All Episodes
Previous Next
May 20, 2024 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
01:48:06
Decentralize.TV interviews Reuben Yap from FIRO, a privacy coin with highly advanced anonymity feat
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Welcome to today's episode of Decentralized TV here on Brighteon.com, the uncensored video platform.
And as always, I'm joined today by my co-host, Todd Pitner.
Welcome, Todd.
Great to see you again.
Great seeing you, Mike.
I missed you this last week.
We both took a, well, not a week vacation, workcation, but we didn't do a show last week.
So, missed you, buddy.
I know, I know.
And our producers already showed our guest today.
Ha, ha, ha.
We were supposed to save him until we did the grand intro, but they've seen him now.
Yeah, there's Where's Waldo and there's Where's Ruben.
Today is Where's Ruben.
So today is Ruben Day from Firo.
Firo is a privacy crypto ecosystem.
It's got a lot of great announcements and things going on.
Welcome, Ruben.
It's great to have you join us today.
Hey, yeah.
So glad to be here.
It's like super early here, but...
You know, for you guys, really excited to, you know, I think it's been a while since we last had a chat.
So I think I'll be very happy to share what we have done and just hang on and chill with you guys.
Oh, yeah.
It's been several months and a lot has happened since then.
I mean, like the Bitcoin ETFs were approved.
And I think since we interviewed you last, oh, let me mention the website.
It's firo.org, F-I-R-O.org for people who want to check us out and follow along.
But since then, a lot more people have gotten turned on to, you know, the use cases of cryptocurrency.
And I hear people talking about how the number one intrinsic value of their privacy crypto is that it is non-confiscatable.
Like, that's number one right there.
Ruben, you want to give us a quick background, quick intro of what is Fero for new audiences?
Sure.
So we are obviously a privacy-focused cryptocurrency.
We started in 2016 under a different name called Zcoin.
I think we rebranded, I think, a couple of years back.
But I think we have been, I guess...
One of the few projects that are kind of at the forefront of building privacy protocols, not just implementing them, we started out with something called ZeroCoin, we moved to Sigma, then Lelantis, and now Lelantis Spark.
And I think what we're offering here is like, you know, very homegrown community built type of privacy protocols that are accessible.
And yeah, I think that's really been our driving focus over the past few years.
And we're not a new project, right?
2016 in crypto terms is a bit of a dinosaur, but we're still here.
We're still kicking.
And I think we've just really improved from strength to strength.
So really excited.
Oh, that's awesome.
And Todd, you know, what are your comments on what has changed since we talked with Ruben last?
Because it's been like six months in this industry is like a whole epoch, you know what I mean?
I know.
Frankly, spirit of full disclosure, I kind of got to the point, Mike and Ruben, to where so many things were changing and we were kind of at the tail end of the bear market.
I just kind of mentally decided, you know what, I'm going to go patient and go home and just kind of sit back and observe and see how some of these projects manifest, come together, fall apart, But I'm really excited, just casual observer from afar, to see Thero and to see the continued development.
And I can't wait to hear about Leilantis Spark and what that means to privacy communities in general, Ruben.
Yeah.
I mean, thanks for that intro, Todd.
So, Ruben, you want to...
Continue that thought because Lelanta Spark, that's been your focus now for quite some time.
As I understand it, you're beyond just the testing stage, but why don't you give us an update on where you are with Spark and what it means?
So, a bit of context because Lelanta Spark, I guess we first released the academic paper, rather like the paper outlining its design in 2021.
So, it's been quite a while since we released it.
Like, you know, kind of the idea behind it.
And that itself wasn't like, you know, it didn't come in isolation.
It was kind of like...
The culmination of work that we have done since 2016, right?
And we kept on improving over the earlier privacy protocols.
And one of the things that we found was actually kind of lacking in the space, because right now, you know, what do we have currently in the privacy crypto space?
We only have really a handful of privacy protocols.
We have Mimberwimber, which, you know, Epic Cash use, which you guys obviously are very familiar with.
We have those types that they use, like ZK Snarks, right?
Which is what Pirate Chain used.
What Zcash really...
They started out using that.
They promoted using ZK Snarks.
It covers a bunch of family stuff.
Halo 2 is also roughly under that family.
And then you have Ring Signatures or Ring CT more accurately, which also hides the amount.
And that's used by Monero, Xano, and a bunch of other coins.
All using the same type of privacy mechanisms.
These are the three main privacy protocols that are out-deployed today on what I call proper privacy coins, right?
Not some coin join mixing type of solution, but actual cryptographic implementations of privacy.
And all of these protocols, they have each of their pros and cons.
And that's kind of sad, given that I think that privacy is so important in this space.
You need to have some sort of diversity, especially good ones, to be kind of resistant, right?
Because especially when building this cutting-edge tech, if you're all in just like two or three different privacy protocols and something breaks, right?
Do you actually have, you know, an alternative to work in, right?
So, for example, like...
You know, this isn't like a hit on other privacy protocols.
We each have their, I guess, pros and cons.
Like, for example, Mimberwimber, the need for both parties to kind of interact with each other, to be online at the same time.
Or with ZK Snarks, there's something called a trusted setup where you kind of need to set...
It's kind of like the one ring in Law of the Rings where you have to trust...
That the One Ring was actually destroyed, or else there's like a backdoor into the system.
And Ring Signatures doesn't really offer very lasting anonymity because, you know, I always use this really kind of crude analogy of like farts in a lift whereby, you know, Ring Signatures is kind of like I go into the lift and I feel like I need to take a fart and I drag like, you know, 15 other people into the lift with me and then I fart.
And great, yes, you know.
On an isolated basis, maybe that group of 16 is good enough, especially if you keep on finding new people to fight with.
But it doesn't really offer...
That great of privacy, especially if you look at the lift for a long enough time in your life, hmm, you know, Ruben has been in this lift during this and this and this transaction.
So yeah, it's just a very easy way to kind of visualize it.
I wouldn't say it's super technically accurate, but it's a very useful analogy.
So I do feel that we are lacking privacy.
Zero-knowledge-proof type of systems like Spark, like ZK Snarks, a bit more on the complicated side, but one that kind of offers very high degrees of privacy, but at the same time for us, you know, it's A lot simpler than, let's say, the ZK Snarks constructions.
And yeah, we need actually really much more diversity in this space.
So really glad to see this whole new family of privacy tech come alive.
And even Monero, which is currently using Ring Signatures, has kind of like looked at our tech and adapted it to their next-gen privacy protocol called Seraphis.
So they're also using the same family of privacy protocols So I think that's like a testament that the number one in terms of market cap and utilization has kind of, you know, drawn a lot of inspiration from our technology.
So I think that's a big endorsement there.
Well, thanks for that intro there, Ruben, and some context.
And I just want to...
Remind you to keep it layman sort of, you know, regular terms for our audience who are not devs.
You're doing a great job so far.
I just want to remind you of that.
But Monero is like the number one recognized and most highest transaction privacy crypto that's out there.
It's got the most liquidity.
but it's still running on ring transactions, as you said, with the flatulence in the elevators, AirBiscuit crypto or some, I don't know what that is.
But they are also working on a lot of improvements, like you said, and I know that you are, I don't know, co-workers or you share ideas with Monero and back and forth.
But tell us about what, you know, the status of Spark and when does FIRO fully implement Spark?
And what does that mean in terms of, I mean, in my mind, I think it's a technological leap over the current state of Monero, even though Monero is always innovating themselves.
But I think Spark puts FIRO kind of ahead in terms of privacy.
Is that accurate, or would you disagree with that?
Yes, definitely.
Spark is actually already live on mainnet.
So we launched six days ago on mainnet.
So it's totally live on mainnet.
Transactions are coming.
That's already, you know, just in the couple of days since its launch, we've already seen like 900 No, no, more than 900, but 900 type of shielding transactions, and around 200,000 type Firo has already gone into the pool.
So it's totally live at the moment.
Okay, wait a second.
I wasn't aware of that, so that's great news.
Does this mean that Firo current users, do they need to download new wallets or anything, or how does that work?
Yeah, so you can download new wallets.
You know, Stack Wallet, which also is a free open source wallet that also supports Apicash, Fero and whatnot, does have Spark support.
So if you're using Stack Wallet, which I would say is the recommended way to kind of get started with Fero and many other privacy coins, All you have to do is just update.
There's a migration thing that you click on it and it goes.
But if you're using our more traditional, I would say, like Fullnode wallets, then yeah, you just go to our website, download the new wallet, and you'll have a new wallet with the whole Spark experience there.
Okay, now, is there a deadline for users who hold Firo?
And I'm one of those users, by the way, because I have some Firo from after our last interview.
I bought some.
I want to try it out.
I have a wallet with some Firo in it.
I don't want to lose that.
Our audience doesn't want to lose it.
Is there a deadline where it vanishes if they don't upgrade?
So it depends on how you have shielded it.
So if you're currently in the old privacy protocol called Lelantis, we agree with the community that a two-year grace period would be sufficient for people to upgrade to move into this new privacy protocol.
So yeah, it will disappear if you don't get out In two years' time.
How do you move it?
Yeah, how do you move it?
Good question.
No, you just upgrade to the wallet and you'll promise for you to move it.
Yeah, that's all.
Okay.
Well, why couldn't you upgrade the wallet at any time, even like three years later?
The thing is that, so right now, if you've moved into the...
Okay, let me explain.
So right now, we've moved into different privacy protocols, right?
And what we want to do is to kind of sunset the old privacy protocol.
Because...
When you deploy a new privacy protocol, you don't want to be maintaining all these different complicated systems, right?
That means once we've moved on, we don't have to maintain the old one.
If there's a vulnerability fund, we don't have to care anymore, right?
We just have to focus all efforts on one privacy protocol.
