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Can Crypto Be Private and Compliant E161 · The FIT4Privacy Podcast | Exploring ISO Standards AI Privacy | Grow Skills Store

• 0:00
  Typically if you use privacy tech, you don't really know who
• 0:02
  sent you the money. There's a fundamental problem
• 0:05
  with like just KYC and crypto in general that actually privacy
• 0:08
  tech makes worse. If it's a problem with just
• 0:10
  people doing millions of transactions, what happens when
• 0:12
  you got agents doing billions of transactions?
• 0:14
  Right? This is like my life passion to,
• 0:17
  you know, create easy to use crypto tech that preserves
• 0:20
  privacy while keeping the KYC perfect.
• 0:23
  Hi, my name is Punit Pakia and you're listening to Fit for
• 0:26
  Privacy podcast where AI meets privacy.
• 0:29
  This is not legal advice. Thanks for listening.
• 0:32
  How do you preserve privacy in transactions?
• 0:36
  I mean, with PayPal you can transfer to a name.
• 0:39
  With Apple you can transfer, or you can pay using Apple ID or
• 0:44
  cloud or Apple Wallet. Now, how do you protect your
• 0:49
  privacy in these things? How do you know who is paying at
• 0:51
  the other end? Is there a way to protect
• 0:54
  privacy? Well, maybe you can implement
• 0:57
  ISO 27,701, maybe you can implement encryption, or maybe
• 1:03
  you can use crypto or you can use health address or things
• 1:08
  like this. It gets interesting.
• 1:10
  No, well, that's not an area in which I'm an expert, but I
• 1:15
  definitely have a person who's an expert in that area.
• 1:18
  And we're going to talk to me how who is the founder of a
• 1:22
  company which has recently ensured privacy protecting
• 1:27
  transactions through American Fortress tokens.
• 1:30
  So let's go and talk to Mihao. And as we do that, if you want
• 1:34
  to learn about ISO 27,701 or any of the other ISO standards, go
• 1:40
  visit grow skills dot store and take advantage of the courses.
• 1:44
  Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Fit for Privacy
• 1:47
  podcast. And here we are with Mihao.
• 1:48
  Mihao, welcome to the Fit for Privacy podcast.
• 1:51
  Great to be here. We are glad to have you and
• 1:53
  let's start with a very basic or a simple question.
• 1:57
  According to you, what's the biggest challenge of the privacy
• 2:01
  challenge, if I can contextualise that exist in the
• 2:04
  world of today? So you know, 1 is still adoption
• 2:09
  of the tech, right? So users have to be fairly
• 2:11
  sophisticated technically to use and understand privacy
• 2:15
  technology, right? And, and then if they use it,
• 2:18
  then, you know, the other problem is generally actually in
• 2:21
  100% of cases, they the, you know, whoever is processing
• 2:24
  those funds like an exchange, you know, in a lot of cases will
• 2:28
  not accept the funds. So for example, this is true in
• 2:30
  Dubai where exchanges are banned from, you know, processing Z
• 2:34
  cash and Monero, for example. I don't know if that extends to
• 2:38
  like, you know, dashes, coin join, but probably because these
• 2:41
  are all mixers, right? So we have this problem of the
• 2:44
  funds are being mixed and therefore they're not as useful.
• 2:48
  Another problem is, you know, typically if you use privacy
• 2:51
  tech, you don't really know who sent you the money.
• 2:53
  It's sure it showed up in your account.
• 2:56
  So it's probably the guy on Telegram that you're talking to,
• 2:59
  right? Because you gave him a receive
• 3:01
  address and the money showed up to the receive address now.
• 3:05
  But do you really know who that is and are?
• 3:07
  Do you have a mathematical guarantee that the money
• 3:09
  actually came from that person? And so mixing aside, that's
• 3:13
  another issue. And, and the answer is you
• 3:15
  don't. And, and this is actually a
• 3:17
  problem even in just regular crypto, like, you know, if if
• 3:21
  you know, I publish my receive address and money shows up to my
• 3:24
  receive address, like who did it come from?
• 3:27
  And the answer is we don't know, right?
• 3:29
  And, and This is why, you know, typically the, the space has all
• 3:34
  these crazy workarounds for this, right?
• 3:36
  Exchanges have all this two FA they try to give you like a
• 3:38
  unique address, but did they really know that when you
• 3:41
  deposit funds that actually came from you?
