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The Honest Money Show is your guide to understanding what money really is, and where Bitcoin fits in. Hosted by Anja Dragovic, Australia's female-led, Bitcoin-only podcast, it cuts through the noise to explore how money shapes our lives, why the current system leaves so many people behind, and what a clearer, fairer future could look like.
Expect honest, accessible conversations with some of the most interesting thinkers in the space, the kind that take you from "I don't really get this" to genuinely curious. No hype, no pressure, just money, made clear.
Whether you're brand new to these questions or already deep in them, you're welcome here.
So he's mining Bitcoin at home, and then
he would buy marijuana on the Silk Road
and have it delivered to his house.
...that was the first time that I heard the word Bitcoin.
There have been an average of
one to three crypto kidnapping
type attacks in France this year
...on a scale that's kind of unreal.
It would be almost indistinguishable from a protocol failure.
Joining me today on Honest Money is Seed
from SeedSigner. Welcome to Honest Money.
Thank you for having me. Thanks for coming
on. I'd love for you to tell my audience a
little bit about what SeedSigner is.
Yeah, for sure.
SeedSigner is an open source software
project first and foremost. A lot of
people have the misconception that we're a
company or that we sell a product and
we're actually just a software package
that is currently designed to be run on a
very specific hardware environment, namely
a Raspberry Pi and a display hat and a
camera. It's just very simple hardware
setup that mimics kind of a tiny ear gap
computer. But to get back to your
question, SeedSigner allows people to
build a Bitcoin signing device from simple
off-the-shelf computer components that
they can use kind of for your long-term
savings, especially with multi-sig in
mind. Myself and our other contributors
are big believers in multi-sig. So it's a
really good tool, especially if you're
just getting started with multi-sig and
you're trying to figure out if it's a good
option for you. SeedSigner is optimized
for long-term saving and especially with
multi-sig. Yeah, I love that. And I want
to know the story of how does it happen
that a police officer ends up in Bitcoin
and ends up in an open source project?
Yeah, it was, I guess it's sort of an
interesting path. So I, when I was
younger, kind of through, you know, those
part-time jobs and whatever that you get
when you're in your teens and your early
20s, ended up deciding that I wanted to
get into police work and I went through
the police academy, got hired by a local
police department. And for the first few
years, I was just, you know, an everyday
cop who drives a police car and responds
to calls at people's houses and businesses
and writes traffic tickets, that kind of
stuff. But I did have a background in
computers and the administrators at the
agency where I work knew that I had a
background in computers. And there was a
local digital forensic lab that was
looking to add examiners. This is like
2006, 2007. So computer forensics, digital
forensics was still like a very new
growing thing that the law enforcement
community was trying to get its arms
around. So they asked me if I had any
interest in maybe trying out one day a
week over at this forensic lab, just to
get a sense of what the work was like. And
if I'd be a good fit, it'd be a good fit
for me. So I, it sounded exciting. It was
no more working nights and weekends. And I
was a young guy with small kids. So it, it
sounded interesting and like it'd be a
great fit for my life situation. So I did
that. And then for the next 12 years, for
the remainder of my law enforcement
career, I was in a forensic lab just about
every day. And we were kind of the, a lot
of people ask if I was involved in online
investigations or this and that. We're
kind of the step after that. So once
someone has done an investigation, whether
it's seizing a cell phone as part of a
homicide investigation, or if, you know,
it's the stereotypical, they're pretending
to be a minor online to try and catch
child predators. At the lab, we were the
step after that. So after they've been
arrested and their computer, their phone's
been seized, they bring whatever digital
evidence items they have to us. And we
take apart the computer and pull the hard
drive out and try to get a forensic image
of that, or try to extract data from their
phone to prove if they were involved in a
crime, or maybe they weren't involved in a
crime. It just depends on the
circumstances. But yeah, so I had the
opportunity to join that group and it was,
it was, so my background in computers had
been, I got an undergraduate certificate
in something called management information
systems, which is kind of like watered
down computer science, basically for
businesses. So if you were going to be an
IT guy at a company managing their network
or doing whatever else, that was kind of
the career track for what I studied. But
computer science is one of these, I should
say digital forensics is one of these,
it's a niche, but it's also a mile wide
inch deep in that whatever, whatever cases
on your desk, that is what you have to
become an expert in. So if it's, you know,
mobile phone, SQLite database artifacts,
you have to be deep on that. Or if it's,
you know, explaining Windows registry
artifacts to a jury or something like
that. So it's, it was like drinking from
the fire hose for the first, I don't know,
two to three years, you're always
learning, but those first few years are
insane. You're going through a lot of
training. And it's kind of, I'd say it's
like acquiring a graduate degree, I guess,
in the first few years. But in terms of
Bitcoin and how that led me to Bitcoin. So
in, it was either in late 2012 or early
2013, there was another examiner at the
forensic lab, it wasn't my investigation.
There was another examiner who we're just
talking about different things we're
working on. And he had a case where there
was a local kid who had a nice gaming
computer that had two GPUs. And he was
mining Bitcoin with the GPUs because this
was the tail end of the era where you
could competitively mine with GPUs at
home. So he's mining Bitcoin at home. And
then he would buy marijuana on the Silk
Road and have it delivered to his house.
And he'd break that into smaller bags and
take it to school. And he's making this,
like, I'm sure, really profitable side
hustle selling weed to other kids at
school. But of course, you know, a teacher
finds out or something, and they call the
police. And that's how his computers
landed at our forensic lab. But that was
the first time that I heard the word
Bitcoin. And, you know, that sent me to
Google and Bitcoin talk and Reddit and
everywhere to try to figure out because
the first time you hear of Bitcoin,
especially in this kind of circumstance
where it's in, you know, initially a less
speculative framing and more of a, like a
computer science framing, it really takes
a little bit to wrap your mind around
because I didn't understand what all the
compute was for. I thought all these GPUs
or whatever, are they being used to crack
passwords? Or is it some kind of, there
was this thing called search for
extraterrestrial intelligence back then
where you would donate compute to a
network that's trying to parse sounds from
outer space to see if they can discern
whether alien life, it didn't make sense.
So it took me a while to wrap my mind
around what Bitcoin was. And then, yeah,
that's how I, that's how I was first
introduced to it. So your first
impression, was it a negative one, I
assume? I mean, given the connection of
buying drugs, I guess there was some
negative framing. Um, but as, as I dug
into it, um, they say that like Bitcoin
hits you where you are in your life. And I
was a young guy, uh, a dad with a huge
mortgage and a couple of kids and trying
to figure out, you know, I didn't make a
ton of money and I'm trying to figure out
how to make all of it work. Um, and so the
biggest framing for me initially was
Bitcoin as a investable asset or a
speculative asset, I guess, because it
seemed so small at the time and that if
any sort of meaningful adoption took place
that it, it was undervalued. So I, I
started trying to figure out, you know,
the, the best ways to mine Bitcoin. And of
course you like, you do everything wrong
first. Like you, I, I, I did some early
mining both with, uh, GPUs and then with
some of the earlier ASICs. And, uh, in
truth, like even back then, unless, unless
you had an in with, you know, an ASIC
company or something like just buying
Bitcoin is typically the most cost
effective and, uh, uh, if cost effective.
