Riccardo is one of the main reasons Monero exists to this day. We had an insightful conversation into privacy in our digital age, maintaining a coin project for almost a decade and mechanisms to improve our control of our information online.
Transcript:
00:09
hello everyone
00:10
welcome to the ftx podcast it’s an honor
00:12
to have here with me today ricardo
00:14
fluffy pony spagny welcome ricardo
00:17
thank you for having me yeah it’s
00:19
absolutely my pleasure and to get things
00:20
kicked off would you mind giving a
00:22
little bit of a background introduction
00:23
of yourself
00:25
sure so um i’ve been in the space since
00:28
uh
00:29
may 2011 early 2011
00:32
and started off uh as a software
00:35
developer
00:36
um and eventually started an import
00:38
export business with my wife
00:40
well back then when before she was my
00:42
wife
00:43
and that grew to moderate success which
00:47
allowed me to focus on other things and
00:49
that’s kind of how i discovered bitcoin
00:51
was having time on my hands
00:53
and digging around and and seeing what
00:56
else was going on in
00:58
you know in the i.t industry in general
01:01
and
01:01
uh and you know sort of went from
01:04
learning about bitcoin to trying to
01:05
break it and went from that
01:06
to playing out with mining which you
01:09
know i think i think mining is a path i
01:12
don’t know if it’s as popular anymore
01:14
but back in like you know 2011
01:17
2012 it was a very popular path because
01:20
everyone was like
01:21
oh i’ll become a miner and get rich you
01:24
know that was like
01:25
yeah i’m gonna use my computer to print
01:28
money out of thin air that was the logic
01:30
um and uh and then from there um
01:33
realized that i was never gonna become
01:35
like a super wealthy miner but i i
01:37
wanted to sell spades and shovels
01:40
and pickaxes to miners or the digital
01:43
equivalents so
01:44
did a bunch of stuff like that
01:46
eventually developed a flat pack
01:48
flat packable stackable
01:52
open air mining frame for gpu miners and
01:55
that did really well um started a
01:58
payment gateway
01:59
uh discovered monero before its launch
02:03
and ended up being the lead maintainer
02:04
of monero and that’s
02:06
kind of what you know taken up the last
02:09
nearly a decade of my life yeah
02:12
it seems like you were part of that for
02:14
quite a long time and i’d be really
02:16
curious as to
02:17
what engaged you so strongly in monero
02:20
when you came across it
02:23
yeah that’s a it’s a good question i
02:25
mean you have to sort of
02:27
you have to like throw back to to early
02:30
2014 well late 2013 early 2014
02:33
uh which was kind of the height of the
02:36
scam coin era
02:37
where um everyone was just launching
02:39
bitcoin forks
02:41
and you know there was very little that
02:43
was being done
02:44
to to innovate um a lot of the bitcoin
02:47
forks were
02:48
they would change the proof of work
02:50
algorithm that was used to mine it
02:53
it would pump because you know it was
02:55
like everyone would mine it because they
02:57
weren’t asics
02:58
and you know like you would just be in
03:00
this battle to try and
03:02
mine as much as you could with your
03:03
computer at home and your
03:05
you know three gpus that you had lying
03:07
around and uh and then you’d wait for it
03:09
to hit poloniex because that was like
03:11
the golden ticket and it would pump on
03:13
poloniex and then you
03:15
dump all your proceeds from mining and
03:17
you know rinse and repeat
03:18
and that was kind of like you know there
03:20
were there were a bunch of us that were
03:22
doing that not as like a job but just as
03:24
like a fun thing to do you know
03:26
like new thing gets posted on bitcoin
03:27
talk and you’re like okay cool i’m ready
03:29
to mine on day one
03:30
and and in in between all of this there
03:33
was this
03:34
um this thing called bytecoin which was
03:37
uh
03:37
uh you know which sort of predates
03:40
monero
03:41
um and actually was the code base or
03:43
formed the codebase formula
03:45
and bytecoin wasn’t it was this
03:47
implementation of something called
03:48
crypto notes and this was totally fresh
03:49
totally new
03:50
not based on bitcoin’s code so i was
03:53
already intrigued
03:54
but you know part of that mindset like
03:56
oh i’m gonna mine it i’m gonna wait for
03:58
it to hit poloniex i’m just gonna like
03:59
do that thing
04:01
um and uh and so this guy called
04:03
thankful for today
04:04
uh launched bit monero which was a fair
04:07
relaunch of bitecoin because bitcoin had
04:08
been heavily pre-mined
04:10
and uh and so i was like i was in that
04:12
zone i was you know mining
04:14
and like spinning up aws instances um
04:17
and then it turned out that thankful for
04:20
today was like a gigantic douche nozzle
04:22
and so um when he disagreed with the
04:26
community
04:27
about the direction he wanted to take
04:28
bit monero then myself and six others
04:31
forked mineral uh forked it off into
04:33
manero
04:34
and when we say forked we’re not talking
04:36
about like a chain fork you know which
04:37
is
04:38
um like what created bitcoin cash or
04:41
what created ethereum classic
04:43
uh we’re talking about just taking the
04:44
code base and forking it so now you’ve
04:46
got these two code bases
04:48
that are able to run the same chain
04:51
and uh and we ran like that for a long
04:53
time i think you know he didn’t he
04:54
stopped updating his eventually
04:56
or adding code to his and the community
04:58
you know obviously
05:00
like went with what we were doing um but
05:02
for a long time you could still download
05:03
his software
05:04
and it would work you could you know use
05:07
use it on monero
05:08
just fine for probably about a year
05:10
before it stopped working
05:12
so it was um it it was
05:15
somewhat contentious but i think
05:17
contentious more from his side than ours
05:19
you know we didn’t really care
05:20
like about what he wanted to do and uh
05:23
and that’s kind of how you know how i
05:25
ended up
05:26
falling in love with monero was being
05:29
forced to take responsibility for the
05:31
thing
05:31
