Projects
![]()
No projects found
Investors
New
DAO Treasuries
DATs
Lend / Borrow APRs
Chains
Categories
Spaces
THEY ARE WATCHING YOU! Protect your privacy on the bc #CryptoTownHall
Recorded: Aug. 23, 2023 Duration: 1:19:39Space Recording
Short Summary
The discussion highlights significant innovations in blockchain privacy, with projects like Dopp and Elusive introducing new protocols that enhance transaction privacy on Ethereum and Solana. These advancements allow users to encrypt transactions and selectively reveal data, addressing privacy concerns in the crypto space.
Full Transcription
Yo, yo.
Yo, yo.
Scott, is there?
Scott, you there?
Scott can hear us?
He declined to go host, of course.
Ran?
Yo, Mario.
I'm sure Scott wants to talk about bricks.
Yeah, I was having that issue where my mic...
Sorry.
Hold on, I can't see...
Where are you?
Oh, there, though.
So, Scott, I just told Rand that you really want us to talk about bricks.
I'm not sure it's a good idea.
I know you're a big fan, but...
I think I have that well.
Very mature.
Man, damage control right after the show.
That was an hour or two of damage control.
Not for me.
I've described Twitter, my technique on Twitter, I think ever since getting past like maybe 150,000 followers.
The only way I can approach Twitter and remain sane is that I view it like pulling the pin out of a grenade.
throwing a grenade in the room and just casually walking away and never looking back.
That's how I think about every tweet.
I'm going to have to start viewing spaces that way too, I think.
Yeah, man, like you start, what happens, and it's a good idea because what happens is like everyone now petrified to talk shit on Scott is that you throw grenades nonstop.
So they kind of give you a little tap on the shoulder or punch you in the gut and they end up shooting them in the head.
I thought the guests were knowledgeable and fine.
It's just every once in a while I hear something.
I'm like, that's just not true and I have to interrupt.
You know, like, oh, breaking news yesterday.
No, bro, that was like April.
Yeah.
All right, so we'll do bricks again today, yes?
Yes, more bricks, please.
Bricks updates.
All right, man, so you want to kick it off with a market update?
And today's your show because I know that you're a very private person.
You take security extremely seriously.
No one knows your wallets, and this is something you're very...
You're an expert out.
Absolutely.
Well, it's something that I would like to be able to participate more in, but can't because I have been a doxed public personality in the crypto space for so many years, which makes it almost impossible.
But, I mean, market update, Bitcoin's still kind of hanging in the same spot.
Very much not much to see here.
I mean, Rand, maybe you can talk about it.
about B&B and there's any implications to what's happening there,
but that is at least still trading below 220.
But I think market very kind of boring after the drop last week,
people sort of holding their breath and waiting to see what happens next.
The real story, obviously, is Nvidia is going to be reporting earnings.
This might be the most hyped earnings.
It's like the Super Bowl of earnings right now because Nvidia has obviously been somewhat carrying the market,
it seems...
on its shoulders. So poor earnings could be a harbinger of bad things to come for the market.
And positive earnings could obviously mean that a lot of people will think that this sort of little correction is over and things are going to rip to the upside.
So I think, you know, listen, for me on Bitcoin, this market is extremely oversold, as I told you guys last week.
I mean, four hourside hit a historic low.
We might go lower, but I think we're going to bounce around for a while.
I'd be surprised if at least in the short term we go much, much lower.
But the market has a way of making me look really stupid really often.
So we'll see.
But then moving on from there, Rand, do you have anything to add sort of to the market update?
I mean, yeah, I think you pretty, I mean, we covered the RSI as being quite low.
We also covered the fact that total three is now at the same level.
Total three is the Bitcoin is the crypto market cap excluding Bitcoin in Ethereum.
So it's actually the real old coins.
That is now at the same levels that it was after FTX.
It's literally at the same levels that it was at on the 8th of November, which is after FTCX.
So we spoke about that, we spoke about sentiment.
Then we spoke about potential COVID restrictions coming in and what they could actually do to the markets and what the source of all of these.
Because if you look at what's going on, it sounds very much like the first COVID pandemic.
If you look at how, you know, first it's a tourist, then it's another tourist, and it's like one or two cases in the United States.
Then it's a discovery that the virus is spreading faster than they anticipated.
Then it's mask mandates.
and no gatherings and stuff like that.
And now we're starting to see the beginning of like mask mandates.
We look at what the agenda behind all of this is.
And then looked at a little bit of a bricks update in terms of, you know,
Putin spoke last night, Modi spoke last night.
So we spoke about that.
And I just spoke about a couple of old coins that I'm accumulating very, very, very slowly.
But as I said, I'm not really accumulating them right now.
And maybe just one more question to around before Scott, you go to the panel.
You covered in VEDIA as well in your show today.
So maybe give us a quick overview on why it's so hyped and what makes it so important.
So if you look at the SNP, the S&P has rallied despite global liquidity actually coming down.
So usually the SNP rallies or the NASDAQ rallies with global liquidity, or specifically dollar liquidity.
In this case...
The NASDAQ ran with liquidity going down.
And what drove the NASDAQ up is very much, they call it the AI rally,
because it was made up of like five stocks or seven stocks, mainly AI-related,
which is Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Mehta, Facebook.
So this year, the NASDAX of about 40%.
The top five stocks make up about 25% of that 40%.
And of that, the biggest is Nvidia.
Now, important to note that Nvidia hasn't missed its earnings forecast in four years.
And I think what's going to happen is they're announcing today after the bell closes.
If they beat their expectations or meet the expectations, and just to recap what the expectations are,
They're looking for earning
per share of 2.07.
They're looking for revenue of 11 billion,
11.04 billion,
and they're looking for free cash flow
about $4 billion.
If the
Nvidia hit that,
I reckon Nvidia runs
and the NASDAQ run with it.
If Nvidia misses the
forecast, then you could get a correction
of up to 5%,
because then people may say
that this bubble has popped,
and this AI bubble is popped.
So...
That's kind of like what we're looking at.
I think I agree with Scott that this is,
I don't know if it's the most high,
but it's certainly one of the most important earnings
if we want to keep market stability.
It's the most important earnings.
I don't think in video would disappoint,
but let's see, let's see what happens.
Yeah, I think that's exactly a perfect summary.
And I do want to now move on, I think, to the topic of the day, obviously, which is, as Mario
said, something I wish I could be more passionate about, but it's very difficult in our situation.
I know Mario Rann and I have all had people very deep in our wallets who...
who have tracked effectively everything that we've ever done.
I can tell you that anecdotally, personally,
and I know these things have happened to all three of us
because we are all docs transparent figures in the crypto market.
I've been extorted.
I've had to deal with the FBI.
I've had to deal with the FBI.
I for a while had to have security.
I've been attacked in public.
I've been stocked.
I've had people send me pictures of my children
playing in my yard that they shouldn't have.
So it would be nice to be able to have some privacy
and not need that level of it.
And so I understand why people remain anonymous
and are not doxed in this.
But I think that even for people like us who are
pretty transparent and major personalities. There are very obvious things that can be done or things
that we would like to see in the market. And today we have like a really breadth on the panel,
a really awesome breadth of both privacy experts and then obviously people who are building these
things. You know, I see we have N-coins, an EN privacy protocol on Cardano. We got Elusive,
who had news yesterday. Obviously, um, uh,
about private swaps on Solana, which I think is really cool.
We have Moshe here, a digital architect,
co-founder of Tomey, and then of course,
Dopp, which was launched yesterday,
which will allow you to effectively keep your transactions private.
And just the broad strokes, obviously,
of something like we've all sent a blockchain transaction,
a crypto transaction to someone,
and then you realize that once they see your wallet,
they can see everything you ever did.
everyone you ever paid, everything you ever bought,
everything you've ever done in that wallet.
Right, so guys, we've got another.
So we've got FIRO, I don't know if it's pronounced FIRO,
Rubein, I'm sorry, but basically,
and then of course, one of my favorite guests
who I talk to you quite often, Seth for privacy,
Seth, I want to start with you, I guess, for some broad strokes here.