And if you want to get into Bitcoin at
scale, at any kind of scale, like it, that
just buying Bitcoin is the simplest way.
But of course, like you find out about
mining and you think, Oh, surely that has
to be the best way to acquire some
Bitcoin. And then of course, at that time,
there were a bunch of altcoins and you
think like, maybe I could trade my way
into, uh, uh, more Bitcoin. And eventually
you just kind of learn that, you know, the
simplest way of just, of hitting the buy
button, uh, is the best way to, you know,
acquire your first Bitcoin, especially.
So, um, for me to circle back to your
original question, um, it did have, I, I,
I did have some sort of ethical moral,
moral misgivings about Bitcoin given most
of my work in law enforcement was
connected to crimes against children. And
there was this sort of, uh, I, I'm sure it
was happening on the dark web that Bitcoin
could be used to, uh, buy child, uh,
exploitative content and Bitcoin's, um,
pseudonymous at that point, especially it
was difficult to trace. And it seemed
like, you know, it could incentivize and
create a market for that sort of thing. So
I, I wrestled with that in the beginning,
but it eventually, you know, after reading
and thinking about it, you come to the
determination that Bitcoin is a powerful
tool, just like other powerful, powerful
tools, like sharp knives or guns or cars,
and it can be used for tremendous good,
but in the wrong hands or with the wrong
intentions, like it's tools are dangerous.
And so it's, uh, yeah, that's, that's kind
of how I made peace with it early on.
Yeah. And I imagine that would have been
hard, you know, as a young father, you
have to grapple with that is, does this
tool have a net negative or a net positive
effect? So, you know, I can appreciate
that. But, um, I, when I first started
using, um, I got a little seed signer that
was like disassembled, um, as a gift from,
from a friend here in, um, Northern
rivers. And so I assembled it with some
help and, um, I just always shied away
from it. Cause you, like most people, I
started with the commercial brands. And so
looking at this thing, it just looked very
like techie to me, but after using it, um,
I was really pleasantly surprised just how
user-friendly it is compared to some
hardware wallets that, you know, are
commercially driven and, and obviously
have advertising budgets and all these,
like a huge companies backing them. Um,
it's really, really good. And my
background is also in design. So I really
appreciated how easy it is. I actually
have one here, um, how easy it is to use.
Um, but I've always also wondered why you
chose open source as opposed to turning it
into a business and making money from it.
Um, there, there, there's probably a few
reasons there. Uh, one was when I first
started getting involved in Bitcoin, I
don't really consider myself an early
Bitcoin because there were still a few
years before it came onto my radar. But,
um, as I started to learn more about
Bitcoin and, um, sort of absorb Bitcoin
culture, um, it was, it was different
then. There was a lot of experimentation
and a lot of open source and Bitcoin was
less of, even though I, you know, I've
already said I was viewing it as a
speculative financial asset. There was a
lot more focus on freedom and a
permissionless monetary network and
Bitcoin as a sort of defense against
government debasement of money, uh, and
kind of anarcho-libertarian sort of ideas.
And so open source was really a big part
of the Bitcoin ethos. And even though Seed
Center didn't come up, come about until,
you know, I retired from law enforcement
in 2019 and, and it wasn't until the end
of 2020 that, that Seed Center started to
become a thing. Um, I had sort of this
nostalgia or yearning for those earlier
days of Bitcoin when people just build
things and share them with like the rest
of the community that the first instinct
wasn't to try to monetize Bitcoiners or
somehow make money or create a product or
build a company with, uh, venture funding
and all that kind of stuff. Like one of my
favorite projects in Bitcoin is, uh, this,
uh, well, it's, it's HTML code and a bunch
of other stuff, but it's called bitaddress
.org. And it was a website and a GitHub
repo and it was made by this guy called
Peter, uh, Peter K. And it was a very
secure way to create paper wallets. If you
follow the instructions, what you do is
you download this website code from GitHub
and you could verify that, um, you could,
everything was open source. If you were
familiar with the HTML and all the
underlining, uh, scripting that's in it,
you could review that. And then you could
verify that that's what you're running
once you downloaded a copy of it. And
where it touches forensics is the most
secure way to create a paper wallet is to
boot an offline computer, boot a computer
in an offline state, preferably with a
clean OS. And then you'd open this website
and it was a really secure way to create
new private keys that you would then use
to create Bitcoin wallets. And this is
before hardware wallets were even a thing.
So basically, Armory kind of existed back
then, but Bitcoin Core or Bitcoin QT, as
it was called, was really the only way to
custody Bitcoin, Bitcoin at that point.
But, um, Bitcoin Core QT is online and
it's, it's on a computer that's online.
And if you're in any degree familiar with
information security, you know that you
don't want to store your private keys on a
system that is online or touching the
internet. So, uh, this bitaddress.org was
a way to create what were called paper
wallets and paper wallets. And paper
wallets are just, um, uh, public private
key pairs that were stored on paper that,
um, ideally had never touched a computer
that had been connected to the internet.
So this is very, uh, secure way, not super
convenient, but a secure way to store
Bitcoin. Anyhow, this guy, Peter just saw
the need for this and wrote the thing,
published it as open source software,
permissively licensed and put it out there
because it was a useful tool that people
in the community like really needed. And
so that, that sort of ethos resonated with
me to get back to your original question,
um, about seed center and it being open
source. Uh, and then kind of an
interesting thing about seed center is
that not all the benefits of the approach
of using off the shelf components combined
with open source software, all the
advantages that were not immediately
accessible to me. I can't claim some crazy
insight that I had a master plan. It was
just like, when something's right over
time, it seems like you discover more
reasons why it's right. And that's what
it's, it's felt like with seed center. Um,
because there wasn't, so this, there's a
few angles to it with, with my background
in forensics. I'd always been kind of
suspicious of hard wallets, especially
back then when they all, all or almost all
connected to your computer via USB cable.
