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Welcome to the 21 and 21 podcast.

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Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

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Yeah. For those of you that don't know Eric,

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Eric Ativo is a Stockholm-based product designer and Human Rights Foundation grantee

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working on Bitcoin and eCash,

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he's a lead designer at Hoseki,

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and contributes to open source projects that make Bitcoin more usable and private.

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Yeah, exactly.

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And he's joining us for Bitcoin Design Week, and it's the last day.

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Yeah, we're wrapping it up today.

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Today's the final session.

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We're very excited for it.

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Yes, me too.

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It's been an event-packed week, but I think it's been going well.

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It's been really well.

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I was telling Christoph and Mo earlier, this is the best Bitcoin event I've been to in my life.

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So I'm beyond happy with how it went.

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Wow.

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And I think you've been to a lot of Bitcoin events.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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Cool.

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Well, can you maybe just tell our listeners more about it and kind of what the overall goal was?

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Yeah.

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Yeah. So I'm here for Bitcoin Design Week, which is a collaboration between the Bitcoin design community and Bitcoin Presidio, where we're inviting designers from the Bitcoin space, but also designers from the non-Bitcoin space that are in the Presidio San Francisco area to join us for a week of sessions, workshops, discussions, kind of ideation about what the future of money will look like from a design point of view.

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and when you kind of bring in people that maybe aren't already into bitcoin design but are working

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in in other industries you can get some really interesting kind of uh cross like pollination and

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stuff so the idea is to explore what the future of digital money or money looks like uh with uh

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people in the environment where they kind of shape the future technologically which is this place

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yes i was super excited about this event well i mean one of our goals at pursue bitcoin is to help

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bridge bitcoin and silicon valley and i'm curious have you gotten any feedback so far from maybe

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non-bitcoiners that has been like interesting and useful yeah there was um uh one individual from a

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company should i say the company yeah i think i can right yeah so from from amazon they expressed

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interest in um learning more about bitcoin as a payment method uh and how they can kind of maybe

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think about why it is that Amazon being such a large retailer, they're not integrating this

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payment method into their business. So they kind of were approaching this from a very different

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angle where they just wanted to learn more about kind of how this money works and how they could

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incorporate it into their business basically. And yeah, so that's kind of, I think like a really

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good archetype type of person that uh would benefit from this event to kind of see bitcoin

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in action how it's currently used um and kind of feel the power of it and then hopefully a light

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bulb goes off where they realize it's actually pretty easy for us to implement or use hopefully

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that's what we try to make it yeah it's actually been really interesting um i mean we've had a lot

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of events at presidio bitcoin over the last like nine ten months or whatever and i think that this

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has been the biggest success

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in getting like non-Bitcoiners here.

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I mean, I've been meeting a lot of people

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who are some people from University of Berkeley,

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which was like really cool to see.

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And then, yeah, like some people,

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it was like their first Bitcoin event ever.

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Yeah, no, I think that's great.

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And I think like organizing this event

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around designing the future of money

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is a really good framing

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as opposed to just screaming,

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let's get in here and talk about bitcoin it's more um the future of how does digital money look like

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that's i think a much more kind of open message to a lot of people it's not a bitcoin or event for

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bitcoiners oh yeah that is a good point yeah we didn't even have bitcoin like in the title of the

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event no so it's and there's a lot of people in san francisco who work on money in some form so

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and they're designers so get over here this was a great learning lesson i love having a bunch of

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designers here because mainly it's like a lot of developers so there's just one lots of cool

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fashion here lots of cool like artsy conversations and then new perspectives i'm like that was really

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smart um so maybe talk a little bit kind of what we did yesterday which was a bit like kind of like

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hackathon based almost and uh i'd love for you to tell our listeners like maybe a little bit

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more about the kind of like hackathon design challenge project that you worked on?

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Yeah. So yesterday, I think, was the most fun session because it was a session where

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we were really kind of jamming on ideas and we had these kind of grand design challenges. And

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there were a variety of them. The one that I chose to kind of focus on was a BitChat focused

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challenge. I think a lot of the listeners will know what BitChat is. The TLDR is that it's a

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messaging app that was by-coded by Jack Dorsey that lets people communicate via Bluetooth. So

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they can just send messages totally offline just using Bluetooth rails. And what we explored were

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what are some ways that we can basically add cool features to this app. Payments were kind of one

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idea. That's an idea that I've already kind of been working on with with BitChat. I've worked

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separately on a integrating an eCash wallet into BitChat. But ultimately, we kind of went a different

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direction with yesterday's challenge, we looked into creating kind of private or permission groups

