S6 E5: Stadicus on Full Bitcoin Nodes, BitBox02 & Multisig Setups

Stadicus is a hero of Bitcoin full nodes, who is best known for his comprehensive RaspiBolt setup guides. If you ask him about his creedence and adherence, he will call himself a full node maximalist and a Bitcoin minimalist: not because he doesn’t like Satoshi Nakamoto‘s cryptocurrency, but because he puts the individual sovereignty and privacy dimension above anything concerning money and monetary exchange.

And thanks to the success of his open source marriage between Bitcoin Core and early Lightning Network clients, he has landed a job at ShiftCrypto and is in charge of products. He designed the BitBoxBase full node product by creating a unique mix of top-notch parts and ShiftCrypto’s own security, but the product was postponed due to the pandemic.

Now Stadicus works on projects related to the BitBox02 hardware wallet and spends his time off teaching people how to run their nodes and how to operate Lightning. He’s also acquired an interest in doing multisig setups, and constantly writes guides about the BitBox device: most recently, he put out a set of instructions which enable users to connect to a third party wallet like Electrum. He is also very interested in multisig setups and inheritance.

In this interview, Stadicus expresses his views on full nodes, sovereignty, privacy, and the importance of good tailored security which fits personal threat models.

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Time stamps:

2:23 – RaspiBolt and Bitcoin full nodes;

10:36 – BitBoxBase full node;

16:06 – What is HSM (Hardware Security Module)?;

20:52 – Nodl, RaspiBlitz, myNode, and other full node products;

23:02 – NixOS;

24:56 – The ShiftCrypto team;

27:47 – ShiftCrypto’s open-source work;

29:27 – BitBox02 secure element chip;

30:52 – BitBox02’s hardware is similar with Coldcard’s;

34:53 – The BitBox App and full node connectivity;

37:25 – How do consumer wallets query the blockchain?

52:29 – Lightning Network

58:57 – Lightning is Bitcoin’s cache;

1:06:27 – Beta testing on altcoins;

1:07:56 – Monopoly is never healthy and competition matters;

1:13:47 – The nature of open source;

1:16:13 – What is the target audience for BitBox02?

1:23:18 – Multisig on BitBox02;

1:29:16 – Questions from the audience;

1:39:09 – How to follow and contact Stadicus.

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