Um, the earliest treasures and of course
ledgers and bit box and really all of the
hard wallets at that point, uh, you would
connect to your computer with USB. With my
background in forensics, I just was never
comfortable with that because with the
wrong software in place. If you can, if
you can update the firmware for that
device via USB, if you get a hold of the
wrong software, like all bets are off and
bad things can happen. So I just never
liked that USB connection. So after I
retired from law enforcement and I was,
uh, uh, looking for a new way to do cold
storage, I stumbled across this project
called Spectre DIY, which was another, and
I, I don't think I can say it was the
first significant, serious, sort of
DIY self custody thing
that you can build for yourself
and, instead of connecting by USB they use
like a really elegant solution of using QR
codes to communicate information from, you
know, your, your, uh, wallet coordinator,
which is online and talking to the Bitcoin
network. And then the secondary device,
which is offline, not connected to the
internet. And that's the thing that talks
to your private keys. And they use QR
codes to communicate between the two. And
it was this sort of, to me, it was a very
elegant solution to the problem of you
have to have some sort of connectivity
between the devices, but you, you want it
to be naturally constrained so that you
can't move a lot of data at once. And the
first time I experienced that, it was like
the first time I'd sent a Bitcoin
transaction or the first time I'd, uh,
made a lightning transaction. It was just
like it clicked and it felt really good.
And so, um, that was, uh, Spectre DIY is
also permissively MIT open source license,
just like Bitcoin and a lot of other
things. And, um, that, that resonated with
me. And then, uh, also I came up during
doing forensics during kind of the time
that mobile phones were also growing up.
Um, when I was first starting in forensics
back in 2007, like it was mostly flip
phones and an occasional Blackberry. So
cell phones were these very sort of
technologically crude devices where you
have to press the number seven, you know,
six times to get a lowercase O or whatever
it is. And I got to watch cell phones grow
up from these really crude flip open
devices to basically the supercomputers
that we carry in our pockets. And as the
iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy and some of
the more sophisticated Android phones grew
up, they started to add more and more
security features because, uh, in the
beginning, primarily because they wanted
access to, um, uh, governmental and
institutional, uh, uh, sales
opportunities. So they wanted to sell
iPhones and Android phones on government
contracts for two large corporations for
people to issue to their, their employees.
And if you're going to be using, you know,
that kind of device to email sensitive
information about your business or
potentially, you know, for law enforcement
and the government, sensitive
investigative or national trades,
whatever, like there's going to have to be
security protocols in place and access
restrictions. And what if people lose the
phone, there has to be a way to remotely
wipe it. So I watched these phones, uh, go
from very sort of insecure devices that
could, you know, be infiltrated pretty
easily to much more sophisticated devices
that had a lot of, uh, access controls and
security tech built into them. And yet as
sophisticated as the phones got and
Apple's a trillion dollar company and the
money they spend on security is really
high. Um, as much money as Apple would
spend on adding, you know, iteratively,
uh, different security features within 12
to 24 months, um, government agencies via
private contractors would get access to
tools that would get them into most of
the, uh, iPhones or Samsung phones or
whatever that they needed to get into. And
I saw that like security was this cat and
mouse game of, uh, Apple implements a
feature. And for a while myself and other
investigators couldn't get into it. And
then, you know, some researcher or, uh, a
government funded company, you know,
figures out how to get around that. And
for a while we can get into that
generation of phones, then Apple comes up
with a new feature. There's a long way of
saying that just like the, so Apple has a
huge security budget, but Trezor and even
ledger, like their security spend is
orders of magnitude less than what Apple,
especially back then. Um, that's still the
case now. So I just didn't all the
marketing around these hardware wallets as
this Uber secure digital vault. I just
didn't feel like, like if, if, if someone
who worked for a government had a harder
wallet in their hands and really needed to
get into it, like, it didn't seem like
they would stand up very, very long. So,
um, I, I was just by virtue of my
experience with mobile phones and having
access to those kinds of tools, I, I was
just skeptical of the harder wallet
industries claims about, you know, their
security posture and the devices being
impermeable and all that kind of stuff.
Um, so this, that was also a part of
Spectre DIY was that in the beginning, it
wasn't intentionally engineered to store
private keys. And that the computer
science term for it is statelessness. So
the device is stateless, meaning that
while you're using it, you, you either use
it to create a private key or you load a
private key onto it. And then once you're
finished with it, you disconnect power.
Um, and it's different on different
hardware platforms, but essentially, uh,
the state of that machine with your
private key as it's operating doesn't
exist after you're done using it. Whether
it's wiping itself or removing power to
reset the RAM or whatever it is. And it
was, it took the whole idea of this uber
secure digital vault and turn it on its
head. Instead of, you know, putting all
these access controls in place and trying
to have a secure enclave where we're going
to store key information. We're going to
do the exact opposite and very
intentionally not store any key
information. And over time, um, I, I, I
think we discovered that by virtue of not
storing the keys, it really focuses people
in on the physical copies of their keys,
where they're storing their backups.
Whether they're using multi-sig, if
they're using a passphrase with their key,
which sometimes makes sense, potentially
sometimes doesn't, uh, you know, how many
keys are in your multi-sig where you're
storing your keys? Do you have some sort
of tamper evident packaging that would
allow you to tell if somebody had accessed
them? Like what physical locations are you
storing them in? It really forces you to
think through all of your backups, which
is useful because, I mean, digital devices
fail. So, so many people have had the
experience of turning on their ledger and
the screens that they use are small and
inexpensive and only have a certain number
of boot cycles in them or a certain number
of years of use. And it's panicking for
someone who has their life savings, you
know, the key to their life savings stored
on a device and they go to use it and they
get, you know, the equivalent of the
Windows blue screen of death. That's super
jarring. So it's important to have
backups. And if you have to have a backup
anyway, why not de-emphasize the
importance of the device and just focus on
the backup, especially if it's for your
long-term savings where you're only
making, you know, a small number of
transactions every year. But I've
digressed a ton here. So I'll let you jump
back in and redirect. No, I love that
segment. I was just thinking with my first
hardware wallet, I wrote down the seed
phrase, loaded some Bitcoin, like first a
test transaction, then a bigger sum. And
then I was like, okay, let me just delete
this and reinstate the wallet. And that
was a really scary exercise. But with
SeedSigner, you don't need to do that. And
like you just, you basically each time you
unplug it from the power, you have to
read, like reinstate the whole thing from
scratch anyway. So it does teach better, I
guess, behavior from the start in terms of
security. Yeah. Yeah. I would just say
like it gives people more confidence. They
feel like they understand more about the
process and they feel like, you know, if
let's say you Sparrow on a laptop. If for
some reason your Sparrow installation got
corrupt and you had to reinstall and
suddenly your wallet wasn't there in
Sparrow or you lost your phone and you'd
been using Blue Wallet and like Blue
Wallet was on your phone. And like, I feel
like our users would have a lot less
tendency to panic in that situation. They
would have a lot more confidence that they
would be able to recover access to their
funds just from the key material. And in
the case of multi-sig having, you know, a
descriptor handy that they'd be able to
quickly reconstitute the wallet and get
access to their funds. And if you're seed
signer, I mean, seed signers aren't built
out of, you know, super expensive
components, but if you're seed signer
breaks, it's relatively simple to swap out
a new screen or swap out a new camera or
just build a second device to keep as a
backup. So it's, I think the resilience of
it is something that gives people who do
use a seed signer a bit of confidence
that, you know, if unexpected things were
to happen, they'd still have access to
their money. Yeah. And that's exactly what
happened to me because I carry my seed
signer in my purse with my keys and my lip
gloss. I damaged the screen a little bit.