you know it was no longer just like oh
05:34
well like now i’m gonna wait for it to
05:36
hit poloniex like yeah i mean i’d mind a
05:38
bunch of manero that was nice
05:40
but it was like the the more i got stuck
05:43
in the more i fell in love with it
05:45
you know i fell in love with it
05:46
conceptually i fell in love with the
05:48
very rough around the edges code base
05:50
that needed a lot of work
05:52
um but it wasn’t based on bitcoin i fell
05:54
in love with the cryptography
05:56
um you know i mean i had i had a
05:58
reasonable grasp of some of the crypt of
06:00
a lot of the cryptography
06:02
um that was in use but there were so
06:04
many nuances and and
06:06
interesting things being done in nero
06:07
that were
06:09
part of a cryptographic world that i’d
06:11
never dug into
06:12
so you know it was it was really
06:15
interesting to just dig into like
06:17
curve25519 and
06:19
you know um uh the the way that we were
06:22
doing shah 3
06:23
and all of the stuff um it’s it’s just
06:26
super interesting
06:27
and uh and i’m very very grateful for
06:30
the learning experience
06:32
um and also for really like
06:36
it helped reignite a love and a passion
06:38
that i had for privacy because that you
06:40
know
06:40
at that point i think i’d kind of given
06:43
up on privacy because everyone was just
06:45
happy to
06:46
sell their souls to facebook as long as
06:48
they could play farmville
06:50
yeah absolutely i mean and we saw that
06:52
ubiquitously across
06:53
all of the internet i think that was
06:55
probably what was this
06:56
early 2014 you said early early 2014
06:59
yeah that’s basically when we all signed
07:00
our keys over to facebook and said here
07:02
have our entire lives um so i think
07:05
that’s really interesting that
07:07
it wasn’t your love for privacy that
07:09
nurtured monero it was
07:10
monero that nurtured your love for
07:13
privacy
07:14
which is which is a great turn of events
07:17
it is and and i think the other thing
07:18
that that uh that people sometimes
07:20
forget
07:20
is a lot of what got people
07:24
into bitcoin i mean you know we we’re
07:27
very
07:27
we all say we’re in it for the
07:29
technology but
07:30
a lot of people bar a handful
07:34
we’re in initially interested in bitcoin
07:36
um
07:37
because of like financial reasons you
07:40
know whether it is financial freedom
07:42
or financial gain um you know bitcoin
07:45
appeals to people
07:46
from a financial perspective and monero
07:48
did as well so i don’t think that
07:50
there’s
07:51
i i it would be wrong to view it as
07:53
shameful
07:54
to say like that you know we were i was
07:56
interested in making profit
07:57
you know we were all interested in
07:58
making profit um and there’s nothing
08:01
wrong with with being a little bit
08:02
capitalistic
08:03
from that perspective depending on the
08:05
outcome you know i mean if you if that’s
08:07
what drives you you know five years down
08:09
the line and you’re
08:10
just interested in helping people
08:14
learn how to take their own freedom back
08:16
that’s not great
08:18
and from a beginner’s perspective you
08:21
had to explain this with someone who
08:22
wasn’t very familiar with cryptography
08:24
what were some of the aspects of monero
08:25
back then
08:26
that were of interest compared to other
08:28
chains at that moment in time
08:31
yeah so there were a bunch of things um
08:34
i mean obviously the privacy focus was
08:36
was one there was very little being done
08:38
in the way of privacy
08:39
and a lot of uh what of what was being
08:42
done for privacy was very naive
08:44
um you know it was very very basic stuff
08:47
and
08:49
like even even today there’s a you know
08:51
there’s
08:52
a lot of maturing that’s been done there
08:54
um and yet
08:55
you know like new privacy stuff
08:59
we’re sometimes launched in a very naive
09:01
manner you know it’s like oh we’ll just
09:02
do this one little simple thing that’ll
09:04
solve privacy which is never the case
09:06
but monero had this sort of like
09:08
multi-faceted approach
09:09
and it wasn’t perfect and you know you
09:11
could see where where there were things
09:13
that needed to be improved but still it
09:14
was
09:15
uh it was amazing um in so many ways
09:19
and then there was the uh proof-of-work
09:21
mining algorithm as well which was
09:24
designed to be relatively hard
09:27
hardened against gpu and asic mining
09:31
which it also took a very different
09:33
approach to
09:34
a lot of the the approaches at the time
09:37
which were like let’s take
09:38
12 different hash functions and smush
09:40
them together um
09:42
and monero’s approach was unique and and
09:45
it was interesting as well was the the
09:47
theory behind it because
09:48
in the white paper they never really
09:50
went into details about
09:52
the hashing algorithm except to say that
09:54
they believed
09:55
in one cpu one vote and
09:58
and that they felt that miners should or
10:01
mining should be
10:03
something that the ordinary user should
10:06
still be able to do
10:08
down the line and i don’t know if i
10:11
agree with that vision entirely
10:13
you know i mean i i i’m i’m maybe a
10:16
little partial to asics and
10:18
and to the value that they provide to
10:20
the network
10:21
in that miners need to invest
10:25
money into hardware and so then they
10:27
have like a vested interest in
10:29
supporting the network that way and the
10:31
cost of switching is very high because
10:33
typically an asic will only be good for
10:36
one currency one main currency
10:38
so you know i i kind of see both sides
10:41
but it still
10:41
is it it was interesting it still is
10:44
interesting today because we’ve
10:45
continued
10:46
with that vision um in in making mineral
10:49
accessible mineral mining accessible to
10:51
the common user um and it is interesting
10:54
to me because
10:55
it’s a different approach to bitcoin i
10:58
don’t think there’s a right or wrong
10:59
here
11:00
i think it’s just different and i think
11:02
that that’s
11:03
that’s it’s always good to see a fresh
11:05
approach
11:06
that is not abandoned after five minutes
11:09
you know and
