Self-sovereignty in Bitcoin is an extension of the American political tradition.
It is in line with what the founding fathers fought for, the same sort of principles.
I have no doubt that if they were alive today, they would be Bitcoiners.
America is really the only place that Bitcoin has a true chance of success.
And it's because of the powerful constitutional protections that we have
and the ability of the sovereignty of individual states to counteract a rogue federal government.
And using those powers to balance against one another,
we feel like there's a very, very powerful apparatus to be able to resist state overreach.
And furthermore, the United States is one of the only places that you actually are entitled to the castle doctrine,
which means that if someone is coming into your home intent on violence
and wanting to rob you or cause harm against you or your property,
you do have a right to engage in deadly force against those individuals.
And we believe that this is going to become a very key and critical aspect of being able to provide the self-sovereignty.
But as the price of Bitcoin goes up and as it continues to go up, we need to take self-sovereignty to the next level.
And we need much more robust products and also, frankly, more expensive products.
because, you know, you wouldn't buy $100 safe off of Amazon and put a million dollars in it.
But that's kind of what Bitcoiners are doing with their hardware wallets.
We now exist at this end state where the law is a highly dysfunctional thing.
And if somebody does choose to rob you legal or otherwise,
in other words, the state choosing to steal from you or criminals,
it's not clear if justice will actually be delivered.
And that's one of the reasons that we really believe that we need to start
empowering ourselves and taking this into our own hands because if we allow for ourselves to get to
hyper bitcoinized world without a product like this it's going to be much more threatening
difficult and scary and the truth is it's going to be much more violent and it's going to be much
more violent because we won't have active deterrent solutions that people will know and understand and
will be branded towards that we live in the future basically like we we're we're already in the
hyper-Bitcoinized world and we're just working backwards from there. And we think that's something
that almost no Bitcoin company and few Bitcoiners really have the conviction about hyper-Bitcoinization
and really take it seriously and really believe with 100% certainty that that's where we're headed,
that that is going to happen, that there's going to be massive disruption because of it.
That's our base case. We know that's happening for sure.
man i'm just like so impressed with this podcast setup i know it's a huge upgrade for us yeah like
now i need to be podcasting more yes yes you do like that's i think that's that's really there
should be the takeaway from any podcast that you do is maybe i should do more podcasts and like
that's kind of how i feel a lot of the time literally i'm of the opinion and i've said
this to you before but we don't until we have more bitcoin podcasts than trad fi podcasts
we don't have enough bitcoin podcasts like there are so many just absolute morons out there
telling people like you should here's the top 10 dividend stocks you should buy so you can retire
retire early and it's like no no god flood the market with bitcoin podcasts until we have
absolutely eviscerated all the trad fi podcasts the thing that amazes me about the trad fi
podcast is that um they're like like bitcoin's a scam you couldn't do this and it's like like
i've objectively made magnitudes more money than you have but like you have the audacity to tell
me that you know better at how this works than me who is that one guy dave ramsey who like he's
like oh yeah you know that guy yeah recently like started to come around to bitcoin but something
about him uh in i in romanian and i say romanian because my wife is romanian they have an expression
called uh it's uh it means a face that begs for a slapping and i feel like that applies really
well to him like it's just like something about his face you're like i just i just want to give
you one of these there's like a smugness that i think uh yes is one of the ingredients there
well that's like the whole engine that like makes bitcoin work is like the the mixture of smugness
and hubris that like has people scoff in rejection towards Bitcoin.
Yeah.
You're a Bitcoin person.
Oh, exactly.
The kind of response I would expect for somebody with Bitcoin in their bio
is something I get on so many of my posts,
especially if I'm like trolling a politician.
They're like, well,
wouldn't expect you to take it seriously, Mr. Bitcoin man.
It's like, you're right.
i don't i think you're absurd but that's beside the point you guys are coming from the presidio
uh and so shout out to uh presidio bitcoin for giving you guys this sweet spot i lived in the
presidio for uh for a summer once back in 2012 when i was working in the bay area
whoa i might have actually lived in the presidio at the same time no fucking way seriously yeah
damn i was in a house with like seven dudes the house was built for probably two people
it was
dirty but we had a good time
we had a good time
I lived in a house with a bunch of alcoholics
and there was one day I came home
and I tried to open the door and it wouldn't open
so I went around back to look through the window
and my roommate was covered in shit
like passed out naked up
against the door
and apparently he had
fell down the stairs
and then passed out up against the door
Jesus
yeah it was like a very severe alcoholic
culture house and that's when i was like do i have a drinking problem and i was like i think so
were we living in the same house because that that eerily describes my experience there too but i i
think i was part of the problem so i never uh never woke up with with shit all over me though
so at least there's that that you remember well touche touche but yeah there was a there was a
few times I woke up in places that I don't know how I got there. And I was like, maybe,
maybe I shouldn't drink so heavily. San Francisco was an, was interesting there. I, I, I was there
for that summer. And then I think what's the next summer I was in, uh, in San Jose. And so I got
like a, you know, decent little toe dipping into the Bay area. And like around that time, like I
remember uh i don't remember the homeless problem being what i see it reported on the news today as
uh i remember it being generally pretty i mean it's like it's san francisco too so it's like it's
funky and weird but like it felt like it was in a good way at that time i don't know what the vibe
there is now how how does it feel to you is just like having been there for like you know a number
of years um my experience is like peak peak homeless problem was probably right around before
covid uh okay the city has cleaned up a bit since then in my opinion um it's definitely worse than it
was at that time um i think the truth is is like they're like the the like i just signed a lease
for a new place and just like rent here is absurd and so like there's a lot of uh like full-time
working, living homeless people. And so like that then cooperates with the mental health issues.
And like, it's a gigantic mess and nightmare that, uh, without fixing the money, there's like
no conceivable way of like how we actually address this problem in a meaningful way.
Right. Yeah. I mean, I think, uh, I've heard some people talk about how, um, you know,
the expensive real estate in San Francisco, um, stays higher by there being bad neighborhoods or
homelessness problems because it means there's more of a premium on the nice parts of town.
So there's sort of a perverse incentive to perpetuate the problem, which does kind of
relate to homes being a store of value because people are trying to escape fiat debasement.
So yet again, Bitcoin fixes this.
you know i feel like uh just with bitcoin now being uh almost like feeling almost mainstream
like you know it's that it's that indie band that you knew before they were cool uh and now you're
like yeah okay well you know all you guys are just posers uh but like now that we're at this stage
and we say you know we continue to say things like bitcoin fixes this and mean them very sincerely
it feels like i don't know about you guys like you've been in longer than i have like maybe this
is just like this eternal september and you guys have been feeling this forever but like it just
feels like the the new batch of people just maybe just don't get that like are they in it for the
fiat gains in case this is something you know you've talked about a lot like the people that are
trying to acquire more bitcoin versus the people who are fundamentally trying to acquire more fiat
And that being a like those being actually diametrically opposed, but perhaps both in service of Bitcoin in the long run.
I don't know.
Well, this is what the hilarious like number go up meme with the Trojan horses is that like, yeah, like you'll totally get a $10 million Bitcoin.
Like you also don't understand that like that means that the entire economy like is in significant and severe crisis.
And furthermore, like real Bitcoin, like when the ticker says Bitcoin is at $10 million a Bitcoin, that means that self-custody Bitcoin is now at $30 million a Bitcoin.
And this price differential is apparent in something.
And like that's something that like anybody who went through Mt. Gox knows is like the price of Mt. Gox Bitcoin was much lower than the price of non-Mount Gox Bitcoin.
And a lot of people were like, oh, I can like arb it up on like getting this nice cheap corn and like no problem with that at all.
And I was like, maybe there's a price signal here that you don't fully understand.
So I think they're both – they both are in service of each other and I just think it's a deep irony of that like that's why this cycle we've found ourselves in bed like essentially with the financiers and the politicians.
because we're like, yeah, you can totally get rich off Bitcoin.
They're like, yeah?
We're like, yeah, it's going to destroy everything that you've worked to build,
but you'll totally get rich off it.
And they're like, yeah, I don't really understand that first point,
but who fucking cares?
Bring the horse into Troy.
Thanks, guys.
Yeah, and I mean I don't think this applies to everybody,
but the orange pill is very real.
And I think a lot of people who've come in purely
because they're interested in the price gains,
just by owning Bitcoin and learning more about it and getting more evolved,
it starts to change your perspective.
You start learning about Austrian economics and all kinds of things that,
you know, you never thought you would be thinking about.
And so for some percentage of that crowd, like their views are going to change over time,
even if that wasn't the original motivation.
it is kind of that beautiful thing like you know again just let's throw out all the cliches like
you don't change bitcoin bitcoin changes you right you know and but it's like it's kind of
true and like uh eric i gotta say one i think my favorite moment from the conference in vegas
was like i happened to be walking by carl was at the ladies brunch i'm walking by the news desk
i see you up there and i'm like well i'm i'm obviously just gonna find a seat and sit around
you know stick around for this because i'm gonna enjoy it and they're asking some questions you
know and they and they they go to you and it's you know eric what do you think about i'm paraphrasing
here but you know the uh basically like the corporatization of bitcoin or like you know or
the america you know u.s government also is starting to you know take a keen interest in
this strategic reserve etc etc and you're like well i'd just like to start off by saying fuck
the state um and like you went on from there and i was like god that was just that was just kind of
perfect because it at this time where like you've never seen so many suits at a bitcoin conference
and again i've only been going to them for a few years and like i've seen the difference in the
number of suits it was very refreshing so i just wanted to thank you for that publicly
thank you i think a lot of people appreciated that i was uh you know truth be told i was
pretty significantly disappointed to see just uh how much sycophantry was going on uh and
And the other one, you know, like I said that at the same time, like it's really important for people to understand like it doesn't matter what the U.S. government does.
