3 Ways to Stop Doxing Your Bitcoin - The Sovereign Computing Show (SOV009)

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Jordan Bravo and Stephen DeLorme delve into the importance and methods of acquiring non-KYC Bitcoin. They explore peer-to-peer platforms like HodlHodl, RoboSats, and Bisq, discussing their unique features, privacy benefits, and how to effectively use them. Learn how to navigate these decentralized networks to maintain control over your Bitcoin transactions while avoiding the pitfalls of KYC (Know Your Customer) regulations. This episode is a must-listen for anyone focused on enhancing their financial privacy.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
00:21 Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show
00:37 ATL BitLab Sponsorship and Community
01:41 Podcast Announcements and Corrections
02:46 Exploring Private Payment Methods
05:11 eSIM Data and Speed Test Results
11:11 Private Web Browsers and Firefox Controversy
19:21 Acquiring Non-KYC Bitcoin
33:01 Currency Exchange Dispute
34:26 Understanding Exchange Rate Slippage
36:11 Peer-to-Peer Platform Annoyances
37:10 Introduction to RoboSats
38:14 Using RoboSats for Private Transactions
47:14 Exploring Bisq for Non-KYC Bitcoin
55:16 Decentralization and User Experience
59:17 Final Thoughts and Tips

Transcript

Jordan Bravo: [00:00:00] A good example of when decentralization of these networks actually matters is, uh, a couple years ago when the Samurai Wallet developers were taken down. It had a chilling effect on the industry. You really couldn't stop Bisq anymore than you could stop Bitcoin because every person that's running the Bisq software is a node in the network.

Jordan Bravo: Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show, presented by ATL BitLab. I'm Jordan Bravo, and this is a podcast where we teach you how to take back control of your devices. Sovereign Computing means you own your technology, not the other way around.

Stephen DeLorme: This episode is sponsored by ATL BitLab. ATL BitLab is Atlanta's freedom tech hacker space. We have co working desks, conference rooms, event space, maker tools, and tons of coffee. There is a very active community here in the lab. Every Wednesday night is Bitcoin night here in Atlanta. We also have meetups for cyber security, artificial intelligence, decentralized [00:01:00] identity, product design, and more.

We offer day passes and nomad passes for people who need to use the lab only occasionally, as well as memberships for people who plan to use the lab more regularly, such as myself. One of the best things about having a BitLab membership isn't the amenities, it's the people. Surrounding yourself with a community helps you learn faster and helps you build better.

Your creativity becomes amplified when you work in this space, that's what I think at least. If you're interested in becoming a member or supporting this space, please visit us at atlbitlab. com. That's A T L B I T L A B dot com. Alright, on to our show.

Jordan Bravo: Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show. I'm Jordan Bravo and I'm here today with Stephen DeLorme.

Stephen DeLorme: What's up?

Jordan Bravo: Uh, we wanna remind you that you can boost into the show by looking up the ATL BitLab podcast on Fountain.FM. [00:02:00] And if you go to Fountain.FM, that's the site that you can use it in the browser.

You can also download it on iOS and Android. And we are gonna get you ways to, other ways to contact the show in the future. We are working on an email address for the show that you can email into, and we're also working on a matrix room. So if you do not like using Fountain or for whatever reason, you just wanna message us, you can do that in the future.

Coming soon. Tm. Um, today, before we get into our main topic. We're gonna talk about a few corrections from previous shows, or just errata in general that occurs when things changed as they often do in software. Um, we had talked about on a previous show in-person payments and the how, the limited options that we had were basically limited to cash.

Uh, because if you're in [00:03:00] person, you typically have to use your real debit or credit card. For, uh, uh, in contrast to when you're paying online, you can use something like a virtual card. We talked about privacy.com in a previous episode. If you want more information about that, go check out that episode.

But, um, again, we, there were no ways of paying in person that you could obfuscate your identity with unless it was cash, um, or Bitcoin. Of course, however, in the, in the time since I've done a little bit of research and investigation and I actually found that. When you go to BitRefill, which we talked about for buying, uh, gift cards, you can indeed buy virtual Visa gift cards, but you can also have them shipped to you as a physical card.

And so I am in the process of trying this out. The card has been shipped to a location that is not my home address, using a name that is not my real name, [00:04:00] and when, when it arrives. Hopefully within a week by next episode, you might hear me have either success or failure. I'm gonna take my card that doesn't have my actual name on it.

I'm gonna go to a coffee shop or something like that. And I'm gonna try paying with my physical card that has a random name on it that was shipped to me to a random add, or not a random, but to a address that I have that is not my home address. So, in other words, um, I paid for it using Bitcoin on BitRefill.

I have it shipped to a private address that I can pick up from and then, um, using not my real name and I, 99% of merchants do not check your id, you know, if you're at the store. When was the last time you were ID to match your card? Not for something like buying alcohol, but just simply to match your face to your credit or debit card, right?

It almost never happens. So I think this is gonna be successful [00:05:00] and I'll report back here with my findings. Pretty cool. I didn't know they had that as an option. I didn't either. So we'll see how it works.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: The next bit of erota that we want to update you all on is eims again. In a previous episode, we had talked about getting eSIM data privately from um, providers such as Mint Mobile, silent link.

And, uh, at the time we noticed live on the show that, uh, Stephen, can you go back to BitRefill? Yeah. Uh, we noticed that BitRefill is actually offering eims, and so I wanted to try it out, and I did. And so here are my results now. Whenever you're using a sim to test bandwidth, it's gonna be dependent on how close you are to the nearest.

Tower. That's, and, and whether or not that tower is actually the primary [00:06:00] infrastructure of your provider. So for example, if I'm on a, if I'm on T-Mobile right, and I'm near an at and t tower, it's not, I'm not gonna have as strong a signal because my bandwidth might, is, might be constrained. But any case for the, the variables that I could control for which were just staying in the same location.

