BTC Sessions - Biden vs. Trump: Bitcoin Policy Clash ep414

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

In this Simply Sessions for May 2024: Coinbase integrates Lightning withdrawals, Jack Dorsey's Block adds more Bitcoin to its balance sheet, and the second-largest European bank buys a Bitcoin ETF. Meanwhile, an Argentinian energy company mines Bitcoin with stranded gas, university students boo at Bitcoin, and Biden vs. Trump on Bitcoin policy heats up. Stay tuned! ______ BOOK private one-on-one sessions with BITCOIN MENTOR! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more - all from a team of top notch educators that I've personally vetted. https://bitcoinmentor.io/ 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: BITCOIN WELL is the quickest and easiest way to get Bitcoin directly into self custody. They also offer non-KYC sells and bill payments. Transparent 1% spread, no additional fees and no withdrawal fees. Check them out today! https://bitcoinwell.com/btcsessions COINKITE offers the BEST Bitcoin hardware on the market. Use this link to get 5% off anything in their store: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions NUNCHUK WALLET and their Honey Badger plan is a best in class assisted mutisig setup with built-in inheritance planning and NO KYC. Check them out today! https://nunchuk.io/ HODLHODL is a NON-CUSTODIAL, ANONYMOUS solution to stack sats peer to peer! Buy and sell Bitcoin while maintaining privacy. Sign up and try it out today! https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION DEBIFI is a non-custodial Bitcoin backed lending platform with institutional grade liquidity providers and no rehypothecation of your funds. Find them at: https://debifi.com/

Yo, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Thursday, another episode of Simply Sessions. We've got Nico waiting in the wings to bring us the latest and greatest and what's going on in Bitcoin this week. And we're going to be touching on a lot of the tech updates, some bullish stuff. And I think partly in response to the crazy week we had last week. I'm seeing some things that I like coming out of the community here.

Anyways, guys, we'll get rolling in a second here. Of course, this is live. Anything can happen. So I defer to my friend. Bill here. We'll do it live. Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live.

The thing sucks. If you have not already, please do like, subscribe, share, all those things, help a ton in getting this content in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your Simply session. Before we bring in Niko, let's take a quick look at where we are in the market right now. I'm pulling up TimeChane Calendar.com. Also simultaneously, I'm going to pull up the live chat.

Everything you say in there from here on in is live for the world to see for better or worse. And, yeah, back to time chain calendar. We're sitting at $62,563 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 1,598 sats. In terms of fees, next block, 27 sats per byte, anytime 16 sats. And in terms of Bitcoin mine, 19.7 million. That's 93.79%. of the total supply. We're going to get a quick word from our sponsors in, and then we'll get right

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Yo, buddy, how's it going? Yo! Dude, crazy, crazy week, man. Just, man. Man, unfortunately, I mean, unfortunately, fortunately, fortunately, unfortunately, Bitcoin is getting into kind of like the political sphere. And I think that we've been kind of stuck, we've been kind of operating in like the, we've been operating in the shadows, so to speak, for the longest time. And like there's an advantage of that. The advantage of that is, you know, you don't have to, you know, you don't have to kind of deal with all this. But. There's a separation of money and state. And if you see it from that lens, then it was inevitable that it was going to be included in the political discourse. Now, where I think the conversation gets really uncomfortable is the fact that, and this is something that this is a pattern that we've been covering for quite a while on Simply Sessions is it seems like the Biden administration, right, specifically has been very hostile towards the industry.

And it seems like, I'm saying it as nice as possible, the other two candidates that are running against him have been, you know, according to their campaign promises, right, after all their politicians, they've been pro-Bitcoin, pro-Crypto, to be fair, right? But you can put Bitcoin in there because I don't think they really know the difference between the two. True. And they've been anti-central bank to dodo currency. So this is like the first U.S. election where like literally, from a regular purely regulatory perspective, I just would be very clear because I know a lot of people feel strongly about this. From a regulatory perspective, Bitcoin is on the ballot in a way, right? And there's been consequences to this.

Like you can't deny it. in the sense that, like, you know, they can make your life a living hell. Like, we've seen multiple Lightning Network companies leave the U.S. They've just pack up and left, right? One of the best. Like, Phoenix Self-Custy is the best. Like, in Canada, and I don't know whether it's just virtue of being slow and inefficient or, you know, if it's on the docket or if they're just kind of not caring as much.

But we still have, in Canada, we still have all of it. We still have wallet of Satoshi, Phoenix wallet. You know, if, you know, Wasabi before they shut down, wasn't planning on blocking Canadians. All of it is still here. But yeah, it's just like a total chilling effect in the U.S. Land of the free, home of the brave. I guess not when it comes to money, right? But I think it like, you know, uncovers the thing.