Like what matters is that like you get yourself on a Bitcoin standard and you have your own Bitcoin treasury and that you tell all of your friends and family like that you can actually own Bitcoin.
It's important because you can escape from the endemic and awful inflation.
And even more importantly, like, you know, I'm pretty sure the last time that I was on your podcast, I pointed this out as like you could have listened to us and bought some and like your wealth would have appreciated by like 30 percent since then.
And like every time I talk to you, we'll probably have this conversation again.
And like it's I have a lot of empathy because like it's really difficult to understand the deflationary nature of Bitcoin against like a highly inflationary world.
But like this is also part of orange pilling and why it changes our value set is because like we start to understand that like it's just really important to understand like we've lived inside of a global Keynesian economic world for 70 years where governments made the decision that they were going to essentially overthrow economies everywhere and make everything inflationary and have their hand in everything.
And Bitcoin is like the one solution we have to that.
And that like works without the state.
And in fact, like it's so powerful and it is deflationary because of how much the state has messed up the general economic functions with fiat.
And yeah, I find it pretty interesting because like in a lot of ways, like this is why I got into the philosophy is that like I think marrying all of this stuff up and really understanding like, well, like what is this bigger idea of value?
Like is value just money?
Like is it just economic exchange?
And like how do we really determine that?
And like, why is that so important? And I think that once you start to realize like, oh, Bitcoin is actually like a monumental societal level shift where we're moving from a fiat government owned economic world into a digital self-sovereign world where we truly get to make the choice to have sovereignty through cryptography like that.
that actually has a capacity to change the totality of human history itself and like where we choose to take the trajectory of humanity towards.
Yeah. And this this actually reminds me of one of my favorite pieces by Eric called The Encrypted Meaning of Crypto,
because it's all about how like the true meaning of Bitcoin encrypts itself very strategically.
And it's actually in the interest of Bitcoin, like in terms of its deeper purposes, that it's not totally apparent and that it actually masquerades as a scam or as an investment vehicle.
Or now that people have convinced them it's a tool for state power and it can be used to prop up the dollar or all these fantasies that people have, even the shit coins and all of that.
it's better that people think it's a joke or it's a scam or it can be used for all these purposes
than to truly understand the deeper and more substantial things that are at stake. Because
if that was crystal clear to everyone, then it would be much easier to oppose it and there would
be way more interest in stopping it. But the fact that it doesn't look like that to most people
means that the true political revolution that it represents can move forward unimpeded because
its real meaning is protected by this form of cryptography that hides what's really at stake.
Do you think that this is something I've heard Michael Saylor say? I'm sure he's not.
Maybe it was the first. I don't know. I'm guessing not though. But he's elaborated on it a lot,
which is the idea that Bitcoin is a virus.
And like what you're both describing is basically a viral mutation, right?
It's a virus being able to adapt and to change what it looks like
and how it presents to be able to basically infect more hosts.
And virus has like a negative connotation,
but it's like it's a very efficient biological mechanism, right?
It's a very, quote, intelligent biological mechanism
without being conscious, let's say,
which is kind of like you could describe Bitcoin in that way.
It's intelligent, but it's obviously not conscious.
Like it presents in these different ways.
Like, I don't know, is Bitcoin a virus that is just bound to infect us all?
With like, with good stuff though.
It's not like, you know, something that was created in a lab in Wuhan.
It's like, hey, sound money.
You get a, you know, you don't even need to be vaccinated against it.
Like, it's just good.
Like, I don't know.
Oh, you're good.
Yeah, I mean, absolutely.
And I think this has happened throughout history.
You know, like, you know, you cannot stop an idea whose time has come.
And the most powerful forces in the world are the memes, like the idea of freedom, right?
Before we had Bitcoin, like in the 1700s, the idea of freedom was viral and people couldn't forget it.
And they start to realize like, yeah, why should we give all our power to the state?
If the state is unjust, we have a right of revolution and we can create something better.
And no matter how many guns or violence or coercion is brought to bear to stop that idea, its propagation moves unimpeded.
So that is – Bitcoin is just the latest example of this phenomenon that has continued to liberate humanity throughout all of history.
Yeah, like I truly think what Bitcoin is is that like it's the reconnection of the spark that like truly is like thought itself and intelligence as you called it.
And it's because like inside fiat world, which fiat means by decree, it's really important to understand that like most forms of logic that people apply are actually these highly authoritarian ideas that have masqueraded as being thought when they're not at all.
And just trying to talk to anybody about basic economic principles like that starts to really display itself.
But it's even – it starts to get even wider with that because it's like, look, like thought itself sort of needs to have like a long chain of logic that like can connect to itself and be self-referential in a holistic framework.
And like the truth is like if you look at the fiat economic system, like it breaks down at some point where it's self-referential feature trying to point back to itself because actually we like made all that shit up and like turns out that like we built this on sand.
and so I think the thing that happens for a lot of people is they go whoa like there's this like
form of logic that could make an economic system and like it turns out that like you can actually
like think about that through this proof of work concept and I think that's what then starts to
actually transform people and I think that's why we spoke a lot about like this sort of rescue from
nihilism is that uh before really understanding bitcoin you can be like how could we ever win
Everything's totally dark. Like this place is really bad and abusive and exploitative.
And then you realize, oh, like I can own this thing that I truly own much more than I own anything else that's ever existed.
And furthermore, like it dignifies me in a new and different way through like, quote unquote, human rights.
But like this is my right to encryption. Like you there's literally nothing anyone can do about it.
Like if I choose to encrypt my information and data, that is something that is given to me very directly through the form of logic that like is the network.
And now that we've collectivized that with each other like that, this is really sort of what the thesis of my book is about is like that that is cryptographic sovereignty, which I truncated to crypto sovereignty to be tongue in cheek towards both crypto, but also to essentially make a new idiom that I think is really important.
and that we can truly achieve a new form of sovereignty through cryptography.
And it's really interesting because it's not doing it through violence or any other means.
It's actually doing it through an inverting of the order
and just being a total refusal to participate within those other systems.
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this podcast. So thank you. I'm curious also in this somewhat transitions us into the topic at
hand, but is that one of the primary drivers for you guys building out Vora basically to fill that
gap because and i don't want i don't want to steal any thunder here but like without having
the ability to actually uh be protected against super basic fucking attacks against your body and
your bitcoin and like potentially losing it to that like can you even make the claim that you
are sovereign like if you cannot be protected against this most basic thing is is that like
am I kind of in the right track there? Yeah, 100%. That's it. And in a lot of ways,
we have the promise of self-sovereignty right now, but not the reality of it. And that's why
we founded Vora is to make self-sovereignty real and not just a LARP and not just something that
people do, but maybe feel really vulnerable about. And the existing systems were great for
Bitcoin's early days when the price of Bitcoin was lower. But as the price of Bitcoin goes up
and as it continues to go up, we need to take self-sovereignty to the next level. And we need
much more robust products and also, frankly, more expensive products because, you know,
you wouldn't buy a hundred dollars safe off of Amazon and put a million dollars in it.
But that's kind of what Bitcoiners are doing with their hardware wallets. Like,
We need systems that aren't subject to hardware supply chain attacks where you can verify the hardware.
We need systems that extend into personal security, home security.
So we're protecting people, not just keys, because we're seeing wrench attacks go up and they're really scary and they're going to get worse over time.
And so it's not enough to just protect the keys.
We need systems that can stop and intervene when there are attacks that can deter attacks.
We also need ways of having recovery systems where you can put keys in multiple places but without being subject to a 6102 attack because what a lot of Bitcoiners are doing right now is they're putting a threshold of keys in KYC safe deposit boxes.
And those can be just trivially seized.
And so when we look around at the landscape and I've worked on key management and self-custody for a long time.
I was at Coinbase for four and a half years working on key management and cold storage and multi-party computation.
I just left the BitKey team.
I was there for almost three years.
And I'm looking around at all these solutions and just feeling like they're not getting the job done.
And so that why we founded the company and it also has this philosophical foundation where it directly inspired by Eric writings by the vision that he put out in terms of what is the deeper meaning that at stake with Bitcoin that it is more than number goes up that it is about self that it is about transforming our political systems
And so that's where it's a real bringing together of this philosophical foundation and technical innovation to make self-sovereignty real for the hyper-Bitcoinized world.
Yeah, and I feel very strongly that, you know, like, Vore really came about from me and Jesse's conversations of, you know, both ourselves and many friends have worked at Bitcoin companies that they are all working towards a particular mission.
But as they grow and get bigger, that mission starts to dilute and more and more people join the company who aren't, frankly, for better word, they're not really Bitcoiners.
and like they have a different incentive structure.
And so I've seen this repeated story arc with dozens of people
where they're really highly motivated and committed to getting into a Bitcoin company.
They start building awesome and amazing products.