• 3:43
  And the answer is no. And that's actually the core of,
• 3:45
  you know, the lawsuit that Binance is going through right
• 3:48
  now for like the end of time where, you know, these, you
• 3:51
  know, certain people are saying that, Hey, Binance did not do
• 3:54
  enough to combat money laundering, you know, but they,
• 3:57
  what those people don't understand is like, well, what
• 4:00
  is, you know, was their tack to even guarantee anything like
• 4:03
  they, they may I read that lawsuit, by the way.
• 4:05
  And obviously it's, you know, around, you know, it's terrorist
• 4:10
  funding. It's it's it's finance, basic
• 4:11
  processing Hamas funds. That's what they're being
• 4:13
  accused of. So obviously this is not a great
• 4:15
  thing for anybody to be doing is, you know, processing funds
• 4:18
  for terrorists, you know, not a cool thing.
• 4:22
  You know, that said, you know, in the lawsuit, it's just like,
• 4:25
  well, they just, they just 100% knew that this was terrorist
• 4:27
  funding. I'm like, well, if I receive
• 4:29
  money from Bob right now, I don't know if it really came
• 4:32
  from Bob. So how is Binance supposed to
• 4:34
  know that 100% it was from a, you know, bad actor, right?
• 4:37
  You know, because later OFAC said, oh, these addresses are
• 4:40
  bad, right? These source addresses.
• 4:42
  So it's like there's a fundamental problem with like
• 4:45
  just KYC and crypto in general that actually privacy tech makes
• 4:48
  worse, you know, on top of, you know, these other issues.
• 4:53
  And, and, and you know, the, the fourth thing I would say that's
• 4:56
  a big hurdle is obviously, you know, right now, if you want to
• 4:59
  have privacy with Ethereum, you got to like move the money
• 5:02
  around or move it into some other L2 or, you know, like
• 5:05
  through this thing called Aztec coming out.
• 5:08
  So everybody's like, OK, well, you know, we have to do all this
• 5:12
  extra stuff to get privacy. And, you know, and because
• 5:16
  you're transitioning between these layers, right?
• 5:19
  Like, there's no real privacy on the L1.
• 5:24
  Like, you can make a mistake and accidentally make yourself not
• 5:26
  private on top of it being technically complex.
• 5:29
  So like, yes, privacy tokens are like, pumping like crazy right
• 5:34
  now. Like, they're, you know, like,
• 5:36
  everybody's like, yeah, it's definitely a good feature, but
• 5:39
  is this the end game that we want to be in?
• 5:41
  And to me, the answer is absolutely not like that.
• 5:43
  This is not a mass adoption end game.
• 5:45
  This is like, OK, people that really love privacy are finally
• 5:49
  getting some love from the world.
• 5:50
  And and, you know, less attention from regulators,
• 5:53
  people understanding that like privacy is an important feature
• 5:56
  just like it is in the, you know, central finance system and
• 5:59
  traditional tribe fire, see fire.
• 6:00
  But so, so we made a lot of progress there recently and and
• 6:05
  you know, there's definitely been some pumps in the privacy
• 6:08
  space and some, you know, great product launches because of that
• 6:11
  change in Meta and that is super positive.
• 6:13
  But is this the end game? And to me, the answer is
• 6:15
  absolutely not. Certainly not, but when you talk
• 6:19
  about privacy challenges, we more often hear that the risk of
• 6:25
  the challenge is accelerating because of artificial
• 6:28
  intelligence. Is that the case you believe in
• 6:30
  also? Yeah, because the robots still
• 6:33
  don't know who they got money from or who they sent money to
• 6:35
  either, right? Like this is the, you know, this
• 6:39
  is what? So a simple example is address
• 6:41
  poisoning, right? Like if you, if you, you know,
• 6:44
  if you copy a look alike address from your explorer and you know
• 6:47
  from this exploits this, this thing that you really don't know
• 6:50
  who the money came from, right? So, so there's no way to really
• 6:55
  determine. I just have to look at like that
• 6:57
  exact address and like make sure that it's the same address
• 7:00
  you're expecting and, and look at the middle of it.
• 7:01
  Because the address poisoners will take, you know, they'll
• 7:03
  mind for an address that's got the same beginning and end as
• 7:06
  the person that actually that, you know, your friend or whoever
• 7:09
  that actually sent you the money legitimately.
