Private Payments: Crypto’s Next Narrative — w/ Paul Puey of Edge | EPI 371

Doug
Alright, we are live. Paul, what's going on, man?

Paul
Oh man, just the exciting roller coaster of crypto. The roller coaster of privacy as well. It seems like the privacy crisis, which we're super excited about, has kind of woken up within the ecosystem.

Doug
No, it's a little it feels a little weird, right? It's like you've been waiting for it to happen for so long and then when it finally does it's like you don't know what to do

Paul
It also kind of catches you by strikes. This wasn't a time when I would expect it to happen, right?

Doug
But hell why is that why why isn't uh, why do you think now is a weird time for it?

Paul
Funny thing is the reason why I thought it was a word time for it is probably the reason why it is happening, which is that all adoption of crypto has not been in that, you know, that libertarian cypherpunk ethos. It's all been in this like government institutional adoption, store of value, use it as like, you know, reserve currency, that kind of thing, which I'm like, great, this isn't what I'm in it for.

When are we going to like get back to its roots and have privacy and transact with it? And then out of nowhere, like, you know, at least Zcash gets a good bubble, even Monero is at at least annual highs. And so that's what kind of why I was surprised. But maybe that's the reason you kind of got it, they're fed up, you know.

Doug
Yeah, it's like people are finally catching on to that meme. People are finally understanding that Bitcoin isn't private, right? That's going mainstream, right?

Obviously, we've known that forever, but all the...

Paul
all these forever actually admittedly, I mean, I don't know what year did you discover Bitcoin, if it was the first currency.

Doug
uh so i i got into i i was telling my whole story like i bought doge on christmas eve 2013 was my

Paul
2013. And I remember at least the narrative around Bitcoin in 2013 was of privacy. Maybe not that it was super private, but you had this significant elevated privacy over the traditional financial system.

And in ways that's true, but I think we just didn't realize how much worse it was than the TradFi system. Yes.

Doug
Yeah, and then I deep dive, that got me into Bitcoin. Because I lost my Doge on Christmas day. There was a hack and the online wallet that I had it started. Rule number one, not your keys, not your coins. I didn't know. I didn't know what crypto. I didn't really understand crypto at all at that point. I sent somebody $50 with PayPal on Reddit and they sent me some Dogecoin to a web wallet and then it got fleeced the next day.

And then it sent me down the Bitcoin rabbit hole though. Because I was like, wait a minute, there's got to be more to this. I read the white paper and I was like, whoa. So I basically got in at the top of the 2013 bubble. I started buying and then I bought... I was hooked. I was watching the Andreas Antonopoulos things. But I realized the privacy flaw pretty early when I started using it. Because I would send it to my friends and stuff and be like, all right, let me go check it on the blockchain. I'm like, wait a minute. If I could check it, they could check it. They're like, hey, Doug, it looks like you got some of these Bitcoins. You could see my balance? Yeah.

Paul
Not ideal, not ideal. So we're in the era now where I'm excited that the tech has advanced so much since those, those days, we didn't think that something like the mirror would actually be possible back in 2013.

There was this all kind of like concept and theory and we're transacting in it. We're actually, I heard you actually interviewed, uh, if it's Chris from, uh, fat chips local here in San Diego. Yeah. And, uh, he comes by like every week to drop off batch of fat chips. On XMR Bazaar. So I, you know, I discovered them through, uh, your website and that's amazing. Right. And we're paying in Monero every single time. That's fat with out, without a flaw, like we're paying in Monero. And so we're using on a regular basis and that this is what people need to be doing. You got to use it.

Doug
I gotta stop by the Edge office. It looks nice over there, man. I can feel the weather through the screen. It looks beautiful. It's been a brutal...

Paul
69 degrees this and so you know, yeah

Doug
Damn, man. New York is harsh right now. New York is no bueno. I know. Four o'clock, 20, 25 degrees.

Paul
Well, you know it toughens you up. Oh, you gotta look at the benefits, right? Yeah

Doug
Yeah, man. It's cold out, but privacy season is definitely warming my heart like we're saying.

I would like to... Yeah, let's chat about that and then obviously we could get into Edge Wallet. You could tell us the latest and greatest and maybe we could get into maybe even some of the history. I don't... Have we done a proper Monero talk? I know we've done video leak.

Paul
What's up? I don't know if we've done anything on Manera talk itself. Yeah

Doug
This might be your first Monero talk, right? I don't know.

Paul
Hopefully the first event, you know, so.

Doug
Yeah. No, because we've got to ask your background, your stories. We got to get the word out on who Paul is and his crypto story. We'll get into that a little bit. I'm sure most people in Monero know you by now.

And then we'll talk about the conference. Let me first and foremost thank you for being a main stage sponsor. That's tremendous help to us, tremendous help to the conference. And in my opinion, it's a tremendous help to the Monero community. I don't want to say Monero-topia is the Monero community, but I do see the Monero-topia event as being very beneficial to Monero. It's a great event, gets people hanging out in person. I know you always talk about the need for events and how the in-person thing is great. And I think Monero-topia definitely lives up to that. And yeah, but for you, we wouldn't be able to do a great conference like this. So greatly appreciate that. CAKE is the other main stage sponsor. So really looking forward to the collaboration that's going to take place with that. Because we'll have the marketplace going on, as you know, and everybody in the marketplace will be using CAKE Wallet and Edge Wallet. So it becomes kind of like a live test bed for Monero watching people actually get to use it. So yeah, Matt, thank you for being a main stage sponsor.

Paul
It's all the effort I put into Monero these past many many years and You know, we've I think been kind of this more quiet Monero supporter because I've been you know We've been a multi-asset wallet since 2018. Although Monero since 2018, but haven't been as I think visible directly in the Monero community at events like Monero topia Monero con as I think we should have been because it's been one of our main primary assets of support And so we're kind of like call it You know making up for years of absence, you know as a little in the physical in-person events We've been on a few podcasts and whatnot that have definitely talked about Monero, but happy to support It's a community that has been building the tech that we're super excited about for many years I don't if you like when we first implemented in Monero in 2018.

It was like we said I've had such a small dev team and You know, we had gone from being a single asset in Bitcoin, which is much simpler to do than Monero to multi asset and I had a personal conviction I wanted Monero to be in our app and it was actually a Two flights to Europe for a bunch of conferences and back where I hammered it out personally I said I want Monero in this thing Our guys were busy on just like stabilization as it just launched, you know, you just want to be one You've got to like go fix a bunch of stuff, right? And so I hammered out Monero support in the course of basic a flight to Europe and a flight back you know Wow whom we had launched I think in like June of 2018 and Yeah, it's been like non-stop since then obviously part of it's keeping up with the Monero community because the the chain changes every year Sometimes twice a year and it's no easy effort.

Keep me up with the changes, but it's been well worth it The advances have been Tremendous, especially the first one in 2018 when even we got bulletproofs Came much faster and cheaper to use Monero and suddenly it's like I was that was a point where I'm like I'm gonna use this myself just personally. So it's uh, that's been held

Doug
Yeah, yeah. No, I don't know. A lot of people may not know like how OG edge is in terms of Monero, right? Like you, so you were one of the first Monero wallets.

Paul
I think, I want to say we were the first multi-asset Monero. I might be wrong about that, but if we mark, we are definitely number two.

I don't know who number one would have been, but yeah, this is June of 2018, so someone can look up, was there another multi-asset in a wall?

Doug
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I was intimately in the Monero scene at that time, and I don't remember.

I remember when Cake came out, Cake was the first iOS Monero wallet. You had My Monero, which is the first, essentially, web wallet, which people nowadays are like, no, don't do that. And then they had the My Monero wallet app. And then I guess you guys came out right after that, right? And you basically used the My Monero server to implement, I mean, you could get it.