And they find slowly but surely they start running up against a fiat incentive structure
working against them of quarterly returns, of making sure your KPIs are hit,
of whatever the goal is instead of the truly overarching goal of like,
hey, we're going to make Bitcoin better.
We're going to make it more secure.
We're going to make it more accessible.
And they find that that drifts so far that eventually they get pushed out of the company.
And it's been really interesting because that's been sort of one of our philosophical slants here is that like Vora is first and foremost a philosophical company.
And like we're committed to solving what we've been calling the honey badger's dilemma.
Like do we have to make this choice between a 6102 attack or a wrench attack?
Like do I need to give my keys to a custodian that they could have to comply with giving that money to the government?
Or do I hold my keys in a self-sovereign way where if someone is directly threatening me, like I have to give up my Bitcoin.
And at first we're like we think that this is solvable.
Like it shouldn't be too hard.
And as we sort of got in the weeds of it, we're like, whoa, this is actually like a really hard problem to solve.
And there's a lot of testiary stuff.
and so we've committed a lot of time and energy into r&d to like make some uh i think pretty
powerful innovations sort of in the space but also like uh it's deeply alarming to me that like right
now the best that we can do with collaborative custodies means that you are going to be doxing
your utxos and like that's deeply alarming and the other thing is like we have the technology to
make that different so one of the things that we really want to do with vora and our product is
like we're going to be shipping with a full node from the get-go.
And the reason is so that you can do silent payments
so that when somebody does actually get paid, we don't know that.
And there's a number of advancements that Jesse has made
on the cryptographic front using zero-knowledge proofs
and other things that ensure that we can preserve your privacy
because to us, that's a number one goal.
It's like you deserve to have your privacy
and not have us be a direct threat vector to you.
And like that, that is a complete non-negotiable for us.
So like if it turns out we have to refactor everything in order to preserve that, that's what we'll have to do.
And that's why we're a philosophical company is like we aren't first and foremost about profits, but we're about making sure that we actually meet the goals.
And that's going to be a very, very large bar to handle.
But the great thing is, is that it turns out by pushing value all the way up the philosophical chain to be like we're going to make this the most valuable thing that actually transforms into our opinion becoming what will be one of the most valuable companies in the world because people need to have self-sovereignty with their data, particularly in the world that we're moving into where AI is becoming so powerful and sophisticated.
and like you're going to want to own your own data
and have it be cryptographically secured
in the same way that your Bitcoin will be in the future.
Because if you don't,
it means that somebody else is going to be owning, running,
and essentially controlling
how you're going to interface with the internet.
How do you balance the, you know,
obviously what is a strong ethos for you guys
in driving force,
this desire to want people to have full control
over their own privacy,
to not want you guys to be a security hole
to how do you balance that with then also wanting to take care or provide protection, quote,
to other aspects of people's lives, like their physical security? Like, there have to be some
trade-offs there, right, to be able to actually provide the one but then respect the other?
Yeah, absolutely. It's a devilishly difficult problem to solve. The transaction privacy is more
straightforward than the physical security. The big problem with collaborative custody is that
one of these collaborative custodians, they have a key and they can use that key
to find all the transactions on the blockchain. And that can be solved with cryptography,
with some techniques called chain code delegation that we've developed,
blind signatures and zero-knowledge proofs.
And the zero-knowledge proofs let the server enforce policies that protect the customer,
like spending limits or time delays, without needing to learn the transaction details,
the balances of our customers.
And so that's how we're able to strike the balance in terms of transaction privacy,
is we can use these zero-knowledge proofs where the server can enforce whatever policy
it needs without learning anything else. But in terms of our alarm systems, that's where there
needs to be location data that goes to law enforcement or private security or both to be
able to respond to an attack. And so we're using some technologies there where we can actually
build an alarm system that routes this data without our company learning the physical home
address, which sounds impossible at first, but one of the technologies we're using there is
something called a trusted execution environment. And so certain chips, like some Intel chips,
AMD chips, they have this feature built into the hardware of the chip where there's a secure
enclave where the data in the enclave doesn't leave that part of the chip. And it can generate
a public key that it can export and you can encrypt data to that public key such that only
the data can only be decrypted within the trusted execution environment and the private key doesn't
leave the trusted execution environment. And on top of that, these chips have a feature called
remote attestation where the trusted execution environment can provide a hash that tells you
what code is running inside of the trusted execution environment. And that hash is bound
to the public key. So if you want to give private data to a server, but you only want to give that
private data to the server if you know that exactly how the private data is going to be executed in
code, the chip gives you this attestation document with a key where you can have high assurance that
if I encrypt data to this key, the only code that can operate on that data is what matches the hash
in the attestation document. And so what we're able to do is we, in the Vora Vault, which is what
we call the hardware wallet plus node that's going to be in the form of a server rack that
lives in your home, it's going to get this attestation document from our server,
encrypt the location data to the trusted execution environment.
And now the location data only lives in that environment.
And we ourselves as Vora cannot access that data.
We have no way of going inside that chip and pulling out the private data.
When we need to route it to emergency services,
they will call our server using TLS, an encrypted connection,
that terminates in the trusted execution environment.
So an encrypted connection is made between an emergency services API
and our trusted execution environment.
That T, trusted execution environment,
the T hands off the location data through the encrypted connection
to the emergency services API.
So the people who need to respond get that location data.
In the process, our company has no ability to see it at all and we can't decrypt it.
If we're forced to do something by the government or somebody else, we literally have no ability to get to that data.
One trust vector there is you have to trust the chip itself that this trusted execution environment was actually implemented correctly.
So if Intel, let's say, is completely backdoored, there could theoretically be a vulnerability there.
None has been discovered.
But one way we can diversify that risk is to use multiple chips from multiple vendors and shard the secret across all the chips.
So even if one of them is compromised, all of them would need to be compromised.
So we can have both an Intel and an AMD chip.
and in the future also an ARM chip where all three of them would have to be compromised for this data to be compromised.
In addition, there could be an attack where if you have physical access to the chip in the data center,
there could be certain attacks that might be able to compromise these environments.
So we can actually further diversify the risk by using all three cloud vendors, AWS, Google, and Microsoft clouds,
and eventually our own data center that we stand up.
So now you have to compromise three different types of chips
across four different types of cloud vendors.
And at that point, the practicality of that is very low.
The cost of the attack is so immense that it outweighs
whatever kind of monetary value could be extracted from this data.
And as these technologies develop over time and as the size of our company grows over time, we'll be able to make our own open source chips that have even higher degrees of verifiability.
But this is going to provide a very high assurance that we can have this encrypted location data that we can give to emergency services without our company ever learning the actual home address in the process.
So you guys have thought about this like just a little bit then, right?
Just a little bit. Yeah.
No, that's, I mean, that's, that's awesome.
I mean, you're,
you are basically trying to decentralize any potential single points of
failure and create something that is, yeah, okay.
Something maybe could be breached here,
but you're not going to breach all aspects of it just because it's not,
not economically feasible to do so like doing so would require like ungodly
amounts of both either money or time or collusion or whatever. So it's like, can you ever make risk
zero? No. But you're taking it as close as you can to that with this strategy, it seems.
Absolutely. And the equation I think about all the time is cost of attack versus reward times
probability of success. If the cost of attack is greater than the other side of the equation,
then it is economically irrational to mount the attack. And so we do everything possible.
You know, you cannot defeat an attacker with infinite resources, but fortunately,
those aren't the attackers we're facing. And so we do everything possible to drive up that cost of
attack such that there are easier targets, softer targets, and that any kind of attacker that tries
to mount that attack is essentially going to bankrupt themselves. I think that's really
fascinating. This is a total sidebar, and I don't mean to digress, but if you notice that so many of
these recent physical attacks, if we're talking physical attacks on Bitcoiners or crypto people
have been in France.
Yeah.
It's almost like they don't have a right to protect themselves or something.
It's almost like the rule of law has broken down or something
and it's not really a functioning society anymore.
Am I off base there?
I don't know.
That sounds like conspiracy theory stuff.
Probably just a coincidence.
It's important to also understand back in January,
there was that influencer who was being very thoughtless
about how she was presenting her crypto holdings.
But with that being said, because her partner was armed,
like these criminals found very real violence that met them.
And while it's definitely not an outcome that is desirable,
it's like if people come and threaten you with violence,
like I don't see any problem whatsoever about meeting them right there
and asserting your right to protect yourself,
particularly within things like the castle doctrine and so another part of vora is like
we're we believe that it's time to take on the home security market seriously like adt is a huge
multi-billion dollar company and the truth is is that what they offer pales in comparison about the
opportunities that are available and particularly the technological development so one is just being
able to have your own home self-surveillance systems that self-encrypt onto our own data
server using the same T methodology and has methods to not only share that data with law
enforcement or private security, but like it's important that like you control that data too
because surprisingly a lot of people, they put up ring cameras and don't understand that like
if you live in somewhere like Iowa and smoke weed on your porch that like, yes, that can actually
be used to incriminate you because you don't own that data. Amazon owns it. So this is just one
step in another direction. And funny enough, something that started out as kind of a joke
that we're actually now exploring is actually drone surveillance systems. Is that like we have
finally gotten to the place that automated drone surveillance is something that is actually feasible
at this point in time. And so using that same methodology, there's very powerful tactics that
if someone were to trigger a panic button, or if there was to be a notification that could trigger
these things, that you could actually have a drone or a swarm of drones that could then
respond to where your location is and to provide surveillance to the responding law enforcement
or private security.
