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Litecoin - Virtual Private Money with Robbie Coleman, creative director Litecoin Foundation
Recorded: Aug. 7, 2025 Duration: 0:59:23Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, key figures in the crypto community explored the evolving landscape of privacy in cryptocurrencies, highlighting Litecoin's MWeb feature and the concept of Virtual Private Money (VPM). The conversation underscored the importance of user privacy, the challenges of global participation in crypto discussions, and the potential for strategic partnerships to enhance privacy solutions.
Full Transcription
get space started Thank you. Thank you. All right, everybody.
Thanks for tuning in.
We're just going to wait here, wait for a few people to join, and then we'll get started.
Where's the elevator music, Theo?
That's a good question.
Tech company tries to use tech here.
But I'll arrange something. Thank you. The quality is outstanding.
Yeah, great quality.
Thanks, everybody.
Hey, what's up, Robbie?
Just request to be a speaker, and then we'll get you on I'm going to go ahead and put it in the middle of the middle.
I'm going to go ahead and put it in the middle of the middle.
I'm going to go ahead and put it in the middle.
I'm going to go ahead and put it in the middle. Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok Hello everyone.
Hey, what's up, Robbie?
Thanks for joining us.
Thank you very much for having me.
And that was beautiful wedding music.
It was beautiful.
Yeah, yeah. uh writing music it's beautiful yeah yeah that was really high tech done you know from the laptop
speaker directly to the phone uh but you know that's how we do things sometimes right you got
to hack things together uh let's wait definitely let's wait you know one or two minutes more
have a few more people join uh if everyone uh that has joined it would be great if you could
share this get this out there we're going to be talking about litecoin uh some of the history of
litecoin and um mimble wimble uh privacy on litecoin uh the concept of virtual private money
The concept of virtual private money.
What's up with Nym VPN?
And yeah, we also have a PO-OP NFT for everybody in here live.
So that means that at some point of the spaces, you'll get a special code and you'll be able to get a limited edition NFT that none other than myself created this morning
and uh yeah so we're gonna have some fun and does that include me do i get an nft as well
yes yes we'll get you an nft too uh we do that a lot in our spaces and community calls we give away uh poops which are
you know nft collectibles that you were on the space and uh i was really surprised we had this um
i there is one nim community member i think he's collected 60 or 100 i don't know pseudo do you
know how many uh this one guy collected?
He's collected so many of these things.
I'm not sure who's the leader, actually,
but it's been a while since we started
NIM community calls and other events.
And I think almost from the beginning
we've been distributing pull-ups.
So I guess, you know,
some people have quite a few by this point.
Robby, this will be your first one.
I hope not the last, though.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I hope perhaps we choose a different time
because it's not super friendly to the U.S. time zone, obviously.
But, yeah, I'd love to join again.
Great, yeah.
Yeah, for everybody.
Yeah, well, they can listen to...
We're in Europe.
You're in Europe?
Yeah, we're in Europe.
It's 10 a.m. right now.
Nice and sunny.
Perfect.
And you're all caffeinated and everyone's good to go?
Yeah.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And, you know, people, if you're listening to the replay,
thanks for listening.
You know, people, it's always about you're never going to get a time for the whole world, you know, people, if you're listening to the replay, thanks for listening, you know, people. It's always about you're never going to get a time for the whole world,
you know, so we do our best.
We do our best, definitely.
It's great.
You know, we're not Sam Altman trying to steal all your biometrics
and stuff, which we'll talk about as well, Queen.
Yeah, that's really wild, right?
It's pretty wild that things that
were looked at as being exaggerated or conspiracy theories or come on are slowly becoming true not
slow even quickly becoming true you know so it's really wild yeah and my favorite part of it is
that you know the chinese security services were
the ones that actually reported on it um yeah i think you know a lot of people be listening back
to this you know later on tonight and early tomorrow so um ready to go when whenever you guys
are cool cool well okay well actually we, you know, get started a little casually.
It just tell us, you know, what is your history with Litecoin and crypto? Like,
how'd you get involved with the project? And, you know, what was, you know, a short form of your journey leading from like, what were you doing before crypto? And what got you interested?
Before crypto, I mean, to be honest, i've done a lot of things uh toured europe
with my band um i was a journalist written for the new york times and and the guardian uh i put
a hit out on myself in thailand for a story i covered the tycoon for a story um so i did a
bunch of crazy stuff did a documentary on neo-nazis. And in about 2015, funnily enough, my drug dealer introduced me to cryptocurrency in
the real world though.
And that's not a joke.
I've been sober four years now though, despite what they are, despite what they are probably
thinking.
And when he introduced me, I was, you know,
curious about a bunch of things.
But the thing that really struck me was that all these projects,
and they were really projects back then, you know,
were unsophisticated in how they were presenting themselves,
talking about themselves, and I guess the creative
and the strategy behind each of the projects.