Paul
that, right? Yeah, the server and the SDK to implement it. And we launched on day one, both platforms, iOS and Android. And so for once, people had a full like iOS and Android solution for Monero, as far back as 2018.

And yeah, leverage.

Doug
And so what compelled you like why were you like you said you did uh, you know, you made it like your You personally made sure it got done. Why were you so passionate about it at that time? What got you so amped up about it?

Paul
So we're already really closely aligned with a lot of the libertarian community. I have strong values aligned with the community of people that would attend, like, Anacopoco.

Libertopia was an event that was here in San Diego, a similar vibe. Workfest, right? I mean, oh no, was that your... I hadn't attended, but I knew a whole lot about Workfest.

Doug
Yeah, the reason I always think you attended Porkfest is because Edge has always been big at Porkfest. Like, I feel like it's always been a popular wallet.

Paul
there. Yeah, because we've aligned with that community, even though we hadn't physically attended until like two years ago. We were very close to the New Hampshire community, Mark Edge from FreeTalk Live. We had both sponsored and he had supported us as well.

He was a big fan of Edge as far back as Airbits. So a little bit of our history, we've been around since 2014. At the time, the app was called Airbits. It's still in the app store. Do not download it. It doesn't work. It's in the app store mainly so that people can actually still get access to the keys that are stored inside of the app. Wow. But that was a Bitcoin-only wallet, but it was very focused on payments, right? Had merchants directly to find places to spend Bitcoin. Had like NFC and Bluetooth payments. It was as soon as you launch it, one tap to your code scanner. It was all about that. We took the same underlying tech and then rebuilt it for Edge in 2017, launched in 2018. And so I think that that old history as Airbits and our strong alignment with the freedom-based, privacy-based community, although there's only limited stuff you can do with Bitcoin that's private, alignment with that community is what brought a lot of attention to New Hampshire and Porkfest. And so I'll get it to what time we finally did a couple of years ago.

Doug
Yeah, but also that crowd is very like coin agnostic, right? Like you go to pork fat as they're not just they're not just use. Yeah, they're not maxis, right?

So a multi coin wallet is like something that they embraced from earlier.

Paul
You know, Dash, Joel Valenzuela is a big Dash supporter. He's over there as well, regular attendee and speaker. And we were early supporters of Dash. I think we supported it on day one. You know, when we built the original Edge in 2018, they had support there. So I think we aligned with that community very strongly.

And a Monero is one that was missing, that I wanted, that community wanted, and the general privacy advocates wanted, and I'd always been supportive of that effort since we were AirBits. So, a little backstory, AirBits, we wanted to put privacy into Bitcoin early, early on. Really? The library that we used to implement Bitcoin, it was a library called LibBitcoin, right? I don't want to go down any technical details, but that library was actually written by a developer that rewrote the entire Bitcoin full node, Amir Taki.

Doug
I'll be your talkie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so.

Paul
Amir Taki had written the LibBitcoin, which was a part of a full-node implementation of Bitcoin. He wrote the full-node implementation of Bitcoin because he didn't like what Bitcoin Core was doing. He's like, we need to have a different full-node implementation. And by himself, he just rewrote the whole damn thing. Amazing genius that he is.

But then part of it was this library, LibBitcoin, which also allowed you to do stealth addresses and mixing. And so in our vision of the future of Airbits at the time was, okay, we want to incorporate those privacy features, so therefore we're going to use this library, even though nobody else was using it. But Amir Taki to build Dark Wallet. All right. So very early on, we were very aligned with the privacy narrative of Bitcoin. But then when you finally dive into like, okay, what is it going to take to do the privacy? What's the user experience going to be like? What's the compatibility like on Bitcoin? It's going to be like, it would just be like Airbits if we did it and we couldn't really transact with anyone other merchants, you know, would be able to support this privacy functionality. It was very, it's what I call like duct tape privacy on Bitcoin. Even to this day, privacy is duct tape privacy. It's like, okay, well, one guy does coin join, one does pay join, one does stealth addresses. It's a mess. You really don't know what you're going to get. And so when Monero came out, it's like, oh my God, it kind of puts it all together. Now, granted, you can't do Bitcoin with it. But when you're on Monero, you don't have to think, you don't have to ask yourself what's this guy using? What's that guy using? You know, do I have amount privacy? Do I not? And that is, I used to say, best way for me to describe the passion and drive for us to say, okay, we're going to get this thing integrated. We'll get it working.

Doug
Yeah, that was super early that you were thinking like that too, that you were actually trying to add privacy to Bitcoin back then because, yeah, that was- Yeah.

Paul
We had LibBitcoin was developed by two guys, Eric and Amir, and Eric had actually done a couple trips to San Diego to talk with one of my co-founders, William Swanson, on implementing the features necessary for LibBitcoin to A, be able to scale and be more stable, be faster to sync, things like that. And so we had been very, very focused on that.

And we only kind of, I don't call it gave up on it, but wound down the strong effort when we realized it was too fragmented for Bitcoin.

Doug
Um, when, when did you guys, um, start adding also Monero was the first privacy coin you added, right? Cause back then that's all that exists.

It was Monero and Zcash was, was around, but like, no, it wasn't even like you weren't even able to. Yeah.

Paul
usable in a mobile app. In 2018, Zcash was 99.99% transparent mode only. You'd have to run a desktop computer that would take three minutes to create a transaction. And so that's pretty much unusable.

Although I had early talks with Zuko, and so I'm not sure how much your audience is going to want to hear any Zcash history, but... Yeah.

Doug
I think it's okay. I like hearing it like people are angry at me because I'm like

Paul
You're one of the more like actually sound voices on my go

Doug
I know everybody thinks I'm like a super math, but this is how I found Monero, right? I mean, I was a Bitcoin maxi, but I was able to move over to Monero because I was open mind.

I was like Monero. So I always try to maintain the open mind.

Paul
the reason you know amidst everyone like shooting on zcash yeah like hey look it's privacy tech it's advancing our narrative and what we're trying to build it's right not to be the best from the viewpoint of like the privacy by default but hey let's celebrate some of the wins

Doug
we can get. Right. And they've come a long way. Like you said, that's why I completely disregarded it because of obviously the trusted setup.

And then it was just like, I was like, well, where's the mobile app for it? And you're like, no, you can't. You can't use it. You can't really even send private transactions from your phone. I was like, oh, okay. So completely disregarded it for years, but they continued to work on it. They continued to iterate and they fixed a lot of things.

Paul
And so the conversations with Zuko, I remember, you know, they only had transparent addresses. Hey, can you integrate at least the transparent addresses? And then we'll get it working. We'll get the private stuff where you can use it on mobile. And I remember that he had hit me up like two or three times like, okay, how about this? Show me even the path that there's even remote possibility that this private stuff can work on mobile and we'll start working on it, but we're not going to integrate T addresses, period, right?

We said we want to have a pure, like full privacy Zcash or nothing. Or it was kind of like the way I really motivated to say, Hey, you got to build this, you know? Yeah, you want to do it the right way. They actually delivered. I mean, we had to work with them very closely to build the full private SDK. But, you know, they worked on it, they delivered.

It's slow to sync, but most privacy chains are, but they like, they didn't give up. So anyway.

Doug
What, what, what do you guys have?

Paul
Not until 2021, maybe late 2021, early 2022, even though our discussion started in 2019. Wow. No, that's low. Many other wallets have implemented the transparent mode, Zcash. And they never went to the privacy mode. And I think that is the danger of not privacy by default. Even we're guilty of this, is that if you have a transparent mode, it's always going to be easier. When they say, oh, you know, the private mode is default in this wallet. It is the default in this wallet. I go, you know, but what's the easier mode on the chain? What's easier on the chain? If transparency is easier to implement, that is the default. Because that's what an exchange, a wallet, a payment processor, by default is going to do. It states that we're humans. We want to take the easy route, right? For sure. The least resistance. And if you do that, that ends up being what gets adoption, is the easy route.

