Coinbase’s. You know what I mean? So it’s kind of like you have to remember the scale of this thing because like the size of Cash App and Block is just such a level that they could actually get a lot of they could really move the needle on self-custody.

It is.

Stephan Livera (22:54.86)
with this, you know, as an example. So it’s kind of like in theory, yeah, we want more people to, you know, do it the right way, but there’s kind of that pragmatist angle of like it’s still better than what came before. So you know. So it’s kind of I that’s why I’m sort of in the middle there. But yeah, that fair enough. let’s move on. Crooks, that’s a that’s a th Brazilian open kind of hardware wallet.

Another

Yeah, another open SAT screen T. so yeah, they you know they they they are sort of like progressing, sort of adding more features. and I don’t know if Mnemonic XOR it’s it’s the same as our seed XOR. I haven’t checked. but yeah, like they you know they keep on progressing. It’s an interesting DIY project. I think it’s important to be out there.

Yeah. I think we’ve got here on our list Seed Signer as well. They’ve got Taproot by default.

Yeah, so like I’m not sure if Taproot by default is a good idea. you know, there’s a lot of wallets that don’t support Taproot change addresses correctly. Like there’s still like some some concerns around that. I I think default should still be legacy. but that’s just my personal opinion. it’s nice that they had translations.

Stephan Livera (24:13.708)
Yeah, okay. all right, and then Bitcoin safe. I don’t actually know a lot about this one. I think you might have put this one on the list. Do you do you know much about them? Yeah.

It’s like a another open science grantee. so like, you know, it’s like like it’s nice to see somebody sort of like putting in the effort to go from scratch and build like a whole sort of a software solution for self custody and sort of like kind of like studying, you know, like it’s almost like rebuilding, say Electrum or rebuilding Sparrow or something like that from scratch and and putting a lot of stuff into it.

you know, and that’s that’s his project and he’s got some some interesting sort of like nostal integrations as well.

Gotcha. And I see here they’ve got compact block filters as well. So that’s an interesting one because maybe it allows people to just kind of quickly get up and get started without, you know, having to do the full chain sync and everything. so that’s maybe interesting for again for some users who might not have otherwise, you know, used it with their own node.

and then Electrum updates. I know actually I c funnily enough I caught up with I saw Thomas V from Electrum in Prague recently. so it looks like they’re doing some stuff on you know, trying to get the lightning stuff better and a few things there.

Speaker 1 (25:33.718)
No, I mean that that was it. you know, they they just keep on pushing Lightning. They really wanna make their Lightning sort of semi implementation, semi client sort of version of it work well and you know, they keep on plowing through it.

Yeah, and B D K. Anything on BDK? Bitcoin development kit.

Yeah, so so Bitcoin B BDK3 came out. Well the the release candidate came out and they now have the Kyoto CBF now default. And I mean BDK is amazing, like it really is a great project. Steve runs it. and it’s like a Rust Bitcoin development kit in a way. so if you’re building a wallet, so for example, Cove.

is based on BDK. you know, a lot of other wallets are based on BDK. It’s a good solution so that like a lot of the hard crypto stuff is done by people who like do a lot of reviewing it, understand it. And then, you know, people can build sort of the softer part of the wallet, right? The business logic, what they want to support in terms of Bitcoin features and the UX on top of something that’s well reviewed and used by many people. It’s it’s a great sort of model.