I tried out three different ees sims and did a speed test on it. So I did um, bit, I did um, silent link. I did the BitRefill eim that I got, and I did mint mobile and my results were the BitRefill was by far the slowest. It was seven megabits per second. Then silent link was 40 megabits per second, and.

Mobile was about 400 megabits per second. Wow. So you have, uh, almost factors of 10 there. Um, I, I had been using silent link for the last several months and it [00:07:00] was usable but slow. The BitRefill one was, in my opinion, unusable. You don't wanna use, I wouldn't use that unless I was absolutely desperate in the middle of nowhere and had no other option.

You know, maybe you could use it for. Sending text-based messages. But uh, for anything else, even web browsing, it was a struggle for silent link. Again, totally usable. I lived on it for the past six months, I would say. Um, and it's very private and convenient to pay, but it wasn't fast enough that I wanted to continue using it.

And so recently I went back to using Mint Mobile, but I have an update for using Mint Mobile. US Mobile in our episode previously where we talked about decoupling your phone number from your data, um, mobile provider. Two of the recommendations I made were using Mint Mobile or US Mobile [00:08:00] and paying for it anonymously by using a virtual or a Visa gift card that you could buy on.

BitRefill with Bitcoin. So since I last tried it, it no longer works. I tried it again just a few days ago. Uh, and neither Mint Mobile nor US Mobile would accept my Visa gift cards that I bought on BitRefill, which is unfortunate. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that, that takes away a, a large, uh, or a really good method of getting premium cellular data for in a completely private way.

Uh, did you have any comment on that, Stephen?

Stephen DeLorme: Nope. Just that it's a bummer.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, yeah, it sucks. However, I did find an alternative that is not perfect, but still pretty, pretty good. And what, what I found is that Best Buy sells Mint mobile data [00:09:00] and Best Buys are great because they are everywhere. It's a national chain.

So if you're in the US, you're almost always near a Best Buy. You know, maybe, probably within. You're gonna be within driving distance of a Best Buy. Most people are. And so what I did was I went to Best Buy and I just bought a chunk of data. In this case, I did three months for cash and I just paid it cash.

And they give me this physical sim or the eim and you activate it with, um, random names and stuff like that. And you're good to go. And so now I have fast 400 megabits per second cellular data and it's completely private. And the thing that's a more of a pain in the butt about it is that you have to actually go in person to buy that.

I don't know if I'll be able to renew it, uh, remotely. I'm gonna give it a try, but I might have to go back and do it in person. However, once, now that I know that I really like Mint mobile because. [00:10:00] It's private and has fast bandwidth. I'm going to, next time I go and renew it, it'll be for a whole year. So if I do have to go in person, it's kind of a pain.

But if, if I only have to do that once a year, I'm okay with it if I get great privacy. But um, I will report back on that and let you know how it goes.

And that wasn't just buying data, that was

Stephen DeLorme: actually like registering for the SEM you were able to do in person.

Jordan Bravo: That's right now. As I talked about in the, in the episode with decoupling, your phone number, even though I get a phone number with that eim, I'm not actually using it.

Stephen DeLorme: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bravo: I willfully forget it, and the numbers that I'm using are my, uh, my VoIP numbers that I'm getting from, in my case. JMP. And that way if I ever wanna switch providers, like I just recently did when I was trying out BitRefill and Silent Link and MIT Mobile that I, my phone number's not tied to those, so I can [00:11:00] just swap in and out at Will, and my number is completely separate and I can keep my number and do whatever I want with my phone number.

Stephen DeLorme: Very cool.

Jordan Bravo: All right. The next bit of erota that we wanna get into is in our episode about private web browsers. We had mentioned Firefox as being a great option. Well, we have a news article that this just came out in the past week or so, and this is Mozilla re rewrites, Firefox's terms of use after user backlash.

So actually Stephen, this is, this might be the like reaction to the original one that we want to talk about.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: You see the first after fielding user backlash. So maybe that's what we wanna, we wanna dig

into.

Stephen DeLorme: So the response to backlash terms saying it's not using people's data for AI.

Jordan Bravo: So for those of [00:12:00] you who weren't, didn't hear about this.

Uh, the open source community typically follows what people, what organizations like Mozilla do pretty closely. And so Mozilla released new terms of service for Firefox. And a lot of people were suspicious of the, because the wording sort of sounded like they were suddenly making a legal claim to users' data that they previously weren't.

And so Mozilla, it seems, is trying to play, um. Public relations game now, and they're trying to maybe walk back their policy a little bit or, or justify it maybe. Um, but, but the gist of it was this quote right here, I'm gonna read, it says, when you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a non-exclusive royalty free worldwide license to use that information.

And so that I think was the. [00:13:00] Problem that, that people were pointing out. It's a lot of people are suspicious that this is paving the way for some new AI play by Mozilla or some kind of data collection play. And as we talked about in the episode on browsers, Mozilla's and, and therefore, Firefox's primary source of revenue is getting paid by Google to include the Google search engine as default.

And so. Mozilla has long, had a, the past several years have been that, um, have shown them trying all kinds of different moneymaking strategies and they, and nothing has really panned out. They've, they tried things like. Uh, Mozilla, VPN and A, the pocket service, which was where it, it was built into Firefox where you could log in and have your website synced and the whole Firefox sync account thing, and they had a premium service for that.

But all [00:14:00] of these various products, ideas that Mozilla has tried over the past few years have all flopped and been complete business failures. And so it's been interesting to watch them try to find other ways of generating money. Which is admirable on their part because if they don't want to be completely beholden to Google for all of their revenue, you would think would be a good thing.