And so with Monero not having an easy route, the privacy becomes the easy route. That's the only route. The only route, right. Becomes the only route. And so that is, I think, the core advantage that drew me to it. And so the rest is kind of history. And we're hoping that all the different privacy protocols advance, become easier to use, become faster, eschew the transparent mode, which both hurts user experience. Ironically, the mix of transparency and privacy, the multi-mode, is kind of like not a double-edged sword. It's like a sword that has two bad edges. Both user experience and privacy suffer. Usually it's a trade-on, right? It's like, I don't want a better experience than your transparency. But the user experience is actually worse, because now you have two addresses. Right. It's confusing. It's confusing. Like, which address am I using? Oh, I can only scan that address. I can't scan this address. And you also have the potential for weaker privacy.

Doug
It's just very good for us. Very good points.

Very good points. I mean, and that's something that I don't see Zcash really ever solve. Maybe eventually, like when exchanges don't exist anymore or something, like by definition.

Paul
And we don't care about the exchanges, which yeah, I think that that way that they will arrive Will they be relevant at that time or will people have just end up using narrow, right? I was you know, the DEX's will support in there.

We already know that's coming And it's already by default. So that's over race. Yeah

Doug
See, we'll see what they do. I mean, continue to pull it off the red while we're here. I mean, what do you, how do you see, how else do you view Monero versus Zcash? Right? I mean, because this is the big, let's be honest, this is like the elephant in the room right now. The Zcash freaking came out of nowhere. We're having privacy season because Zcash rallied, right? Like, and then everything else kind of followed. So you just gave us, I think, some great insight. And I think that's probably the most important point, right?

Is that Monero is private by default. Zcash is not. I don't really see that changing anytime soon, but how else do you kind of view these two projects?

Paul
Well, obviously the big criticism on Monero will be alleviated likely within the next year with FCMP, which is the how private is it, right? And I think the one thing that I've appreciated out of the Monero community, and I know this is kind of like where Edge, my Monero differentiate, is that the Z... So having interface with the Zcash team, I call them like the very sharp, incredibly intelligent cryptographers that you kind of want to lock up in a closet and just like amazing stuff comes out, but you kind of don't want them creating a product, you know?

And so the overarching product of Zcash is incredible cryptography, incredible like scientist stuff, but a product that is lackluster from its viewpoint of actually using it to pay people because they're so like staunch, like we want this like, you know, this amazing privacy at any cost that they throw the baby out with the bathwater from usability. So some key examples of that are like there is absolutely zero, zero ecosystem build out for anything like, you know, a light wallet server. There's no option for it, period. Even if you want to run your own, which basically gives you the same privacy as full sync on your phone, you can't, right? Why they did that, they'd rather focus on, let's make it even more private, you know, go from one kind of shielded pool to another shielded pool to another shielded pool. So they're putting their effort into valiant cryptographic efforts and they figured out how to remove the trusted setup. So one of their latest shielded pool, right, has trusted setup. So you see kind of like where that scientist, you know, mentality goes, but it doesn't go into that user experience side. And when I see these prints, not like the app and the pretty buttons, I'm talking about like the protocol level user experience. Another case in point example, like, you know, Zuko's new company or foundation, Shielded Labs, right, is receiving a bunch of grants to do a few things on Zcash, one of the biggest things is proof of stake. I know the Monero community is like, yeah, that's absolute garbage, right?

Doug
For the most part there's been a little bit of a debate, but yeah, I think by far most people are narrow or pro proof of work

Paul
Yeah, they're proof. We're not just pro. They're like proof work maxis. And so sure, if you give you a proof work maxi, if you're going to go proof of stake, right, if you're going to bother to do that, to me, there's two advantage of proof of stake. One is you kind of motivate people to lock up the crypto, right? So there's like that financial benefit, right?

The economic benefit. And the other proof of stakes finality is much faster, right? Like that few seconds finality, which is one of the big pain points of, admittedly, both Monero and Seacatch. I mean, how many times you spend some your Monero and you got to wait for you can spend it again.

Doug
Yes, no, that's a it's like Veneros grade in my my opinion Veneros greatest usability flaw is that that 20-minute lock that Sometimes happens like me. I use it quite often doesn't have as much but yes continue on

Paul
outputs, the hidden outputs and whatnot. The Schulze Labs is implementing proof-of-stake on Monero, I'm sorry, on Zcash and I'm like, okay, great. You're going to have proof-of-stake. It's going to be hybrid proof-of-stake proof-of-work. Am I great? Can we get fast finalities? How long will it take to get a proof-of-stake block? They're like, 30 minutes. What the fuck? Oh, really? It's two minute block time on Zcash and you're going to make proof-of-stake basically give you 30-minute finality? What's the point?

It was, oh, well, a Zuko, if you're listening, sorry if I'm throwing you under the bus about this, but I already did. I actually said this to you directly, so therefore this is nothing new, which is, oh, well, we want to make it where when people deposit Zcash into an exchange, you don't get differing levels of finality because one exchange will ask for five confirmations, another will ask for 15, another will ask for 20, and it's not consistent. We want it to be consistent across all the exchanges and so the finality will be 30 minutes across all.

Is Zcash for trading on an exchange or is it for actual use?

Doug
Yeah. Right. Like have you ever, I know, I know we see him buying Chipotle. I mean, his, he, does he wait for 30? Is he willing to wait 30 minutes for a centralized service?

Paul
which promises the finality by having people stake their token to promise that they're not going to double spend. Yes. And so this is the kind of criticism I lay on that project from the viewpoint of UX.

Re-cryptography, super smart developers, I haven't met people in the cryptography community that sharpens them, but the fact that this is their focus on a product level is where I think that they're a bit skewed. In contrast, even though it's privacy compromise, the existence of a light-walled server in an API to do that, and then with the upcoming FCMP switchover to being able to use the receive detection key in Monero and then drastically improve the privacy but still have very fast sync, that's tackling the actual problem of usability. Yes.

Doug
I don't think people really realize what the outcome is going to be there. We could get into that now, if you like, or if you have anything else further you want to say about Monero versus Seacash, or anything else further on that overall.

Paul
You know, I don't want to just keep throwing Zcash on the bus. So I'll kind of I'll end with what I call their.

Doug
You know, Paul knows his audience. He knows his audience. He knows how to not at least you're all one of them.

Paul
It's less about the audience, but honestly how I feel. I tell Eddy this, I absolutely tell Eddy this. Zuko will tell you, I give him a hard time about stuff, but...

Doug
he's got me blocked. He's got me blocked for years now.

He might block me out of this, but he actually, you know, not to go off and never, never land for a second, but he, he actually DM me a couple of years ago. Cause he was like trying to convince me of Zcash. And I was very respectful. Cause you know, I have like, I think he's, you know, a God in this space, right? He's, he's one of the OGs and, um, but then he got frustrated with it. He basically was DMing me to tell me that Monero is a shell. Like the privacy is a shell game, right? Cause that was like, you know, that's what he was trying to convey to me. Um, saying, you know, like it's gotta be perfect. Right. No, but say like the ring, ring signatures is flawed, which, you know, I don't disagree. Um, but, uh, yeah, then, then he, he ended up blocking me. I think he was, he kind of pinned the fact that cake was, didn't add Zcash. He kind of pinned that on me saying like I was the person that like was pushing for cake now, which I don't know. Maybe I said some things, but anyway, that's a, so, so Zuko, if you're, if you are listening, please don't block me, you know, uh, didn't be, you know, come on the show and I have an honest conversation. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. My God. That would be, I don't know. I don't know if the Monero community would be able to handle that, but I would, I obviously would love to talk to him. That would be amazing.

Paul
I mean, I just at least say that you are a voice of reason within the Marrow community to at least hear people out, right, you know, free speech, like or not like what you hear, but at least, you know, provide honest criticism.