So I just got the spare screen and yeah,
like it's definitely my favorite wallet.
I'm curious to know, did you, did you
envision when you were starting it out
that it would become such a human rights
tool or was that like a secondary thing
that came through? Are you like, Oh, like,
of course. That was, that was another one
of these things that, that we kind of
backed into after the project had started
to gain some momentum. I had communicated
with a Bitcoin advocate called Zia Sadir
and he was an Iranian dissident. And at
the time was, I believe, still living in
Iran and was teaching people about seed
signers because there are certain parts of
the world where it can be difficult for a
variety of reasons to acquire hardware
wallets. In Iran, they have some, you
know, they're, they're in some ways cut
off from the Western supply chain. And so
the only way to buy a hardware wallet
would be through some sort of black
market, black market operator. And you
don't really want to buy some sort of
security critical computing device
secondhand from a black market source. So
seed signers kind of a better model for
that environment because the parts that go
into it aren't immediately associated with
Bitcoin. You could easily claim you were
using them for something totally unrelated
to Bitcoin. So in that sense, it offers a
bit more operational security in terms of
the supply chain risk that comes with
ordering something that is easily
identifiable as a Bitcoin device. But it's
also privacy preserving in that, again,
those parts aren't definitively associated
with Bitcoin. So you can still get them in
parts of the world where you might not
want to telegraph that you're involved or
interested in Bitcoin. Because in a lot of
places in the world, like China, for
example, regular searches of postal
packages, that's just a routine thing. And
I've sent some seed signers to people in
China. And more than once, they request
that you don't include any sort of – like
I typically might throw in a sticker or
something that says seed signer with a
package that I send out. But they
specifically don't include any
documentation as to what the device is
intended for, nothing about Bitcoin,
nothing about seed signer, nothing like
that. So it's just a way of keeping people
under the radar in, I guess, these sort of
political environments around the world
where the Human Rights Foundation supports
people and tries to use Bitcoin as a way
of funding their activities. So, yeah, it
was not immediately apparent. But the
privacy benefits are real, not just for a
dissident in a hostile political
environment, but for everyday Bitcoiners
who – it happened to me. I bought a ledger
in, I wouldn't say like 2016 or 2017. And
their customer lists in some form were
either exfiltrated or leaked. And, you
know, I bought the device poorly and had
it shipped to my home address because it
was still kind of early back then and we
were reckless. And that information
doesn't go away. So my legal name and my
home address and my associated email
address from that time and probably my
phone number all now leaked and I get, you
know, these calls from Coinbase support on
my phone or from Trezor support or I
received an actual physical letter in the
mail. Yeah, the advantage of building a
seatbelt. building a Bitcoin yourself is
that it helps you avoid being put on yet
another list of Bitcoiners that could be
used to potentially – I guess wrench
attack might be the right word. Like with
what we're seeing in France right now. I
think they said that there have been an
average of some crazy number of like one
to three crypto kidnapping type attacks in
France this year. Like every day this
happens to people and it's on a scale
that's kind of unreal. So, yes, the aspect
of SeedSigner that you're building
something from non-Bitcoin specific parts
and it allows you to keep your name off of
the list of Bitcoiners to do self-custody
in a more private way. That's a real
benefit that I think is still
underappreciated.
Yeah, I know we were talking offline a
little bit about this before you joined
the call. Obviously, one of the bigger
news happening in Bitcoin now is Francis
Puyol from Bull Bitcoin is essentially
taking legal action against France for the
implementation of DAC8, which essentially
seeking to centralise all Bitcoin or
information or anyone who holds digital
assets, their home address, their personal
details, their Bitcoin holdings, name,
surname and share that with international
tax authorities. And that's going to
happen in Australia as well. So it's just
really, really concerning that this
information is being centralised when we
have, you know, a solid runway of law
-abiding citizens buying Bitcoin, doing
the right thing with it. And now it's like
potentially their lives are at risk. It's
concerning, but I'm also interested to
know what someone like you, who's
obviously comes from a forensic
investigative background and, you know, an
ex-police officer, like what do you think
of that? Is it fighting crime? Yeah. No,
it's, I, you know, some of it is nuanced
because I don't know what the, what the
guarantees that citizens in the European
Union or in Australia or Canada have about
the right to, right to privacy and the
right to, in America, it's the right to be
secure in your personal papers and
effects. If information is being stored.
Ultimately, it will be accessed
So if, if centralized
government actors are keeping, you know,
logs of people on Bitcoin or ongoing logs
of communications by people at all
Bitcoin, eventually that stuff will be
leaked. I, much earlier in my career, when
I was actually prior to when I was in the
police academy, I actually applied to, the
FBI here in America. And as a part of that
process, it's really exhaustive and you
have to fill out all these forms and
provide all this personal information,
including relatively banal stuff like your
social security number, which is our
government identification number. And, you
know, your home address and, you know,
your home address and all that kind of
stuff. And all of that, because it's,
because it's for a federal position, goes
through a department called the Office of
Personnel Management or OPM here in the
States. And, I mean, there's hundreds of
thousands of people whose information went
through there and was stored indefinitely
by that organization. I don't remember how
many years ago it was. I mean, it was up
to 10 years ago, but the Office of
Personnel Management was hacked because
it's a huge honeypot for people who have
applied for or eventually got hired and
worked for the federal government here in
the United States. And so my social
security number, I've had my identity, my
financial identity stolen multiple times
now because of that. But it's just, it's a
prime example of if the information is
being held, even if it's being held within
official source, like a national
government, the data is there. And
eventually it will become exfiltrated to
people who don't have good intentions,
like the, you know, the crypto kidnappers
in France that we're seeing right now. So
I am not deep on Francis's lawsuit or what
he's doing with that. I've been meaning to
watch the video that I think came out at
BC Prague. I've been traveling this month,
so it's, I just didn't get to do it, but
it sounds like he's spot on with
identifying the problem and taking some
sort of stance against it. Now, how
successful that'll be, unfortunately, I
have no idea because it seems like the,
what the Western liberal democracies are
kind of intent on self-owning at this
point. And like reversing all of the
things that made them great to begin with.