So one of the things which was
about then um was lisk i don't know whether you guys remember that sorry i don't have a lisp but
it sounds like i don't want to say that um and lisk had like a a logo which was a from memory
it was like a some salt lamp or crystal or something um and it jumped on their their
website and it talked about interoperability
with cross-chain, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was indecipherable. And so I started a
creative agency called The Tokens, which, you know, we were dedicated to bringing a bit of
maturity through strategy and creative and branding for cryptocurrency and blockchain
technology projects.
And so, you know, had a bunch of paid clients and some of the biggest exchanges in the world and wallets back then.
And then we took on a project.
It was an internal project, but I was bored and I have ADHD,
which probably everyone on this call does.
But, well, everyone in Australia seems to be diagnosed with it.
But I'm pretty restless and I was looking at the top five back then and i said to all the all the staff that i
had um pick a project and and so we picked litecoin and i said it's going to be a bit of a problem
because it's decentralized um but that became a challenge unto itself and so we set about
But that became a challenge unto itself.
And so we set about rebranding Litecoin.
And that's a crazy thing to say, but, you know, around 2017, when we started on that project, there were over 300 variations, the Litecoin logo.
And there was really not cohesion in how Litecoin presented itself to the world.
cohesion in how Litecoin presented itself to the world.
And so I and my team, myself and the team,
went about producing a 65-page document,
which was based on qualitative and quantitative research
that we conducted among peers, contacts, past clients,
present clients, or back then, and also a Reddit community.
And so we had about 300 responses from the old Litecoin Reddit community.
And the result was the Litecoin logo that you see, which is, you know,
there is a silver version, but the most prominent version being the blue.
And so I flew over to San Francisco with a 65-page PDF, big smile,
and, you know, I was pretty naive guy
and tapped Charlie Lee on the shoulder
at the first Litecoin summit.
And I was swiftly put in a room by a bodyguard,
sat down, presented to him.
And then he said, listen, I created Litecoin,
but, you know, it's the communities, it's decentralized.
I said, was there anyone else I can show?
And he said, what about these guys?
And they just happened to be um the light queen foundation which was um only just formed before
that that summit so that was 2017 i flew home and um the light coin foundation sent me a nice
message saying we'd like to endorse that logo and the branding that you've done and um shortly after
i became the creative director of the lightcoin Foundation and one of the directors.
So there's six directors.
And, yeah, we helped steer the Lightcoin Foundation.
So there you go.
That's the truncated version of my life.
Nice.
Yeah, that's, you know, it's pretty interesting.
A lot of people got introduced to crypto via, you know, drugs, drug dealers, dark market, things like that.
I, you know, and yeah, I'm sure a lot of us on this call and that are in crypto have ADHD
diagnosed drugs for sure. But I think it's, I think it's really interesting. I think the era that you're talking about, so let's say 2017 and before, if you were to go to meetups, there was a lot more talk about, oh, dark markets, peer-to-peer buying and selling for cash, things like that and you know unfortunately i don't hear not that i'm saying
anyone should do anything illegal but i'm just saying you know it's kind of missing a little bit
uh if you go to meetups and events now this kind of vibe um kind of like and i think uh if you do
i think i encourage people to do a cash for a crypto transaction
because it's kind of an aha moment, I think, for people.
Do you agree?
Oh, totally.
And you think about the days when, you know,
the easiest way to get crypto was, and, you know, Bitcoin, Ethereum,
Litecoin, was to meet someone in a car park that you met off the internet,
you know, and use something like LocalBitcoins or, you know, an alternative.
And unfortunately, things like that shut down, you know.
LocalBitcoins shut down in earnest in 2023,
but in reality it was gone way before then in terms of its popularity.
But I agree, the grassroots nature of this technology,
I mean, there's a bunch of camps, but there's technologists,
then there's, I reckon, dark market users,
and then the people that are lucky enough to stumble across it.
And, you know, I sit on panels all the time and, you know,
they go, oh, how'd you get introduced to crypto?
And they don't
want to say dark market so they say oh that that that wide article in 2011 it's like i wonder how
many how many readers that um that article actually had and anyway i always find that funny but yeah
gone are the days of those grassroots made ups. Now, Robbie, I'm anxious to jump into the nitty gritty
technical stuff, especially when it comes to privacy
on Litecoin, but you mentioned something, I believe.
Okay, so two things before that.
First of all, big shout out to all the ADHD people
in the crypto space and on this call,
myself very much included, so I definitely hear you there.
Me too, no shame.
And then the other thing, no shame, no shame at all.
And then the other thing that you mentioned, which I found fascinating because I had the exact same experience is incomprehensibility.
I think you used this phrase when you described at least an earlier stage of, you know, like communications and documentation in the crypto space.
like communications and documentation in the crypto space.
I would say that's a pretty common experience
when you jump into this space.
