LETS TALK BITCOIN

Episode 90 Not About Gox

Participants:

Adam B. Levine (AL) Host
Stephanie Murphy (SM) Co-host
Jonathan Mohan (JM) LTB Correspondent
Lamar Wilson (LW) Founder of Will Love LLC, Cycle of Goodness cooperative & Pheeva
wallet
Lafe Taylor (LT) Founder of Will Love LLC, Cycle of Goodness cooperative & Pheeva wallet
Matt Corallo (MC) Bitcoin developer
Michael W. Dean (MD) Host of Freedom Feens radio show and podcast & FreeSpeechMe
promoter
Jeremy Rand (JR) FreeSpeechMe developer



Today is March 8
th
2014 and this is Episode 90.

This program is intended for informational and educational purposes only.
Cryptocurrency is a new field of study. Consult your local futurist, lawyer, broker,
investment advisor and bank before making any investment decisions for yourself.

AL: Welcome to Lets Talk Bitcoin, a twice weekly show about the ideas, people and
projects building the digital economy and the future of money. My name is Adam B. Levine
and today, were back in the flow.

Ever want to change that one little annoying thing about Bitcoin without having to
start your own altcoin. Jonathan Mohan caught up with Matt Corallo, an enthusiast
who took his very own Bitcoin improvement proposal from ideation to integration.
Now you can follow his lead for the good of the land
Then, Namecoin was a good start but Stephanies got a line on an active crowd-
funding campaign that aims to put the privacy back in domain names with the plug-
in designed for your browser. We end todays show with Michael and Jeremy from
FreeSpeechMe.org
But first, in the wake of Gox, everyone should know what a hot wallet is. One whose
funds are easily usable but conversely, much more easily stolen should you be
targeted. Scary Bitcoin (??) reality aside, hot wallets are a necessary tool for daily
use and today, Lafe and Lamar join us to kick off Episode 90 with their Pheeva wallet.
Incidentally, if youd like to send any tips via the Pheevacoin D system, simply direct
donations to user name LTB. On a related note, we nearing the launch of LTBcoin. If
you want to learn more and be part of the pre-launch community distribution, you
can get involved over at LTBcoin.com

Enjoy the show! [1:44]


___________________________________________


Adam B Levine interview with Lamar Wilson and Lafe Taylor


AL: Lamar Wilson and Lafe Taylor are founders of Love Will LLC and the Cycle of Goodness
cooperative out of Lexington, Kentucky. Gentlemen, thanks for joining us today on Lets
Talk Bitcoin. [1:59]

LW: Hey, whats going on Adam? *2:01+

LT: Yeah, thanks for inviting us. [2:02]

AL: Absolutely. You guys have a couple of projects but the one that were here to talk
about today is a wallet application that has some kind of unique features. Can you tell me a
little bit about Pheeva? [2:11]

LW: When we made Pheeva, we thought about having a dedicated hot wallet. We are
users of Coinbase and we realized that when you use Coinbases wallet, you tend to have all
of your bitcoins there or youd have them offline on a piece of paper somewhere and its
not really easy to get to them and you dont want to be walking around with all of your
Bitcoin if you use Coinbase to keep all of them there. We thought we need a hot wallet that
is your go to, kind of like a debit card of the Bitcoin space. We were trying to formulate this
hot wallet that was really, really easy for my mom to use, or my grandmother to use, or
whoever and make it really easy for them to get into the game and be able to use something
on a daily basis, instead of using your whole entire Coinbase wallet for everything. [2:56]

AL: Whats different about a hot wallet from a not hot wallet? What are the other options?
If youre specifying this is a hot wallet. *3:03+

LW: This is a hot wallet so what we were envisioning is that you dont keep a lot of Bitcoin
in there ever. We are going to make it to where you can quickly get your Bitcoin out of
there and put it into cold storage. Just say you get paid on the street or something, say you
trade with someone on the street and you dont want to keep all of them in that wallet, we
are trying to keep the risk down as far as holding a lot of Bitcoin in that wallet. It becomes
more of a transactional wallet than it does a storage wallet. Thats what we would consider
a hot wallet is. Its more for just every day, all the time transactions which are what most
people use their phone wallets for. We are just coming out and saying this is your dedicated
hot wallet. [3:38]

LT: Yeah, think of it as checking as opposed to a savings account. [3:41]

AL: This is kind of a solution youre creating for yourself and for people who you know who
arent as technically savvy, maybe, who are using things like Coinbase which is a fairly secure
web solution that should be fairly resistant to any sort of tampering. Im wondering, there
are options out in desktop wallet clients. Do you guys use any of those or do you find them
to be useful at all? [4:00]

LW: Yeah, I use the standard client, the Bitcoin QT client. I use that and Ive used Mycelium
Ive used that. Ive tried a lot of them. The thing is that, I think, the learning curve on
those are a little steep for my mom and so thats what we thought about when we were
making it. We wanted to make it more of a consumer application and more about just
loading it and being able to send quickly. A big part of those, as well, is that you still have to
wrestle with those huge Bitcoin addresses. I gave my mom some Bitcoin for Christmas and
the Bitcoin address is something that doesnt feel like its great for her to deal with and have
to mess with and maybe copy and paste and all of that. We came up with what we call coin
IDs that try to make that easier, as well. *4:44+

AL: Lets talk about coin IDs for a second because is an idea that weve seen before. Its
kind of like DNS system, dynamic name system, for Bitcoin addresses where instead of
having to remember that long alpha-numeric capitals count string, instead you just have to
remember something thats human readable and on the back-end, that gets attached to
your Bitcoin address. Is that what youre doing here? *5:06+

LW: Yeah, thats correct. When we thought about it, we were thinking about early Hotmail,
Gmail, and those types of things... Gmail wasnt that early but Hotmail, Yahoo, and those
things that made it easier for people to use email. We were thinking if, even within just our
application, we had these coin IDs to allow people to send Bitcoin to those coin IDs, instead
of an address, we eliminate people having to have the address. Of course, right now we
have to have the address because if you want to load a lot of the wallets that people already
use, have QR codes scanners and they only take addresses. Hopefully, moving forward, the
more people we get on, we can go ahead and open that up and allow more people to make
coin IDs. [5:43]

AL: If I am not using your wallet and you are using the wallet, can I still send to your name
through that system, or would I need to install the client, load the Pheeva wallet software
onto mine in order to access that? [5:56]

LW: Right now, like I was saying, it just like kind of being in AOL, or something like that. You
almost have to have our wallet but were going to open that up later on. Were just testing
it to see if people like it and because its a hot wallet, it doesnt really bother anyone to just
have a quick wallet. Like, Lets Talk Bitcoin could have a wallet that you guys just download
and thats the one that people who have the Pheeva wallet can quickly send you coins to.
Hopefully, that becomes a lot easier for people so it makes it easier for you to just say, and if
you have a Pheeva wallet, send to Lets Talk Bitcoin on the Pheeva wallet... tips. They dont
have to come to your site and figure out what the addresses are and those things. [6:35]