Doug
I tried to get Zcash to participate more, I've officially participated in the Monerotopia conference and they're very hesitant, I'll leave it at that.

Paul
Cushion as well. I've been pushing it.

There's state and Monerotopia, and our Capulco, a lot of freedom-based events. And yeah, they've definitely been a bit more hesitant. And they feel like they're walking into lines. And then I go, you are, but you know, you've got sharp devs that can answer the hard questions.

Doug
Yeah, it would all it would all be good. I'll be good You know the Monero devs be talking to the zcash does it be freaking amazing.

Yeah So we got an XMR chat here the phase two tips 0.001 X more Zuko glows and the Tarka, right? All right. See this is this is what?

Paul
I mean, he's like, you know, radioactive.

Doug
I guess they're trying to say, you know, he's, he's a fed, which, uh, you know, I'm not sure I believe that rumor. Uh, I would love to see him on Monero Talk.

There you go. South Padre Tony. See there's a reasonable Monero bro. Yeah, man. I mean, like, like, hate him. I mean, you got to respect the guy. He was literally one of the original cypher punks working on.

Paul
Bitcoin, right? And probably the thing that people don't realize, like, you know, one of the things I do respect is he's very open ears. He's, you know, at least from my conversations with him, like he's blocked you. So maybe it doesn't sound like he's very open ears.

But, you know, I can get into stuff and actually debate him on things and I've and have him go, huh, okay. After like 10 minutes, okay, I see your point. All right. You know, and so I've had good conversations with them where we align and where we don't. And I think if people aren't toxic to them, you can actually get through in some of that.

Doug
So then yeah overall anything else to say between like the two your viewpoint of the two projects?

Paul
I hope something with default privacy wins. And so far, there's only one right now that is very likely, which is Monero, but I want something with default privacy to win.

Doug
100%. There will be a default privacy winner. Yeah. I mean, that's going to be a utility that's here in the future.

I can't imagine we don't have some version of Monero, if not Monero, right? Yeah. So yeah, I guess let's chat more about the wallet then. So we have full chain membership proofs that will... It's coming down the pipe. We're very excited about that. That's going to solve Monero's greatest flaw, which is the ring signature problem, right? I think that gets a little... Obviously, it gets overblown by the Zcash community and others that want to throw FUD at Monero, acting like Monero is completely broken because there is a potential attack vector against one component of its privacy tech. I always saw that as Monero just being honest, but they see that as vital flaw. But for better... It's going away anyway, right? It'll be a moot point. We'll have full chain membership proofs. But I think one of the things you want to get at is you're obviously very interested in the fact that that's going to solve Monero's sender privacy issue. But it's also going to come with other things that will make using the wallet more efficient. Correct?

Paul
So much like the Zcash community has thrown Monero under the bus for having ring signatures, which are not quite as good of privacy as Zero Knowledge Proofs, there are people that would throw an implementation of a light wallet server under the bus for not having as good of privacy as it did right now. And so in that same sense, with FCMP coming out and improving the privacy of Monero, it also is going to improve the privacy of the light wallet server, or the privacy that you get from a light wallet server.

And right now, the light wallet server can see incoming amounts to a wallet with FCMP and the new implementation of receive keys or receive detection keys. It won't be able to see any amounts, zero.

Doug
Right. Because now, so people understand right now the way currently you guys are using the My Monero server, which relies on the view key.

And so in theory, that server, not even in theory, it's seeing all the incoming transactions. But now you're saying with these new keys, it's going to be encrypted so that there's no way of viewing it even though it's being held on the server.

Paul
To be more specific, when you say incoming transactions, it sees all, you're right, incoming amounts, incoming amounts into your wall, but not outgoing amounts. It never sees the address that you're interacting with, right? So it doesn't know what you're interacting with. It only knows your incoming and the amounts. It doesn't know the outgoing amounts and it doesn't know the address you're interacting with.

But with FCMP, that will switch to it knows this is your incoming transaction, it does not know what the amounts are. And that's what I would consider to be the holy grail of privacy and usability, where we can rely on a server to scan for transactions or at least scan for most, do most of the scanning. There's still going to be some scanning that has to be done by the wallet, about 1-256th of all transactions will still have to be scanned by the wallet. That's like 0.4% of the blockchain. But you then you get a very high level of usability, but a very high level of privacy.

Maybe not as perfect as if you scan everything yourself, right? Well, like I said, don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Just like don't throw Monero under the bus in comparison to, don't throw the 16 ring signatures under the bus in favor of zero knowledge proofs, right? There's some advantage there. So similarly, there's still a huge advantage, especially user experience advantage. From being able to use this new model. To me, this is the holy grail of usability and privacy. No amounts. You don't know who you're transacting with. You just know that this transaction was yours and that's really it. And people can still run their own, right? The ecosystem exists where you don't just have a Monero, you have LWS, which is an open source implementation of the Monero API, which people can run and actually Edge runs those as well. And we contribute to it. We've actually contributed to the open source LWS. So making it faster and more efficient. One of the things that it was missing was being able to detect unconfirmed transactions. We actually contributed that back to LWS. Things like that are what we're trying to contribute to the Monero community, both usability and privacy improvements.

So yeah, we're excited about FCMP. Of course, I'm sure the transition is going to come with some headaches. Every hard fork is biggest. I mean, Monero has not had a hard fork this big ever.

Doug
this is since, at least since I've been involved, right? I mean, I guess when it originally, when it first added confidential transactions, right?

But that was like, I don't even think I was that, I wasn't there yet. That was like super awesome.

Paul
the one was bulletproofs and that was formed in 2018. That was a headache for sure.

That took us down for a month or two, maybe a month, right? But nothing that large. And so I'm pretty sure there's going to be some growing pains with the migration of CMP. But once you get past that with other pains, so forgive us and any other companies dealing with Monero during the transition period. But after that, we'll have a great system, great usability, great privacy.

Doug
Super exciting times right now for a minute like it like yeah, I hope people are appreciating this especially people are just getting into Monero I hope they're appreciating how exciting these times are right now You kind of already answered the answer will Edge be setting up their own Monero LDS since I believe they were using my Monero servers before

Paul
Yeah, we're running we'll be running some ldvs servers. We're also looking at letting people do the full sync model which takes will take time take bandwidth take CPU horsepower on your phone But if you want that like elevated level of privacy, you'll be able to do the full sync similar to

Doug
going to add so you'll have options. You could either use the LWS or you could just use your traditional own keys full sync. Thank you.

Paul
Well, yeah, that will become the king of a timeline on that, but it is in the works for sure. We'll run, not just run our own LWS, but we'll actually, we'll contribute to it.

You know, we already have, we'll continue to do that because we want, if people are running their own, then it runs well. All right. It runs well, runs smoothly, runs optimally. And so we've already started contributing to it. We'll continue to do that.

Doug
why are you then also adding this additional ability just for user choice or, I mean, what's.

Paul
So it's true to me for user choice, especially cause there are some people that I would say have frequent enough use of their wallet where they're like, Oh yeah, it's fast to sync. You have high bandwidth, high power phone, and they use it frequently enough. I don't think that is the average person, unfortunately, right? It's not the average person, but there aren't enough people that have that usage pattern where it doesn't provide a bad user experience for them.

Right. And so those few people will, we'll have that option for them. But for the majority that, you know, they might touch it once a week and may not have higher power phones, especially cause, you know, one of the big target demographics for privacy coins is kind of the, the developing nations. Right. Don't want to go where, how you're using your funds. And most of them have bad internet, low power phones. So ones ironically, that are the worst fit for privacy coins because of the way you have to sync. And so we want to make sure that they have good access to Monero as well.