You kind of, obviously, you rose to a claim or larger acclaim to some degree when you realized what was happening with Ledger.
Ledger released the service that people...
freaked out about saying that it was going to be a violation. They could backdoor your device, all those things.
You were the guy who discovered that, wrote a threat about it. It absolutely blew up.
But you've been passionate about privacy for a long time.
I guess maybe we should start with like why this actually matters. Is it important?
Because a lot of people are completely dismissive about their privacy.
Yeah, yeah, I'd love to get this started there.
Thank you for the invite and excited to chat about this in front of a larger audience
because often privacy doesn't get the limelight that it deserves.
And awareness is a huge step forward towards privacy.
But really basically, I mean, when I'm talking to people, pretty much everyone wants privacy.
They just may not realize what that means for them.
And I mean, like you were talking about how you're a public figure.
People know who you are.
Obviously, people know what you look like, et cetera.
but that doesn't mean that you don't have privacy.
It just means that if you want to keep specific things in your life private,
it's going to be a little bit more tricky.
Because I think a lot of people cross wires
between the ideas of privacy and secrecy or privacy and anonymity,
where most people don't necessarily want to be anonymous,
hiding in a forest,
and...
invisible to anyone, no one knows what's going on.
But practically everyone wants privacy,
which is just very simply the ability
to selectively reveal yourself to the world.
You choose how much the people around you know.
You choose how much you reveal to governments,
to nation states, to friends, to family,
to everyone that you interact with.
And that's ultimately what privacy is.
It comes down to you having the ability to consent or not consent
to data about you being publicly available.
And that, I think, is something that everyone wants.
If you talk to anyone and you ask them, hey, can I see your bank records or see your pay stubs for the last year, see how you're spending your money?
No one's going to want to do that, even though they may not think they need privacy.
But there's a very fundamental human desire for privacy that we all have.
And, yeah.
finding how to fit that into the digital age where everything we do is online.
And now in the cryptocurrency age where much of our finances are now online and publicly visible
in a way that wasn't even possible with credit cards or debit cards, bank accounts,
that sort of thing.
There's a lot of new things to discover.
And a lot of us kind of have to hit a pain point of realizing how much is out there about us
before we can swing back and start to take some actionable steps towards privacy.
Yeah, I mean, that all makes a ton of sense. And as you pointed out, obviously, with crypto, as much as we can advocate for privacy, it's actually very, very public, right? The blockchain transactions, if someone knows how to look into it, they can effectively find anything they want about you, which is,
is a bit terrifying when you actually think about it.
I mean, I want to talk to Dopp, Mattan.
I know you're there and Mo, either of you guys, what's up,
about what you're doing about that
and why you view this as so important
because Dopp is just incredible.
Like most of what the problems that I've had
have been because...
I was using public ledgers, right?
And so people could dig back, like I said,
if you were able to just hit a button and say,
don't reveal the sender's address,
how many problems that solves?
Mo, you want to go ahead?
Yeah, yeah, sure.
So again, first of all, thank you for inviting me.
So I think it starts even before that.
If we look...
Since the dawn of history, you always see that there's two major tools of weapons to control mankind.
The first one is money.
It was always been money.
Money is being weaponized all the time.
It's been weaponized when you look at the Russia, Ukraine war.
Money has always been weaponized.
But the second thing, which could be even bigger than that, is information.
Information is maybe the biggest one, the biggest tool to control.
And it's a huge problem that we cannot control our own data.
And with all the magnificent and beautiful things, the technology brings us,
it's also taking a lot of our privacy, therefore taking a lot of our freedom.
Now, Seth said many, many things that I agree with, but when we look at the mission to decentralize the financial system, it cannot happen with all the respect to everything.
It can never happen once we don't equal the privacy that we have in the conventional system.
When I go to the grocery store,
And I want to buy milk.
It doesn't make any sense in the world that the seller can go into my wallet and can see my balances,
you can see what I have, or I can go to ease.
Just makes zero, zero sense.
And it will never ever be a forms of payment, a real one, scalable one, mass market one, without solving those issues.
Now, those of us that know, Satoshi spoke about it.
He spoke about it in 2011 in one of his latest talkbacks.
I think it was in Bitcoin Talk.
So Vitalik spoke about it two months ago, spoke about privacy and the fact that he thinks that if Ethereum world solve privacy, it will be a big problem for them in the future.
So scalability and privacy are two very important things.
Moshe, I, Scott, I want to say one quick thing is that I, if you got me on this space six months ago talking about this topic,
I would be making the argument that privacy is overrated and it's dead.
And I think if you have nothing to hide, why the hell should you require privacy?
I know it sounds a very naive, dumb argument.
But then obviously I experienced what?
surprisingly you experienced as well is that people dox in your location you know my
old address in Dubai was docks I had well I wasn't really private about it I had
you know personal matters dogs all my Wallace and I didn't even care about all my
Wallace being public but then people could link it to everything to all projects
we work with people in my personal life so I learned the hard way that privacy
is a necessity and but I'm actually curious got like you actually you've
You've had issues with the FBI, Scott?
Hold on, hold on.
When we signed up for blockchain,
when we signed up to transact on the blockchain,
did we not sign up for the fact that every transaction
was going to be visible to everyone on a public ledger?
Isn't that one of the major things that we actually signed up for?
We signed up for a world of transparency.
We signed up for a world where transaction can't be changed.
We signed up for a world where every transaction is visible to everyone on a public ledger.
Isn't that what we got into when we decided we want to be part of this movement?
I definitely think not.
I definitely think not.
This is a bug.
It's not a feature.
This is not something that was planned.
The idea is to...
go against double spending and make a decentralized financial system when no one controls it, no one can print more money.
The way that it was architect doesn't necessarily mean that it's the right thing.
You know, and when you say privately, and Mario, you said it very good and Seth said it, said it very well.
Privacy, it's not about hiding something.
Privacy is about the power to control your own data and to disclose and not to disclose what you feel comfortable to do.
And we don't have it now.
And you see it and you feel it, and you know many, many times how many people go into your wallet.
Why did you sell that token?
Why did you do that?
It's a huge problem that needs to be solved.
And I think DAP is doing something beautiful to solve it.
Yeah, yeah, I want to talk about data ownership protocols.
Scott, just one question.
If you don't mind, very briefly, what did you go through?
What was your experience?
Because that sounds fucking horrific.
Yeah, I want to be, I was on the right side of the FBI, not the wrong side.
To clarify that question, I was, do you?
I thought someone swatted you or something.
That was my guess.
So, yeah, I would say that the first major problem I have was being sim swapped twice, right?
And, uh,
And I then went through the entire trying to work on that with T-Mobile.
They gave me the highest protections.
I got SIM swapped again.
Luckily, I didn't lose any assets because I had it pretty well protected.
But it's pretty terrifying when that happens.
You have to change every password you've ever had in your life.
That's when I started to take this years ago.
Privacy and certainly security more seriously.
Yeah.
And then, you know, from there...
after having a whole lot of issues with my wallets being doxed and lined up with tweets and all the shit that we all know we've all been through a million times to create these sort of false narratives.
Then I had people trying to extort me saying they had fake knowledge.
I had to deal with the FBI and go after the people who were attempting to extort me, which they didn't have anything anyways.
I mean, it's a real shit show, man.
And people don't realize how much goes on behind the scenes once everybody has access to everything that you've ever done.
Or because they just see an opportunity to take advantage.
I mean, I'm telling you, when somebody sends you a private message with pictures of your kids playing in your front yard saying they're coming for your money, you take that pretty seriously.
Yeah, I, and mostly like what I went through very briefly is, like very recent, I went through from the, from being private, no one caring. I recorded all my calls. And obviously, we're talking about the blockchain. On the blockchain, all my wallace were public. I was very comfortable with it. All my wallace were linked.
very comfortable with keeping remaining public.
And when people told me like,
Mario is this fucking stupid,
even my team members,
and my team members,
and my team members,
there's nothing to hide,
just put it all public.
