Bitcoin and Freedom by Design

It's really difficult to engineer freedom tech, like, you know, solutions that like require you to kind of take ownership of your money, take ownership of your data. These things, you know, typically have engineering solutions that are harder to build. They might take a longer time to build or it might actually require the user to kind of learn something new or requires just a new way of us thinking about product building. So it kind of ends up being this, you know, huge disadvantage in that regard. Is there something inherent and even maybe some would argue noble, I think, about self-sovereignty, freedom tech requiring friction? Stephen DeLorm, welcome. Hey, thanks for having me, Sean. I appreciate it. I love the ATL BitLab background. So how are things in maybe sunny Georgia? Yeah, things are going great. Vibes are high at ATL BitLab as always.

Just got another Bitcoin meetup in the lab here tonight. It's every single Wednesday night here. So things are going good. And I'm just looking forward to 2026 and what the community will build. Awesome. Yeah, and for anyone in Atlanta or the surrounding areas, definitely recommend you check out ATL BitLab. I'll be sure to have the links in the show notes. It is a great space with even greater people, which I've had the opportunity to spend some time in and with. So we are, if I am doing my calendar math correctly, Stephen, we're two days, we're recording two days after Square's Bitcoin launch. And that is now available to four million merchants, in-person merchants. I'm not sure actually if that's what they call in-person or in total. It is a product as I've seen, and I want to get your take with, you know, really strong UX, great design, fully custodial. And so I think the timing is perfect to, with you, explore the tension between the sort of purity of freedom tech, as it were, Bitcoin most specifically, and, you know, designing for freedom.

And in that, people like yourselves, you're very much in the center of this, are taking into consideration what non-technical, everyday individuals want and need. And so, you know, with that, let's talk about sort of the seduction of, you know, great product design and smooth UX. So Cash App, Venmo, even some custodial wallets, they are, I think, winning because the UX is just buttery smooth. you know, the user experience. And meanwhile, some self-custody tools can feel like operating a nuclear reactor. And so as a product designer, and let's take a moment as you answer to give us a bit of insight into your work, how do you think about this fundamental challenge or disadvantage that Freedom Tech comes out of the gate with? Yeah. So I'll, you know, briefly kind of summarize my experience in this space. And, you know, I didn't really start off in Freedom Tech like

most people. You know, I was just a graphic design major in college, spent the first part of my career doing mostly design, more focused on marketing and advertising and that sort of stuff. Of course, you kind of have to know some amount of building for the web to be, you know, competent You know, we're in a digital first world now. So I kind of fell into web design, web development, and then, you know, kind of fell into freedom tech along the way there. And so and then kind of transitioned into product design from there. Did, you know, work with the Bitcoin design community under a spiral grant. Now I work on product at Voltage from a design perspective. And, I mean, it's a huge disadvantage for people building FreedomTech because I think for a couple reasons. One, you have this idea that when you live somewhere like, let's say, the USA, where more or less your freedoms are respected.

Like, sure, everyone will have gripes here and there about something they don't like in their particular city or state or, you know, something the president said or whatever. But by and large, we live in a place where like, you know, your freedoms are more or less respected. And, you know, that's that's creates a situation where you don't really need freedom tech like you can benefit from it, but you don't like need it the way that someone living under an authoritarian regime needs it right this second. you might need it one day but right now you don't like need it to carry on your daily business and then there's this this other idea that i think it's just it's really difficult to engineer freedom tech like you know solutions that uh like require you to kind of take ownership of your money take ownership of your data these things you know typically have engineering solutions that are harder to build or, you know, they might be harder to build. They might take a longer time to

build or it might actually require the user to kind of learn something new or requires just a new way of us thinking about product building. So it kind of ends up being this, you know, huge, you know, disadvantage in that regard. Is there, in your view, Stephen, is there something inherent and even maybe some would argue noble, I think, about self-sovereignty, freedom tech requiring friction. What's your perspective on that? Should self-sovereignty and freedom tech require friction? I don't think so. I don't think it has to involve friction. So you don't buy that assertion, which I would assert many builders say, you know, is that in order to learn, you got to suffer. Yeah. And I think there, I think people, it's kind of like the whole idea of like, there's a band that you go to listen to at your local club. And it's like, you know,

it starts, it's a band of people from your community making music. And then, you know, one day they get a record deal and then, you know, they, they, they get bigger and bigger. And then one day you're playing, they're playing the Superbowl and you're like, I don't like them anymore. I like the one they used to play in the clubs. Yeah. And it's like, you know, there's this kind of idea that like, as something becomes more accessible, when you find something early on, you, you, you like it more because it's like, well, I had to work hard to find it. You know, I had to follow this one obscure Instagram account just to know when this band was playing. And everybody else has the benefit of finding them now on Spotify. I had to work to listen to this band. And I think there's very and you can see this kind of thing happening in computing, too, where it's like, well, I used to have to work to understand how to use computers. Now it's all just easier. I compiled my kernel and now it just installs. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, you know, I don't like that kind of like hipster mentality of, you know, just because something is more accessible, it's no longer good.