Doug
Yeah, I mean, like I said, like Monerotopia, I think is a great testing bed for the wallets. So when people are out there and they're trying to sync and maybe they haven't opened their wallet... Maybe they are a power user, but still they haven't opened it. Even if it was a week, two weeks, and they show up at Monerotopia, and there's a lot of people there trying to connect to the internet, trying to sync at the same time. It's like, it's when you're really confronted with the usability issues, which I think is great because you've experienced it right out there, right? People are like, oh, I'm trying to do this right now, it's not working, this, this.

Paul
Luckily, I mean, Monartopia has been a great experience. We learned some subtle things, less than, you know, not just like the syncing. I think we learned like, cause people are actually using Monero. And I think when you actually use it, you learn some things about it.

So we learned like our URI format parsing was a little bit off by like two care. So, you know, it's like, okay, boom, we fixed it within like a couple of weeks. And so it's surprising what you will learn when you use. We have, when you come by to visit our office, you'll see our little snack bar that we built where everything is subsidized. Sounds really like California, right? Government subsidized, but at least a dollar probably subsidizes the cost, including the fat chips, right? And so it motivates people to actually use crypto.

And so the snack bar has found surprisingly a good chunk of like little nugget bugs. Oh, sure, I'm sorry. Yeah, a sync issue, a, you know, currency exchange rate issue, especially taking paying with tokens. The URL, I saw that's a really weird paying with tokens. And so.

Doug
That you are QR code issues. I know we were running into those like Like if you're in dark mode and you're trying to show your QR code

Paul
I remember that one. You don't actually have the right border around the cure in it.

So those things like that, we try to set up so people can use it. And since everyone at Edge has paid in crypto, they actually always have crypto to be able to use to spend. No, I love it. So, hence why I love Meritobics, people actually use it. Same with Porkfest. I can go everywhere. I didn't spend a single dollar a fiat the whole week with Porkfest.

Doug
I know that's that's that was kind of the inspiration with Monero topia too because I love pork fest so much I just loved just like that. You're actually using crypto People work for fridge

Paul
hour to about 14, 15. So we're not a big team. So enough stuff done, lean, mean. And I think we definitely swing hard for the size of the team as far as what we've built.

We've built a tremendous amount of tech, sporting tons of chains. And unlike a conventional, I won't call it conventional, but like most of our competitors, we have to pour in a pretty significant amount of hours in something that almost no other wallet has, which is unique key management. So the key management at Edge is a whole other side of our tech that no other wallets have to deal with that we do. And we still do with a fairly lean team. So very happy with the devs that we've got. I couldn't have picked a better team to work with over the past seven years.

Doug
years. Awesome. And so you said everybody's accepting crypto as payment. What, what, what cryptos is mostly just Bitcoin or anybody accepting Manera? Just curious.

Paul
Actually, no, some, some are that are more like contractors of the company. All right. And so we do have some, some contracts that we pay in Monero, um, primarily for like our, our employed staff. It's all Bitcoin, or we just recently added BTCX.

All right. And so BTCX, it's a token on XANO, which we met because of Monero-Otopia. Right.

Doug
Oh, it's like a wrapped Bitcoin on Zeno.

Paul
It's a tokenized Bitcoin on XANO that is set with the full privacy of Monero. I mean, it's Monero-level privacy.

And so we integrated XANO, gosh, earlier this year, added token support pretty much the same time, and then added Bridgeless support, which is a Bridgeless. You go to Bitcoin to BTCX and then send BTCX fully private and back and forth. Oh, awesome. So we kind of launched it with a little fanfare, like put a blog post out and put a little note in our app. But we got a shockingly large amount of inbound pings from the community about, wow, this is really cool. I can send Bitcoin privately now. Can you come on the podcast to show us how to do this? Can you come on this podcast to show us how it works? Can you make a video to show us how to do it? You know, I was like, wow, we probably should have spent a bit more money on announcing this feature because we're really, really interested in this.

Doug
and so no they know any any like like what kind of volume or anything that's that they're getting with it I guess there's no way

Paul
private, so, yeah, it still isn't.

Doug
I think the XANO guys on again before obviously they'll be at Monero topia They're very excited. They've been great participants the last couple of years.

So very excited to have them Yeah, maybe we maybe we'll have them on the show and I get because this I don't I don't really I kind of miss that the whole BTCX thing

Paul
Yeah. So, you know, when I first met them, they're the most compelling part of their pitch. Yeah. Obviously, everyone's pitching us to get integrated into Edge.

And the most compelling part of their pitch wasn't just that they supported tokens, like, okay, all right. So, you got tokens, right? But that they had that upcoming partnership and integration with Confidential Layer slash Bridgeless, which is kind of one in the same-ish project that would then bridge tokens from transparent blockchains onto XANO. All right. I'm like, okay, now that that starts sounding kind of interesting. Then we started researching that a bit, figuring out how that works and how the tokens on XANO, how private they would be and whatnot. And after that, we're like, okay, this is exciting. We integrated XANO.

But at the end goal was not just to support XANO with a token, the end goal was to be able to send Bitcoin and other assets privately.

Doug
So like F F freedom dollar as well, right? So is that

Paul
So Freedom Dollar is not bridged from any chain. Freedom Dollar is natively minted on XANO. But is that an edge? Is that an edge or no? All tokens are an edge. So any XANO token can be added to edge. A few are automatically detected. FUSD is one of the ones that's automatically detected.

Actually, it's one of the negative features of Edge is we have auto token detection across all EVM chains, Solana, as well as XANO. So you don't have to enable it. Someone just sends you FUSD or someone sends you BTCX on your XANO address. And it just shows up. No, it only just shows up. There's no like having to enter the asset ID when you know what it is, which is the user experience in the native XANO wallet and in other wallets that support XANO. I think bitcoin.com take you, like enter the asset ID or not. For us, it just shows up. Beautiful. Yeah, so happy to have met that team over there. I know it's not Monero, it uses Monero technology. Some of the original Monero devs worked on it, but it is a way that, yeah, people, okay, this is a long five minute answer to your question. What do people get paid in?

Doug
Yeah, it's it's funny that somebody's getting already getting paid in BTC X though. That's like that's pretty that's pretty cool

Paul
You think about it if you paid everybody, you know, I'm not sure how big the team at Monero talk Monero topia is, you know But if you paid everyone in anything like Bitcoin, you know any transparent chain Just think about how bad of privacy that is like, oh, you know you you as the employer know how they move the money Yeah, um as well the employee can probably ascertain how much other people are making right? Right, right and of this is bugged me from day one Like I was so principle that wanted to make sure we were using Bitcoin because we're a Bitcoin company back in 2013 14 we were but the same time it always irked me.

I'm like, you know, I can kind of tell

Doug
Yeah, like how am I gonna send them without them being able to go look at the

Paul
Yeah, let the chain do analysis to see what other people are getting paid and so this is the first opportunity to say hey You can make it so that people don't know what you're being paid and it costs you almost nothing to bridge it back into Bitcoin if you need to sell it All right, whatever to it swap it And even if that's what you did as soon as you receive you swap in the back in Bitcoin You all you already hide from all your other staff your your employer You know what you did with that big hook because it's automatically received private We have no idea what you do after that So there is a compelling nature to receive it even if you don't ever hold it as BTC X Right.

You just wanted to write out. There's still already a compelling reason to

Doug
Right. Yep. That's cool. That's cool. So what are your favorite coins right now for purposes of making payments?

Paul
So one of the coins that I'm a fan of for making payments, even they have a narrative of privacy, although the privacy is pretty weak is Dash. And the single reason is because of instant send.

That's the one that almost every other chain lacks, except for these guys are going to hammer me if I get this wrong, but I believe PIVX has that. It's either PIVX or Firo, and I think they both eventually will, whichever one I'm forgetting. I believe they both will have it, and they'd be the first privacy chain that both has privacy at the Monero level, although they're both not privacy by default. They're like, you know, privacy or transparency, but you can receive and mow instantly that you've received the payment.