AL: Right, absolutely. That has been a huge problem, not just for Lets Talk Bitcoin, but with
Bitcoin addresses and non-visual formats in general. Even with video, its still hard because
most of the time, the code on the video isnt selectable or anything. You just have to write
it down real quick or pause it or something like that. There hasnt really been, outside of QR
codes, a good way to do this. Even with QR codes, you dont really know that its going to
the right person, you just know that its going to whatever that QR code is telling it to go to.
Talking about this coin ID service for a second; with the coin ID thing, you said that its kind
of a walled garden, at the moment, just like the early AOL was when you were on AOL in the
beginning; you didnt interface with other different walled gardens. That happened at a
later point. I agree with you. I think that were not really there yet so there is room for
these closed and experimental eco-systems where youre trying to figure this stuff out. Are
there any centralization issues through this mechanism that youve created for the names?
[7:26]

LW: There are some centralization issues but the thing is if you have our wallet and you
trust us anyway, its kind of like AOL; its like getting the emails. The coin ID doesnt stop
you from using your standard address. It doesnt stop you at all because, in the wallet, you
can still load to the address, or to a QR code, the same way you always know. It doesnt
stop you from being able to use a regular address; it just adds a little piece of convenience
for people who dont want to deal with it. *7:53+

AL: Its a value add and again, it sounds like you have a bigger plan here with what youre
doing with these things. [7:58]

LW: Yeah, we do. We want to make it decentralized later on. Were just trying to see if
people want it first. [8:03]

AL: Right. [8:04]

LW: Its kind of the whole... I hate using lean start-up but yeah, like the lean start-up
method of just lets see if people want it and see if it makes it easier for people to use. Even
within our testing within the people that weve given the wallet to, we intend to not use
addresses at all. We just type in Lafe or type in Lamar and then send Bitcoin that way,
quickly. [8:21]

AL: For people who are interested in trying this out right now or lets say we want to set up
LTB as our donation address, is the wallet available and can we start using this now? [8:31]

LW: Heres the thing. We have Love Will LLC which is a company and then we have the
Cycle of Goodness cooperative that will own a piece of Love Will LLC. Thats the other part
of this whole thing. The Pheeva hot wallet is just the first application of Love Will. Its,
basically, Love Will works for the Cycle of Goodness. When you come to the site, you can
buy a membership to the Cycle of Goodness cooperative and with that membership, you get
to, basically, personalize your coin ID and you also get access to all of the applications that
Love Will creates. With that, what happens is Love Will creates the applications for the
Cycle of Goodness and then the Cycle of Goodness goes out and markets Love Wills
applications. What happens is you get this cycle where Love Will is creating applications and
the Cycle of Goodness is bringing in the marketing. What happens is those people who are
in the Cycle of Goodness grow larger and larger and larger which allows the Cycle of
Goodness to have, what we call, ad space which is what, you know, guys in media like
yourself understand. The more people we have in the Cycle of Goodness, in that network,
the more advertising space we have for advertisers. Most of that, what were going to do is
most of that ad revenue will go directly back to the Cycle of Goodness. Lets say if Overstock
or TigerDirect wants to advertise inside of the Cycle of Goodness, theyll come to Love Will,
well place the ad and then well give most of the money back to the people in the Cycle of
Goodness. If everybody knows how a cooperative works, everybody whos in the
cooperative gets a piece of that ad revenue. [10:01]

AL: That sounds interesting and it sounds pretty equitable and it also sounds a little bit
complicated. How did you come to this as a business model? How did that arise? [10:12]

LW: The philosophy behind it, basically, came from number one, the fact that we always
think about this whole 99% versus the 1% and how a lot of times, the 99% would just cry
like... Im not into 1%. We talk about the inequality and this is like giving the 99% a chance
to add the equality or bring the gap a little bit closer. We came to... we were like OK, how
can we do this because number one, in the same country where they allow the poorest
people to be advertise the lottery, which is awful, right? In that same country, in this very
country, we cant advertise small businesses or early stage start-ups to those same poor
people to allow them to get in early. I think that is unjust. I just really do think that if youre
not an accredited investor, thats the only way you can get a piece of a company. You know
what I mean? [11:10]

AL: Yeah. [11:10]

LW: To me, thats completely unjust so we said OK, how can we do this? If we give back
through a cooperative, what we can do is allow the people in the cooperative to benefit
from all of the same early stage benefits and valuation that a corporation would get or a
company would get in the early stages. Thats why we have the name Love Will because its
just the whole thing of us being able to give back to the people that helped us to get to
where we are. [11:37]

LT: Were going to have a Chrome extension, as well. That will, for the most part, be free
and if you are part of the membership, the coop membership, then you can log in with the
Chrome wallet as well and use your ID related to that. [11:53]

LW: Yeah. The Chrome extension you dont have to pay for but you also dont get a clear
coin ID, so if you use the Chrome extension, youll get a suffix on the end like .phb. It would
be like Adam.phb and that will be the Chrome extension so you could go ahead and use it.
Our Chrome extension - it allows us to pay quickly. I dont know if youve seen the videos
for that yet but it allows you to pay quickly on sites like yours, like if you want to leave tips.
On Coinbase and all of that, it finds the addresses on the page and it fills the wallet so it
makes it real easy to roll around the internet. Its kind of like with Kryptokit as well. *12:28+

AL: Lets talk about that for a second. The wallet space has been a problem for years and
this is really not a new problem and yet, you guys and Kryptokit and there are a couple of
others who are all sort of attacking these various usability problems. It seems to all be
happening right now. As someone whos kind of in the trenches on this, where do you think
were going to be as an eco-system in six months or a year? [12:49]

LW: I think that with adding things like the Kryptokit (I like the Kryptokit a lot), I think
adding things like that and our wallet, of course, it allows people to quickly transact. Im not
saying thats the only thing that Bitcoin should be used for but I think if we want to gain a lot
of new people, like my mom like I said, we want to gain a lot of these people out here who
are not necessarily early adopters of technology, we have to make it extremely easy for
them to come onto the system. Thats another thing like right now, Im not sure if theres
any wallets that, basically, allow you to fill up when you get the wallet but because youre
getting the membership to the Cycle of Goodness cooperative, what Love Wills going to do
is once you pay the $10 for early membership, were going to give you half of that back in
Bitcoin into your wallet, so youll have Bitcoin as soon as you start. *13:38+

AL: That sounds really interesting to me. You said this is going to be out next week. Will
this be available? Will I be able to have... [13:44]

LW: Yeah, well get you one quick. Were working on all of that to make sure the
memberships and the licences, and all of that, go back and forth but once we get that, well
send it to you first to make sure you can secure your coin ID. Thats it but, other than that,
we have everything going. We were going to secure you one anyway. You guys have been
very, very good for me as far as my education of it. Thats another thing we educate, we
go around the state talking to people about it. [14:08]

AL: Yeah. [14:09]