11:09
to go with the status quo um so in in
11:12
many ways
11:13
monero’s technology even is a little bit
11:15
contrarian
11:16
it’s a little bit like well you know
11:18
this is the bitcoin way of doing things
11:20
and this is the monero way of doing
11:21
things
11:22
and who knows which one’s right or wrong
11:24
um you know if they’re still around in
11:26
15 or 20 years we’ll find out
11:28
and what does it mean for a blockchain
11:30
which as far as i understand is an
11:32
immutable ledger to be private
11:36
yeah that’s a that’s a good question i
11:38
mean um
11:40
it’s kind of a little bit ironic that
11:42
it’s like well this is private
11:43
however it’s also going to live on
11:46
thousands of computers around the world
11:48
forever
11:48
you know it’s like a little bit of like
11:50
the antithesis to privacy you’d expect
11:52
that
11:53
that the data would disappear but that’s
11:55
not the case
11:56
so with monero a lot of the privacy
12:00
comes from various clever cryptography
12:03
tricks like
12:04
instead of it going to i mean you pay a
12:06
terminal address
12:08
but when you look at it on the
12:09
blockchain you don’t see that monero
12:10
address you instead see this
12:13
output of a cryptographic function so
12:15
you just see like a destination
12:17
and a single transaction could be paying
12:20
the same address
12:22
with all its outputs but it appears to
12:23
be going to different places there’s no
12:25
way to tell
12:26
um and then another trick is it hides
12:28
the transaction amounts
12:29
so you can’t tell how much is transacted
12:32
um and then there’s
12:33
other trick where we use something
12:35
called ring signatures and so a
12:37
transaction
12:38
appears to be spending funds from um a
12:41
whole bunch of older transactions
12:43
and you can’t tell which of those older
12:45
transactions is the real one that’s
12:47
spending
12:48
so it’s it’s kind of powerful it’s a
12:49
little bit like in in some ways it’s a
12:51
little
12:52
a little bit like coin join or you know
12:54
like a mixing
12:55
service because you’ve got like these
12:57
older transactions that go into the one
12:59
transaction
13:00
but what’s really powerful about it is
13:02
that it doesn’t require interactivity
13:04
so with something like mixing or with
13:07
coinjoin
13:08
um all the people that are participating
13:10
in that need to come together
13:12
uh you know you need one central body to
13:14
like control that
13:16
um and yes you there’s ways of doing
13:18
coinjoining that are more decentralized
13:20
and that’s great but you still need the
13:22
interactivity you still need people to
13:23
come together
13:24
and and pool their stuff and then you
13:27
know you suck your your funds out of
13:28
that
13:29
um and with monero you don’t need that
13:31
because you just need the blockchain and
13:33
you can take these old transactions
13:35
um older and newer ones and you can
13:37
create a rank signature from it
13:38
without the permission or input or
13:41
anything
13:42
from the people that created those
13:44
transactions initially
13:46
and the blockchain is then in a private
13:47
manner parsing which is actually
13:49
the accurate transaction that occurred
13:51
and recording that internally with
13:53
where no one can read it is that what’s
13:55
happening or yeah so
13:56
kind of so it’s not it’s still it’s
13:58
recording the the full ring signature
14:00
so to a passive observer they see the
14:02
full ring signature
14:03
to the recipients um they
14:06
also just see the the full ring
14:09
signature
14:10
to the person who sent the funds they’re
14:12
the ones that know
14:13
okay this is the real um the real
14:16
signature
14:16
of these uh in the ring signature so
14:19
they’re able to track
14:21
which outputs in their wallet have been
14:22
spent but no one else is
14:24
understood so everyone has control so
14:26
it’s like your wallet you’re
14:27
understanding outside of your wallet you
14:29
don’t have the understanding
14:30
got it and i’d love to hear a little bit
14:33
about so you know
14:34
at 9 10 years as the lead maintainer for
14:36
monero i know monero has
14:37
advanced a ton from where it started
14:39
because it’s had to keep pace
14:41
with a lot of tools that are being built
14:43
to
14:44
parse these things and be able to
14:45
understand what’s going on and i’d love
14:47
to hear some of the developments and
14:48
some of the things that stand out to you
14:50
over the years that were really
14:51
important in the development of monero
14:55
yeah that’s a good question i mean when
14:58
monero
14:58
started um the i think the
15:02
the biggest thing that that needed to
15:04
happen was
15:05
a an improvement of the code base so
15:09
excuse me monero was not the code base
15:12
was not very mature
15:14
um in some ways it was um
15:17
it was pretty horrendous because they’d
15:20
uh you know whoever created the code
15:22
base that purposely stripped out the
15:24
comments
15:25
which made it very challenging you know
15:26
you can see that something’s been done
15:28
but you don’t know why it’s been done
15:30
so as a developer that can be extremely
15:32
extremely frustrating
15:35
but but i think more importantly there
15:37
were
15:38
even aspects of the privacy that were
15:40
immature you know so as an example
15:42
um initially monero did not hide the
15:45
transaction amounts
15:46
that was something that we worked though
15:49
that we created and invented
15:51
within monero and just tons of other
15:55
subtle improvements to privacy as an
15:56
example when you’re selecting those old
15:59
transactions
16:00
to decide you know to create your ring
16:01
signature
16:03
we realized that people have a tendency
16:06
they have a spending pattern
16:08
which is irc funds and i spend them
16:11
pretty quickly
16:12
and that is pretty common if you look at
16:14
bitcoin if you look at ethereum
16:16
if you look at all these traceable
16:17
ledgers you can see that spending
16:19
pattern
16:20
and so it was possible to create a
16:23
heuristic where you could just go well
16:26
you know i’m not sure who is the true
16:27