Yeah, so something even from my side, like when I talk to people I I talk to developers in the space and many of them are saying, Hey, yeah, we’re gonna build on BDK or they like to build on, you know, that stack. So it’s it seems to be popular. so yeah, good on them. doing good work out there. what else have I got on my side? yeah, I mean I think if we talk a little bit about the merchant side of the house, right? Like what what are people doing what or what can people do for merchants? I’m noticing

Stephan Livera (27:15.074)
You know, a lot of movement and development around things like SDKs and daemons, right? So as an example, Bark recently launched, right? So they launched Mainnet. I did a podcast with Steven Roos about that. So they have Bark SDK and Bark D, Bark Daemon. So that’s kind of an easy one. People can now do stuff with that. Or Breeze SDK. and then there’s Phoenix D is also like Phoenix Wallet, but the same team behind that have made like Phoenix D as a daemon. That’s been around for a little while. But that’s also, you know, these are options now that if you are a merchant looking to take

payment. these are like daemons that you can integrate or some of them have like integrations with BTC pay server, things like that. so yeah, curious if you have any thoughts. I I mean especially I mean I I presume for CoinKite you’ve kind of got your own setup that you’re doing. Yeah.

I mean we have we have a monster that we’ve built.

But but that’s also because you’ve been around for so long, you know, like if you were starting a new thing today, maybe you would be using one of these too.

Yeah. I I mean like I think the the the thing that I’ve noticed there’s there’s a lot of JavaScript stuff. I’m not a fan, but

Stephan Livera (28:18.016)
So for you it’s a security concern that that’s why you wanna sort of do your o

That’s right. I made a an alpha vibe coded by the way, but it it works. Btpay.org. it’s yeah, it’s a Python version of like a a smaller subset of BTC pay server features. it’s alpha, you know, like if you wanna play with it, play with it. I I did that because I wanted to put like make a few websites that needed to accept payment.

And they were like lighter sites. so you know, so I made that project. It’s kinda fun. You know, if you’re making like a T shirt selling website or you know, needs a quick checkout, try it out. you know, if you see bugs, please report it. but you know, it works.

There you go. Yeah, merchant self custody too, you know, it’s not just individuals, but we want we want obviously merchants to be able to easily self custody their stuff.

Yeah, it is also DB less. It’s very easy to push into a hosting service. It just sort of stores stuff in objects and then saves to file in Redis. what else? so BTC Pay server had some regression. I saw some tweet about it. There were LND Hub issues, but I think they’re they’re coming up with a plugin to support it again. block still pushing a lot of like

Speaker 1 (29:46.018)
merchants to accept Bitcoin. I think it’s automatic default now. Not sure.

So blocks blo as in Yeah, yeah, gotcha. Like square the

Yeah. I I love that that that project, like the the fact that they’re getting merchants to like cause it’s great. I mean like it really closes the loop, right? If I can just go to a merchant and just pay Bitcoin without them knowing is my preferred. I don’t want to be known as a Bitcoiner when I go to a merchant. You know, like I I just want to like pay and leave. so if I can pay a Bitcoin voice without the merchant even knowing, they’ll be like, that’s amazing. Like that’s perfect. Nobody should know what the other person is paying.

Like that’s like absolutely perfect.

Yeah, and I guess even there like people will be using different layers, right? Like yes, Bitcoin on chain and lightning, but nowadays how many other you got Arc, Spark, Liquid, you have cashew and Fetty stuff, like there’s so many of these now that you could be paying off some other thing and actually in the end it’s paying a lightning invoice, you know? So but yeah, I guess to your point it’s more just like not even knowing that you’re paying with Bitcoin at all in any form. but you know.

Speaker 1 (30:52.16)
Yeah, I think that’s that’s like what winning looks like for for Bitcoin. It’s just like, you know, whenever you want to spend it, it’s like available for you to spend. but like, you know, most people shouldn’t sell their BTC anyway. So like i it’s a complicated, like, you know, we want the the capacity, the the ability of of like paying things in Bitcoin, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you wanna spend Bitcoin. it’s it’s an interesting part of the the sort of adoption phase.

Gotcha.