And then you realize,
as soon as you are public person,
you know,
you put your name out there,
people will use any piece of information
to come up with any,
any narrative.
And then you start experiencing
the importance of privacy.
Like, Moshe,
what triggered you to launch a DOP?
Yeah, so I gotta say, I don't think privacy is the only problem of famous people or public people.
I think it's a big problem.
Just if we want to make crypto a real mass market form of payment, then it's got to be private.
You got to allow people to choose what to disclose.
Now, this was the major reason that made us try to solve this problem.
And I think...
What we successfully did, or we're successfully doing in DAP,
which is just going live soon, and the alpha is out,
so you're welcome to test it, is we're bringing privacy to Ethereum.
You can encrypt any EFC 20 or any other ERC 721 or 1155 NFTs.
You can encrypt those and then store them or transact them.
on top of Ethereum, with the scalability and the security of Ethereum, without being tracked.
you can choose using the data ownership protocol,
you can choose what to reveal.
You can say, you know what, I just want to show that I bought an NFT,
but I don't want to show the rest of my balances,
or I don't want to show the other tokens I have,
or you can say, you know what,
I want to show the types of tokens that I hold,
but I don't want to show the balances.
which makes sense.
You choose what to reveal.
You can choose to reveal everything to the IRS.
If you want to, no problem.
You can give them a key, and they will see everything.
So...
We think that this kind of protocol would become a standard for the Ethereum ecosystem.
And by doing that, it will solve one of the major problems.
It won't solve the scalability.
There's other protocols to do that, but it will solve the ownership of your data problem,
which is a big one.
Yeah, Paul, what are your thoughts?
So I think a lot of people don't realize that Mario's opinion and how his opinion that he had quite a while back when he first got into crypto about I don't really care about the privacy.
I'm going to docks myself is actually insanely common.
More people that interact with, especially people not in our bubble of cryptocurrency, really don't care about their privacy.
And a lot of us don't care about it until it becomes critical.
Right.
And so one of the fundamental thesis that have had about getting privacy adoption is that it needs to be by default.
And I think a lot of these protocols, I haven't looked to adopt very carefully, but I think one of the most important things that as builders we need to do is give it to people that don't give a shit, right?
I don't care about privacy.
I just want to transact.
I want to send and receive money.
I want to interface with a protocol.
And I get that privacy regardless.
And I think Apple actually has created a great idea.
what I call it kind of standard and has adopted a level of privacy that most people don't realize
they're getting.
You know, when IMessage came out, it heavily increased the privacy of an SMS chat, at least between
two people that are using an iPhone or iPad.
And for a lot of people, they didn't know.
Like when I went and sent a message to my mom and to my sister, they didn't realize that
was end-to-end encrypted.
until tools like that become a default,
we're not going to see good privacy adopted,
and we lose the level of privacy for those of us that care.
Now, in the scope of cryptocurrency,
I've noticed this in cryptocurrency protocols,
the ones that make it default,
the ones that make it as easy as sending Bitcoin, i.e. so far from our experience,
Monaro is kind of the de facto standard.
You don't have to deal with multiple address types.
You don't have to shield your money.
You don't have to know, hey, do I have money that is clear or not?
I just simply send and receive.
That protocol has achieved the highest level of adoption.
So I think user experience, hiding the fact that you even have to do anything for privacy,
is a key piece from the viewpoint of what I've seen with things like tornado cash,
and protocols that are kind of opt in, you get them used by a lot of the nefarious actors and very little by the people that just want to use crypto or just want to use financial services.
I think it's a key thing that people forget about.
Yeah, Paul, basically you're saying, I think, which we know the obvious is that humans are going to be human and they're only going to care about it as much as it's convenient.
As soon as it becomes convenient, exactly.
It's an absolute sad truth.
But I think the key piece is let's build the tools that just get privacy into their life,
doing the things they already want to do.
And then we as people that actually care about privacy actually get better level of privacy
because privacy is a lot like trading markets.
Liquidity is king.
The higher liquidity you have in privacy protocols, the more private it is for everyone.
That is the anonymity set problem that you have.
And that's a key piece we forget about.
It mirrors a lot of just financial markets.
Liquidity begets liquidity gets a better product.
Ruben, go ahead.
You've had hand up for a while.
Hey, yes, thanks for having me on.
I just wanted to touch on the few things that were talked about.
I guess, like, you know, Mario was saying, you know, he didn't care about it.
And it's often the case that once you need privacy and you didn't care about it, it's kind of too late.
And I think also, I don't know who was saying this earlier, but he's saying, oh, you know, blockchain transparency.
Isn't that what we signed up for?
You know, this is everything.
But I think the key difference is that.
with the new privacy system, actually with all the privacy systems since then, although you are
hiding what the transaction is, you are not preventing the verifiability, right, which is not just by
sight, and everyone's not just eyeballing it. It is through the use of clever math, right? It's not
And of course, we have all these expert cryptographers and mathematicians that make sure that everything is right.
But this is kind of the beauty of, you know, zero knowledge proofs or the new types of privacy protocols where you can still verify that, you know, no money is being created of tin air.
No one is printing money for themselves, but still hide all this thing.
So yes, blockchain transparency.
I think it's more of a.
the lack of technology that was available then rather than, oh, yeah, you know, this is something that we definitely must have.
Because if we want to be money, as, as, you know, Moshi has pointed out, Satoshi wanted privacy, but the tech then wasn't quite there.
The other thing that I also wanted to touch is that, you know, he said like weaponization of money.
Yes, that has happened to in a way a weaponization of money has happened for like a long time, but it is also a relatively new thing, the way in the global economy things are working, right, with sanctions coming like much, much more to the fall in the past, what, 20 years or so. And.
you know, we've seen cases where, you know, you know, Venezuela had their gold reserve
seized because, you know, UK and a bunch of Western countries say, oh, no, you know,
your leader isn't responsible.
I mean, Russia had literally their entire, like, central bank deposits removed and liquidated,
you know, because of their war in Ukraine.
So I'm not saying supporting Russia or anything, but it's pretty scary when you see
hundreds of billions of dollars disappear that was deposited in the bank even as a nation.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. So anyway, I just wanted to touch on that, that, you know, I came to crypto because, you know, my payments were being censored, right? And I feel that, you know, with the whole move towards like, everything should be K-O-I-C, everything should be like AML. Not that I'm totally against it. I do think that there's, you know, some measure that we need to employ. But at the same time,
you know, it should not be just about hiding criminals.
It's also about, like, you know, being free to do things without someone telling you what is right or wrong.
The government deciding which country is right or wrong.
Like, you know, for example, in China or even in Western countries, right?
Like, I ran the VPN service in 2007.
And back then VPNs were considered like, oh, why would you want to use a VPN service?
You know, you must be doing something dodgy.
Now, every day you get like so many VPN services here and there.
And because of that, my business was actually censored.
You know, I was cut off from my credit card companies.
All these payment gateways did not want to accept payments.
And that's how I kind of with crypto.
And in the way, I would say privacy is kind of essential to maintain that uncensurability.
So, so, yeah.
Yeah.
Yes, Seth, I see you have your hand up, but I want to ask you, you can comment really quick,
but then I want to ask you specifically your thoughts on Friend Tech in this context.
I have not dug into FrontTech at all, so I don't have many comments there.
I'm shocked.
I know.
I've seen it's the latest rage, but I haven't followed it.
Are we really talking about Frantek again?
Are we back there again?
The only reason I asked is because we had this sort of 100,000 people, they called it a hack,
but it wasn't really, but being able to connect once again, everyone's addresses to their personalities.
But no, we can skip Front Tech.
Go ahead, Seth.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good example of many people who sign up for something not realizing the ramifications.
And a good friend of mine, Andrew Bailey, mentioned on a podcast lately that often pain is the best teacher and sometimes the only teacher.
And I think one of the reasons why I love that we are able to have conversations like this with people who maybe haven't experienced any pain related to a lack of privacy yet is that you can get ahead of that.