And Zcash has also done this as well, where they moved from They all sprout to sapling to what they call orchard right now.
And they do also have grace periods for each of those things.
So what it means is that once I've already kind of like shielded my funds into this anonymous protocol, right, I need to be able to kind of get it Out and then back into this new system, right?
And we are giving people two years to kind of get out of the old system so that we can sunset the old privacy protocol so that we don't have to maintain it anymore.
We don't have to worry if there's any bugs or vulnerabilities that might affect the cryptocurrency.
But does that mean then you need to download and install the new wallet?
Do you need to send a transaction to yourself under the new system?
There's a pop-up that says migrate.
You click on it.
Oh.
I see.
Okay.
And then I assume after two years, old addresses won't work anymore after two years either.
So Lelantis didn't have...
I would call a shielded address.
Let me try to explain this for the layman user.
In privacy coins like ours, there are some coins which have Only one type of addressing system.
For example, Bitcoin.
You only have Bitcoin addresses which are all transparent.
In terms of Monero, everything is in this self-addressed type of system.
Mandatorily, there's no second type of system.
With Firo and Zcash, we have two address systems, which is one which is the old traditional Bitcoin type, and then there's the kind of like the private type, right?
Which is like Zcash, shielded Z addresses.
For us, it's the Spark addresses.
The Lattice didn't really have a shielded address component.
It just allowed people to burn coins.
And then after that, redeem them for brand new ones in a new address that you generate all the time.
So it's kind of like coins disappearing and then reappearing.
Coins disappearing and then reappearing.
So there's kind of like removing traces of the coin.
But there wasn't like a separate address type to hold it.
And with Spark addresses, this is what we are introducing.
So in the old system of Lelantis, just Lelantis, not Lelantis Spark, you will burn your coins and it will go into this kind of like shielded pool, right?
There's no address to it.
You can't directly send from one shielded pool to another person's shielded pool.
You have to send to his normal address and then he then reshields it back into that pool.
So, when you're migrating, what you have to do is just to bring it back into the transparent layer for once, and then after that, push it back into this new privacy pool with the new cryptography and all of that.
And that actually has a very...
Important, I would say, benefit because with all these privacy coins, you know, including Epic, including, you know, Fero or Monero signatures, because we hide amounts, right?
And so we can't directly see how many coins actually exist, right?
We are proving using, you know, special math and ZKP that there are no coins being created out of thin air, right?
That the coins are how many they say that they are, but we can't actually see like, oh, one coin is there, 10 coins is there.
That's the whole point in privacy.
We need to hide the amounts, right?
So to ensure that the math has held up and whatnot, right, by forcing people to kind of like move into this transparent layer, you are actually...
Visibly counting it, right?
So that you know that from this old pool, when I'm moving it out, I know how many Fero actually exist, right?
I can actually count.
This is what we call a turnstile, which is a term that Zcash also came up with.
So it's kind of an opportunity to audit the supply, especially when you're moving from an old system to a new system and say, okay, you know, has there actually been any sort of Issues or unknown inflation, which has happened in the past with many privacy protocols.
That's a really good point.
And this upgrade has, as I understand it, major advantages that I'd like to ask you about.
For example, the concept of, you know, full membership proofs or whatever version of that you're using.
But let me just remind the audience here, and Todd, I'm sure you'll appreciate this.
I want to remind the audience that by today's standards, building Bitcoin is easy by today's standards.
Now, Bitcoin was very innovative in You know, when it first came out, what was that, 2012 or whenever that was?
You know, it was breakthrough, right?
But by today's standards, it's the easiest thing ever.
There's no obfuscation.
Everything's on a transparent blockchain, simple addressing.
There's no coin destruction and reappearance.
Nothing.
No privacy on Bitcoin.
The hardest projects, the most difficult projects today are the privacy projects.
But I think that's because they also offer the most...
Intrinsic value which is privacy which I believe is a basic human right.
Why should any other party or any government be able to pry into your crypto wallet and audit all your transactions and your holdings and know how much you have or even be able to block it?
You know, the greatest thing about crypto, especially privacy crypto, is that no one else can counterfeit it.
No one can take it from you.
No one can block you.
No, I mean, these are inherent values now that are so critical that even even the Supreme Court of Canada just ruled, by the way, that Justin Trudeau was illegal when he cracked down on the truckers through that the banking crackdown.
The Supreme Court of Canada said that's wrong, which just underscores why this is right, privacy crypto.
But back to either one of you.
Todd, you want to comment on that?
Well, I would just love, Ruben, for you to educate us a little bit with Lelanta's Spark now and the tech advancement.
How might that impact a use case?
With Privacy Crypto, Mike, you and I, we like to focus on use cases.
And can you educate us a little bit on that?
What's your vision?
How does it make using Fero easier?
Or more secure.
Sure.
Well, before I go into that, I want to touch a little bit on what Mike said on the Canadian truckers thing about privacy as basically a human right.
And one thing that was really interesting Kind of an eye-opener to me was when Andreas Antonopoulos, I must be butchering his name, but he's a very well-known speaker on Bitcoin and educator, I think one of the best educators in the space, right?
And he brought up something that was really, really interesting.
It really opened my eyes.
I mean, I kind of knew it in the background, but the way that he expressed it made me like, wow, that is really true.
Which is that we have gotten so used to transacting money in a way that required intermediaries, right?
And the thing is that In the past, when it's cash, it's just P2P, right?
From one person to another person, direct.
There's no intermediaries now, all right, with that sort of payments.
But today, besides cash, which is also, you know, in many cases, in many places, is kind of like being outlawed or...
Or, you know, deprioritize or saying, oh, you can only have cash transactions up to this amount of value, right?
Which is very sad, right?
You know, people say it's for convenience and all of that, but that is control because you're removing direct P2P ways to transact money.
And What that means is that if I use PayPal, if I use Venmo, there is an intermediary.
If I do a bank transfer, banks are the intermediaries.
So you're saying that if we just embrace this system whereby Everything, whenever I want to use money, I have to go through an intermediary that often charges fees as well, right?
What is this exactly that, you know, what is money becoming, right?
Why should we need the intermediary to do this?
And you need permission from those intermediaries.
That's the key because more and more these banks say, oh, we're not allowing you to wire this money.
We're not allowing you to do this.
Oh, this is suspicious.
This has to be flagged as a suspicious transaction.
Unless your name is Biden, in which case it's all good.
You know what I mean?
It's selective enforcement of permissions.
And I personally experienced this because back in 2007, of course, I was a lawyer for 10 years.
In 2007, I was just beginning my legal career and whatnot, and I actually started a VPN service that got actually pretty popular.
I think in 2012, we were rated one of the top VPN projects companies in the world.
What happened then was, look, VPNs right now, you know, you see all this NordVPN, all this type of, you know, move up VPN, they're all so commonplace now, you know, even your antivirus comes with a VPN, even some browsers like Opera come with a VPN. But back then, VPNs were kind of like privacy cryptocurrencies today, where you're like, Oh, why would you want to encrypt your traffic?
You must be doing something bad.
But now it's like, yeah, everyone's using a VPN. And because of that, when I was just offering this VPN service, I was cut off from all my payment processes.
So that means my local banks shut down the ability for me to accept credit card payments.
You know, I was put under this kind of blacklist.
It was so difficult for me to accept money on a legal business.
There was nothing to say that this was illegal, right?
And just because banks or financial institutions just say, oh, this is a risky business, even though it's totally legal, even though there's no chargeback, like hardly any chargeback risk, right?
Like with PayPal, you know, if you take a look at how many people actually dispute my transactions, it's like, Less than a percent, right?
Why am I being denied this right to receive payments, which is how I got into crypto in the first place, because I was like, oh, wow, you know, I'm being cut off from all my payment providers, and someone said, why don't you take a look at Bitcoin?
And this was like, you know, 2012, 2013, and went down the rabbit hole and kind of never looked back, right?
So, you know, I just wanted to, like, reiterate the point that, look, you know, we are building basically what money should be, and cryptocurrencies were...
Build as this answer to control over money, over banks being bailed out and whatnot.
And here we are now, we're seeing crypto, especially Bitcoin, I feel like has kind of been captured.
Like, oh, now we have ETFs.
Now we have custodial lightning solutions.
Now we have all these things.
Oh, you should use Liquid, which is a federated centralized sidechain.
And you're like...
Is this truly the vision of crypto, right?
Is this what we really set out to do?
Which is, you know, like with the ETF, you know, people are cheering for it.
But at the same time, you're like, why do you need an ETF? The ETF is so people can hold and buy it by...
You can hold and buy Bitcoin.
Why do you need this black rock entity to hold for you and charge a certain percentage point on it?
It's a complete contradiction of the whole cypherpunk ethos.
Correct.
And that's what I love about FIRO is I would imagine your project has been under a lot of pressure because especially EU regulators, they're trying to outlaw all privacy crypto.
I mean the EU is becoming the most authoritarian system.
It's just run by a bunch of tyrants.
They're outlawing freedom of speech, of course.
They're about to criminalize so-called hate speech, which is anything that they say it is.
And they want to outlaw all privacy crypto.
So one of the questions I wanted to ask you today, Ruben, and you could get to this later if it's still premature, but I remember you talking about how Under FIRO, there can be permissions for an in-house accountant to audit transactions for compliance purposes if the user chooses that.
So are there some innovations under Lelantis Spark that also help maybe have regulatory, I don't want to say compliance, but compatibility?
Yep, sure.
So let's talk back to Todd's question on what are the benefits of Spark, right?
And then we got, I mean, like one of those, I would say, compliance stuff is part of that feature set, right?
So, I mean, first of all, Spark offers this ability to have Spark addresses, right?
So Spark addresses are pretty great in the sense that They work like your email address, right?
