Scaling Bitcoin Privacy with Calle - WBD647
The Peter McCormack Show
Peter McCormack
4.7 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2023
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Calle is a Bitcoin and Lightning developer contributing to LNBits and the Cashu ecash system. In this interview, we discuss Cashu's mission and development, undertake a live demonstration of it in action, the importance of privacy, removing ideology from Bitcoin, and the future of AI and robots.
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"By providing a high degree of privacy in payments, cash helps to slow the growing information asymmetry between consumers and companies… between citizens and public authorities… privacy is crucial for individuals to safeguard their position when dealing with organisations which are more powerful than a single person." Not the words of an anarcho-capitalist, but a prominent Deutsche Bank economist from 2019.
It is a truism that privacy is the bedrock of democracy. The problem is we're sleepwalking into a cashless society where digital payments are tracked, recorded and stored. You can learn everything about someone through their transactions. Privacy in other areas means nothing in this environment. The issue has been how to replicate the utility of cash in the digital world.
David Chaum solved this problem in 1982: his dissertation "Computer Systems Established, Maintained and Trusted By Mutually Suspicious Groups" was the original blueprint for blockchains (excluding the proof of work consensus mechanism). His company Digicash launched ecash in 1995, predicated on Chaum's blind signature innovation. For various reasons, ecash did not take root. Until now.
Amongst a small number of initiatives aiming to revive ecash under the Bitcoin umbrella, is Cashu, which allows for private ecash payments over the Lightning Network. It is essentially digital cash, backed by Bitcoin. It requires no accounts or personal information, and everyone involved in the system is blind to other users' transactions.
There are tradeoffs: it's a custodial system where sats are deposited in 'mints' to create ecash. The creator Calle, a respected Bitcoin and Lightning Network developer, is working on technical solutions to overcome concerns. Even so, given how well the test version of Cashu is working, Cashu could be the go-to digital cash feature we're all using very soon, and the feature that enables the next cycle of adoption.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Well this is also the reason why I think e-cash is coming back now because it need a big |
| 0:14.8 | Bitcoin. e-cash is almost worth nothing if you don't have a free sovereign monetary |
| 0:20.4 | layer below it and we found the base money of the internet. |
| 0:24.0 | Hello there how are you all? Are you having a good week? It's pretty chilled over here. |
| 0:28.6 | The football season is coming to a close and we've just completed our event last week so you're going to have some |
| 0:33.6 | downtime before I head out to Miami for the big conference hopefully I will see some of you |
| 0:38.4 | there anyway welcome to the What Bitcoin did podcast which is brought to you by Iris Energy, the largest |
| 0:44.1 | NASDAQ listing Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable energy. I'm your host Peter |
| 0:49.1 | McCormack and today I have Kali on the show. Kali has been working on LM Bits and on an e-cash project called |
| 0:56.2 | Keshu and he recently came to me through a highly recommended shout out from Ben Ark. Now I wasn't sure what to expect with this one. I don't always |
| 1:05.2 | enjoy the more technical shows, but honestly this is one of my favorite shows I've recorded in a long time. Now, |
| 1:10.3 | Callie is a real cipherpunk and I really appreciate the way he approaches this project, |
| 1:15.3 | and really just the way he approaches privacy in general. Now in this one we get into David |
| 1:19.8 | Cham and the history of e-cash and why it needed Bitcoin to be able to succeed. |
| 1:24.0 | Now you're going to love this one, |
| 1:26.0 | but if you've got any questions about it, you can hit me up, |
| 1:28.0 | it's hello what Bitcoin did.com. |
| 1:29.0 | Or you can jump into our discord via our Patreon, |
| 1:32.0 | which is Patreon. dot com fore slash what |
| 1:34.1 | Bitcoin did. |
| 1:38.5 | Morning carry good morning Peter I'm not p-fucking hell you just giving, you're just giving me away as well. |
| 1:44.0 | You're, Cali's a secret name. |
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