Like you can avoid pain being the best teacher and a lot of the things that we've talked about.
get towards that.
But I also just wanted to kind of briefly touch on the idea of privacy again.
And that I think we've kind of harped on a lot of the different ways that like you and
Mario want privacy and how it's been a struggle.
But it really comes down to privacy as the means to an end.
It's not.
interesting to gain privacy just to gain privacy. I'm not pushing privacy as this idea just because I like privacy or because I'm for privacy. But privacy is as an immensely valuable means to the end of freedom. And ultimately, there is no ability to have freedom without privacy.
and especially financial privacy, because if we have our finances laid out for the world to see,
laid out for governments to see who often either are authoritarian or can quickly become authoritarian,
the amount of freedom that we actually have is drastically diminished.
So if we're really seeking human flourishing, human freedom, and the individual having power
rather than the oligarchy or big government, that kind of thing, we need privacy as a means towards that
So oftentimes we need to look at the bigger picture when we're talking about this kind of stuff
and seeing that it really is the way to achieve freedom at a broad scale.
Moshe is an argument to be made for, you know,
Would you invest in a project that is docks or a project that is that you don't know the identity of the founders?
Like there's also an argument to be made and I still I still believe in that argument despite what I've been through, what Scott's been through and I'm actually curious what RAN has been through what happened to him in South Africa.
I have a feeling there's some dark shit that happened in South Africa to RAN but isn't there an argument to be made where
a world that doesn't have privacy could sound very
Distopian, but it could make sense imagine everything is transparent. No one could lie because everything's on the blockchain and
Is that, I know I don't believe in that argument as much as I did a few months ago, but I'm curious to get your thoughts, Marcia.
Yeah, my thoughts is that we need balance.
Just like Seth said before, we just need balance.
And the problem today is that we don't have it because we don't control our own data.
It's kind of crazy.
Regarding to investing in a project without knowing who it is, who stands behind it, you know, if I had the product,
If I didn't have the product to examine, then probably not.
But if I have the product and I can check the product,
I don't care who stands behind it.
I don't care about who are the inventor.
I care about the invention.
If it's decentralized.
If it's decentralized.
If it's decentralized.
If it's decentralized.
Of course.
What do you mean?
Look at all of us.
All of us have bitcoins.
Does one of us know who Satoshi is?
I mean, it's Alfini.
But other than me knowing it's Alfini,
Does anyone knows who's Bitcoin creator?
Anyone knows who's Satoshi?
But everyone is behind it because we saw the technology.
We played with the product.
So I definitely think that we need to move from credibility to more proofs, to verify, to see.
But again...
the ability to choose to share this information.
Okay, I want to share this information with you.
But I don't want to share my financial balances.
I don't want to, the fact that I want to buy an NFT.
And I have a bunch of NFTs.
I agree with you.
I agree with you that that's a flaw because I don't like it as much as you don't like it.
And I believe that if you're going buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks,
then the barrister shouldn't know.
every single ICO that you've ever invested in and every single transaction that you've ever made.
I agree. But having said that, that's part of the rules of the game that we signed up for.
We signed up for a public ledger. We signed up for a...
No. I would actually disagree early in 2013.
My friend, we signed...
We signed for a financial system that is not in the control of anyone specific.
We signed for mathematics as a verify method.
And if we found, and we did, not only us, other projects also found that using zero-knowledge
proofs, we can get the same verifying capabilities.
as what Satoshi did in 11 or at the 09,
then we just have a better solution today.
And I'm sure that in 10 years,
there will be a better solution back then.
We signed for a system that is decentralized.
This,
lack of privacy, it's not a feature, it's a bug.
And I gotta say one more thing, just, you know, I 100% support and agree with everything Seth is saying,
we need to remember privacy is freedom.
In many places over the world, when you don't have privacy, it takes you the ability, it takes from you the ability to express your opinion without risking something.
It's not only in the financial system.
It's also you guys.
You cannot express your free opinion without taking a cost.
People in Russia, people in Arab countries, people in China.
When they do that, they're risking their freedom.
And those kind of technologies that allows you to own your own data just for starters are an extremely important step in
To go against everything that is happening in our digital lives, that everything is exposed.
Everything is the control in Google.
Moshe, one last question for you, Mo, before we go.
I've seen a lot of panels with the hands up.
One more question is like, how do you prevent that option of privacy to being used for nefarious reasons?
Yeah, that's a good question.
So obviously we don't want those protocols to become the safe havens for bad actors.
That's definitely not what we want.
And we do have tools that allows...
agencies, just like
Zcash, by the way, allows
agencies to blacklist some
addresses from interacting
with the smart contracts, and
this committee should be
the committee
or the
that chooses which addresses to be blacklisted should be in the control of a DAO,
because, you know, Russia agency can say one thing,
and the American agency can say a different thing.
So you need to have a DAO in place to be like the de facto courthouse to make those decisions.
But the protocol does have disabilities in it that allows them to,
a blacklist and stop and block bed actors from enjoying these systems.
Yeah, because like I feel and Ryan, you probably agree with this and I'd like to get other panelists.
If anyone on stage agrees with the point that everything to do with privacy benefits everybody
because it gives us freedom, but at the same time it's mainly used by those that are doing things
that are illegal and nefarious.
Does anyone disagree?
I disagree.
That's not the case.
Yes, go ahead.
At all.
Any guests can feel free to jump in instead of me.
Yeah, look, I think there's different motivations for privacy.
And too often, the criminal side of it is associated with privacy.
It's that negative.
Yeah, Houdini's top.
You just dropped a friend.
Yeah, yeah. So someone else was jumping it at the same time as a huge swap.
It was a pretty passionate, Seth. Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, I can go and jump in there. Yeah, I definitely 100% disagree.
I mean, if you look at any of the most popular privacy tools out there,
They're most broadly used not by criminals, but by people who need privacy, by dissidents, journalists, activists.
I mean, Tor, if you look at the history of Tor, it is overwhelmingly used for good things.
Yes, there are things like darknet markets that live on there that can be used for bad things.
But the use of a technology for...
evil does not make the technology not worth it.
And we've seen this throughout all of the history of technology.
The car first adopted by criminals, phone first adopted by criminals, smartphones, widely
used by criminal organizations and it's sped up their ability to do crime.
But look at all of those things and look at the human flourishing and freedom that have come
through them.
There's always a first adopter phase to privacy tools that often are those people who
are most in need.
And that is normally...
journalists, activists, dissidents, people in repressed countries and criminals.
But the last of those criminals being able to use a tool does not make it
evil and always has to be possible for the tool to actually bring freedom. Because if we talk about a
protocol where you can censor at will, anyone he's using it, you have to know what's going on in the
protocol. So you have to have a way to break that privacy or backdoor that privacy. And you have to
have some sort of censorship layer. And if you have those two things, the privacy tool itself cannot
function to bring human freedom. And that is something that I will always push very strongly against. That goes
against
what Bitcoin was created for and what much of cryptocurrency was created for because we need
censorship resistance for this stuff to bring freedom. And in order to have censorship
resistance, we need privacy. And if either of those things are our
are able to be changed, able to be broken by whoever is behind the project or protocol,
it will not function. If you look at popular cryptocurrencies like Monaro, which is the most
popular privacy tool within the cryptocurrency space, there's no ability to backdoor the privacy,
there's no ability to censor on chain, there's no ability for miners to censor, which is a huge
step towards freedom because yes, it means that bad actors can use the tool, but it also means
that good actors can use the tool despite
authoritarian regimes, governments, law enforcement that are evil,
attempting to prevent them from doing so.
And that has to exist for human freedom to be brought through these tools.
Brian, you were jumping in?
Yeah, I think, I mean, you know,
one of the things that really struck me when I went to the U.S.,
when I lived in the U.S. was how they want to believe in transparency.
Like all court documents are public property and like, you know, everything in the U.S.,
tries to be a very transparent environment.
I mean, let's put aside the, let's put aside the layer behind that.