So it's, it's sad to see the path that a
lot of these countries are going down, but
yeah, that's, that's my feeling is if
they're storing the information,
eventually it will come out and it will
cause harm to people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
I, I like the way that he's doing it. I
think he's doing it through legal means
and obviously raising awareness and
getting public publicity over this. So,
you know, even if it's not successful at
the French court level, he does intend to
escalate it to the European court of
justice. He's basically, you know, said on
camera, he's willing to use any means
necessary. So I think, yeah, I mean, I'm,
I'm glad that it's happening, but I'm also
a little bit concerned for him. Like he's
putting a bit of a target on his back as
well. Cause I don't know, just my vivid
imagination. Yeah. Yeah, no, I, I think
that's a, that's a real thing. In Asia,
they have this thing called tall poppy
syndrome and it's, it's because they have
a very, I don't want to say collectivist,
but the culture there is such that because
there have been so many oppressive regimes
over the years, like people have this
innate tendency not to draw attention to
themselves. Because once you stand out of
the crowd, that makes it more likely that
you're going to be, you know, lopped off
or, or, or attacked. So it's, yeah, it's,
it's in some ways a scary time in terms of
things that are going on. And then it's,
it's, it's, it's, it feels like the frog
is being boiled slowly and like it, we're
pretty far into that progression in some
areas more than others, but yeah, it's,
it's, it's a scary time. Yeah. Yeah. It's
interesting that you mentioned tall poppy
syndrome because I live in Australia and
it's very much a thing here. Culturally, I
didn't know. I'm not from here originally.
I wasn't born here. I was born overseas,
but yeah, it's, I've never quite
understood why Australia has it because
we're also one of the globally. There's
some index, I can't remember what it's
called, but it's measures like
individuality or individual freedoms. And
we rate like highest in the world, like
the UK, US, we really value individual
freedom, but at the same time, we also
have a tall poppy culture. And it's just
very confusing why that is just, yeah.
When you said that, I was thinking about
Australia. Yeah. But I'm really, yeah.
Sorry. Did you want to say something? No,
no. I was, I, I, I noticed during COVID
and you never, that's another one of the
problems these days is you never know.
Really what's real. And I remember during
COVID seeing some of the ways that they
were handling people who, who wouldn't
take the vaccine in terms of, I think they
were sending them to hospitals or there
was, there were some videos on the
internet, which I assume were real of
Australian police officers forcibly
detaining people for medical reasons. And
it was, I should ask you, was that a real
thing? Or I? Not that I've seen, and I
could, yeah, like I haven't seen, I've
seen videos of things going wrong at
protests. So the police didn't like the
protesters. And then the media definitely
tried to play down just how many people
were protesting in Canberra. But there was
definitely a lot of coercion happening
from the government and also corporations
because they were under pressure to coerce
their employees into getting the vaccine.
And people who wanted medical freedom
basically lost their jobs. And then a few
months later, everything was lifted and it
was all fine. But, you know, the, the, the
scars are still there. Um, so yeah, I'll
be, yeah, it's, the internet's funny like
that. I don't know the specific video you
were talking about, but there, yeah. Um,
it's hard to also know, even though I'm
from here, it's hard to also know what's
true and what's not. And that was hard for
me as a law enforcement officer, like with
the protests, even as you're discussing,
like I was in a convenient position where
I'd already retired from law enforcement.
I wasn't, uh, active then, but I, at some
point you get to a place as a law
enforcement officer where what's happening
is not okay around you. And you have to be
willing to just stop and say, uh, I, I
won't be a part of this. And I think some
of the things I've seen in, in Great
Britain with people being arrested for
social media posts and the Canadian
trucker protests in, uh, Canada. And I,
some of the things at some point you have
to know who you are and what you believe.
And as a cop, just be willing to say,
like, I'm not okay with this. And yes, I
have to feed my family, but I'm willing to
figure out a different way because, you
know, if, if everybody just goes along to
get along, we end up in a very dark place.
And that's, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's,
it's a bit of a tangent, but yeah. Great
tangent to go on. Um, but back to seed signer
what is next on the roadmap? How does the
roadmap work in open source? So the
roadmap and open source is like herding
cats. Uh, I, I am billed as kind of the
quote leader of the seed signer project,
but I can't give anyone any assignments or
like ask. I could ask, but I can't tell
anyone, Hey, we want to implement this
feature on seed signer. I need you to
build it and have it to me by the end of,
uh, Q3 or whatever it is. Um, our, our,
our contributors are all volunteers. And
so they generally scratch their own
itches. That's not to say they don't do,
you know, housekeeping or very obviously
necessary things that come up in terms of
fixing bugs or, uh, working on features
that maybe are not their number one
choice, but that they see are useful. Um,
but it's, it's, it's, uh, a messier sort
of situation than a centralized company
where there's, you know, a CEO and he has
people under him and they can tell people
what to do. It's, it's, it's, it's just
not that clean. And for that reason, as
well as other reasons, uh, things just
happen more slowly in open source. Um,
seed center came. Um, and in the first two
years from two years from me building a
very clumsy, barely functional technical
demo to two years after that, we, uh,
through the efforts of some very selfless,
very dedicated, very skilled contributors
built a very capable Bitcoin tool in a
short period of time. And got a lot of
people's attention. And then it was kind
of funny. Um, I don't know, two or three
years after the project was started, our
cadence of, of development and releases
kind of slowed down because the developers
generally had built this thing that they
were very happy with and did most of the
things that they wanted it to. So there
wasn't this huge impetus to add new
features. And I, I sometimes wonder if
that's, uh, just an inherent facet of for
-profit companies is that they have a full
-time engineering staff. And once they've
kind of built the product that satisfies
the goal that the company set forth,
there's this ongoing sort of need to
justify your existence as an employee by,
uh, almost perpetually, you know,
redesigning the UI or adding new features
that people may not really need. But that
sort of, you know, you, you, you need to
find work because, you know, you need to
find things to do or else you can't
justify your employment with a company. I
think of my banking app and it seems like
every six to nine months I open my banking
app and there's some new redesign and
they're walking you through the new
interface and how much, how much better
it's going to be. But the core
functionality is still the same. I, I
still do the same things with my banking
app. It's just like they're rearranging
books on a bookshelf. Um, so with an open
source project, we, we built this really
useful, capable tool that, as you pointed
out, um, has an amazing user interface and
experience of use it. After you build it
and get it running, it feels much more
like something that you would have bought
in terms of the value that's delivered
rather than some clunky thing that you
built and are using yourself. Um, so
there's a long way of saying that our
development cadence slowed down for a
while because it did most of the things
that we wanted to do and it did them
pretty well. So there, there was some
polishing that we did over time. Um, but
we're sort of opening a new chapter with
SeedSigner right now. Um, I've been
posting and our lead developer, Keith
McCoy, has been posting about it, uh, that
we've, we've started to build support for
alternate hardware platforms. And it's
kind of been the nexus of a few things
coming together, uh, primarily, um, so
SeedSigner runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero. I,
I should, I should backtrack slightly. And
as we discovered during COVID, uh,
Raspberry Pi is obviously a centralized
company and they manufacture these
Raspberry Pis in a centralized way. And
during COVID, there were supply chain
issues where it was difficult to find the
Raspberry Pi Zeros, the specific model
that is the preferred model to use to
build SeedSigner. And for a while, people
were wanting to build SeedSigner and it
was just difficult to find some of the
components. And that's, with SeedSigner
just being designed to run on Raspberry
Pi, um, we're, we're sort of locked into
their ecosystem, meaning that if their
price was to go up, uh, crazy, it would
suddenly become more expensive and maybe
less practical to build a SeedSigner. Or
if, if, or when they decide to discontinue
the Raspberry Pi Zero line, like we're
going to be up a creek because that's,
that's the hardware environment that we
rely on. So there's been discussion and a
quiet push over time to figure out how to
expand our functionality to different
hardware environments. And the Raspberry
Pi is what's known as a microprocessor. So
it's a very tiny computer with a general
purpose processor, similar to the
processor that you have in a MacBook or,
you know, a Dell laptop or whatever you
want to. And over time, uh, an alternate
type of, of, uh, computer device called a
microcontroller has become more prevalent,
uh, in the technological sphere. Um, and
microcontrollers are different from
microprocessors in that they're less
powerful, but they're also less expensive
and really good at doing simpler
repetitive tasks. So, um, uh, uh,
microcontrollers are in, uh, name any
electron from a coffee machine to your
refrigerator to, you know, basically
anything electric in your house as the
internet of things and everything has
become sort of a computer. Uh, these
small, uh, these small, inexpensive
microcontrollers are what is driving that.
