Max's rule for Lightning, Liquid, Ark, Spark or whatever comes next: it's for spending, and he only keeps what he's comfortable losing on it. Roy builds on these systems for a living. "I would second your advice. Don't put your life savings on layer two." Hardware wallets aren't perfect and on-chain multisig isn't perfect either, he says, which is exactly why the trust and security models need improving on every front. @MaxUM

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Bitcoin in Every App

A weekly live show covering all things Freedom Tech with Max, Q and Seth. This week we

Roy is honest about who Breez is for: a mainstream audience that doesn't really care about privacy. Lightning was his way to push Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. "If I was a privacy concerned person, I wouldn't have used Lightning, period." He ran a large node on the network, did the maths and ran the tests. Most of the flow goes through very few nodes, a hub and spoke model a long way from peer to peer. @Breez ⚡️

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Bitcoin in Every App

A weekly live show covering all things Freedom Tech with Max, Q and Seth. This week we

How Washington got to try Bitcoin Fog: an undercover agent mixed $250 from his office, then told the service it came from selling ecstasy. The appeals court said that "furthered Bitcoin Fog's ability to launder the funds of all users." Prosecutors are now pointing that ruling at Roman Storm. Follow the logic and every district where one user mixes becomes a place to charge the developer. That reaches coinjoin too.

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$93M Drained From Tampered Ledger Devices

A weekly news show informing you on the latest in Bitcoin, privacy and open source tech, hosted by Ungovernables, Max and Q. AOB KeyOS v1.4.1 relea...

Max spent years telling people to go all in. Rent, don't buy. Life savings in. He wouldn't give that advice to himself, or anyone he cares about, today. His test: if a hack has ever made your heart drop and you thought you were finished, you've got too much in Bitcoin. Or, as Q adds, your self-custody setup isn't good enough.

Ungovernable

$93M Drained From Tampered Ledger Devices

A weekly news show informing you on the latest in Bitcoin, privacy and open source tech, hosted by Ungovernables, Max and Q. AOB KeyOS v1.4.1 relea...

Max used to think multisig wrecked your privacy. Then @BlackCoffee flipped it for him. Someone breaks in and demands you move the funds. If your defence is a passphrase stored in another country, you're relying on them believing you. With multisig you can prove it: "I can't fucking do it, and here's why."

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$93M Drained From Tampered Ledger Devices

A weekly news show informing you on the latest in Bitcoin, privacy and open source tech, hosted by Ungovernables, Max and Q. AOB KeyOS v1.4.1 relea...

Passphrase maxis won't like this one. After five years of official Bitcoin support, Q says the single biggest cause of lost funds, or the panic of thinking you've lost them, is passphrases. By a country mile. Case sensitivity, spaces, special characters, not knowing what a fingerprint is. Get one detail wrong and there's zero fault tolerance. @QnA

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$93M Drained From Tampered Ledger Devices

A weekly news show informing you on the latest in Bitcoin, privacy and open source tech, hosted by Ungovernables, Max and Q. AOB KeyOS v1.4.1 relea...

"I would be the first person to call myself out." A year ago Q's advice was that multisig probably isn't for everybody. After this year, and after the Ledger implant, it's changed: for long-term storage, single sig with or without a passphrase isn't enough. Buy direct, always. But the only thing that would have survived every attack this year is multi-vendor multisig. @QnA

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$93M Drained From Tampered Ledger Devices

A weekly news show informing you on the latest in Bitcoin, privacy and open source tech, hosted by Ungovernables, Max and Q. AOB KeyOS v1.4.1 relea...

Where the foam padding behind a Ledger Nano X screen should be: a microcontroller with its markings scraped off, a Nordic cellular modem, an eSIM and a custom antenna. It's wired into the lines that carry data to the screen. When setup shows your 24 words, it reads them and sends them to the attacker over its own mobile connection. It never goes near the secure chip, so the device passes the genuine check. Ledger's own docs say the check can't detect this.

Ungovernable

$93M Drained From Tampered Ledger Devices

A weekly news show informing you on the latest in Bitcoin, privacy and open source tech, hosted by Ungovernables, Max and Q. AOB KeyOS v1.4.1 relea...

Max's take on the Liquid hack: you look at a federation and assume you'd need collusion for anything to go wrong, then something nobody saw coming sideswipes it. Roy, who sat on the federation, says people did see it coming. Liquid's core principles should have prevented the attack, but a federation member was allowed to take funds into a hot wallet. "I didn't know about it, and I was a federation member. But other federation member knew about it and didn't do anything about it." He calls that an execution problem. @Breez ⚡️

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Bitcoin in Every App

A weekly live show covering all things Freedom Tech with Max, Q and Seth. This week we

"If Boltz couldn't sustain the attack, it means something has dramatically changed in the ecosystem." Roy counts Michael and Kilian as close friends and doesn't think there's a more capable team in Bitcoin. That's why he reads their hack as a warning to everyone else. Small teams are up against AI-generated attacks funded by serious teams and governments, burning tokens and money to find a way in. Bitcoin is the low hanging fruit: open source, it's about money, and plenty of projects run hot wallets. He expects consolidation, and says this is only the first wave. @Boltz - Non-Custodial Bitcoin Exchange