signer on this ring signature
16:30
but i’m pretty sure it’s the most recent
16:32
um transaction
16:33
i’m just i’m just gonna i’m going to
16:35
make that guess and you’ll be right like
16:37
70
16:38
of the time so what we needed to do was
16:40
then
16:41
um create a a an output
16:44
transaction output selection algorithm
16:46
that
16:47
was more akin to how people were
16:50
actually spending their funds
16:52
and that that i think is something
16:54
that’s evolved many times over the years
16:56
and we now have something that is pretty
16:59
solid
16:59
you know in terms of of mirroring how
17:02
people are spending their funds
17:04
um and and selecting uh you know
17:07
favoring very recent transaction outputs
17:10
so whether you are spending uh where you
17:12
whether you’ve dug up an old 2016
17:14
wallet or whether you’re spending funds
17:16
that you receive today
17:18
you if you’re afforded the same level of
17:20
privacy because of how that transaction
17:22
output selection
17:23
is done so lots of really important
17:26
improvements like that
17:28
another big improvement not so much on
17:29
the privacy side but on the proof of
17:31
work side
17:32
was to eventually dump the uh
17:35
proof-of-work algorithm that monero
17:37
shipped with
17:37
which is called cryptonite after several
17:40
iterations it just
17:41
wasn’t really working and something was
17:44
created called random x
17:45
and random x is um basic
17:49
i mean it’s it’s difficult to to explain
17:52
non-technically but
17:53
effectively it’s something that just
17:56
creates a a bunch of special
18:00
code that gets executed randomly
18:03
and that code is code that is built to
18:06
favor
18:07
cpus so you know it does not it works on
18:11
gpus you can’t
18:12
mine monero on a graphics card but
18:15
the you don’t get the the same
18:17
performance um
18:19
uh gain at the or the same performance
18:21
efficiency from
18:22
from like an electricity consumption
18:24
perspective as you do from mining it on
18:26
a cpu
18:27
so what that’s that’s really interesting
18:29
as well and i don’t know how long it’ll
18:30
last i don’t know if it’ll last forever
18:32
or
18:33
if someone will figure out some magical
18:35
trick but
18:36
it has lasted pretty well no one seems
18:39
to have been able to create anything
18:40
close to an asic for it um the cpu is
18:42
the asic
18:43
you know it’s about as specialized as
18:45
you’re gonna get when it comes to random
18:47
x
18:47
so that’s really interesting stuff um as
18:50
well
18:50
and uh and you know that’s that’s sort
18:52
of like just some of the improvements
18:54
that have been made over the years i
18:55
mean there are a ton
18:56
um that i’m certainly forgetting and uh
18:59
and i think but i think monero’s main
19:01
main contribution to to privacy compared
19:05
to other privacy coins
19:06
is that it’s private by default there
19:08
are a few that are doing this but
19:10
uh monero’s led the way in saying like
19:13
every transaction should be private
19:15
you can opt out if you want to but you
19:17
shouldn’t need to opt into privacy
19:19
well another ones you have to
19:21
potentially opt in if you want to be
19:22
private rather than
19:24
the other way around um on monero
19:27
how do these changes come about when you
19:29
guys changed
19:30
the mining the proof of work how does
19:33
that decision pass is it similar to
19:34
other blockchains where you get the 51
19:36
percent
19:36
or what is the deal there yeah so
19:40
um it’s pretty it’s pretty similar in
19:43
terms of
19:44
um you know how how these things are
19:47
are designed it’s i would say it’s
19:49
similar most similar to bitcoin um
19:52
you know someone comes up with an idea
19:54
it gets discussed there’s normally a
19:56
bunch of
19:57
discussion on github and then ultimately
20:00
the decision
20:01
is something it’s a term that the apache
20:05
foundation use
20:06
which is broad consensus or loose
20:08
consensus
20:09
so you know you sort of have to as a
20:12
development team
20:13
um which again you know in the
20:15
development team on an open source
20:16
project there’s not a bunch of guys
20:17
sitting in an office together
20:19
it’s people from all over the world some
20:21
of which are anonymous many of which are
20:23
anonymous
20:24
some of which are not and and you know
20:26
you’ve worked
20:27
together kind of um for
20:30
many years and their newcomers and and
20:33
people who’ve been around for a long
20:34
time
20:35
a lot you’ve never met a lot of them in
20:37
person and
20:38
you your line of communication is
20:42
a channel on irc and github issues
20:45
and you know you kind of need it you
20:47
kind of need to like
20:48
um evaluate you know what
20:51
like what what is the consensus that’s
20:53
coming up from the community
20:54
and you know as developers do we agree
20:56
with that consensus have we
20:58
have we voiced our opinion um and then
21:00
from that
21:01
you know you someone eventually writes
21:03
code it gets
21:04
ripped apart it gets uh you know it gets
21:07
improved
21:08
you have lots of eyes on it um and that
21:10
code eventually makes it into
21:12
a release um and uh where bitcoin
21:16
favors soft forks um monero has had a
21:19
tendency in the past
21:20
to to have hard forks um and uh and we
21:24
i don’t know how long it will continue
21:26
um if we’ll always have hard forks i
21:28
think we probably will continue
21:30
to have hard forks with uh with with
21:33
less frequency uh previously we’ve had a
21:36
hard fork every six months
21:37
it looks like now we’re we’re having
21:39
hard forks annually
21:41
um i would imagine that eventually we’ll
21:42
go to having a hard fork every two or
21:44
three years
21:45
um the reason that we favored hard forks
21:47
over soft forks is because there is
21:48
normally
21:50
uh you know with a lot of these privacy
21:51
improvements they’re quite breaking
21:53
changes
21:53
it’s brand new cryptography um and you
21:57
want to actually
21:58
stop all the old transactions you don’t
22:00
want it to be like a mix of
22:02
old style and new style transactions you
22:04
want to stop all the old ones
22:06