LW: Were just going to build more and more apps for the Cycle of Goodness. Right now,
what you can do is, you can go to Pheeva.com and register. Put your email in and when we
get the cooperative site up and running, we will send you an email so that you can join early
and secure your coin ID. Also, the Chrome extension is out right now. If you go to the
Chrome store, you can go there and find the Pheeva wallet, Pheeva hot wallet Chrome
extension and use it immediately without having to buy a membership. Its free but you
dont get that wonderful, custom coin ID. You have to add .phb onto the end of it but you
can get it right now. [14:44]

AL: Thats Pheeva.com, right? [14:48]

LW: Yeah, Pheeva.com is Pheeva. I got a Pheeva and I cant let it go. (Laughter) Whats his
name? Christopher Walken... so thats Pheeva, Pheeva, Pheeva, Pheeva. (Laughter) *15:04+

AL: Lamar Wilson and Lafe Taylor, founders of Love Will LLC and Cycle of Goodness
cooperative, thanks very much for your time. [15:10]

LW: Man, thank you very much Adam. [15:13]


__________________________________________


ADVERT:

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cryptocurrency for March 8
th
2014. Its been a busy week of new releases for Nxt. Wesley
Hs web-based interface for the Nxt software has been included in the software distribution
and a new client, Nxt Freerider has been released. Several other Nxt clients, Nexus, Nxt
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tuned for more news on Nxt in the next Lets Talk Bitcoin broadcast. *16:10+


_________________________________________


Jonathan Mohan interview with Matt Corallo


JM: Im here with Matt Corallo at the Bitcoin Miami conference. You have the great
distinction of being one of the chosen few who actually got a BIP passed in Bitcoin...
aaahhh! (Laughter) A BIP, for those who dont know, is essentially a Bitcoin Improvement
Proposal. [16:30]

MC: Yeah. [16:31]

JM: Essentially, its the way in which programming changes to Bitcoin... essentially, the
changes to Bitcoin itself are made. [16:37]

MC: Not just Bitcoin... everything in the space of Bitcoin, whether its directly in the
protocol which means Bitcoin D changes or something much higher level, just kind of in
random wallets, maybe this is how they should do things or this is a way to do things.
[16:50]

JM: Can you explain a little more about what a BIP is then? [16:53]

MC: Yeah. I mean, the process is modelled after the Python Improvement Proposals which
are a bit more technical and those are generally fairly focused on specific things to change
to the language, whereas Bitcoins a bit more general. A lot of the BIPs are specific changes
to the language; things like pay to script hash which is a change to the scripting language in
Bitcoin. Some of them are kind of in the middle, which is something that I did, which was
the Bitcoin URI spec, so thats the Bitcoin links where you put an address in a link and then it
opens Bitcoin. There are some things that are way more away from the protocol which is
like wallet things, where say your wallet... how your wallet should store keys, how your
wallet should manage transactions which is far removed from the low level Bitcoin protocol
and more into the implementation of what other people are doing. [17:37]

JM: I just wanted, for my own edification, to understand how the heck changes in Bitcoin
occur because we talk about centralization in Bitcoin. We had that whole scare with GHash
and all the other mining operations that come out there... Oh my god, theyre getting to a
point to which they can affect the consensus. [17:55]

MC: Yeah. [17:55]

JM: Then, when it comes to the most important thing... when it comes to decentralizing
Bitcoin which is who can implement code changes into what we call Bitcoin. I dont feel like
theres enough decentralization in it. *18:07+

MC: Yeah. [18:07]

JM: I kind of wanted to know... like, lift the veil. [18:10]

MC: I agree. There should be as much decentralization as possible there. At the end of the
day, it takes time and it takes people to volunteer their time to look at these things and
review them and make good, useful comments and then decide when, maybe, its ready to
move forward on things. At the end of the day, there are a lot of people in Bitcoin and a lot
of people doing really interesting things which are taking up all their time so they dont
necessarily have time to join a mailing list that has way too many posts to read them all.
[18:36]

JM: How many people are on the mailing list? Were talking about how consensus is
derived. Its derived by the voices in the mailing list. *18:41]

MC: Yeah, I mean, its derived by the voices of anyone whos going to end up implementing
the BIPs which, because theyre usually proposed on the mailing list by people... most of the
client developers who are going to be implementing this are on the mailing list, at the end of
day, it becomes the people on the mailing list form the consensus around the BIPs, which
are then implemented. [18:59]

JM: Can you explain the two BIPs that you were able to get through? What were they
about? [19:03]

MC: I havent done a BIP in a while, mostly because I havent worked on Bitcoin as much
recently. I did the Bitcoin URI spec which means, at the time, Luke had a proposal which
had a lot of details that were kind of over the top and not necessarily worth implementing
that I thought and a lot of people agreed, so I redid his BIP and suggested that its basically
simple... just Bitcoin:address?amount= whatever. A fairly simple proposal which then got
implemented and now, if you click on a Bitcoin link, it magically opens your client and it says
Hey, do you want to send money to wherever? That was kind of pushed through because
it was seen as a great idea and there wasnt too much discussion because it was kind of
fairly simple. [19:45]

JM: If I joined the mailing list, I can have a voice in whats going on with Bitcoin? *19:49+

MC: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. We encourage anyone who wants to have a voice to join
the mailing list; anyone who is willing to spend the time to write well reasoned arguments
as to why they agree or disagree with something. [19:58]

JM: Where would I go in order to join the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal mailing list?
[20:03]

MC: Most of the discussion happens just on the general Bitcoin development mailing list.
That means, Google Bitcoin development mailing list on SourceForge. I dont know the URL
off-hand because its long and... *20:15+

JM: No one in the past five years has made a tiny URL for it? [20:18]

MC: No, of course not. [20:19]

JM: (Laughter) No, thats way too hard, right? [20:21]

MC: Yeah, of course. [20:22]

JM: Tiny URL/BIP Improvement Proposals. [20:24]

MC: Someone listening should do that and put it in the comments somewhere and post it
everywhere. [20:27]

JM: Maybe we should put it on the mailing list and get consensus on it? [20:30]

MC: There we go. We should do a BIP about the tiny URL for mailing list URL. [20:34]

JM: I think thats really important and should totally take up everyones time. Congress
started talking about baseball and I thought that was the perfect use of their time. [20:40]

MC: Absolutely. No, no question, especially with the huge amount of development
resources that Bitcoin has today. [20:45]

JM: (Laughter) If anyone wants to take on that as their crucible in the BIP forums, please,
please do that. [20:51]

MC: There we go. Please do it. (Laughter) [20:53]

JM: Theres one thing to be transparent and open and theres another to be inclusive and
accessible. I feel like the BIP forums are transparent but that theyre not getting the word
out... theyre not proselytizing people to join them or making it easier... making the
onboarding process easier for people to come onboard. [21:11]