Stephan Livera (31:19.34)
Yeah. I guess the other cool one is I did a little mini interview with Tony Klausing from Stable Channels. Right. So his concept is like this idea of like he he’s making a wallet now and it’s gonna be sort of kind of like a Phoenix wallet. But the cool thing is it allows people to have sort of like a stable balance, but it’s in Bitcoin. It’s not even using a stablecoin. So that’s actually kind of an interesting concept because hey, it’s g it might bring more people to actually use self-custody Bitcoin, as opposed to stable coins, right? Now

I’m not against, you know, tether or whatever, it’s just more like more users, more possibilities, right? And so, and there could be like a sta stability quote unquote receiver and a stability quote unquote provider, like the liquidity provider, and he might be getting paid a small interest rate, but the the user is kind of getting his stability that he wants. And he could, just like a f Phoenix splicing model, you know, earn and spend Bitcoin, and it f hopefully the idea is that it will feel sort of like a Phoenix wallet experience, but you have the ability to flip between Bitcoin

and stable balance, but it’s in Bitcoin. So th I think that’s a cool concept from a you know, Bitcoin self custody

I love the idea. Like I mean seriously, like being able to to hold stables that are not shitcoin based would be like amazing. I’m just very skeptical on like the the collinear sort of issues. You know, they’re both directionally on the same asset and and like when the price moves a lot in either direction, like how those contracts behave.

Yeah. So I think in this case, for now, he is gonna like the the company behind it is gonna be the main stability provider and I think they would, you know, figure out those aspects of it. And I think s I think the the way it it works is that like you you might be putting up a certain amount of Bitcoin above what your you know, the w what the fiat amount is, so there might be certain levels to which it can go and then that’s it. It stops out there, you know? Something like that.

Stephan Livera (33:18.008)
Cool. So, you know, can be handy for people and we’ll see if it gets more self custodial use of Bitcoin. That’s a good thing, right? Like we want more people to use Bitcoin.

I mean like you know, I want I want the the the value and the activity to come to Bitcoin, right? Like however like it’s exactly

Whatever we can do, right? Yeah. And Blink Wallet, I think they just I was I I saw this recently as well. Blink Wallet, so previously called Bitcoin Beach Wallet, they you know, spun off out of Galois and now they’ve gone Spark Wallet as well. They’ve gone non custodial spark accounts. And I think this is just a recent thing. So I haven’t played around with it myself, but doesn’t like Spark have like self custody series

like privacy issues, like you can you can see everybody’s balances or

Yeah, so I think this is if they had a privacy setting, I don’t know the exact the latest on that, but I think some of the people who are plugging in through Spark were able to change that setting, so then like the privacy implication is different. but I don’t know the latest on that. So I’d need to kind of check the detail on that. And obviously Wallet of Satoshi, they’re another example like that. So they have moved their I think another update I saw is that they moved their merchant POS out of the custodial thing they had before into like the Spark

Stephan Livera (34:30.028)
Set up as well. So

Yeah, Primal also uses Spark. it’s a it’s a very good solution like in terms of like liability and legality for wallets to support Lightning. It’s sort of like this sort of middle ground of the state chain stuff where you know like it’s not really custodial, but it’s also sort of like easy, like a custodial one to integrate for wallets, so they’re not like at risk of being considered an MLL.

like or the AML, KYC. So it helps from that perspective. So yeah, again, if if more pe it if it helps more people kind of have a slick good experience, hey, good, ’cause now there’s a chan and they have a unilateral exit, so that’s interesting. But yeah, the conversation around how you know, how much trust are you placing in the Spark operator and the thing like that, it it that can get a bit of a nuanced conversation and people can sort of argue about like, which is better, like is Arc better or is Spark better or whatever?

S B

Stephan Livera (35:27.004)
There was one more update I think worth mentioning is core v30 and v30.1. They had a wallet migration bug, so those binaries got pulled from the core website. and I think they’ve re-released them as version 30.2, and that sort of should so essentially like make sure you make a little backup of your wallet.data.dat if you do use core

Horror wallet before you migrate. That was kind of like a a biggie. And it was unfortunate because he was, you know, mangled in some of the drama.