You can share them with anybody, right?
But these addresses cannot be looked up on the blockchain, right?
So unlike in Ethereum or Bitcoin, where you take an address, you plug it into a blockchain explorer, you can see all the transaction history of that particular address or account, right?
With Spark addresses, you can't even look it up.
There's nothing to look up, but you can share that to people, and people can send to it, and you will receive those funds.
So it's like an email address that I can share it freely, I can post it publicly and whatnot, but I'm not really giving any information about myself.
All I see is there's this unique string, but outside people cannot see when I receive money or when I transfer money from me, and that's already a huge problem.
Privacy improvement.
For example, with Wikileaks, they have a donation address in Bitcoin.
People can see money going into it, and people can see when they also spend from it.
With Spark addresses, all of that is shared.
I just have this really usable address that I can share to anyone and not worry about people snooping into what I do, which is really, really important.
I would say that's the first thing.
First big improvement over there.
Do you want to interrupt or should I continue?
Yeah, please go.
We want to know about the improvements, yeah.
That's huge.
That is.
The other thing is that, of course, the anonymity sets have increased, you know, like, for example, from something like Ring Signatures, which the anonymity sets, like, you know, you're grouping, like, 16 people with that, or, like, Wimber Wimber, you kind of have to, like, you know, group people that are within the same block and stuff like that.
In this case, you are...
Our current set is around 32,000.
So that means like, you know, versus 16 versus 32,000, that's a huge, like, you know, like a magnitude, maybe two magnitudes difference from there, right?
To use your earlier analogy, that would be one fart amongst 16 people versus one fart amongst 32,000?
It's like farting in a stadium, basically.
Yes, good.
Right.
And what we do is that, you know, when a new lift comes up, we actually take like 8,000 people from the old lift to put into the new lift to kind of like mix up the pool so you're like not sure which lift, which group of people farted, right?
It's a flatulence decentralization protocol.
Yeah.
That's very important.
Obviously, we have something down the line, which is something what we call curve trees and what Monero's global membership proves, that would allow that lift size to be in the billions.
So yeah, that is also coming down the road.
But right now, what we have is around 32,000, which in practical terms is really, really, really good privacy, especially like, you know, Monero, at least on the per transaction basis, That set is only 16.
So that's a very big improvement as well.
I think, I mean, one of the upshots of that, though, or the benefits, is it makes it very difficult for investigators to use metadata to create statistical alignments among the possible participants in given transactions, right?
I mean, because if you start taking 32,000 times 32,000 times 32,000 across three transactions, now you have a massive number that no computers can really deal with.
In a cost-effective way.
Right.
So our idea was like, look, you know, I mean, some people say, yeah, let's have like theoretical privacy.
Of course, we're aiming for those like, you know, billion sets, but they come with their own like trade-offs or like weird trust assumptions and stuff like that.
If we wanted today, you know, we have these things, you know, we doesn't need any sort of trust and all of that.
And you can have, I would personally think, you know, practically almost the same Practical levels of privacy, if not theoretical levels of privacy as, you know, something with a billion.
Of course, like, yeah, 32,000 is definitely not the same as a billion.
But then it's already like there's so much to look at that can you actually get any sort of meaningful information from it?
I would say right now with current technology, no.
But obviously, we're always pushing.
It's a cat and mouse game, right?
Ruben, question.
So I know with...
Monero, when you add the additional sets, you're adding data to the blockchain.
So the blockchain can tend to bloat.
Now you're talking about 32,000.
Right?
But they're not creating like 31,999 fake transactions.
Oh, okay.
Can you just kind of educate us on that?
Because I want to dispel that.
Right, yeah.
So we aren't creating that.
So the way to kind of think of it is that It's like a bulletin board, right?
And each of us, like, throw our note in the bulletin board, and each of those commitments are very, very small, like a kilobyte or so, right?
So I would say, like, you know, for a set of, like, Like a million or something like that, I think like the whole...
If I were to download the entire set or something like that, it was like 30 megabytes, which is like really nothing, you know?
And I feel that, you know, with this kind of...
You're not exactly like...
You're not putting 32,000 there.
It's more of like I'm producing a proof that I'm one of these commitments there.
So it's kind of like, yes, everyone's putting on this commitment on this big block, which is really, really small.
And this, you know, I would say 30, 40 megabytes in this day and age is really nothing, right?
And I'm just producing this one little proof to say...
Ah, I posted on this bulletin board.
I'm not telling you which one I am, but from this proof, you know that I'm one of these people.
Yeah, that's kind of like it in an easy-to-understand way.
At least I hope it's easy to understand.
Okay, right.
Okay, thank you.
So it's not bloating the blockchain.
So one of the downfalls of it is that the transaction speeds are going to become really, really slow.
Hmm, what do you mean by transaction speed?
Well, you know, as you transact with Bitcoin, it just gets to be bloated, more information going on the blockchain, so it's not going to be really effectively used as a use case to be able to buy something at retail.
With Leilantis Spark, that's not an issue, right?
I mean, it's still a very, very fast transaction.
No, I mean, the thing is that Bitcoin will always be pretty fast because there's no encryption on it, right?
It's just totally transparent.
And I think what you mean that is what is slow is because, well, first of all, so many transactions, you know, there's always new history being added to it.
And that's the case for almost all blockchains, right?
Mimber Wimber is a bit different in the sense that You can cut through and kind of remove all of that, right?
So that's a plus.
But at the same time, there always has to be new information added to the blockchain.
If there are more users, you know, that blockchain size increases.
And I feel like with the trade-offs there, you know, especially in today, you know, we have SSDs in 1TB and whatnot, we are not reaching a stage, especially even if you're using Monero transaction volumes, that an SSD would not serve you.
So I feel like, yeah, we can optimize for all these things, but...
I don't think it's a problem with our current specs, and I don't foresee there continuing to be a problem there.
Okay, I want to ask you, for the same number of transactions, like let's say 1 million transactions, the size of the Firo blockchain versus the size of the Monero blockchain, is Firo about the same size or is it smaller or bigger?
It's going to be smaller.
Smaller.
Okay.
So that's very workable.
And also importantly, and I just want to confirm this, when someone has a Spark address, I can send to their address.
They don't have to be online at that moment.
I mean, they can retrieve that.
They can claim that transaction at any time later.
Correct?
Correct.
That's right.
And so, yeah, so not like in Beam and whatnot where, like, you know, I guess in Epic and whatnot, like there's this thing that kind of holds, I mean, you guys probably know it better, right?
Yeah, it's like a handshake type of thing.
Yeah, it's kind of a handshake type of thing, right?
Beam kind of gets around it where there are servers that have this kind of bulletin board that kind of stays open for a while so that you can continue to retrieve this type of things.
But with With our protocols, it's what we call a non-interactive protocol.
That means each person doesn't have to handshake or anything.
Everything is just done on the blockchain, which is one of the benefits of our approach as well.
So Mimberwimber has this size advantage.
But we have this thing where, well, you know, it's non-interactive, which has a lot of usability improvers, especially like exchanges really hate this handshake thing.
I mean, you know, I think Epicash and Mimberwimber or Grin would know, you know, exchanges really, really hate this thing because it's just so tough.
It's true.
Right.
Perfect.
Okay.
Well, so are there any other major improvements?
I mean, what you've mentioned so far is already huge.
I mean, game-changing.
Like I said, I think that technically this puts Firo, you know, really ahead of where Monero is on the tech.
Now, I'm a fan of Monero, don't get me wrong.
Yes, for sure.
I love Monero for getting in and out, liquidity, you know, widespread acceptability, right?
Like a lot of places will take Monero that don't take Firo yet.
So I love Monero.
But Firo, you guys, maybe it's your size.
You're more nimble.
You're able to move more quickly.
You don't have as many users at the moment.
So I don't know.
You explain.
How is Firo able to move so quickly on some of these innovations?
Well, obviously as a smaller project, you know, we have a much more focused team, right?
And obviously it's much easier to get community consensus with a smaller community, right?
So, like for example, with, you know, Monero...
Especially since they don't really have an official kind of funding model, which is kind of dependent on donations.
There is a core team, obviously, but it takes time for things to move.
And even for good solutions, there may be some kickback.
People have differing ideas.
There needs to be this consultation process.
And if there's any sort of...
I would say, like, let's say 10% of people are not really happy with it and they're very vocal and it might not actually happen, right?
So with us, right, we have an open forum to discuss these things, right?
We open it up for discussion and we're very, very transparent with what we're building and, well, the fact that because we do have a development fund, right, and we can hire full-time researchers to, like, develop this type of stuff, So we were, I guess, a lot more nimble.
And I guess also from our history, right?
In the history, because we have really been focusing all our efforts on building privacy protocols, not just implementing them, that we've gotten pretty good at doing that.
So I would say we are...
Specialists in this type of privacy protocol.
So that's why I'm like, you know, I love Monero, you know, like it's to me a very important bastion of what privacy coins should be, right?
And something to aim to.
But obviously, I think, you know, they...
Obviously, as projects, we don't agree on everything.
If we agree on everything, there's no point to make a new project, right?
So I guess there are different trade-offs, right?
We have a more, I would say, centralized funding type of mechanism, but because of that, we can come up with really good stuff a lot faster, deploy it, while still kind of maintaining that spirit of community consultation.
If there's any sort of major type of things that people...
That's why I call myself not the project lead or the CEO or something like that.
I call myself the project steward.
I'm looking after the project for the community.
So yeah.
Or you all could take the Bitcoin approach where we all agree to never innovate.
We want it to run exactly the same today as it did on day one.
No, I'm joking.
I'm nudging the Bitcoin people, but they could have done a lot with it, and they mostly said no.