So anyways. So I do want to start with this because in the house today, or I think it was yesterday, actually, there was a vote to repeal something called the, I don't want to butcher this because it's all these like weird. It's called the SAB 121. And essentially it was a law that would repeal the ability for the SEC to make it difficult for the. banks to custody Bitcoin. Now, what's interesting is that Michael Saylor back in the day said that this is one of the three things that needed to happen in order for Bitcoin to hit $5 million. Now, isn't it quite a coincidence? Isn't it funny that this is one of the things that the, you know, Biden administration, the administration behind Operation Choke Point 2.0, the administration

behind the samurai wallet devs being arrested is also against one of the three catalysts that Michael Saylor said needed to happen in order for Bitcoin to reach the next levels. And if you kind of think about why they would be against it, think about how much harder banks would be to control from a political sense if all of a sudden they started benefiting from number go up technology. It kind of reminds me of like when Elizabeth, Warren was like literally freaking out when Fidelity was first you know offering Bitcoin exposure to their client to the people's 401k is like you can't do this under no circumstances there's risk this is crazy what are you talking

about and why didn't she want to do it because it boils down to like as soon as people get addicted or they start to feel Bitcoin's incentives and NGU technology bro you know like good luck trying to convince someone to go against their incentives. And we saw a little bit of this when the BlackRock ETF was initially approved, how much they slow walked it. You know, they, they, they, they, the, the letter that he wrote initially was like, his teeth were grinding.

He's like, the world is going to burn because this was approved. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, they don't like this, right? Anyway, so I'll play you guys the clip. Here's the Chad Sailor. Mind you, this was about two years ago. So I think Bitcoin was a lot lower back then. I own some Bitcoin, but we have no designs on anything, or I don't know if you said Bitcoin or crypto in general.

Is that the thing? And then the... I think there's three... Look, first of all, it's going up by a factor of 10 whether they fix any of the stuff, right? It's going to go a lot. It's going to be a grind up by a factor of 10 just because gold is a factor of 10. gold is broken and the coin's going to replace gold and now everybody in the universe knows they need a non-sovereign store of value in the form of a bearer instrument.

So now they're looking the amount of stories for last year people said inflation may be coming, we're not sure. Now the mainstream narrative is flipped to inflation is here, you need an inflation hedge. So it's going to grind up to replace gold. It'll go to $500,000 a coin regardless of whether they fix these. things but there are three things that are massive catalysts that cause an acceleration and I don't think that those three things don't take us to 500 thousand they take us to five million a coin right those three things are a

spot ETF where someone can go ahead and buy a hundred million dollars of Bitcoin via security an ETF security I think that's one two is your bank is going to custody it for you and lend against it And three is I can market up or mark it down on my balance sheet based on fair value. It'll be parapassue to the way I'd handle Apple stock or at least that good. If you have property with fair value accounting, by the way, it becomes parapesu to the way you'd handle treasury bonds on a treasury balance sheet. Treasuries are better than stocks because treasury is property whereas a stock is a security. All right.

A lot to impact there. So he said three things. FASB, Bitcoin ETF, both things. Those two things checked. They changed the FASB accounting rules. That starts to go into effect at the end of 2024, the end of this year. The ETF, well, we know how that went. The third thing he said is the ability for a financial institution or a bank to have to have a

the ability to custody Bitcoin. That is what they're fighting. That is essentially what they're saying, no, you can't do that. Now what's really interesting is that he mentioned treasuries, right? So what happens, I think the world would like, I think this is what they're fundamentally afraid of, right? What would happen if you start to see a lot of these companies start to come to the inevitable realization that, wait a second, why the F are we holding treasuries? Why are we holding dollars? If we could just hold Bitcoin and we just get a much better return. Like, why are we doing that? And I think that's fundamentally why they're behind this. Right. And it was actually, so shout out to Thomas from Hey Apollo that actually pointed it out. It says Biden says he will veto the final

piece of Sailor's $5 million catalyst for Bitcoin. In 2022, Sailor discussed three catalysts to take Bitcoin to $5 million, spot Bitcoin ETF, fair value accounting, rolls from FASB, and then banks custody and lend against Bitcoin as collateral. Congress passed a bill enabling this today. What was really interesting is that President Biden stepped in and basically said that even if this passes the House and the Senate, he would veto the bill, right? It's very, very interesting. Here's a little bit more details in Coin desk. It goes on to say the U.S. House representatives voted Wednesday to approve a resolution

rejecting SEC cryptocurrency accounting guidance that the industry said had deterred banks from handling crypto customers. But President Joe Biden is already promising he'll veto the effort if it hits his desk. The SEC staff accounting bulletin number 112, also known as SAB 112, has been a focus of criticism from digital asset businesses and Republican lawmakers since its arrival. The bulletin was meant to clarify accounting treatment for crypto assets. Directing a bank holding customers digital tokens should do so on its own balance sheet, potentially incurring massive capital expenses.

But the policy guidance has since been found in one government review to have been handled badly, though the agency and Chair Gary Glenser have defended it. At this point, I don't think Gary Gunzer has much to stand on. So, Ben, before I continue, you got any thoughts on this? So I've got one question. I mean, number one, it's not Biden. It's whoever his handlers are because that guy can't even put together a sentence. He has no idea where he is.