I do think there are some interesting ideas, though, like when we, it has been argued before that, you know, sometimes computer software maybe makes it too easy these days. And like the idea is that like in the 90s, you wanted to learn how to use a piece of software. You know, you would get a manual for how to use Adobe Illustrator that was like this thick. I mean, it was like three inches thick for people who were just listening. That section in the bookstore, you know, had those 20-pound tunes. But the thing is, is you actually really just by having this more mentality of like, well, I'm going to go read how to do it in the manual. I think you actually learned how to use the software at a much deeper level. so i i do think there is some merit to sometimes with software just saying look if you want this piece of software to fulfill your purpose for me that might be graphic design you need to educate yourself about how to use it that's going to make you a better you know a better more powerful user

of this piece of software having said that i don't think every single software in the world needs to be to that degree. Like if you want to use a piece of design software and you want to just, you know, totally slay at, you know, making designs or making video or making whatever you're using in your particular piece of software, yes, you do need to kind of read the manual, go down the rabbit hole, so to speak, and really educate yourself. But like, I don't think every single piece of software, like certainly just a messaging app or visiting a website or sending money back and forth. I don't think that necessarily needs to be the friction. So I think it's more of a matter of like what kinds of software requires, you know, friction. I'll, you know, maybe it's like, I know I'm going on a little bit of a rant here. No, it's good. Another way to think about it is maybe in terms of friction, maybe you don't want friction so much as you want slowness, right?

And so, like, I think of friction as being like, well, it was really difficult. It was really confusing. I didn't know how to do it. When I was using this particular piece of software, I got the impression that it was buggy or I didn't understand what it was telling me. That's what I think of when I think of friction. But, you know, for example, let's say you're trying to onboard customers to some kind of multi-sig solution that's going to help them self-custody like multitudes of Bitcoins. You might want that to be a slow experience. You might not want people to just download that thing and start using it immediately and just throw a caution to the wind. Right. You might want it to be a very slow onboarding, like, okay, we're going to onboard you to a solution for self-custodying your money. We don't want you to do this if you're in a coffee shop or if you're at a party or surrounded by lots of people.

This is not a speed run. Yeah, we want you to be in a calm environment. But you can still imagine it being a very like easy or kind of like handheld process. This is going to take an hour to complete. It has 10 steps. Are you ready to begin? You can save your, you know, you can come back and resume this later if, you know, you get interrupted. So you can make it a very calm, handheld, understandable process and make it kind of slow. And that in my mind is different than like friction, which I think of as like really kind of negative and harsh and confusing. I think that is super interesting. So what I take from that is there is friction, for lack of a better word, and there's pace. and and i think that's really interesting um because i think about patterns like which are now i i believe and hopefully are standard um requiring you to enter your seed phrase you know

play it back to prove that you've recorded it that you haven't just yoloed uh through a seed phrase for example and and so we're from that and you touched on this let's talk about you know the cost of making it easy or too easy. So one of your projects, 12cash, makes sharing payment information fairly or simple. But simplicity, you know, often means abstraction. Abstraction implies a certain level of trust. Where do you draw the line between simple enough to use and easy enough to fool you? The distinction between simple enough to use and easy enough to fool you. So, yeah, that's a good question because I think, you know, we've, I mean, we've seen certainly like controversies online as of late of like, you know, products that, you know, people felt confused by what was actually happening in the interface. um i don't know it's a very it's a very tough it's a very tough problem to solve i think

you know i mean i really just think about it as in terms of trying to figure out who you're trying to build for right right like it's it's you don't i don't think you ever want to fool anybody of course that's a that's a dark pattern you know in the ui world we call those dark patterns where it's like when you're trying to cancel a gym membership or something like that and they make the you know do you sure you want to cancel and then they make the the they make the cancel button the big the no keep my membership button like the big you know primary solid color button that your eye you know gets drawn to um so yes you don't want to fool anybody you don't want like dark patterns or anything like that. Um, I think just from a like moral perspective. Um, but I think you really just got to think about like who you're building for and like, you know, what problem they're actually trying to solve. You know, you brought up the square terminal earlier and they're, you know,

I don't think of like the square product as being like for dissidents or unbanked people or anything like that. It's really, they're just trying to solve a problem for like local businesses of like, you know, a coffee shop, for instance, probably before they can afford the real estate for their coffee shop, they probably are pouring cups of espresso at a local farmer's market. Previously, they were an all cash business. Now, like with Square, they can like start accepting credit cards. Right. And so like custody and all that is like totally acceptable for that kind of customer. They're not really operating in like a high friction environment. If you're building stuff that's like, you know, for human rights activists and stuff, you have to think about like all these other things about like they actually need custody of the money because most, you know, banks and fintech providers won't even serve their country. You need to think about like, you know, being able to like hide the money and make plausible deniability in case they're like

arrested or something like that. So it's a completely different end of the spectrum. Voltage, a lot of the work that we're doing these days, we kind of, you know, I'll say like 2021, the narrative was very much run your own node, right? Like run your own lightning node. And a lot of businesses wanted to do that. But we've kind of, as we've gotten to know our customers better and gotten to know the kind of customers that want to learn about Bitcoin and start accepting Bitcoin, we started to learn that for a lot of them, like running a lightning node wasn't really important to them. They just wanted to be able to accept lightning payments. And so for us, our solution to that problem is we're going to open a line of credit to your business and you can hit our API, send lightning payments as much as you want, as long as you pay back your line of credit, you know, at the end of your billing cycle. And so, um, you know, I think it's just a matter of understanding what it is that your actual customers need, uh, before you, you know, start building. Cause it's very easy from like a engineering, like I, I run into this

myself, it's very appealing for me to want to build things that are like kind of technically fascinating and like scratch a technical itch in my brain. Even as a designer, I fall victim to that. But, you know, when you're thinking about it from like a product perspective, you really need to think about like who it is you're building for and like what what solves the problem for them. Yes. And I think as you were speaking and I mean, kudos to to you and the Voltage team, I think the line of credit, knowing many of you as I do. and having some insight into how the product has evolved, I think Voltage is a great example of meeting the market, meeting customers where they are. And it brings to mind this sort of slider, you know, between pure protocol sort of adherence and self and user experience and customer needs and wants And I know it very difficult And it an ongoing process to sort of dial that

in as it were. Well, let me ask about maybe a few more specifics, Stephen, and those are great backdrops, you touched on the pace and needing to sort of slow down the intense, potentially, you know, high value, high risk flows of something like custodying your money, multi-sig, for example. Are there other areas where friction is positive, beneficial? And again, it's my word, not yours, but that sort of not hiding all the details, so sort of surfacing some of the complexity. And so that's sort of part A, you know, where are there patterns or areas where you see that as necessary and positive? And with it, are there, are there advice or cautionary notes you could offer to people about being more aware of some of those dark patterns? So, you know, where is there a positive application of what I would call friction?