• 7:11
  And then they hope that you copied the wrong address, you
• 7:14
  know, from the explorer, you know, so, you know, robots are
• 7:19
  slightly better at that, slightly right, because the
• 7:21
  robot can, you know, easily compare the addresses.
• 7:24
  So I, I, I don't think like an AI agents going to get address
• 7:27
  poison because that's a uniquely human error.
• 7:30
  But does the robot really know who the counterparty is?
• 7:34
  Still no, because there's no cryptographic proof of who the
• 7:37
  counterparty is, right? Like anywhere on any chain
• 7:39
  really. So it, it, it, you know, and
• 7:42
  then the robots have to stay private as well.
• 7:45
  Like, you know, it's, it's going to suck when you can, you know,
• 7:48
  figure out like, you know, how much money a robot has and then
• 7:51
  you can go exploit it, right? Because there's, you know, many
• 7:54
  known vulnerabilities and AI agents, you know, prompt
• 7:58
  injection attacks, for example, that are unique to robots.
• 8:01
  So yeah, the robots don't have vulnerabilities that humans
• 8:03
  have, but they have other vulnerabilities that humans
• 8:05
  definitely don't have. They're also fairly easy to
• 8:08
  exploit remotely. So, you know, given that, you
• 8:10
  know, for example, one of our partners is 0 Gai, you know,
• 8:14
  very, you know, high volume, high throughput, you know, very
• 8:17
  cool project that's doing a lot of AI infra, right.
• 8:21
  And so we've actually, they're one of our big strategic
• 8:23
  investors in American Fortress and we're, we're going to be
• 8:26
  deploying our, our privacy tech to their chain first.
• 8:31
  Actually the, our full stack, they're getting it first.
• 8:34
  And it's exactly because of this sort of question.
• 8:37
  We're like, OK, well, if it's a problem with just people doing
• 8:40
  millions of transactions, what happens when you got agents
• 8:43
  doing billions of transactions, Right?
• 8:45
  Because because then a mistake can, you know, really get
• 8:48
  amplified very quickly. And it's not, you know, given
• 8:52
  that the robot's going to catch it or the robot's going to be
• 8:54
  like, you know, fully understanding at the security
• 8:57
  implications of what it's doing. Because ultimately it's just
• 8:59
  another programme. Sure, a, you know, clever
• 9:02
  programme or more clever than we're used to in the past.
• 9:04
  But yeah, for sure that AI scaling issue will create more
• 9:11
  problems in the space. Absolutely with with.
• 9:14
  Privacy, yeah, and, and the robots need privacy for for
• 9:16
  sure, just as much as people. Yeah.
• 9:19
  I mean what happened is few years ago it was with PayPal and
• 9:23
  Apple offering you anonymous linkages or anonymous emails
• 9:27
  with which you can still make a payment and still protect your
• 9:30
  identity. But then with AI, you can do all
• 9:33
  that in, you would say, in a huge scale or a very different
• 9:36
  scale. And then there's no solution.
• 9:39
  And then we are talking about hiding your actual name,
• 9:43
  protecting your identity. And then sometimes we hear this
• 9:47
  concept called the stealth address.
• 9:49
  I don't know if you would like to talk about it.
• 9:52
  Yeah, so in our world so. So here's what a stealth address
• 9:56
  is. So first of all, a stealth
• 9:58
  address can exist on any chain. It's just a mod, a slight
• 10:01
  modification to how addresses are computed, but doesn't break
• 10:05
  the chain. So you know, we've had the
• 10:07
  notion of stealth addresses for Bitcoin since bit 47, which is
• 10:11
  written by Justice Randvir. He's actually our chief
• 10:13
  architect all the way back in 2015, right.
• 10:16
  So this was pay codes for Bitcoin.
• 10:18
  So the way that worked is a user would generate A payco which was
• 10:22
  a hardened ex pub of their private.
• 10:24
  So you know, typically when you start a seed.
• 10:26
  So just for you that don't know, you have a 12 word seed, 50
• 10:29
  words, eighteen word seed, right?
• 10:30
  So that's essentially a, a backup of your private key,
• 10:34
  right? And the private key is a number
• 10:36
  from the private key, you derive A corresponding public key.
