# I'm leaving Foundation and joining Cake Wallet It's time for a new chapter in my journey building freedom tech, and I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be jumping in to help Vik run Cake as VP of Operations starting in September. ## Why Cake? I've known Vik for many years in the space, and have been watching from the sidelines as he's worked hard to bring together an amazing team to build out a wallet that prioritizes ease-of-use and powerful privacy no matter what cryptocurrency people prefer. That all started with being the first Monero wallet on iOS, and has rapidly grown to being a cross-platform, multi-cryptocurrency wallet used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. The best part? Cake Wallet has been paving the way in the privacy space for many years, including the latest push to be the first mobile wallet to include Silent Payments for Bitcoin and MWEB for Litecoin. My vision for Cake is to carry this privacy-first vision even further, continuing to push the envelope and let users access powerful privacy features with an intuitive, beautiful user experience that makes privacy easy. The first three objectives I have will be improving and expanding Silent Payments support (especially improving the sync experience!), building out an amazing (and privacy-preserving) Lightning experience, and fine-tuning and improving the existing Cake Wallet that you all know and love across the board. I can't wait to step into this larger role, especially with friends that I've already gotten the chance to meet and get to know over the years. I'm also thrilled to be able to dedicate a bit more time to expanding access and ease-of-use for Monero, especially in the wake of the takedown of Samourai Wallet and the broad attacks against Bitcoin privacy. Monero is a more important tool than ever, and Cake has been a key part of making Monero more useful over the years. ## Grateful for Foundation I have nothing but amazing things to say about Foundation and the incredible people I've gotten to work with so closely over the past two years. We've gotten the chance to build the best Bitcoin hardware wallet out there in Passport, and turn Envoy from a simple companion app for Passport to a powerful standalone mobile wallet with the best coin control in the space. I especially wanted to shout out Zach Herbert and @qna, as they have been close friends and allies, giving me the chance to get started in the space and grow into what became a much larger role than originally planned with Foundation. Zach has gone above and beyond to empower me over the past two years, and his tireless efforts to drive Foundation forward and ensure we ship the best possible products has been inspiring. @qna is the reason I'm even in Bitcoin in the first place, and was the key voice of reason that helped me understand the how and why of privacy in Bitcoin, as well as the power (and necessity) of going no-KYC-only. We've built a great friendship over the past two years and I'm honored to be able to have learned so much from him. This has to be the most bittersweet move of my life, but I'm thrilled with the new prospects at Cake and know that those taking over in my place at Foundation are going to bring a unique approach to help them take the next step forward as well. Now let's get back to building 🫡 P.S. - Keep an eye out, Cake and Foundation will be working closely together in the near future 👀

