BTC Sessions - Bitcoiners revolt against Trace Mayer, Buffet dumps his BTC, Avanti bank to serve BTC industry EP023

Starting point is 00:00:01 Wasabi wallet. I'm fairly private. What's up everyone? I'm Ben with the BTC sessions and this is your daily session. Before we jump into the news, of course, shout out to sponsors of the show, leaden.com. This is where you can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different services. They've of course got their Bitcoin savings accounts where you can earn Bitcoin on your Bitcoin paid in Bitcoin. so you can get interest on your Bitcoin. They've got Bitcoin-backed loans where you can use your Bitcoin as collateral

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Starting point is 00:00:52 to the price fluctuations of Bitcoin. If you want to check out any of this, there's a link in the show notes, and if you use that link to get a loan, they'll actually credit you with an additional 50 bucks worth of Bitcoin. Secondly, we have Rise Wallet. This is a physical Bitcoin gift card that you can give to anybody.

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Starting point is 00:01:30 They're super easy, super idiot proof. and I think really great for onboarding new users to Bitcoin. So go ahead, check them out over at risewallet.com. There's a little button in the top right that says locations, and you can check out where you can pick one up. Now, they are only in Canada right now, but keep an eye out because they are looking at expanding. And with that, let's dive into the news.

Starting point is 00:01:52 So a lot of drama over the weekend on, I guess you could say, on Bitcoin Twitter, but kind of in the whole Bitcoin universe. reason being is because there was the unconfuscatable, there was an event called Unconfuscatable in Vegas over the weekend, hosted by Tone Vase. And a lot of great Bitcoins were there. One of them was American Hoddle, so if you don't follow him on Twitter, I mean, he's had a million different accounts because he keeps on getting banned. But regardless, he was there. There's a ton of other great people there. And one OG Bitcoins that was there was Trace Mayer.

Starting point is 00:02:32 And American Hoddle got to meet Trace Mare for the first time. Now, what ended up happening kind of stirred up a lot of people. And what happened was Trace Mare, unfortunately, he's been kind of standing against the idea of coin join and privacy measures on secondary layers or using different tools to achieve privacy and Bitcoin, worrying about. regulatory measures that could come down on them and the idea of Bitcoin taint, which is kind of a flawed idea in itself. But he's been pushing back against the idea of coin join. And some people thought that was kind of funny. Some other people kind of pushed back. But by and large, most people kind of respected his opinion about it, or at least, you know, didn't find it weird for him to have that opinion. And that they thought it was just, well, okay, well, we don't agree on

Starting point is 00:03:31 this, but that's fine. But at the conference, what ended up happening is he started slipping people these pieces of paper that was pumping a coin called Mimble Wimble Coin, which is a privacy coin, which had a large pre-mine, and which potentially he owns quite a bit of. And it didn't take long for people to start to call him out on that, but the first one to do that was American Hoddle. And he put up a post on and now different Twitter account because that one got banned. But he basically said, like, hey, I met one of my heroes and I was super disappointed when he gave me this piece of paper. And it was basically just a crumpled up sheet that was, again, pumping this coin, saying

Starting point is 00:04:20 that it was going to be better than Bitcoin, that it was good money, and that it didn't have the problems of fungibility that Bitcoin is experiencing if you don't use privacy tools and he put that out on Twitter and then a lot of people ended up corroborating that story. Giacomo Zuko is one of them. A bunch of people and I've found this tough to kind of take in too that somebody would fearmonger around tools that allow for privacy on Bitcoin but then be secretly shilling something that is a solution to the problem that they're presenting. to other people.

Starting point is 00:05:02 Yeah, it's a tough one because Trace has been around for so long. And I think a lot of people weren't super enthused to hear that somebody that has been around and done so much for Bitcoin in the past would be secretly kind of encouraging people to buy something that is less than ideal. Now, people have since pointed out, well, this isn't the first time that Trace has shilled something else. You know, he was pumping PIVX back in the day. He was pumping a bunch of other things. People didn't really seem to care.