• 10:39
  And then you can now derive child public keys and child
• 10:43
  private keys. And this is done very commonly
• 10:45
  in crypto. It's called HD derivation.
• 10:48
  It's in bit 44, BIP 39, etcetera, BIP 32.
• 10:52
  So these are all the sort of original standards and these
• 10:55
  things generally work the same on all chains.
• 10:57
  So like actually, you know, the Etherium address computation
• 11:00
  standard is identical really to Bitcoin other than it's an
• 11:03
  account model versus ET XL model.
• 11:05
  So the spends work differently, but the address computation is
• 11:08
  actually identical. Etherium doesn't swore multi
• 11:12
  set, but I digress. And in any case, this idea of
• 11:17
  stealth address is just been around for a for a while.
• 11:20
  What it does is it lets two parties compute a unique address
• 11:25
  between them, right? So like if I'm sending money to
• 11:28
  you and I'm using stealth address tech, you're going to
• 11:30
  give me my pay code, which is a derivation of your public key.
• 11:33
  And then based on that, I'm going to do some calculations
• 11:36
  and I'm going to find an address on your curve that I can compute
• 11:40
  that you can spend, but only me and you know about that address.
• 11:44
  So yeah. And then when I send money to
• 11:46
  that address, yes, that transaction's on chain, but no
• 11:51
  one knows that it's me and you, right?
• 11:54
  So, so, so, So what this does is it means that, you know, every
• 11:59
  time we transact a UTXO, we're actually using a new address.
• 12:03
  We can also perpetually use the first stealth address and still
• 12:06
  meet unique between me and you. And there's no way to reverse
• 12:09
  compute that, right? So there's no way to like
• 12:12
  reverse compute the address like which hardened X pubs, which pay
• 12:17
  codes were used in the transaction.
• 12:19
  So that creates really good privacy already a good privacy
• 12:24
  letter on all chains and tokens. And the reason is that, you
• 12:29
  know, even if you publish your pay code and in our system in
• 12:32
  American Fortress, we translate that to human real names.
• 12:35
  So now you have a name like Alice.
• 12:37
  You can publish Alice on your Instagram and just say, OK, send
• 12:40
  money to Alice with any an American Fortress compatible
• 12:43
  wallet, which is certainly meta mask.
• 12:45
  A lot of our, we have an SDK that just lets existing wallet,
• 12:49
  a wallet providers, you know, add this functionality to their
• 12:52
  existing wallet. And we're going to be, we're,
• 12:54
  we're putting in a meta mask ourselves as a snap.
• 12:57
  So you'll be able to just say, I want to send money to Alice, but
• 13:02
  now no one knows how much money Alice received, right?
• 13:05
  So, so stealth addresses are very useful that way because
• 13:08
  they create unlinkability between the, their sort of real
• 13:13
  identity or the, the, the public identifier you're using to
• 13:15
  receive funds on any chain and token and how much money you
• 13:18
  received. And furthermore, they also
• 13:20
  create unlinkability, but who sent you the funds, right?
• 13:23
  There's there's no, you can't compute who the sender was.
• 13:26
  So like, if you, you have a name like Punit, you know, Punit B on
• 13:29
  our system, right? And I send you money like you
• 13:32
  and I know that I sent you money and we have cryptographic proofs
• 13:36
  around that, but no one else does, right?
• 13:39
  So you have this fundamental unlinkability.
• 13:42
  Now in crypto, though, you know, there's various degrees of
• 13:47
  privacy, right? And some would seem like the
• 13:50
  privacy purists were like, say, well, but I can still see the
• 13:52
  transaction on chain. You know, how, how do you solve
• 13:56
  that? And then we actually do have
• 13:57
  another solution to, to, to get to that sort of ZK level of
• 14:01
  confidentiality where not only do you not know who the endpoint
• 14:06
  identities are, but you also don't know how the money got
• 14:08
  there. But one of the unique things
• 14:10
  that we do is we make sure that still between me and you,
• 14:13
  there's still those cryptographic proofs.
• 14:15
  So we solved this fundamental problem like I talked about the
• 14:18
  beginning of, you know, who the money came from.
• 14:21
  And at that point, you know, if, if it also solves another thing
• 14:26
  with with the mixing, right, because now, if you have a proof
• 14:30
  where the money came from, was it really mixed?
• 14:32
  And then technically, like, how is that confidentiality machine
• 14:36
  work? Does it actually mix?