Summarizing my thoughts on ecash For some reason this ecash trend seems to be gaining steam instead of going away, so I'll try my best to detail my thoughts on ecash into one post. 1. The incentives are broken Ecash finds itself between a rock and a hard place. For users to trust the mint, they need to know that the people behind the mint are trustworthy. If the people running the mint reveal their identities (or even just nyms), they're a trivial target for regulators and law enforcement as it's clear a mint is an MSB. If the people behind a mint don't reveal their identities or nyms, users of that mint are subject to trivial rug pulls with no recourse. Which do you prefer as a user? Mint operator rug pulls or government rug pulls? If a mint had been targeted like Samourai Wallet was, instead of just a potential privacy loss, all users would have lost all of their Bitcoin. 2. Ecash is not "self-custodial" For some reason this concept of ecash being "self-custodial" is a thing, merely because the tokens themselves are self-custodied (and require proper backups of seed phrases etc.) While the lines get a bit weird, it's important to separate two things: 1. The asset people want is Bitcoin, not ecash tokens. 2. The asset people give up custody on is Bitcoin. The ecash tokens themselves are completely worthless IOUs without the Bitcoin behind them, so even if I can take custody of my ecash tokens, I have 100% given up custody of my sats to a third-party. Because of this, talking about ecash as self-custodial is disingenuous -- no one wants empty IOUs, they want Bitcoin. When they use ecash they do not have custody of their Bitcoin. 3. Ecash still requires all of the hurdles of Bitcoin self-custody The hardest hurdle for many people to adopting Bitcoin is the simple first step -- writing down 12 words and making sure not to lose them. With ecash you still have this single greatest barrier of entry as you must backup a seed phrase or secret in order to restore your ecash tokens. 4. There is no incentive for custodians to implement ecash While a custodian could switch to ecash out of the goodness of their heart, the incentives are broken for custodians. Not only does ecash harm the UX their users are used to (not having to store a secret seed phrase), it also introduces additional infrastructure complexity. Instead of just running a database, now they have to run additional mint software to provide their users with tokens, and handle support cases where users lose their tokens. In theory a custodian could just also store the seed phrase for their users, but then have we actually improved on custodians at all? They even have custody of the ecash tokens in that case. 5. Custody is a line that cannot be crossed The core of what makes Bitcoin unique is that we can actually take custody of it ourselves, gaining immense freedom and self-sovereignty through a bit of personal responsibility. Even though I am a massive proponent of building better privacy tools, sacrificing custody to get better privacy is a non-option for me. Surely we can do better and build privacy tools on top of Bitcoin (or directly into Bitcoin's consensus layer) that allow us to have both privacy and self-sovereignty via self-custody. I will not give up custody of my Bitcoin, no matter what, and you shouldn't either. "Better custodians" are just custodians with extra steps, and still strip us of self-sovereignty and thus freedom. 6. Time is a more scarce resource than even Bitcoin Even though I have been very outspoken on what I view as a pointless venture, I am not here to stop anyone from building what they enjoy in the space. Devs working on ecash are free to do so as of course I have no control over them, though I fear that time spent on improving custodians is time that we will not get back. It's clear that the US gov and many in the EU are seeking to ramp up their attacks on Bitcoin privacy and self-custody, and our time to build tools to route around them is growing shorter and shorter. P.S. - None of what I write is a direct attack on any ecash dev, and I have immense respect and personal relationships with most of the people working on this stuff. Respect for an individual doesn't have to mean I agree with them on every avenue they pursue.

If the only solution for Bitcoiners to have private payments is custodians (be it e-cash, Fedimints, etc. as is all the rage) then Bitcoin will simply be dead for me. Feels like the ultimate cop-out. Custody is the line in the sand that cannot be crossed. Custody not only opens up immense risk for loss of funds, it also makes these tools far less resilient to adversarial environments. Can "they" stop every Bitcoiner from keeping 12 words safe? No. Can "they" stop a few popular mints from operating? Absolutely.

Say hello to

Silent Payments

A simple site detailing Silent Payments, their value, their usage, and their current wallet support.

Wanting to learn more about Silent Payments, see which wallets support them, or find out how to integrate them into your wallet? I've built out a website with all of that info and more to do what I can to speed up Silent Payments adoption.