Uh, the problem is if they start doing something similar to Google in, in terms of privacy invasions, whether that's data collection or advertising, uh, it, it, it makes people wanna turn away from them.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, the, it's hard to know what to make of this. I think, uh, I, I don't know. I, I feel like I see this language, uh, uh, all over the place.

And you know, on the one hand it could just be like some kind of, uh, 'cause it says to use that information to help you navigate experience, uh, experience, interact with online [00:15:00] content. So at least if we interpret this very strictly, it doesn't say. We can use this to sell it to advertisers just as we can use it as long as we're, you know, helping you navigate experience and interact with online content.

I'm not sure how, uh, legally broad that is. And, um, you know, also another thing too is that it looks like we have the, the CEO of, uh, brave, uh, trying to capitalize on this to drum up controversy and all that kind of stuff, which makes good sense from a, a business perspective. Right. Um, so. Uh, it, it's, you know, alarming and, but you know, it could also be nothing.

I'm not sure.

Jordan Bravo: Right. This could be a complete nothing burger and we'll keep watching it and report back if there's any major updates. I personally am gonna keep using Firefox. If anybody else out there is interested, there are some popular forks of Firefox for people [00:16:00] who either are distrustful of Mozilla or just want something that's even more privacy focused and we'll, we'll name those out real quick.

There's gonna be water. Fox is the first one. Um, they have in their tagline, get Privacy outta the Box with water, fox. And so all of these are gonna be very similar to Firefox. They're just gonna have maybe outta the box some more private options. It's probably nothing you couldn't do on your own with Firefox going into the settings and manually tweaking things, I.

But at least with these privacy focused forks, you're getting that outta the box as well as if Mozilla were to do anything shady with Firefox, like start collecting data, you can probably bet that these forks are not gonna pick up that part of it as well. So water fox is gonna be one. The next one is Libre Wolf.

Again, they, their tagline, they mentioned that they're focused on privacy, security, and freedom. And [00:17:00] then the last one is called Pale moon. Pale moon, one word or maybe two words. Um, and they're also based on Firefox and they're focused on efficiency, custom and customization. So they don't explicitly talk about privacy, but if they're basically Firefox without any new, uh, shady changes, then you can.

Sort of glean that it's also a private browser.

Stephen DeLorme: This,

Jordan Bravo: so have you ever used any of these, Stephen?

Stephen DeLorme: I have not, but just, you know, uh, eyeing the, the websites of these things, pale Moon looks like it was, you know, put together by like. Hardcore open source Linux users and, you know, has been, I don't know, it's, that's, that's the vibe I get from that one.

And then like the, the Libre Wolf and like the Water Fox both have [00:18:00] like, uh, incredibly simple and appealing looking marketing websites, especially the Water Fox one.

Jordan Bravo: I think Pale Moon was forked off of Firefox many years ago before Firefox underwent kind of a major version upgrade. And so they still have that old school look to them.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, yeah. But no, I haven't

tried any of these.

Jordan Bravo: The, there's one more special mention browser I that I have not tried, but I've heard people talking about it. And that's Floorp, FLO. ORP

Stephen DeLorme: Flooooooorp..

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, so it looks like the, the domain is flop app and it's another Firefox Fork. And, uh, I'm not really sure what's so good about it.

It, it also mentions privacy and I've, I've had a lot of, heard a lot of people talking about it, but, uh, [00:19:00] if you're adventurous and you wanna try out Flo, give it a shot.

All right. Anything else you wanna comment on the, the Firefox or browser topic?

Stephen DeLorme: Uh, I think I'm good.

Jordan Bravo: All right. Today's main topic we're gonna talk about is we're going to do a deep dive into how to acquire non KYC Bitcoin that's non know your customer Bitcoin. And for those of you who listen to our episode on private payments, we tease that we are gonna talk more about how to acquire non KYC Bitcoin.

We talked about how when you buy Bitcoin from a place where you have to. Uh, KYC yourself, where you have, where the company has to follow, know your customer regulations, they have to put you through a series of steps where you're supplying identifying information. And that's gonna be things [00:20:00] like your real name and address, your government id, phone number, and bank account in this case, because you have to connect some kind of payment system for buying Bitcoin.

And so. When you use something like Coinbase or even a Bitcoin focused app, like Strike for example, you, there's no way around it you, they will not let you use their service unless you are providing your personal information. And when you buy Bitcoin in that manner, you are creating a record in a database that they have to keep for regulatory reasons.

That shows an exact time, date, timestamp, basically your name, your information and information about that Bitcoin that you bought as the amount and the UTXO. So if it's on chain, there's a permanent record [00:21:00] of that on the Bitcoin blockchain. And if somebody has that private data, even though a company's database is not public, it's possible that it could get leaked or just um.

Searched via a warrant by government agencies, and that's gonna be permanently tied to your UTXO, your Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain. Uh, before we go further, I just had a thought, maybe Stephen you would be able to answer this, but when you buy from a lightning enabled provider, let's say you're buying from strike.

And then you are sending it out via lightning there. Since there's no UTX, since there's no on chain transaction there, there's no UTXO to tie to your name. Do you know how they would possibly do a compliance based tracking of that, of that bitcoin that you're sending out via

lightning?

Stephen DeLorme: Um, what do you mean by compliance based [00:22:00] tracking?

Like checking, like. Do you mean, um, checking like are you allowed to send to this address or invoice or whatever, or?

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. So I mean, I, I know from where I work where we sell Bitcoin, we, we have to, when a customer buys Bitcoin, they are gonna send it out to an address. Mm-hmm. And before they do that on, send that on chain address or send it to that on chain address.

Uh, we have to scan that address and compare it against a. OFAC compliance list, and if it's, if it's banned, then we are not allowed to send it out to that address.

Stephen DeLorme: Sure. Then,

Jordan Bravo: so

I'm just thinking when it's lightning, you don't have the exact same mechanism there.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, exactly. And there are some services that like offer, um, compliance checking and similar sorts of things for lightning payments.