Doug
That's because they had those master nodes and whatnot, right? They have a look at that.

Paul
The master knows are the ones that come together and say, yes, this payment, it has to have come from confirmed money. So if it was unconfirmed before it was spent, then it doesn't get instantly confirmed. But if it was, then you don't have to wait for confirmation. And from the viewpoint of payments, we kind of need that. We need fast settlement.

If you know the Visa MasterCard network gives you, even though there's like, what, 30-day clawback in credit cards, you have fast finality on the order of less than eight seconds. I think that is the requirement for merchant point of sale, is that whatever system you build has to be able to have finality in sub eight seconds. And anything after that actually will not get deployed at a point of sale. So realize that most of our cryptos don't have that quick of finality in just a few, like not even Ethereum's basic salon has got it. Dash, for instance, send and a few others. And so and

Doug
You know, right? Naddo's like, cries themselves of being instant, right?

Paul
I think that's the missing piece. So Monero somehow getting to that I think would be one of the last pieces. Well, there's a few more, right? It needs instant finality from the viewpoint of receiving a payment. And then it needs fast finality from the viewpoint of being able to respend. All right. So I don't want to have one Monero spend it, spend 0.1 and then now 0.9 is sitting there in limbo for two minutes. So the respendability, if we can solve that fast finality and the respendability, I don't know why we don't all, there's no reason not to use Monero.

And I would just deploy it everywhere, right? But before that, there's a bit of that open-ended question of like, how much should I trust that payment coming in, you know, before that two minutes? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Doug
Yeah, I know. I can't wait for the day that we solve that in Monero.

Obviously, that was part of the talk that came up with potentially doing this hybrid proof of stake thing to fix the finality issues.

Paul
I think the master of the model, I'm hoping the proof-of-work maxis can open up to at least proof-of-stake master node kind of model just for the sake of better finality pre-mine block. You're not putting all your trust in a bunch of proof-of-stake nodes. It's not 100%, but just like a confirmation, even one confirmation, you can't 100% trust. The more confirmations, the better.

I look at this as just like another confirmation that just happens to come earlier. How much can you trust it? Well, you can only trust it to the degree of how much Monero is staked in this little like master node setup, this hypothetical master node setup. So maybe that's your normal transactions at Monero topia. You want to go buy a car or a house. Now you want to wait some blocks, some actual little fashioned burn energy proof-of-work blocks.

Doug
Speaking of, I did just buy a car next month. Mrs. R. with an arrow, like, got it.

Paul
That was the first thing I saw when I went on an XMR bazaar. I was like, okay All right, I guess we're going full high ticket items here

Doug
I mean, you know, I'm not buying a Lambo, you know, I bought a 2013 GMC Arcadia with like 170,000 miles on it. But I bought it with Monero, it was like 12 Monero, I was like, all right, I'll take a car, I'll take a car for 12 minutes.

I could use a big ass car, right now, you know, my car's not too big right now, I always wanted a lot, you know, it's got three rows of seats, looking to make the family a little larger. So, say you bought it.

Paul
already had an addition this year, so I could move the need for a larger vehicle, you know. So I think we're stopping at SUV size so far, don't need the minivan.

Doug
But it was it was surreal, man, sitting there. And, you know, the way I had somebody there locally, Tony, Tony that helps us with the news on the show. And he's been a big part of the Monero community. He lived in the area. So he went, he scoped out the car. He met the guy. We took it to a mechanic for like a pre-purchase inspection. And then he's like Tony's like, all right, I got I have, you know, I have the the paperwork in hand. I have I have the deed or, you know, or I'm getting the term. What's the term for a car? You know, not the deed, the or yeah. No, what's the term for what the term is? The ownership of a car is not a deed. It's a title. I have the title. He's like, I got the title. He's he signed the title. I was like, all right, here I go. And he sent me the address and boom, I sent the Monero. That was it.

Monero sent a car purchased. It was like the easiest, easiest transact car purchase I've ever made in my life. It was there's no wire transfer. Yeah, it was amazing. It was an amazing feeling. It was it was a big moment. So, you know, I hear what you're saying. I want to.

Paul
that's where our crypto is most useful right now is for big transactions because those are the ones where the traditional financial system is much slower. Yes, exactly. Our transfers are slow and so two minutes is nothing.

Destroy this. Yeah, it absolutely destroys it. It's the small ones that you're still

Doug
struggling a bit with right right right very very good point so I mean yeah so any other thoughts on how we get there I mean I'm trying to do what I can do with XMR bizarre yeah any other thoughts from like a wallet standpoint like usability standpoint why do we get everybody using using Monero down to

Paul
To me, one of the challenges with, I'm going to call it Monero or crypto in general, comes back to my era in the Arab states when we tried to get merchants on board at the Bitcoin. The app showed all the merchants you could spend in. The biggest challenge was, to me, the point of sale. I've come back to this over the past eight years.

The point of sale, we have all these companies building crypto point of sale devices. I'm like, you're getting it all wrong. I'm like, what's wrong with this? It works great. And the amount of money is because you're a crypto point of sale. And so fundamentally, it needs to not be a crypto point of sale. I hate to say if we're not a crypto only world, it's got to be mixed. It's got to be everything in one. Yeah, it's got to be.

Doug
integrated into the existing POS systems.

Paul
Yeah. And right now, the POS systems in the past 10 years, there's been a giant switch over in the POS ecosystem over the past 10 years. It went from these old behemoth payment processors and point of sales like Microse. I ever gone to a restaurant, you have these giant Windows 95 touch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to work in a restaurant, co-own one in the mid 2000s. Those things just cost 10 grand per terminal. And most restaurants will have two or three of them. That's 30 grand for these terminals. And they're literally running Windows 95 on a 486.

These things are dog slow. The new order, iPads came out. Suddenly, you just write some software, throw it on an iPad, and you've got a point of sale. Square really launched this era. Now, you have Clover and a few other brands like this. But aside from Square, which now integrated Bitcoin Lightning, but only Bitcoin Lightning and nothing else, you don't really have any good crypto support. And everything is like, well, here's my point of sale. And here's this little phone on the side that takes Monero. So for a long time, I've been motivating. Try because I'm busy with that. I can't, we can't expand yet. We're only team 15. I've been wanting to motivate the build out of a modular plugin based open source point of sale, where the payment methods and payment providers are plugins. They could take credit card, they could take WeChat in China or whatnot. And you could take crypto through different payment processors, BTC Pay Server, if you want, which I think supports Monero now. So you could do BTC Pay Server, run your own or plug into someone that's hosting it. Whatever payment processors in the credit card space of which most of them are locked out of point of sales now, because they got vertically integrated with Square. If you're a payment processor in credit card space, you're not going to get into a Square terminal. You're not going to get into a Clover terminal. You're not going to get into a toast like with the restaurants. So I would love to see what I call, there's certain products in the ecosystem that I call grenades, right? You're throwing a grenade into a big established ecosystem. And I think an open source point of sale that supports this in a very open way is a possible grenade. And that is the grenade I think that we can throw to get adoption of Monero and other cryptocurrencies as well. Because it's all in one, they're already using it. And you can start with MVP of just like enter the amount and then expand the way Square did. I was an early Square user and I'll enter out swipe a card, that stupid little dongle you put into the

Doug
Yes, I was an early Square user as well. I can't remember that. Believe me, there used to be a headphone jack. I still have that. I still have a lot somewhere.

Paul
And so they started with that as the MVP and then they grew to a full point of sale, two screen terminal and whatnot. That's what I really want to see exist.

So if there's anyone that wants to contribute to building that, I would love to either would be given advice or I would commit to building like an edge side plugin for the crypto side of it with the whole point of sale.

Doug
but and maybe I'm not you know technical enough to fully understand what needs to be done right so I like how do we get it to the point where you're saying like square can easily integrate.