Everything actionable you need to know about what this indictment means for you as a Samourai Wallet (SW) or Whirlpool user 👇 As a Samourai Wallet user (no Dojo) Unfortunately, the architecture of SW meant that your xpub (a master public key, allowing anyone holding it to derive all your past/present/future Bitcoin addresses) was at some point in time held by Samourai, and could now possible in the hands of the DOJ. Though it's a worst-case scenario, you should assume that your xpub was compromised, and thus all previous mixes you have done have been unwound and are now traceable. You should also assume that the gov can now derive all past/present/future addresses of yours and track movement of funds if so desired. In addition, Samourai's coordinator and backend sync server was seized, and so SW will no longer sync, show received funds, or allow sending funds out. As such, you have to migrate funds to another wallet like @SparrowWallet following the docs here: https://docs.samourai.io/wallet/restore-recovery#export-to-external-wallet In addition, I would recommend migrating funds to a new seed phrase to prevent anyone holding the xpub from seeing all future received/spent funds. You should also disable automatic updates in the Play Store (if used) to ensure no malicious updates are pushed. As a Samourai Wallet user (using your own Dojo) Thankfully, you avoided having your xpub potentially compromised. The worst case scenario for you is that your previous mixes may not have the full anon set you expected if non-Dojo users xpubs were compromised. You will still be able to sync/send/receive from your Samourai Wallet app, but should also migrate funds eventually as no further updates will come out for Samourai Wallet. If you want to migrate, use the docs below: https://docs.samourai.io/wallet/restore-recovery#export-to-external-wallet You should, however, disable automatic updates in the Play Store (if used) to ensure no malicious updates are pushed. As a Sparrow Wallet user Thankfully, you avoided having your xpub potentially compromised as well. The worst case scenario for you is that your previous mixes may not have the full anon set you expected if non-Dojo/Sparrow users xpubs were compromised. There is no real need to rotate to a new wallet etc, and Sparrow is still an excellent option. Unfortunately you will no longer be able to mix in Sparrow as the Samourai coordinator was seized. Next steps for privacy If you (like me) relied on Samourai Wallet for privacy on Bitcoin, it's time to look elsewhere sadly. As of today I have two recommendations: Use Monero for spending, keep using Bitcoin for savings Yes, this isn't Bitcoin, but its by far the most used and most practical privacy coin out there with strong (and growing) ways to swap in/out of it without a centralized, KYC exchange. My recommendation is buying enough to cover your normal spending of Bitcoin for a month at least, and spend out of that lump sum as needed. Learn more: getmonero.org Where to get Monero: bisq.network Trocador.app In Cake Wallet's exchange feature Wallets: Feather Wallet Cake Wallet Monerujo Wallet Merchants that accept Monero: monerica.com cryptwerk.com/pay-with/xmr/ Use JoinMarket JoinMarket is a decentralized Coinjoin protocol that brings together peers to mix funds together, gaining strong privacy without relying on a central coordinator, without giving fees to a central entity, etc. The best way to get started today is using the new UI built around JoinMarket, @jamapporg: jamapp.org Have any more questions? Drop them below and I'll do my best to answer them.

Working on making a guide for running this with phoenixd directly in Docker Compose with @bumi! Really excited to get this up. View quoted note →

1M sats on offer 👀👀👀 View quoted note →

Big week ahead, kicking off with a brand new domain and website for all of our freedom tech at

Foundation

Passport Prime - Secure your entire digital life

Secure your Bitcoin, 2FA codes, security keys, important files, and additional seeds – all in a single, easy to use device.

🥳 Check it out and let me know what you love/hate/would change on the new site! Good suggestions might just get some sats/piconeros sent their way (zaps make things damn easy) 😉 View quoted note →

Favorite Nostr client just got way better 🧡 View quoted note →

Been secretly enjoying RBF and the new address and amount formats for what feels like an eternity 😅 Now it’s live for all you lovely Envoy users out there on all platforms 🫡 View quoted note →

There is no second best when it comes to a full LN node in your pocket 🔥 View quoted note →

Who do I need to follow here? My “Latest” feed is a bit dead a lot of the time. Help me fix it 🫂

CANNOT WAIT to do my first in-person workshop teaching Bitcoin self-custody from scratch alongside @QnA. If you're in NYC, get your tickets ASAP before it's full! View quoted note →

Stop trying to use dice-rolled seeds unless you're an expert ❌ Just had yet another person (hard to count the total now) reach out about a low-entropy seed they generated and were allowed to import into a certain hardware wallet. A lot of the blame for these lost funds falls on influencers who shill users on overly-complex security setups without properly explaining the massive risks and tradeoffs associated for the average user. What happened: Less than 10min after funds were sent to what they thought was secure storage, they were swept to an attackers address. They used <10 dice rolls, meaning the private key had <25bits of entropy when the minimum for strong security is 50 dice rolls (128 bits of entropy). Wallets should not allow a user to import a seed that they know is completely insecure. Staying safe: As I have said many times, if you don't know the ins and outs of dice rolls, entropy, verification of the resulting seed offline, etc. please do not use dice rolls alone for seed generation. 99.99999% of users are better off allowing good, multi-source, open-source random number generation like we do on Passport. To date I have heard of zero compromised seeds that were generated using on-board RNG due to entropy issues, while there are countless examples of users losing funds due to improper dice rolls. Stay safe out there, folks.