[00:23:00] Um, but it's definitely more difficult. I think the, the, the. Like, one obvious way to do it is, um, just with like a lightning node id, so ba basically what I mean by that is like the pub key of the node and either the IP address or the tor address of that node. Um, you could certainly, um, just, uh, take a lightning and say, you know, okay, this, this is on the, uh, we're, this is on the sanctions list now, or whatever.

This is a bad guy. Um, but, you know, a a again, it might be, it, it, that's not a, a perfect metric. Well, the on chain one isn't perfect either, but, um, you know, it's still not a perfect metric because, you know, somebody could just, you know, a bad guy could just make another lightning node or whatever. Um, you could also have a lightning node that, you know, um, may, maybe it's not the final recipient of the payment.

It might just be like, um. You know, providing a route [00:24:00] hint to where the actual payment is going and all that. So it's certainly not perfect, but it would probably be done through Pub Key and IP address.

Jordan Bravo: Okay. Well, that's actually good news because that right there tells you that even if you're buying KYC Bitcoin, if you're receiving it over lightning, that's already a privacy benefit right there.

It's not perfect, but it's certainly better than on chain, I would say. Yeah, definitely. Um, let me pick a pause on the topic for a second and talk about why we might actually want non KYC Bitcoin. So what's the problem with just buying Bitcoin via the typical KYC fashion where I'm buying it from Coinbase or Swan or something, and then sending it out to my Bitcoin wallet?

Do you wanna to dive into that?

Yeah, I mean, I think that would just be, um, [00:25:00] the, the, you know, whole idea. We, we kind of touched on this a little bit in the private payments episode, but it's just that, you know, it's all observable on chain, right? So, uh. Once you, once you've identified, like, I'm looking for anyone just listening, I'm looking at men space and, uh, I'm just looking at Bitcoin addresses here in the ledger.

I don't really know who that address belongs to, but if I, if I were to figure out their name, then, um, I know this address belongs to, um, you know, Jordan, let's say, and then I can follow this around if, if I knew it was his and I could. Uh, not only figure out like, you know, trace back, like where it came from, like which address it came from, but I could also see like where it gets sent to in the future.

Right. I could, uh, I, I, I, I could see, I, I, I could just follow this over the course of time. So, um, you know, it's a different, um, it's a, [00:26:00] it's a different, um, kind of, uh. Privacy question. I think a lot of times when, uh, privacy, uh, like, like privacy with Bitcoin payments, I think and all, all that is a little bit different than privacy in other areas.

A lot of times, um, when you say stuff like, uh, you're talking about a private, a messaging app, let's say, um, people might say things like, okay, well I don't have anything to hide, so I don't really care if Facebook reads my messages, or, I don't really have anything to hide, so. I don't really care if the government is able to get in and read my messages.

Well, I don't think that's, um, a, a great, you know, viewpoint to have. Uh, I would argue that, uh, even, even assuming you, you agree with that boy viewpoint is fundamentally different than when it comes to Bitcoin privacy. 'cause Bitcoin privacy is, the question is more like, do you want the entire world to be able to observe your financial activity?

And that's kind of the situation we we're at [00:27:00] with the Bitcoin blockchain is that, um. You know, on chain you can pretty much see everything that happens and if somebody, you know, links a bunch of addresses to you, you know, it's not just a matter of whether you're comfortable with a, a, a single company knowing your balance or your employer knowing your balance.

But do you want, like I. You know, your, your friends to know. Do you want everyone in your community to know how your know your exact balance? Do you want like people you know, do you want your enemies to know? Like how many people are you comfortable with actually knowing, um, you know, your bitcoin balance and bitcoin activity?

So it's just kind of a fundamentally different question, I think.

Agreed. Great, great point. There. So we understand why we would not want to buy KYC Bitcoin. Let's talk about where we can buy non KYC Bitcoin. And the first place I'd like to talk about is Hoddle Hoddle. And I wanna go over this one first [00:28:00] because it's probably the easiest for people to get started simply because they have a, um, a website that you don't need tor for.

You don't have to install anything. So you could just pop open a web browser and get started right away. And this is a peer-to-peer buying and selling, uh, Bitcoin platform. Last I checked, they don't support lightning. So it's all on chain, which means you have your 10 minute or more wait time. But it's still a great method for non KYC Bitcoin.

You, it's pretty similar to like an eBay type flow. Once you've created an account and logged in, you're gonna see sellers. Let's say you're, you're looking to buy Bitcoin, you're gonna see a list of sellers and they're gonna have ratings next to 'em, and, and much in the same way as on eBay. You're gonna use your judgment to say, this particular seller has a.

[00:29:00] 99% positive feedback rating with 10,000 trades or something like that. And so you'd say, okay, they're obviously very popular and they're highly rated, so I'm gonna choose them. And then you, um, what they do, the Hale Hale acts as a escrow service and using a multisig, so. The seller sends the Bitcoin to this Multisig escrow address, and then you send a payment to the seller.

That's gonna be something like using Cash app or you could pay them with Strike. Um, you could also use something like Zelle. But I would recommend against Zelle because you have to use your real name and it's attached to your bank account, so the seller will see your real name. There's no way to obfuscate that versus things like cash app and Strike.

You can just put some random username and that's all they'll see. So. You send it to them, you hit [00:30:00] con. I've confirmed that. I've sent they, once they've received it, they hit release. And then HodlHodl releases the Bitcoin to whatever wallet you've entered. Um, if there's a dispute, of course HodlHodl will deal with it, they'll arbitrate.

Um, I've used this quite a bit and never had a, had a go to dispute, which is either really fortunate or a good sign that it's rare. Um. Yeah, I, I don't think there's any more to say about that. Do, can you see Stephen, whether there's a way to pay out over lightning,

Stephen DeLorme: like to filter by?