And where instead are we sort of seeing these dark patterns that are designed to fool the end user? Well, I don't think I see a lot of dark patterns in like Bitcoin and freedom. No, no. But the alternatives, right? The alternatives. Yeah. I would say in terms of the freedom tech world where like friction might be good, like some would argue that fees maybe like you know if you just want like more transparency fees um you know i kind of don't know i i kind of don't worry about that nearly as much just because i feel like at least from a lightning perspective i think a lot of the times the fees are so low that um you you know don't really run into an issue but i you know totally if you're I don't know, like a wallet that accepts on-chain and Lightning and there's like some kind of conversion happening there.

You could certainly run into a situation where like, you know, converting between Lightning and on-chain could like maybe create some unexpected fee. Right. So I guess. You're doing a swap or something. Yeah, I guess as I work this out, as I talk about it, I think that could be a place where maybe a little more, you know, a slower pace or friction might be warranted. And that, like, you don't want to, like, it's very convenient to feel like, oh, it just kind of all magically swaps into whatever format the user's requesting. But if that swap is going to like eat up like 25% of the value of whatever it is, it's like, yeah, you might want to caution them and make them aware of that. I think, you know, when it comes to stuff like Nostra, actually, you know, you know, a lot of people are trying to like onboard everybody to Nostra very quickly and all that kind of stuff. And I guess it kind of depends on your perspective of Nostra.

I'm a little bit of a black sheep when it comes to Noster, and I think about it a little bit differently. But, you know, there's this one kind of philosophy of Noster that's like, oh, like your Noster key is going to be like your self-sovereign identity. And, you know, you're going to use this for all of your Noster applications to represent your identity. Well, if that is your philosophy of how Noster works, then you probably want a little bit of a slower paced introduction, I think, because you don't want people making this identity and then losing it. Right. There's also the more ephemeral view of Nostr, which I tend to lend myself more towards, which is like the kind of BitChat version of Nostr, where you're actually not even aware that you're using Nostr. And you download BitChat, and it's this kind of ephemeral identity. There's not this illusion with BitChat that you're going to be using the same identity every single time you log on. And so with that regard, it's actually very, you know, easy to just onboard people quickly.

You don't need that friction with that kind of philosophy of Noster. But yeah, I think it's really just those kinds of things where you're going to like cause somebody to lose money or you're going to, you're asking them to create an identity or something like that. I feel like those really lend themselves to a slower, more handheld pace. um but yeah i mean the the kind of like dark patterns i think we want to avoid are um we want to like avoid uh you know in like in in the the regular world that's stuff like you're trying to cancel something and you're trying to trick somebody into not canceling it or you're tricking people into upgrading to a new member, like a higher level of membership towards something, or you're trying to opt people into sharing their data, like you automatically have the box selected that says, yes, please add me to your marketing list and share my personal information

with your advertising network. Right. Or I think of Venmo, you know, which I think the social aspects, and I haven't been on in years, so I'm not qualified to say what it looks like these days, But there was this playfulness about sharing, you know, as many would joke, it's like, I know who you pay rent to and who your weed dealer is, you know, because it's all out there. And so are there, I don't know that you spent a lot of time looking at this, Stephen, but in payments specifically, do you see much of that going on and that, you know, individuals should be wary of? I think with Venmo, I just don't get it. like i've i've never i've never used it i've i refuse to download it and i know it's very popular among my generation but i never understood the appeal of like i'm going to like have all my payments like broadcast publicly that just seems kind of weird um i don't know if i would call that a dark pattern i guess just because i i guess so many

I guess people are aware of it. They're pretty upfront about it. I guess people like it. Yeah. And it's, you know. I don't get it. Yeah. It's not for us to convince someone that they should or shouldn't do anything, but I think it is worthwhile to call out, and I believe this is fair, correct me if you disagree, that in traditional sort of TradFi payments, you know, you are the product in many ways. There's a little, there's a vig on the payment, you know, they're making some money on the payment. But the data, to use the cliche, is the new oil, where I think what Bitcoin offers you in most cases is anonymity, if not total privacy. Yeah, if you're using it right. I would say I can speak to that a little. I mean, what a lot of people don't realize is, like, it's scary how much, you know data about you is already being sold through like credit and debit cards and stuff like that um i remember before i moved into freedom tech and i'd say this is probably a

catalyst for um you know my kind of transition to freedom tech is i used to do a lot of marketing and advertising for like b2b tech stuff um not the kind of stuff you'd see on tv usually because like i said more b2b kind of stuff but i had to work on like marketing videos for so many products that are like deployed at, you know, large enterprises that are really just about this, about like, you know, collecting large amounts of data on people, trying to come up with insights about, you know, individuals and what they might buy. And I mean, get this, one time I had to work on a video that was not even, get this, it wasn't even, it was not never going to be seen by end users it was never going to be seen even as a business market like advertising to other businesses this was a video designed to pitch a single data analytics idea to some executives