The thing is that they say they don't innovate, but they introduce stuff like Taproot, and then when people use it in unexpected ways and start inscribing ordinars or NFTs directly into their chain, they're like, this is not the way it's supposed to be used.
I'm like, okay, right.
And no one asks for Taproot.
That's the thing.
People say, oh, Bitcoin is so decentralized.
Whoever asked for Taproot, right?
And people have been waiting for Lightning, and it's been eight years now, it's still not that great.
It's only the maxis that I think is a great thing.
I mean, after eight years, you're still having problems, right?
And usage is dropping off.
You kind of still require intermediaries, which is horrible, right?
I'm like, what are you guys actually building there, right?
Yeah.
Hey, Todd, can you host for a minute?
My dog needs something.
I'll be right back.
Yeah, I would be happy to.
Hey, Reuben, Reuben, let's talk about probably the most important thing to all of our futures in privacy crypto, and that's widespread adoption.
So what's your...
Thinking regarding FIRO on how we can get more widespread adoptions and utility for the coin.
Right.
So I think this is a great question, right?
And FIRO is kind of approaching that juncture where we're asking our community, what is the direction that you want to take, right?
Obviously, you know, we can always say, yeah, you know, Monero is a success, right?
And yeah, sure, it is being accepted in many places and whatnot, but I still think it's not like, it's not really, it's still like how many percent of the population uses Monero, right?
It's still not wide, and especially with like, Centralized exchange delistings, I have a feeling like, you know, Monero's going to be probably losing most of its centralized exchange delistings, which is an issue that we can talk about later.
And yeah, you know, there are a lot of people cheering for it.
It's like, yes, you know, we are moving back into how, you know, this is very cypherpunk, right?
There's no centralized exchange.
Everything's decentralized.
And I definitely can get behind that sentiment.
But to me is that if you want to use, let's face it, I don't think as long as we still have fiat in this world, and I don't think cryptocurrencies were meant to replace fiat, they were meant as an alternative, right?
And it's like, how can we expect the whole world to just abandon their own US dollars and pounds and whatnot and just adopt cryptocurrencies?
I feel like the Possibilities of that happening are like close to zero, right?
I mean, as much as I ideologically would like that.
Yeah, that's right.
And I don't see it happening, right?
Not in my lifetime anyway, right?
Yeah, I agree.
Go ahead, go ahead.
Sorry, I interrupted.
And if we are going to be existing in this world with fiat, right?
And you want ways...
For you to convert your cryptocurrency into fiat, right?
If you're going to be losing all these centralized exchange listings, you know, how are you going to get widespread adoption, right?
Okay, let's say, like, oh, I want to...
And they say, oh, yeah, we can rely on decentralized exchanges.
Yeah, I guess you can, but then you would still need to be dealing with something like some kind of stablecoin, right?
Okay, let's say I trade it for Ethereum stablecoin.
Then you still need to go back to a centralized exchange to convert it into fiat or some, you know, like there's no escaping, I would say...
Yeah, because P2P modes of dealing with money, unless you're going to physically go and give cash to someone, which is not feasible in many, many cases, how is that going to be sustainable, right?
You need to be interacting with the banking system if you want that fiat.
And I think that's going to be a big challenge, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, even today, just in the current state of crypto, I mean, the hardest thing, I think, is just being able to onboard and off-board your fiat into crypto, and from crypto into fiat, if you wish.
It's really pretty hard, don't you think?
Yeah, I mean, it is already very hard, even with the existence of centralized exchanges, right?
Like, you know, Binance, you know, I think they had their fiat providers cut off many times.
And for many people, the...
Okay, yes, there are some, like, regulated exchange in the various countries that allow you to directly do that.
But how are you going to do that with a decentralized exchange?
Because with the fiat world, you need a bank account, right?
How can you...
There's no getting around that unless, again, you want to do face-to-face transfers, which, honestly, if you ask me to meet strangers to transect money, I'm going to go through the bank route because as much as I don't like banks, I don't want to put myself at risk and meet someone in the forest and give bunches of cash.
Why the forest?
Why forest?
You could meet them in the elevator.
That is true.
We fought together.
Hey, Ruben, I have a consultancy and I try to help people with private crypto.
Tell me what would be the easiest way if somebody had $25,000 that they wanted to invest in FIRO, how would they go about doing that with the $25,000 currently being in fiat in their bank?
That, of course, changes from country to country, but I would say the easiest way is to either get Bitcoin or USDT, and then after that, then you can go to a swap provider just directly within the wallet and get it into Fero.
And you can do that...
Out as well.
And that's how I mainly deal with most of crypto.
I get it into some sort of stablecoin and then I can transfer it out or swap it P2P with other people to get real cash.
Yeah, real cash.
So somebody would get an account with Kraken, let's say, and they would go in and they would acquire BTC or USD, and then they would send it into Stack Wallet, for example, and then exchange that for Fira right in the wallet?
Yeah, I mean...
That's right.
You can probably do that right within the wallet.
I think that would be the easiest way.
It probably incur a little bit of fees for the swap providers, but that's fine.
Cheap is expensive if people want to get into privacy crypto.
I mean, you're losing a lot of money on your fiat in the bank and people lose sight of that every year.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just brought up the price action on FIRO on CoinMarketCap, and I haven't been following it at all.
So I think that the last time we did the interview was when it was around $1.50, and now it's about $1.60.
But in between, it went up to like $2 and something, and then it came back down to this small gain.
So...
That's interesting.
I mean, any idea what's going on?
That was a release of our first interview, Mike.
Kidding.
What, we made the price go down?
We were recovering, but what happened was...
So, yeah, this is a really, like, a topic that has caused me a lot of pain, which is, you know, Binance placed a monitoring tag on...
A bunch of privacy coins, Monero, Zcash, Fero.
Yeah, like a few privacy coins, they place a monitoring tag.
And what a monitoring tag is, is that it's a really horrible tag because it covers a bunch of stuff, right?
And it says that this coin has increased It may be more volatile and it may be delisted, right?
So obviously people are going to panic like crazy, right?
And there are various reasons why you would get a monitoring tag.
Sometimes like, oh, there's no development activity.
It's...
Kind of scare me and whatnot, but one of that is legal and regulatory risk, right?
But unfortunately, when they put that monitoring tag, they don't say, oh, this monitoring tag is for legal and regulatory risk because it's a privacy coin.
It's just like a slap-on monitoring tag, right?
And everyone's like, oh, and then when you want to trade Fero on Binance, they make you fill out this freaking questionnaire to say...
Like, oh, you understand that, you know, this thing may be delisted, you know, this thing is very volatile and whatnot and whatnot, you know, you must agree to these terms to trade it, right?
Wow!
But see, I think, I mean, I hate the idea of people holding these coins on exchanges anyway.
You know, I'm all about self-custody and peer-to-peer transactions.
Correct, correct, correct.
But the thing is that, like, look, let's face it, right?
I mean, Binance is about, what, 180 million users, right?
It is by far the largest exchange.
And many speculators, I mean, let's face it, right?
We talk about adoption, but of course, speculation also can drive adoption, but right now in crypto, a lot of it is still speculation, right?
I mean, that is a fact, right?
And for speculators, they're not going to bother installing a wallet, right?
They're just like, I'm just going to hold it on exchange.
Obviously, I do recommend for people to do that, but I think even in Epic, everyone's still using that I'm going to say it.
Crappy exchange, Vitex, right?
We're not even trading in real epic cash, right?
I think it's some weird proxy token or something like that.
Yeah, it's tokenized.
Yeah, yeah.
So I feel that there is that sizable amount of people that are happy to keep it in the exchange.
And unfortunately, all of crypto, even if you say Monero whatnot, the vast majority of volume of, I would say, trading behavior are still happening on centralized exchanges, I would say.
Easily 90% or more, right?
That's just like a number plucked out of thin air, but I'm pretty sure I'm around in the ballpark region correct there, right?
So if that's the case, when centralized exchanges go, ah, you know, I'm going to, like, you know, do this because of regulatory risk, right?
And...
That has a very bad impact on price because, you know, all these speculators, right?
Because you have to remember that it doesn't take the whole community to sell to cause a price dump, right?
That's right.
Just a few people on the edge.
Just a few people, you know, wiping out the books and just going up and down.
That's the nature of the game, right?
And that happens with any sort of asset.
But, you know, there's a positive way to look at this, though.
You could say that that event kind of cleared out some of the speculators who maybe weren't representing core users.
You could say that the users who held on to FIRO are more serious about the FIRO project and not just speculation.
Yeah, I mean, I am actually seeing, like, there's a lot more high-quality people that come in and whatnot.
But I also realize...
One thing that I found quite interesting was that we are actually seeing a lot of users from the Middle East region, and this is not a region that we particularly focused in, right?
I'm in Southeast Asia, and we don't even have the active translations to Arabic or whatnot, right?
But when I was speaking to some of the exchanges, I was like, you actually have a lot of users in the Middle Eastern region, and people would actually message me directly on Telegram and say, oh, I'm from Syria.
We have a lot of Turkish users.
All these countries, I'm like, wow, okay.
And you're kind of like, oh, why is that the case?
And you kind of get it.
They're saying, well, my home currency really sucks.
Inflation is really bad.
And if I can keep it in crypto, it actually makes more sense.
But for them, they may not really get into it because of the ideology of crypto.
They're like, I just don't want my money to melt away, right?
And this allows me to, you know, maybe get rich, right?
But then at least it's doing better than my fiat currency.
And that's, I would say, a valid use case, right?
It may be speculation, but I think in their situation, it's legit, right?
But I think...
Well, I'm sorry to interrupt, Ruben, but to your point, I think that that phenomenon that you're referring to is going to accelerate because we see a lot more currency devaluation in the United States, massive money printing.
There was a three-month period in the U.S. where the Biden administration added $1 trillion to the national debt in three months.