I mean, the fact that Biden is in office has completely gotten rid of the illusion that the president actually run shit. Like, it's clearly, like, whoever is in the background pulling whatever strings. those the ones that are threatening to veto it via Biden. But what I'm curious is, and I'm unfamiliar being Canadian here, but if a president vetoes this, does that then, does that preclude the next president from reversing that? Or is it like, okay, you know,

vetoes it and then like next year this time Trump is like, you know, we'll just undo that. Like I don't know how that goes. So essentially a president has a right to veto it and then it gets thrown back to the House and the Senate and then they would need essentially a veto proof majority. If they're able to get a veto proof majority, it goes into law regardless of what the executive branch has to say. Right. But essentially it would be difficult to pass because the House and the Senate are so divided, right?

The Democrats have barely a majority in the Senate and the Republicans barely have a majority in the House. So essentially that veto is very powerful with how currently the House and the Senate are structured in a political sense, right? But I think it really, I don't know if that answered your question, but yeah, yeah, I think, I think, my it seems like they're trying to cram this through before um election or at least before he finishes his term in office um and i'm just wondering if it makes it a pain in the ass to go back through that legislation you know after he's no longer president yeah again like i think that he's he's really he's really stopping the inevitable uh like he's trying to slow down the inevitable i think I think by 2028, I'm going to stand by what I said.

There's absolutely no way that you can take an anti-Bitcoin stance just by the amount of adoption. So I think that this is just like a losing battle, in my opinion. I also want to emphasize the fact that the bill that did pass, I do want to give a shout out to there was 21 Democrats that signed up to it. So most Republicans voted along party lines. Democrats voted along party rounds, but 21 Democrats broke their party and actually voted for the bill. And I do want to give a shout out to them

because I truly believe that Bitcoin is a nonpartisan technology and I think it benefits everyone equally. And I think what we're seeing here essentially is not so much a left or right thing or a liberal versus conservative thing. I think that would be an incorrect way of looking at it. I think the way that people should be looking at this is it like a central bank digital currency thing, which I think would negatively affect everyone versus a Bitcoin thing, which would positively affect everyone. So I think that's really kind of the way to look at this. Now, I think where the Overton window has to be shifted a little bit, and this is actually a tweet I had in my head for a very long time, and I was going back and forth with Opti because I was like, dude, I cannot say this because I just felt like it was just like, it was the thing that couldn't be said out loud.

But it reached a point where I was so upset with what happened to Samurai that I was like, okay, all right, guys. The quiet part needs to be said out loud. Everyone sees it. It's there. Can't deny it at this point. So I basically said, all right, I'm going to say it. No one is saying it. But it has to be said.

Biden winning re-election would be terrible for Bitcoin in the U.S. Strictly from a regulatory standpoint. That's where Bitcoin shows. I'm not getting into any of the politics. This is a wrong show to tune into the political discussion. But strictly from a Bitcoin regulatory perspective, that's an objective fact. You cannot deny it at this point.

It's undeniable. And I want to make the case for that today. Right. And then comparing contrast with his political opponents, which are RFK Jr. And Donald Trump. So here's Pierre Richard. His words not mine.

Biden's authoritarian attack on Bitcoin is anti-competition. He wants a CBDC monopoly. And Pierre Richard takes a screenshot. a Phoenix wallet and this other wallet called Ancicu or something, both announcing that they're pulling out of the United States, following also wallet of Satoshi. And then here's another quote tweet of me, you know, putting the, the, the, the, the Biden's basically preemptive, like, we're going to veto the shit. Don't you dare. And then connect the dots with all the other things. What am I talking about? So Biden's proposed 30% percent.

tax on proof of work miners. Proof of work miners don't emit more CO2 than anything else. They're just essentially like a really, really powerful toaster. They're like video games. They use electricity, right? Well, they come in and they're saying there's a specific type of toaster that we want to tax the high heaven. And I truly believe it's because they just don't like the industry, right?

Of course, we remember we went over this last week or the week before. The FBI issued a warning against no KYC cryptocurrency money transmitting services. Does this apply to Sparrow? Does this apply to Electrum? Well, they sure made it open-ended AF so that, you know, they could interpret it a certain way. And then, of course, you know, shout out like a blast from the past. I remember covering this on the show, the so-called Operation Choke Point 2.0. And Nick Carter actually did a great job kind of covering this.