Bringing back #Bitcoin #SkepticismSundays 😎 One of the things that showed me the intellectual honesty of the Monero community and helped to force the community to stay grounded in reality and always laser focused on their core ethos was their weekly "Skepticism Sunday" Reddit threads. These threads allowed the community to come together, ask hard and skeptical questions about the design of Monero, the privacy provided, the economic approach, and much more. In my time in Bitcoin I've never seen anything similar, but the nuanced and high-signal crowd on Nostr seems like a perfect fit to fire things up and see how it goes. The goal of this thread (which I'll post weekly on Sunday's) is for discussing the uncertainties, shortcomings, and concerns some may have about Bitcoin. Things like what makes it difficult for you to use Bitcoin, what pain-points you have, etc. NOT the positive aspects of it. Discussing things with a critical thinking approach and level-headed discussion helps us learn where Bitcoin and its community can improve and go from there. P.S. -- I try to take a break from social media on Sundays so I will follow up and reply whwre I can tomorrow!

If we can't have honest, divergent opinions about the state of Nostr without people being abject assholes about it, then my bearishness will 100% prove true. Being able to openly discuss issues with each other without purely strawman, insulting replies is vital to the success of any project like this, even more so because its success relies on social networks. Read through the replies to this and enjoy a healthy response to criticism 😅 View quoted note →

It’s official, I’m on #TeamNerdMiner ⛏️ Had to pick one of these up and support the amazing work of @bitmaker Absolutely love the educational aspects of this, and a great way to play with @Public_Pool_BTC more as well. Can buy your own here, great way to support the amazing dev behind the NerdMiner project!

Bitronics

NerdMiner Crystal Edition

We are celebrating reaching 78KH/s on the NerdMiner! That's why we created the Crystal edition. The NerdMiner Crystal edition is a limited edition ...

# Taproot didn’t cause Ordinals ❌ I've seen the view that "Taproot caused/enabled Ordinals" commonly mentioned across Twitter, and it's one that can be extremely harmful. Many in the space would love to further ossify (prevent change) in Bitcoin and use Ordinals "spam" as the reason for doing so, but I'd argue that that would be the worst possible outcome from this situation. This needs a lengthy explanation to properly grasp what's at play here, though, so let's get into the fun details. ## Arbitrary data in Bitcoin has always been possible Something most people don't understand is that a system like Bitcoin is built for data storage, it's just intended for monetary data. This design made it possible from day one to include arbitrary (arbitrary) data into the blockchain, either through methods like OP_RETURN (a good place for storing arbitrary data as it can be easily pruned) or in tweaked pubkeys (a bad place for storing arbitrary data, as it cannot be pruned). Some examples of this: - Satoshi inscribed a newspaper headline in the genesis block coinbase (

The Mempool Open Source Project®

Explore the full Bitcoin ecosystem with The Mempool Open Source Project®. See the real-time status of your transactions, get network info, and more.

- Luke Dash Jr. used his pool to inscribe Bible texts and prayers in 2011 in the coinbase (

Eligius miners aware of prayers in block headers?

Eligius miners aware of prayers in block headers?

- Someone added the entire Bitcoin whitepaper to the UTXO set in 2013 (

Bitcoin Stack Exchange

How is the whitepaper decoded from the blockchain (Tx with ~1000x m of n multisig outputs)

The whitepaper is apparently encoded at 54e48e5f5c656b26c3bca14a8c95aa583d07ebe84dde3b7dd4a78f4e4186e713, which is an m of n multisig Tx with 947 o...