One trillion dollars.
And Western Europe is, they're going to have to engage in even more massive money printing in order to compensate for their, you know, collapsing economy and energy subsidies, all the horrible things that are happening there because of typically, you know, takedown of energy infrastructure.
So I would say that All these factors are going to lead more people to seek out crypto solutions, if not gold and silver, for example, but something that will just hold value.
They're not even trying to get rich.
They're just like, I don't want to lose anymore because I've been holding dollars and they keep going down.
Yeah.
I think, so let me get back to the Binance, because this is going to be A phenomenon that is going to be happening throughout this year, if not the next couple of years, right?
And this is because of new regulation, especially targeting privacy crypto is coming into force, right?
The biggest one is something called MICA, which is M-I-C-A, which is called Markets in Crypto Assets, right?
And it specifically prevents European exchanges From listing or trading with privacy-enhanced cryptocurrencies, or what they call in-built anonymization features, unless the exchange can identify its users and transaction history.
So...
So that's the thing.
As a result, you see all these exchanges delisting or placing certain restrictions on them.
And that's only one.
There's also some bad US laws in FinCEN which talk about mixing and all of this.
I won't cover that so much.
But because of all these laws, and remember, Binance just had like a huge regulatory risk, right?
Like CZ, the CEO was being forced to step down.
There's a new guy that came in, right?
Massive multi-billion dollar fine.
Yeah, I mean, to them, it's like, yeah, I think it's one of the largest fines ever, right?
If I'm not mistaken, right?
But at the same time, it's like, well, you know, Binance is able to pay that, right?
And okay, you know, it's easy to hate the exchange, right?
It's easy to say, ah, Binance is like, you know, not supporting privacy crypto and whatnot, right?
Okay, let me...
Let me have a kind of like an argument for them.
Again, I'm not saying that, you know, Binance are saints that you should trust them and whatnot and whatnot, all of that.
But I don't think they should be unduly getting hate for this, right?
Take a look at how other exchanges have responded to this regulation.
Like, for example, OKEx.
OKEx just went D-list or privacy coins.
No sort of You know, consultation or, you know, check with the team, just like, ah, it's not in our risk appetite, we're delisting all of you, right?
Like Coinbase still, you know, not listing Monero, right?
Okay, right?
And despite being Monero like one of the largest cryptocurrencies, I don't really know why, right?
And let's face it, Binance, you know, could delist Fero and it would Barely heard their bottom line, right?
Even if they delisted Zcash and Monero and whatnot, it's still a very, very small proportion of their revenue, right?
And so they could have just gone the easy route and just say, like, look, we are under all this regulatory pressure.
We have regulators sitting inside our company.
That's one of the settlements with the Department of Justice, right?
And...
And they could say, like, yeah, you know, because we are being accused of money laundering, all of that, we just need to remove privacy coins, right?
And that is the easy route.
But Binance actually reached out to us, right?
And say, like, look, you know, there's this upcoming regulation, right?
You know, is there a way that, you know, you can stay compliant, right?
And...
We found a way to kind of balance privacy.
That means we're not sacrificing privacy.
Especially when you're dealing with an exchange, you're not going to have that high expectations of privacy because they have your KYC data anyway, right?
So, if we can say, like, look, if we can preserve decentralized exchange listings, at least for a while, right?
Better decentralized exchange solutions come up.
Or maybe we buy ourselves another couple of years of listing to get more adoption, to get more integrations.
Because at the end of the day, the one thing to beat regulations, or rather not beat regulations, but the best form of fighting against regulation is to get so much adoption...
That it would hurt a lot of people if you were to ban it.
And I feel like that's what happened with Bitcoin.
If you ask a regulator in the early days of Bitcoin, would you allow it?
They'd be like, no way.
What are you trying to do?
beat the US dollars, but because it grew so quickly before regulators could catch up, and they knew that if they stop this, then first of all, it's not going to be effective, and it will hurt a lot of people, right?
Then like, oh yeah, let's regulate around it.
And that's kind of the same with Uber, with Airbnb, and all this type of things where they grew faster than regulation could stop them.
But if you say that- I mean, I think that's why they...
Now they realize it.
I feel like Bitcoin has already kind of been captured.
That's my personal opinion.
Yeah.
And, you know, especially with the block size walls, you know, with all of that, like, you know, that's very controversial.
But...
I just feel like, you know, Bitcoin has been captured.
You know, regulators know that they can still control, you know, so they're like, yeah, we're cool and kosher with it.
But if you tell people like, oh, yeah, I'm going to build Bitcoin in this alternative financial system and whatnot early on, it would have, if Satoshi went to the SEC and said like, hey, can I build this?
They'd be like, no, right?
Obviously, right?
So, I think there is like, so the thing is that Binance reached out to us and said, like, look, let's find a way to work this out, right?
Because if you don't work it out, you know, we would have to delist you, right?
And we found, we were through a bunch of ways, and one, the first thing that Binance asked was, like, really, you know, we could not comply, definitely.
They said, like, hey, are you guys going to remove your privacy?
What?
Yeah, and then I'm like, no, of course not, right?
And they also approached Monero, they approached all these other privacy codes and said, hey, are you going to remove your privacy?
And we're like, no, you know, I say that's the whole point of our project.
If we were to remove it, there's no point for us to exist, right?
But we've already seen certain projects already cave in.
And look, I don't blame them, you know, it's...
Like Horizon, right?
They started Horizon that used to be called ZenCash.
I forgot the old name.
But they said like, yep, we're removing all our privacy features, right?
Beyond doing that.
Then the second thing was like, well, okay, if you're not doing that, can you find a way that, you know, because they basically said that we cannot be dealing directly with any sort of shielded funds, right?
We said, well, you know, you guys are using our transparent addresses.
Isn't that good enough?
But they said, well, look, look at Micah.
Micah says that we cannot, you know, we cannot be dealing with your currency unless we know who, you know, we are dealing with and that person's transaction history, which is kind of nebulous.
It's really, really bad drafting for that Micah stuff, right?
And they say that we cannot interact with any sort of shielded pool, right?
We cannot have funds from anonymous sources.
Which is, again, to me, I really don't like this regulation because, let's face it, Money laundering in crypto, first of all, is, of course it happens, but it's already a very small percentage when you compare to the fiat world, right?
Like, you know, like, you have banks facilitating, you know, billions or even trillions of dollars in money laundering.
Okay, sure, whatever, right?
And yet, they're fine, right?
Let me interject here, not to get political, but I find it so hilarious that the same governments that are so worried about crypto money laundering, Like, the United States just laundered $110 billion to Ukraine, where, like, half of that money vanished.
No one knows where the weapons are.
Some of the weapons got sold to, you know, terror groups in the Middle East.
Like, that's all fine.
But the problem is you, Ruben, and your project.
You know what I mean?
It's like, wait a minute.
$100 billion in money laundering.
It's happening at the national level.
It's just, you know, the hypocrisy is just difficult, you know, to endure.
Yeah, yeah.
And AML laws, like even UN says that, you know, AML laws, despite all the compliance costs and all this, you know, stuff and leaks, you know, like privacy risks and all of that, right, it only catches less than a percentage, like, I would say 0.5% of all actual money laundering.
So you're like, you know, you impose all these anti-money laundering laws and have this, you know, people jump through hoops.
Regular people have to jump through hoops.
Somehow, you know, if you're a big guy or know people, somehow these rules don't really apply to you, right?
And somehow, right?
And okay, let's say...
Let's say, okay, yeah, you know, we have to deal with money laundering in crypto.
Let's face it, money laundering in crypto actually happens on transparent chains, in stablecoin, in USDT, on Tron, on Ethereum, right?
You know, even North Korea loves, you know, users like USDT, right?
So, you know...
Yeah, you've done a bunch of seizures, just a bigger hoo-ha, but still, all that money laundering is happening on transparent chains, you know?
Privacy coins are the least of your problems, right?
And yet they say, oh, we have to crack down on privacy coins.
I'm like, dude, where is actually, where is your evidence that money laundering is happening on Earth, right?
You know, like...
Has to be.
You're a privacy coin.
You have to be doing something nefarious.
The bottom line is they just don't want anybody to have any privacy.
That's true in your phone.
Everybody's got a Google phone.
It's tracking all their locations and all that metadata purchased by the government to spy on their own citizens.
We're just in an era of authoritarianism and really evil governments that don't want citizens to have any privacy at all.
That's just the age we live in.
And they're kind of also taking advantage of all this work culture.
Well, not so much work culture, but...
Topics that people are like, for example, all these new laws to ban privacy or degrade end-to-end encryption, a lot of them have been kind of couched in terms of, oh, we are doing this to protect children from sexual abuse.
Come on, right?
Let's install a freaking backdoor on all our phones to combat Children's sex abuse.
So it makes it very difficult because when you fight against it, they're like, ah, you must be a pedophile.
It's like, come on, you know?
Like, that's, I'm not a pedophile, but then...
This law is wrong, right?
But then because they couch that law to say that this is to protect children, you must be against it.
So they are using these narratives to push their true narrative, which is to degrade privacy, right?
So yeah, I mean, this thing is happening.
So anyway, back to the...
Well, but hold on.
Let me interject.
We only have a few minutes left here.
We want to be mindful of the time.
And we've gone down quite a rabbit hole on the privacy and the regulatory issues, but bottom line, is Fero going to coexist on exchanges in some way, or no?
So we found a solution that doesn't really affect user privacy in the sense that you're already not expecting that much privacy when dealing with an exchange, but you don't have to You know, P2P transfers of Firo are not restricted and whatnot.
We just created a special address for exchanges that mean that people cannot directly receive from the Spark funds.
They would have to unshield into a transparent address.