But I just, and I understand the need for privacy,
but I really struggled to understand how the powers that be are going to allow privacy.
Because I just think it's not, it's not part of how governments operate.
I think I was saying this before when I got cut off I think that it's really important to understand the motivations for privacy as well
So we're talking about pretty extreme cases right like living in an in an authoritarian or a dictatorship government or
You know a criminal using it to hide their to hide their whatever
Whatever nefarious purposes they're doing but I think even at the most basic
fine
fundamental level. When it comes to transactional privacy at least, even for people who are just
complete beginners, they have like you wouldn't think that they have a motivation for privacy.
It's important to separate that the fact that privacy is security.
Right. Like, it's simply dangerous to expose your personal financial information to everyone in the world, no matter where you live.
Right. Like, in, in fiat systems, governments allow privacy in the form of a bank account, right?
Like, when I go to, you give the example of the barista at your coffee shop, like, they can't see my personal financial information.
So, Houdini, let me ask you a question. I've got another question for more.
So the question I have for you, Houdini, is...
Is privacy dead? Let's be straight here.
Like with RAN's point, like with CBDCs, etc., is privacy dead?
And then I want to ask Mo is that how do you determine what to make private, what not to make private?
I know you guys are working on it atop, so I'm actually curious.
But Houdini Swap, is privacy dead?
No, it's absolutely not dead.
I think it's the next evolution.
And it depends where you're like in what context is privacy dead.
No, absolutely not.
In the specific context of crypto and blockchain.
I think it's just the next evolution.
It's we got to this point where we've,
we have some pretty serious adoption.
We have institutions playing like we're in contact with with hedge funds,
for example, who require privacy.
Like it just, if our, our philosophy is that if crypto and blockchain is to become
a global digital payment system, there needs to be privacy.
Like, it's just not going to function in a, in a seamless way with CBD, you know, with central bank digital currencies.
It'll never happen.
Like, it's just not a realistic future.
And so it's not dead, but it's evolving.
I actually have a question about Central Bank Digital Currency.
So I know you guys have a lot of privacy developers on here.
What's your sense of urgency on that?
Because that is coming very fast.
And there's no stopping it.
And, you know, as you can hear from like the World Economic Forum, they're constantly talking about it.
Central banks love it.
And it's going to be linked to a bio identity and potentially a social credit score like China.
So what are your guys as, what's your urgency?
Is it boring you?
Doppe, but you guys didn't actually, I don't think you spoke.
Do you want to unmute your mic, Dop?
Can you hear me?
Yeah, bro, we can, yeah.
Perfect. So you just asked if privacy is dead. And I want to say that from my perspective, privacy is not even born. Okay? I think that now crypto is not really mainstream yet. So it feels that privacy is not really needed. But that's not the vision. It's not our vision.
for crypto. Our vision is to bring crypto to the mainstream. And in my opinion, it will never happen without privacy.
So it feels like privacy is dead because, yeah, in the past, I totally agree that in the past, privacy was mainly for criminals.
But you know, that's what people used to say about Bitcoin. And I think that we are growing together as a crypto community.
we see that people really need privacy.
So, you know, Aristo used to say that the truth is in the middle.
It's not about zero or one.
And the middle is the truth.
And I think that absolute privacy or absolute transparency are both wrong.
So you don't need zeros or ones.
Yeah, we need to allow the crypto community flexible privacy settings.
No one thinks that, I don't know, cash is for criminals and it's private.
It's the user responsibility and it's not the tech responsibility.
We just need to give our users the options, the options to do it in their way.
Rubin, jump in.
Yeah, so I think Ron mentioned that, you know,
the governor's not getting privacy.
They wouldn't get behind it.
But I do think that if with enough pressure, like, for example, let's take a look at the UK, right?
They actually wanted to ban end-to-end encryption on messaging, right?
And in response, you know, I message, WhatsApp, all these anti-acrypted messages were saying,
well, screw that, you know, if you guys are going to ban us, then, yeah,
none of these are going to be available in your country, right?
So...
I do think it's, you know, rather than just saying, oh, yeah, governments are, there's nothing that we can do.
I do think that if it's sufficient enough people, make it a point to care, they actually can be changed.
Because I don't think these people, when they're being denied the tools that they use every day.
But people, but really, people just, people don't seem to care, man.
It just doesn't, we talk about privacy all the time.
Yeah.
People still use social media that has no privacy.
People still publish it that has no privacy.
It just seems that people are voluntarily giving up privacy for convenience.
I don't think it's right to say people who use social media don't care about privacy.
I mean, we all use social media.
But again, it's all about the ability to have that choice, right?
So none of us want to have like a thing like WeChat where, you know, the government can see everything, right?
I think, well, unfortunately, a lot of us to use telegram because of it, they are false advertising.
But, yeah.
Yeah.
But I think the other thing that I wanted to bring up is that, you know, CBDCs?
Yeah, of course, you know, this is a really big concern.
But if the Europe, when they surveyed European citizens on what was the number one concern they had on CBDCs, it was actually about privacy, right?
I don't know.
And now you can see all the real.
Robin, Ruben, talking about privacy, Ryan, we can hear you talking to your kids.
It doesn't seem you care much about privacy, man.
Yeah.
Ran?
Okay, go ahead.
Ryan, we can still hear you.
Let's actually all mute and listen to Ran.
Ruben, go ahead.
Yeah, no, as I was mentioning that, you know, even if you take a look at the messaging behind the European CBDC, they keep on talking about privacy, privacy, privacy as well, because they realize that especially when it comes to money, especially when it comes to countries that have been, you know, subject to authoritarian governments like Germany, you know, still very, very, you know, cash.
They would defend cash very heavily because they believe that there's importance between the division of money and the state, right?
But even among Europeans, privacy is actually the number one concern for CBDC.
And I actually found that surprising, but all of this information, you know, it's not just me spouting out.
You can look it up.
It's all online.
So just wanted to say that, you know, privacy is not dead.
Of course, it's a better, but we shouldn't be giving up.
And...
You know, we have actually come a long, long way, you know, HCTPS being standard,
and the encrypted messaging being standard.
So there has been a lot of good progress, so we shouldn't just give up and say, ah, you know,
there's nothing we can do about it.
Yeah.
Lay on Mo, I want to go to lay out, layer, layer.
Your thoughts like do people really give a shit about privacy like okay, we're giving them the option here like we talk you know Houdini was talking earlier by giving it as an option or I think he's as well
More was you know we've got more and and Dob here as well talking about the option of privacy is freedom yet the next question is do people really give a shit as we saw everyone giving away their data to the to the big tech?
Yeah, it's a good question. I think as time goes by, you know, like all of this technology is still extremely new.
You know, more and more people are getting on social media now. And I think initially, perhaps people didn't understand the problems with, you know, publicizing their entire life online, you know, talking about private things on WhatsApp, on Twitter DMs and Instagram DMs and things like that.
But I think as time goes by, people are starting to become more suspicious of governments, more suspicious of big tech.
And so I think I am actually starting to notice people caring about privacy.
You know what's really interesting?
I saw a new ad from Apple saying that Apple is like, is the place you can go to for privacy.
I don't know if anyone else has seen that.
So privacy is becoming extremely trendy.
And I think it's something which people really want.
The question is, are they going to put their money where their mouth is?
And unfortunately, I don't think they will.
I think at the end of the day, people will always favor convenience over everything,
over democracy, of privacy, and so on.
And so I also, I kind of want to just go back a sec.
You also ask, is privacy dead?
Um...
I think it's up to us. I think we're at this interesting intersection where we have to decide what we want to do.
I think big tech and governments obviously are very anti-privacy despite Apple's ad.
But we're at this weird intersection where it's really down to what we build and what we create
and how loud we are in the crypto community and how loud we are as citizens in the society that demand freedom and privacy.
So I don't know. I think time will tell, to be honest.
Oh, sorry, I'm muted Mo.
Your thoughts on that same question?
Do people really give a shit?
Yeah, so you know, I think the answer is like this.
We are early adopters.