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Bitcoin in Every App

A weekly live show covering all things Freedom Tech with Max, Q and Seth. This week we

"Lightning is not a good privacy solution. It's very concentrated." Roy from Breez pointed at Blink's hack report from the day before: attackers trying to launder funds through Lightning. Then the numbers. About nine nodes process 80 to 90% of the volume, and anyone who gets hold of those nodes learns a lot about the flow of funds. Ask any LLM to map the network and you'll see the same thing. Max has spent years arguing with people who say Lightning beats Whirlpool and Monero for privacy. His reaction says the rest. @Breez ⚡️

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Bitcoin in Every App

A weekly live show covering all things Freedom Tech with Max, Q and Seth. This week we

"Especially in areas where there's poverty, they see someone travelling, they see someone paying in Bitcoin, it would be extremely easy to just send a message to someone else who waits outside with a wrench." The question put to Nathan Day of BTC Map was not a wet blanket on adoption, it was a practical one. A Square terminal or a Visa top up card hides what you are paying with. A Lightning QR code at the till does not. The ask: terminals that take both, so the cashier cannot tell. "Yes, I wanna push Bitcoin adoption. I want my family to be alive more."

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Freedom Fest UK with Nathan Day

A weekly live show covering all things Freedom Tech with Max, Q and Seth. This week we

Utah's SB 73 told adult sites to block VPN users or locate every visitor. A federal judge put the VPN part on hold, finding it burdens people outside Utah and demands something technically impossible. A site simply cannot know where a VPN user really is. The part they kept: it's still illegal in Utah for those sites to explain how to use a VPN. Age verification is ramping up everywhere as a way to identify everyone online, and VPNs are the obvious next target.

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The Cop Who Robbed Silk Road

A weekly news show informing you on the latest in Bitcoin, privacy and open source tech, hosted by Ungovernables, Max and Q. AOB Weekend shenanigan...

Blink's post-mortem: a permissions flaw open since October 2023 let the attacker grant themselves admin rights, take over 35 custodial accounts and pull 6.61 BTC from 24 of them. Nine of the targeted accounts had 2FA turned on. The attacker logged into all nine and every attempt to use them was refused. None of them lost anything. Yes, it's a pain in the ass. Turn it on anyway, everywhere, without fail.

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The Cop Who Robbed Silk Road

A weekly news show informing you on the latest in Bitcoin, privacy and open source tech, hosted by Ungovernables, Max and Q. AOB Weekend shenanigan...

A bent cop skimming seized bitcoin makes headlines because the chain eventually gave him away. Cash doesn't. It's still what most things run on, and it's perfect for it. Kick the door in, count £100k, write down £50k. Who's checking? It makes you wonder how often this happens.

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The Cop Who Robbed Silk Road

A weekly news show informing you on the latest in Bitcoin, privacy and open source tech, hosted by Ungovernables, Max and Q. AOB Weekend shenanigan...

Intake at the Oklahoma City transit center ends with a body scanner. The officer running it sits behind a lead curtain. The warning sticker tells you to stay behind the blue line for your safety. The warning is not for you. Prisoners are told to jam themselves against the machine, "so they can make sure to dose you with the radiation of the six guys ahead of you."

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Letter #7: Notes From The Inside

In these episodes, we read Keonne’s recent letters written from prison. The aim in sharing this is simple: amplify Keonne’s story, support him ...

11PM. Keonne asks his cellmate what time they turn the lights off. They don't. He covers his head with a sheet that smells of motor oil and sawdust, lies with half his body on bare metal, and asks himself if a year off his sentence was worth leaving Morgantown. All he wants is to call his wife, Lauren.

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Letter #7: Notes From The Inside

In these episodes, we read Keonne’s recent letters written from prison. The aim in sharing this is simple: amplify Keonne’s story, support him ...

Keonne Rodriguez was moved between two prisons a four hour drive apart. It took thirty days, two transcontinental flights, three multi hour bus rides, a cellmate doing time for murder and a cellmate who couldn't stop shitting. "I preferred the murder." Letter #7, part one.

Ungovernable

Letter #7: Notes From The Inside

In these episodes, we read Keonne’s recent letters written from prison. The aim in sharing this is simple: amplify Keonne’s story, support him ...

First night in the Oklahoma City transit center. The officer brings Keonne half a foam mattress, because that is all they have. His ass and legs will be on bare metal. "Welcome to prison," says the officer. "I understand this is prison. You still have an obligation to provide us basic amenities like bedding. This isn't fucking Guantanamo." The officer shrugs, drops it on the floor and walks off. His cellmate, doing twenty years for murder, has the last word.

Ungovernable

Letter #7: Notes From The Inside

In these episodes, we read Keonne’s recent letters written from prison. The aim in sharing this is simple: amplify Keonne’s story, support him ...

"Fuck me. These people are maniacs." @QnA The Supreme Court said taxing made-up returns breached human rights law in 2021. (NO SHIT) They force you to sell to pay the unrealised bill, then tax you on the sale.

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The Cop Who Robbed Silk Road

A weekly news show informing you on the latest in Bitcoin, privacy and open source tech, hosted by Ungovernables, Max and Q. AOB Weekend shenanigan...