and have a point where the new ones take
22:08
over um and everyone benefits from the
22:10
improved privacy um
22:12
because one of the one of the things
22:13
that you want from a privacy perspective
22:14
is that all transactions look alike
22:16
and if you’ve got like you know some
22:18
transactions that look like this and
22:20
some transactions look like that it’s
22:21
not great
22:22
yeah so yeah the that’s that’s kind of
22:24
the decision making
22:26
and again i mean i i don’t i don’t know
22:28
if this is
22:29
like the best way to do it or whatever i
22:32
i just know that
22:33
it works for monero it works for bitcoin
22:36
um
22:36
and it’s you know like i think we’ll
22:38
just we’ll continue with it for as long
22:40
as we can
22:41
my next question ties a little bit it is
22:43
a bit more personal it’s that you know
22:45
you’ve been the lead maintainer of this
22:47
project that’s been under a ton of
22:48
scrutiny
22:49
by many different entities and
22:51
organizations and individuals all around
22:54
the world and you’ve been a pretty
22:55
public figure how
22:57
the heck have you dealt with that how
22:58
have you been able to maintain ahead of
23:00
all of this and not
23:01
in you know embroiled in something that
23:04
would have messed with you
23:08
yeah um i i mean
23:11
i think with uh with us there’s
23:15
i’ve been grateful to be involved with
23:17
bitcoin
23:18
early on that’s made a big difference um
23:22
because for a long time a very long time
23:26
bitcoin faced similar scrutiny and
23:29
uh and and you know people saying like
23:32
oh bitcoin is only
23:34
i mean i say for a very long time i mean
23:37
like just yesterday or the day before
23:38
there was some dude saying that like
23:40
you know bitcoin is boiling the oceans
23:42
and it’s also only used by drug dealers
23:44
and polar bears buying fentanyl
23:46
and it’s like it’s 20 21 that’s
23:48
definitely not the case
23:50
um and it’s time to to move beyond that
23:52
argument
23:54
and i i kind of feel like um if bitcoin
23:57
can find
23:58
success and and acceptance
24:01
by regulators and by companies like
24:05
microstrategy
24:08
then you know regardless of of what
24:11
what people try to position it as
24:14
and what to the arguments they make i
24:16
think that monero can find
24:18
um use as well i don’t think that monero
24:20
is positioned as an investment vehicle i
24:22
don’t think that
24:24
um you know microstrategy is ever going
24:26
to hold monero on the
24:27
on their books i don’t think we’re going
24:28
to have manero treasuries but uh
24:31
well i mean we might but i think that uh
24:34
that where bitcoin
24:35
is um viewed as digital gold i do think
24:38
that uh
24:39
that that regulators will start to view
24:42
monero’s digital cash and it’ll
24:44
grow beyond it’s um you know the
24:47
criticisms that people have held
24:49
and and i think that that’s important
24:50
it’s a it’s a part of growing up it’s a
24:52
part of
24:53
um you know getting new users on board
24:55
because you you want as many users as
24:57
possible so that there’s a crowd to get
24:59
lost in
25:00
and and i think that all of this is is
25:01
essential um
25:04
and i’ve i’ve just i’ve lived through it
25:05
with bitcoin so living through it with
25:07
monero was
25:08
uh not too dissimilar and not too
25:10
difficult
25:12
and okay into the next question with
25:13
this i’d like to hear your personal
25:15
opinion on
25:16
so there’s the view of monero as the
25:18
coin that permits trafficking and drugs
25:20
and all of these terrible things in the
25:22
world and then there’s the view as well
25:23
that is monero as a coin that allows you
25:26
to keep your autonomy
25:27
and financials to yourself how do you
25:30
personally balance this
25:31
knowing that obviously any of these
25:32
things is going to be used for both
25:34
sides and like what is your personal
25:35
perspective on that
25:38
yeah so you know what i find interesting
25:41
is um especially when it comes to
25:43
to some of the criticisms that uh that
25:46
people try and
25:47
and push what i find terribly
25:50
interesting is
25:52
if you really think about it the the
25:55
users
25:56
of a privacy enhancing system whether it
26:00
is
26:01
a privacy enhancing currency or a
26:03
privacy enhancing
26:05
um thing like tor
26:08
like your early users are going to be
26:11
people who need
26:12
privacy the most and that wouldn’t
26:15
would naturally mean that people who are
26:18
doing things which might be illegal
26:21
um are going to be early adopters um and
26:24
that goes for
26:24
i mean that cause for privacy enhancing
26:27
messaging systems as well
26:29
signals had to deal with it tours had to
26:31
deal with it
26:32
you know i mean there’s the tour has a
26:34
reputation of being like
26:36
oh well that’s where like the drug
26:38
dealers and the child pornographers are
26:40
and yet tor is incredibly valuable
26:44
as a tool to whistleblowers to
26:47
dissidents
26:48
to you know people who just
26:51
don’t want their isp spying on them um
26:55
and i think you know i i’ve i’ve
26:58
thought about this a lot and i’ve i’ve
26:59
spoken to a lot of people
27:02
it’s very easy to paint monero into that
27:04
corner of like oh it’s only used by
27:06
criminals but
27:08
my question is what is a criminal you
27:10
know i mean there’s things that i object
27:12
to morally
27:13
certainly but that’s very different to
27:16
a criminal i mean a whistleblower
27:19
can be a criminal you know someone who’s
27:23
fighting against
27:24
a uh a racist government
27:27
like someone who fought against
27:29
apartheid is a criminal
27:31
you know nelson mandela was a terrorist
27:34
so when it comes to labeling people as
27:36
criminals and labeling the tools that
27:39
they use
27:39
as being for criminals i feel like
27:42
that’s a very
27:44
difficult thing to do it’s it’s um
27:47
you know we can talk about what is
27:49
morally objectionable
27:50
sure but to say that something is used
27:53
by criminals
27:54
who’s to say that the criminals are bad
27:56
you know um
27:58
it’s uh i think that that that looking
28:01
at examples of people like uh