And he was just basically describing all the things that were happening in the back end, this combined effort from the Biden administration and the Elizabeth Warren camp to essentially an attempt to isolate the industry from the rest of the traditional financial system. and they were somewhat successful because Caitlin's Caitlin Long's bank, which by the way is fully reserved, right, custodia bank, was denied a federal banking charter which would make her competitive with the rest of the other banks. And when she came on my show, she said,

that order came directly from the top, meaning directly from the White House, right? So they've taken a very negative stance on Bitcoin. and on crypto and because they know they call it crypto and whatever even though it's bitcoin and crypto uh but they see it that way and it can't deny that at this fact right so you know multiple when i when i tweeted that multiple people agreed uh Alex Leashman CEO and founder of of a river he's that's an undeniable fact what he's saying but in my mind i'm just so shocked that like in terms of the over like we got to move it that's a move

move the fuck out of that window, bro. Because the fact that we can't even say that without it being like, you know, like, dude, like, you know, you're othered. Like, that is unacceptable, whatever. Like, I think we should be able to talk about, you know, the consequences of certain leaders in an office that have taken a very hostile stance

towards the entire industry from a regulatory perspective. I'm not really, as a single issue voter, I'm not really interested in, you know, the other policies, which I just think they're just a distraction. I think, you know, it's, it's very divisive to say the least, right? So like, to put it like, you know, simply and then we'll, you know, we'll play the Trump video and stuff. We have two options in front of us, three options, really. We have one guy that's anti-B Bitcoin pro-C, which is Biden. And we have two guys, the Orange Man, which is pro-crypto, to use his words, and anti-Cb-D-C, and we have RFK Jr., which is pro-Cripto and

anti-C-BDC. I mean, it doesn't take that much brainpower to kind of figure out which would be a better vote if you live in the U.S. and if you're holding Bitcoin. Is that safe to, is that, can we say that? Is that allowed to be said? I mean, I think that's. fair like would you would you prefer everything be banned or would you prefer that bitcoin be allowed but there's also a bit of a shit coin free for all at the same time um you know as coming from a libertarian perspective i don't i i generally don't think that schick coins should be banned in the first place either um i think they're shit coins and i think that economic reality will exert itself over time and I reserve the right to, you know, point out how stupid all of them are in terms of just how

useless it is to be dealing with a lot of this stuff. But do I think people should be banned from using or owning them? No, I just think that they will reap the economic consequences of doing so. And, you know, maybe some people learn by touching the stove. So I prefer that approach to Big Brother telling us what we can and cannot do. 100%. 100%. Okay. So now yesterday was, I think, the big cahuna.

Yesterday was the like where you cross the Rubicon. I tweeted this out. Yesterday I said Bitcoin is entering the political sphere. Politics is uncomfortable for most people because it concerns power at the highest level. where morality goes out the window. You might not care, but the regulatory environment in your country

will have an impact on your life, right? So what am I talking about? Well, the orange man said some things. And the orange man, as much as I know a lot of people like RFK, realistically speaking, the election from a poll perspective, it's either going to be Trump or Biden that wins, right?

So the fact that now, remember Ben, we went through this. We're like, we're like, dude, like the fact that it's Vivek, the fact that it's Ron DeSantis, the fact that it's RFK, like, this is crazy. Like, you know, at 2028, we're going to have a mainstream political candidate talk about Bitcoin and happened way sooner than we anticipated. So Trump is kind of funny the way he talks, but let's check this out. They are against it. the Biden, Biden doesn't even know what it is. If you ask Biden, sir, are you for against crypto?

What's that? What that? Get me off the stage. You say, get me off the stage. Now, he has no idea, but look, the Gensler is very much against it. The Democrats are very much against it. And I say this, a lot of people are very much for it, probably a lot of the people in this group. And I'm fine with it. I want to make sure it's good and solid and everything else, but I'm good with it. And if you like crypto in any form, it comes in a lot of different forms. If you're in favor of crypto, you better vote for Trump. They are again. I mean, like, yeah.

Here's another clip. Here's a shit coiner. Which is fucking hilarious. Trump was like the guy with the goggles. Let's check it out. Thank you for the statement. Yeah, with the goggles on. A lot of the smart people in crypto are moving their businesses out of the U.S.

because they're scared of like the U.S.'s regulations. Because of the hostility. Correct. Yeah, crypto is moving out of the U.S. because of hostility toward crypto. Correct. So what are you going to do to stop it? Well, we'll stop it because I don't want that.

I don't want that. I want that. If we're going to embrace it, we have to let them be here. Yes, sir. Okay. All right. And then. Free Sprague.

Jesus. God. What's going to happen is he's going to get in. And then it's just going to be a shit coin free. at you all. But like that, this is, this is what we're looking at. So like, I posted a response to somebody. And it was like, I'll pull it up.

I'll pull it up. Yeah. It was the perfect use of the Larry David meme where he's like so undecided. But it's just like, Biden, everything gets banned. Trump is a shit coin free for all. So it's like, you know, dick. pick, but I mean, at the end, yeah, it'll, yeah, there we go. This is my feeling on it.

It's like, well, I guess so go that way for the one, I suppose. I don't know. It's like, I'm telling you, it's such an uncomfortable conversation. And then here's the last component, the last piece of the puzzle. Here is Trump on CBDCs. And this I do for Vivek because he's very big into it. I happen to agree with him. But he said, could you mention this?