Gotcha. Yeah. speaking of new wallets also, I guess I should mention, I think on the Bark side, there’s two new ones there. I think there’s Noah wallet.

and that’s I think by Hampus and I believe the other guy’s name is Nitesh, but it’s a it’s a Bark wallet. I had a quick play around with that one actually. It was pretty slick. and then there’s this other one called Arke wallet, like A-R-K-E. So that’s like another Bark wallet. I haven’t played around with that one. I think that’s iPhone-based. But you know, different options for like phone self-custody, like, but with using Bark and Lightning stuff. and then

Stephan Livera (36:38.7)
Yeah, I guess chatting I guess any other hardware updates. sorry, that was the other one. Trezor and Tropic Square. I think there was a laser fault injection vulnerability. from what I can see, the funds were still safe because it was one of three independent security layers. and I believe it was Yeah, so that’s

That’s a huge problem. So, like, you know, so Tropic Square trying to make an open secure element, View One. you know, it’s like a shitcoin-friendly secure element, so it doesn’t support Bitcoin Curve. very unfortunate. And then, you know, it did get owned, fully owned. and the other secure element that they have is the same one on the UbiKey, which it has been owned as well.

Maybe they have different configurations and that’s why it was not exposed on this hack. But if I have to guess, you know, like the ledger guys will probably produce a full ledger owned very soon of both secure elements and expose the seed. it’s kinda nice that they added two secure elements. They you know, like it’s nice to see people following the lead.

But again, it’s I I think it was a poor choice of secure element. The UBE key secure element was already owned when it was chosen. and but you know like it it is it is incredibly better than the previous non-secure element Trezors.

I see, yeah, and I mean just reading the Trezor blog, they’re saying your funds remain protected, the vulnerability in one of our secure element chips in Trezor Safe Seven, which Tropic Square is disclosing, doesn’t give access to your funds, neither remotely or with physical possession. they’re saying it’s a professional complex attack, disassembly and desoldering, backside decapsulation, specialized lab equipment and deep expertise to find and ex execute. So yeah, so anyway, it looks like the Ledger Donjon team and Tropic Square are you know have put that out. but

Stephan Livera (38:39.894)
You know, there’s always yeah.

I love the dunjunk. I love that they spend the resources that they do trying to break it. You know, they broke Mark Three, right? Like it’s like they they broke some of our devices too. It’s like this is great. Like we we need that. You know, they really forced the secure element sort of like chipmakers, right, to to like up their game.

Yeah. I mean hey, the White Hat hackers needed to because you’d rather the white hat hacker finds it before the black hat guy finds it. Exactly. So I guess that’s the way to think about that one. also I know your new device, the ARCA device. Let’s talk a little bit about that. And it’s not strictly Bitcoin, but it’s also kind of digital I guess sovereignty backup kind of do you want to give give a quick overview for that for anyone who doesn’t know?

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:24.374)
So we we sort of identified this problem a few years ago. We just didn’t have the right way of sort of packaging it economically and sort of like conceptually, but it sort of finally kind of came together. You everybody has like digital secrets now, right? That they need to keep, like maintain and have access to. Right. and that’s not a simple task, right? Like keeping something digital available but also not like exposed is a big deal. Right? Like

What do you do with like bank account numbers or you know, like instructions on how to recover your seeds or the seeds that have less Bitcoin in them, for example? Like what do you do with this information, right? Like do you do you put it in an encrypted drive and you just leave like a password for the family? Like it’s it’s not ideal, right? And then there’s the fact that you need access to this from different countries, like everybody’s digital nomad now, right? we cannot trust our computers.

And we cannot trust the cloud. So we figure, hey, why don’t we create a device that’s sort of like sort solve this exact sort of problem? Right? It’s like an arca. Like arca is a concept of like this this box where you have like special things in it and you sort of like survives you and survives your sort of generation. and so this this little box is a network.

network connected device. we call it a personal data haven. and you put it on on your network, you set it up, it works over I won’t get into the details, but the point is it gives you secure access to it. And then you have a password manager, you have a password server for like for example, I don’t know, we’ll still decide if it’s gonna be Bitwarden or XCPass. So you’re gonna have a password server on it.

you’re gonna have inherenting inherent solutions. so sorry, inheritance solutions in there. So deadmen switches essentially.