So you look at yourself and you compare yourself to the mass market.
It's a wrong comparison.
I think people care a lot about privacy, but people have no patience and they have no tolerance.
Right now, they don't.
It looks like they don't.
They don't until they do.
I'll give it an example.
Okay, so like in Israel, I think it was like six months ago, there was a huge, huge thing.
And all of the public spoke about the fact that the government can use a system, a software called Pegasus with a company called NSAO.
in order to just put your phone number in the system.
And without you clicking anything,
the government is in your phone.
They see your photos.
They see your videos.
They hear your calls and see your texts.
Once this became public knowledge, there was a huge, huge chaos.
Everyone spoke about it for two weeks, and now everyone is investigating this.
So privacy is not an issue until it is.
Right now, we don't see it because like Matan said before,
Crypto is not mass market, guys.
Crypto right now is a speculation tool for making profits or losses and to make money.
This is what it is right now.
But this is not a vision.
If we want to get to a place that blockchain is the backbone and the basics of financial systems...
then we will need to allow users what they have today.
Plus, we cannot show a less good of a product.
We need to show a better product.
So we are better in terms of self-custody.
Great.
We are better in terms of the fees and the speed.
Great.
We are very bad in scalability and in privacy.
So we must solve those issues.
People will never, ever, ever use cryptocurrencies if they know that anyone that gets the payment can go to their wallet. Period. That's it. It's very simple. It will die at that second. Once we solve this and it shouldn't be out. It should be, like he said before, flexible.
privacy. You should be able to reveal what you want to reveal to whoever you choose.
How do you do that? Momo, how do you do that? Because I was looking at Doppin, before going
to Seth, how do you allow someone to choose what to reveal? It sounds
technologically impossible. No, so actually it is. So when Bitcoin was developed,
zero knowledge proofs, all of those technologies were
They were there, but they were very early on.
Recently, in the last few years,
companies like, or projects like Stockwell,
projects like AdStack Network,
they've done a major breakthroughs in terms of the mathematics
that allows you to verify transactions
without being transparent and open on the blockchain.
We are using those mathematics equations.
and obviously with our own development in order to create a system that gives you full power on top of Ethereum.
You mentioned Monero before.
One of the problems with Monero is that it's not like, for example, it's not stable, right?
So people use stable coins.
What if you can have a stable Monero or something, Monero doesn't give you the flexibility to choose.
Monero is strictly private.
Over here, we have a protocol that gives privacy to Ethereum.
So you can take USDT, you can encrypt it, and you can transact it now, using zero knowledge proofs, without it being traceable on the blockchain.
I would finish and say...
that you need to test it.
Guys, you need to go to dab.org and use the test net and see it for yourself.
It's beautiful and it's working right now.
Seth?
Yeah, yeah, I'd love to trip in on that because the idea of having the power to reveal what you want is a vital one.
But it really comes down to the tool.
The freedom, Seth, the freedom, sorry, I want to add like the freedom argument of it makes a lot of sense.
Um, just like my two concerns is like the, the fairest reasons and do people give a shit?
Yeah, also like what, uh, just to kind of most points circling back on something he said about it before.
I don't know how it is in any given country, but in the United States, you're going to have to report every single transaction one way or another.
Right. So, um, you know, as, as he said, you can, I guess, give the key to the IRS so they can see it, but, uh,
even being able, you should be able to be private, but still be able to share those transactions.
You're going to have to.
In the United States, you just can't hide your transactions.
It's literally impossible, not something that you would get in trouble with the IRS.
So there has to be a way to thread that needle.
Unfortunately, I'm sure there's countries where you can just send privately, not share it,
never share it with anyone.
Great, you just can't do that here.
So it's a really valuable tool, you know, to be able to sort of thread that needle and have the best of both worlds.
Yeah, and when we talk about that, the real requirement is that these tools have to be convenient, like we've mentioned before.
And the only way that privacy is convenient is that it's the default.
If we have to take extra steps to gain privacy, you're going to drastically limit how many people are actually going to choose the private path because of that convenience, privacy, uh,
seesaw that most people want to just sit on the convenience side.
So it is important that things are default,
but there's a misconception that a system that has default privacy,
like Monero, for instance,
does not allow you to reveal the information that you want to reveal,
which is, it's a myth.
It's not true.
If I am using Monero...
And I'm using it totally above board, which I do. I pay taxes, which I do. I can still reveal any information I need to about those transactions to the government or to other people using something called a buki in Monero. That exists for most privacy preserving protocols. Zcash has a similar concept. I believe Fero has a similar concept. Rubin can comment more on that. But it's not something where when you.
are using a private tool that provides privacy by default all the time,
you don't have the ability to reveal information.
You always can, even if the tool didn't have a native ability,
even signal, if I wanted to reveal a chat to someone,
yeah, I can just screenshot and share the chat.
It's much easier to selectively share data.
than it is to opt into privacy every time.
And so it's really vital for anyone who is building a tool
or who is a developer,
who is an educator in the space,
that we push for privacy by default whenever possible,
because that is how we get people using privacy preserving tools
even before they realize the risks of,
of a lack of privacy and cryptocurrency.
Yeah, for sure.
Elusive, I want to ask you because I literally saw the news yesterday,
and I shared your profile here saying we had to get you here,
obviously not knowing you, but I saw Anatoly sharing that you were offering basically
private swaps on Solana.
First of all, why is that important?
And how does that work then if you want to share those transactions with the IRS, something like that?
It just kind of leads in to exactly what we're talking about here.
Yeah, happy to be joining the space and have a chance to finally also give some impulse.
Yeah, so...
I think we broadly talked about the reasons why privacy is important, especially in Defi, I think a lack of privacy
really undermines the individual's freedom.
So private swaps are essential just as normal private transactions are.
And for us, this compliance aspect...
that we were just talking about is also really important.
So for us, you can generate viewing keys for individual transactions or different rule-based
subsets of your asset ownership or transactions.
So if you do a private swap, swapping your Rep, E for USDZ,
on elusive, what you can do is you can generate a viewing key
that then gives the IRS inside
into this swapping transaction, only exposing what you did in Defi to all third parties that you share this viewing key with.
And what we're working on, which I think is important, is also to have this feature be directly integrated with block explorers, right?
And so,
You generate this key, share it with anyone,
and they pass it into their block explorer
like they would with a normal transaction hash,
and now they can see what happened in an encrypted transaction.
So they don't have to go out of their way when checking what happened in an encrypted transaction.
Like the user shouldn't have to go out of their way when getting privacy.
So I think.
So you guys are threading the needle as well.
You're finding a way where you can transact privacy, but you have the choice and obviously can still share it tax-wise.
Yeah, I'm actually curious, Scott,
like who on stage, I know we're going to wrap soon,
but who on stage experienced something similar to me or Scott,
I know Ryan is with his kids, and I'm not sure if he's listening,
but I'm actually curious to hear another story.
Very much, yeah, very much, yeah.
I'd love to know your story that South Africa's a different world to the West.
Have you been docks? Have you had any issues because of the transparency of the blockchain?
You've always been careful?
I mean, I haven't been careful. It's not like I have much to hide.
Like, what am I hiding? I'm not doing any illicit transactions. You know what I mean?
It's what it is.
But hold on, we just made the argument that you don't have to hide anything.
You don't have to hide anything for people to come up with a story.
Like,
you don't want,
okay,
you don't want competitors to know all the projects you're working with,
for example.
Yeah,
I mean,
look,
that's why I said,
that's what I said,
I'm very much,
I understand the problem very much.
I've experienced the problem very much,
but I'm just,
and,
As I said before, like I feel that when we got into blockchain, one of the features that we were told that it has is that everyone can see every transaction.
So, you know, it was one of the, it is a problem.
I understand it.
I think I agree with Moe that with this problem, unfortunately, it does stop blockchain from being used as much as it can be used, you know, because you're thinking about it in terms of investing, but think about suppliers buying.
chips or IP or software from other suppliers and competitors being able to track their wallets and then
effectively infiltrate their supply chain and destroy their competitive advantage.