I will never. She said, I love Vivek. I love him too now. I didn't love him when he was running, but I like him now. It's amazing the way you can like somebody when you win. But Vivek is great. He's really great. But he wanted this, and I'll give him full credit for it.

It is very important, actually. I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency. Okay. So, all right. So, RFK, Trump, pro Bitcoin and shitcoins, anti-stunchly against anti-CBDCs, Biden, anti-Crypto, pro-CbDC. Like, it is what it is. It's not ideal, right? Like, I think a lot of Bitcoiners are like, dude, I remember Joe Carl Sari responded to my post and was like, you know, like, he said he's pro-Crypto.

And then I told them, I said, I don't think Trump knows the difference between Bitcoin and crypto. And I think a lot of us started, I'm not making an excuse, but I think a lot of us started not knowing the difference either. And, you know, like, I think the, from a regulatory perspective, everyone, just emphasize that a million times. I think the options are clear, right? Like, RFK Trump versus, you know, anti-Bitcoin Biden. It's my opinion. Yeah. Unless you're an accelerationist.

And you just want the whole thing to fucking die. And society to crumble because of overregulation to a point where just everything happens quicker. Then maybe you do vote Biden. There's a bunch of the accelerationsists here in Canada. They've got a, what was it? Trudeau for. Bitcoin or I can't remember what the what the handle is um or bitcoiners for Trudeau or something like that and they're they literally want to vote for Trudeau just because he's going to he's going to fuck

the economy so hard that everybody will have to turn to Bitcoin quicker so I mean true but like it just depends how again like we've got our first taste of like real harsh top down no bullshit, we don't want this kind of regulation. And yeah, I don't know. Do people want to sit through that for the next few years? Or do you want a little bit more runway before it becomes so, so adversarial? I wouldn't mind a little bit more runway. I mean, the chat is like accelerate. And like Nolan, by the way, I love his show, by the way. Yeah. It's such a great. Nolan has amazing takes. He's like in the accelerate camp.

He's like, dude, Biden. Like, let's just like, let's just burn this stuff to the ground. I just like, I'm looking at it. I'm like, dude, it would be a nightmare if they shut off the on ramps and off ramps in the US. It would be a nightmare if these, all these lightning companies just kept leaving. It would be a nightmare if they just started like KYCing wallets on the app store. Like, you know, like that's the accelerate. path, right? You know, I think the Trump RFK path is a little bit, you know, like, it gives

Bitcoin more time to build up a following, right? And it stifles the launch of the CBDC. I would think that that is the choice in my opinion. But, you know, who knows? A Trump presidency is like all of all of the shit-cointers that we thought were about to die out, take one last big hub of cocaine. That's what it's going to be. And we're all going to be like, oh, I guess at least it's not illegal. That's what it is. 100%. I 100% agree with you.

All right. Okay. So speaking of have fun staying poor, this clip went viral earlier on the week. You know, I had earlier refused to listen to it because I was like, oh, I know it's going to be a little bit cringy. but also, I don't know, okay, this is my first time listening to me. All right, so this is a commencement speech or whatever. Apparently you give these speeches like when there's a graduate. I dropped out of college, I would have no idea.

But apparently they give these speeches when everyone graduates and everyone kind of goes around, right? And, you know, Dylan LeClair's comment, 100K of unsecured debt is good, Bitcoin is bad. So let's check it out. Okay. The one girl. Oh my god, this is totally embarrassing. I fast forward like five years. She's going to be crying in her car because she can't afford groceries

on whatever shit degree that she just got. Yeah, 100%. You know, you know, I've noticed something, Ben, is that like the most successful Gen Z years and Bitcoin, they all have one thing in common. They've all dropped out of school. You know, there's a shout out to the Tuttle Twins. I fucking love that. Oh, the recent episode.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they had a good one with a guy named Mike Rowe. And Mike Rowe is like the dirty jobs guy. But he goes and he like showcases like all these crazy jobs and everything. But he's big on like jobs that actually have demand. And he's very, very critical of like this, this education complex that is normalized the idea of

sinking hundreds of thousands of dollars into a degree where there's jobs with no demand. And I mean, he has pretty good point. Like it's just you you get all these people that have been told like go to college no matter what, regardless of what you want to do, and then sink tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into your degree and you'll just have a job regardless of what you do. And so you get all these liberal arts degrees and everything and they're like, why the fuck can I survive? Well, because you paid $150,000 to become an expert at something that nobody wants to pay you for like this this is and and again for for this entire graduating class i get it nobody wants to be preached to but it is also ironic that this this guy that you know years from

now people will look at this commencement speech and be like i wonder how that guy's fucking doing and he's going to be just yeah he'll have it made and everybody else that booed that girl that just like oh this is embarrassing is going to be like a barista 100% a 100% dude like I remember and like speaking of what you're saying about the pressure right and like the the the the sciop is that appropriate with it it's because it's a sciop right um and I remember like you have to go to college or you'll make nothing of yourself like that was like thatka taka taka taka taka like i've heard that a million times and looking back on my life one of the best things I've ever done is drop out of college. and start a YouTube channel. It was a phenomenal idea. I wish I started it sooner. Not financial advice.