All of these happened before both SegWit and Taproot, and there are many more cases of this type of data storage on Bitcoin. ## But I thought Taproot enabled this? Unfortunately, there is a common misunderstanding (thanks for the troll name [@TaprootWizards](https://twitter.com/TaprootWizards) 😅) that Taproot enabled this type of data storage, thus opening the way for Ordinals "spam." In reality, this type of arbitrary data storage on Bitcoin has always been possible, but was made much cheaper to do with the introduction of SegWit in 2017. SegWit was a major upgrade and bug fix for Bitcoin that enabled the Lightning network to be built and included a 3MB "witness" data allowance within each block w/ reduced fees for data to incentivize spending UTXOs (therefore making them prunable). More on SegWit in a fantastic post from [@River](https://twitter.com/River) here: <https://river.com/learn/what-is-segwit/> This incentivized portion of each transaction (called "witness" data) is intended for things like Bitcoin scripts, but can be used to store any data as long as it's done the "right" way. Specifically, Ordinals store them in an "envelope" between two opcodes, allowing the data to count as witness data and get the discount. This storage method was possible before SegWit, but now saves on fees in comparison to pre-SegWit usage. While this of course was not the intent of SegWit, it underlines the simple fact that if someone wants to store arbitrary data in a blockchain, they will find ways to do it. ## Does that make SegWit bad? If your first reaction is then to want to raise a pitchfork and campaign for no more changes in Bitcoin, remember this -- without the SegWit soft-fork there would be no Lightning network, no discount for users consolidating UTXOs, and instead users would be incentivized to create more un-prunable UTXOs as it's cheaper to create than to consume UTXOs w/o SegWit. Additionally, Ordinals being stored in witness data allows those who run a node to easily prune them and not store them in RAM, unlike any method that leverages pubkey tweaking or other types of stenography to include arbitrary data on-chain. This means that the actual impact of Ordinals on those who run a node is drastically minimized versus other arbitrary data storage methods. ## If we didn't have SegWit, Ordinals would all use the UTXO set It's extremely like that if we had never included the SegWit soft-fork into Bitcoin that the Ordinals craze would still have happened, and along with it a drastically worse outcome for the blockchain. In this alternate reality, Ordinals (and all similar NFTs) would likely be inscribed directly into the UTXO set, similar to how Stamps function today. Some within the Bitcoin community have been asking for a removal of the SegWit witness data discount to force Ordinals to pay the same fees as all other users per byte. Unfortunately, this would have two extremely detrimental side-effects: it would disincentivize healthy UTXO management (consolidating UTXOs vs creating new ones) and incentivize Ordinals to be put in the UTXO set directly. While putting the data into the UTXO set does cost those creating these NFTs drastically more, it also means that those running a Bitcoin node cannot prune the data, no matter what. Bitcoin relies on nodes being able to retain the entire UTXO set in order to verify transactions properly and prevent double-spends, and any data within that UTXO set must be kept in perpetuity. That would be drastically worse for those running a Bitcoin node, and makes the Ordinals in SegWit witness data pale in comparison when it comes to negative impact on Bitcoin nodes. ## So what can we do about it? The solution to reducing the cost of using Bitcoin is not censoring Ordinals (something that isn't even technologically possible, BTW), but rather is finally building solutions to Bitcoin's long-term scaling. Ordinals have highlighted something most of us knew would happen -- base-layer fees would become untenably high, as they have to for Bitcoin to be secure long-term. In order for the average person to use Bitcoin, we need powerful scaling solutions like layer twos, and unfortunately Lightning in it's current form isn't the final solution. Lightning relies on every channel-owner (and thus user when done in a non-custodial manner) being able to settle back on-chain to resolve disputes, something that isn't economically feasible in a realistic fee environment. ## The solution? Covenants Enter covenants, an improvement to Bitcoin that has been a long-time in the making and is finally picking up the steam it deserves in the space. Covenants enable both improvements to Lightning that make it drastically more scalable, and new layer two networks to be built that have different (often better) trade-offs compared to Lightning. As this post is already getting a bit too long I won't dive into the details of covenants, but instead ask you to spend a few minutes going through this fantastic set of resources on covenants to better understand what they enable: <https://covenants.info> Have questions? **ASK THEM!** The best way for the broader Bitcoin "rough consensus" layer to work is for more people to step up, learn, and ask questions as they go.