28:03
like uh nelson mandela i’m i’m certainly
28:06
cautious
28:06
especially having grown up in south
28:08
africa of labeling
28:10
um anyone as or associating
28:13
criminal behavior um with being
28:17
inherently bad so that’s kind of you
28:19
know that that’s kind of my
28:20
my positioning is yes people
28:24
that we might think or we might call
28:26
criminals are going to use monero
28:28
um and is that a bad thing i mean i
28:31
guess it depends on what they’re doing
28:32
and and on what they’re using it for um
28:35
i don’t know
28:37
but i think that it is um it’s
28:40
ultimately a tool
28:44
just like a car is a tool just like a
28:47
kitchen knife is a tool
28:48
you can use a kitchen knife to stab
28:50
someone to death you can use a car to
28:53
run over a crowd of protesters but that
28:56
doesn’t mean that the kitchen knife
28:57
manufacturer should start blunting their
28:59
knives
29:00
and it doesn’t mean that car
29:01
manufacturers should sell their cars
29:02
without airbags and seat belts
29:04
just in case somebody uses it for
29:06
something bad and so with monero
29:09
the privacy is exists to help
29:13
people who are most vulnerable and most
29:16
threatened
29:17
and i like to think of examples like um
29:20
you know
29:21
someone who is in a household where
29:24
there is domestic abuse and they’re
29:25
trying to put money aside to be able to
29:27
escape that cycle
29:29
um you know like that is a scenario
29:31
where they could use monero
29:33
um where they could uh they could use
29:36
monero without
29:37
fear of the other person
29:40
knowing how much they have um certainly
29:42
an extreme example
29:44
but uh one that you know that that’s the
29:46
sort of thing that i think about
29:47
when it comes to who monero is for
29:52
and then another question for you going
29:53
off of this as well if you who have been
29:55
studying privacy for
29:56
a long time and are probably very aware
29:58
of some of the things going on
30:00
would you be able to speak on a bit of
30:02
the degradation degradation of privacy
30:04
that we’ve had over the years and maybe
30:06
some of the things that are going on now
30:07
that people may not be that aware of
30:11
yeah i i think that um
30:14
i’m kind of hopeful and privacy as a
30:16
whole i mean it’s
30:18
uh you’re right it has it has not been
30:21
great for
30:21
uh for a long time um and i’ve been
30:25
i’ve kind of been surprised by how
30:29
willing people have been to continue to
30:32
compromise their privacy
30:34
despite um
30:37
uh all of the hacks and the the leaks
30:40
that we’ve seen
30:41
and yet people are just they just sort
30:43
of double down you know they’re like oh
30:45
well you know it’s
30:46
my my data’s been leaked again i’m still
30:50
not going to take control of it
30:52
and and then a couple of things have
30:55
happened over the last
30:56
uh you know quarter 12 months
31:00
the first was like ces last year back in
31:03
the day when we were still allowed to
31:05
physically go to conferences ces last
31:07
year
31:08
apple had a big banner up
31:11
about privacy like a billboard outside
31:15
ces
31:16
and apple over the past 12 months has
31:19
made
31:19
privacy a selling point a a
31:23
feature differentiator between them and
31:26
and google and i think that that’s very
31:28
interesting because
31:30
apple are going to make mistakes they’re
31:32
going to make they’re going to
31:34
definitely do things that are not great
31:37
and they’re going to have to walk some
31:38
stuff back
31:40
but the fact that they are viewing
31:42
privacy as an imperative the fact that
31:44
they are viewing privacy is a feature
31:46
that differentiates them from the others
31:49
i think is very
31:50
crucial because it is a mass it’s one of
31:54
the biggest companies in the world
31:55
it is a massive company with a lot of
31:58
influence
31:59
and i would i would be very nervous as a
32:01
regulator to try and take apple on
32:04
and say you shouldn’t be adding privacy
32:06
is a cool feature
32:08
and so that i think has been a
32:10
fundamental shift
32:12
in um in in people’s view
32:15
maybe maybe they don’t even realize it
32:17
but just um
32:18
you know globally that that i think has
32:22
far-reaching consequences because it
32:24
means that
32:25
a government like in australia where
32:28
they’re trying to fight for
32:30
uh responsible encryption which is just
32:32
code for backdoors
32:33
um in your stuff a government like
32:36
australia will not be able to force
32:38
apple
32:39
to to do that i mean they you know they
32:41
can go toe to toe with apple and say
32:43
well you’re no longer allowed to sell
32:44
your devices
32:46
in our country unless you put a backdoor
32:47
in and apple will say okay we are no
32:50
longer selling our devices in your
32:51
country
32:52
and people will just gray import them so
32:54
it’s you know like
32:56
like this it’s it’s really interesting
32:59
because
33:00
it’s like disney when disney fights for
33:02
copyright is probably the best example
33:04
of this
33:05
you know it disney’s continuous
33:08
hold on copyrights is
33:12
pretty immoral at this point you know
33:14
they should they should have lost the
33:15
copyright a long time ago
33:18
to mickey mouse but they have managed to
33:20
extend it
33:21
well beyond what the copyright laws in
33:25
the states were originally envisioned to
33:26
do
33:27
and they will i’m pretty sure they’ll
33:29
continue to be able to extend it and it
33:30
just shows you the regular
33:32
regulatory reach of a company like
33:34
disney
33:35
so you know the regulatory reach from a
33:37
privacy perspective of a company like
33:39
apple
33:40
i think we’re grossly underestimating
33:43
how
33:44
how much of a turning point that is um
33:47
the second thing that that’s happened
33:48
recently which has been very
33:50
heartwarming
33:51
is to see the reaction to uh of people
33:54
to whatsapp changing their
33:56
terms of service i i i mean it
34:00
definitely
34:01
it’s probably the result of all the
34:03
things that have happened over the past
34:05
few years all the leaks all the hacks
34:07