And microcontrollers are also
consequentially what are used in basically
all hardware wallets because of their low
cost. And, um, there's so many different
directions I can go. I'm trying to keep
this short for you. I'm going all of them.
Part of the reason why the seed signer has
such a great user experience is because
raspberry pi provides an insane amount of
computing power for a really low price at
$10. That's what they are. Um, and all of
the hardware wallet companies, uh, use
microcontrollers because they're less
expensive, but they're also less powerful.
So seed signers had such a great user
experience in terms of the amount of time
it takes to crunch through a, you know, a
larger multi-sig transaction or things
like that because we use a different
competing platform because raspberry pi
was just. I mean, it's the most
ubiquitous, inexpensive, easy to obtain
single board competing environment in the
world. It still is. Uh, but where I'm
going with this is microcontrollers have
come a long way. And an example of that is
in my personal life is a gun safe. Seems
like a weird example, but, um, you know, I
obviously the police officer, I own a few
handguns and, uh, I wanted to buy a
combination, a digital combination hand,
uh, gun safe about, I don't know, seven,
eight, maybe 10 years ago. So, you know,
just a simple thing where it has a digital
combination lock on the front and you
press buttons. And once you enter, you
know, a four or six pin correctly, it
beeps and you're able to open up and
access, uh, what's inside of it. I, I
bought one of those, like I said, eight
ish years ago, maybe, maybe it was more,
uh, and paid, I don't know, something
crazy, like $350 for this small gun safe,
uh, with a digital access control
mechanism on it. And the steel in that
wasn't the expensive part. It was a
microcontroller because, um, they, they
just weren't, that was before the internet
of things was kind of a thing. And
microcontrollers just hadn't scaled to the
point where they could be included in
everything. So, uh, I guess last year or
two years ago, I wanted to buy a secondary
handgun safe for my house. So I started
looking for, uh, something comparable to
what I had or whatever was the latest
stuff. And that $350 gun safe was now 80
to a hundred dollars. And it didn't just
have, uh, a digital pin code. It had a
fingerprint sensor and it had, uh, you
know, it could be remotely accessed from
my phone if you wanted it. That didn't
seem like a smart feature, but, um, it was
possible with it. And it just had, it had
all of these new features and the, the
cost of the steel that went into the gun
safe didn't go down in those eight or 10
years. It was the cost of the micro
microcontroller. Uh, they got much less
expensive and they got way more, uh,
powerful to the point that they could, you
know, store two dozen fingerprints and
open, you know, in a fraction of a second,
recognize my fingerprint versus, you know,
an incorrect fingerprint. And these
an incorrect fingerprint. And these
microcontrollers to circle back to seed
sider have gotten to the point where, uh,
they are powerful enough that we can
powerful and inexpensive enough that we
can create, um, a user experience that is
on par with the original hardware
environment, seed sider, but with these
lower cost microcontrollers. Um, and
there's, there are several benefits, uh,
to that, but probably the most important
one is that we're no longer, uh,
imprisoned within the Raspberry Pi Pi's
ecosystem. So if or when they decide to
discontinue the zero, if we're running on
other hardware platforms, multiple, you
know, microcontrollers, it's not a deal
breaker for the project. Um, my
microcontrollers also tend to have some
security problems. Protocols baked in to
where, um, we're not going in the
direction of storing private keys like
harder wallets do, but we can start to do
some sort of, uh, software authenticity
assurances baked into the hardware. So if
you have a piece of hardware that you've
instantiated yourself and you have a
certain degree of trust that it is, you
know, the hardware that you originally set
up your wallet with, if you load new
software in it, we can do some checks to
make sure that you haven't inadvertently
downloaded software from a malicious
source. And you're trying to load bad
software that would do bad things. Um, it
also opens up the path to just a, a wider
array of form factors in terms of people
have been asking for a touchscreen seed
sider for a long time. And that becomes,
uh, much easier with some of the hardware
form factors that these microcontrollers
come in. Um, there's also more
transparency in terms of, uh, the
underlying low level firmware. You can get
a lot closer to being able to audit all of
the code that's running on bare metal on
these things. Whereas with Raspberry Pi,
there, there are some low level
proprietary elements that are, um,
somewhat opaque, uh, that because they're
not a concern because. The use case of
building a seed sider is like 0.01% of all
the pies that go in existence. So if, if
someone was going to try to compromise a
hardware supply chain, it would make a ton
more sense to go for even the smallest of
the hardware wall companies, rather than
trying to. Compromise Raspberry Pi supply
chain. Um, but, um, yeah, the big push in
seeds are right now is the ability to, uh,
extend support for new hardware platforms
is becoming very quickly, very real with,
you know, all the advances in AI and
agentic coding. And that stuff. So Keith,
like I said, Keith Mukai, our lead
developer has been posting some really
compelling technical demos where he has
almost all of the functionality mapped out
onto one of these inexpensive touchscreen
devices. And it's, it's really exciting to
see it come together because maybe that's
the last piece in the puzzle to, to really
be the next leap forward for DIY. I think,
I think, I think DIY is, uh, in terms of
cold storage is way more important to the
Bitcoin ecosystem than a lot of people
appreciate. Um, and just briefly, I'll
say, so the hardware wallet companies are
just inherently centralized and they
present a certain amount of risk to the
Bitcoin ecosystem. In that all of the
hardware wallet companies operate with the
implicit permission of the countries that
they sell in and that the, that the
corporations are domiciled in. Meaning
that, uh, take an example, like Ledger
operates out of France. I don't know where
their hardware is manufactured, but they,
they're corporately domiciled in France.
