Privacy Policy
Last updated: 4 November 2026
I'm Vlad Costea, and I run Bitcoin Takeover on my own server, with open-source software. I'd rather know as little about you as possible, so this page is short. If anything here is unclear, write to me at bitcointakeover@protonmail.com.
The short version
- No cookies. No cookie banner, because there is nothing to consent to.
- No advertising trackers, no Google Analytics, no Facebook pixel, no Jetpack, no Gravatar, no Akismet.
- Your full IP address is never written to disk. I don't sell or share anything with anyone.
Visitor statistics
I count visits with Umami, an open-source tool that runs on my server. It sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser. It never receives your full IP address. My server shortens it first (the last part of an IPv4 address is set to zero, an IPv6 address is cut to its first 48 bits). Umami keeps no IP address at all. It records the page, the referring site, your browser, operating system, screen size, language and approximate country and region, grouped under an anonymous code that changes every day. I use this to see which pages people read and to tell sponsors how many visits the site gets.
Server logs and podcast downloads
Like every web server, mine keeps a log of requests: the shortened IP address, time, page or file, and your browser's user agent. The logs are deleted after 14 days. I use them to fix errors, stop abuse, and count podcast downloads per episode. The download counts keep only totals per episode and day, with no IP addresses and no user agents.
Contact form
When you use the contact form, your name, email address, subject and message are sent as an email to my Proton Mail inbox, bitcointakeover@protonmail.com. Nothing is stored on the website's server. I keep the email the way I keep any other email, and I'll delete it if you ask.
Comments
Comments run on Comentario, also on my own server. It stores your name, your comment, and your email address if you give one. If you create a commenter account, it also stores your login details. Your name and comment are public; your email address is not. The server passes Comentario only the shortened IP address. Comments stay up until you or I remove them.
Newsletter
Search and Ask the Archive
Site search runs entirely in your browser. It downloads an index of the site from my server and looks things up locally, so your search terms never reach me.
Ask the Archive answers questions from the episode transcripts. Your question goes to my own server, where an open-source language model (Qwen, running on that server, not a cloud AI service) writes the answer from transcript passages. The question is not logged or stored. No IP address is passed to that service, and nothing is sent to any outside company.
Rate limits
To stop abuse of the contact form, comments, newsletter signup and Ask the Archive, the web server counts requests per IP address for a few minutes. That count lives only in memory and is never written to disk.
What stays in your browser
The audio player remembers your episode, position, queue and playback speed, the light or dark theme you picked is remembered, and the games remember their high scores. This is saved in your own browser (local storage) and never sent to me. On the https site, offline mode also keeps copies of the pages you open (the last 80 or so) and some images in your browser's cache, so they still load without a connection. Nothing in that cache is sent anywhere. Clearing your browser data removes all of it.
Media, fonts and embedded content
Images, MP3s, PDFs and fonts are served from my own server, so loading a page doesn't contact anyone else. Videos are the one exception, and only if you choose to play one. A YouTube video shows a thumbnail stored on my server, and nothing is loaded from YouTube until you click play. Then the player loads from youtube-nocookie.com, YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode, and Google's privacy policy applies from that point. The few Spotify and Twitch players work the same way: nothing loads until you click.
Where the data lives
The server is a virtual machine rented from Romarg, a Romanian hosting company, in the EU. Each night it makes a backup of the comments, newsletter list and site settings. The backup is encrypted on the server before a copy goes to my Proton Drive, and the password never leaves my hands and my server, so Proton stores it but cannot read it. Emails from the contact form, newsletter and comment notifications are sent through Proton Mail. No other company receives any of this data, and nothing is sold or used for advertising.
Your rights
You can ask me what I hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it. Write to bitcointakeover@protonmail.com and I'll handle it myself. Since I don't store IP addresses or tracking IDs, the only things that can be linked to you are what you send me yourself: comments, newsletter signups and emails.
