Chat_173 - The Time Has Come for Privacy on Bitcoin with Dan Gould

***"I think I got kind of orange-pilled and privacy-pilled in this way when Snowden exposed all this surveillance that was happening by default through every system you've ever touched.

That's when I started treating all digital infrastructure as inherently recording devices. They're trying to take information and, even if someone doesn't really want or intend to store the information, it's possible that it gets leaked through a hack. And when it comes to money, that reveals all the relationships someone has. And without privacy, there's no way for that to be free. For Bitcoin to kind of live up in my mind to what it was meant to do, be censorship resistant, you need to have privacy."

~ Dan Gould***

We've all heard that Bitcoin needs privacy to function as real money. But most current solutions force you to jump through ridiculous hoops. Dan Gould has been obsessing over this exact problem for years, and he came on the show to explain why we might finally have a viable fix.

Dan and I talked through the history of Bitcoin privacy tools. We looked back at the early days of TumbleBit and Wasabi, and got into why past attempts failed to gain significant adoption. But the core of our conversation was about Payjoin V3.

If you care about protecting your stack and keeping your identity safe from on-chain surveillance firms, you need to hear this one. Dan breaks down exactly how the new Payjoin protocol strips out the heavy infrastructure and simply hides your transactions in plain sight. It completely shifted my perspective on how we actually achieve basic on-chain privacy.

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Guest intro

(00:04:42) - Fixing base layer anonymity

(00:10:29) - The physical risks of public ledgers

(00:14:58) - Lessons from early privacy protocols

(00:21:44) - FinCEN and the downfall of Stratus

(00:26:20) - The technical flaws of synchronous mobile coinjoins

(00:30:37) - Developer assumptions versus actual user behavior

(00:32:40) - Understanding Payjoin and interactive transaction batching

(00:39:19) - Overcoming complex connection barriers in p2p privacy

(00:42:07) - Async Payjoin directories

(00:49:20) - Output substitution and routing interactive payments

(01:00:28) - Achieving non-interactive additions without covenants

(01:12:34) - The push for widespread adoption

Guest Links

Dan on X (Link: https://twitter.com/bitgould)

Payjoin's Website (Link: https://payjoin.org)

Payjoin's GitHub (Link: https://github.com/payjoin)

Edward Snowden's X post (Link: https://x.com/Snowden/status/1391040522433830912?s=20)

Affiliate Links

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Host Links

⁠⁠Guy on Nostr ⁠(Link: http://tinyurl.com/2xc96ney)

⁠Guy on X ⁠(Link: https://twitter.com/theguyswann)

Guy on Instagram (Link: https://www.instagram.com/theguyswann)

Guy on TikTok (Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@theguyswann)

Guy's Takes on YouTube (Link: https://www.youtube.com/@GuysTake)

Guy Swann on YouTube (Link: https://www.youtube.com/@theguyswann)

⁠Bitcoin Audible on X⁠ (Link: https://twitter.com/BitcoinAudible)

The Guy Swann Network Broadcast Room on Keet (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3na6v839)