• 14:37
  Does it not mix the fun? So lot week more we can get
• 14:40
  into. But I think that addresses, you
• 14:44
  know, the beginning of stealth addresses.
• 14:45
  And for us, it's, it's a way to if you don't have stealth
• 14:49
  addresses, you can't seamlessly integrate full confidentiality
• 14:52
  into into every chain. So you, you have to have stealth
• 14:55
  addressing in Ethereum, you have to have stealth addressing in
• 14:58
  Bitcoin. And then you can add full
• 15:00
  confidentiality on top of that and actually works really
• 15:03
  elegantly together. And if you add this name concept
• 15:06
  now it's really easy to use, right?
• 15:08
  It's, it's now it's like the, you know, in our system, it's
• 15:10
  like user just says, I want to send money to Bob send.
• 15:14
  And if they want full confidentiality, there's a check
• 15:16
  box. They, they check and that just
• 15:18
  happens, right. They don't have to really
• 15:20
  understand anything. It's it just it all happens and
• 15:23
  the user experience, whether the money's fully confidential or
• 15:27
  just self addressed is the same. Yeah, it does make sense from a
• 15:33
  privacy standpoint. But on the counter, as counter
• 15:35
  side of it, you also want to make sure that there's no money
• 15:39
  money laundering and there's no, like you talked about terrorism
• 15:42
  or bad actors transferring money.
• 15:45
  So how do you then ensure transparency?
• 15:48
  Because in a system or a regulatory perspective, you need
• 15:50
  transparency as well, while you need to protect privacy.
• 15:53
  So is it in balance? Yeah.
• 15:55
  So you know, in our system and as far as I know, this is the
• 15:58
  only such system in the world, you know, and and it is patent
• 16:02
  pending, two of our patents already granted.
• 16:04
  We have a very extensive IP library like we've been working
• 16:07
  on this for four years. We didn't just show up in the
• 16:09
  last two months when privacy was pumping and was like hurrahs do
• 16:12
  privacy, you know, so because I've, you know, this is like my
• 16:16
  life passion is to, you know, create easy to use crypto tech
• 16:20
  that preserves privacy while keeping the KYC perfect.
• 16:25
  So let's just talk about what mixing is and kind of like what
• 16:28
  the problem with it is, like what is the problem we're trying
• 16:31
  to solve? So you know, why do people use
• 16:34
  mixers? Well, they use mixers to get
• 16:36
  confidentiality. Now, if you think about stealth
• 16:38
  addresses, like I said on chain, no one can link that particular
• 16:43
  transaction to say me and you. But if you know you, you can
• 16:46
  link it to me because you know, I sent it, right?
• 16:48
  Like that's for sure. And now you can look at the
• 16:52
  source of funds address in my, you know, Etherium or whatever
• 16:54
  and you can see, you know, how much money I have leftover in
• 16:57
  that particular Etherium account.
• 16:59
  So that's not ideal. You know, furthermore, you know,
• 17:03
  you, you can see how the money got there and you know, and then
• 17:07
  now if you leak this information to third parties, they can see
• 17:10
  how the money got there. Rather you even say this is my
• 17:12
  stealth address and Mihao sent me this money.
• 17:14
  And now any, any just publicise that now anybody can tell what's
• 17:17
  going on. So these are, you know, these
• 17:21
  are the the reasons that people want to use, you know, full
• 17:24
  confidentiality machines, right? Not just basic sender receiver
• 17:28
  unlinkability, but just everything is blinded, meaning
• 17:31
  that like the money just show up and you don't know where it came
• 17:34
  from, right. So there's, there's, you know, a
• 17:37
  number of approaches to do that. One is Z cash.
• 17:40
  Another one is say a Monero coin join Mimble Wimble.
• 17:44
  So the last three I mentioned, these are all mixers.
• 17:47
  Z Cash is not technically a mixer, but it is treated as a
• 17:50
  mixer because you, you, even though there's specific outputs
• 17:53
  of the money comes from you as the recipient don't know which
• 17:56
  output the money came from. And so you, you can't tell, you
• 17:59
  know, it's basically like there's all these unspent
• 18:01
  shielded outputs in Z Cash, actually 30% of the chain.