at a very large soft drink company that everyone probably drinks and so and i was like looking at all the people in the room working on the video with me good people all of them good designers to work with but i'm like looking and i'm like trying to calculate like well we've been working on this for a couple weeks now and i'm like wow this video probably has a budget of at least thirty thousand dollars this was a probably a budget of thirty thousand dollars to make a video designed to pitch an idea to like a group of five people and that's how much money right is in data and analytics it it is such a like profitable money machine that you know dropping 30k just to pitch the idea to a group of five people is totally worth it in their book and i worked on the other project for a company that all they do is hook into um like uh you know they they partner with banks and say

give us all the data about your customers' financial transactions. And then we will find advertisers who want to advertise to them and we'll kind of like do like a matchmaking operation between that. And a lot of major banks that everybody knows the names of actually, you know, are customers of this company. And it is routine, right? And I think that's the thing that is worth taking away among great points there. You know, if anyone wants to try this out, sign up for one of these services that automates the process of getting your data removed from brokers and getting them to stop collecting. I use one in particular. I'll remember what it is at some point. I've been enrolled for about six months, and they're at 900 data brokers and counting that have my data that they're removing me from, so they say, I believe. And many, many will not sort of agree to a checkbox that says, you know, don't start again.

They will start again. And I'll have to do this process continually. So all that to say it is remarkable what a massive industry that is behind the scenes. And that is the de facto with not just payments apps, but certainly financial services stand to gain the most. Well, on that note, Stephen, let's talk more about Square. So as we said, they rolled out Bitcoin payments to millions of merchants. I don't know about you. I took a look. Someone floated their onboarding video, their merchant-facing onboarding video. Looked quite straightforward to me. What's your read? Is this how Bitcoin wins? Is it a necessary step? Yeah, so please. Probably how Bitcoin wins. Yeah, I mean, it's just one more step in Bitcoin, you know, gaining the mass adoption that, you know, a lot of people in the Bitcoin industry are crazy for. I think it's a great move, actually.

Like, I think the problem with, like, trying to onboard merchants to Bitcoin before, there's a couple problems with it. Like, one, when a lot of times when Bitcoiners go with this narrative of, you know, we're trying to fix inflation and like, oh, my God, every problem in our society is caused by inflation. Yeah. And they're like, dude, I'm just trying to pour coffee for people and like, you know, you know, make ends meet at the end of the month. Like it's, it's, and so you got to meet, I think, business owners where they're at and, and what they're trying to do is they're trying to get customers. They're trying to retain customers and they're trying to lower their expenses too. Um, and so, uh, with definitely with the, the fee model, like the really low fee model, like that's huge. Um, another kind of problem with onboarding merchants before was, um, you know, just like we've talked about like the friction with kind of self custodial wallet.

Um, even if that business owner, if you can kind of, you know, convince them like, yeah, you know, you should download the self-custodial wallet and they might use it for their own personal uses, but it's a much more complicated matter of like onboard a business where you might be hiring somebody, um, to, you know, work in your coffee shop to continue this example who, um, you don't know very well. Um, you, you count the cash register at the end of the night, right? Like that's just typical for any business. It's like you can't just have a situation where like, you know, everybody, you know, every person you hire for your business has access to this health custodial Bitcoin. And, you know, I know there's certainly great solutions like BTC Pay Server and all that, but typically there's just been it's been kind of hard to onboard people. And there's been a lot of, you know, community initiatives around the world to like onboard people like, oh, we're going to go out to businesses and try and, you know, convince them to accept Bitcoin.

But you got to think about it. It's kind of like you're trying to onboard them to a self-custodial Bitcoin wallet. Who's the tech support for that business? That that has always been that's why I've in the past have never like really tried to do much community outreach here in Atlanta, because it's like a busy guy. I don't want to do tech support like one on one. And I'm happy to like talk to, you know, people and answer the questions on Bitcoin. But like, I don't want to get into a situation where like me and my friends are like, like kind of like free tech support for local businesses. We do that for our families. Yeah, exactly. The Square thing is great because it's like it meets them where they're at in terms of fee savings. And it also is kind of like bundled into a service that already has tech support. And on that note, by the time this podcast drops, I'm sure the announcement will already be out there. So there's kind of an initiative. We're publishing today, so be careful. No, no, I think the tweet is supposed to be out this morning.

So Haley Burko and Matt Bayless from Spiral have been working on this kind of like merchant adoption initiative. And so a lot of the Bitcoin community spaces around the world are helping. ATL BitLab's involved. I think both of the Bitcoin parks and the space are involved and probably some other ones that I'm forgetting at the moment. we basically have like these uh you know bitcoin plushies like you know the grumpy bitcoin the here comes that explains the box of them that i saw at bitcoin park last night exactly so we got a bunch of boxes here too and uh so we're starting a movement so we're sending out a atl bitlab street team um with plushies and onboarding letters to try and onboard our favorite businesses and the kind of letter it's it's it's it's actually very cute and adorable it's kind of like written from the perspective of the grumpy bitcoin and it's like why am i grumpy it's like because i'm grumpy because of three percent credit card fees nice um and it's just like the the whole like you know campaign they've started is really like meeting merchants where they're at which is not like

talking about liquidity inflation and freedom yeah it's just like hey if you're already a square merchant you can turn this option on if you're not a square merchant we can help you with that But like, if you're already Square Merchant, you can turn it on. You can save money on fees. And that'll be great. And so we're going to start some more stuff at BitLab here just in terms of like if some of these merchants have questions, we can have like a merchant night or something where people like a merchant town hall. But by and large, we'll probably just be driving people to the Bitcoin merchants like Facebook group. And that's really just like meeting merchants where they're at, solving a problem for them. So yes I think Square and to answer your question I think what Square is doing is great and it just kind of another little domino that gets tipped We see who next Love it Well and in fact on that note who else would you give accolades perhaps to Stephen who you think is balancing usability with trust or permissionlessness, if we want to sort of put that on the other end of the spectrum? Who's doing a