And this is really about, it's time that Bitcoiners really make a choice to upgrade themselves
and start providing their own surveillance and security for themselves.
And it's time for us to really upgrade security on a whole because this is moving into a more scary direction.
But also like we can't be truly self-sovereign if we find that when these instances come up, we're always turning to the state and asking for them to assist us.
And so we hope as the company becomes larger and expands that, you know, like we will really be able to sort of own that aspect of security as well.
And that's really important because I've definitely had instances where I've had to deal with law enforcement like here in the city when my car was stolen on multiple occasions because it's San Francisco.
And it was pretty sad and unfortunate to see not only how poorly that turned out but how much in that process I was victimized by the police department because like there isn't necessarily an incentive to help you out.
So these are all things that we've thought very seriously about and we're taking – we really want Vora to be the next generation of hyper-Bitcoinized companies because others is that the entire model of our company is like Bitcoin will be at a million and then 10 million and then $21 million per coin.
And that is going to escalate not only the cost of attack but also the very structure of how security itself is going to be dealt with.
And we want to be at the forefront of making sure that that is done in a thoughtful and robust way and that we're not still panicking and sort of following up behind on the price.
You know, I got to say, I love that you guys are tackling both sides of this, right?
Because there are obviously companies who do just multi-sig or, you know, a collaborative multi-sig custody.
I use one of those companies with a bunch of different seeds. And like, I'm pleased with that
company. It has allowed me to sleep better at night. And I know that nobody can come into my
house and force me to give up any Bitcoin. By the same token, most people that would try to come into
my house and do that are fucking stupid. And they and if I tell them, Oh, well, I'm sorry, sir,
I have a multi sig, you won't be getting any corn from me. They'll be like, Well, okay, then I'll
I'll cut off your finger and then I'll cut off your wife's finger.
And like you trying to explain your just, you know,
geographically distributed multi-sig to somebody who's coming into your house,
trying to like expecting to come in and do violence against you.
That's just not going to work out well for you like at all.
And so if you're not handling the physical side of the security, it's like,
well then like, honestly, like, yeah,
it's cool that you have this neat little solution, but like why bother?
I mean, yeah, you should still bother.
Like multi-sig is great, but like you're just, you're only solving for 50% of the problem.
And the other 50% will literally get you killed.
Like the multi-sig part stops you from, you know, okay, losing your fucking coins in a stupid way.
But if you're not protecting your physical security, if you don't have plans in place for that, like, then what?
Like the option is not you lose your coins.
The option is you die.
and like that's like no amount of bitcoin is worth my life or my family's life and so like
that's like then how do i protect against that and so i think it's like i'd love to dive into
that a little bit deeper with you guys because like this is something obviously in america
we have guns thank god for that like that's that's fantastic i myself am a large enjoyer
of guns and have been using them since i was a small child because i'm from bumblefuck knower
Wisconsin. And that's how you grow up. But like a lot of places in the world do not have like only
the state has guns. That's a terrifying prospect, because then you are completely reliant on the
state. So I'm curious, are you guys targeting like, are there different sorts of threat models
that you're looking at for like US based customers who do have the ability and right to defend
themselves versus international customers? Are you targeting one audience first? How are you guys
going about that? Yeah, well, I think we in the U.S., we have some of the strongest legal cover,
you know, not just for the kinds of self-defense systems we want to build, but also just for
self-custody in general. We have a bill of rights. We have the rights remain silent. That's actually
something that helps us with 6102 attacks because there's certain recovery methods that are going to
require a pin. And we have we can use something called an OPRF where you can derive a strong
key from a short pin. And, you know, unlike 12 words or 24 words, like four digits or six digits
is something that somebody has a shot of actually being able to memorize. Not required in all cases.
But if you think you need to establish your constitutional rights, you can move your coin
to something where a testimonial factor is required.
And under the Fifth Amendment, due process, rights remain silent.
You can't be forced to divulge a memorized PIN or password.
And so that's the kind of protection that we're going to most strongly be able to establish
in the United States and in other countries that acknowledge that kind of right but won't
be available everywhere.
But in terms of wrench attacks specifically, the initial defense that we're looking at will work wherever we can have emergency services connect to an API over TLS because what happens is we have this vault at home that's a node that is running online all the time that has backup network connections.
And if the node goes down, we can detect that.
And so that will cause our monitoring team to make a phone call to the customer and to check for a verbal password.
And if we don't get the right password or if we don't get the person to answer their phone, that triggers this emergency response.
And that's something we'll be able to deploy widely to a lot of different places.
And we'll have other triggers, like if you enter the wrong pin or if we detect other sorts of anomalies.
And this also applies to the mobile app, by the way, where if you're out on the go and you're using the mobile app and we're going to have a hot wallet that you can use on the mobile app, the bulk of your funds will never be able to move with a phone only.
But if you're forced to open that app and you put the wrong pin, we can send your GPS coordinates using this same trusted execution environment system.
And we can check by calling the customer to make sure there isn't like a false alarm or something like that.
And when you check for verbal password to an attacker, they have no way of knowing whether you gave the real verbal password or the wrong verbal password.
And so this gives us a really strong mechanism where you don't have to actively hit a panic button.
Just in the course of being attacked, we can get notified and we can respond and we can find out.
That's where we're starting.
That's kind of the MVP, but that's not where we're ending.
We're going to keep escalating from there.
And we expect home security and personal security is going to evolve with drone technology, with robotics, with AI, with all of these things.
We're going to go beyond just people having a gun.
And even with a gun, you can get caught by surprise.
You can get outnumbered.
And so we can create a greater asymmetry between defense and offense by staying on the cutting edge of the technology curve that's accelerating very quickly.
And so we'll have to see the legality of those systems in different jurisdictions to the extent we'll be able to roll them out.
But we're going to move very aggressively and also we're going to engage in political lobbying.
We're going to engage in with politicians to make the case that you need these protections for your citizens.
This is about safety. This is about the fundamental principle of the law that's been there for as long as there's law that Eric talked about with the Castle Doctrine.
People have a right to self-defense. If somebody comes to your home with a gun and intent to harm, there's no reason that that person should be protected from the kind of response that we need to mount.
And ultimately, the best form of protection we want is credible deterrence because once we establish credible deterrence, criminals aren't going to attack us at all.
Right now, organized crime sees the Bitcoin community as a soft target, as an easy target, as low-hanging fruit.
We're going to change that.
We're going to make them know and realize that the Bitcoin community is the hardest target in the world, that they have much easier targets to go after.
And if they come after our customers, they will be caught, they will be punished or worse, and they should not fuck with us.
I fucking let me just say I fucking love that because one thing that I always found absurd is that like you have these high profile like Bitcoin or crypto people who get targeted.
But it's like it blows my mind that those people are targeted when you have like very publicly super rich, let's say fiat celebrities flaunting their wealth all over Instagram and everywhere.
But it's like, what's the difference? Well, with those very rich celebrities, there's no guarantee that they're going to be able to instantly transfer you millions of dollars if you cut off a finger. Like that's basically the difference is you know that it's going to be harder to get their money out because it's in the fiat system. Their money is in banks. It's not so easy to just like, yeah, okay, let me sign a transaction and broadcast this.
100 percent so we we have to change that equation where yeah we have irreversible anonymous money
and that has a lot of attractive properties to an attacker but not if they know with certainty
that first of all everything's time locked they're not going to get the bitcoin and second of all
they're going to get caught they're going to get punished we're going to track them down we're going
to put bounties to get information to catch these people. We have a heads on pikes principle,
which is that we're going to publicize when we catch these people and we're going to make
everybody know that they got caught, they got punished. And it's just going to be very clear
that, you know, when, when somebody sees the Vora logo, if they're a criminal,
they're going to run away screaming in fear because they know that this is not going to end
well for them. Yeah. And it's, and like, first I want to clarify, like owning, owning your safety
is something that like only you can do, you know, it's the same way. It's like, if you're going to
drive a car, like you should buckle your seatbelt. Like if you don't buckle your seatbelt, it doesn't
really matter what happens when you get in a car crash, it's going to be bad. So the same thing,
like I'm always pretty pedantic about this with people that like, even if you don't like guns,
even if you don't own guns, like if you were an American, you should probably take a firearm
handling course so that you know and understand how a weapon is because what do you do in a
situation if there is a loaded gun like can you unload it like do you feel comfortable with doing
that would you be safe with doing that or do you need to ask somebody else to do your safety so
like it's very important to own that safety but on the next level it's like uh we want to
essentially have the world's best investigative and response team that happens so that when people
see that vora logo they go you know let's go fuck with somebody else like that this isn't going to
work out of that because right now there's a real opportunity because of the sort of failed
socialism that has created the legal portion of the state that like you can perform crimes and
get away with it because of how the system functions we want to let people know that like
if you're going to be fucking with vora customers like not only will all that information be very
actively given to law enforcement but there will be specialized individuals that have dealt with this throughout their lives who will be responding to it and doing the full investigation and making sure that you are caught
And I think one of the more interesting ones is I'm pretty sure any of these crypto influencers, if you got in that moment with them where like it's becoming clear that there is an active robbery going on against them, they would be more than happy to bounce up 10 percent of the total amount of whatever Bitcoin or crypto that they own to pay for people to respond and help them.
we actually have these abilities and capacities and we would like to develop in that direction
because there's no reason that if I'm being robbed at gunpoint that I shouldn't be able to have other
individuals that are within the area who could respond to me be able to show up and offer
assistance so we're very early on but we feel confident that that this is actually a solvable
problem and not only is it solvable like this is the most important issue to become solvable for
Bitcoiners. And we want to lead the charge on that by making a Bitcoin first hyper Bitcoin company
that understands there will actually be a point in time somewhere where because of how the state
is failing and collapsing, that getting law enforcement to respond in a meaningful way
probably won't be very available. And so we're going to need to have alternative solutions.