• 18:04
  So hundreds of millions of dollars, I think at this point
• 18:07
  are shielded. So, you know, when you receive
• 18:10
  AZ to Z transaction or, or AZ to Z to T transaction on Z cash,
• 18:16
  you know, do you know which one of those outputs that money came
• 18:19
  from? The answer's no.
• 18:20
  So like, so essentially all these things are treated like a
• 18:23
  mixer. Now, what is officially a mixer?
• 18:26
  A mixer is a thing where when, when there is a pool of people
• 18:30
  sending money from, you know, say you've got N2 pools, right?
• 18:33
  You've got, you know, Alice sends to Bob, Charlie sends to
• 18:37
  Doug, you know, whoever, right, Echo sends to Foxtrot and so on,
• 18:42
  right? And all these transactions
• 18:44
  happened in the same, the same block.
• 18:45
  So the simplest concept of the mixer is that all the input
• 18:48
  funds get commingled together. Yet the, the cryptographic math
• 18:52
  means that, you know, the exact money that Alice sends to Bob,
• 18:55
  Bob still receives, but mathematically there is
• 18:59
  guaranteed commingling, right? That you, you have for sure your
• 19:05
  money's, you know, Alice's money's been being mixed in with
• 19:08
  Doug's money before it gets sent to Bob.
• 19:10
  So, you know, so the regulatory problem with that is that is the
• 19:13
  definition of money laundering. So like every time you use a
• 19:16
  mixer, and some would argue, although there's a subtle
• 19:19
  technical difference between Z cash and the mixers, you're
• 19:23
  committing money laundering. You know, and in the sense of
• 19:25
  the mixers, you're literally committing money laundering.
• 19:27
  Now, how much money laundering am I committing?
• 19:29
  Can I tell as a recipient, the answer's no because you don't
• 19:32
  know what, who you know, who are the other people in the
• 19:34
  transaction? How bad or good are they?
• 19:36
  Like, you know, did you just buy coffee while some drug Lord was
• 19:39
  buying, like, you know, kilos of cocaine?
• 19:42
  You know it. You don't know, right?
• 19:44
  So yeah. But obviously the regulatory
• 19:46
  problem with this is exactly that is that the recipient
• 19:50
  doesn't know and can't prove that, you know, the funds
• 19:53
  weren't commingled. But what does the user get?
• 19:56
  Well, it gets confidentiality, right?
• 19:57
  So like now the centre of the funds doesn't have to reveal the
• 20:00
  rest of their balance, etcetera, etcetera.
• 20:02
  So the real question is can you have the confidentiality without
• 20:05
  the, the, the mixing? And the answer is absolutely.
• 20:08
  That's what we built on American Fortress.
• 20:09
  And we're actually we're releasing a big paper on how
• 20:13
  exactly we did that in the next couple of years.
• 20:15
  So that's the one thing I can't talk about is we've been working
• 20:18
  on this for years. But the the sort of method for
• 20:21
  doing this is. It's very cool and it's.
• 20:25
  You know, it's a little secret right now, but it'll be out
• 20:27
  shortly in the wild working also published.
• 20:30
  So what we do in our tech is that you still, you know, Bob
• 20:33
  receives the funds. There's a mathematical guarantee
• 20:36
  the funds were mixed. But Bob does not know how much
• 20:38
  money Alice has. It doesn't it doesn't know where
• 20:41
  where the money came from, but he has a cryptographic that it
• 20:44
  came from Alice like 100% from Alice's key set.
• 20:49
  That's where the money came from.
• 20:50
  And this works on all chains and tokens, which is cool.
• 20:53
  So that's what you know, that's what we're, you know, to me,
• 20:57
  that's the the solution, right. And then the other thing I'll
• 21:00
  talk about is you don't, we're not, you know, we're not an L1.
• 21:04
  You don't have to go use American Fortress token to make
• 21:07
  this work. You don't have to go to some
• 21:08
  other chain. You don't have to bridge any
• 21:09
  funds. It's just, you know, it's like a
• 21:11
  simple type in recipient's name and and hit confidentiality
• 21:15
  button. Yeah.
• 21:17
  But let's talk about it in detail.
• 21:19
  So now that we understand the concept, what does American
• 21:22
  Fortress do? So, and who is it for?