And, uh, national governments, if you
followed like the American government, the
three letter agencies have an uncanny
ability to infiltrate, um, technology
companies, especially technology companies
that manufacture hardware. And plants
either surveillance capability or certain
vulnerabilities in those platforms that
work to the advantage of the government
agencies or whoever else they're, you
know, intended to work for. Um, and I'm
not saying that any of the hardware wallet
companies are captured or anything like
that, but if Bitcoin grows to a point
where it really becomes a matter of
national security, there is a huge
incentives. There's a huge incentive for
these elite government agencies to start
leaning on companies to give up customer
information or to build, uh, key
generation vulnerabilities into their
platforms or to try to start to surveil
their users or whatever it is. Um, and DIY
is kind of a bulwark against all of that,
that decentralizes the aspect of self
custody. Um, just as a thought experiment,
um, well, there's a couple of different
ways to go about this, but basically the
private, your master private key is the,
uh, the absolute secret that protects your
Bitcoin. A lot of people, when they
instantiate a hardware wallet, when they
take it out of the box, um, they don't go
through the process of creating their own
private key, which we force you to do with
seed center. They give you a private key
and tell you to write down these 12 words,
write down these 24 words. If there was
some sort of known or unknown
vulnerability to the randomness that
underlies that private key, that would
allow some sort of centralized entity like
government, whatever else to seize Bitcoin
at a massive scale. Where it would be
almost indistinguishable from a protocol
failure. If all of a sudden like thousands
or tens of thousands of Bitcoiners wake up
around the world. And, you know, maybe
it's, maybe it's in a, uh, tumultuous
political environment where there's a
world war going on or something like that.
And a company needs money to support
military operations or whatever. But the
ability to confiscate individual
Bitcoiners money at scale is a huge
vulnerability. And I think I'm not going
to be popular for saying it, but hardware
wallet companies play into that
vulnerability. And so that is a big part
of the reason why I think DIY, why seed
signer, why specter DIY. Um, there's
another project called kern, K E R N. That
is another one of these DIY, um, self
custody projects. That's, that's a big
part of the reason why I think they're
also important because we, we talk about
in Bitcoin, how it's important to
decentralize mining. We don't want any
country or any mining pool to have too
much mining, uh, capacity. We don't want,
um, we want nodes in all political
jurisdictions, you know, around the world
to make the network resilient. And I
really think, uh, self custody is still a
part of that. And we want people using all
different kinds of self custody still use
hardware wallets, use them for your, you
know, medium term kind of Bitcoin storage
needs, like a checking account. Or
something that you're spending money out
of more frequently use, you know, all
different companies and all different
parts of the world. But I think DIY is a
very important part of that mix. And
hopefully we can, uh, with this
microcontroller initiative, level up the
user experience even further to the point
that like people understand maybe the
importance of DIY as a decentralizing
force and Bitcoin self custody. But maybe
they just want to use a DIY, um, uh, sign
device because they're just so darn good.
And they've seen one work and it's like
the, the user experience is second to none
and it's low cost. And it uses a model
that really is intuitive to them and helps
them understand what they're doing with
their cold storage. So it's, we're, we're,
we're, it for a long time, it didn't seem
like there was something going on, but
there really is something going on. And
it's about to become, uh, pretty big, I
think as much as I don't like making
predictions. No, I mean, like, I'm glad
you brought this up because I hadn't
thought of this attack vector. Um, and I
failed to kind of appreciate just how big
it is now, you know, speaking to you about
it, it just doesn't seem like such an edge
case scenario. It really could happen. If,
if Bitcoin is as successful and important
as we think it, you know, is and could be
in terms of world, uh, political dynamics.
Um, yeah, there's just like, there's like
the, the, for a long time, the, the CIA
owned networking equipment because all of
the world's network traffic passed through
it. And if they could, if they could, uh,
uh, own the routers and switches and the
largest, most strategic places in the
world, they could basically eavesdrop on
the world. And it's kind of the same thing
for Bitcoin. So that the wallet, uh, the
wallet, harder wallet makers are kind of a
natural attractant to people who, you
know, uh, might be dangerous to Bitcoin.
Yeah. And, and like you said something,
and I would like you to kind of expand on
it a little bit. Like you, you almost said
if something like an adapt attack of this
sort happened, it would almost be
indistinguishable from protocol failure.
Is that what you said? Something along
those lines? Yeah. If you can imagine, you
know, on a given Friday, a bunch of people
waking up and we start to see things on
Twitter or wherever that, you know, people
happen to open their hardware wallet that
day. And all or a significant amount of
their, their Bitcoin was seized as a part
of a government haircut or some sort of
mass seizure, uh, for a regime that needed
funds for who knows what. Like, uh, like
it's not like, uh, the, I don't know, the
Mossad or pick your, you know, government
agency is going to come out and be like,
oh yeah, earlier today we executed a mass
seizure and it's primarily targeted at
people in these geographic areas. And it
was through, uh, pick your harder wallet
company specifically because that's the
one that we own. And so there would be a
lot of chaos and we would be, you know,
realizing like, okay, these seizures seem
to be limited to companies, this specific
generation of hardware wallet or this
class of hardware wallets that uses this
specific architecture or, you know, secure
element in their design. It would be
difficult to put together. And I think it
would like in the fog of war, I say fog of
war, but just in the uncertainty of that
environment, like people would start to
think that Bitcoin had failed or there was
some sort of protocol or cryptography
weakness, or maybe it's quantum that was
taking all of this stuff. Like, and the
markets would tank and you can only
imagine the kind of chaos that would
happen if one of the major wallet, uh,
companies was somehow compromised and
Bitcoin started disappearing from people's
wallets. Yeah. And that time that it took
us to figure out why that. Yeah. Okay. And
there's, there, there is a documented
history of, uh, American government
agencies targeting standards organizations
and technical, technological companies to
weaken encryption so that they would be
able to, you know, so they would be able
to break encryption to access private
messages or whatever. Bitcoin is the exact
same thing. Bitcoin is the exact same
thing. And so they might potentially have
a motivation to try to weaken the
algorithm that generates the private keys
for a certain company's hardware wallets,
uh, such that, you know, they're at some
scale crackable or, uh, can be
compromised. It's, it's, it sounds far
fetched, but this kind of crazy stuff has
already happened in, um, in kind of the.