Starting point is 00:05:39 But now, I think a lot of people have become hardened. There's been a lot of people in Bitcoin where they've kind of gone the route of being chain agnostic and maybe pumping things that aren't as much worth people's time and much. money and potentially are designed to separate you from your Bitcoin. And yeah, the response to this was very, very, I don't even know the word for it. It was, it was pretty intense. And a lot of people were very riled up over it. Yeah, so my stance on the privacy aspect of it is if you're trying to shill a coin that has privacy baked into it because you're worried that coin join and privacy measures on Bitcoin will be made illegal, then in what world does that privacy coin also then not be

Starting point is 00:06:43 swept up in that regulatory purge? In the end, I don't think it will matter what regulations happen for privacy and Bitcoin because the heuristics used to track on-chain transactions and try and draw connections between people and coins are already broken, but they're being further broken by these tools, and these tools are very difficult to crack down upon. Many of these are open-source things that can, you know, if certain repositories are crack down upon can easily be forked and utilized elsewhere. So this is software and you can't really stop said software. Somebody somewhere will continue to create this kind of stuff. And it's it's it's like bit torrent. It's the idea that if you can't have a centralized party doing something for a service

Starting point is 00:07:40 that and it's going to be cracked down on. So file sharing back with Napster. If you can't have that, then you get a piece of software that can be utilized by people everywhere that really has no central point of failure where you can crack down on. And that is things like coin join and whirlpool and other solutions as opposed to centralized mixers. So in the end, I don't think it will matter. I think there will be so much of this that when people try to say, hey, these coins have been joined, we're going to flag them. it's trivial to add hops between a coin join and a destination address where you're sending it. And if you add hops there and then they keep on checking further back in the chain to see, well, how long ago was that coin join?

Starting point is 00:08:31 Eventually it gets to the point where you're flagging all Bitcoin if you take it to its logical end. So I think it's a losing game for those trying to stop this from happening. In the interim, it could be a pain in the ass because, people won't know what to do. But I think the endgame here, if you think adversarially, eventually everything will carry taint and thus nothing will be tainted. So we'll see how that plays out. Anyways, American Hottle, he was previously not really giving a shit about privacy, but he did tweet out, I'm going to start mixing and providing coin join liquidity. My apathy over privacy ends today. I will not be caught on the wrong side of history in a Bitcoin civil war. Lines are drawn.

Starting point is 00:09:14 fired, the privacy war has already begun. So kudos to American Hottle. Um, hats off to you. And, uh, I hope that your privacy journey is an exciting one. I'm glad to see, uh, you jump on this. And, um, I shared a wasabi wallet tutorial. Matt Odell from Tales from the Crypt has got some great tutorials out there around this stuff. Uh, and there's plenty of good resources out there. So I'll try and include something down below. Uh, but be sure to check. that out. With that, let's move on. Warren Buffett, he gave away his Bitcoin that Justin's son gave him. Surprise, surprise. So a little context in regards to this. Justin's son, the creator of Tron, bid like $4.5 million to have lunch with Warren Buffett. Now that money goes to charity.

Starting point is 00:10:07 But eventually when he did end up having a meal with Warren Buffett, he gave him a meal. He gave him a wallet with Bitcoin and Tron, unfortunately, on it. And so Warren Buffett said that he doesn't, and he never has and never will own any cryptocurrency recently in the news. So he also doubled down on his anti-crypto stance. So he said cryptocurrencies basically have no value. They don't produce anything in terms. So in terms of value, zero.

Starting point is 00:10:42 He also said, so you can look at your little ledger item for the next 20 years and say, and it says you've got X of this cryptocurrency or that. It doesn't reproduce. It doesn't deliver. It can't mail you a check. It can't do anything. And what you hope is that someone else comes along and pays you money for it. Now, there's major pushback from a number of people on these stances. You had Tim Draper talking about, well, of course, he's not going to like it.