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in BitChat because by default, it's a mesh network. And that means that it communicates locally with

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whoever is in your Bluetooth mesh. So 15 to 50 meters, I believe is the range. But we also want

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a way to kind of make closed channels, private channels. So we looked at like, what does the kind

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of UX of creating a private channel look like? And I think one of the really kind of cool things

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that we settled on was this concept, this idea of inviting people with this kind of bump UX,

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kind of like Apple Pay, where I create the group, I generate an invite, and then you can imagine

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that an NFC kind of invite card appears. And then if I want to invite you to my private bit chat

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group, I just bump your phone, and then you get invited into it. And we wanted that because this

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is mesh So it local 15 to 50 meters So we should already be in the same area And now there this kind of I think really novel and really kind of personal experience of just like inviting people to your chat by like you know phone bumping almost like your fist bumping and you letting them into your space So yeah we put together a concept with a high

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fidelity design. I vibe coded something that was hard coded. So not fully functional, but it ran

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through the scope of creating a channel and inviting. And that was fun. And we did it all in

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one hour. And we even, you know, put some logic about how the permission group should work and

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whatnot. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it was really cool. It was way better than my project. So I guess like

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kind of like the output that you guys did yesterday, like what's the next step? Is that

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going to like, you submit it into VR? Are you going to try to get it into the real app or like,

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how does that work? Yeah. So the next step for me at least is to get it fully functional and not

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hard coded. So I actually met someone who has another Android. So today what I'm going to do

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is I have it running locally on my computer. I'm going to try to flesh it out so that it

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fully functions with the communication

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protocol, the Bluetooth,

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and the invite actually kind of

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works and it's not just like a hard-coded thing. So

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I want to actually flesh it out and have like a fully

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working prototype and then test it

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between two Androids. I

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think we can do the NFC

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invite on Android

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because they're not as restrictive as Apple.

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So I really just want

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to see if I can get it fully functional.

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And then maybe I can share

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it with the larger BitChat community because it's

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open source, so I'll throw it out on Twitter. I'll

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throw it out anywhere like hey we came up with this during the presidio um design week here's

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our idea what do you guys think very cool uh yeah we kind of have this thing at presidio bitcoin

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where like people tend to come here and then they leave with lots of work we're very good at like

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making people busy yeah yeah i can kind of already see how that yeah um well another thing that you

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were building with bitchat was like this integration with with cashew yeah um okay i feel

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like a lot of people don't understand cashew like can you like just like before we get into that

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yeah yeah really just at the basic level for people even who like kind of barely understand

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bitcoin well how is cashew different sure how we explain it why it's cool yeah let's do it uh

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cashew in one minute i'll do my best uh so cashew in the context of bitcoin and i'll speak uh about

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e um e-cash in the context of bitcoin and i'll speak about cashew specifically uh it's a mechanism

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or it's a way to use Bitcoin that what eCash does is it lets you take Bitcoin that you already have

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in the form of Lightning and then change that Bitcoin, give it some magical properties so that

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the Bitcoin just becomes a string of text. It becomes a piece of data. And when you're able

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to transform Bitcoin into just a string of text, a piece of data where the data is now the money,

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you can do really, really cool things. And what does that look like? So you can imagine that I've

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gone from sats I had in my lightning wallet, and I've deposited them into an eCash wallet. And from

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the end user, it looks the same, you just receive a lightning payment. But now that I have this data,

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I can unlock this kind of throw UX or this push UX, because the data is the money. So that means

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I can take that data, I can encode it in a QR code, I can print it out and give it to someone,

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I can airdrop it to someone, I can do like a bump to pay kind of push UX, where I just

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throw you the data because it's just a string of text. And what I think is really special about it

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is that it also works totally offline. Because all you're doing is transmitting data, you can

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send that through SMS, through Bluetooth, you don't need to be online to use kind of those

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payment rails. So I think it unlocks this way of using Bitcoin that is very similar to how we use

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physical cash, where you just hand someone a thing, and then they receive it, you don't need

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a direction. You don't need to have an instruction set on where to send it.

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Like with traditional Bitcoin Lightning, you require

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a Lightning address or a URL or a destination of some

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sort. With eCash, you don't. And one of the

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key things that I want to emphasize is that it unlocks these kind of properties

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with the trade-off of custody. So eCash is a custodial solution. I want to be very

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very clear about that. So you trade custody to get these kind of magical

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properties of using the data as money.

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That was very good.

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Yeah, I feel like you have been the best person to explain eCash to me.

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So thank you for that explanation.