And we're only going to have those solutions in place by looking out into a future that knows
and understands that's what's coming down the line.
And by the way, you know, insurance doesn't solve this problem
because even if your Bitcoin is insured,
if an attacker knows your Bitcoin is insured,
you're a great target for them
because they know you're going to give it up easily.
And now you're their ATM.
Like what makes them stop?
You know, they get it from you.
You get your insurance.
You get your Bitcoin back.
Well, now they're going to come back for more
and they're going to come back again and again and again.
So insurance is great, but insurance by itself does not solve the wrench attack problem.
You know, it's a really good point.
One thing I want to ask you guys about, maybe part one would be,
could either be just like elaborate on the Castle Doctrine for folks that maybe are not familiar with this.
But then the second part would be just a larger question, which is,
I think in recent years, we've seen a lot of Bitcoiners say,
okay, America is not the place you should be living.
If you're a Bitcoiner, you shouldn't live in America.
You should live in, whether it be Dubai or El Salvador,
nothing against those places.
I've never been to Dubai.
I like El Salvador a lot.
It's amazing what they've done.
But this kind of almost anti-American sentiment in terms of like,
no, this isn't a good place for Bitcoiners.
I disagree with that fundamentally because I think that America, again, the fact that you can be armed to the fucking teeth in America actually makes a huge difference.
And the fact that we do have certain laws in place that allow you to protect yourself and meet violence with violence in the form of self-defense is really, really meaningful.
and do you see i mean with uh like is is any part of your thesis kind of around like okay there's
actually going to be a shift towards like bitcoiners are going to bring their physical
bodies but also their capital and cyberspace back to america because of these protections that do
exist for americans because you can take your safety into your own hands is that something you
guys are kind of like theorizing a little bit because that's the vibe i'm getting 100 and this
is actually sort of one of the more distant goals and what Jesse alluded to earlier about
doing some work within the political sphere is that we feel very strongly that like America is
really the only place that Bitcoin has a true chance of success. And it's because of the powerful
constitutional protections that we have and the ability of the sovereignty of individual states
to counteract a rogue federal government.
And using those powers to balance against one another,
we feel like there's a very, very powerful apparatus
to be able to resist state overreach.
And furthermore, the United States is one of the only places
that you actually are entitled to the Castle Doctrine,
which means that if someone is coming into your home
intent on violence and wanting to rob you
or cause harm against you or your property,
you do have a right to engage in deadly force
against those individuals.
And we believe that this is going to become a very key and critical aspect
of being able to provide the self-sovereignty.
And one of the things that we stand next to with Vora is that, like,
let's say that somebody has a Vora safe and somebody does come to their home to rob them.
When they engage in using deadly force against them, like, we will have their back 100%.
We will pay for their lawyers.
We will take on the entire cost of making sure that we push that forward because to us, this is a really important public demonstration of that.
Like you own a Vora Vault.
Our job is to help protect and secure you.
Like we do not end just at the keys, but this is actually about you as a Bitcoiner.
And this is about us creating a human-centric Bitcoin company that knows and understands the reason that you own Bitcoin is because of the self-sovereignty that that gives you.
and that's what we're in service towards.
Like our job doesn't just end at the keys.
It ends when we know that you're safe and can provide that.
And that's the same reason why we'll provide investigative teams
and the same reason why we'll provide rapid response teams
is that while these are going to be very expensive
and difficult problems to solve,
they must be solved if we are actually to be able to say
that we are people that are self-sovereign.
Yeah, and as hyper-Bitcoinization happens,
we're going to have access to substantial resources to deploy against these problems.
And before I became an engineer and a cryptographer, I was a lawyer.
I practiced law for 10 years.
I then became inspired by Bitcoin and the cypherpunk vision and the idea that code is law.
But I have those roots in my legal training and Vora has a legal and political strategy.
and how we see it is, yes, America in many ways has strayed from the founding principles.
The Constitution has been eroded.
We have these problems that Eric's highlighted in his writings about permanent states of emergency,
suspensions of the normal legal order.
We've seen with Snowden and countless examples of how the principles of this country are not as intact as we would like them to be.
But those are our roots and those are – we do have the constitution and we do have the vision and philosophy of the founding fathers and what influenced them.
John Locke and Rousseau and the fundamental principles of liberty and freedom and natural rights and natural law.
This is the foundation of this country and that's never going to go away.
And so that's something very powerful that we can tap into and that we can make the case that self-sovereignty and Bitcoin is an extension of the American political tradition.
It is in line with what the founding fathers fought for, the same sort of principles.
I have no doubt that if they were alive today, they would be Bitcoiners.
And so we are continuing that tradition and we can take that to the courts.
We can take that to the Supreme Court and we can make that case that what we're doing here is in line with the fundamental legal political principles of the Constitution and we can fight and win those battles.
And we've seen with the NRA their ability to succeed that way, whether it's through lobbying and creating a political situation where gun rights cannot be eroded or winning in the courts and protecting those rights.
And so that's the same model we're going to be using with Vora is that we're going to be establishing in the law and in the political system that self-sovereignty is a sacrosanct political constitutional principle that cannot be violated under any circumstances.
What does that look like?
I mean, and, you know, Cason, I'm curious, too, does this dovetail in with your VP bid alongside American HODL for the presidential run?
Is that is the plan all coming together now?
Apparently. So so like we'll need to have some great legal conflict where we're obviously thrown away.
And I'll just at that point, that's when I have to be like, we clearly have to overthrow the political establishment.
But with that being said, like I've been shocked at the amount of testiery curiosity that's sort of gone on with the orange party.
And I literally have not spoken to anybody, Normie or otherwise, who I haven't been like – look like both parties are absolutely corrupt beyond repair at this point.
And so like do you agree with that?
And like I'll get him and Han, but they'll be like, yeah, like both are extremely problematic.
And like it's – I really do hope that we'll actually get a sincere and realistic Orange Party movement that is committed to the radical principles.
And I'm very pedantic about this.
Like I'm not talking about a traditional standard political party.
But I'm essentially talking about a rogue syndicalist methodology of having people be like I'm part of the Orange Party.
This is about the education and allowing for individuals to hold and use Bitcoin as self-sovereign individuals to influence state-level politics and really to get people on board with understanding that like if you identify with red or blue, like you're the enemy.
Like you're the person that has allowed for our country to be destroyed.
You're the one that is standing aside and saying that either one of these people who are stealing and destroying the goodness that our country has, that like you're on their side.
And because you identify that way, you're my enemy.
I don't want that.
But it's very clear that if your guy gets into power, you're OK with them stealing from me.
You're OK with them taking my money and using that to make war against people who I've never met and I don't have conflict with.
And I think that's a despicable and horrible thing.
And I don't know. I always find it really interesting when you come back to the thing of like both parties want to use your money to murder other people and like you're OK with that.
No one's ever like, yeah, I'm OK with it. Most people object to it. But it's like that's that's a very real truth.
And I apologize that it might make you feel uncomfortable and it might be difficult to look at. But it is true.
You know, like Obama, who is largely celebrated as being this liberal ideal, it's really important to understand that like as a constitutional lawyer, he used his understanding of the Constitution to overcome it specifically so he could do things like kill American children abroad using drone bombing like that.
That happened.
That's like a real thing.
And I find it deeply alarming that people want to be like, well, you know, he was the son of a terrorist like that.
And it's like, oh, I didn't realize like when we disagree with people, we can kill their children, particularly when they're Americans as well.
Hmm.
Interesting.
Give the man another Nobel Peace Prize.
Amazing.
Like, wow.
Nothing says peace like bombs.
But I guess Nobel and dynamite.
That's his whole shtick, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, right.
It kind of worked together.
Now, I think it's going to be very interesting to see what happens in these next few years and decades, because I think there's no denying that we are in the middle of a fourth turning.
I'm also of the opinion, this is a thesis I'm working on, I might even have to write about it, but that we're seeing a convergence of cycles.
if you're familiar with Polybius's anticyclosis, like we also seem to be somewhere near the end of
that cycle in the aglocracy, like verging on the mob rule sense. We're in the midst of a long-term
debt cycle. If you look at Ray Dalio's, we're in the midst of a bunch of other, like all these
different cycles that have been proposed by various thinkers. We seem to be nearing the tipping point
of all of them. And I think that's going to make for a very, very drastic and violent change. And
I mean, violent, both in the, uh, let's say, uh, metaphorical sense, like, but then also probably
in the literal sense, like that that's typically how things happen when there's massive changes is
there is violence. I mean, a little bit to the South of you guys right now in California,
there is a lot of violence going on. Um, I, I don't know how that's going to resolve itself.
Maybe it just won't. It seems that these things tend not to resolve themselves,
but they're mostly peaceful. So it's okay. But how do you guys prepare for the, like, are you,
are you building for the world that is now, or are you building for the world that is to come?