Uh, well, they do say, I mean, it does say in off in the offer details here.

Uh, some people,

Jordan Bravo: oh, look at that. Yeah.

Stephen DeLorme: So it may be that they support lightning. Now, I.

Jordan Bravo: I wonder if that's just a swap, like you can pay lightning and get on chain or vice [00:31:00] versa. I

Stephen DeLorme: think you might be right. Yeah, I think that might be what it is. Which at that point I wonder why you wouldn't just, there's probably submarine swapping services like bolts exchange that, like on that note, I mean it might be also just working, looking at, very quickly, I think it's Bolt Start exchange, is that their address?

Jordan Bravo: Yep. And they'll let you swap between Bitcoin Lightning liquid and like root stock. Um, so yeah, that works pretty good. So if you just need to swap between on chain and Lightning, this, this would probably be probably a simple service. I mean, they, their fee is pretty low. Um, hot you might get as. Consistent of a price, um, as, as, as you would, 'cause it's gonna depend on the seller and all that.

But if you wanna go from fiat

Stephen DeLorme: to Bitcoin, this is certainly a good [00:32:00] option.

Have you ever had

on, um, any issues using these types of peer-to-peer marketplaces? So, I, I, I had an issue on another. Peer-to-peer marketplace that I don't want to mention right now. But, uh, so I had an issue with like exchanging between currencies where it was like, okay, I wanted to buy, I don't know, it was like a hundred dollars worth of Bitcoin or something like that, which seems pretty straightforward.

You know, I was, you know, quoted a price very much like this in this column every year. But then when, and I think the method I chose was PayPal, so I was gonna send a PayPal payment to get the Bitcoin. I was really just testing the service to see, and I, I ran into this like really interesting dispute where, um, when I make the PayPal payment, it alerts me that the other [00:33:00] person is going to receive it.

And like, I think it was British pounds. And so they received the payment and then they come back to me telling me, like, kind of debating with me in the chat that like, oh, I didn't get as many British pounds as I wanted. And I'm trying to be like, well, um, no, like I was quoted in dollars. If I was, if I was asked to pay you a certain number of pounds, I would've happily paid it, but the, the order that I agreed to on the website was denominated in dollars.

I was asked to pay that many dollars. Um, and, and, yeah. And then the person like wanted to get into all this like, annoying stuff with me. Like wanted be like, I want you to like, you know, kill this order and start a new one. And I was like, this is really shady. And I ended up just, uh, like, can't, like they ended up just refunding the, the money to me over PayPal.

And, um, I, uh, we ended up just canceling the peer-to-peer order 'cause it was, we, we just couldn't reach an [00:34:00] agreement on it. But anyways, have you ever run into the any. Negative situations or like disagreements over currency swaps or anything like that?

Jordan Bravo: No, I've never run into that. That's, that sounds like there was some kind of exchange, like foreign exchange fee being taken out without either of the users having any say in it.

Stephen DeLorme: I think so. Um, well, I think what it was is it was just slippage, right? It was just the exchange rate being slightly different. So by the time the, mm-hmm. Um, by the time, I guess what was I, I guess I would be considered the buyer in that scenario. So by the time the seller got around to it and looked at it, it wasn't the amount of pounds they were expecting.

But the thing about it is that like, as the buyer, you don't really have an option. Like you don't get to. If you're typing in, if on your screen it says a hundred dollars and you go to [00:35:00] PayPal and type a hundred dollars, you don't get to choose how many British pounds that comes out. Uh, out as on the other end.

Right. Versus like, if somebody on PayPal were to say, request a hundred British pounds from me, then it would be, then, then, then that would be the way to do it. Does that make sense? It would be like. So it, it's like if it's imperative that it comes out as a certain number of pounds on the other end, then the seller needs to be the one to like create that invoice.

Um, it's like the person who like in initiates the transaction. That's where it chooses, um, that, that's where the exchange rate gets defined. I think

Jordan Bravo: I, I can't tell in the situation whether it was. The responsibility of the seller or whether the platform is at fault for not making it clear that there's gonna be a foreign exchange happen, in which case there's.

They should have laid out what the fees or the final price or the [00:36:00] final amount would be.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, exactly. I mean, the way I looked at it is the seller should have denominated it in pounds and not in dollars at that point. Like if they wanted a specific number of pounds, it should have been denominated pounds.

But yeah, anyways, I think that's just, that's looking at some of the edge cases and kind of annoyances that some of these peer-to-peer platforms can have. So it might be that, you know, um. You know, you just look out for that and like make sure that when you're using the stuff that the person is, you know, actually expecting dollars and um, that that's what they want on the other end of that trade.

I think if you're especially, and especially for like some of this stuff, I see some of these are like denominated and like Tether and so if you're dealing with Tether, I don't really think you can really, you probably can't really go wrong with that. Um. The, the, and I think if you're using Cash App, uh, you also probably can't go wrong with that because I don't even think that's available.

I'm not even sure it's available in Europe. I might be wrong on that. It's, it's, the [00:37:00] tricky one is platforms like PayPal, which support a wide range of currencies, so just something to keep in mind.

Jordan Bravo: I, yeah, good to know.

Okay. Well the next one we don't wanna talk about, the next peer-to-peer non KYC service or app to use is, is RoboSats. This happens to be my particular favorite.

Um, you do have to have a TOR enabled browser. If you're using Brave, that would work. Also, the Tor browser, um, you can u do this on mobile and then in addition, Android has a native mobile app for robo sets. I don't know if they're gonna be able to come out with one on iOS anytime soon because of IOS's.