Paul
the the the

Doug
Oh, okay, okay. This is not saying just build an independent open source POS system that people would use, but then that independent system would then integrate with other POS systems?

Paul
It would integrate with payment processors. And so there's a ton, a ton of credit card payment processors that used to integrate with what I call janky point of sales prior to Square.

They've been cut out now. This is their infidelity back into the point of sale ecosystem.

Doug
No, this is great. I always say, for example, all these weed shops in New York, legally they can't accept credit cards, they can only accept cash and debit card. Wouldn't it be great if they were accepting Monero? It would be perfect.

Let's say this POS system exists. I walk into these places, I try to get... Why would they use this POS system just because it additionally accepts crypto? How do we make it good enough where they're willing to replace Square with this? Why are they replacing Square with this?

Paul
Number one, one of, one of the things I've come to the conclusion is you probably don't replace any merchants. Um, it's real. The switching costs is pretty hard. It's going to be like new people. If you look at it, the turnover in small businesses, huge, you don't have to convert a lot of existing long time companies.

You can start with the new entrepreneurs like, Oh, I'm going to open a new restaurant. I'm going to open a new coffee shop. When I open a new dispensary, right, I'm going to open just whatever. And they're starting from scratch. Start with them first. Like that's your envy. You can't start with the behemoths that already, cause Square has so many features. And as your company grows, you start using every little nugget feature, right? You can't build that right from scratch. So you start with something simple that a new business could use. Um, and if you, I need to do the research on this, but then the number of small businesses that open up like nationwide on an annual basis is enough. You don't have to fall over.

Doug
And you'll get you'll get like the early, you know, the libertarian small disorders, right? Who will be like, you know, I'm gonna use this instead of that, right? I could start that way.

So does any open source POS system exists? Is that like a thing?

Paul
Yeah, I did this research. You find like this thing written in like old-school Windows, you know Win32 DLL that you have to use a mouse to click on menus. It looks like you're running a Windows 95 app That's what exists right now. Nothing that's using water technology like time a lot of room for improvement.

Yeah Oh my gosh Yeah they've all kind of given up because of square and so The crypto gives an end and it gives you an MVP and also gives you a captive audience for the first adopters that one So like a coffee shop downstairs They won't accept crypto, but they use square and so they're like we don't only have an option Right if we caught them when you first opened up and had a usable system and got them on to that I think we would have crypto accepting coffee shop, right? And so you start small right start so small and then you can actually put in one of the things that I think has been Missing too is motivation to use crypto over credit cards credit cards Most people rewards that amount to about a percent. Mm-hmm merchants pay about four percent So they pay three and a half four percent Consumer gets one percent and you got like this two and a half percent that just gets sucked up by you know The trad-fi system Now you build this open open source point of sale Maybe one company has their deployment of it that can basically give like two percent back to the user Charge the merchant two and a half percent, right? Which is still way lower than they would get with any credit card processor I'm in pocket like half a percent and now the two percent rewards is better than you'll ever get So now we have actual motivation to use crypto You're actually getting some savings. You're not just doing it for ideological reasons But you need an in with the point of sale and that's what you don't have it in in the point of sale to offer These kind of rewards to the users to motivate them, you know, and then you do things like oh look Here's all the merchants that are gonna give you two percent back. They're all using the sale system Alright and using the same tricks and techniques that the trad-fi world has done with credit cards and rewards and know these Merchant lists like, you know extra word merchant lists, but do it within the crypto space

Doug
Yeah, that really is kind of the holy grail. And I've been thinking about a lot too, right?

And like you said, it's not... Because you see people like, oh, I'm working on a Monero-based POS system, but that's not the issue. We need something that's multi-coin and multi-transaction type, right? We need to be able to accept credit cards, obviously cash, right? It needs to be... It might all

Paul
need to have some basic, like, you know, product offering, meaning, like, what am I going to be trying to buy, right? Calculates tax, as much as the libertarian say, uh, tax and stuff, wow, so I want to go to jail, so here's the tax you're going to pay, and it might export to your accounting software.

So give someone, like, some of the basics of a Square terminal, um,

Doug
And then maybe we make this the Monero topia hackathon slash build-a-thon this year, right? Like the open source POS system for Monero.

Paul
I've started to utilize a little bit of AI to discuss what the architecture can be like, so I have an architectural framework already created for this as far as the plug-in modules and whatnot, but no code written. It's surprising quite a bit of time just to create the architecture for it. It's all asking if you're right, not a single line of code. I'm hoping to pitch it to you.

We have a developer meetup that shows up in Edge once a month, one of our CRM peers runs this developer meetup. Once I have the framework architecture, I want to pitch it as I can open source project people can work on. Seriously, it's awesome. I hate to say it like a gobble load of unemployed devs. For them to just sit unemployed isn't as interesting as for them to build up their resume by working on something. This can be a thing that many of them could potentially work on, and a good chunk of them are very prevalent.

Doug
they could vibe code it with with a

Paul
I mean, I mean, I think every developer needs to be vibe coding at this point, right? Even experienced senior devs.

Yeah. And so, sure, it'll be vibe coding, but you got to understand the code. So yeah, this is one of the little nugget exciting projects I want to see in our space to help drive it off. Yeah.

Doug
So my, my, my hesitance obviously is something I always, you know, thinking about as well, right? Because I'm here in New York, would love if people were accepting Monero, accepting Monero.

But then I always kind of go back to, uh, maybe it's better to focus on something like an XMR Bazaar, where you just build up a global community of the early adopters that are already like naturally onboard it, onboarding themselves as opposed to trying to get, you know, the normies to accept crypto as their POS system, you know, like, you know,

Paul
I think I think you're you're on the right track and I think we're actually on the right track without realizing it I don't think you get the normies with this new point of sale. You actually get the crypto Crypto interested merchants that just don't have a way to to accept

Doug
crypto. Right. And then, yeah, maybe five years ago, there were there really weren't any of those. But now there are those people.

Paul
Yeah, you start with those folks, which are the people that would have put themselves on XMR bazaar, kind of like the fat chips guys. Yeah, exactly. They show up at the farmer's market, but they've got probably like their square terminal. And the only reason we're able to pay Monero is because this is not at the farmer's market.

This is us placing an order with them, them sending a secure code. We pay it, they come to our office and deliver it. But if they're literally at the market, they don't really have a good way accepting Monero. How many of those are there in the world that we could onboard and drive that little extra nugget of adoption, which once you're paying in Monero, realize that's Monero you're not selling. They're accepting it natively, you're paying it natively. And there's a floor price that you're creating for Monero by having people use it. That's better than the HODL to me. That's circular economy. For sure, for sure.

Doug
Yeah, I was also thinking how like, you know getting somebody like a like integrating it into something like a square But not necessarily, you know having square needing to take any action But using the square API to build something that you know, like what's that?

Paul
I keep on that. Yeah. The most open to that has been Shopify, but even they are still you have to be approved by Shopify. Get in. Go ahead. Continue. Continue. Oh, yeah. No. What was I saying? Yeah. We can get some merchants on board that actually had that interested.

And I've run into a good number. They just don't have a good tool. And so the fact is, it's not a good tool. And there are some merchants that are willing to duel. It's just a big pain in the ass and they lose it. So you mix the merchants that are that have been jumping through hoops, plus the merchants that won't jump through hoops, but they want to take crypto. And you mix that with the motivation that once they do, now they could actually capture users that maybe have this interest in this like one and a half, 2% reward back for spending. I think we can create like this real circular economy and a network effect around this. And that has been what has always been missing is the wholesale. I'll keep my back. 100%. Yeah. 100%. I love.

Doug
Yeah, let's keep pushing that, man. Let's keep pushing that. I'm behind you 110% on that one for sure, man.

Paul
maybe we can hack something together in time for Miratopia.