good job of striking that balance? Hmm. Wow, that's a good question. I wonder who is striking permissionlessness and trust like uh i would say in terms of my favorite products and is this bitcoin specific or just broadly free broadly anything you care to to draw attention to my my favorite one that i like people have always heard me talk about is signal um i think that just i i compare most freedom tech products against signal because i've been using them for eight years and I think I'll probably still be using them for eight years. And I think just in terms of, um, being easy to onboard people to, uh, I've never had to really, I've never really had to hold anybody's hands much. I can basically just tell them somebody to download the app and then message me on it. Um, it's built in such a way to where it actually doesn't really expose

private keys. It really, you know, kind of stores it in the phone's enclave and keeps it kind of hidden so that the user doesn't have a foot gun. They can't accidentally shoot themselves in the foot and expose their key material. So that one has just been like a true blessing. And, you know, you're talking about balancing permissionlessness and trust, like they can't read your messages. is it does rely on some centralized like kind of signal coordination servers. And, you know, in that regard, I guess that is a, you know, single point of failure, which isn't great. But I think that we've seen a pretty good track record of good behavior on terms of like the signal like found and like just being run by a nonprofit foundation, I think is a pretty good model. So I think that like it's really, really easy from like an engineering standpoint to kind of become fascinated with decentralization and be like, we need everything decentralized and we need everything distributed.

And I don't really know if that's a good way to think about it. I think it's more of a model of like, well, what kinds of things need to be decentralized? What kinds of things need to be distributed and how much do they need to be so? And so when we talk about Bitcoin nodes, we talk about like Bitcoin being this like source of money for the world. Like, yes, obviously we want Bitcoin to be as decentralized, you know, decentralized AF. But and we want like, you know, decentralized Bitcoin nodes at all costs. but when we think about other kinds of technology it's like you may actually get to a point where too much decentralization actually makes it like you know just like you know ungodly hard to use so i think signal strikes that balance they just like they they focus solely on like we want it to be private we want it to be we don't want there to be user foot guns we'll accept a little bit centralization trade-offs we just want it to be super private super easy no user foot guns um so i think that uh they uh do that very well um in terms of you know like unchained is another

product i'm a fan i'm on the bitcoin side it's like you know we we they they're and and their whole thing is they're they're like look we're centralized uh we can you know obviously if we are part of your multi-sig quorum we can see your money so they they don't really err they They don't really focus so much on like the, you know, privacy side, I feel like, but they do focus on like this core idea that like we will not custody your money. Like, you know, that and if you do want to enter into like some kind of loan agreement with us or whatever, we're going to have like a third party have one of the keys. They're very, very good at that. So I think it's just like a really like an idea of trying to figure out like what is like the core value and like the most important part of your product. For Signal, it's privacy. For Unchained, it's like we want to encourage self-custody. You know, at Voltage now, we, you know, our kind of, you know, efforts mostly now is like easy engineering integration and interoperability.

right so like for us we're focusing more on making it easy easy for engineering teams to adopt and we're focusing on making it interoperable with any other you know bitcoin and lightning service um you know that's kind of where our focus is right now um so i think it's like you know my some of my favorite products are just the ones that really really know what the thing is that they're trying to optimize for. And for whom, as you said earlier. Yeah, know your audience, know your customer. Great points. And I'm big fans of both. And I think it's interesting. And Signal does deserve tremendous accolades and credit. They are the one most everyone, you know, starts with because they're such a shining example. So shout out to Signal and everyone I think should be using it. And another product I can think of from a FreedomTech perspective that I think does a really great job is Proton and just the whole suite of Proton services, ProtonMail, ProtonCalendar, Protondrive. And I do not get paid to shell them, though I

kind of wish they would reach out because I feel like I show them so much. They just, I started as a ProtonMail user when it was like really kind of rough around the edges and just stuck with it. And I just, it's been so impressive to see their whole product stack and kind of Similar to, you know, you know, Signal, they've just they've isolated what it is that they want to optimize around, which is privacy. And, you know, you have that centralization, you know, thing right there, but they're not optimizing for decentralization. They're optimizing for privacy. And I think that that just goes to show that from a business perspective, you know, there is business models around freedom tech. But I think you just can't go into it trying to, you know, tick every single box on day one. You can't be like, we are going to be private. We are going to be decentralized. We are going to be peer to peer. We're going to be interoperable. Like you just you can imagine like all these different metrics you could try and optimize for.

And it's really, really, really difficult to optimize for all of those. And when you do like Proton and you choose to just optimize for like one or two things, you can really make a ton of progress as a product and actually get like long term sustainable customers. So, yeah, find find your core value and optimize for that. is my take. Yes, agree completely. And I think when you, and I'm also a longtime Proton user, and they, if I'm not mistaken, have a hundred million users. So it is remarkable the scale that they've reached with privacy as the primary selling point. And they remind me, as some others do, that, you know, long ago, pardon me, long ago, Google, their mantra was don't be evil. And that has long since been struck from all documentation, websites and the like. But I think Proton and Unchained in their own way are examples of a

bigger, better commitment, which is can't be evil, right? Unchained, and I'm a client, delighted client, great team, know so many of them, a big fan, not taking any money. So just to say that they're a great product and a great company, you know, they can help you, they cannot materially harm you. So if they were compelled, as you said, they could disclose some details, but they cannot take control of funds. Proton, while centralized, because of the way, you know, they're very, in my mind, sound cryptography works, you do lose some features. You know, I can't easily integrate Proton Calendar into some slick, you know, native desktop app, but they cannot see my data. They cannot, as you know, someone will correct me if I'm wrong, But they can't be evil in that regard, which I think is a great shout out to them. If we then transition, Stephen, to what I think I understand that you and other product designers, UX designers, sort of human computer interface discipline would study is psychology.