And it may be a totally new transparent address, which has never been used before, which means similar privacy to Lelanta's.
And then send it to the exchange, right?
And the exchanges are okay with that, right?
I see.
So I think...
So for the moment, I do think that Zcash also kind of adopted a similar method to us.
We were the ones that actually proposed this to Binance because the other approach which some other privacy schools were doing was to say, oh, let's give the exchange our view keys.
Because we don't have to do any consensus change and whatnot.
And this is what viewkeys are designed to do, right?
And viewkeys mean that means I can allow people to look into my wallet.
But I should not be giving viewkeys of my wallet to an exchange.
Because it means that...
I just...
Degraded all my privacy to an exchange, not just for the transactions that is to the exchange, but all my transaction history, unless I want to create a separate wallet for exchanges.
And I was like, technically, of course, that's possible, but realistically, no one's going to do that, right?
So I felt that this exchange address rule was a compromise, right?
To say that, okay, look, It was going to, at least, at the very least, buy us some time while we are building more decentralized alternatives, right?
But, you know, in the best case scenario, we still manage to have all that privacy features, but, you know, when you're dealing with an exchange, we still maintain those centralized exchange listings, which, let's face it, they are still important today, right?
Mm-hmm.
One of the narratives that has been emerging, which to me I find quite unfortunate, is because obviously a lot of us are privacy maxis and stuff like that.
I guess I'm a bit more practical.
I wouldn't say that, yeah, I really hate these laws, right?
But then at the same time, I also find centralized exchange listings are important.
But if we do allow centralized or we don't do anything and we allow all privacy coins to be delisted, What actually happens to privacy coins?
Now we will say, oh yes, we will build these decentralized exchanges and we will thrive and exist, you know, free from the government and all that.
And yes, yes, ideologically, you know, that seems great.
But realistically, in the mainstream mind, We will have been successfully relegated to these fringe corners of crypto where, ah, this is where all the bad guys do their stuff, right?
Because we have been removed all centralized exchange listings.
And the average user, even the average user today is like, oh, why should I touch privacy coins?
They're going to get delisted.
They must be done for dirty things.
And this is a narrative that people keep on, you know, especially all the governments, they keep on Promoting that privacy coins are for illicit use.
There's no reason for you to use a privacy coin.
And if we do allow decentralized privacy exchanges to delish us, to criminalize us and all of that without fighting back or at least showing ways that we can meet this regulatory environment, then we are also doing a disservice to privacy coins because that means they have successfully pushed us Into this, like, you know, tinfoil hat category type of thing, right?
Which I would say would be a great disservice to privacy coins and privacy adoption as a whole.
No, I like the compromise you talk about, Ruben.
I think it's very practical and it makes sense.
And if I'm a user that's buying Firo on, you know, Binance or wherever, not that I have an account on Binance, but if I were...
Sure, I wouldn't mind the fact that those transactions are unshielded on that exchange because I'm going to set up a Fero wallet on another system, and I'm going to send it to that other wallet, and then that's the end of that line of traceability.
Yeah.
So, you know, of course, I don't believe in bending over to regulators and whatnot, and we have to realize I'm not bending over to regulators.
Binance is under regulatory pressure.
They're trying to find a way to work with us.
Yeah, at least they didn't delist you.
Yeah, yeah.
Because they are taking a lot of risks and a lot of steps and a lot of additional hoops to keep us on.
And I think that's, you know, okay, I'm not saying they're perfect, but that is, you know, something to say like, hey, they're actually a lot better than many, many other exchanges, at least in this regard, right?
So I think you have to give them kudos for that.
Yeah.
And I'm very sad because, like, I see, you know, many in the Monero community and whatnot say, ah, you guys are selling out, you're removing all your privacy and whatnot, which is total bullshit, you know?
But then even people within the Monero community who know that this is bullshit, right, they don't dare to come out and say that and defend us.
There's no reason for them to defend us.
But if they defend us, then people say, oh, you're a sellout, you know, you are like a fad, you know, like all this...
Crappy type of arguments, which I say, these are disingenuous arguments, right?
It is not true.
We are not, like, you know, revealing...
We are not removing privacy, right?
Remember, the first option was, are you removing privacy?
We said no, right?
And we came up with a way that is...
Firo actually came up with a way for us to meet these regulatory concerns, at least temporarily.
And I did tell my community, I said, yes, they will be aligned with Where if the regulation gets two that would really affect user privacy...
Then we would have no choice and say, yeah, we're not going to ban over.
But I feel with this compromise today, where, you know, you're still getting privacy, but then when dealing with exchange, you have less privacy, which, well, the exchange already knows who you are and all of that.
I think that's an acceptable compromise for the moment.
Yeah, right.
And, I mean, let's remind our audience, you know, every $100 bill in circulation has traces of cocaine on it.
I mean, you want to talk about money laundering and illicit use.
It's cash.
You know, it's Federal Reserve notes, actually, which are a really horrible form of money, by the way, because they don't hold value and they can print more.
They can counterfeit them, making yours worth less.
So anyway, look, bottom line.
I mean, this has been a fascinating discussion.
We do need to wrap it up in terms of time.
But bottom line, FIRO has undergone major advancements on the technical side with Lantus Spark.
People can migrate their old wallets to the new Spark system easily.
It sounds like I haven't done that yet, but I will.
And you're also finding a way to stay listed on Binance with a kind of special designation Not only just Binance, but there are a bunch of other exchanges as well who are also going through that same process as well.
There we go.
So I think you've navigated this brilliantly.
Yeah, good job.
Fingers crossed.
I mean, it's really painful.
I think I lost several years of my life dealing with this because I don't like regulators, exchanges coming up, all these things.
People that, you know, I was part of the Monero policy group, like, just to take a look at what's going on and chip in and whatnot.
I just recently left that group, not because, like, I have anything against them, but, like, I felt that, you know, there was one point that, like, ah, yeah, you know, screw the exchanges, fuck the regulators, and, look, I get it, right?
I don't like them either, but if your policy is...
That, right?
To just say, fuck the regulators, screw the exchanges.
Then there's no valuable interaction there.
Then there's no point for a policy work group.
I mean, that's just my personal opinion, right?
Obviously, there are maybe some silent people in there that have a more measured response.
But it was just like, you know, seeing all of this, you know, even seeing like, you know, Fluffy Pony go out and crap on Zcash.
And look, you know, Zcash has done a lot of wrong things and whatnot.
But for this thing, you know, they just like...
Beating the bandwagon and saying, ah, Zcash has compromised on privacy and all this type of things.
And I'm like, look, you know, I'm here to promote and support all legitimate privacy coins.
And we have different ways of navigating different things.
But if everyone went down the Monero route, I also don't think that's right.
I have respect for coins that go down the Monero route, right?
But at the same time, right?
Like, Monero is also Monero, but I feel like If you lost all your centralized exchange listings today, would you feel the same?
Because a lot of people say, oh, yeah, I can use ShapeShift.
I can use a Switch.
Oh, guess what?
Their backends are also centralized exchanges.
You get delisted.
You also lose those integrations.
You lose your gift cards.
You lose all of these things.
Then what are you going to use Monero for, right?
I mean...
Well, I continue to think the big answer to this is to have more merchants accepting crypto to where people don't need these exchanges to go back into fiat.
I never want to go back into fiat on the crypto that I hold.
I want to use it as crypto.
And that's merchant adoption.
And that's a pretty big technical barrier right now.
It's difficult.
Most merchants, even when they accept crypto, they need a way to convert to fiat.
For example, I can use Firo to travel around the world, stay at hotels using Travala.
But they have a centralized backend that converts it into US dollars.
And that's the same with gift cards and whatnot.
They have costs that are in U.S. dollars.
They need the U.S. dollars.
I know, but the good news is, Ruben, as the dollar continues to collapse, I mean, merchants will be forced to look at alternatives that allow them to stay in business.
I mean, for many years, people have talked about, well, I can't take the volatility price risk of crypto as a merchant.
Well, what are you going to do when dollar inflation is 50% a month?
You're going to love crypto compared to that.
I mean, just ask Argentina.
Just ask Venezuela.
I mean, they rush into Bitcoin because it's the most stable thing they can get their hands on.
Sure, but even if I accept that, even if I say like crypto, even if I say fiat is just this thing for me to pay bills, I'm going to keep all my savings in crypto, I still need a way to convert my crypto into fiat.
Yeah, I get it.
Yeah, like my pay, my cost, my bill, my feel.
And yes, it may be, you know, the USD price may be increasing, but I still need to convert it into that first.
I cannot directly...
Use Monero to pay for my fill, right?
Like, I think that's really tough.
Yeah, true.
Yeah, especially with, like, the number of transactions required to confirm, you know, the confirmation time.
Bureau doesn't have that problem, by the way.
Yeah, but no, I was talking about Monero.
I mean, it takes a while.
You can't be at a gas pump, like, waiting 10 minutes for the transaction to be confirmed.
So, okay.
Final thoughts, gentlemen.
Todd, let's start with you.
What do you want to say?
I mean, we'll do the after party here, but I mean, just with Ruben here.
Well, Ruben, I'm grateful for the education you gave us.
And yeah, I'm with you, Mike.
I think merchant adoption is really the key.
Mike, I think on a sidebar, you know that there's a group of us that are working on that.
And I'm really excited about it.
And Ruben, at some point in time, I'm going to bend your ear because we are getting something cooking and would love your mind share on that as well in the short future.
Love it.
Love it.
Okay, Ruben, final thoughts.
What do you want to leave our audience with today other than Firo.org?
Well, I just think one of the things that, you know, when we talk about merchant adoption, we also have to realize that we, you know, especially stuff like Ethereum and whatnot, have created WebTree economies.
economies that you need crypto to do in.