It landed me a job at like, you know, a big Bitcoin company. It gave me my own stuff. Look, I'm here now with, with, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the genius of the tutorials. So like, like, bro, follow your heart. really hard. I don't think you need to agree. In the internet age, I think before the internet, there was some necessary, like credentialism, you could make the argument that it was necessary, but in the internet age, you can literally teach yourself anything, including how to take

self-c custody by going to YouTube and take and search BTC session. And I'm slowly convincing Ben to make other tutorials. So the fathership series starts soon and who will be be dropping new videos every Monday, right, Ben? Video one, first tutorial, how to father a child. It's 18 years long. You could put it on, you can put it on like 2X speed and get through it in nine, though. That's fine. Yeah, like it's, it's, again, like when it comes to sinking money into education to do something,

I think it's important that one ascertains where value can be provided that is in demand and then go to get the necessary education to do that. So, like, there are some instances where, like, if you want to be a doctor, yeah, by all means, like, it's necessary that you go and you get your PhD so that you can go do brain surgery. But if you want to be like a tradesman, if you want to build things, yeah, you go to trade school. If you want to do something else that's more entrepreneurial, then, you know, like nothing, nothing works better than experience and learning from people around you. So like, you know, use the tools that are available to you to teach yourself things. And if it doesn't require a slip of paper to obtain that job, then why are you spending $100,000 on it? A hundred percent. Again, like it's it's so normalized and it's so normalized and then people get upset.

Like it's like, it's like, dude, like you decided to take, who would give an 18 year old kid a $100,000? By the way, if you go to bankruptcy, they don't forgive that. Like it's so crazy. It's so nuts. Yeah. I love some of the comments in the chat where they're talking like my cousin got a degree in architectural history. like all the like comments. Drop in the comments the worst degree that you know out of your friend group and what they're actually doing now.

I would love to see a few of those. What the fuck do you do with an architectural history degree? Anyways, look, it seems like we're running close on time. So I do want to end it with this clip from Sailor. And, you know, it gives a different light because you look at this from the Bitcoin Echo Chamber and you're like, wow. Like, this is stupid, but here Michael Saylor explains why this is actually an opportunity for you. Let's check it out. If people agree with you when you say, I like Bitcoin, that means it's not a good investment anymore.

You understand? At the point when it's not controversial and everybody agrees with you, everybody will own it. The price will be 100x. You won't be able to afford to buy 1% of what you want, right? You want to know it. You don't want them to understand it. Let them take 10 years to figure it out because that's how you 100x. You guys literally become a rock star.

But yeah, I mean, I think he has a point. And, you know, I think he's right. And I think some of those college students, because I'm sure some of them are. Is that appropriate to read? I don't think so. We won't say that one. Oh, wow. Don't want to get a strike on the channel.

Opti said a Trump derangement syndrome on Simply today, and I got so upset. And I was like, and then my entire chat is eating me alive like, Nico for censorship. We're on YouTube, guys. Anyways, guys, this was simply, this was simply sessions. I'm your host, Nico. go subscribe to Simply Bitcoin if you want to see more daily Bitcoin news. Go to SimplyBitcoin.com,

buy some of our merch. It really, really helps us. And Ben, I will see you next week in Canada. You bring me a shirt? Absolutely, of course. Oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah, you're going to be tuning in next week, guys,

and we're going to be in Montreal together doing the show and a little something special for, why are we bullish on Friday, perhaps. So it's going to be a good time. Wee, we, mona, me. I'm practicing my French. I don't know any. All right. Peace out, everybody. Later, man. So everybody else. Stick around. We have tech updates.

There's some awesome stuff that has been dropping very much in response to what's been going on this past week in regards to the heavy-handed, we'll just heavy-handed enforcement actions. But before we dive into that, quick note from our sponsors and then we'll hit our tech updates. Multi-sig and inheritance planning is hard to beat Nunchuk.io and their HoneyBadger program. On your mobile device, they allow you to set up a full multi-signature vault. And once it's done, you have baked in inheritance planning so that your Bitcoin gets to your next-of-kin if anything should happen to you. On top of this, the entire thing can be set up with devices like the tap signer, the cold card, and plenty more options, and the whole thing can be done without KYC.

You don't need to give up your personal information to have it set up and working for you. You can check them out today over at nunchuck.io. DeBify.com allows you to borrow against your Bitcoin in a non-custodial way. Collateral is held in a three of four distributed multi-sig with trusted parties.