Information, uh, technology, uh,
technology warscape globally, you know,
over the last 10 or 15 years. Hmm. It
actually doesn't sound that far fetched
because some of the other attack for
vectors that I've heard, this kind of
seems almost like the easiest one. Um,
like not easy, but you know, in terms of
like, if you want to attack Bitcoin,
that's probably the best way to do it. Um,
and the cheapest way to do it as well. Um,
and it's kind of one of those things that
it's similar to retirement attack, meaning
that you can have this vulnerability
present for years. And totally unknown
until, like I said, war kicks off and, and
maybe it's not even to seize money. Maybe
it's just, maybe you're targeting users
from a certain geographic area to screw
with your geopolitical enemy or something
like, or, or maybe, maybe the U S
government adopts Bitcoin in a meaningful
way as a reserve. And not to say like, you
know, North Korea can't see necessarily
seize the strategic reserve, but maybe
they could hack, uh, a lot of, uh, users
in that country and just create a lot of
chaos in the markets to, um, you know, to
mess with their enemies. It's, uh, it's,
it's, it's interesting to kind of game
out. I don't know. Yeah. Well, it's
certainly going to be keeping me up at
night tonight. So it's like, it's, it's
what is 11 o'clock 11 PM here. And now I'm
just going to be buzzing. It's getting
late for you.
One more
thing, one more thing. Um, just briefly,
uh, if, if you're not familiar with the
Israeli government's pager attack on, um,
I, I, I'm blanking on the, the terrorist
organization that, uh, they, they attacked
people with pagers remotely where they
captured the supply chain that the
specific, um, organization was using to
source pagers from. And somehow engineered
them to explode, you know, that took years
of planning for an attack that was
ultimately devastating. And that involved
compromising a digital hardware supply
chain at scale over a period of years. So
that's kind of like an analog for what
could be done with, uh, harder wallet
infrastructure.
I wanted to ask you before we wrap up, um,
if as a user, uh, a dedicated user, I want
to suggest some features. How do, how,
what's the best way to do that? Uh, the.
The best way to do it is to go to our
GitHub repo. So you do have to have a
GitHub account, which is a simple process
of just signing up with an email address.
But, um, in our GitHub repo, it's very
simple to open an issue and it doesn't
have to have a lot of technical language
in it. But if it's something that is a
piece of functionality, um, that you think
is missing or that could be implemented
better, you would open a feature request
or it could be a bug report if it's
something that, you know, is a undesirable
behavior that you're observing. But, uh,
you would open a feature request and just
explain in plain language, like what you
think the device should do that it's not
currently doing. And what that does is
that it's something, you know, those, uh,
feature requests are something that, uh,
the developers see in the repo. And it's
something that they can comment on, you
know, to talk about everything from how
easy or difficult that would be to
implement or why that would or wouldn't be
a good idea and such. And it also
documents the request in an ongoing way
such that it's not something that can get
lost in our telegram chat or in sidebar
conversations at a conference. Like
there's a real record of it. And at some
point that feature request needs to be
either acted upon or if someone decides
it's not a good idea, they, you know, an
admin in the repo closes it with some sort
of explanation or whatever. But yeah,
opening a feature request in the GitHub
repo is the way to do it. Yeah. Okay. Good
to know. I will tell you what the feature
is when we stop recording, but, um, do you
have any final thoughts that you'd want to
share with my audience? Um, I, uh, no, I,
I, I just appreciate the opportunity to
talk to you today. I have heard for a long
time that there are parts of Australia and
the Bitcoin community that are, that are
very enthusiastic seed center users. And
I'm, I've always tried to kind of get some
insight as to like, what was the, if it
was just happenstance that they discovered
it early, or if there are specific facets
of the project that made it more
desirable. Or I, I've always been kind of
curious to know like what, cause we, we
think it's a really awesome thing, but,
um, seed center grows kind of very slowly
throughout the world. Cause it's typically
passed from user to user. So maybe you
guys just have an exceptionally strong
meetup network and community there that
like that help bootstrap the interest.
But, um, I've always, I'm always curious
about the Australian Bitcoin community. I
hope, hope to make it there one day to
experience it firsthand. And, um, yeah,
that's what I've got. Yeah, no, we've got
really cool Bitcoiners here. I find that
in general, like the North, um, Northern
New South Wales, where I live and the
Southeast Queensland seems to have a lot
of seed signer users. And it does kind of
boil down to just a number of, um, super
users that really advocate for it and
explain why they, you know, believe in it
over other wallets. And, you know, it is
more of a trustless wallet. And if you're
going to be using a trustless network,
then it just makes sense that you're using
something, um, that doesn't require as
much trust. And obviously it doesn't cost
as much because that's another, another
thing, like another barrier for a lot of
people is you get into Bitcoin and
typically the, you don't invest your life
savings when you're starting out. Um, so
your first wallet is typically going to be
a cheaper one. Um, and yeah, I just find
the usability on this product really,
really good. I'm holding it in my hand
again and I can't go back to using
anything else. And in fact, I have had to
use some other wallets that I've just
recently purchased to do some testing at
work. And oh my gosh, I'm like, you know,
it feels like I'm going back to the dial
up internet days where I'm just feeling
rage at the different, you know, the user
experience. I just want to break it, but
not with this one. Yeah. Yeah. I really
like it. And, um, my, my sponsor mind
racks, he does a lot of training and he's
got like a whole folder of different
things. And he kind of, during the
training session, he aligns them from
trust me, bro to seed signer. Um, and he
explains like, you know, the worst ones,
the K ones in the middle and then
ultimately where you want to land. Um, so
yeah, no, it's really good. That's,
that's. So the answer seems to be that
like, you guys have a really sharp Bitcoin
community there that, that, um, values
like the original ethos of Bitcoin. I love
to hear it. And hopefully, um, uh, as we
move into the microcontroller era of seed
signer and real quick, the way that we're
kind of transitioning this microcontroller
thing, all the Raspberry Pi devices that
are out there will continue to be
supported. Keith is a genius in terms of
how he's architecting this new code and
that it can be, uh, loaded and run on all
of the existing Raspberry Pi devices. So
new features and UI changes and bug fixes
and stuff like none of the Pi users are
going to be left behind. It's really an
amazing kind of, uh, it's amazing that he
figured out a way to move the architecture
forward, that we could bring all of the
Raspberry Pi existing devices with us. But
I, I just want to say that because people
think that we're moving on to a new
hardware environment and everything's it,
that is not so we're, we're doing this in
a very careful strategic way because we,
we, we don't want to leave any of those
like earliest supporters behind. Um, so
yeah, yeah. No, I appreciate, appreciate
you sharing that. Um, yeah, it makes me so
bullish on Bitcoin when I hear, you know,
people like this stand behind Bitcoin and
products like this and it's just, yeah,
like how can you not love Bitcoin? I love
to hear it. Thank you. All right. Thanks
so much for your time, Seed. Appreciate