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And then so you kind of mentioned it, but like, well, maybe we're getting a little technical

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here, but like the Lightning Network, which is like, I know, a layer on top of like, you

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know, on-chain Bitcoin.

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How does eCash, like what's the relationship between eCash and the Lightning Network?

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Is the Lightning Network like critical to how eCash functions?

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Yeah, it's absolutely critical because lightning is the glue that kind of holds this thing together and makes it interoperable. Because if you didn't have a way to go from eCash to lightning, you would be kind of locked into this. It wouldn't even really be Bitcoin. You'd just be using some, you know, third party coin, basically.

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So Lightning is the glue.

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What makes eCash, I think, special and novel is that you can go from eCash and you can just send it to anyone's Lightning wallet.

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It's fully interoperable with the Lightning network.

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So when somebody puts a Lightning network QR code in front of you or if you want to send it to someone's Lightning address, you can just do that from the eCash wallet.

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So that's that interoperability, I think, is key.

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like kind of like thinking about the future in like an ideal world and you know having good user

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experiences maybe like first trade-offs with custody or maybe having a choice what do you

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think like is like the kind of ideal vision of like bitcoin working with eCash in the next like

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five years so i think that there's something i didn't touch on is kind of the the privacy

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benefits is that eCash offers the the best in class privacy it uses very old cryptography that

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I'm not going to pretend like I have a super sophisticated understanding, but it uses

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Chami and Blinded signatures in order to achieve this totally perfect privacy so that when you

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transact with eCash, it's technically mathematically impossible for someone to kind of see a trail

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there. So that to me, when I think about the future of what eCash could look like or the

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cool things that people can do about it, I think about existing custodial solutions in the space

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that people already gravitate to. Things like Wallet or Satoshi, or if you have Bitcoin on

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Cash App, you're using Cash App as a custodian. And what I would love to see is one, for these

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custodial solutions to implement e mechanisms so that they increase the privacy of the users all across the board I think that would be a massive win for custodial Bitcoin to get this

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level of privacy. And I would also like to see these wallets kind of really lean into the push

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UX, this throw UX. I think of a wallet like Cash App, which is a really beautiful lightning

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experience. It's really nice to send Bitcoin on Cash App. What I would love to see would be

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something like at the time that you go to hit send Bitcoin, you type in whatever, you know,

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$10 in Bitcoin and you hit next. If there's like an option that's like a throw cash, you tap that

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and then imagine something like almost like an Apple pay, like a nicely designed cash app card

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slides up with like $13 on it. And it says, you know, tap your phone with your friend to send your

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cash. And then you just go like that. And then you just like receive the cash. And that would work

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instantly with zero fees between two cash app users because they can be in the same cash you

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mint. And what I think would be really novel about that is that it would be perfectly private.

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You can imagine this kind of throw cash feature in custodial wallets where if you have like 50

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people at a conference and everyone just throws the cash with this kind of bump UX to each other,

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there would be no record of that transaction. And it would have this really, really great kind of

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just push, throw experience. I think the big thing there is the regulatory thing, which I'm not a

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lawyer. I can't speak to that. Like, is this even feasible for a custodial solution to offer this

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kind of service where they don't have the ability to trace it and they lose that kind of, you know,

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maybe legal requirement that they required it to do some due diligence? I don't know. I'm not a

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lawyer. I'm strictly thinking about like, how can this experience feel, feel really magical? And I

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Think about things like that.

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This would only work with custodial wallets, though?

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Custodial wallets that are part of the same Mint.

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So, yeah.

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Okay.

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So then, like, Lightning is more of, like, a solution for non-custodial wallets?

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Well, the Lightning ASIC would work for a custodial or a non-custodial wallet,

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but that would be just a payment done through the Lightning network.

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I see.

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So it would just route through the Lightning network,

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and you would just have the same kind of Lightning network experience.

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This kind of push effect would work for people within the same Mint.

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The same eCash.

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So yeah, that's why I say like it would make sense if everyone just had Cash App and wanted

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to kind of build this cash or if everyone had Wall of Satoshi and wanted to have this

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experience.

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Got it.

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Super cool.

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Quick pivot away from Bitcoin.

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So you're living in Sweden and funny enough, we discovered that like you live like where

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is my grandma was from Sweden, like in the same area.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Maybe talk a little bit about how like what's the most Swedish thing that you've picked up

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um oh wow that's that's a good question i think the most swedish thing that i've picked up that

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i've had to adjust um coming from being an american uh is the embracing the idea of not

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not doing small talk and people in swedish society it's kind of polite and it's considered like

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appropriate to not interrupt strangers uh if you don't know them uh which is very different from

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American culture where if I'm in an elevator with somebody or I run into somebody wearing a shirt

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with a band or whatever the case may be, that is a cue to strike up a conversation. That's not weird.