MC: Yeah. I mean, most of the developers, most of the people who are working on these
things have very limited time and are working on ten other projects five projects in Bitcoin
and probably have some Bitcoin start-up, or something. Theres not much time to do that
and, at the same time, there is some kind of perverse incentive that the more people we
have, the longer these things take to get pushed through because everyone always has an
opinion and you have to read all the opinions and eventually, decide whether or not theres
a consensus for them to make all the changes. We encourage everyone who wants to write
good opinions to come join but I dont think theres really ever going to be some kind of
outreach to get more. [21:50]

JM: Right. I guess my problem with that... you know, Andreas Antonopoulos, whos on Lets
Talk Bitcoin, always talks about the other six and a half billion. Now, if were trying to make
Bitcoin be the pre-eminent, global, apolitical currency, what were really talking about is the
other six and a half billion. When were deriving consensus from what hard core
cryptographers are doing on a mailing list, which are probably trending towards one type of
space, theres kind of this unspoken cultural bias that just gets formed in what Bitcoin is,
just because they dont have the same background. [22:20]

MC: Yes and no. The development mailing list has gone, in the past maybe six months, has
grown a lot and its grown out of just developers, although it is still very primarily
developers, there are a lot of BIPs and general Bitcoin improvement stuff is very generally
self-serving in the sense that if someone has an idea for how to get a bunch of people in
South Sudan into Bitcoin that requires some minor change, theyre going to go write a BIP
for it and submit it and say I have this idea and I think this is whats required to make it
happen and theyre going to make it happen, which is something thats great about the
Bitcoin community is there are so many people who have so many great ideas and are
working so hard to make things happen and I think its open in the sense that anyone can
submit and thus, the people who have good ideas and who need a BIP to make something
happen, will do it. [23:08]

JM: How would I determine if I need a BIP to make something happen? Do I just put it out
there? [23:13]

MC: There are guidelines for what defines a BIP, what kind of category it should be in
there are a few categories. As to whether or not you need a BIP for something, generally
the answer is you dont need one except unless you want every wallet to include it or you
want a major protocol change. [23:30]

JM: Unless youre trying to pass an amendment, then you really dont need to try to modify
the constitution. [23:35]

MC: Yeah, you dont necessarily need one but it is also a very good idea to do one if youre
looking at, say, how should my wallet encrypt keys or... theres a recent one about how to
encrypt keys for wallets. If youre trying to figure out a way to do that and you want other
wallets to do it the same way, so that things are inter-operable, a BIP process is a good way
to go through that and say Look, lets get some comments, lets get everyone together
thinking about this problem and figure out how to do this the best way. [24:00]

JM: If I wanted to get involved on a BIP, what would I do right now? I would go to the... I
would just Google Bitcoin BIPs and I would submit one? What would be that process? Is
there someone I contact? [24:11]

MC: The BIPs are now on GitHub. They were living on the Wiki forever but now there is a
BIPs GitHub that should be GitHub.com/Bitcoin/BIPs, I believe. [24:21]

JM: There you go. They got a URL. [24:22]

MC: That ones not bad. *24:23+

JM: That only took five and a half years. [24:24]

MC: Yeah, yeah, you know. A lot of discussion has moved there as well but there is also
always a lot of discussion, good discussion on the development mailing list. The Bitcoin
development mailing list is a good place to go to discuss BIPs and other things in Bitcoin.
[24:36]

JM: I think the thing to mention is that BIPs arent just software, its not just code. *24:40+

MC: Oh no, most of the BIPs, in terms of change to just Bitcoin code stuff, a lot of the BIPs
arent that, especially kind of proposals for how Bitcoin things should happen, how wallets
should function, how Bitcoin should work, in terms of UI. [24:57]

JM: It could be as meta as youd like it to be. If there is some evil, evil human being out
there who doesnt like the color orange, and they really think that they could make that
case... (laughter) [25:05]

MC: Ultimately, if you think nothing in Bitcoin should ever use the color orange, you can
make a BIP for it. Itll probably get rejected and kind of laughed away pretty quickly but hey,
if you want to try, go for it. [25:18]

JM: Right, right. [25:18]

MC: We try to be as open as possible. Just get involved and, hey, if you think you can help,
if you have the time to think critically about things in Bitcoin and how they should be done.
[25:29]

JM: You just lost like two thirds of the internet; the critical thinking part alone. [25:31]

MC: Critical thinking is hard; time is also hard. If you do, for some strange reason, fall into
these categories and want to get involved, absolutely. [25:40]

JM: I, actually, have a BIP. My own little agenda which is as it relates to the language of
Bitcoin. I think its really silly that four things or three things all have the word Bitcoin
associated with it. [25:53]

MC: Yeah, theres no question. *25:55+

JM: In the Zeitgeist, it is the cryptocurrency the field is called Bitcoin, the Bitcoin
blockchain is called Bitcoin and the currency is called Bitcoin. [26:04]

MC: Oh yeah. No, I mean, it makes perfect sense. [26:06]

JM: It makes perfect sense. (Laughter) [26:07]

MC: Perfect sense. [26:08]

JM: When you explain it to a layman, theyre like...what?... you have to explain this is the
Bitcoin Im talking about now and then, this is the Bitcoin Im talking about now... and this
is... [26:16]

MC: Oh yeah. The duplication of naming in Bitcoin is hilarious. You have the coinbase,
which is a transaction and then you have a company called Coinbase and then you have
Bitcoin which refers to three or four different things in the space. [26:25]

JM: You have Blockchain.info which created the blockchain apparently. [26:27]

MC: Then you have Blockchain.info which apparently runs the blockchain. This is a funny
story about that. A paper by a very famous researcher, one of his first Bitcoin papers, I
wont name names, was... referred to the blockchain as an HTML dump that he was
analysing because it was an HTML thing and was analysing the blockchain via HTML, by a
very famous cryptographer. Kind of embarrassing. [26:50]

JM: Theres a lot of confusion. [26:51]

MC: Theres a lot of confusion. *26:52+

JM: Its like when that RSA did was like Yeah, Satoshi Nakamoto totally invested into
Dread Pirate Roberts. [26:58]

MC: Oh yeah. [26:58]

JM: He just didnt do any analysis whatsoever. He was like Yeah, this is totally true.
[27:01]

MC: What was it, like a month later, a few weeks later, someone was like Nah, that was
me. [27:04]

JM: I dont know if I would have admitted that if I were him. *27:06+

MC: Yeah. There was some longer story to it, I dont quite remember but anyway. *27:10+

JM: This discussion of language and this problem with Bitcoin and language and mBits and
nBits and uBits and whatever the heck were going to be like, I really feel like this needs to
be discussed and driven through consensus in the BIP format. How would I go about doing
that? [27:23]

MC: Go on the GitHub BIPs site, look at some of the existing BIPs. Theres BIP 1 is the
format for BIPs and how to format them and how to submit them and all this stuff.
Generally, just write up something for the mailing list, propose it on the mailing list, get
some discussion and then write it formally as a BIP and get it submitted to the GitHub after
you have a lot of discussion and people agree kind of this is how it should function. [27:50]

JM: Right. [27:51]

MC: It will generate a lot of discussion and it will be months of work but youll get there.
[27:55]