There, there's a ongoing problem with mobile app devs where iOS. Is notorious for killing background processes. So if you have something that you need to be running in the background, it's not really possible to keep it going, um, [00:38:00] unless you do some kind of weird janky tricks. So it sounds like right now there's no immediate plan for robo sets to be an iOS native app, but if you are on Android, you could go ahead and take advantage of that.

So RoboSats is another one of these peer-to-peer marketplaces. And when you. Create an account. It's actually an ephemeral account. They encourage you to spin up a new account every time you, you start robos, and so it'll automatically generate an account for you. You can copy and paste a token string that will, if you ever need to come back and recover your account, sign in again.

You can do that. Otherwise it just will generate a new one for you. So that's one level of privacy right there. The other level of privacy you're getting that we just talked about is it's over tor. There's no option to access it over a clearnet. So by using Tor, it is obviously a little bit slower because that's generally how Tor is is, [00:39:00] but it's also a lot more private.

And the other thing about robos that makes it one of the best is that it's decentralized. So it's gonna be more resilient to being shut down in the future, uh, versus compared with if it were a, uh, single point of failure. They've recently, in the past couple years, taken the steps to have about five or six different, they call 'em coordinators.

So it's actually running on several different servers around the world, geographically distributed and. For those of you who are watching, you can see Stephen's going through the onboarding flow here, where it generates an identity and it gives you a name, um, and a, a cool looking robot to go with it. And then when you, when you get to this screen, you can click on offers or create.

So if you wanna just see the existing offers, go ahead and click on the offers. And this is where you'll see all the [00:40:00] stuff that's for, for sale. For sale and people who are buying. So, um, Stephen, if you scroll up a little bit, you'll be able to see the filters.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Let me hide the unsafe thing.

Okay.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. So what I would do is, um, yeah, I wanna buy, and then I'm gonna select dollars.

And in this case, this is how you're gonna avoid one of those problems like you encountered Stephen, where you're, it's, it's, uh, using the wrong currency. And then for method. The two I've had the most success with are Strike and Cash app. I like, I like Strike. I've had a lot of sellers tell me that they like Strike the best because there's fewer fraud attempts on it.

That could be by virtue of the fact that it's just a, a small, has a smaller user base. You know, not as many people know about Strike compared with Cash App, so there's fewer scammers on it. But in any case. [00:41:00] Um, what I would do then is click on the premium column, sort it by how much they're charging over the typical market price.

And, and then, um, I would just choose, typically I'm gonna choose the cheapest one, which is at the top. And you could see right here that, that this seller accepts both cash app and strike. And he, there is one. Caveat with, with robos, if you haven't used it before, you are gonna need to already have some Bitcoin to be able to lock it up in, in a bond.

And you could see where it says the, uh, where it doesn't say the bond amount. Can you go back to offers?

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: See if you can find that same one. You might have tosort it.[00:42:00]

Stephen DeLorme: Uh, I think it was this one right here.

Jordan Bravo: Hmm.

Stephen DeLorme: CashApp strike 1.8% premium.

Jordan Bravo: Maybe maximize this thing in the bottom left quarter. There's a a square box icon that will. Enlarge this whole window.

Stephen DeLorme: Uh, hold on one second. I don't see that actually. You said in the lower left.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, but um, you see, you see smart ya 8, 6, 7. The last

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Oh,

I see.

Bond. There you go.

Jordan Bravo: Okay, so it says bond and then 2%.

What that means is however much you're buying, if you're buying, let's say you're buying a hundred thousand SATs, you're gonna have to pay, lock up 2% of [00:43:00] that and you get it back. That bond, both, both the seller and the buyer, have to put in a bond, and that's just to prevent either party from abandoning the trade.

So you will get that back as long as the trade goes through, and even if. You both mutually cancel the trade, you'll get it back. The only time you wouldn't get the bond back is if you try to cheat and they arbitrate against you, or if you completely abandon the trade. Hmm. So, um, in the amount column, you could see how much they are willing to sell.

So if you wanted to buy somewhere between a hundred dollars and $220 worth of Bitcoin, you would click that one. But let's say you wanted a lot more. Well, you'd need to drop down to that next seller 'cause he's selling up to $4,000 worth of Bitcoin.

Stephen DeLorme: I see.

What's the difference between the host and the, I did not mean to back out there. I,[00:44:00]

hold on. Let get back into there. Doing it live. Um, what, what's the difference between the robot and the host?

Jordan Bravo: Okay, so the, the robot is the seller or buyer. Uh, the host is one of the coordinating servers. So like I was saying, there's about five different coordinator servers. Um, there's a way to bring them all up to, I believe, yeah, the big lake.

That's the host, AKA coordinating server. So it says become, becoming a robo sets. Ooh, that is in Portuguese. Becoming a RoboSats coordinator represents boosting intrinsic values of decentralization and economic freedom. RoboSats solves the problem of KYC and loss of privacy that that big exchanges are forced to comply with.

I believe that decentralizing the lightning nodes will adv enhance the robustness of the tool, allowing more users to join. I'm excited to be part of this new phase of growth. So [00:45:00] that's the description from the Robos project about. Why they are decentralizing the coordinator server. So originally there was only one coordinator server that was run by the, the project creator, and now it's uh, there's five or so of them and they are not run by the co the project maintainer.

Stephen DeLorme: Hmm, interesting.

Yeah.

And each one

can,

Jordan Bravo: or

maybe one of them still is.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. Pretty cool.

Jordan Bravo: If you, if you click on, in the bottom right, there's a more tab. Yeah. I think that might show all the, there's somewhere that shows the list of, uh, different hosts, but it's not super important.[00:46:00]

Stephen DeLorme: I'm not sure.

Jordan Bravo: Oh,

Stephen DeLorme: oh, here we go. Here's somewhere. It's in under the settings.

Jordan Bravo: There it is.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. The big lake, temple of SATs, Bitcoin, Venito, and over the moon.