When you're looking at the website of any project,
it can get pretty crazy pretty fast.
How do you feel this evolved?
Are we still incomprehensible?
Or did we manage to uh uh to uh you know
like uh get past that well i think in terms of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology
there there was a swift learning curve you know 2017 every bull market basically but
there was a steep learning curve i still think that for the vast majority of people um you know
I still think that for the vast majority of people, you know, comprehension is an issue.
And so, you know, we'll get into it.
I might as well just get into it.
But that is really the root of why I went about, I guess, creating a new shopfront for MWeb or Litecoin MWeb.
And that shopfront being virtual private money or VPM. And that was really because when I tried to explain Mweb to people after I, you know, deciphered it myself and then translated it into layperson language.
When I tried to then explain it to people that their ability to grasp what Mimble Wimble extension blocks were, their ability to then grasp how it interfaced with Litecoin,
all these things, there were hurdles everywhere.
And I thought, well, there's not really a need for all these hurdles.
There's no reason why there should be this barrier.
And one of the things, and this is anecdotal,
but I think, you know, would be able to be backed up by some research which I can't afford and the foundation's not going to fund.
But, you know, shout out Sam Altman if you want to fund it.
I'm not going to give you the data.
what people's responses or attitudes towards M-Web or Mimble Wimble extension blocks were
and what it sort of said as an acronym, but also as Mimble Wimble extension blocks as
the full length.
I think they have their mind blown.
I don't think anyone can sit here and say, well, firstly, it's a Harry Potter spell or
inspired by, and they can't talk about the genesis of it
with any fluency. Whereas when I started thinking about comparable technologies to MWeb,
so for those that don't know on this call, in 2019 or 2018, Litecoin started and and everyone you know the foundation and Charlie especially started
talking about this need for privacy or confidential transactions um to be more specific and that was
largely based around the fact that like when was being used as a currency and it still has been
used as a currency and it's it's sort of purpose is is to be a currency and, you know, silver to Bitcoin's
gold, which people say is a tied cliche, but all cliches are tied.
And there's a reason they're cliches.
It's because people understand them and they're memorable.
And I think it still resonates.
But what was missing was privacy.
If you think about cash and, you know, you mentioned at the top of this conversation,
one of the aha moments being, you know, sw mentioned at the top of this conversation, one of the aha moments
being, you know, swapping physical cash for, for cryptocurrency.
And if you think about that and you're in a car park and you're giving a guy 500 bucks
and you're getting, you know, three Litecoin or something like that, and then you drive
off in your Honda Civic that no one needs to know about that and that's because you know you've pulled
cash out of the atm or you know heaven forbid you've forgone your your adhd medication and pay
for it with that but i that that is missing privacy is missing and it's really important
it's why things like nim network and project and and the ecosystem you're building is important
like nim network and project and and the ecosystem you're building is important so in 2022 we we um
got the green light or you know 75 quorum from um the light coin sort of nodes and and miners
and they all signaled for swapping across to the mweb chain and so we activated mweb and what it
is is it allows you to obfugate your sending or receiving address
and or your sending amount or receiving amount of Litecoin. So pretty important, you know,
elements of privacy and pretty easy to grasp. But the real hurdle was the name. And when I started
talking about, you know, comparable technologies, like a VPN,
which affords you, you know, relative privacy on the internet, and there's 1.4 billion people
around the world who have downloaded a VPN. I thought, well, an acronym like VPN, sure,
people might get confused, but really, is that a bad thing? And when I thought about virtual
private money, it sort of said everything it needed to.
And so there's no reason why there couldn't be two shopfronts.
There's an MWeb shopfront and people who are technical
and understand what that is, they can use MWeb
and they can jump on MWeb Explorer
and all the technical stuff and testnet and blah, blah, blah.
Whereas the non-technical people, the 1.4 billion or, you know,
minus probably a thousand people who actually understand what Mweb is,
but 1.4 billion people minus a thousand for them,
a shop front like virtual private money or VPM seemed much more approachable.
So yeah, a segue into into uh the conversation sorry about
that no no that's good okay well you talked about um mweb mimble wimble a little bit your concept
of virtual private money give us the give us the one-liner give us the 20 second like what is it
what is virtual private money yeah it's What is virtual private money? Yeah.
It's virtual private money.
It's digital money, a Litecoin, and with, you know,
relative privacy added on top via MWeb.
So it really does, you know, if you jump on vpm.run, you know,
the line there is just use money with privacy easily
make your transactions confidential using vpm so that would be the one-liner okay that's good
all right well let's go back so you're you're based in australia and i think you've probably
heard about the latest uh uk law that came out the online Online Safety Act, and I believe Australia already passed something
similar. A lot of age restrictions on viewing things on the internet in the name of protecting
the children, but it even prevents you from doing basic things like maybe going on Twitter
or Instagram and looking at memes even. So how has it been in Australia?