JM: (Laughter) OK. [27:55]

MC: Itll get there. *27:56+

JM: Alright. Well, I look forward to taking that cross on and seeing if I can make it work.
[28:00]

MC: Hey, if you want to improve Bitcoin, thats a good way to do it. *28:03+

JM: Right. Thanks a lot man. [28:04]

MC: Absolutely. [28:05]


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Stephanie Murphy interview with Michael W. Dean and Jeremy Rand


SM: This is Stephanie Murphy for Lets Talk Bitcoin. Im here today talking with Michael W.
Dean and Jeremy Rand. They are two people behind the project called FreeSpeechMe.
FreeSpeechMe is something that I think is really going to change a lot. Its got a lot of
potential here. Ill let them explain what it is but first of all, gentleman, welcome to Lets
Talk Bitcoin. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. [29:53]

MD: Thanks. [29:54]

JR: Thanks. [29:55]

SM: Tell me what is FreeSpeechMe. What is the elevator pitch? [29:59]

MD: Ill give the exciting this is going to change the world one and then Jeremy can tell you
the technical reasons of why itll actually change the world because everybody always says
My thing will change the world. First of all, there are several people who did the work
behind this, that Jeremy is standing on the shoulders of. Hes connected with the Namecoin
team. Namecoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency, kind of like Bitcoin. Its probably the
only currency thats not a threat to Bitcoin and people who are heavily invested in Bitcoin
should know this. Its not a competition; it complements Bitcoin because its barely a
currency. The thing that would change the world and what people should be working at the
most is commerce sites located anywhere that take Bitcoin only and run a Namecoin.
Theyd have their DNS served on Namecoin because they cant be shut down and hacked
and taken away by governments nearly as easily as .com or dot whatever. [30:56]

SM: For anybody whos totally unfamiliar with this, Namecoin is a spinoff of Bitcoin. Its an
altcoin and its main function is really not as a currency, its as a distributed domain name
system or DNS system. [31:10]

MD: Until recently, it was difficult and unsecure to serve .bit domains. Its really easy to set
them up but it was hard to (?? surf) them and not secure. Jeremys come up with this plug-
in called FreeSpeechMe that makes it really easy. Im going to let Jeremy take over from
here. [31:29]

JR: Namecoin offers DNS, thats decentralized and is difficult to censor, hijack or surveil. Its
an advantage over standard DNS but when Namecoin was originally set up, and up until I
got involved with it, there really wasnt a good, easy to use way that was still secure. There
were some people who were changing their DNS settings on their computer to point to a
DNS server that would treat stuff from the blockchain and that kind of defeats the security
point of Namecoins DNS because then you still have all the security issues that someone
can hijack your connection. If theyre on your network, they can just change what you see
from that DNS server. The DNS server you configure also has the ability to hijack your
requests and send you whatever they want for whatever malicious purposes they want.
Thats really not a secure way to use it; it defeats the point. There were some other
methods of using .bit which is the DNS system that Namecoin sets up. There were things
like nmControl and nmcSocks, things like that but, in general, they were very difficult to set
up, especially for novices. There really werent many people using things like that and if,
when I was hanging around in the Namecoin IRC chat, it was very frequent to see people in
there advising Oh yeah, you just use this DNS server and everything will be fine. People
didnt seem to be aware that this was a really insecure way of using it. I thought Namecoin
seems like a really good way of preventing censorship, improving security, improving privacy
by some maybe we should be using it for that, rather than just having it either for security
for the elite or insecurity for everyone else. [33:27]

SM: Youve got a plug-in here, the FreeSpeechMe plug-in, thats going to allow people to
easily view .bit domains without changing their DNS settings or doing any of this
complicated sounding stuff that most people probably dont know how to do. *33:42+

JR: Thats right. *33:43+

SM: Why would somebody want to view websites that are .bit websites? Whats the
advantage of having .bit domains that are not registered through a central registry like
ICANN? [33:56]

JR: When you make a DNS request for a website, or for any internet service for that matter,
sender DNS is really, really insecure. Its also not private and it can be easily censored.
When I want to access Google.com, or something like that, any website, my computer has
to send a request to a DNS server. Anyone whos on my network, as well as anyone whos
on the DNS servers network and the DNS server themselves, they can see that my IP
address went to Google.com and so thats a privacy issue. The DNS server, or anyone
between me and the DNS server can then either falsely say Google.com doesnt exist,
theres nothing here or it can redirect me to a false website which might be either a
phishing site of some kind or it might be a site that just installs malware on anyone who
views it. Its, generally, not a secure system. *34:57+

SM: Can you tell me some examples of, basically, problems with the standard DNS system?
Before, I know youve got some on your KickStarter page but tell the listeners about that.
[35:06]

MD: Well, Jeremy could give better examples than I. I know one is that, recently, Facebook
was redirected to a fake Facebook site. Its one thing if they redirect it to a site that says
Youve been pwned! Owned! Haha! Youre an idiot, we took your website! Thats bad.
Worse is if it goes to a website that works exactly like your website and youre like Oh, Im
on Facebook, OK, well Ill entire my password... BAM! Theyve got your password. Oh, Ill
buy some little credits to play Angry Squirrels. Oh BAM! Theyve got your credit card
number. Thats a big issue right there. Also, governments and corporations take down
websites all the time without any due process. They say Oh, we saw the word pirate on
here and it turns out youre like Tarrin Lupo, writing about stories about the days of old and
pirates on the high seas. Theyre like This is a piracy site and just take it and when people
go to it, itll say This has been seized by the Department of Decency and Morality and
Good Things that Obama Likes and George Bush Likes. (Laughter). They do that. This cant
be done nearly as easily with that. I dont want to say cant because its a challenge. You
tell a safe cracker This safe cannot be cracked. Then, they want to crack it. [36:25]

JR: Yeah, were very careful to say its resistant to some of these attacks. We dont say its
completely immune from them. There is a threat model, just like any other kind of security
software. One of the other things thats interesting about FreeSpeechMe, in particular, is it
doesnt just get DNS data from the Namecoin blockchain, like most Namecoin software
does. It also gets HTTPS fingerprints from the blockchain and the reason why this is useful
if I want to visit a website that uses HTTPS, there are two main components in HTTPS. One
of them is the encryption, which most people are aware of. There is also authentication,
verifying that the website that you go to is the website that it should be. HTTPS is often
touted as the way to deal with hijacked DNS because people will say Oh, if youre
redirected to a false website, then the HTTPS will show an error and so youll be safe. As it
turns out, HTTPS is really not that hard to do bad things to, particularly if youre a large
corporation or a decently sized government. As an example of that...[37:34]

MD: Or a decently funded gang of criminals like a mafia. [37:39]

JR: ...In July 2011 actually, which is quite recently, the HTTPS certificate authority DigiNotar,
was compromised. There were reports that the person who did it was affiliated with the
Iranian government, although we dont really know. The attackers, whoever they were,
were able to retrieve false certificates from this certificate authority that allowed them to
securely impersonate the CIA, MI6, Facebook, Microsoft, Skype, Twitter, WordPress, Mozilla
and hundreds of other targets. Whats really scary is DigiNotar didnt even notice that this
had happened for over a month. [38:14]