Jordan Bravo: Yep.

And so you can disable or enable them if you wanna hide one or more.

Stephen DeLorme: Very cool.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, so I've, I've had great success with this. I've been using RoboSats for a couple years now, and once you do it the first couple times and you, you figure out the flow, you know, the first time it's new, so you're learning, you have to figure out the UI and how do I lock up SATs.

But once you've got it down, it takes me maybe five minutes and I've got non KYC Bitcoin, so it's really fast. It's over lightning. Um, everybody's very responsive and you have escrow protection from getting [00:47:00] scammed. So highly recommend it. And, um, that's all I have to say about this one.

Stephen DeLorme: Where should we go next?

Jordan Bravo: All right. The last non KYC place to buy Bitcoin is gonna be bis, that's BISQ. And Bisq is a little bit more involved simply for the fact that you can't use it in a browser. You have to actually download it to your desktop or laptop computer. They don't have a mobile option. But once you have it installed, if you go to Bisq Network, they've got pretty good documentation and once it's installed, it uses TOR under the hood.

So you've got PRI great privacy there, and similar to RoboSats, you're gonna have to start out with an amount of Bitcoin because it's gonna use that as a bond to prevent people from cheating [00:48:00] or trying to scam each other. So again, if you need to get that first bit of Bitcoin. Recommended ways to get it are huddle.

Huddle, like we talked about earlier, or talking to somebody at a meetup, a local meetup, and getting some face to face Bitcoin. Um, or you could even buy some KYC Bitcoin just to use as your bond and then keep that separate and start your non KYC stack using one of these methods we're talking about today.

So Bisq have been around a long time. They recently. Underwent a brand new major version so that they have Bisq two. Um, keep an eye out for Bisq two if you are trying this out, because that's, that's the, um, route that you want to go. They still have BIS one running because it's the legacy network and they don't wanna shut it off.

But Bisq 2 was completely revamped and made to be a lot more user friendly and easier to use in general. [00:49:00]

Stephen DeLorme: And, but it's still like a separate piece of software that you download and run on your computer, right?

Jordan Bravo: That's right. Oh, you know what, I take back what I just said.

Stephen DeLorme: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bravo: You no longer have to have, you, no longer have to start out with an amount of Bitcoin to get started.

They have something called bis Easy as part of BIS 2.0. You see up, up at the top in the header, there's a, I'm on bis Easy. I'm on there right now. Okay, cool. Bis Easy was Law launched in March, 2024 as the first BIS Bisq 2 trade protocol. Designed, especially for new and novice Bitcoin buyers to get their first Bitcoin in a safe, private, and self custodial way.

So that was one of the major complaints with Bisq was that for new users it was hard 'cause you have to start out with Bitcoin to use as a bond. Uh, you kinda like a security deposit. And so with Bisq two, they've now made it an option where you can buy from certain buyers without [00:50:00] needing any kind of collateral.

Stephen DeLorme: Hmm. That's cool.

Jordan Bravo: So if you've, if any of you listening or watching have tried Bisq in the past and felt it a little too cumbersome, it's undergone a huge change. So maybe give it another shot and see if it's your liking nowerratays.

Stephen DeLorme: Do you know why it requires this like other application to run?

You mean Bisq two versus Bisq one?

Well, they both require us to download like a piece of software that runs on the computer.

Right,

Jordan Bravo: Right.

Stephen DeLorme: I guess I was just curious about like what, why that design decision, why does it need like its own, um, its own piece of software to run?

Jordan Bravo: As opposed to running in a TOR browser, for example.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Yeah. I mean just, you know, we have these really complicated web applications. We got stuff like RoboSats where it's like all the order book stuff [00:51:00] can kind of happen in the web browser there. Like what's fundamentally different about Bisq that makes it need its own compiled software binary that you have to run.

Jordan Bravo: I don't have a, a perfect answer for you, but I do know that it was written in Java and, uh, Bisq is a lot older than robos. Right. So, yeah, when Bisq first was, was created, I don't think we had the technology to create the same rich web applications that we do now. You know, it wasn't possible to do the same kinds of things in the browser.

Uh, so I think that drove the design decisions back then and now I think the code base is so extensive that they don't wanna do a complete rewrite from scratch. I think they're just building on what they already have. So I. It might be a technical limitation. Mm-hmm. Uh, but I, that's just a guess on my part.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. I just curious. I know, I, I, it is kind of like [00:52:00] its own network protocol too, isn't it? Like, aren't there, like the, the Bisq servers and all that, don't they have like their own like little, uh, little protocol language they speak to each other or something like that?

Jordan Bravo: You could be right. Uh, um, it's. Go ahead.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, I was just gonna say that's, I think that that would be my only guess is why that might be the case. That it's kind of like running a Bitcoin node or a lightning node. Like you need this piece of software that's like capable of speaking whatever protocol and like talking to other nodes on the network.

Jordan Bravo: Hmm.

That makes sense.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, I don't know. It might be a, a fun UX thing. Uh, at some point if somebody could make like a wasm client or like, you know, some kind of yeah, like wasm binary that could like run as part of like a web application that could still talk to bis and it might, uh, might make the like onboarding to Bisq a little easier, but I'm not sure.

I'm [00:53:00] just spitballing ideas right now.

Jordan Bravo: That would be cool. I would say the major thing is. Whether or not Java can compile to Wasm and that's web assembly for those of you who don't know what we're talking about.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I mean, yeah, you know, easier said than done, right? Like if, if this community's, you know, stuff is already built around Java and all that, that's a, a lot of code to write.

It would, it would have to be like a brand new client or something like that, probably.

Jordan Bravo: A feature that I would like to see from Bisq, and I know that this has been requested a lot in their feature request. Forum is the ability to have a, to decouple the sort of demon that has to always be running from the GUI client so that you could have the demon running on your server, like let's say with your Bitcoin node.