What's the vibe?
How are people, are people pissed off about this?
Are they like, okay, I'm comfortable with complying with this.
This makes total sense.
What's the general vibe there?
Yeah, I've heard Julian Assange is setting fire to bras outside,
you know, Parliament House.
No, listen, online there's been some, I didn't get many laugh emojis there, sorry for everyone
who's listening.
But, you know, anecdotally, I've got two kids, you know, at school drop-offs, things like
this would be pretty hot news.
And in reality, I've only really discussed it with a few people.
Myself, I've got mixed feelings, you know, with kids of, you know,
an age where they are facing a different and a very potentially hard
to see enemy and dangers online. But i also think that this is a time
for education so there's you know you can't protect your kids from everything they're they're
gonna go out and take drugs when they're older maybe i don't know they're gonna drink they're
gonna go to parties they're gonna get in trouble they're gonna get into places where you know they
actually have to use the knowledge and the lessons that they've learned, you know, from their parents and maybe school and
their friends and, and potentially online. But I see no reason why it should be different online,
you know, in the real world. If, if you find yourself in trouble, you, you fall back on the
skills that you've learned. Why wouldn't that be the same for digital environments?
And in reality, I think that the government should be sure
maybe there is a need for some sort of protections,
but a blanket rule is crazy in my opinion.
And I actually just think that they should be funding more education
around how to be safe online and how to be private online.
I mean, do you have that?
That's an excellent point.
Yeah.
Sorry, go ahead, go ahead, Robbie.
No, no.
I mean, what do you guys think?
This just sounds like a Robbie opinion, you know, like I'd be keen to hear what you guys
think.
No, I agree.
And separately from that, you know, kids is always going, kids, it's always the kids. It's always going to be the sort of excuse that they push such legislation through with because it's the most visceral way to reach right down to change anytime soon. Now, but when it comes to law and, you know, privacy,
specifically private transactions,
it looks like the assumption is that, you know,
privacy preserving cryptos were created solely to, you know,
bypass or like circumvent laws and restrictions.
And also there's that supposed like tension or trade-off relationship between
uh between compliance and uh privacy i just wanted to ask you know in some cases it's true in other
cases it's it's less true um i just wanted to ask your opinion on compliance in general and you know
uh what uh uh what the more private direction um of uh of litecoin provides when it comes to compliance.
Of course.
I mean, in reality, the idea of private transactions
is always going to be a topical one and one for debate.
But I'm a firm believer that you should be able to use your money
in any way that you want.
And I, you know, I've been cheering from the sidelines as, you know, all the CBDCs have failed.
The projects, you know, Australia's pilot project failed and spectacularly so.
So it was seriously well-funded and it failed.
It was seriously well funded and it failed.
And I had a great time presenting it.
I think it was Australian Crypto Conference about a week after it failed.
So I changed my presentation to CBDC's failing or something, a topic like that.
But, you know, South Korea has just aborted their project
But, you know, South Korea has just aborted their project and their pilot as well.
and their pilot as well.
I think, you know, with the European Union,
they've been trying to push for a cross,
what they call a cross-border remittance payment strategy,
which they've been working on for like five years
and they've released a white paper and it's done nothing.
And I just go, everything is in front of you.
You know, like the reality is CBDCs were never going to work
because people need privacy.
And the level of intrusion into, I guess, Western lives is insurmountable.
You can't intrude and be privy to that level of surveillance where you're seeing
where people are spending their money and what they're spending their money on. And then there
could be adverse reactions or sanctions or whatever on you for that. And so, yeah, I've
been welcoming and cheering from the sidelines they fail.
In terms of like compliance and I guess legislation in Australia and the Western world, I think that it is almost like a stall tactic, if I'm being honest.
You know, they're sort of putting their thumb against the dam and trying to stop the flow of technology.
And the reality is that more people are understanding
what cryptocurrency is, more people are understanding that,
you know, things like when, you know, the last block I looked at,
I don't know, 12 hours ago, you know, it sent $23 million
across the world somewhere, you know it sent 23 million dollars um across the world somewhere you know
across 200 transactions and for mere cents and if you think about the western unions and the
remit lees and all that kind of stuff they're they're fast becoming superseded by you know
this technology um and it's really exciting and i think it's unstoppable. And so I'm excited by that.
And but in terms of compliance, I think that regulation for the space is needed in ways.
I think that, you know, and apologies to any Americans who have stayed up to listen to this.
I hope your dexamphetamine hasn't worn off. But, you know, you look at the lack at what lack of
regulation in the, the digital currency space looks like in the U S and you see Trump coin
in Melania and just outright, you know, uh, the, the, the complete antithesis of, of what,
you know, why Bitcoin was forged and where it was forged from and the values it's
it espouses or you know potentially depending on how you look at it used to espouse that that has
just been set alight um by the the activity you know of the trump administration and and the us
lawmakers so i i welcome some regulation to the space. But I
also think that there's overreach. Hope that answered your question sort of.