MD: The CIA, think about that. Like, the CIA and the FBI. The people who claim they should
be uncrackable. They were owned, basically. [38:27]

SM: Mmm. Wow! I would say thats a pretty big security breach. *38:32+

JR: Yeah. There are some proposals that have been made to try to improve the HTTPS
system. One of those proposals is something called Perspective Verification, popularized by
Moxie Marlinspike, who wrote the Convergence plug-in for Firefox. What that tries to do is
you chose some trusted third party and every time you visit a HTTPS website, your browser
takes the certificate from them and sends it to the third party and, basically, that third party
checks the website themselves and says Hey, do I see the same thing? If it sees something
different, then it can tell you Oh, youre being attacked, dont trust this website. The
problem is what happens if that trusted third party is also attacked. If something is being
attacked on the server end or the attack is widespread enough and it affects some of those
trusted third parties, then youre no better off, whereas what FreeSpeechMe does is it
stores the fingerprints in the Namecoin blockchain which is backed by proof-of-work, since
its a blockchain. Basically, to be able to feed false data into FreeSpeechMe, you would have
to do a 51% attack on Namecoin which we think is probably a lot harder than doing a man in
the middle attack on one or two of those trusted third parties, especially if those trusted
third parties are well known and are targets for someone who wants to attack stuff. [39:57]

MD: What Jeremy has done is kind of the difference between what Linux used to be like... I
mean GNU/Linux used to be like when it was mostly command line to when they got a GUI
for it and now, its almost like using Windows in ease. Thats one thing and the other thing
is like Im approaching everybody I can about this... like all kinds of people, like tech people,
liberty people, cryptocurrency people and some people are getting it and there are some
first adopters jumping on it and some people have given money to our Indigogo campaign
and its great. Yesterday, a mind-blowing thing happened a total stranger came out of the
woods and said This is going to change the world. Ive got some Bitcoin. I want to buy ads
for you, radio ads on FreeTalk Live and this guy... worked it out at FreeTalk Live. He bought
50 days of ads for FreeSpeechMe on FreeTalk Live. [40:50]

SM: Wow! [40:50]

MD: Theyre reasonable but thats not cheap. Thats an investment from a stranger.
[40:53]

SM: I heard your ad tonight and I was wondering how you got that. Thats a cool story.
[40:56]

MD: He paid for 50 days on the radio show and on the podcast. There are people like that
but then there are also people like... Im not going to name any names but I called one of
the biggest tech blogs in the world. I called it on the phone... I know them, Ive worked for
them, theyve been... like paid me as editors before, back in the day... at book publishing
stuff. I called them up and told them about it and they were like Oh, I dont know. That
sounds interesting but I have to go put up these pictures of squirrels in the snow with the
new iPhone. Im like You guys used to be cutting edge man. What happened? Im trying
to call this other (I wont say any names) but its a radio show thats huge, its liberty-
oriented and its like, I know people at it and its something they would love and their
listeners would love. They were like... its like trying to get the Pope to talk to a peasant,
man. Really, what this really, really needs is people to go check out FreeSpeechMe.org and
look at it and realize that this is whats going to save the internet and without this, your
internet in five years, the way things are going, is going to be President Hilarys Facebook
page is all youre going to be able to get to or President Chris Christies Facebook page.
Thats all that youre going to be able to do on the internet if everyone doesnt start
adopting .bit Namecoin DNS and using FreeSpeechMe. What Jeremy is planning on doing
you can go to the Indigogo site or to FreeSpeechMe.org he has a list of 30 or 40
improvements. Were not saying We have this idea, give us money and well make this
thing. Were saying We have the thing, we have a beta, it works today, you can set up a
.bit website for $0.10 and get your viewers to share this thing and they will be able to build
it and help with it and look at it. Jeremy has plans to improve this to the point where like it
is going to become how the internet works. Its not just Oh, we have a cool plug-in. Its
like this could be the underlying foundation of internet 4.0. Jeremy, go ahead and tell what
some of those improvements are. [42:51]

JR: Obviously, one of the first things we want to do is make it a little bit cleaner looking, in
terms of just the user interface. Right now, for example, if youre on Windows, youll see a
couple of terminal windows pop up when we launch the Namecoin software on Firefox.
Obviously, thats not user-friendly. It will scare some people. We want to fix that and thats
pretty easy. There is lots of just simple user interface stuff like that which we want to
improve. There are also security related things we want to improve. For example, right
now if you have an incomplete blockchain in Namecoin, FreeSpeechMe will use whatever
beta you have up to that point which a) means lots of (?? upsides) dont work but, more
importantly for me at least from a security standpoint, whoever used to control a domain
may have retained some level of control after they sell it to someone else while youre still
updating the blockchain. Thats kind of dangerous. *43:51+

MD: I want to interject two quick things right there. One is that when you install
FreeSpeechMe, you have to wait five hours or so for the blockchain to download. It doesnt
work until that happens. Weve been getting tons of emails from people who are so excited
to install it. They dont read that and theyre like Ive had it in for ten minutes and its not
working. Youve got to wait five hours. The other thing is, currently, it wont play well with
the Namecoin wallet. They wont hurt each other but you cant use one while the other is
open but Jeremys going to fix that. It plays well with other wallets with Bitcoin, with
Litecoin and I tried it with Phoenixcoin, Im afraid to even admit I have a Phoenixcoin wallet
but I got some as a joke. Let it download the five hours and then it will do it automatically in
the background. Also, dont use it while running your Namecoin wallet. *44:40+

SM: Wait a minute. This is only for Firefox, right now but it works in Windows? [44:44]

MD: Thats correct. *44:44+

SM: In Linux and maybe Mac? Is that right? [44:46]

JR: Weve gotten some reports that it does not work on Mac. *44:50+

SM: OK. [44:51]

JR: That doesnt surprise me that much because it hasnt been tested on Mac. I think some
of the code from Convergence, which is what FreeSpeechMe is based on, has not been
tested on Mac either, so that doesnt surprise me a lot. Obviously, wed like to make it work
on Mac and if we cant do that ourselves, well happily contract that out to someone who
does Mac Firefox extension development, something like that. [45:12]

SM: Right and thats why people should contribute to your Indigogo campaign? *45:15]

JR: Yes. [45:16]

MD: Yeah. Jeremy is a full time college student of computer sciences at the University of
Oklahoma. Hes doing all of this around a more than full time school load, although
summers coming up, so eventually. *45:28+

SM: Yeah but this is great because youve got here a working plug-in that will enable people
to easily view .bit domains. Youve also got some marketing behind it and youve got a
campaign to let people know about it. I think this is a great combination because not only is
it a killer app, but its also how to translate that to the not quite so nerdy among us out
there, that may not know how to use it but they do know how to download a plug-in and
then you can possibly save the internet from that. [46:00]