Stephan Livera (41:28.376)
Yeah. And so is the ARCA device itself internet connected and power connected? Like you would leave it yes like kind of you know, plugged in with power and internet is on, but it’s like meant to be segregated away.

Yeah, it it works like a HSM really. Like a so what you have is like very, very, very harden hardware on it. So like you uses like secure elements, uses we ported free BSD to the embedded platform. it’s like really hardcore, right? So that you can have secrets in it. What would I put a bare seed there that’s for like, you know, millions of dollars? Probably not, right? But

You can encrypt and then put encrypted blobs in there as well. Everything that’s in there is encrypted and then is encrypted in different envelopes as well. It’s it’s really, really secure. and what’s cool about it, and like real innovation on this, is on top of being physically secure, you can have multiple boxes in different jurisdictions. They find each other and they mirror each other. So

They have multi-tenant, right? So you can have multiple tenants there. So you can have your tenant, you can have your other tenant, and then you can have your mother’s tenant in there, right? And then you can choose which tenants sync with the other box that you have maybe sitting in your mother’s house in a different country, and maybe another one, you know, being hosted but like in a data center or hosted in some other place.

Yeah. And then how would you manage this? Like in terms of pairing, let’s say I’ve got whatever, th three devices in different places, like how do they pair and how do you kind of manage what you store in there? Like how’s how’s that gonna work?

Speaker 1 (43:06.602)
It’s so you’re gonna get a a UI, right? Where you can just choose you know, like what kind of secrets you wanna store in there. and you just tell the box which box to sort of use to mirror and they they talk to each other and they they shake hands with each other and then they immediately mirror each other. That’s it. Like it it’s very easy in that sense. So

So then what’s cool is that you get high availability of this very important data that you want to have for a long time. Because electronic devices die, right? Like I mean, we’re using the best components we can, but realistically speaking, things can die, right? They can burn.

Yeah. Device failure, et cetera. Yeah, it happens.

Exactly. So you know you have two, three boxes of this in the world. They’re mirrored to each other every time, so atomically updated. and then you know, if something happens to one, the other ones continue. They also support remote hints, so you can call up your mother and say, like, do this on the front panel, and the box comes back up. we we’re gonna support it so that like there’s a few sort of wizards for you to set up so you can set up as an individual.

You can set up as a third party, like setting up for somebody else, or you can set up as like a hosting for it as well. and like ideally, you know, like when I pass, my kids have a a key that I left somewhere and that key only works if I don’t do the check in for the deadman switch, for example.

Stephan Livera (44:34.444)
Yeah, okay. So yeah, I think it’s kind of interesting to see this evolution of how where things are going in terms of digital sovereignty and things like that. and then where it ties in with the Bitcoin side of things like and maybe this w I guess like we like I said before, this one may be not strictly Bitcoin related, but a lot of Bitcoiners would probably be interested in

I mean Bitcoiners get it, right? Like it’s like the for Bitcoiners, this is a no-brainer, right? Like you need a place to store like your phone seeds, for example, right? If you’re not using BP85, right? Or you need or or the BP85, because it’s gonna have a BP85 generator as well. It’s all seed-based, by the way. So the backup of the ARCA key.

Is like a seed. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. And people are gonna start using Yeah, and sometimes because of the familiarity that people have with like writing writing down your twelve words, then people take that same concept and apply that in other areas so that you can back up your key in a similar way.