It provides institutional liquidity providers, loan periods with flexible conditions, and the best rates. Best of all, no re-hypification of your, funds. If you want to check them out today, head over to debify.com or hit the link in the show notes down below. All right, let's dive into those tech updates pulling up my screen right now. So we saw the coin join coordinators samurai basically get slapped, arrested, coordinator, completely taken down, people scrambling to figure out how to get access to their funds,

which I did, we did on Simpley Sessions last time. I did a little breakdown of how to do that. You can peek back at the last show for that. But we also saw Wasabi Wallet initially say that they're just going to ban all U.S. customers and make sure they couldn't access the coordinator. But then shortly thereafter, just fully shut down their coordinator, which again, you know, I wasn't a fan of when they added in chain surveillance prior to being able to take part in their coin join rounds. but even them trying to play nice with regulators, it seems like it was all for not, right?

Like it's just at the end of the day, there is no playing nice with these people because if they don't like what you're doing, they will come after you. So this is where it gets interesting. This is, I love the name, MSB, like E-M-E-S-S-B-E, obviously a play on words,

as money services business. But construct coin join transactions without a coordinator. Super TestNet shared proof. This is a person, by the way. Super TestNet shared proof of concept implementation of the MSB protocol for performing coin joint transactions without a central coordinator. It uses a three-round serverless flow that can work with any public bulletin board allowing for sending and reading messages.

The demo version of the protocol makes use of Noster as a public bulletin board for coordination, although the real version of the protocol would likely communicate over more secure channels. MSB also requires users to pay for their own block space. The mining fee is calculated after all change addresses are submitted, then divided up equally among all participants and deducted from the amount that would otherwise go to users as change added the developer. According to the developer, the key advantages of the protocol are lack of coordinator and

coordinator fees. The developer also outlined a mechanism for reducing denial of service attacks using the kickout protocol, although it has not been implemented yet. Some also pointed out that the protocol also lacks civil resistance mechanism to which the developer responded. That is not a complete coin join software. After digging a bit, the most interesting thing by far here is the use of ring signatures like those leveraged in a Monero to prevent any mixing around participant from being able to deterministically link other participants inputs to outputs all without a central coordinator, and that's from Seth for privacy. And then perhaps I'm missing something, but this can be extremely useful for join market to

implement. This enhances the civil resistance of fidelity bonds. Also better protects makers against takers that attempt to reveal their outputs. So yeah, anyways, there's some videos. there, but very interesting to see development in and around on-chain privacy for Bitcoin in the face of everything we've just seen. And to that point, we've also seen companies that are high-tailing it out of the U.S., not just like Samurai being shut down, but we, you know, previously wallet of Satoshi left. Now we have Phoenix pulling out. Again, Wasabi had they've been, continued to operate. There's other wallets that you just can't get in the U.S. U.S., namely Blink is another big lightning wallet that I'm aware of. There's plenty of others.

But, God, I love some of the shit people are building on Noster. This is Zapp. Dot Store. It's a permissionless app store. It uses Noster to establish identity linking release artifacts to social profiles validated by the web of trust. This enables secure installs, a new app discoverability layer and developer monetization via Zaps. You can download it now. It's only available on Android because Apple, it is important to verify this APK, but only on the first install. And again, it shows a verification.

Basically, it's very bare bones right now. There's no way to browse or whatever, but you can start searching. So again, they have things like mutiny, Zeus, mini bits, Phoenix, all of that stuff you can get from that app store. Again, I love, obviously there are app stores that exist for Android that are outside of the Google Play App Store, and I played around with those previously. But I just love the idea that you can have stuff on here. And it's because you can link it to N-Pubs and things like that and have a degree of verifiability

baked right into it, pretty cool. Moving on, Zeus, Zeus, who is taking a stand, Evan Kulutis, and not leaving the U.S., they've introduced the ability to select your wallet and node on startup, currency conversion for silver and gold. So if you want to track your sats versus gold or silver, a revamped theme and numerous bug fixes and enhancements. So kudos to them. They keep on pumping out the updates and they're killing it. By the way, you can use your cold card Q with Zeus now as well, which is super awesome. Mutiny wallet, release time, 1.7.0. We've made a number of performance improvements.

Bug fixes, new features. Here's the ones we're excited about the most. On-chain Fedomintz support. So if you're unfamiliar, Mutiny wallet is a lightning wallet that you can get on your phone. You can install it as a progressive web app, meaning you don't need to use the app store whatsoever. once you install it, in the back end, one of the major kind of onboarding hurdles for people for self-custody lightning is you can't receive your first transaction for a small amount because you have to establish a channel. Mutiny gets around this by using a fetament in the background for your first low-value transactions. And then you can build to a balance and then hit swap to on-chain or swap to lightning.

and it will establish a channel for you of your fetament balance, which is so awesome. Well, what they've done now is you can now fund your wallet with on-chain transactions, and they will go into the fetament and then be instantly accessible with lightning transactions. So all of this stuff is kind of meshing into the background, and it's becoming indecipherable from one another.

It just kind of works. So I love this. You can also transfer funds between federations and nodes operated in a web worker now. The UI should be quicker. Yeah, so super, super awesome. They're killing it. I love Muni and what they're doing.