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I totally agree with you. It's all about education, whether
that's for the kids or for or for just everybody you know
and also just what you what you just brought up about you know random coins like trump coin or
you know whatever that are obviously predatory you know it's it's about education and and you
know at the beginning of the of the spaces you you know, you talked about, you joined Litecoin because you saw that they had a major communication problem.
You know, there was no the branding was off. It wasn't clear what it was. Just pick your brain. How do we communicate to the world
or even locally to your friends,
the need for privacy and the negative effects
of the surveillance that we're seeing?
Because right now, you know, that's,
it's painted as, okay, this is gonna solve your problems.
If you just like outsource the education,
outsource it and just let us take care of it, you know,
we'll protect you or we'll protect your kids, et cetera. So it's kind of, it's basically
outsourcing what we should be doing. So how can we do a better job and how can we communicate
better? So now I'm just giving you free advice on free consulting advice.
Yeah, basically on the spot. That, basically. On the spot.
That's fine.
That's okay.
Checks in the mail, obviously.
Not from me, from you.
Honestly, if I had unlimited cash,
it would be to, without, you know, any bias, and when I say that, you'd have to draw the line somewhere, but it would be a resource library and education that, you know, to be honest, could be accessed by school kids and kids of, you know, high school age.
And in Australia, they are actually wanting to teach the kids about digital currency.
They just don't know how.
And I think that's because there's, you know, tribalism has killed a lot of, I guess,
I guess, combined efforts to communicate, you know, the values or the features or the attributes
of a Bitcoin, you know, you've then got people from the Ethereum community shouting and trying
to tear down that, you know, that great work. And so I think it would be creating some sort of resource hub where it took a unbiased approach to explaining,
you know, the different camps of cryptocurrency. So, you know, putting a Bitcoin and a Litecoin
together and saying, you know, these are coins, these are currencies and, you know, trying to
actually explain, you know, the Bitcoin white paper, which is also, I mean, if I don't know about
anyone else on this call, but it's pretty indecipherable for the layperson.
And so almost why hasn't someone rewritten the Bitcoin white paper in layperson language?
And, you know, I think explaining that there's currencies and then explaining that there's,
you know, things like Ethereum, which are incredibly valuable and they open up an entirely different,
you know, world, a DeFi world.
And then there's different layers on top of that.
And talking about, you know, credible sort of battle-tested
and hardened technologies and projects, you know,
not just whatever the latest Solana meme coin is and, you know, whatever the Dave Portnoy's of this world are pushing, but actually legitimate projects.
And I'm saddened because, you know, I don't want to name it, but there's a major nonprofit associated with Bitcoin that had the chance to really create this hub and to be a leader.
And in my opinion, it's failed spectacularly.
And that was purely out of greed.
So, I mean, to be honest, it would be finding like-minded people.
And I'd love to have a conversation with people that wanted to join forces to create, you know,
educational materials around privacy, educational materials
around the need for digital currency and, I guess,
the different types of digital currencies and their use cases
and then go about trying to talk to, you know,
high school students around the world. And I think that governments are actually wanting, you know high school education high school students um around the world and i think
that governments are actually wanting you know a lay person digital currency and you can sneak
in a bit of digital privacy stuff in there too that's my i'm a i'm honestly a little shocked
it sounds like you're you're you're you're telling us that uh solana meme coins you know trump and
milania coin and all of that stuff is not what the crypto space is about, which is really surprising to me.
It's really weird.
I reread the white paper just to check, but it didn't seem to stack up.
Crazy.
Absolutely crazy.
A bit of shifting gears.
I'm super curious to find out a bit more about MWeb.
find out a bit more about M web. So how about going a bit technical? Because as I understand,
So how about going a bit technical?
you know, standard transactions on on Litecoin are fully transparent, just like, you know,
on on Bitcoin or any other of your of your regular blockchains, right? And then I'm just
wondering what the privacy properties that M web gets us in comparison to that look like and how does it work in general?
Yeah.
So like it was probably missed in my mumbling.
Apologies for the mumbling, but it is a great question.
So yeah, Litecoin is, you know, the ledger is open and you can easily read and trace
transactions and obviously trace them back to a source, whether it was the car park or the bank account that it came from.
But what MWeb does is, or, you know, VPN MWeb,
what that does is it's like CT, so it's confidential transactions.
And so what it allows you to do is, you know,
obfugate, so conceal or shield your sending or receiving address.
So I can send money to you, for instance,
or Litecoin to you, for instance, using MWeb.
And, you know, it goes in a batch of other transactions
and, you know, it's very difficult or near impossible
to then trace back to the source of that money
or the receiver of that money.
And you can also do the same thing and obfugate the amount of Litecoin too.