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You're not bizarre for doing that. In Sweden, you shouldn't really do that. It's seen as if you

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don't know that person, it's almost out of respect. You don't want to invade their privacy or their

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space with a question if you don't know them. So I've had to adjust to this society that is very

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kind of reserved and insular. And it's kind of changed the way that I've interacted. And I think

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in some ways now when I'm here in the U.S. walking around and I have these interactions

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with strangers that they're very different. Yeah, that's interesting. I guess as a designer,

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what about the Swedish architecture or anything about the culture has influenced the way you think?

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Yeah. So Sweden, I think it's a designer's paradise. I think that there's just a lot of

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thoughtfulness into how they've designed their cities, into also how they've designed their

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kind of social infrastructure. And what I mean by that is that Sweden is a very, very high tech

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society. And there's actually a lot of cons to this. And you can kind of anyone interested,

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they can Google about how cashless Sweden is, for example, physical cash is non-existent there.

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Everything is done centralized through an application that is totally surveilled and

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controlled by the state called Bank ID. But it's actually an example, to me, it highlights that if

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you design an experience really well, anyone can use these digital products to authenticate and do

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things. So there are people in Sweden that are in there, they're not digitally native, they might be

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in their 50s or their 60s. But they all use bank ID to sign in to their bank account, to pay taxes,

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to reload their MetroCard to when you pick up a package at a post office, you sign on your phone,

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and then the person gives you the package, you don't need to show your physical ID,

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everyone interacts with this this bank id software and it's designed so well that it appealed to

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everyone there and to me that that's proof that if you design something really really well

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um and it becomes sticky and integrated into society people want to use it and they enjoy

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using it and i'm not going to get into kind of the privacy aspects and the trade-offs that the

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people made to kind of engage with this with with this system that's kind of a separate discussion

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but solely from a kind of design and user experience point of view it's kind of uh

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inspirational that they've they've managed to design something that that really just kind of

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permeated across society like that yeah that's that's super interesting i mean yeah with bitcoin

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and it's really interesting that you say like non-digital native people can just like pick it

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up and like there's you know not like challenges which is actually kind of something i've noticed

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with like ai like chat gpt for example like my boyfriend's like 94 year old grandma is like using

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Like she's like, she knows how to use it.

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It's like easy, like definitely not like a digitally native person.

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So there's definitely like a large experience of like,

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or opportunity with Bitcoin to just make it super easy to use.

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Where like, we don't have this like excuse anymore that it's like confusing.

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Yeah. And I think with, with a lot of the, the chat apps or like the LLMs,

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like there's a saying that like no interface is the best interface.

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And these chat GB teams have done something really well where you're just chatting

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or they have the on your phone they have the button you can hit where it almost like you just speaking to a device and it just speaks back to you and then you don interact with it other than your voice and when you pause it responds if you interrupt it it it stop talking and then you know

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prioritize your response so no interface there um that's i think you know really well done

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interesting okay we have a few minutes left uh you know this has been super fun we have to get

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back to design week, get to the breakfast burritos before they run out. So I guess kind of like

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leaning into that anymore. Are there any like dream projects that you'd want to see Bitcoiners

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build that have like a really cool, seamless user experience? Yeah, I would love to see. I'm,

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I'm a huge fan of Swift, which is the native programming languages that Apple uses to kind

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of make these like, kind of magical experiences that you feel when you use Apple products.

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one of the things that I would like to see are

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Cashew apps, more Cashew

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apps coded in Swift. They have

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these very subtle kind of micro

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animations and these haptics that

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the everyday person might not

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kind of realize they're there but

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when you add these things

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and when they're kind of in the

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totality of the app, they add up to this really

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just like polished and beautiful experience because

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it's all these little things

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the subtle shadow, the subtle micro animation

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the slight haptic when you

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when you like send something that make, make it feel magical. I want to see more apps kind of lean

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into that. And with Apple in particular, when you're kind of in the, in the ecosystem, you can

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unlock really, really cool things that you can't do on other ecosystems. There's this thing called

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extensions, which some people might be familiar with this when you're on iMessage and you hit the

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plus icon on the left and that kind of menu slides up and you click on photos. And then at the bottom

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of your message are your photos and you can tap on them, select them, do things, and then just send

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it in the message. You never had to leave your chat or your iMessage to kind of perform this

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action. I want to see eCash lean into those kinds of experiences where I'm just using iMessage,

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chatting with my friend, and I can hit plus, select an eCash wallet, select 12, and then just

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send it through iMessage. And it's very seamless. It doesn't even feel like you're using Bitcoin.