And so with this, I'm curious, when someone makes the choice to use Cash App, and that is not a slam on Cash App, it's a great product, when they choose that over, say, a self-custodial wallet, let's just pick Blitz, you know, as I think a fine example, not at the technical level, but what's your understanding at the sort of human level, the psychological level, what's the story behind why they make the choice they make? Is it as simple as one is easier, one is harder, or is there more to it? I think why someone would use Cash App versus a self-custodial one would depend on, well, like, how are they approaching Bitcoin from the start? Like, you know, if they're not a Cash App user and they're not, like, let's say they don't have Cash App and they also don't have a Bitcoin wallet. They're starting completely from scratch. you know it might be that they choose cash app just because it lets them buy bitcoin

i mean that's a huge thing that i think a lot of wallets ignore uh is just buying acquiring bitcoin um like it's it's i know it's very appealing this idea to like get bitcoin in a peer-to-peer capacity um but you know when people i think when people are thinking about it more from like an investing use case or savings use case they need to actually get bitcoin and so it's really i think for one it's just a features standpoint cash app lets you buy can't use it if you don't have it yeah exactly and so a lot of wallets they it's kind of this cold start problem it's like well yeah you can download this wallet and there's no kyc and all that but it's like what do i do i just like look at the number zero um another thing another way to look at it might be that like maybe it's uh they already were a cash app user and it's like well yeah i could download you know this other wallet but i already have cash app i think there's very much a sense of like app fatigue

nowadays like i don't want another app great point and this is like among technical and non-technical people there's just this fatigue with more services and apps and websites you have to register for. And so I think for a lot of people, it's just like, well, I already have cash up. Why not just use that? And, you know, that's an interesting, sorry to interrupt. I was just going to say that, you know, I had this aha moment, which is perhaps should be obvious given that I work in tech and have my whole career is, you know, what, what struck me as you said that is the preciousness increasingly of the real estate on a user's phone. And so if you've got an install, what I hear you say is there's going to be a natural incentive to keep adding features so that the user doesn't turn to a different competitive app. It's like, let me jam everything in there, which is the, you know, the sloppy way to do it. But in effect, once I've got a user,

let's retain that user and serve them with every possible feature we can imagine. Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of funny because a lot of times in UI design in the West, we're like, we have this tendency to want to make things as simple as possible. And like, if you look at like the evolution of software design from like over the past 30 years, it's gone from interfaces with like, you know, full plane control, you know, cockpit kind of situations to just being like, here's a screen with a single sentence. sentence and one big blue button and it's like that's like and and and like so we like that in the west but it's funny if you look at ui design from like china and vietnam and and places in asia it's completely the opposite they love that like cockpit um you know kind of thing and it's like a different psychology it's kind of like like wechat very popular in china and it's like uh there's this idea that like this one app handles all of your needs um it's it's like more of this comforting

idea that like everything i need is right here it takes care of me and it's not just like actually chatting it's also like a wallet it's also a map like it's like google maps so it would be like if your venmo your uh you know i message um your google maps um yelp everything was just like all bundled into one interface. But that's been a very, like, you know, good business model for WeChat. So, you know, anyways, that's more of a tangential thing. There's just this really big difference. But I think what, you know, here again, what strikes me, and I'm sure there are papers on this all over the place, but it seems that there might be a correlation between a more collectivist society. And as you, I think your word, Stephen, take care of me, You know, do it for me. And the rugged individualists that we like to believe we are in the U.S., which is, no, that's OK. I'll pick. I'll pick and choose. And that that would translate into, you know, that device that we carry around with us all day long.

that very well could be i think that i think that might be part of it i mean we definitely have kind of uh you know with the history of capitalism in this country there's almost like a personal identity wrapped up in brands and like this is the thing is like when people really really like a brand they start to like kind of identify their brand kind of like how i'll wax poetic about you know proton um you know you you know you you kind of we identify with products and brands that kind of not only we enjoy using but also that we feel like match our values yes um and like who what we stand for and and and i know and it's and like it's easy to say those kinds of things when we're talking about freedom tech but this even like you know comes down to things like like fast food brands and all of that and i remember like i remember seeing this like meme online a long time ago i mean it was some like really stupid meme but it was like this like guy being like you know what are you doing going to chipotle and moe's and places like that to get a burrito like taco

bell was there for you with like that value meal and all of that and it was like but it's it's true it's like people have these like emotional connections with things and like you know for for somebody it might be that like yeah i remember like that taco bell value meal when i was in college and didn't have any money. That was dope. So, you know, we formed these kinds of things. And so, you know, if you if you can, you know, bring somebody into your kind of product vision with like not only the product that you are actually giving them and the value you're giving them, but also like the kind of vision of the world and how you make them feel about it, you can really kind of form a relationship. And, you know, you don't want to abuse that relationship. But once that relationship is in place, that opens up the door for you to make all kinds of other kinds of products for those people. Keep that customer engaged. Yes. And I think that is such an interesting and important point to make, which is, and I don't want to be a hypocrite because as I have told anyone who will listen to me and have said many

times on the podcast, that after owning an iPhone since 2007 and having Mac since the 90s, I made a switch to another product plug for, you know, no money's exchanged hands, but framework, laptop, and a Pixel 9 running graphene. So those are my two go-to devices. And so you know I sort of purposely broke out of the Apple ecosystem And my point to all that being they as a business have done brilliantly I have bought a frightening amount of their products But I think the nefariousness, be it designed or incidental, is as those products become more like appliances and as the experience just becomes smoother and easier and more fully integrated, It's just so easy to do the next thing, you know, with Apple or to use the next Apple app that they probably have stolen the concept from some third party independent app developer and now integrated into the operating system and so on and so forth.