all the facebook um cambridge analytica
34:09
stuff
34:10
um and finally finally this little terms
34:13
of views change
34:14
which frankly i you know is not even as
34:17
scary as people have made it out to be
34:19
it has just been the straw that’s broken
34:21
the camel’s back
34:22
and people have flooded off whatsapp on
34:25
mass
34:26
they’ve gone to signal they’ve gone to
34:27
imessage they’ve gone to wire
34:29
they’ve gone to threamer they’ve gone to
34:31
all of these different things they’ve
34:32
gone to telegram and we’re just
34:34
trading one master off for another but
34:36
anyway um at least they
34:38
at least they’re moving off whatsapp i
34:40
think that’s the most important thing
34:42
and i have been so heartwarmed by
34:45
um but to see that because whatsapp has
34:48
got an excellent user experience
34:50
and they’ve got a stranglehold because
34:52
they run on so many old devices where
34:54
wire and telegram and and signal do not
34:58
run
34:59
and so it has been a challenge for some
35:01
people to try and get ever
35:02
like all of their groups off of whatsapp
35:04
and so on
35:05
but they’ve done it and i’ve you know
35:08
some people have been brutal they’ve
35:10
just set their whatsapp status to like i
35:12
you know or their
35:13
bio or whatever so like i’m no longer on
35:16
on whatsapp you can contact me on signal
35:18
or on wire and i think that that is
35:21
amazing because it is
35:23
it it is a change that six months ago i
35:26
don’t think anyone
35:27
would have fathomed happening they would
35:28
have just been like no sorry
35:30
you know yeah i’ve got these other
35:32
things i use why i use signal but i’m
35:33
never going to stop using whatsapp
35:36
and now it’s just like dead stop dead
35:39
halt
35:40
so that you know and they’ve easily
35:43
easily lost tens of millions of users
35:45
so that that to me is uh is very
35:48
powerful
35:49
very heartwarming and i i continue to
35:51
see that steady drum beat of
35:54
privacy adoption and improvement and
35:57
i think that’s great i think that’s
35:59
that’s uh it gives me hopeful for the
36:01
future
36:02
yeah absolutely i love it as well and i
36:04
think a big part of it as well has been
36:06
all the censorship we’ve been seeing
36:08
across social media
36:09
which is another push that people are
36:11
looking for other alternative platforms
36:13
which
36:13
i think is just so fantastic just from
36:15
the angle that maybe these companies
36:17
will lose their stranglehold over time
36:19
because with the regulatory remotes
36:21
these guys are building for themselves
36:23
it’s pretty much impossible for a
36:24
competitor to come in and fair game
36:26
take the user base and build themselves
36:28
to the point they want to be
36:29
so hopefully we have a few more of these
36:31
events that make people transition off
36:33
of these main platforms and go elsewhere
36:35
because
36:35
it’s getting pretty pretty ridiculous
36:38
another question for you ricardo so
36:41
what can people do to protect their
36:43
privacy in today’s world
36:47
so i’ve been i’ve been challenging
36:49
people to do a
36:50
um like a a six-month
36:54
privacy um challenge
36:57
and and what that means fluffy pony
36:59
six-month privacy challenge goes like
37:01
this
37:01
every six months change something
37:06
to better your privacy and so maybe
37:09
initially you
37:10
you know that means dumping whatsapp and
37:12
and using
37:13
privacy enhancing messaging um
37:16
and then six months down the line
37:18
evaluate something else you know
37:20
um okay you’ve used gmail for many years
37:23
could you switch to something like
37:24
protonmail or to tonota
37:26
but you know not just like not just like
37:29
set your
37:30
your email to forward i mean like can
37:32
you actually transition you know can you
37:34
say to people like this is my new email
37:36
address
37:36
can you change your logins to use your
37:39
new your new email address
37:41
it’s a it’s a brutal change but you know
37:42
it’s six months you’ve got six months to
37:44
prepare for it you’ve got six months to
37:47
to to make that change before you need
37:48
to think about anything else and then
37:50
you know
37:51
six months later can you delete
37:52
instagram
37:54
can you still maintain your friendships
37:58
by i don’t know sending them actual
38:00
pictures
38:01
instead of posting them onto facebook
38:03
servers you know
38:04
and and i think like i think a lot of
38:06
that stuff is it
38:08
is painful but if you do if you just do
38:10
it like one thing every six months
38:13
you will eventually find that within a
38:16
few years you will have regained so much
38:18
of your privacy um that you will be
38:20
interested in more nuanced things like
38:23
you know the operating system that
38:24
you’re using or the the hardware that
38:26
you’re buying
38:27
um but you know i think that people
38:29
sometimes tend to do it the other way
38:31
around where they’re like
38:32
okay that’s it i’m buying a uh
38:36
purism libram5 linux phone
38:39
and then they they buy this thing and
38:41
they’re like they get it in their hands
38:43
and they they’re like well i don’t know
38:44
i can’t message anyone
38:47
you know i can’t do anything oh it’s so
38:49
confused everything’s confusing and they
38:50
get frustrated and they stop
38:52
and i feel like that is you know i mean
38:55
i’m a massive purism fan i have a bunch
38:57
of their devices i use
38:58
all the time but you know it took me
39:01
many years to get to the point where
39:03
um i was able to make those changes um
39:05
to my life
39:06
and and to run operating systems like
39:08
cubes um
39:09
you know which is a very a very
39:12
fantastic privacy preserving operating
39:14
system but very difficult to use
39:16
for the average person so you know i i
39:19
feel like
39:20
there’s so much scope for people to just
39:22
make much smaller improvements
39:24
monumental in their lives um but but
39:27
relatively much smaller then like trying
39:30
to try to do this top-down thing where
39:32
you you know rip everything out or where
39:35
you
39:35
um you know change your devices um one
39:38