You know, that's that for me is a big problem.
Like.
You know, if you're thinking about Apple one day
transacting on the blockchain and paying their
semiconductor supplier,
then, you know, the entire world will know
exactly where they're buying all their IP from
and all their consulting and whatever else they're buying from.
And I think that that's a fundamental problem in blockchain.
I think for as long as we have governments
and for as long as governments have control,
they're going to be very much against privacy.
We saw this where we thought, as the crypto community,
we said they'll never be able to infiltrate tornado cash
because tornado cash is a protocol, and it's a decentralized protocol, and the keys have been burnt, and therefore, there's no way that the government can control or come after tornado cash.
What did the government do? The government found a weapon against tornado cash, which was sanctions.
And using sanctions, they've now taken the developers and put the developers into jail.
I think the developers actually out of jail knife, I'm not mistaken, or may be wrong.
But...
What the government did was they found a tool in their arsenal to be able to shut us down or to shut privacy down because they don't want people to have privacy.
So I think that as much as ideologically I agree with it, I think that it's a very, very, very tough fight to fight because I think it's the ultimate part of what the government don't want to give us, and that is privacy.
Can I jump in on that real quick?
Sure.
Sure.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, I'd love to just comment on the tornado cash thing because it's something that I've thought about a lot.
And when it comes to tornado cash, the sanctions did not technically prevent people from using tornado cash.
And even today, people can use tornado cash.
What the sanctions did and what the most important tool available to governments is when pushing back against tools that are truly decentralized,
which tornado cash smart contracts are, but the ways you can access them aren't,
which is the main gateway that people have been prevented from using tornado cash.
they can use fear as a weapon.
Sanctions in this specific case were a tool of fear.
And so when we continue to propagate the idea that governments are against privacy,
so we shouldn't even fight for it, we actually aid the governments that do not want privacy
in their goals.
We aid them in those aims.
I think it's very, very, very important that we remember that even though, especially
like in the tornado cache case, which is a,
A good one, it set a terrible precedent because it showed that governments are willing to go after developers and projects who build on privacy.
But it also showed us in the positive light that tools that are truly decentralized like the tornado cash smart contract can continue existing and continue working despite government sanctions and government interference.
And the tools that we build have to be able to continue function.
I agree.
Despite whatever governments want to.
I agree, but I disagree.
And you know, you say that we can continue to use tornado cash.
Yes, if you're very, very, very, very, very technical and you exclude 99.9% of the population, a subset of very, very, very technical people can still somehow use the protocol.
But they know that if they do use the protocol and the government does actually find out that they use the protocol, then they've actually violated sanctions.
So you can say, oh, we can't.
Yeah, and that's the fear tool.
Yeah, you can't use it.
The reason it can't be used easily is because of a flaw in the Ethereum ecosystem where most people go through centralized API providers.
That's not a flaw with the Pinnitoucash smart contract.
99.9% of the world don't know how to use anything else.
and won't know how to use anything else and shouldn't know how to use anything else.
And by the way, if you do interact with tornado cash today,
you're in violation of sanctions.
And as far as I understand that violation of sanctions is quite a serious criminal offense in the United States.
So it's like, yeah, it is possible to use it.
It is possible to use it.
But if you do, then you're violating sanctions.
Of course, and that's the fear tool that I was speaking up.
That's the tool that they're trying to dissuade people from using it,
but they cannot prevent the actual tool from existing.
And it's only a flaw in the theorem ecosystem that prevents most people from being able to use.
You can say this about anything.
You say this about a bomb.
Exactly.
You can still go buy a gun and shoot people,
but you're not allowed to shoot people.
I think, you know,
Yeah, so you can't really use tornado cash today.
You can't, it's too risky to use tornado cash today.
You can't really use tornado cash today.
So that's what I'm saying.
I think that you've got to look at the government's agenda.
The governments are talking about CBDCs.
They want exactly the opposite of what we want.
We're saying we want privacy.
They're saying we want full transparency,
and then that full transparency must also become full control.
And you can't go to people who say, want full transparency.
and full control and say, hey, we want privacy.
I think it's a very, very, very tough fight to fight.
Ideologically, I agree.
I want to have privacy.
Of course I want to have privacy, but realistically,
I think it's a tough fight to fight.
So what's your response then? Is it bending the need to the government's aims to strip privacy?
No, as I said, I think there's certain fights that I choose to fight.
And there's certain fights that I think are not worth the way that I'm going to move the needle.
And again, like we can sit here as crypto Twitter and there's 4,000 people on the Twitter spaces and talk about how much we want privacy.
Ultimately, we have to accept that privacy is the one fight that governments are all going to fight hard against because privacy means that they're not going to get their tax revenue.
Privacy means they're not going to get their control.
Privacy means that they're not going to get their disclosure and they don't like that.
Privacy is not binary.
Privacy is not binary around what level of privacy?
Agree.
It's a very, very.
Agree, but I think.
Can I jump in for a second?
Can I jump in for a second?
Yes, please, Moe.
Sorry, go ahead, Ma.
Yeah, so-
Yeah, so- yeah.
So, guys, you know, you say this, I gotta share with you our experience regarding
America because you, all of us are looking at America like the government of the world,
but it's not true.
There's 300 million people inside America.
There's 7.7 billion outside of America.
Like when we started to develop the app,
then we immediately hired a top...
top firm in America.
And we spoke with them, and one of their
partners is like former
head off money,
anti-money laundering
and things like that.
And we got it, by
the way, we got an opinion today,
thank God. But
what?
Part of the discussions with them was like, guys, listen, you need to do this, you need to do this, do that, do that.
But then after we've done everything, they told us, listen, it's completely legal, it's perfectly fine.
It's nothing like Donato Cash, but you want a golden advice?
We said yes.
So listen, block it in America, block it completely in America.
until the government won't shift because the current leadership is against all of those things and are very, very aggressive.
So by the way, we've done it.
Not that you can block a protocol, but we are blocking the IP addresses to gate the protocol from America.
So we did do this.
But we need to remember that governments change and feel is a tool that works until it doesn't work.
And regarding the necessity of it, please, I don't think it's, you know, I don't want to say it's not an opinion because it is an opinion.
But in our opinion, it's almost the fact that crypto would never be a mass market tool without the flexible privacy features in it.
So we need to build it, as he said before, default tool, as a default setting.
in the standards of Ethereum and the blockchain
that will allow people to disclose to the governments,
to disclose to the IRS.
It's not legal to not show it to them,
but it is perfectly fine for me to buy an NFT without the need
to show my entire balance.
Yeah, I agree.
I agree.
And I think this is a good time to plug my sponsor to say,
if you are American and you do want to experience this protocol,
use a VPN, use NordVPN.
And hook me up for a referral link.
I'll give you a referral link later.
So all criminals, make sure you go, I'm joking.
Anyone in Dubai as well, check out.
All criminals use Rands affiliate link for NordVPN.
Nice.
I mean, you know what I love.
I love when exchanges and protocols say, no, no, don't worry.
You know, we block US IP addresses.
I mean, I don't know any crypto user that's not using a VPN these days.
I've got to be honest.
Yeah.
I'm using VP.
Can I just go ahead, Leigh.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, so I just want to talk about the mentality of, oh, it's too difficult to fight, so let's not fight.
I think that's one of the weakest and most dangerous mentalities.
You know, if we had that mentality, we wouldn't even be here in the crypto space.
We wouldn't even be on Twitter.
Elon wouldn't have own Twitter.
We'd still have Jack Dorsey and, you know, World Economic Forum and all that controlling Twitter.
The fact is, if we give up now, then we're not going to get anywhere.
And privacy is a human right.
It's a fundamental right.
And it has nothing to do with hiding illicit activity.
It's about your right to choose what you want to show and what you don't want to show.
And the fact is...
This is going, it's happening.
More and more people are building, building protocols to allow this.
I know DOP is obviously doing this.
Tommy is doing this.
Do you have a right?