And then the GUI client that you can access via a [00:54:00] browser that way. 'cause the way it currently is, at least the last time I used Bisq. One of the annoying parts of it is that Bisq has to be running. Yeah. In order for you to be able to transact or interact with the network, and so you have to leave your computer on, right?

You can't let it go to sleep or it's gonna cut off. And so if you had that ability to separate, decouple the, the client and server and you could put the server on your, always on server, let's say where your Bitcoin node is running, then you could not worry about having to. Turn it off and on. It's just gonna be always running in the background, and you can access it from your laptop, your mobile browser, whatever.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, that, that, that explains it right there. It has to always be running. That's probably why it needs its own application. Like I, I haven't studied this protocol, you know, at, at all As, as evidenced by. Um, how many questions I have and how, you know, little I know about it, but it sounds like if they have something that [00:55:00] need, like a daemon that needs to be running all the time, then that means that like, I don't know it need it, it just, it, it sounds like it needs very, very frequent state updates from the other, like what's called a Bisq nodes on the network.

So, yeah. That, that's probably,

Jordan Bravo: Oh, you're

right. And, and the node, a Bisq node is the right way to describe it because. Unlike RoboSats, for example, or HodlHodl, it's completely peer-to-peer. There is no centralized server, so BIS might actually be the most resilient and decentralized of the services we're talking about, but.

The downside is that you do have to have these nodes that are always on in order to be part of the network. And so that's why it would be great if you could decouple the client from the server.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, I agree. Like it would be kind of like on the Bitcoin side of things, we're really getting into the weeds here and this is more philosophy than actionable cyber and computing advice, I think.

But, uh, it's interesting for me, like on the Bitcoin side of things, it's [00:56:00] like obviously running a Bitcoin node is the. The most sovereign way of doing it. But there's also these other options for, you know, different situations and people who need it, right? Like you could use an electrum server, so you could just get your block bitcoin block data from somebody else's node.

Um, you could also have multiple electrum servers to find like some, some Bitcoin software supports that, where you can kind of request block data and transaction data from multiple different electrum servers. So if you don't trust. Want to trust one of them. You can, you know, just sample from a couple different ones.

And then there's also stuff like compact block filters and like neutrino and stuff like that that, um, you know, allow you to kind of not run a full Bitcoin node but just kind of selectively get block data, block filter data. Um, so, uh, yeah, there, there's just a lot more options out there in terms of how we get Bitcoin block data.

There's a lot more work that's been [00:57:00] done on that. Um. Uh, but it sounds like with Bisq it's still kind of, it is sounding like it has this still more like you need to run a full node approach. Like, it sounds kind of like it, it's where Bitcoin itself was, you know, in the early days where it's like, you know, everyone using Bitcoin in 2010 was probably running a Bitcoin node, right?

So it's like every and, and so like similarly today, anybody using BIS is running a Bisq node and there's not that like. Flexibility in terms of how you can interact with the protocol, I guess.

Jordan Bravo: Right? And you have, so you get decentralization with the trade off of a more difficult user experience.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, that makes sense.

Jordan Bravo: And for those who might think, this all sounds very theoretical. A good example of when decentralization of these networks actually matters is, uh, a couple years ago when the Samurai Wallet developers [00:58:00] were taken down. It had a chilling effect on the industry. A lot of people, a lot of entities in the US that were Bitcoin related had to stop doing business in the us, and one of those entities was Agora Desk.

And Agora desk was a KYC free Bitcoin peer-to-peer exchange, similar to Hoddle Hoddle. But, um, they were a great source, and I had used them a lot in the past, but, but sadly, they had to shut down just because they were scared of the legal implications. And so the reason that they were vulnerable was that they were a single, centralized server.

Mm-hmm. And so if the authorities came knocking, it would be trivial for them to shut them down, whereas bisq. Uh, I mean, this thing has been going on for a long, long time. I can't remember the exact year it started, but it's, it's very resilient. The only way that you could, you, you really couldn't stop Bisq anymore than you could stop Bitcoin because every person that's running the Bisq software [00:59:00] is a, is a node in the network.

And so in the same way that you would have to go out and shut down every single Bitcoin node in the world to stop Bitcoin, you would've to go out and shut down every single Bisq node in the world to stop people from trading on Bisq.

Stephen DeLorme: Hardcore.

Jordan Bravo: Well, that's all we have for buying Bitcoin in a non KYC fashion. If there's anything you listening or watching would like to comment on regarding that topic, you know, tell us boost in, did you, have you used non KYC Bitcoin exchanges before? Do you have any non KYC Bitcoin? Oh, one last thing I'd like to throw out there a pitfall to avoid.

When you are buying non KYC Bitcoin, it's important to keep track of the Bitcoin that you have. That's non KYC and the Bitcoin that you have that you bought from a KYC exchange. So make sure you keep those separate. If you mix 'em together, you've tainted your non KYC [01:00:00] Bitcoin and now. You've kind of lost that privacy.

So anywhere that you send it, it's going to still have the same privacy downsides as the KYC Bitcoin. So I just wanted to put that out there in case anybody is new to this topic.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, absolutely. I agree.

All right, so boost in, let us know what you think.

Well, alright everybody, thanks a lot for listening and we'll see you next time. Catch you later.

Hey, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to learn more about anything that we discussed, you can look for links in the show notes that should be in your podcast player, or you can go to atlbitlab. com slash podcast. On a final note, if you found this information useful and you want to help support us, you can always send us a tip in Bitcoin.

Your support really helps us so that we can keep bringing you content like this. All right. Catch you [01:01:00] later.

3 Ways to Stop Doxing Your Bitcoin - The Sovereign Computing Show (SOV009)

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

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