Turning privacy into Bitcoin's economic edge

“Bitcoin exists to remove intermediaries from the movement of money online. Without privacy, if someone can see how money is moving, they don’t like someone you paid, they can discriminate based on that.” — Dan Gould

Dan Gould builds PayJoin, the privacy protocol that breaks Bitcoin surveillance while cutting transaction fees up to 25%. Satoshi flagged Bitcoin’s privacy problem in the white paper—PayJoin solves it without mixing, turning surveillance assumptions into dead ends. When privacy becomes an economic benefit rather than a cost, adoption follows.

“Bitcoin exists to remove intermediaries from the movement of money online. Without privacy, if someone can see how money is moving, they don't like someone you paid, they can discriminate based on that.”
— Dan Gould

Timestamps

00:00 Why PayJoin works like HTTPS—making surveillance unreliable across the network
02:11 PayJoin Foundation launch: Eight contributors building privacy infrastructure
04:30 How exchanges batch withdrawals to reduce fees without sacrificing privacy
08:32 Bitcoin's Fourth Amendment gap—why digital cash has less protection than physical
14:42 Breaking the multi-input heuristic that enables dragnet Bitcoin surveillance
20:15 Interactive batching supercharges Bitcoin transactions with privacy and cost savings
27:45 Why merchants get fee benefits while improving customer privacy
35:20 Cross-input signature aggregation delivers 25% fee reduction with privacy
42:18 Serverless PayJoin removes infrastructure barriers through encrypted mailboxes
48:30 Lightning integration: PayJoin for channel opening and splicing
52:26 Essential privacy hygiene for self-custody Bitcoin users
54:27 How developers integrate PayJoin into wallets and e-commerce platforms
56:17 Six-month roadmap: Production integrations and multi-party PayJoin advances

Resources

About Dan Gould

Dan Gould leads the Payjoin Foundation, a nonprofit launched in August 2025 to advance Bitcoin privacy through practical, fee-reducing technology. Based in Taipei, he's the architect behind Payjoin Dev Kit (PDK)—open-source infrastructure that lets any wallet or exchange integrate privacy-preserving transactions. He won the Human Rights Foundation's bounty for Payjoin V2 by eliminating the server requirement that made earlier implementations vulnerable to censorship.

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