Is it a little bit of both? Because like, I think you're the only company that is tackling both
sides of this. Again, the, let's say the cryptographic side of this and the, uh, the
very physical human side of this, how do you like build with the structures we have now,
but then prepare yourself for what may be an incredibly tumultuous period
where the reorganization of the world makes it look vastly different than it is today.
We live in the future basically.
Like we're already in the hyper-Bitcoinized world
and we're just working backwards from there.
And we think that's something that almost no Bitcoin company
and few Bitcoiners really have the conviction about hyper-Bitcoinization and really take it
seriously and really believe with 100% certainty that that's where we're headed, that that is going
to happen, that there's going to be massive disruption because of it. And we are – that's
our base case. We know that's happening for sure. And so we're trying to think through, okay,
if that is happening, what kind of companies do we need to exist? What kind of products do we need
to exist? What kind of services? What kind of political philosophies? What kind of legal
frameworks? What are the things that we need to put in place right now so that when this event
arrives, we're ready for it, we're prepared for it, and that ideally it can be nonviolent or at
least the minimum amount of violence that can occur because if we can plan in advance and if
We can put the right systems in place.
It doesn't need to be violent.
It doesn't need to take that form.
And that's one of the most powerful things about Bitcoin that we've never had before in history, which is that we can completely transform the legal, economic and political system without any coercion whatsoever.
Just by providing a superior alternative, that's going to create the change.
Just by providing ideas, by providing mathematics, by providing technology, that will win people over.
And we can establish our moral superiority to the status quo because the status quo, its essence is violence.
That's how it operates.
Everything is coercive.
Everything is through at the barrel of the gun or a jackbooted thug.
Like that's how it operates.
That's how it thinks for any kind of social change.
It can only do that through throwing people in cages.
Bitcoin is different.
Bitcoin doesn't need to use those mechanisms to create change.
and that's a bright line that we are drawing to say how we are different from the status quo,
how we're going to win over the hearts and minds because we have a better system that is more
peaceful, that is more beneficial, that is more free. And so we think a lot about the future.
We think a lot about how to prepare today for what's coming.
And Eric and I have been in Bitcoin for a while now and we kind of have a track record of being able to anticipate things that nobody thinks are going to happen and yet they occur.
And so we're just kind of bringing that to the next level.
Yeah, and that's one of the reasons that's allowed for us to start designing it in the way that it is because it's really only even been in the last few years that the technologies have been available to actually try to be able to build a truly open source and verifiable computer from silicon to software.
Like these FPGAs, like the new Tropic Square chip, like these are all very new advancements.
and then when you start to pair this stuff with the advancements that we're seeing in ai with the
advancements that we've been seeing in drone tech like there becomes a very different future that's
available where the asymmetric relationship between the state violent actors and the individual
allows for itself to actually become much more equalized and so like i feel very confident that
within five years that any individual that has a Vora vault at their house, there is going to be
triggers that are going to allow for them to deploy their drone surveillance. And anybody that has
came to that house will be marked and surveilled, like their gate recognition will be tracked,
and that that information will be used to identify them. And like, that's something that we think is
really important because we want violent thugs and criminals to know like you you won't have
somewhere to hide like you have now permanently branded and marked yourself with that you are an
individual that will go after our customers and we have an entire team and division of people that
are dedicated to finding you and bringing you to justice and that's because we now exist at this
end state where the law is a highly dysfunctional thing. And if somebody does choose to rob you
legal or otherwise, in other words, the state choosing to steal from you or criminals,
it's not clear if justice will actually be delivered. And that's one of the reasons that
we really believe that we need to start empowering ourselves and taking this into our own hands,
because if we allow for ourselves to get to a hyper-Bitcoinized world without a product like
this, it's going to be much more threatening, difficult and scary. And the truth is, is it's
going to be much more violent and it's going to be much more violent because we won't have active
deterrent solutions that people will know and understand and will be branded towards that.
And so, you know, and the other one is, is that like as as large and as much potential as this
company has, again, it comes back to like we're building this for philosophical reasons. Like
it's really important to us to have this product out in the world, not because it's going to make
us both a bunch of money, but because people deserve to have this new and different upgrade
that truly allows for them to have sovereign custody of their Bitcoin, rather than needing
to collaborate with somebody for that sovereignty, or just try to take it all on their own.
I mean, to that point, Eric, you've and Jesse, I'm not sure about your situation, Eric, I mean,
you you came out of retirement for this basically uh like this is not something uh you let's say
were forced to do uh and by the way did you guys do you guys meet at coinbase is that how yeah it
was uh wow i would do like introduction coin conversations for like any new employees and
it was funny because jesse came and i was like hey like i'm eric like i i love bitcoin because
of this like deeper philosophical aspect that i'm really into and he was like oh wow he was like
do you like know about this like philosopher Carl Schmitt?
And I was like, yeah, I'm like actually really well read in Carl Schmitt.
And we were like both just blown away immediately.
And that really became the basis of, you know,
what is now our long and deep standing friendship is that like,
not only were we both Bitcoiners before and came in with this deep philosophical commitment towards Bitcoin,
but we both truly believe that Bitcoin has the potential to change the world in a radical way,
but only if we take responsibility for it.
And so for me, like, you know, I had sort of done my retirement thing.
But the truth is, is within that you have this idea that you'll sort of ride off into the sunset.
And then you get out there and you're like, huh, like this is kind of boring, to be honest with you.
And also, like, there's these other things that need to be built that are really important.
Like, why aren't these people?
Why aren't these things being built?
And furthermore, like, I need that challenge for myself.
And after really taking some time and energy to think about it, I realized like, frankly, like nobody else can actually build this because like we're the only people with this unique perspective.
We're the only people that have this philosophical background.
I mean, Jesse is arguably one of the best applied cryptographers in the world.
Like I seem to have some of the deepest and most philosophically aligned thoughts with Bitcoin.
and furthermore because we're not motivated by the fiat short-term incentives there's an ability
to build a company that has a 20 50 and 100 year timeline in front of it and that's what we're
building you know like i i've wrote a philosophical document that's this like it's a 20 page document
about like what vora is and like in that we talk about the year 2045 and what vora is doing and how
the product has developed from there and like the only reason that we can do that is because we're
We're not concerned with quarters, but with epochs.
Like we're not concerned with making sure that we satisfy the short-term fiat gains, but that we look at the long-term Bitcoin sustainability of the company.
And I think that's only really available for people that have been involved in the space for a long time and thought very deeply and intently about what Bitcoin is and how it's going to change the world.
Yeah, and we're going to actually build that into the compensation structure for every single employee at the company.
That part of their future compensation is going to be time-locked Bitcoin that is stored in a Vora vault in their own home.
So if this system is not safe for our customers, it's not safe for the employees, and you better believe they're going to be extra motivated to protect that privacy,
to make sure the alarm system works, to make sure there's no back doors,
because all the incentives will be aligned.
That's actually brilliant.
That is quite possibly the most alignment-enforcing incentive structure I've ever heard of.
That's genius.
Thanks.
Yeah, I love that.
I'm curious, can you guys talk at all about the actual home vault side of it all?
without like, you know, I don't want you guys to give away anything that shouldn't be given away,
but like whatever you can talk about, can we get into a little bit more of like some of the nitty
gritties there? Cause you mentioned just like a lot of these supply chain concerns and, and all
of this, like, can you talk through that a little bit? Like why that's actually important, what that
means, how you guys are addressing it? Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, a lot of Bitcoiners,
they insist on multi-vendor multi-sig for good reason, because they're worried about supply chain
attacks. We want to provide something where, you know, a customer is going to feel safe working
with a single vendor Vora without needing to diversify among multiple hardware wallets.
Other Bitcoiners I know, they insist on commodity hardware where, you know, they consider any
specialized Bitcoin hardware is subject to a supply chain attack. They want to be able to walk
into a random Best Buy, pick a chip at random and use that to secure their Bitcoin because the
likelihood that –
Real quick, just for people that don't know, what exactly is a supply chain attack?
Yeah, so supply chain attack can take different forms. I mean the first form it can take is that
the chip, when it's manufactured, there's a backdoor in the actual atomic structure of the
chip itself. Another form of supply chain attack can be even if the physical structure of the chip
has full integrity, that the microcode, which is the lowest level software that lives on the chip,
is compromised. And in most cases, that microcode is completely opaque. It's not open source. There's
no way to verify it. Another form of supply chain attack is that the actual chip is swapped out
somewhere between when it's made and when it gets into the customer's hands. And we've seen very
sophisticated attacks by organized crime against credit card readers, against all kinds of
hardened systems where they've been able to swap out the hardware.
And we have no idea what kind of nation state level attacks might be applied to Intel or AMD or any of these chips.
And so that's the foundation of the hardware wallet.
If the chip is compromised, the whole system is compromised.
For example, to generate a cryptographic key relies on entropy, relies on randomness that no one else can predict.
But if the chip is compromised, if the microcode is compromised, if the physical structure of the chip is compromised, it can produce keys according to patterns that some attacker knows.
And they can wait a very long time before they perform the attack.
They can wait for hyper-Bitcoinization to happen before they take everybody's Bitcoin.
And so defending against these attacks is of paramount importance and we've put a lot of time and energy to figure out how to do this in a way that nobody else is doing.
And so, you know, like I said, the actual physical enclosure of the vault is a server rack.