So, you know, if you think about use cases for this, you know, you're a business which
Litecoin's been on a crazy roll.
Oh, this is going to be bad.
Crazy roll with payroll.
I should put that in a headline of a news article.
I should put that in a headline of a news article.
But been on a really upward trend and seen great adoption
as a means of paying people across Europe and Asia.
And one of the use cases of this would be, you know,
if your company, so say my company, Francium, you know,
if your company, so say my company, Francium,
you know, was paying its employees
and, you know, it had a single wallet address
and you were getting paid a different amount
to say Theo and myself and everyone else in the company
with open Litecoin or Litecoin,
just pure normal Litecoin,
you'd be able to trace that back
to the company's wallet address and you you'd be able to trace that back to the company's wallet address
and you'd actually be able to see
or you'd be able to work out pretty quickly
who the receivers of each amount of Litecoin were.
And so I guess there's a real need to conceal
who the highest paid is.
And if you're a junior graphic designer
and you're getting paid 50 grand
and the other one's getting paid 30 grand
because they're shit.
I shouldn't say that,
but no, there is discrepancy.
You know, there is a need to conceal that
and be private with that information,
not only as a business,
but also as the receiver of that money.
So, you know, MWeb,
that's just one use case, obviously.
MWeb affords you that ability to conceal.
And so you won't know which employees, which necessarily,
or you won't be able to see the real amount sent or received.
Does that sort of answer that?
I try not to get too technical because it's like...
Yeah, no, that definitely answers it. um that with i try not to get too technical because it's like
yeah no that definitely answers it okay well what about the next level so how do you see the marriage of well here we go yeah here we go here we go you know we could do it in a in a in a non-technical way, and I'll pick your consultant brain again, too. But, you know,
there's a lot of privacy coins. You know, you've got Litecoin, Mweb, Monero, et cetera, et cetera.
But none of them, you know, alone, that does have on-chain privacy, but, you know, it lacks network level privacy. You know,
you're still exposing a lot of metadata to the, to the network,
to the, et cetera. So yeah.
How do you see the marriage of on-chain privacy and network level privacy
going forward? How do you see,
how do you see the need for that be clearly communicated?
Because right now, we're doing a lot with it, but it's still a new, I think it's still a very
new concept. A lot of people, when you talk to them, they say, okay, well, like, for example, I'm using MWeb.
I'm good.
That's enough.
And they don't see that, okay, I also have to, you know,
conceal my metadata.
I need to protect my metadata.
I need to also conceal other things that I'm leaking.
What's the easy way to communicate that?
The way I say in the police are in the bottom,
that sounds more like an ambulance.
It's a really great question, I think, in terms of the evolution
and where could it go or where should it go.
So I think there's a couple of parts or a couple of answers
to the various parts of your question.
Firstly, the way I, and the reason why I like, you know,
what we've created, or I say we, but, you know,
it was a team of developers and, you know,
a lot of work borrowed from Mimblewimble as well.
So credit to Thomas Judiser and all the others that came before us.
But, you know, I see Litecoin as, you know, you've just got regular mode on your computer and then MWeb as a toggle that you switch to dark mode.
UI, which is as simple as that. And I want to help create language, which is an approachable,
um, to the point where people aren't even thinking about their metadata that they need to conceal,
because in reality, they're not concealing it now. And they probably don't know how to conceal it.
And so I see M web and the, the relative privacy that it affords as being enough for the vast majority of humans
and enough for the vast majority of commerce that's going on.
And so that's why I really like it as an optional privacy layer.
If you look at the other purist privacy coins,
so you think about Monero,
Monero is incredible, right? Like it does
a lot more heavy lifting and it is a lot more robust in terms of what it affords in terms of
like digital privacy or digital currency privacy. But it's by default private and it is through and through private.
And what I like about VPN or MWeb is that you can hold the exact same thing being Litecoin
and you can opt in to that relative privacy.
Then your second bit, which is about, I guess, the more complicated and not network level sort of privacy concerns that you might have.
I also say that the research that I did for VPN and behind the white paper and everything and looking at the 1.4 billion people that do use
VPNs like Nim, which by the way, I signed up to today. So talk about that later, but they can't
fluently explain what VPNs do. So the vast majority of people know that a VPN can help you conceal where you are and it can help access
things that you might not be able to access necessarily because of your location in the world
and others you know where you know that there's heavier surveillance and censorship and you look
at parts of Europe and and parts of asia specifically china the the level of um understanding and
comprehension uh increases because their need for um you know technology which affords you
much more privacy and you know the getting into the minutiae of things but the metadata and various
other that the people that understand that stuff, they're more sophisticated anyway.
And so they're employing more sophisticated technologies and they're most
likely not going to use Mweb. You know,
they're most likely going to be using a Monero.
And I think that more and more, you know,
and this is one of the great things which I really like about Nimmin and we'll
go on about this because I really want to talk about it.