Like, you know, people hate NFTs and whatnot, but it's an economy where you need crypto.
You can't get cash and buy an NFT.
You need Ethereum, you need whatnot.
And I think that for those type of economies, and NFTs are just one example, right?
There's all this DeFi stuff that you need crypto to participate in that.
That is something to me that I would like to focus more on because, yes, real-life adoption relies on fiat and whatnot because of the ways of the world, right?
But then when you create web-tree economies, those are not dependent on fiat because they exist in their own world, right?
So I do believe, so that's why, you know, like, you know, Firo is also like expanding to have Asset support, where people can create their own private assets to do various things.
It may be a meme coin, it may be a voting token, it may be a stablecoin, it may be a whatnot.
They all share the same.
The asset type is hidden.
So that means even if it's on Firo blockchain, you can't even tell, is it Firo being transacted?
Is the stablecoin being transacted?
Is the NFT being transacted?
And I feel that when we're talking about merchant adoption, we should not limit ourselves to just real-world stuff.
But also talk about WebTree economies where crypto is the native currency and that to me would be a great success as well.
Love it.
Really good point.
Yeah, well said.
Well, Ruben, one of the things that we love about you, especially here at the show, is you're very forward-thinking.
You're not just a visionary, because there are a lot of visionaries, but you're a practical person who puts the vision into play, gets it built, and gets it done.
Look, I'm a project manager right now on an AI, LLM project, and I'm doing the same role that you're doing.
And it's like, oh my gosh, I've got these devs, and I've got these...
I've got accounting and I've got experts, data sources, and I have to corral all that together.
Man, that's where the rubber meets the road.
Project management.
And you're doing it.
And I admire that in you.
Thank you.
Very tactless job, but yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Everybody wants to be the visionary.
Like, I've got ideas, ideas all day, wonderful ideas.
Nobody wants to actually work the ideas into something real.
Yeah.
That's the hard part.
Yeah, Ruben, I do have to say, I know it's really, really early there, but Mike and I weren't tired at all during this interview, so you did great.
Yeah, good job, Ruben.
Thanks a lot for staying back, but I'm a bit jealous that you guys are having an after-party, and I'm like, oh, after Ruben's done, I'm like, hey, I No, that's the rule of the after party.
That's when we get to talk about our guests when our guest is not there.
Oh, no.
Yes.
That's right.
Yes.
Well, really, we're talking about the project.
But, you know, it's just that's our format.
So and usually it gets crazy.
You don't want to be here in the after party anyway, because things get off the rails typically.
So.
You should enjoy your day.
It's morning there still.
Enjoy your day in Malaysia.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the city where I lectured was Kuala Lumpur.
Last time I talked to you, I was like, I remember I gave a lecture in Malaysia about network security back in the 1990s, and it was KL. That's where I was.
Wow.
Okay.
That's cool.
I'll be moving to KL in a couple of months, like back and forth, because my wife's moving there.
So, yeah.
Maybe you're more likely to meet you.
I mean, hopefully we'll meet someday in the flesh.
Hope so.
Hope so.
Okay.
Well, thank you, Ruben.
Have a great day.
Thank you for all that you're doing, and thank you for your project.
We appreciate you very much.
Thank you, everyone.
Thanks for staying back, you know, past your work hours to make this interview happen.
No problem.
Our pleasure.
We enjoyed it.
Okay.
Cheers, Ruben.
All right.
We'll see you, Ruben.
And then, Todd, you and I, let's take a quick break, and we'll be back in, what, five minutes for the after-party recording?
Perfect.
Okay.
Perfect.
All right.
We'll be right back.
All right.
Cheers.
Stay with us, folks.
Join the official discussion channel for this show on telegram at t.me slash decentralized TV where you can ask questions or offer suggestions of who we should interview next.
Also be sure to subscribe to the email newsletter on decentralized.tv where you'll be alerted about one day in advance of each new upcoming episode before it gets published.
On Decentralize.tv, you'll also find links to our video channels and social media channels across all platforms, including Brighteon, Rumble, Bitchute, Twitter, Truth Social, and more.
Check it all out at Decentralize.tv.
Alright, welcome back folks to the after party today.
And we're going to keep this shorter because actually Todd and I stayed up late so that Ruben could not have to get up at 4 in the morning because he's in Malaysia.
So we're going to make this short.
Maybe we'll call it the afterburner party.
Yeah, there we go.
Perfect.
Perfect.
Yeah, very cool interview.
But by the way, what's the deal with your shirt there, Todd?
What is that?
Well, you know, we have redpillprints.com forward slash DTV. Well, I asked them if they would commission a special shirt for me because I was tired of going into my grocery store and just still seeing people wearing masks.
So, Mike, you may have to read this to people, but this is what they made for me.
Okay, my tinfoil hat is greater than your face mask.
Ha ha ha!
I love it.
I did wear it today.
Oh, you did?
It was hilarious.
Oh, my God.
What kind of reactions did you get?
Frankly, I was surprised I didn't get anybody.
Now, there wasn't a lot of people in there.
I didn't get anybody that was like, oh, that's great, dude.
You know?
Just a lot of...
Well, I went into this Whole Foods place and...
That's a place to where there's just a lot of people still that are just on the way right.
You know what I mean?
They spend all their time watching.
They're still wearing masks?
Oh, yeah.
What?
Yes.
As a matter of fact, the lady checking me out was wearing a mask.
And so, you know, I don't know if she comprehended it.
I think maybe it was over her head.
But I didn't get the reaction I wanted.
But I am a survivor.
I'm going to keep out.
I'm persistent, Mike.
I'm going to go out there until I get an attaboy.
Okay.
All right.
Well, perfect.
Well, our audience loves it, I'm sure.
Now, redpillprints.com, just for full disclosure, they are not a sponsor.
We just love the company, and they made that shirt for you, custom.
It was your idea?
Or where did the idea come from?
It was my idea.
I asked them if they could make it.
I thought it would be something that our audience would love.
And so people go to redpillprince.com forward slash DTV. I believe you'll be able to find it there.
Okay, yeah.
That's all the DTV. If everybody wore this, it might get people thinking out there, you know?
Okay, that's good stuff.
All right, now, then back to Ruben and Fero.
You know, first of all, I'm really excited about the advancements.
And last time we interviewed him, I remember I was kind of worried that they were doing such a major overhaul.
I was a little concerned about how that would go, you know?
Yeah.
But apparently from a technical perspective, yeah, it was quite a smooth transition.
Yeah.
Everybody watching this, I mean, that literally is one of the brightest minds in privacy crypto that you just watched and listened to.
And I love how he's just a normal dude, too, Mike.
He's, you know, Ruben is very mature, and you have to be a resilient person to operate in the space of privacy crypto.
Right.
Because there are so many, I mean, he even mentioned some of the attacks that Yeah.
Everybody wants you to do something different than what you're doing, and if you don't, then they call you, they say you're working for the FBI or whatever.
Yep.
You have to have some real backbone.
Oh, yeah.
To navigate that.
There's so many of those type people that are just going to, you know, build themselves up by trying to knock you down.
True.
I had somebody message me this week that just were telling me that, you know, you realize that you are co-hosting with someone who has controlled opposition.
And I'm like, jeez.
Oh, my gosh.
I told them that was very lazy.
That was my response.
But those are the people that are out there, the ones that don't possess any critical thought.
And the one thing I love about Fero and Ruben is that he's just non-tribal.
He really is open to all privacy companies.
It's all for one, and it's not just I'm the one.
It's, you know, rising tide lifts all ships.
If you are in privacy, you know, how can I help you?
How can we help each other?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
I mean, Ruben is a problem solver.
He's a very practical person.
And I think that's reflected in what Fero has become.
I just want to see more adoption, even for ourselves, our own stores.
We can talk about that later, but the adoption has been more difficult than what we thought, and the tool sets are not widely available that can help with adoption as a merchant.
And there's checkout, like online checkout time.
It needs to be fast.
It does.
Like, remember when we...
Who was it that we interviewed that had the super fast one?
The guy from...
No, no.
The other project...
I forgot the name of it.
That was from South America.
He's a very strong presence in Brazil.
Yeah, I thought that was Beam.
No?
No, no.
It was another one that was used mostly at point of sale.
Right, right.
They were really, really...
Gosh, what is that?
Dash.
It was Dash.
That's it.
Thank you.
Yes, Dash.
Okay, so Dash is like made for rapid transactions.
That's correct.
Yeah.
I feel like...
That kind of feature set is really critical for online merchant adoption because online checkout transactions can time out if they take too long or the customer gets nervous like, what am I waiting for?
This is still going on.
What's going on?
So speed is really critical.
It is.
It is.
Yeah.
Even a minute is too long.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
But, you know, the advantage of crypto for merchants is the transactions are non-reversible.
You know, the customer can't give you money.
Yeah, no chargebacks.
And we've been ripped off by people that, you know, place an order and Several hundred dollars worth of stuff, we ship it out, and then they call their bank and they say, oh, never got it, even though we have proof of delivery or whatever, you know?
Wow.
I mean, this happens, actually...
It happens to all online merchants, including Amazon, including merchants of photography equipment.
Can you imagine how often their stuff gets stolen?
Yeah.
So you just build that into your model then, right?
Well, I mean, you fight against...
You fight the chargeback, for one thing.
You show proof of delivery, and then the chargeback gets denied.
But it takes you time and money to fight the fraud.
Right.
Whereas with crypto, you got the crypto, it's done.
You can confidently ship out the product.
You know it's good.
Well, again, I shared, we're working on a few things, and I'm really hopeful.
There's a team of people that are, I just think their heads are in the right place.
And so as that further develops, we're going to bring in, you know, some meaningful people into the project.
And so there's, you know, we're going to make it happen at some point in time.