I mean, we’ve seen so many hacks of like password managers and like you you just can’t trust your stack anymore. Like it’s really bad. you know, we’re building this for ourselves. The first one is gonna be a founders edition. we’re gonna probably make a smaller batch. I need it, I want it. Doc Hex needs it, he wants it. We’re gonna make it, you know. Hopefully enough people want it, you know. Like if you feel like you want something, you know, on the

And maybe Maxi’s Bitcoiners out there will be into it. I just remembered also there’s some updates on FrostSnap. So as you as I’m sure you know, NVK, there’s this technique called Frost. And it’s like kind of like multi-sig, but actually it looks like single sig on-chain, but using, you know, cryptography. and so these guys are doing FrostSnap, which is a hardware device or multiple devices, and you kind of kind of do this hardware wallet centipede sort of thing. They they they go into each other and then they

Stephan Livera (46:22.956)
set up like that. So they’ve got some updates on that. I think and actually I met Nick and Lloyd and Adam from the Frost Snap team recently in Prague as well. They put out some updates. so it looks like they’ve got on device backup check, they’ve got a verify address dialogue, you know, backup reminders. and so the thing like the thing with them is they’ve got their own wallet on the phone, right? Their own phone app, let’s say.

And you you you plug in the devices that way. I think they don’t have like the remote signing thing yet. So as I was asking Nick as an example, let’s say I if I’m in Dubai and he’s in Melbourne and we want to do FrostSnap together. We can’t yet right now, but they are going to build that. but it seems like for now it’s kind of that’s like just a different paradigm, right? Like it’s just kind of you got the let’s say Sparrow Wallet, Electrum, Nunchuck, kind of Liana sort of multi sig paradigm, with you know, with your different devices, and then you’ve got sort of FrostSnap, which is a

kind of a different paradigm because they don’t necessarily all play together. Like you need different device types for that, right? So I’m curious what you see on the Frost side of things.

I think I think it’s cool. I think it’s very early. but somebody’s gotta do it. Props to them for doing it. I I think it’s fun to to watch. But again, like it’s like I you know, as you know, I was a big fanboy of Frost. I think the reality is that like you know, Path Dependency, I think MooseGig 2 sort of like kinda like one in that sense. you know

being worse or better, however you wanna see it based on your preferences. But like I don’t know. I think it’s cool. The device looks cute, you know, like they got the little, you know, centipede going there. You just attach one to the other.

Stephan Livera (48:09.114)
And you do like your three of five or your two of three or whatever at for the initial setup and then you go around and collect it’s not actually a PSBT but conceptually it’s sort of like you you do you go around to your different locations. Let’s say you’ve got five locations and you need to go to three of them to to get the signature from your phone.

I think the only thing missing there is a secure element. Like they they need to up their game on that sense. But it’s early, you can’t do everything in the first version, right? but you know it does hold keys, so you you do need you do need something there, especially if you’re gonna be USB connected. I find it fun that they did serial over USB in their own spec there, so they could pass on the the comms between the devices. it’s cool. And I I think once you have like the again, like the remote signer thing that

You know, they mention I think it’s gonna become more useful. I’d I’d love to see where this goes.

Yeah. yeah, I think those are the key updates. Trying to keep it, you know, quick and snappy for people so they get some updates. Any other last bits and pieces you want to share before we wrap this up?

no, I I think I think that’s it. I think Arca was the only thing so it was like very new from us. it’s ArcaSafes dot com. you know, people use the password manager on code card, they’re gonna love this. and you know, we’d love to see how people use it. And if you you know go there, put your email there if you want updates for it.

Speaker 1 (49:35.892)
what else? check out OpenSats. We have a lot of new sort of like blog posts about the stuff that we support there. And that’s I think that’s all I got for today, Livero. Cool.

We’ll we’ll leave it there. So listeners, let us know what you think. Do you want us to keep doing this format? we’ll we’ll keep experimenting with this and trying this out, the quarterly self-custody update. If you like it, make sure you share it out there so people can learn about Bitcoin. follow NVK and of course follow me. and that’s it from us. See you guys.

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