JR: Some other things we want to do are some improvements for privacy. One of the things
I didnt mention yet is one other feature FreeSpeechMe has, which is almost entirely new, is
a .bit domain which is what Namecoin uses for its DNS. A .bit domain can point to either a
TOR hidden service or an I2P service which are anonymously hosted websites. We think this
is really important because if you have a website which someone wants to take out,
basically, then even though they cant seize your DNS, then can just shut down the server
and then your website goes down anyway. If you host it anonymously using TOR or I2P or
(??) and Freenet as well in the future, you can have your .bit domain point to that and that
basically gives you anonymously hosted websites that have full DNS. The thing is, since
Namecoin is blockchain based, it has anonymity issues. Just like Bitcoin is not really
anonymous but pseudonymous, Namecoin is also pseudonymous and so we would like to
make some improvements so that either people who are browsing websites using
FreeSpeechMe or people who are hosting .bit domains using TOR or I2P, so that they can
have a little bit more anonymity rather than just pseudonymity. Some of that, we can work
on, some of that might take collaboration with other people but again, anything that we
cant do, if we get enough money through Indigogo, we will happily contract that out.
[47:43]

MD: There is a guy named John Gilmore who is a computer scientist who said something
thats been quoted a lot and it was The net interprets censorship as damage and routes
around it. Thats absolutely true but the weak point in that, the weak chain in that is DNS
controlled through things like ICANN, which I call... it stands for something long and silly and
computer-related and scientific... one of them scientific... one of them book learning things
(laughter) but I say it stands for ICANN take your website because the government controls
me. They have similar things in other countries and pretty much any .whatever, if its not
.bit and its not through the blockchain, pretty much any other domain name, your domain
can be taken by a government agency or by a big corporation demanding a government do
it, with a letter. They could write a letter a lawyer can send an email and some
department of something can write, any three letter agency can write to ICANN and theyll
take it down. There is no due process. Theyve stolen your property and... [48:49]

SM: They should call it I CANN has your website. (Laughter) [48:52]

MD: I CANN has your website, yeah, yeah. [48:55]

SM: I understand and please go ahead if you have more. [49:00]

MD: I was just going to say one of the things were doing to promote this we have a three
minute video we made and its up on YouTube. Its linked at FreeSpeechMe.org. Im getting
people to do language translations of it to translate it text and then also, the same person or
a different person read it and do a decent recording of it. Im going to make different
language version of this video because I really think we cant have a US-centric view with a
program like this. It has to be worldwide. So far, weve got people working on that right
now. I say that my job is Im the FreeSpeechMe cat herder, thats my official job
explanation. Ive done a lot today just going back and forth to people answering their
questions What does this mean? What does this mean? and getting people to work on
translations in French, German, Greek, Farsi (you know, for Iran), Portuguese, Serbo-
Croatian, Arabic, Turkish, Japanese, Spanish and Catalan (I dont know how its pronounced)
but its a version of Spanish, a variety of Spanish a derivation thats actually kind of like a
separatist language. There are like 7 million native speakers in the world but Im like Oh,
its people who are rebels? Yeah, we want it in that. The guy who did the Spanish could do
it too. We need translators in any other language but, in particular, we trying to get it in
Korean, Russian, Ukrainian, Italian and Chinese. [50:22]

SM: Wow! [50:23]

MD: If anyone speaks those languages, drop us a line. Go to FreeSpeechMe.org, click on
Meet the Team or Contact, our email address is at both places. We cant pay a lot for it
because we havent made a lot yet but well pay one Namecoin for translating it and
another Namecoin for recording it. Ill also give you a little bit of tech help in setting up
FreeSpeechMe or, especially, a .bit domain. Thats another thing we need is people to set
up .bit versions of their .com or whatever and give it out to their users. Also set up, if you
want, this is kind of cool I actually set up a couple of .bit only domains and one is a kitty
cat picture site called .bitkittypics.bit. If you have FreeSpeechMe... yeah, because its like
kitty cats drive the .com internet and I figure they really should also drive the .bit internet.
[51:21]

SM: Thats how you know its made it, right? *51:22+

MD: Yeah. [51:23]

SM: What is the process for registering a .bit domain and what do you do after you register
a .bit domain? How do you host it and how do you set it all up? [51:33]

JR: First, you need to obtain some namecoins which is a currency, just like Bitcoin. You can
obtain it at an exchange, some people mine it if they have mining hardware, you could
probably sell a product for Namecoin, if you really wanted to since its technically a currency
although, most people wouldnt do that. Once youve obtained some namecoins, you need
the Namecoin wallet software. [51:55]

SM: How much Namecoin do you need? [51:56]

JR: To register one domain requires destroying one namecent, so .01 namecoins and then
you also have to pay around another half of a namecent as a transaction fee. [52:10]

SM: Just to give people an idea, right now the price of one namecoin is about around $4 or
about 6mBits? Were talking about $0.50 to register a domain? *52:23+

JR: Yeah, I think its a little bit less than that. Its cheap. Its cheap, yeah. Once youve done
that and youve entered either the IP address, or DNS name server address, or whatever and
you can also enter an HTTPS fingerprint, at this point, in case you want to use HTTPS which
is actually secured by the blockchain. Once you do that, the Namecoin QT client will wait for
12 blocks while that first transaction gets confirmed and it has to wait 12 blocks so that
someone else cant see that youre destroying a certain domain and then take it from you by
paying a higher transaction fee because that would obviously suck. After this 12 blocks, it
sends in another transaction which confirms that yes, this is my name and I actually want it
to point to this and it points to that from then on. After youve done that, you can either
right click on the name in Namecoin QT and hit update and you can type in the new IP
address or something like that or you can use a command line application if you want to
script something. If you want to automatically have it update with dynamic DNS or
something, there is actually a tool which Ive written which can do that for you and so
programmers can have lots of fun making their names automatically update based on the
outside world. You have to issue, at least, one update every 36,000 blocks, otherwise your
name will expire and thats, basically, so that if someone loses their keys to their wallet,
eventually, the domain will get released back into the world so that someone else can use it
or the same user can get it again with a different wallet. [53:59]

MD: Right now, thats about every eight months. When I first went on, a bunch of months
ago, to check this out and register some domain names, FreedomFeens.bit had been cyber-
squatted. [54:11]

SM: Freedom Feens is your podcast, by the way. [54:14]

MD: Yeah, its my radio show and it had been taken and unless somebody puts a note in the
blockchain with their email address or they point it to a site that says Contact me and give
me $50,000 or contact me and Ill give this to you free because Im your fan. Theres no way
to figure it out that I know of but I just kept checking and looking at the blockchain counting
down and just waited for it to expire and grabbed it the minute it was available. I did the
same thing for Bad Quaker, Ben Stones podcast, badquaker.com. I grabbed badquaker.bit.
The really cool thing is now that weve been doing this, Jeremy and I have sort of turned into
an unofficial ICANN, libertarian ICANN, or free market ICANN because all these people that
have been first adopters of this have seen what Jeremys done and are so excited about it,
theyre contacting us and theyre saying Hey, I have stuff on Molyneux.bit, would you like
to offer it to him? Im like Yes, send it to me. He sends it to me and then I have it and
then I contact Stefan and he doesnt get back to me. When he does, Ill have it for him for
free. (Laughter) [55:21]