And we specifically chose that because we don't want it to be obvious to your guests that you have a ton of Bitcoin at your home.
So it just looks like, hey, I've got like, you know, a server, no big deal.
In that server rack, we have an offline component and an air gap and an online component.
And, you know, we're still in R&D.
some of these details may change. We have a plan for a prototype. Eventually,
we're going to have custom boards. But what we're looking at for the prototype
is, first of all, the offline component has
a chip called an FPGA, which is a programmable
chip. And there's a specific chip called the ICE40
that has a completely open source tool chain and an open source
bitstream. So you can, using open source tools,
You can download the hardware configuration for the chip compile it yourself and load it onto the chip So that removes the microcode attack where there no software layer on the chip that opaque that you haven built and inspected yourself
And the other thing that can be done with an FPGA is you can randomize the layout.
So there's different ways to program the gate arrays in the chip that provide the same functionality.
So if you're an attacker who tried to compromise the way the transistors are laid out in the chip,
the fact that we're randomizing the layout makes it much more difficult for the attacker to be able to predict
what physical part of the chip they need to compromise.
On top of that, what we're going to do is we're going to select –
for every one of these vaults, we're going to have three FPGA chips.
We're going to select one at random and ship that to the customer, take the other two chips, delid them, and put them under an electron microscope and send the results to the customer.
So if there's a hardware attack, that attacker would have to have picked one of the three chips that we select at random and attacked that and not the other two.
So there's a very high chance that we're going to catch that hardware attack.
That's step one. Now we also have the online portion of the box. So we're using a Raptor Blackboard motherboard, which is the only open source motherboard. There's also Talos, but they're all made by Raptor.
So the whole firmware, the whole BIOS, everything about the board is open source.
It uses an IBM Power9 chip, which has open source microcode.
And that's the server component of the chip that's always online.
And when the vault signs for keys, it's going to have a two of two between those two chips, but not just a two of two.
So we're also considering to add the Tropic Square chip, which is this brand new chip that has been specifically designed for hardware wallets.
And it has some of the best-in-class tamper detection technology.
So if that chip is tampered with, it will wipe its secrets.
So we can actually do a three of three between all three chips.
So all of them would have to be backdoored.
All of them would have to be compromised for a hardware supply chain attack to succeed.
And then the last thing we're doing is we're going to have an open socket on the motherboard.
So if you do want to go to Best Buy and buy a chip at random, you can plop that into the motherboard.
And now all four chips have to be backdoored in order to compromise the system.
And so now we're way beyond multi-vendor, multi-sig.
Because even with multi-vendor multi-sig, all of the vendors could be compromised.
Like your Trezor and your Ledger could be compromised.
And so with this kind of four-four setup, with all these measures that we're putting into place, the probability of a hardware supply chain attack taking place against the system becomes negligible.
Jesus Christ.
He's a good guy.
I mean, that's just kind of awesome.
Okay, my natural next question, though, is all these things you're talking about, being able to verify all these things,
how do you envision this presenting to the actual end user, though?
Because presumably there are a lot of people with a lot of Bitcoin who may be technically not as literate as you would imagine they would be having so much Bitcoin.
Is this still something where on the UI, UX side, you're looking at making this very comfortable for the, let's say, the Bitcoin layman who has, in a hyper-Bitcoinized world, still accumulated a fortune of coin, but he is not, or she, is not a very technical, quote, person?
Well, and that's the next component that comes along is that, like right now, this is all buildable.
Like you could build this out on your own.
it would have some difficulties for it, but it's not even that technically difficult.
What we want to do is we really want to position ourselves as being the Apple of Bitcoin
so that you have this high-end premium product that you're going to pay extra for,
but it means that you plug this in and you now have a Bitcoin full node.
You have a beautiful new and different UX.
We're really excited about the designer that we've been working with.
He has deep expertise and understanding in Bitcoin and wants to approach it differently as well.
And we think that there is a massive opportunity to essentially take the full Bitcoin vertical, make that into a great Apple-like presentation to have a plug-and-play solution that's easy, intuitive, and fluid to use.
But once you've established that, we're also doing sort of the Tesla market approach in that this is first going to be a premium product that's designed for whole coiners.
But as it addresses the market, that market then expands out to where eventually like what we really want to be is in people's personal home data server.
Because the world that we're moving into, everyone's going to need to have their own personal data server if they're going to want to run, say, an LLM that will be both their personal assistant, have personal information and health information about them.
And you're going to need to have the same degree of security for that information as you're going to need for your Bitcoin.
and furthermore as all of these vaults are deployed there becomes a real opportunity to
make them interoperable with each other on their own protocol level using the cryptographic key
storage that we have on there so now we've actually gone from being just a bitcoin vault to now
we're a decentralized cryptographic key storage provider that has essentially a decentralized
cloud solution that is interoperable with other safes. So the ultimate mission is going to be that
let's say you are one of these ultra high wealth individuals that has your place in Aspen, New York
and France. You can have your three nodes all running in tandem with each other, communicating
to each other and verifying for each other so that like if the socialists in France choose to
like, sees your property in France, well, it turns out that it's backed up and stored on
the other servers that you have because of the way that they've been programmed to collaborate
with each other. So these are all distant ideas, but this is the big vision we're going for,
because the other one that we found in conversations with people that we find
almost ridiculous in some ways is that a lot of people think really small. Like, they don't,
don't they really don't fully embrace that bitcoin is going to transform the world and that
that's already happening and i thought it was interesting even earlier today somebody said like
bitcoin penetration is essentially zero at this point in time like it's still totally new
and with that perspective we can allow for ourselves to step back and say well if that is true
and if bitcoin is going to keep conquering and kicking ass as it has over the last 10 years
there is not only a massive opportunity but probably the most massive opportunity to build
on top of the tech stack to make something truly incredible and very similar to if you ask steve
jobs in 1978 like hey like where do you think the world's at in 1995 he would tell you yeah there's
going to be an apple computer in most homes in the united states people would laugh at you and
that's what the reality became and that's what we believe vora has the opportunity to do as well
is that because of the way and direction that both Bitcoin and the Internet are moving,
people are going to need to have their own home data servers
that will have very strong cryptographic and security protections.
And absolutely nobody is approaching that market right now,
despite the fact that this is arguably a multi-trillion dollar market cap.
Yeah, and 100%, it's going to be easy to use.
It's going to be plug and play.
You don't have to be technical at all.
So that's a big limitation of the current systems is the level of education and knowledge you have to have to use self-custody is a huge barrier.
And even for experts, it's easy to screw it up.
It's easy.
You make one mistake and the whole system doesn't work.
And so UX and security go hand in hand.
And it should take care of foot guns.
It should guide the user through the process in such a way that anybody can use it.
Bitcoin, we want everybody who wants to use Bitcoin to be able to use Bitcoin.
No matter how technical or non-technical you are, self-sovereignty belongs to everyone.
And so that's our goal.
And in terms of what Eric is talking about with the kind of decentralized network that the vaults can bootstrap, this trusted execution technology that I talked about for the server also exists in every Vora vault.
So every Vora vault can also have a trusted – has a trusted execution environment that can provide a remote attestation.
And there's completely new types of decentralized networks, not with a token.
There's no new token here, but a decentralized network where each node in the network is providing a remote attestation telling the other nodes the code that it's running.
And so we can build all kinds of new applications on top of that, decentralized cloud storage, decentralized pin servers, decentralized blind signers.
All the stuff that we're doing with our server eventually will be able to decentralize across the vault network.
And one of the big breakthroughs in terms of UX that we're going to deliver is we're going to revolutionize the Bitcoin address, not with the technology we invented, but we're going to actually deploy it, which is what Eric alluded to earlier, which is silent payments.
And part of silent payments is privacy.
But the other thing about silent payments is we're going to be able to have a human readable static identifier as your Bitcoin address.
So my Bitcoin address is going to be jesse at vora.io.
That's my Bitcoin address, not 1CX345, whatever.
It's human readable.
It's static.
and it's also completely private.
That's what silent payments,
that's what's so powerful about silent payments.
And right now, addresses are a UX nightmare.
You have to generate a brand new one.
And every time you do that, you have to secure it.
You have to figure out, is this the person's address?
Did it get man in the middle?
How do I actually verify that this is their correct address?
And so this is going to help us secure Bitcoin addresses because you can have the most fancy key management, key arrangement, multi-sig system in the world.
If the address is compromised, it doesn't matter.
You're going to send all your Bitcoin to the attacker's address.
So one of the big hangups with silent payments, the reason we haven't seen it more widely deployed is because they don't work well with light clients.
You can't do silent payments on your phone.
You need a full node to scan every block to do a Diffie-Hellman derivation for every single input to find the silent payment addresses.
And most people aren't running full nodes.
And especially if you're not technically inclined, it's not that easy to set it up and keep it up all the time and figure out how to connect it to your Bitcoin wallet.
And so by having an integrated full node in the box, this means that we can also have silent payments for all of our customers.
And now we can have these human readable Bitcoin addresses.
Can you just explain again in like a more layman terms what the significance of the silent payment is, how that actually works?
Just for anyone who's listening and is like, yes, yes, I understand that, I think.
But like what is the significance of this for you guys and why does this actually matter?
Why should anyone care about this?
Yeah, so it starts with the principle of in Bitcoin, we never want to reuse addresses.
We could have one address.