Doug
That would be insane. Speaking of, let me quickly play a Monero-Topia ad, and we'll come back and we'll wrap things up.

I have, you know, we could talk about another, maybe we do round it out with the privacy season and we'll end it there, so here we go.

Speaker 2
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Doug
You remember that. You were there. You lived it.

Paul
Yeah, no, I think I had a good little one-second cameo.

Doug
Yeah, so thank you again, man, for being a main stage sponsor this year, super excited that you'll be participating at that level you participated in the past and you've been a great contributor in the past as well, just being a speaker being on panels. But I do want to thank you again, because it's just, it takes it takes a lot of pressure off of us when we get these main stage sponsors, it just allows us to really blow the doors off these events. So thank you, man.

Paul
I hope it keeps growing. Hopefully more companies see the value in supporting Monero-Topia and Monero in general.

There's a few that I'm pitching because I think they're a good fit for Monero-Topia. I'm not sure the name is yet, but he's like, hey, I think you guys would have a good fit and presence at this event. I'm going to try to get them out maybe to at least attend this year.

Doug
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Paul
Please. Thank you.

For your support in future years. And so, yeah. No. Thanks for hosting it. I know that throwing an event, I help organize meetups voluntarily here in San Diego, and that's a very small scale, and it's already substantial work. So doing a full-on conference event, I can imagine being, I can't even see the light tunnel. You know what I mean?

Doug
it's a lot it's a lot of moving parts and you just gotta you know you just kind of kind of roll with the punches at some point because it's it's not something that you could perfect especially the fact that we do it in Mexico City at that venue right it's like it's not like we're doing it at a hotel where everything there's a lot of unknowns it's part of it

Paul
that probably has done, you know, events like Monerotopia over and over again with the same level experience and, you know, staffing. And so, yeah. Well, at least it's not your first time around.

Doug
No, no, no. We love it.

We love it. It's kind of like having a baby, right? It's an amazing experience that you get those sleepless nights. You're like, I'm never doing this again. And then all of a sudden you're like, you know what? We're going to have a baby again. You forget all the bad parts, right? You filter it out and you only remember the good stuff.

Paul
brain of it. Yeah.

Doug
Yeah, let's round it out with privacy season. What do you think, man? You think the game's still on? What are your thoughts there?

You think bull market's still on? We'll still see more. Yeah. Is the privacy narrative still on the top of mind here?

Paul
the tough is like, you know, how much does privacy, privacy coins, how much are they trend with Bitcoin? Like they still have a trend with Bitcoin, right? We can't totally avoid that. But A, where's Bitcoin headed over the next year or so? Like that becomes a big question.

And then B, where's privacy relative to that? The same thing that surprised me, right? Saying like, oh, the whole never is around institutional adoption, ETFs and all that stuff. Possibly being thing that elevated the need for privacy and brought people's attention to privacy. I think as a community, we need to latch onto that while it's hot.

Latch onto the fact that institutions are what are driving the interest and like, hey, there's a danger in this, right? This isn't what was intended. You know, why is Bitcoin even interesting? Why was it interesting? Okay, well, let's take that and go, well, it's not anymore, unless we do this, right? Here's what makes crypto interesting. Privacy is a big piece of it, self sovereignty. So I think we kind of have to capture this. Where it's headed, I think, you know, that whole four year cycle, I used to think that, yeah, it's going to happen again, just to a lesser degree, I'm actually slowly getting more and more convinced that it's ending, right? That we're not in that cycle anymore.

Instead, that we're just simply tied to macro. This is specifically Bitcoin that we're just tied to, we're tied to macro. Less about border cycler, because maybe a lot of these newcomers don't even know the four year cycle. Right? Like, they're like, what's the four year cycle? What's the halving? They're just like, it's Bitcoin. It's been going up for the past many years. It's volatile right now. Why not even know it? So I think we might be trending actually away from this four year cycle.

Now the question is the macro, like, you know, going in a good direction or bad. Well, the number one thing is I think, like, the market is headed in a bad direction. But that also means that we're going to, we're going to can it print harder than the economy could go down? Kind of the question.

Doug
Um, yeah, they're about, they're about to turn on the spigot bay. I mean, so if that, if that doesn't pump crypto, then something's wrong.

Paul
right? It's known as a sponge of liquidity, right? Because it's so, so liquid and it's so accessible by everybody and everybody gets impacted by inflation globally. When the US represents, everyone feels it.

And so there's no better sponge than crypto. People can't buy stocks when you're, well, you kind of could, but barely when you're out in Africa, right? South America, but you can buy crypto. And I think how well we do when that spigot turns on in the privacy ecosystem is how well we get the word out of how this is what Bitcoin was built for, right? This is exit. This is what we built it for. The current incarnation with ETFs aren't achieving that goal. So I think if we can get that word out before the spigot opens, then privacy season just explodes, right?

Doug
I am saying I'm thinking the same.

Paul
a bunch of people that are not privacy folks, but they're crypto folks, they're waking up. I call it the crypto tradify people, the payment processor people.

They're actually starting to put some bags into privacy. And so just keep hammering while it's hot. Keep that narrative hot. So I think we have that chance.

Doug
Yeah, and me in terms of Monero, I've been kind of selling it more to noobs, right? As a hedge, if nothing else.

I think it's becoming the best hedge in crypto because it is the one crypto that's already large, it's big, I'm not talking about some small project, that is not as susceptible to getting co-opted as any other crypto. It seems to be the least susceptible to getting co-opted, and I think that's an important and unique feature, right? I think we've already seen that Bitcoin is susceptible to that. The ETFs and all that stuff, and it's not very likely that Monero is going to get added to an ETF, it's delisted from all the

Paul
It'd be an amazingly funny thing if it ever did

Doug
Yeah, if anything they would do it as an attack at this point. I don't know.

I don't know. Maybe it will naturally happen, but But but but my overall thesis being like Obviously, it's it's the you know I think it's the best privacy coin because it's the one that's here the most used but it's also just the coin that's least Susceptible to being co-opted which I think everybody should have a little little bag of that and be betting on that

Paul
We definitely do, and I think they should have a bag of it, and then they should use it. 100 percent.

You know, like, actually use it, because then you actually put that bag out of other people's hands as well. Use it. Replenish. Spend.

Doug
I mean, my solution is to that is if I just completely value everything. If I just hold only Monero, then I have to use Monero. When I take everything in Monero, then I'm forced to use Monero.

We paid you guys. Yes, you did. Yeah. And then I turned around, I got to use it to run the businesses.

For people that see that as a dichotomy, like holding versus using, it doesn't have to be. I mean, I'm not. The only thing is now I'm suggesting you got to be all Monero, but it's tough. Not the worst thing in the world.

Paul
the work. It's hard for some people to settle. What's that? It's hard.

I'd say it's only bad if you don't have that, if you can't get that much Monero. Obviously, a whale. Your money goes from $100 million to $50 million. Well, so what? You're still good.

Doug
And so I'm not well in that regard, but I mean the way the way you know Monero is pretty stable man And it just kind of it goes up over time

Paul
it kind of like it back headed slap of like saying it's been a stable car for the past eight years yeah you know and so admittedly it kind of has been

Doug
No, not financial advice, but yeah All right. All right, man greatly appreciate you doing this especially on a Friday afternoon I know I think you got to head off to a holiday party I got some some family things going on over here on my end too as well and Yeah, man anything else you want to put out there before we close it out

Paul
No. Happy to have you on the show.

I'm sure we're going to have some cool stuff to share with the Monero community, maybe come January next month. So maybe we can do another one of these and see what the markets look like, what privacy looks like.

Doug
Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, we can have you on Monerotopia show too, right? Yeah, maybe so maybe in January we could do that Yeah, right in time for Monerotopia. So awesome.

Sweet. Oh, all right, Paul. We're being touched. Thank you so much. Adios

Speaker 2
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