But it is approachable in every way.
You guys have done a great job with presenting yourself and the VPN.
And also I downloaded the wallet as well.
And that's looking great from a UI perspective as well.
So I think that what you've done is you've positioned yourself to be more approachable to a much bigger audience.
And that much bigger audience has no idea about how to conceal metadata and has, to be honest, no concerns.
So, yeah, I sort of, I'm yet to sort of hear why we would need to be concerned about that just yet as the vast majority of the world.
Now that's music to my ears, Robbie,
because I've had,
so you mentioned simple UI and approachability
and the fact that people don't necessarily understand
what metadata protection is or even metadata is
and also the fact that they don't even have to
it just has to be there right in the background and um it's really it's so i've had quite a few
of these conversations with like-minded projects uh who care about privacy and it feels like there's
this convergence on um uh you know from this uh like very niche space um where a bunch of like
hardcore privacy people are sitting in like
really, really private chats, you know, 10 of them, and they're talking about privacy.
We actually are making the switch to mass adoption and mass adoption happens with simple
UI, with approachability and with, you know, also simple communication.
So, so mass adoption comes from great UX.
And this is like really nice to hear that you guys are on the
same page about this now. Yeah, I want to hear totally. Go
ahead. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, no, please. I would I would be
really happy to hear your thoughts on MVP. But before that I
have a I have a question that is very interesting to me. I would
want to hear your answer, which is about the future of Mweb.
Like, what does the future hold? Are you guys working on something
in addition to what it currently offers in terms of privacy? What's the roadmap like?
Well, I think, to be honest, you know, from a technology perspective, it's obviously,
you know, privacy, but also scalability. So hopefully that, you know, it's obviously you know privacy but also scalability so hopefully that um you know it's
it's not an issue at the moment in terms of scalability for light queen but um if and when
it does become an issue that's why the extension blocks are really important as well um but from
a privacy perspective i mean nothing immediate that we'd be addressing and i speak for the
foundation and just the knowledge that I have.
I don't speak for absolutely everyone in the ecosystem because, again,
there's, I don't know, 8 million wallet holders and the community
is incredibly sophisticated and there is a really amazing group
of people that do come up with different ideas and activate
different features and have different requests and put in, you know, lips.
So like when improvement proposals as well.
So who knows what's cooking in the background, but from a foundation perspective, no real plans to evolve MWeb from a technological perspective.
I think it's more trying to get adoption and awareness and understanding of why you'd need it.
And then obviously getting people to use it.
And so, you know, some of the things that we've been working on is, is, you know, partnerships,
partnerships is a strong word, but, you know, implementation and activation by big wallets.
So you've got Cake Wallet and you've got the light coin foundations uh official
wallet which is nexus um and a whole bunch of other big wallets have um you know implemented
mweb and so people can you know not necessarily as fluid sometimes as the switch of a button but
it's getting there you know i think that we're working on that trying to get it into more wallets
and and getting more awareness and adoption,
but also improving the actual experience.
So when I say it's not there yet,
where it's like light and dark mode,
that would be my ultimate dream
would be to see a toggle,
which you could literally just switch
and you didn't have to think about any of the other,
you know, pegging in and pegging out and, you know, various other things. It was, it was as simple as a switch.
Um, and it's going to take, it's going to take more people using it and more people needing it,
um, to, to implement that kind of stuff. And also it's going to take a wallet to actually say, Hey,
um, we we'd love to improve the experience. Let's work together. And,
and hopefully that's someone like a NIMH or, um, you know,
just throwing it out there. But, uh, and then I guess the other thing,
which has been my,
another dream is to see other technologies.
So you think about NIMH's VPN actually allowing, you know,
people within the same platform or within the same
um let's just say app for the moment um actually allowing them to send and receive uh vpm or mweb
um like when and i think that that would be uh if if an experience could be created, you know, where it was end to end privacy focused in a privacy environment where people were, you know, they connected to their VPN using NIMM and they were sending money overseas or money to their friend or paying their employees with the privacy that they want and need.
And so that would be an evolution, which I'd love to see.
That's great.
That's actually, you know, that kind of aligns with some of our vision too.
And getting back to, you know, about talking to the general public, let's say. We say privacy loves company because it's not going to work.
Privacy is not going to work with just a few of us. We need the regular people. The more people
that participate in the privacy set, the more private things are going to be. So we really do
need a lot of people. And going into what
you were saying, yeah, you know, the vision, you know, right now you need, let's say you
wanted to use Litecoin Mweb. Right now you need, you know, you need to get a Litecoin
wallet and you would need to have an NIM VPN too, so two programs. You know, the vision in the future would be, you know,
seamless integration to the wallet
where you could toggle like you were saying, you know,
okay, I wanna have regular VPN,
I wanna have mixed net protection directly in the wallet.