Do you have a right to show what you want to show
and not show what you don't want to show?
Because when I'm doing my tax returns, I don't have that right.
Not inside my wallet.
It's not your business.
It's not the government's business.
But when I do my tax returns, I don't have that right.
Yeah, but I can decide.
That doesn't mean I'm not going to pay taxes.
I never said I'm not.
Yeah, and disclosing to the government is also different than disclositing to every person you've ever sent a transaction to.
Not necessarily does. I mean I'm not going to pay taxes, but that opens up a whole other kind of worms. I'm not even pro-taxas anyway. I don't think the government has a right to steal from me. So that's another kind of worms.
I pay my taxes in case the IRS is listening. I don't agree with that. I pay taxes, but I'm open about the fact that I'm anti-trial. I love the IRS as well in case anyone's listening.
My favorite agency is called. I also love the SEC contrary to the other things.
Yes, yes. They're welcome on stage anytime. Sorry, Lear. I just want to put these disclaimers. Go ahead. Sorry.
Uh, I just wanted to train me.
Anything, yeah, hold on.
Anything that Leah said is not endorsed by me or Scott.
Right, Leah.
We were just kidding.
You get better.
Will it?
Yeah, yeah.
I do have a retort back to Larry to say, look, I agree with you.
And I think that we should fight for our rights and our rights to privacy.
But, you know, I think with...
As I say, for me, it's a personal thing in terms of picking my battles,
in terms of which battles I think I can fight and have a high probability of winning,
and which battles I can fight and have a lower probability of winning
and therefore probably a higher return on effort.
And so for me, what I'm saying is I really respect people who are fighting for privacy.
I just think it's one of the hardest fights to fight.
I respect people like you.
I respect people like Mo because I know very much that he has...
he's been fighting very much for privacy.
I'm just saying if you take the subset of things
that I choose to fight for,
I think that privacy is one of those things
where I'm more comfortable leaving it to other people
who are more passionate about it.
I think most people are exactly like you, Ron.
That's why I was asking earlier.
Do people really give a shit?
Because while they say they give a shit,
their actions don't show that they give a shit.
No, but it's also...
what is your probability of success?
How hard is the government going to fight back against you?
Like, you think about it,
how hard will the government fight back against me for holding Bitcoin?
That's quite a big fight.
Like, government,
governments allowing me to hold a currency or a store of value that they can't control,
that I can send cross borders without an intermediary, without being part of the financial
systems.
I mean, that's a big fight.
Like, that's already one big step forward.
Now, that is a fight that I'm willing to take because I think that the probability of
winning it in the current...
playing field is reasonable.
When you add another layer and say,
you know,
will the government let me have privacy,
then that's not a fight that I'm,
I mean,
I like the idea,
but am I going to fight it
and spend a lot of my time fighting it?
Probably not,
because I think that the probability of success
is much smaller.
And I think that,
as you say,
that's the reason
that most people,
that most people choose
not to fight for their right to privacy,
because I think the probability of success
is very small.
Can I jump in here?
I'm going to finish my point.
Yeah.
Leah, your mic doesn't seem to be working.
Go ahead, Leah.
Go ahead, Leah.
I don't think her mic is working.
Go ahead, Rubin.
Okay.
We're going to move towards rapping.
She's back.
She's back.
She's back.
Yeah, try again.
Yeah, I don't know. I got disconnected. Yeah, I just wanted to finish my point. Ultimately, you all do agree that freedom matters, and you can sit here and say that you don't, you know, you don't believe in paying taxes and all of this stuff. But ultimately, I think you're all just too afraid to say the truth in case that the art is not.
Yeah, we can't hear you. Sorry, your mic is breaking up.
It's amazing, but as she talks about privacy and the IRS, her mic mysteriously cuts out.
I'm being paid by the IRS to mute layer.
So anyone that says anything bad to the IRS, you may be accidentally muted by me or Scott.
Okay.
Yeah, Leia, your mic is really bad, Leia.
I'm just going to mute.
You can just really chopper.
You can't hear you.
But I think what Leia's saying is that we're cowards me and you, Scott, for not attacking the IRS and saying that private.
Even though I'm not in the US, I don't report to the IRS.
I'm just kind of backing up my boy, Scott.
So I think that's Leia's point.
Let's just a quick question.
What do you think it means to fight for privacy?
Like when you say it's not a battle that's worth fighting for, like if there were privacy...
It's like not used, not use, not use, not use platforms for convenience when that's at the detriment of privacy.
It's probably the most obvious thing we could do and no one's doing.
It's like there's so many alternatives to other, to the big tech to Google.
Like even in crypto, how many people have...
are huge, you know, use Google Chrome, which whatever, but could use Brave, but go over to
Brave and then they don't like the way that some of the content doesn't load and then they go back
to Google Chrome, right?
Yeah, well, I think.
And this goes back to the point that I think Paul was saying earlier and I know we're
going to wrap really soon.
People care about their privacy only in as much as it's convenient and they don't have to
go out of their way to change their behavior to remain private.
That means it really has to be built in.
Yeah, Leah mentioned that point earlier.
She said people will choose convenience over privacy,
and I think that's one of the most astute points of this entire show.
It really is about convenience, and it has to be there.
And for people to expect to get a PhD before they're able to use a privacy tool is not realistic.
But there are convenient tools out there.
I mean, shameless plug, we've done over $100 million in transaction volume on Houdini swap.
It's a very popular tool.
Send me some of that, bro.
And then...
I was going to make a bad joke, but I should hold myself back.
So go ahead, Scott.
Go ahead.
Well, thank you guys.
We're up against time here.
But, Dopp, you haven't actually spoken and got a really big fan of what you guys are
doing.
You guys, everyone should follow it at DOP underscore org.
The black, yeah, there's two logos.
Two logos on stage you should follow.
The ugly red one and the nice black one.
The ugly red one is ours.
It's crypto town hall account.
We're going to, I was going to.
I was going to.
I know, man. I know. Everything I have is black, including my clothes. But yeah, so the red one is Cryptotown Hall because we're going to start hosting shows from there in the very near future. And the other one is DOP because, you know, we're pretty big fans of what they do. And they're about to wrap up the show. DOP data ownership protocol. The mic is yours, guys.
Thanks, just a short comment to Renn.
So Rann said 10 minutes ago that he has nothing to hide,
that he's not using any privacy tools.
It's like he don't need it.
But respectfully, you will never ever upload your passport,
all your credit card payments history to Twitter.
So you have what to hide, and it has nothing to do with criminal activity.
So what I'm trying to say is that without privacy, we will never, ever, ever go mainstream.
Never ever.
I agree.
I agree.
I agree with that.
Well, I think it's a good point to a good place to end, Scott.
Yeah, I agree.
I think that was a great conversation.
What's your wallet, by the way, Scott?
Four, nineers, Z, six, horse, alpha.
Horse Alpha Mario.
Alright guys, we gotta wrap on that.
Horace Alpha Mario.
Your mind is so fucking weird, man.
We're gonna wrap it up.
You should try being married to me.
I'm gonna get my wife on stage one day as we can break it out.
I would love your wife on stage.
No joke.
It would be one of my favorite spaces for sure.
But let's wrap it guys.
Ryan, final words?
I'll tell you, I'm not falling into this trap, bro.
Oh, we stopped it. You ordered me to stop it. So since then, I've been unfortunately forced to no longer do this.
If anyone wants us to start doing this thing again, if you know what I'm talking about, just let us know in the comments.
Moshe, I'll give you the final words.
I wish I could hang out of you right now.
Moshe, any final words?
Yeah, final rules. I think we all agree now that privacy is a big part of freedom.
We always say, now, privacy is freedom.
And please, if I can use this stage to invite you guys, we are in the development stage.
We want users to use the test net, help us find bugs.
and security breaches and stuff like that.
It will help us a lot and it will help you guys later with the airdrop
that will be given to the users of the test net.
Thank you guys.
Thanks, everyone.
I appreciate it.
Moe, thanks a lot, everyone.
Thanks for the...