Moving on, Geiser version 0.8.0. They have on-chain to Lightning donation swaps via bolts, meaning they were a portal where you could donate to various types of projects that you want to support and you could donate via Lightning. Well, now you can donate via on-chain, and it will auto-swap to Lightning for you. And again, they're doing this because the legends have bolts, which just make all this stuff super interoperable. Love to see it. Moving on.

This is in the pipeline for me. I'm going to be covering Bitcoin Well cash vouchers. So if you recall, Bull Bitcoin had like a non-KYC on ramp via the Canadian Post Office. But, and I think largely in part to the fact that it was relying on the post office infrastructure, which is government run, is very easy to be clamped down upon, even though they were within the Canadian regulations of transactions per day and per, you know, the limits there. Well, Bitcoin Well is now able to get around this because they have their own infrastructure. So they introduce something called cash vouchers. And this is for light accounts as well. So what's a light account?

Basically, you sign up with an email address and set a password. And that's it. And so the way it works is you would have a light account with just email and password. You would go to one of their local ATMs. And sorry, U.S. people watching, but it's just in Canada because that's where their ATM network is. But you go up to a Bitcoin ATM. You say, I want to buy Bitcoin. I'm going to use the cash voucher system.

there's a little QR code on your mobile device linked to that account that's just an email. You scan it and then you can purchase up to, I think it's $995 per transaction. The way it works is you scan, you put in all the cash that you're going to use and then you hit, I'm done, and then it will show up in your account. Typically, like it showed up in like a minute for me. And so then that's in your account. and then as soon as you tap on the voucher, it auto redeems and sends instantly to your own self-custody. So, like, it's pretty slick.

I was pretty happy with it. So anyways, what I'm working on is a tutorial for that. I went, I did it yesterday, visited the ATM, did the whole process. Pretty slick. Again, it's $995 per transaction, but up to $3,000 a day can be done. So if you're looking to purchase Bitcoin and you're not super keen on having, you're, on having like a honeypot of all your private information just sitting on a server somewhere, this might be your Canadian solution.

So anyways, kudos to them. Up next, I want to give a shout to Julian and Isabella and Adam, of course, over at Get Based. They just dropped a new video about all of the horrible, horrible food in the USA and how it's kind of linked to the money being broken and everything. But yeah, it's a solid one. and check them out, get based over on YouTube. Lynn Alden also dropped a half-hour animated overview of broken money, her book, which is amazing, 500-something pages. But it's just a quick overview of it.

Highly recommend, definitely check it out. Side notes, I was just down in Las Vegas last week, and I got to see a few bitcoins in person. So I got to go and chill with American Hoddle. We had some lunch together. Also got to see Vortex for those of you that have been around for a while. What an absolute legend. He helped shape my Bitcoin journey. He taught me so much.

And then James Lavish, we all went out for an awesome dinner. So great to see some Bitcoiners in Vegas. Hell of a time was fantastic. And speaking of seeing Bitcoiners in person, Nico already alluded to it. But we've got the Canadian Bitcoin conference coming up next week. I'm going to be heading there, I think on Wednesday, the 15th. I think that's the date. Anyways, I will be there on Wednesday.

Can't wait to see everybody. If you're in the area, please do come down, say, hey, hang out. It's going to be a lot of fun. It goes Thursday and Friday. If I'm not mistaken, I don't know the day. Anyways, go to my website, BTCSessions.com, and go to the events section. You'll find it there. And then also, I can't wait for June.

We're going to be hitting the Oslo Freedom Forum in Norway, followed by BTC Prague in Prague, of course. So anyways, if you want to say, hey, let me know that you're going to be there, please do. And if you're looking for links to where those events are, you can head over to my website in the event section, and you'll see them there. And with that, we're going to start rounding out. Thank you guys so much for being part of the show. I do want to show.

I've got a little show and tell something awesome showed up today. There we go. This is two full boxes of cold card cues. So there's 20 cold card cues in here. So why in the hell did I order 20 cold card cues? Well, that is because we have, myself, my co-founder, Mike, have set up a company called Bitcoin Mentor. And we basically, I've been doing one-on-ones with people for ages now.

It got to a point where it's difficult for me to juggle that. And so I hand-selected and picked a awesome team of mentors that can help you through your whole self-custody setup, help you through learning anything and everything about Bitcoin, whether it be layer twos, multi-sig, hardware, inheritance planning, running a node, you name it, they can help you figure it out. So anyways, if you're looking to do some learning, these cues are to help the team be up on the latest when it comes to hardware. And yeah, it's, I want them to be well informed and they're an awesome bunch of people. So if you want to check them out, Bitcoin Mentor.com. You can find them there. You can also head to my website, BTCSessions.ca, and the booking

section will lead you directly here as well. So either way, I appreciate you guys being here. Thank you guys so much for joining in. We're going to be back tomorrow for why. Are We Bullish? You'll see who's on there. We'll drop that tweet and that Noster Post tomorrow on who the guests are. But meet me back here tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern Time for Why Are We Bullish? And with that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be.

See you guys next time for your Simply session.