• 21:25
  Because is it for common people? Is it for people who exchange a
• 21:29
  lot of money? Is it for people who are worried
• 21:31
  about confidentiality? So tell us more about what is
• 21:35
  American Fortress. Why did you find, found found it
• 21:38
  and what does it do? So American Fortress is a simply
• 21:44
  from a consumer point of view, we're we're a actually AB to B
• 21:48
  to C company and we're also B to C we're both.
• 21:51
  So the parent companies on Mattify that who owns all the
• 21:54
  tech and the IP. And this is an enterprise
• 21:56
  focused cryptographic fintech company that ICO.
• 22:00
  The other brand we have is American Fortress, which is a
• 22:02
  retail brand. This is a retail wallet.
• 22:04
  You can go to American Fortress, dial and and download it, right.
• 22:07
  So in our system, you register for a name just like Unstoppable
• 22:11
  or Solana Name Service or any of these other name systems.
• 22:14
  Except when you do that either via the SDK or our wallets, you
• 22:19
  can just send crypto privately to counterparties.
• 22:23
  And the way it does that is you sign up for a name like Punit B
• 22:27
  and then I send money to you. The system will dynamically
• 22:31
  compute a stealth address between me and you that only me
• 22:33
  and you know on any chain and token.
• 22:35
  Therefore, you can receive the money with this extra privacy
• 22:38
  layer and we don't have to modify the chains to do that.
• 22:43
  So, and, and that part of it is for the consumer, but we also
• 22:48
  have a custody system. Decentralised DID system
• 22:50
  hardware wallets, like all these other things, they're more
• 22:53
  enterprise focused and they're, you know, like B to B to C
• 22:56
  meaning like, I wouldn't sell a hardware wallet directly, you
• 23:00
  know, but I'll sell it to like one of our partners like Brinks.
• 23:03
  And then Brinks will distribute it to, to the, you know, to the
• 23:06
  end users, right. So it's for both.
• 23:09
  And it just really elegantly solves, you know, a lot of
• 23:11
  problems in crypto. It's like decentralised PayPal
• 23:13
  for all crypto. So it is fully decentralised.
• 23:15
  Once you have a name, the name registration system is
• 23:17
  centralised, then the metadata gets written to the D5 becomes
• 23:20
  decentralised. Then your wallet will verify
• 23:22
  that the metadata is written correctly.
• 23:24
  Once that happens, now it's a fully decentralised system.
• 23:27
  We don't know what you're doing with the names.
• 23:30
  You know, we, we don't, we don't know who you're talking to.
• 23:32
  We don't know you know what you're transacting.
• 23:34
  We have no idea. We have no way to mathematics.
• 23:36
  You reverse compute that it's 100% decentralised stuff address
• 23:41
  system. But as a user, it's like it
• 23:43
  just, it looks like PayPal. So if you go to our website and
• 23:46
  you know, download the beta, we'll be in production next
• 23:49
  couple months. The beta is out now and you can
• 23:52
  use this you can use this idea of of sent a name and it's just
• 23:59
  like PayPal for all all the crypto but decentralised right?
• 24:02
  So your your log just says the name.
• 24:05
  Yeah, but it's more more privacy protected.
• 24:09
  Well, it's decentralised so I would say, I mean there's no so
• 24:12
  difference between US and PayPal.
• 24:14
  The user experience for it's a lot like PayPal.
• 24:17
  The functionality is completely different like this.
• 24:19
  PayPal is a centralised, you know, C fi system that can like
• 24:21
  take your money from you at any point they want to block a
• 24:24
  transaction. They can, right.
• 24:26
  But like in your account activity in PayPal, you see all
• 24:29
  these emails, the people you sent money to and people you
• 24:31
  receive money from. Well, in our case, it's the same
• 24:34
  thing from a user point of view, but it's completely different in
• 24:38
  implementation, right? So, so I say it's decentralised
• 24:41
  PayPal for all of crypto because that kind of like, you know, the
• 24:44
  simple two word explanation for, you know, what the system does.
• 24:47
  So that's American Fortress, which is my invention along with
• 24:52
  Justice Ranvir and our team, you know, we're USA and and Poland
• 24:56
  based team. We're a Wyoming C Corp.
• 24:59
  I live in Wyoming. Nice.
• 25:02
  And is it based on crypto the the blockchain?
• 25:06
  It works on on Bitcoin, Etherium or BTCBCHE cash Dash 0G.
• 25:13
  We're, we're adding Solana actually this week we're in the
• 25:17
  Solana hackathon. We're also going to be adding
• 25:19
  privacy cache supporters, a demo.