And yeah, I'd like to hear any, you know,
your first impressions of NIM VPN. We do have,'d like to hear any, you know, your first impressions of an NIMP VPN.
We do have, and like you were saying with the toggle,
we have a toggle too.
You know, we have fast mode.
We have fast mode.
Yeah, yeah.
So just like give us your hard, go ahead and roast us if you want,
but go ahead and give us your feedback real quick.
Just so everyone knows that this is not a paid segment.
No, no.
So I did download it and I used it.
And I'm going to be honest,
it didn't let me pay with Litecoin for the VPN,
but I brought that up with Theo.
But yeah, I don't know what happened there.
I've screenshot it and I'll send it across.
But, you know, aside from that, it was, it was pretty fluid downloaded it. Uh, that if I'm being truly honest that the fast
and the anonymous, I really like it. I liked the different modes. I think that it, it possibly
needs a bit more explanation upfront. Um, but it was other than that, it was really seamless and
easy to use the the wallet though the i
downloaded the nim wallet um you know obviously it's it's it's in its infancy and um and it's
it's nascent but it's looks good and you know sort of reminds me of the old exodus wallet if i'm
going to be honest which again i always used to point to as being some of the better ui in the
space back in the day so no problems with that obviously need litecoin in there um and you know would love to
see as part of the experience with with i guess the the nim bpn you know why wouldn't there be
a mode where it was browsing um and then why wouldn't there be another mode where it was
sending or you know paying or receiving and it it
was about money um within one interface and and one user experience i mean that would be incredible
and i don't think you know anyone's even close if you look at um proton they they tried to launch
their their bitcoin wallet um and it's a bit clumsy and they just missed the mark.
It was a really great opportunity, in my opinion, to, you know, merge two really important things.
But I guess the elephant in the room there is that Bitcoin doesn't have any privacy features
as well.
So that was another big miss for me.
So I guess that, you know, it's, again, privacy loves company.
It would be about joining forces.
And, you know, why couldn't we make this happen?
Hey, man, why not make it happen?
Yeah.
Now, that's an excellent note to almost close on.
We're closing the end of this call.
We still have 10 minutes left,
and I just want to thank our audience for joining us and listening in.
Hopefully you've learned something,
and hopefully you've had fun so far with this call.
You can send your checks to Robbie's mailbox.
We will share it after this space.
Now, of course, there's this little tradition that we do with the NIMM community.
We give out pull-ups
to commemorate, basically,
that we hung out together.
That will happen now. Big drum roll.
Please, you know where to go.
You need to go to nIMM.com
slash go slash pull-up. The secret phrase is
can you guess the secret phrase, Robbie?
It's something relevant to our conversation.
Well, I'm hoping
it's VPN, but I know it's MWeb. Yes, it's something relevant to our conversation well I'm hoping it's vpm but I know it's mweb
yes it's mweb sorry it could have been it could have been vp no that's all good all good
all right ladies and gentlemen clearly clearly that it's resonating with you guys um thank you
very much for having me and and i really appreciate um the
opportunity to talk and if anyone's got any questions please feel free to reach out or visit
um vpm.run or litecoin.com um it would be great it was lovely to have you right on right um and uh
just just just a quick note uh we also tweeted out from the official name account uh the details but
be quick because uh the claim will only be open for 15 minutes.
Now, Robbie, I just want to open the floor for you for any closing remarks.
It was lovely to have you on and pick your brain a little bit about MWeb and Lightpoint
and also a bunch of adjacent topics through ADHD style.
So a lovely conversation.
Yeah, I mean, if I can just say one thing, I think it'd be there's a lot of big brains, not only
on this call, but, you know, hopefully listening tomorrow and the next day.
And a lot of big brains that I see on Nim's website and also, you know, within the Litecoin
Foundation and beyond.
And I think those big brains, they have they have, they have the same goals,
a lot of them and, you know, privacy loves company and we can see that there are, there's a need and
a want and a future need that maybe some other people can't really see or, or foreshadow. But
I think if we can come together and, you know, share technologies
and share ideas and share resources and, you know,
I'd love to hear from people if they want to email me
at robbie at litecoin.com.
You know, I'd love to hear from you and I'd love to create a community
where we can share ideas and technology and resources
and so we can spread the word about the need for technology
like NIM and Litecoin VPN or MWeb
and the reason why digital privacy is so important
and it's not going to go anywhere.
You know, it's only going to become more important.
So, yeah, let's all buddy up.
Right on, right on.
Totally agree. Privacy loves company. Also, anyone listening,
I have pinned the link to the POAP to the top of this spaces so that you can easily reach it. So
if you're looking for the link, you can get to it. Thanks again, Robbie. Thanks, Sudo. And thanks
everyone that's listening live and to the replay.
We'd love to hear from you too.
And that's all for today.
Thanks a lot.
Much love.
Bye, everyone.
Have a great day. Thank you.