And so, you know, that is a rambling lead up, Stephen, to, you know, what would you say to someone nodding along to most of this that, yes, you know, Venmo's fun, even though it exposes my data. Apple is incredible, even though the iPad is an appliance that I can't really, you know, get under the hood and do anything with. what if anything is your call to action to people to get a little more uncomfortable you know what's or would you you know what what are those conversations like that you might have with an individual at atl bit lab or on the street or you know at chipotle yeah um that's a good question i mean like it's kind of like how do you how do you turn somebody on to freedom tech and And I don't really, I don't know if I know the great answer to that. If there is one, you're retired tomorrow. Yeah, that's the thing. Because it's like I find that people become most interested in these things when something bad happens to them.

Um, and I, I, I guess my personal experience has been that a lot of times people just don't care until something bad happens. Now you have the kind of the, the, the nerd, the engineer kind of person who, you know, is just intuitively interested in these things. And because they want to know how something works under the hood, there's a whole class of because I also I help my friend Jordan out with his show, The Sovereign Computing Show, where he talks a lot of like very, very much in depth about these things. And it's kind of interesting as we dive into topics on that show. You know, there's a lot of people who are just like, yeah, I want freedom. There's also a whole class of person who's interested in like self-hosting just from a like kind of academic. Sure. Perspective. Someone who's just like, I want to set up a home network and self-host all this stuff just because, you know, I'm curious. And I took a networking class and I can.

Yeah. And so I think for that kind of class of person, kind of, you know, your kind of pitch is just like, you know, it's the hackable money wallet or it's the hackable mail client. It's the hackable messaging thing. It's something that you can, you know, you're almost kind of like pitching it as almost like a toy to them. Because even though it is useful, it kind of is like the, you know, the saying, the bigger the boys, the bigger the toys. I don't mean to gender that, but it's really like my mind. I'm sorry. I was, you know, we used to crack open the hood on the Mustang. You know, the engines are not so accessible anymore, but technology is. Sorry, please continue. Yeah, so exactly. It's like so for people who enjoy, you know, just like the tinkering, that is that is the allure of Freedom Tech is that this stuff is built in a way that you can tinker with it. For everybody else, though, for the people who are not, you know, garage tinkerers and, you know, self, you know, PC hobbyists and all these things, I really find that people need something bad to happen before they get.

And that doesn't mean catastrophically bad. No, but, you know, there's a privacy breach every other day. Right. And I often think about that. So they need to be like, yeah, they need to be like in the headlines, Equifax got hacked again, let's say, for example. and then it's like click here to find out if you're on the list oh crap i was on the list what do i do and then people get interested in that or like someone hacked into my email and and like okay well now you need to get into password management right um or it might be like um i i wonder you know and i'll get your take on this if there's not a fatigue there you know the the credit agencies um ironically named have so little credit um with i think the average individual that that breach, that yet another breach is almost like, all right, so I get six months of free credit reporting and God knows what's going to happen to my data delete, you know? So I say that to sort of prompt, do you think it's ratcheting up? Does it have to be catastrophic

in order for someone to make a significant change? It might have to be, but I hope not. Yeah, certainly. Definitely when it comes to, I mean, definitely you're right. There is a bunch of fatigue and there are like an overwhelming number of people. I mean, I hear this opinion all the time when people are just like, I don't care. They have all my data. They're tracking my every move. And I really, I don't like that attitude a lot. But, you know, it is there. I'm just like, yeah, I'm just kind of like, yo, like toughen up. Like, you know, like you don't like you're hot. Don't surrender that easily. Yeah. One thing I do find is one of the best things in this kind of twisted way to steer people towards freedom tech is politics. And I've kind of told this story on another podcast before, but I'll retell it here.

One of my favorite, you know, things about like privacy tech is that our opinions about privacy tech in the U.S. totally depend on who's president. And like, like, I remember like, OK, being like in high school and like George W. Bush was president. You know, everyone was still kind of sore about the oh, crap, the name is blanking on me. But the the act Congress passed right after 9-11. Right, right. But, you know, anyways, basically, there was, you know, all these controversies in the 2000s over like, you know, is the government doing warrantless wiretaps? You know, what sorts of powers does the federal government have now to combat terrorism? Can that be deployed against, you know, U.S. citizens? And the privacy narrative I was hearing in that time in the 2000s was totally about it was totally coming from the left in the U.S. It was a it was a democratic center left idea that, like, maybe we should be more private.

Maybe we should be more concerned about the government's intrusion in our lives. And, you know, the center right perspective was, no, we need to combat terrorism because terrorists suck. I think they're both valid viewpoints. But my point is, and I mean, certainly everyone has different individual takes. But during that time, it was privacy was I heard coming more center left. Then, you know, Obama gets elected. And then the scandal like the Snowden, you know, scandal and all that. And then everyone on the right is suddenly more like this happened under Obama's watch. You know, we have this federal, you know, you know, federal apparatus, you know, surveilling our ever move. And everyone on the left was like, no, you can't critique Obama. Never let a good crisis go to waste, I think is the. Exactly. Then Trump gets elected the first time and suddenly everyone's like, oh, my God, we need to get journalists using signal. We need everyone using signal so that people can exfiltrate information from the White House and, you know, bring down the fascist hierarchy or whatever. then uh suddenly you know january 6th happens and then you know all of a sudden everyone on the right