• 25:21
  So you'll be able to send a name with a, with a mixer.
• 25:24
  So, so obviously privacy cache is a, a copy.
• 25:27
  If not, I wouldn't say literal copy, but it is like it's a
• 25:30
  mixer, like tornado cache. It's a mixing defy.
• 25:33
  But obviously it is useful to be able to use it with names and
• 25:38
  just hit a button then just have more privacy.
• 25:41
  Now it does have these other problems I talked about, but you
• 25:43
  know, we're, we're, we're solving the promise one at a
• 25:46
  time. I can't solve them all.
• 25:48
  And and I will also say that I'm not against mixing like I'm not
• 25:51
  like, so we're enabling inside American Fortress or SDK.
• 25:54
  We are enabling like if a chain like Litecoin has Mimble Wimble,
• 25:57
  we are and that's one of our partners.
• 25:59
  We are enabling that functionality.
• 26:01
  So, for example, user available to choose if they want to just
• 26:04
  send it with stealth addresses natively on the chain to a name,
• 26:08
  or do they want to send it through Mimble Wimble on a, on
• 26:12
  Litecoin, or they want to use our confidentiality machine, you
• 26:15
  know, as an alternative. We also don't know if our
• 26:18
  confidentiality tech will be deployed to every chain because
• 26:21
  that's a thing that does require some chain cooperation to have
• 26:24
  it, you know, work the way we want.
• 26:27
  But you know, I, I'm all for giving the users a choice.
• 26:31
  It's just users got to understand, like if you mix
• 26:33
  funds, you may not be able to do certain things with them later.
• 26:38
  And we'd like to offer an alternative where you're not,
• 26:40
  you're not mixing the funds, but you know, from me from like a,
• 26:44
  you know, libertarian freedom point of view, you know, being a
• 26:48
  privacy advocate, I think users should be able to mix all they
• 26:52
  want. Now that said, an exchange also
• 26:56
  has the right to not accept mixed funds for cash out because
• 26:59
  they're just as free as you are, right?
• 27:02
  So, so the you know, so the you know, the the two edged sword
• 27:07
  is, you know, you just got to understand that if you mix your
• 27:10
  there, there might be limitations on what you can do,
• 27:13
  No. Problem, I think you're making
• 27:15
  sure the privacy protected transactions happen and the
• 27:19
  Yeah, it is in. In whatever form, right?
• 27:23
  And, and because there's layers to it, right?
• 27:25
  You can have stealth, you can have full mixing and you can
• 27:28
  have a thing in between. Then you can have cross chain
• 27:31
  versions of this thing. And then you can have DID on top
• 27:33
  of that. And you can have a custody
• 27:35
  system that runs all this. So like in our world, we make
• 27:37
  all these things possible and we let the both the business
• 27:40
  customers and the consumers decide like what they want to
• 27:42
  use out of the system. Sure.
• 27:45
  Now, the beauty of this podcast is that I talked to guests and
• 27:50
  many times I also learn about things which I would not come
• 27:54
  across as a consultant or as a advisor to companies because
• 27:58
  there's so much in privacy. There's so much happening and so
• 28:01
  many innovative, creative ideas that are happening and you learn
• 28:05
  through conversations like this. And I would say, while I'm
• 28:09
  grateful to you for this conversation, but if somebody
• 28:12
  wants to contact you, what's the best possible way?
• 28:16
  We just go to American Fortress IO.
• 28:17
  We have, you know, contact form on there that we'll pick up.
• 28:20
  You can also DM me on X, on me how hacks.
• 28:23
  You can also DM the American Fortress underscore IO account
• 28:26
  on X. So X is where we have all our
• 28:29
  socials. So it's pretty, you know, pretty
• 28:32
  easy to get a hold of us and we will definitely reply, you know,
• 28:36
  we always reply so. So yeah, thank you so much
• 28:39
  Mihao. And as I said, it was a good
• 28:42
  learning for me as well. So thank you so much and have a
• 28:44
  wonderful day. Amazing.
• 28:47
  Thanks, Puneet. Thank you for joining us on the
• 28:50
  Fit for Privacy podcast. We hope you found today's
• 28:53
  conversation valuable and thought provoking.
• 28:55
  Subscribe for more insights like this.
• 28:58
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• 29:03
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