other thing that i think is
39:40
kind of useful is this book yeah for
39:43
anyone that’s
39:43
really really interested such a great
39:46
book
39:46
a book called extreme privacy second
39:49
edition came out last year
39:50
um by uh by a guy called michael
39:54
uh michael basil and it is
39:57
michael basil really is his genius it’s
40:00
very geared towards
40:01
a us perspective in terms of
40:05
you know legal structures than that but
40:07
i mean even if you gloss over those
40:09
parts i think there’s a
40:11
there’s just a whole mindset that that
40:13
he positions in terms of regaining your
40:16
privacy
40:16
um and he speaks a lot about i mean
40:18
there’s a whole section on devices
40:20
and and so on um but yeah just really
40:23
fantastic well written very engaging
40:26
uh very specific and detailed um and
40:30
uh and i think that anyone who’s very
40:32
serious about
40:33
um taking back their privacy it’s uh
40:36
it’s worth a read
40:38
perfect thank you extreme privacy by
40:39
michael basil got it
40:41
and then my last question for you
40:42
ricardo is
40:44
in this world of increased regulatory
40:47
scrutiny
40:48
and entities and organizations and
40:51
governments trying to be more involved
40:52
in blockchain things
40:53
what do you see going forward for
40:55
privacy chains such as monero
40:59
so i i think i mean i’ve thought a lot
41:01
about this and i think that regulators
41:03
will
41:04
eventually be forced to view monero
41:08
as cash what i mean by that is
41:12
regulators already know how to how to
41:13
regulate cash you know you
41:15
you can you can certainly run a
41:17
cash-based business
41:20
you could take all of the cash and you
41:21
can stick it under your mattress you
41:22
don’t need to have a bank account
41:24
you can pay your staff in cash you can
41:25
pay your um
41:27
your bills in cash you can pay your rent
41:29
and cash but at some point you’re going
41:31
to make a purchase with that cash
41:34
and you know whether it is buying a car
41:36
or whatever and someone’s going to have
41:38
to file something called an sar
41:39
a suspicious activity report because of
41:42
the amount that you’re
41:43
you that you’re paying in cash um
41:45
that’ll happen and it’ll
41:47
you know it can trigger a bunch of
41:48
consequences um similarly you you know
41:50
you might end up even if you’re very
41:52
clever you might end up getting a
41:53
lifestyle audits
41:55
because you know you’re trying to like
41:57
live your life with cash
41:58
and so they’ve designed all these
42:00
systems i i don’t think to
42:02
i don’t think it’s designed to stop
42:03
criminality i think it’s designed
42:05
to make sure people are paying their
42:07
taxes i think that’s the the primary
42:08
concern
42:09
there and i feel like with monero i
42:12
don’t see how manero is any different
42:14
you know i mean if someone is running a
42:17
monero based business they’re paying
42:18
their bills with monero they’re paying
42:19
their rent with monero they’re paying
42:20
their staff with monero
42:22
like at some point they’re going to you
42:24
know trade that monero out into fiat
42:27
in order to buy a house or buy a car or
42:29
buy something
42:30
buy a diamond wedding ring and that’s
42:32
gonna that should
42:33
trigger some consequences and i have no
42:36
problem with regulators saying
42:38
that is the point where we regulate you
42:40
know or
42:41
the dudes driving a ferrari but claiming
42:44
to earn
42:44
a thousand dollars a month that is the
42:46
point where we regulate
42:48
i have no problem with them doing that
42:50
like active regulation
42:51
where where they were active
42:53
surveillance where they figure out like
42:54
this person may
42:56
not be paying their taxes and so
42:58
whatever we’re gonna go after him or
43:00
we think this person um you know that
43:02
like that cool we we know this person
43:04
runs a minero based business
43:06
but you know they nothing seems awry
43:09
they’re declaring stuff
43:10
as they should i have no problem with
43:12
regulators taking that approach i think
43:13
that it’s the right approach to take
43:15
and i think that is a markedly better
43:17
approach than regulators saying like
43:18
well
43:19
you know monero is bad let’s shut it
43:20
down um which just seems to
43:23
you know they’re cutting off their nose
43:24
to spite their face because by taking
43:26
a a hard touch like that by taking
43:30
an aggressive touch like that
43:33
what they’re going to end up with is
43:34
criminals will continue to use monero
43:37
and ordinary people will be too
43:38
frightened to use it and so you
43:40
you end up the people that suffer are
43:43
the whistleblowers the dissidents the
43:45
you know the the people in extreme
43:47
situations like domestic abuse that
43:48
might
43:49
actually need it and the criminals just
43:51
continue using it anyway
43:53
so it’s uh it it it’s useless to to take
43:56
a heavy-handed approach
43:58
and i think regulators are starting to
44:00
see that and i’m i’m hopeful that
44:02
um with work the work of uh
44:05
organizations like perkins cui that have
44:06
put out an excellent white paper
44:09
on aml regulation for privacy coins
44:12
uh with the work of organizations like
44:14
coincentre that continue to
44:16
lobby regulators and explain to them how
44:20
it’s actually not a bad thing to to have
44:22
a privacy enhanced cryptocurrency
44:24
i think we’ll continue to see um just
44:28
broad improvements
44:29
uh from a regulatory perspective to the
44:31
way they accept it
44:32
and to where on the fringes they feel
44:35
regulation
44:36
should exist just like they’ve been able
44:38
to regulate cash
44:40
perfect that makes a lot of sense to me
44:43
and i hope that it plays out in a
44:44
similar way as well because
44:46
as we’ve seen these heavy-handed
44:47
approaches don’t seem to work on any of
44:49
these new
44:50
cutting edge technologies it just makes
44:52
it worse over time
44:53
well ricardo thank you so much for
44:55
coming on the podcast i appreciate your
44:57
time man it’s been a pleasure
44:59
thanks thanks for having me tristan it’s
45:00
been great
45:12
you