A lot of people do this.
You put like a tipping address on your website and then everybody can send to it.
But now you have a privacy problem because all your payments are linked to this one address.
And in terms of making it human readable, basically you can use secure DNS to take a human readable address, connect to a server, and it would resolve with some data like a Bitcoin address or a public key.
So if address reuse wasn't a problem, we could do that just with the Bitcoin technology that exists today.
You'd have something that looks like an email address.
It would verify a cert against the domain name that's signed by the domain's key so you know, is it man in the middle?
And it would resolve to the Bitcoin address.
But because of address reuse, there's a privacy problem.
So that's why Xpubs were invented.
Now with Xpubs, you could have an Xpub where you could put an Xpub out there and you could derive a new address from the Xpub.
And anybody who wants to send you Bitcoin could derive a new address.
But the problem with the XPUB is anybody who has the XPUB, they can derive all the addresses and they know they belong to the same wallet.
So if you make your XPUB public, it doesn't really help in terms of privacy.
It helps a wallet internally be able to generate many, many addresses, new addresses.
You know, you're using your hardware wallet.
You're generating a new address.
That's all being derived from the same root public key using an XPUB.
But if you give that XPUB to somebody, now they can derive all your addresses, which is the problem with a lot of these collaborative custodian systems is they have everybody's XPUBs and they can derive everybody's addresses.
So silent payments was created to solve this problem where you have a static public key that never changes.
And you give this public key to everybody that you want to send you Bitcoin or you make it resolvable with a human readable domain where they look up the human readable address and they get the public key.
But then they do something called a Diffie-Hellman derivation. And Diffie-Hellman is one of the foundational cryptographic innovations that revolutionized cryptography in the 70s and made it – is at the basis of when you connect to a website with HTTPS, underneath it is a Diffie-Hellman derivation.
And what Diffie Hellman is is that if you take a public key and a private key, let's say you have Alice and Bob.
Alice has a private key and gets Bob's public key.
And Alice can take her private key and combine it with Bob's public key to generate a number, to generate a secret.
Now, Bob can take Alice's public key and his private key and derive the exact same secret.
So let's say Alice and Bob are communicating over an insecure channel.
You have Eve, the eavesdropper, can see any of the data that Alice sends to Bob or Bob sends to Alice.
They need to establish a secure communications channel such that the eavesdropper can't decrypt the data.
And so if they just sent a secret over the channel, well, Eve's going to read the secret and they're screwed.
So instead what can happen is Alice sends her public key over the channel to Bob and Bob sends his public key over the channel to Alice.
So they have each other's public keys.
Now that they have each other's public keys, they do this Diffie-Hellman derivation on each side and they derive the same secret.
But Eve can't derive that secret because the only way to derive that secret is she would need to know either Alice's private key or Bob's private key.
and without either of those private keys
and those private keys aren't sent over the channel,
it's impossible to derive this secret.
And once they both have a common secret,
they can use that as an encryption and decryption key
to encrypt their data and send messages back and forth
and authenticate those messages.
So silent payments uses the same principle,
which is if I want to send you Bitcoin
and I know your public key,
I can do a Diffie-Hellman derivation with my private key and generate a shared secret and embed that into a Bitcoin address.
And the only person who can find that address on the blockchain, even if I know your public key, if I don't know the private key of the sender, I don't know that secret and I can't find it on the blockchain.
And so now we only need this one public key.
We don't need an XPub.
We just have a static publicly that never changes.
But each sender can generate a unique secret that only they and the recipient can identify.
And the reason you need a full node is to – the recipient to identify their transactions on the blockchain.
Unlike an XPUB where it's a very simple calculation and they can just look up the addresses, they need to scan through every single input and every single new block.
do this Diffie-Hellman derivation to see, oh, is this a payment that was sent to me?
And you can't do that on a phone and you need a full node to do that unless you want to offload
that to some server or some third-party service that then is going to learn all your transactions
and your Bitcoin balance in the process. I appreciate very much the explanation because
I think it's like sometimes these terms are thrown around.
And again, like this is a product that can help the non-technical people too.
Like this is not something that you need to be an expert cryptographer to be able to use,
but it helps to be able to understand some of the stuff going on behind it.
So you understand why it's so powerful for you and why this actually helps to preserve your privacy,
not just from anyone who, you know, Eve, the eavesdropper,
but from the vendor who's actually providing you with the solution in the first place,
which is arguably more dangerous potentially.
Absolutely.
Wasn't that a great explanation of a Diffie Hellman exchange?
The first time that he explained that to me when we were at his house one night,
I was like, whoa, like that's how cryptography works.
That's amazing.
Yeah, honestly, that was incredible because I've like read around this stuff before
and that was the single best explanation that I've ever seen about it.
And I feel like I just gained like I gained a little bit more intelligence there.
I appreciate it.
I want to be conscious of your guys' time, but I also want to make sure,
was there anything else from the Vora product or the Vora philosophy
that we didn't get a chance to kind of cover here today?
The only one I want to point out is, so Vora comes from the Latin term
Melivora capensis, which is the honey badger.
And you can see we have this nice piece of swag,
and we have our nice honey badger logo.
And the reason why is because like Bitcoin is the honey badger of money and we believe that that honey badger of money, it's – the honey badger doesn't tolerate what we've called the honey badger's dilemma where they're forced to choose between 6102 attack or wrench attack.
The honey badger intransigently refuses to be attacked on either side and will viciously attack and defend itself.
and that's the goal of Vora
is we want your Vora vault to be the thing
that displays your self-sovereignty in the world
and will viciously attack and defend you
against either one of these attack vectors
and we invite you, please come to Vora.io
sign up for our wait list
for when we're going to start doing marketing and advertising
and yeah, this is just the beginning of a very long
and probably at times difficult journey
but we really want to become the premier
and preliminary Bitcoin brand in the world
because this is where we're at and we do need to have this full stack available to us that's really going to make the message clear that Bitcoin is here to stay.
It's not going away. Hyper-Bitcoinization is going to happen.
And everybody from the technical to the non-technical is welcome to these solutions and it's our market that we want to address.
Yeah, and don't dox yourself. Use a temporary email address or something that isn't linked to your identity for our email list. We don't want to know the emails of all the Bitcoiners that have all the biggest stacks. We don't want to know who you are. We don't want to know anything about you.
So we're just giving you this email form so you can stay notified about our updates.
We also have a PGP key on the website and an email address.
So if you want to send us an encrypted email, this company is all about Bitcoiners.
We want to know what you like, what you don't like.
Don't trust us.
Everything we do is going to be verifiable.
Everything is going to be open source.
We encourage adversarial thinking.
If you can poke holes in our designs, please do and tell us about it.
We're all in this together and that's what Vora is all about.
Fucking right.
You guys have time for one more question?
Sure.
What does hyper-Bitcoinization actually look like and mean to you?
I mean for me, hyper-Bitcoinization means that Bitcoin is the dominant and primary monetary instrument on earth.
That fiat currency has been firmly displaced by Bitcoin.
That Bitcoin has achieved all the three categories of money, store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account.
Everything is priced in Bitcoin and it is – becomes synonymous with money.
yeah for me it's pretty much the same of that uh bitcoin becomes the global currency everybody
uses it uh unit of account pricing medium of exchange uh and more exciting is that like we've
now witnessed profound transformations of the economy like i don't i don't think property will
have nearly the same influence or affect it once does uh i think that the entire module
of how people approach economics will be really different.
And most exciting is like,
I think that the world becomes a much more radically free
and liberated place.
And frankly, I believe that very similar
to how the American ideals that came out of 1776
then pushed out into the world,
I think that there's a very similar opportunity
for that to happen because Bitcoin is like,
Bitcoin will not work in a command and control economy like the CCCP runs. It simply won't
function there. And so I think that there is a very extraordinary opportunity to provide for
those that live in the global south an opportunity to have the same sort of American style revolution
through an economic front. And we want Vora to be able to support those individuals in that quest
towards their own self-sovereignty.
And we really hope that as the product develops and builds
that we will have the same thoughtful,
forward-looking solutions for those individuals
as we will for Americans as well.
Damn right.
That's a hell of a note to end on.
Guys, I appreciate you both coming on here
and talking about this.
I'm fascinated by it.
I'm going to give you an alias email
because I like to create lots of burners.
So you're not getting my real one, you spooks.
Exactly.
That's how you should regard us.
Good, good.
But seriously, guys, thank you.
And thanks for working on this and building this.
It's one of those things that gives me a lot of hope in the future
when I see hardcore state disrespecting Bitcoiners
building really fucking cool freedom tech
that will ultimately allow us all to be more sovereign
or move along that spectrum of sovereignty
towards a more ideal future.
so thank you guys i fucking appreciate you both i'll uh i'll link you both and also i'll link the
vora.io in the description but yeah thanks for your time guys this was uh this was a pleasure
thanks to you as well and the work that you do as well yeah thank you so much for giving us this
opportunity to to talk about vora really appreciate it me being a podcaster is basically equivalent to
advanced cryptography i mean it's it's essentially you know it's it's basically the same thing uh no
appreciate you guys we're gonna cut this now thanks to all the folks on Noster who joined
in the live stream too there were more than 25 of you at one point we got up to like 100 so hey
folks on folks on Noster care about shit that's great to see all right I'm gonna cut this now guys
thank you and cut
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of The Bitcoin Podcast.
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