Well, keep me posted because we want to participate in that, and we've got some...
Some good devs as part of it.
So anyway, bottom line on Firo, my take is, I mean, yeah, I'm thumbs up on it too, but my take is I think Firo is really technically very innovative.
Yep.
I think there's no reason why Firo would not experience wider adoption.
No.
I mean, right now, its technology is better than Monero, but it doesn't have the brand name recognition that Monero has.
Yep.
So I think Fero's got a really bright future.
I think it's the best crypto out there right now, Mike.
Really?
Yeah, I mean, they've solved for everything, right?
That's why I was trying to understand the transaction speed from him.
I didn't quite get the answer I was looking for on, you know, how quickly the transactions occurred and is it more bloated?
But I'm sure he has a good answer for that.
But if it is...
You know what?
I'm going to test that.
So I do have some Firo in an old wallet.
After this, I'm going to upgrade the wallet, and I'm going to convert that or migrate that to the new Spark, whatever, and then I'll do some test transactions.
But the only thing I did not like about the previous Firo, before this upgrade, was that when you received Firo, you did have to click another button to burn and recreate the coins.
Right.
That was another step.
Yes.
And I think for the average user, they might be saying, why?
You know what I mean?
Right.
It's like, why do I have to go through this extra thing?
Yes.
I think that was to gain the privacy, right?
Definitely.
Definitely to gain the privacy.
But for the average non-technical user, it's like, why do they need to see that?
You know, it's like how the sausage is made, you know, in privacy crypto.
It's like, just burn it and recreate it.
Don't tell me about it.
You just go do that thing, and I don't want to know what happens in the back room where you're burning crypto, but I just want the good coins.
Give me the good coins.
Perfect.
It's like Al Pacino in the back room interrogating the old crypto.
It's like, you said what?
You know?
Like an Italian mafia scene or something.
No, now I'm getting carried away.
But now the new Spark version doesn't have that at all.
It's all privacy all the time.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to...
So I hold my Fero in the Stack Wallet.
So after we get off, I'm going to go in and just check and see what the process is.
I presume it's...
He said it just walks you through it, so we shall see.
Yeah, I'm going to try that.
I wish I would have done that before the show, but I wasn't tracking everything.
I didn't even know Fero went up to like $2 and something and then kind of settled back down from that.
Who's got time to track all the prices every day of every coin?
I mean, no way.
I've got a job to do, man.
I've got other stuff to do.
You have about 10 of them and a ranch.
Yeah.
All right.
Speaking of timing, we agreed to keep this short.
Let's plug a couple of things so that we can actually get a little bit of support for the show.
Why don't you go first on your project, Decentralized Directory.
Sure.
Decentralizeddirectory.com.
If you come visit me, just kick the tires at the website.
And ultimately, if you go down to Key Partners Supporting Decentralization, and you click on that, and you go in, and in the middle, there's a little button for tax advantage strategies.
For those of you who are U.S.-based citizens, and you earn income, whether it's W-2 income or if you're 1099, It may be worth just reading up on it there, and if you're interested, you can book an hour with me, and I will tell you, I will help you keep way more of what you earn, regardless of your income circumstances.
I have helped so many people, and Mike, I'm now starting to get the feedback of people who have gone through the last part of last year, and they're realizing how much...
Of their income they're going to be able to retain or be able to claw back from their withheld taxes.
It is an entity that is relatively undiscovered and I couldn't be more excited about the engagement that I've received and the adoption.
When people actually take the time to learn about it, not many people say it's a bad idea.
Okay, very cool, yeah.
I mean, as I'm learning about it, I'm really fascinated by that as well, and I know you've got a lot of success stories.
So your website is decentralizeddirectory.com, and that's where people can find out about that.
Okay, what I've got to plug here today goes along with privacy crypto, but it's goldbacks, which are physical.
They're not crypto.
They're not digital.
And I've got something to show you today here, Todd.
This is the physical gold that...
I don't know if you can hear that, probably.
Physical gold that I've extracted from the goldbacks using a kiln.
I actually melted them down to get the gold out, and then we tested the gold in our lab, and it's more than 100% recovery.
That's amazing.
I know.
It was a lot of fun.
I got to burn stuff and actually do it for real.
It wasn't just being a pyro.
It was actually burning goldbacks for gold.
Go to verifiedgoldbacks.com.
You can learn all about goldbacks there.
And you can see all our lab testing results and there's some of the photos of how I use the kiln and there's the acid digestion of the gold extract and there's the acid stone test and so on and so forth.
Anyway, not going to bore you with all the details, but goldbacks are great for when the power grid goes down.
You know, whereas...
And also for local transactions and very small transactions, too.
Like, this is a one gold back, so it's one one-thousandth of a troy ounce of gold.
Whereas, you know, crypto, like Furo or the other projects we cover, is great for, you know, remote transactions or taking it with you electronically.
Like, it's hard to stuff a bunch of these in your pocket.
Right.
Without being noticed, you know?
Yeah.
Like, are you happy to see me or is that a thousand goldbacks in your pocket?
Whereas with crypto, you can just, you know, memorize the seed phrase and you have your wallet in your head, essentially.
So everything has its use case, but the use case for goldbacks is when things hit the fan so badly that you don't have...
An internet functioning or electricity or post-EMP attack or whatever.
Yeah, that's right.
But you can take a gold back to your local farmer's market and be able to educate them on what it is.
Yeah.
And, no, that's fascinating.
I'm just amazed that you're actually yielding more gold than face value on those.
Well, we're getting anywhere from 102 to 107 percent.
And I talked to the founder.
I interviewed him.
He said they intentionally apply up to 105 percent.
They use a vacuum deposition printing technique to deposit gold atoms onto the bills.
And they overdo it to account for variations so that they never slip under 100 percent.
Okay.
Yeah.
Because, you know, that would be a scandal.
Yeah.
Like, I bought one and it only had 98%, you know, there's a problem.
But if you buy one and it's got 105%, you're like, yes, you know, extra.
Which is the case.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, good job on that, Mike.
I mean, I love how you test everything.
Oh, I do.
Yeah.
I know you do.
I'm a little bit fanatical about testing everything.
Yeah.
Okay.
The other thing I want to mention that is a sponsor of the show is AbovePhone.com forward slash DTV. And these are the de-Googled phones.
Fans love these.
I love them.
I know you've got one, Todd, as well.
Yes.
And if you don't want your phone to track you and spy on you and report everything back to Google or Apple, you need to get AbovePhone, which is a de-Googled phone.
It runs Android, but it's all de-Google-fied.
There has been an anti-Google exorcism performed on the phone.
That's right.
That has got the Google demons out.
That's what it did.
And even Google Play is out.
Google Maps is out.
There's other maps.
There's other apps.
There's a better way to run your phone without spying on you.
Anyway, abovephone.com slash DTV. And Mike, you know, spirit of full disclosure, I still use my iPhone a lot, but I have taken your advice.
And when I go out, when I go out to eat or when I go out, I take my de-Google phone, my above phone, with me, and I leave my other at home.
And if there's ever any trouble out there, right, and Google is geolocating anyone, I've just been at home all night.
Yeah, man.
See, that's so smart because these geofencing warrants have been shown to ensnare people.
There was a story recently about a big geofencing warrant that was typed in with the wrong coordinates.
There was a typo, and it just ensnared people.
A huge group, thousands of people who were suddenly subjected to this warrant because their phones were in this location when whatever crime went down.
That's crazy.
You know?
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
Don't take your phone with you.
I mean, especially not an Apple phone.
But if you have a de-Googled phone, you can take it with you because it's not spying on you.
And people are paying attention.
Folks, there have been so many people who have gotten these phones through this program.
It's crazy, right, Mike?
Oh, yeah, we've had a lot of adoption.
People I didn't even know that we're going to ask for it.
Like a friend of the family contacted me through one of my family members.
Like I saw the show.
How do I get one of these above phones?
You know, which one should I get?
I'm like, whoa, I didn't even know you're watching the show.
And you want one of these phones?
Yes.
I mean, who doesn't want more privacy?
I mean, think about the whole show today with Ruben and Fero.
It's about privacy.
It is.
You need privacy in your money, in your phone, in your life, in your transactions, you know, all of it.
You need decentralized.tv.
Just hang in there with us.
Yes.
Hang in there.
Yes.
Oh, hey.
Real quick, let me mention, before we go, I don't mean to hold this, but I am inviting, as a guest, an expert in simulation theory, which is the theory that we're all living in a giant simulation.
Oh, I love that.
Yeah.
I mean...
On our show?
On our show, yeah.
Yes!
I mean, I don't have him yet, but we got the invitation out, and if he comes on, then we're going to talk about are we actually living in a giant computer simulation created by a vastly more advanced civilization in which we are their playthings in their SimCity.
Wow.
Or SimCosmos.
Wow.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's great.
Can you imagine?
Yeah.
Could you tell them to hit Control-Alt-Delete on about 20 pounds around my midsection, Mike?
Just the simulators, please.
Well, as they say in the Matrix, the Matrix has rules, but you can bend the rules.
Ooh!
There is no spoon.
And that's how you lose weight.
You just stop using silverware.
Okay.
There is no spoon.
Problem solved.
Yes.
Perfect.
Good.
Okay, no worries, man.
All right, well, have a great day, Todd.
Thank you.
It's actually late.
Great show today.
Had a lot of fun with you.
All right.
Thank you, Mike.
Really appreciate you.
All right.
Take care, Todd.
And for all of you watching, I hope you enjoyed today's show and found some practical, useful information.
I know we did.
And be sure to check out our other episodes, which are all timeless episodes, at decentralize.tv.
Thank you for watching today.
Mike Adams and Todd Pitner here from brighteon.com.
Take care.
Cheers.
▲
Export Selection