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It feels like I'm chatting with you, just throwing you money. And then it appears in the chat box and

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you just tap it and it opens up your wallet and claims it automatically. That's what I want Bitcoin

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to feel like. I don't want it to feel like it's this extremely novel, complex technological project

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that you have to download a wallet for and then use a layer one or a layer two and all this stuff.

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I want to see Bitcoin integrated into how people already use their devices. So that's the type of

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stuff that makes me really excited and stuff that I want to work on. Yeah, we definitely don't want

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like the user to know anything about like layer one or layer two or maybe at a basic level.

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There's different kinds of users and I think it's okay for certain people.

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For some people.

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Yeah, that want to have Phoenix

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and look at my channels

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and see that they're balanced

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and stuff like that.

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I think that's great.

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And I'm not, you know,

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saying that that's the wrong approach.

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But I think for a lot of people,

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we often forget that

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most people are not Bitcoin enthusiasts.

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They actually don't care.

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They just want to do things

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and have them work.

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And I want to design for them

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because, you know,

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that's where the magic is, I think.

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People like me that are deeply into Bitcoin,

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I have a high tolerance

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for things that might not be

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you know, the most elegant.

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But if we really want this thing

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to feel like magic internet money,

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keyword there is magic.

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And I think a lot of that comes

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into how people experience it

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for the first time.

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Last question, super quick.

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If you could give our listeners

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just a single thought

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that would maybe like inspire people

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who aren't into Bitcoin already,

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maybe designers or people around here,

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like what would you say

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to encourage them about

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designing the future of money.

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Yeah.

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The most important thing is that anyone can contribute to Bitcoin.

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And that might just sound like a truism or a cop-out, but let me explain it further.

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You don't have to be a designer or developer to contribute to Bitcoin.

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One of the biggest ways that you can help is literally just to use a Bitcoin app

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and think about what was confusing, what was clear to you when you used it.

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So much of design is not visual.

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It's not about the shadow.

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It's not about the radius of the box.

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It's not about how you lay things out.

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It's about words.

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It's about copy.

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So if you're someone that just likes using Bitcoin, but you're not a designer or you're

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a developer, you can help tremendously by using someone's app, looking at the copy,

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looking at the messaging.

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How are you communicating things to the users as I'm running through things?

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And then stopping and taking five, 10 minutes to take screenshots, share them with the developers

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and say, hey, when I was using your wallet, I found this kind of language confusing.

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Or I expected that when I opened up this menu, I would see this option here, but I found

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it here instead.

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And for me, that didn't make sense. You're helping design Bitcoin products when you're just doing that. So I would encourage anyone out there that wants to contribute to do that. Reach out to developers, reach out to designers and share your experience when you use it. You can help. And also, if you ever use a Bitcoin app that made you feel really good and made you feel like that was slick, like you felt like that was happy, tell them, tell the designers, tell the developers that that goes such a long way to kind of hear that from people.

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that was a great way to end the show um well if someone wants to tell you about something that

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you've designed that's cool where can they reach out to you what should they follow yeah um you

354
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can find me on the worldwide web um i love the internet um i won't stay off the net uh i'm on

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primal.net slash eric that's my nostril account uh eric with a k eric with a k yeah the scandinavian

356
00:24:50,011 --> 00:24:58,091
way uh you go to erik.day that's my website with all my links there if you're on x or twitter uh

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it's ux eric underscore um yeah just those are you know three ways to just reach out to me and just

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just tag me and let's let's have a conversation i'd love to know what bitcoin apps you're using

359
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um if you use e-cash tell me like what didn't work for you what what sucks so we can make it

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better if they see you if they're in within 15 meters they can bump you yeah i'm working on it

361
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So if you're within 15 meters, put pressure on me.

362
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Next time you see me, pull out your Android and be like,

363
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Eric, invite me to a private bitch hat channel right now.

364
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That's going to fire me up to actually get that function working.

365
00:25:29,471 --> 00:25:31,491
Okay, I'm going to do that later today because I don't have an Android.

366
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So you're not.

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I can't.

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Okay.

369
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Well, thanks for joining the show.

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Let's go have a great final day at Studio Bitcoin Design.

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Let's do it.

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Let's go.

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Breakfast burritos.

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Yeah.

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Okay.