SM: If you have a .bit domain, how does the hosting work? You still have to have hosting
for it, right? [55:27]

JR: There are a few answers to that. Right now, your web server either has to have a
dedicated IP address, in which case there is no other configuration you have to do or if its
not a dedicated IP address, youre going to have to make sure that there is a virtual host set
up on that server so that it knows that when it gets a request for something.bit, that it
points it to the same folder on the server that the .com is pointing to. In the future, there is
actually a proposal, which I wrote, which I think we can implement it in the future which
would actually have the FreeSpeechMe plug-in handle that conversion. The way that would
work is, in the future, you can register a .bit domain in Namecoin and you can put a note in
the blockchain that, basically, says I want this .bit domain to point to a .com domain that
already exists but I dont want to have this server know that its .bit and the server can think
its still .com and FreeSpeechMe will just sort of magically change the HTTP headers so that
it just works. [56:36]

MD: Wow! I didnt know about that one. *56:37+

JR: Thats not implemented yet but that is planned. *56:39+

MD: Awesome. Jeremy, when Jeremy says Im planning on implementing this or that hes
written this, its not like some guy. Hes actually... are you on the Namecoin development
team technically? I know that youve done some work with that and put some things that
are being implemented, right? [56:57]

JR: Yeah. I dont know that there is one specific definition of a Namecoin development
team but I am on some of the internal mailing lists. If that counts, then yeah. [57:07]

MD: Youve also written some things that are probably going to be implemented in
Namecoin, right? [57:14]

JR: Right. Several of the specifications that have been proposed for Namecoin which either
have been or will soon be implemented were written or co-written by me. [57:23]

MD: Cool. [57:25]

SM: Yeah, cool. I think youve given people a pretty good overview of what they might
need to set up a .bit domain if theyre somebody who makes websites or to register .bit
domains and, maybe, give them to other people or to install the FreeSpeechMe plug-in. I
think weve painted a picture for people of why they might want to start using .bit domains
and what the benefits might be of doing that. Youve got an Indigogo campaign going right
now and what you want, basically, what youre asking for is to raise some money to be able
to improve the FreeSpeechMe plug-in and implement some new features and, I have to say,
your T-shirts are really cool. If you donate to their Indigogo campaign, you will get a T-shirt
that says I saved the internet and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. (Laughter) [58:15]

MD: Glad you like it. [58:17]

SM: I love it. I love it. Im going to have to send you a... [58:19]

JR: If I can briefly elaborate on that. [58:23]

SM: Yes. [58:23]

JR: The funds were raising are not just for FreeSpeechMe itself, were also looking to
improve other related Namecoin software. For example, right now were bundling the
Namecoin D client which is, basically, the command numbers of Namecoin QT. Theres lots
of software that FreeSpeechMe relies on and we want to make sure that that software gets
improvements where it needs it as well. About half of the things weve listed and things we
want to do are for FreeSpeechMe itself and the other half are for related software which,
basically, has the same goals but which FreeSpeechMe needs that software to work and
FreeSpeechMe benefits that software. [59:03]

MD: Its kind of one eco-system. Its hard to explain as... you know, most people think of a
plug-in like Well, you want to improve the plug-in but you want to improve some
cryptocurrency? I dont get it. The way I put it is that whats good for Namecoin is good for
FreeSpeechMe and whats good for FreeSpeechMe is good for Namecoin. *59:20+

SM: Yeah. [59:21]

MD: Ill stress this again. This isnt just Oh, we have a plug-in. Somebody came out with a
plug-in a few years ago that was kind of neat. It was a Firefox add-in that had a continually
updating list of blocked websites and then you could go to the blocked websites through
their DNS but the people doing it had to maintain it and it wasnt always accurate. They
actually got a threatening letter from the government for that. We havent gotten anything
like that yet but well see. That wasnt like this. That was just a trick. This is a whole new
eco-system of how to run the internet. Its very bold to say that but its true. If youre
technical, go check out what Jeremys got written down for what he wants to do and youll
get it. If youre not, install the plug-in and youll go Man, this is neat. I get it. [1:00:08]

SM: Yes and go to FreeSpeechMe.org and youre going to find out, not only about the plug-
in, but you can download it right now. Its available right now. Its not just something that
theyre going to build. You can also learn how to set up a .bit version of your website.
Theyve got a tutorial there, theyve got a video which, of course, is being translated into
different languages and, of course, theyve got the Indigogo campaign and some reasons
why you might want to support this. I really encourage everybody to go there. I think its a
really cool project and Id love to have you guys back on to see how it develops. I think this
is going to be really big. People can find you, of course, at FreeSpeechMe.org but, Jeremy,
do you have a personal way that people can get in touch with you like Twitter or anything
like that that you want to give out? [1:00:51]

JR: I have a personal website veclabs.net and thats, basically, for pretty much all of the
programming projects Ive done over the past few years. Its not updated very often. Ill
warn you of that but if people are curious what the FreeSpeechMe programmer does in his
spare time, you can see some other stuff Ive done. [1:01:14]

MD: He builds robots. He builds robots. [1:01:16]

SM: That is so cool. Somebody is going to scoop you up and hire you right out of college, I
think. (Laughter) [1:01:22]

MD: I think they already have. Dont you have like a robot building summer job coming up
or something? [1:01:27]

JR: Ive had some robotics internships in the past. I dont know about this summer. Well
see how that goes. [1:01:34]

SM: Sweet. Alright so, your website veclabs.net and Michael W. Dean is the host of the
Freedom Feens radio show and podcast. People can find that at FreedomFeens.bit, right?
(Laughter) [1:01:47]

MD: .bit and .com. [1:01:49]

SM: Yeah. [1:01:50]

MD: .bit if you have the FreeSpeechMe plug-in and .com if you dont. *1:01:53+

JR: Yeah and Veclabs is also available at .bit, although for Veclabs .bit, you need HTTPS
because Im like that. *1:02:00+

SM: OK guys, thank you so much. This has been awesome. [1:02:03]


__________________________________________


CREDITS:

Thanks for listening to Episode 90 of Lets Talk Bitcoin.

Content for todays show was provided by Lafe Taylor, Lamar Wilson, Jonathan
Mohan, Matt Corallo, Stephanie Murphy, Michael W. Dean, Jeremy Rand and Adam
B. Levine. This episode was produced by Adam B. Levine with additional production
by Stephanie Murphy and Jonathan Mohan. This episode was edited by Denise
Levine, Matthew Zipkin and Adam B. Levine
Music for todays episode was provided by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz

Any questions or comments? Email adam@letstalkbitcoin.com.

Have a good one and Ill see you at LTBcoin.com! [1:02:38]