and like every republican in my life is just like steven how do i get on signal so that like you know i don't want to get banned i don't want whatever it takes i'm like dog dog chill and now we're right back i mean the pendulum like it's so this pendulum just totally swing my and i don't mean to make fun of anybody for their politics here. My point is just that like privacy is a concern no matter who is in office. It is a political or all political if you wish to view it that way. Yeah. And everything is political. But what I mean is privacy shouldn't be seen as a partisan. It shouldn't be seen as part because politics, politics is who gets what. Yes. But partisan is like, you know, which party are you aligned with? And privacy doesn't need to be a partisan idea. You're always at risk of having your privacy breached. It's just that how we feel about privacy depends on who is the president in the U.S. at least. And I don't really know how to shake that belief in people. But the useful thing is, is that every four years as the pendulum swings,

we get a new crop of people interested in privacy tech. So, you know, that's what I mean. It's like, It's not a catastrophic crisis, but in their mind, politically, it's a partisan crisis to them. And so it kind of stirs their interest. So maybe as more as the pendulum, pendulum swifts, more and more people become interested in privacy. And as more and more people become interested, the products become hopefully easier to use and less evil. So that's kind of my optimistic take on it. I love it. Let's let's with all of that wrap up here, Stephen. Uncomfortable question. What if most people prefer beautiful surveillance over ugly freedom, you know, and not to cast all freedom tech in that vein? But if it's the perspective is sort of on that on that two or almost two poles, if that's true, like what what are we building for? Is it the one percent who care or do you think we've got a shot at broader adoption of freedom tech?

I think that there's definitely a trend where people just want the, as you put it, the beautiful surveillance over the ugly freedom, but it doesn't have to be that way. I think Freedom Tech products can be beautiful in terms of having beautiful interfaces. uh part of that is you know helping you know projects you know helping freedom tech projects to care about like kind of having beautiful interfaces part of it is getting designers interested in working on these projects uh which is always the challenge but um that's that's one part of the equation i think though that it can also be kind of a trojan horse type of scenario where if you build a product that's useful for other means,

then you can work these FreedomTech things in there in meaningful ways. So, for example, what Square is doing with Bitcoin support, well, it's custodial, but they're onboarding a ton of merchants and that opens the door for merchants. Yeah, it opens the door. um you know stuff like signal and proton makes privacy more accessible um i think you know the more the more products we we have that try to work this stuff in here the better and i guess this would really be a good place to highlight that i don't i i've heard people kind of like a lot of people like think of me as like okay i'm a product designer i i really try to think of myself these days is more as like, I'm a Bitcoin UX guy. I like to think about these things, not just from a design perspective, but also from an engineering perspective, because I think that good user experience is not just a design problem. I think that user

experience is, you know, it's a problem to solve. Some UX problems have design solutions and some have engineering problems. Great point. Some have engineering solutions. And so like, Sometimes it's just about like working until we have the optimal engineering solution to make this stuff easier to use. I mean, definitely all the work around like with like secure enclaves and stuff like that is a great start. So there's design solutions, there's engineering solutions. It's not always just about like making the interface more beautiful to use. It was like, for example, you shared with me, you know, some of like your Nostra UX research that you were doing. And I liked that, you know, what you had in that document was not just, oh, it doesn't look pretty enough. It was that you're actually going into like under the hood. The problem with some of these Nostra products is that they're, you know, you know, from an engineering perspective, they're like, like you had a page on there just about they're like waiting to display a list of results.

until they've queried every relay in their stack. That's an engineering problem. Right, absolutely. So we have to get more FreedomTech people interested in product, and we have to get more product people interested in FreedomTech. But I'm overall optimistic that we can work FreedomTech into every aspect of people's lives in a way that, even if they don't know that it's there, it benefits them. LFG. That is fantastic. That is the place to put it. Thank you so much, Stephen. Really appreciate it. And I do want to thank you specifically for all the work you do. Bitcoin Design Guide, the community that you, I know, at least co-lead, if not initiated in Discord and elsewhere. These are really important initiatives, great contributions. So thank you for that. Thanks for the time today. Well, I want to go ahead and actually on that point, thank you. And I want to go ahead and clear something. So I did not start Bitcoin design. It was actually, it was, you know,

a group of designers on the internet who started it actually before me. I think, you know, Daniel Nord and Christoph Ono were some of the earliest ones there. Now the kind of community is kind of led mostly by Christoph and Mageshny. So unfortunately, I don't, you know, contribute to the design community as much as I used to did. But, you know, I'm kind of getting back into the swing of things a little bit. We have a project at Voltage now called the Bitcoin Builder Kit, where we're trying to kind of componentize. It's an open source project we're kind of doing in public in the design community, where we're trying to kind of, you know, componentize some aspects of Bitcoin UX so that other product teams can use this stuff and also make it easier for AIs to consume some of this stuff. Very interesting. But yeah, anyways, I just wanted to make sure we get credit where it's due there. Please, thanks for the correction and thanks to the other team members and I will look forward to checking that out. Yeah. Common misconception because I'm one of

the Bitcoin designers in the U.S. and so I end up at conferences more. Right, right. You're the face or a face. Yeah. At least in the U.S. I ended up several years ago being like the face, but it's like a whole global initiative. It is. Yes. And thank you for that. And it's important. And I think, you know, it's a good cautionary note that we don't assume that all of this stuff just to happen stateside. Well, thanks again, Stephen. I'll get all those links out so people who are interested can dig in. And I think you have left, you know, from an engineer, a product designer to an individual who just wants to pay, as you say, you know, the barista for their coffee. There's a lot to take away here and I appreciate it. Hope to catch up and talk with you soon, Stephen. Thanks so much. Yeah, thanks so much, Sean. It's been fun. Bye-bye. Thank you.