Starting point is 00:11:11 He's a traditional investor. He's heavily invested in banks, which, you know, if Bitcoin is successful, then banks are one of the major players that stand to lose. So he's incentivized to not like something like Bitcoin. And also Tim Draper pointed out that he has a lot, a lot, like double a lot of his net worth in Bitcoin. and that he has largely moved it there over the past six months because the market was getting a little out of hand. He said it was to the point where Uber drivers were day trading. So he moved to something that he considers to be much safer. Now, also in response to this, he had Anthony Pompliano from Off the Chain podcast. He was on CNN talking with Juliet Chatterley,

Starting point is 00:12:05 and they were talking, of course, about Bitcoin. And he did have some words about Warren Buffett and his stance on things. He said that I don't really take technology advice from someone who uses a flip phone or doesn't use email, which, I mean, excellent point. He did go on to say, well, Warren Buffett is the best at what he does, but what he does is largely concerned with traditional investing in trying to find undervalued blue chip stocks. But he's traditionally been wrong on anything to do with technology. So when it came to Apple, when it came to Amazon, when it came to a lot of these early kind of

Starting point is 00:12:48 internet era unicorn companies, he was totally wrong. And he since apologized to his investors for missing those boats. In fact, he was not on the train of Apple in 2016. and as of around now, it was just a few days ago that he said Apple is probably the best company that he knows. So clearly he's behind the eight ball when it comes to anything related to technology. And I don't see why Bitcoin would be any difference. So I think it's best to look to other sources when it comes to digital value than somebody who's as traditional as Warren Buffett, not knocking what he's been able to accomplish in his lifetime around traditional and investing,

Starting point is 00:13:34 but this is a different ballgame, and it's tough to have any real insight into that space if you don't understand anything digital. So, yeah, I guess that's about it. I will link to the Anthony Pompliano clip below. It's a pretty good one. He does a pretty good job here, I'd say. Check it out. He does more than just talk about Warren Buffett in the clip. Okay, moving on, Caitlin Long dropped a bombshell the other day. I'm going to read a little bit from her tweet here. Introducing

Starting point is 00:14:12 Avanti, I think I'm saying it right, Avanti Bank, a new U.S. Bank to serve digital asset, the digital asset industry offering new products and SVCs not currently available in the U.S. dollar markets, along with Tech Partner Blockstream. It's Wyoming-based. We're preparing the long process of charter application and aim to open in early 2021. So they're aiming to become a charter bank that caters specifically to digital asset and cryptocurrency-related funds and companies. So a couple of the interesting notes here, she said that a critical piece of U.S.

Starting point is 00:14:52 market infrastructure is missing, a regulated bank that can act as a bridge to to the Fed for payments and custody of cryptocurrencies for big institutional money, which would include things like pensions, endowments, foundations, corporations, sovereign wealth funds, all of that. And they need this before entering cryptocurrency in any big way. Regulation had blocked it. Now, for those of you that are looking at this going, oh, great, you know, major cryptocurrency custody and Bitcoin custody is a huge.

Starting point is 00:15:27 attack vector. I agree. I agree that having a lot of Bitcoin in custody can be scary and you're taking counter-party risk. However, she goes on to say that they are indeed, they are respecting not your keys, not your coins, and also working on the idea to offer levels of institutional custody services accordingly with not your keys, not your coins, which would include things like multi-sig signing as a service and other services working with block stream features that are available out there and more. So, yeah, some interesting stuff coming out of Caitlin Long and Wyoming. And if this is in line for early 2021, that could be some good timing. that could really expedite things because I'm and again I could be totally wrong but I'm getting the

Starting point is 00:16:27 feeling that this year is kind of the warm up with the having coming as in previous havings this year is kind of the warm up where we just start to get close to that previous all time high near kind of the end of the year early next year which after that point kind of spurs on a mania and if that comes to fruition and something like this launches in the midst or in the early stages of that, it could make the kind of steamroller effect of this exponential. So we will see what happens, but very interesting and for me, most interesting when it comes to timing. All right. I wanted to touch on another story here. And kudos to, I did get a message on Twitter about this, but I did also see it in the Bent, Marty's Bent.

Starting point is 00:17:27 If you don't subscribe to that newsletter, very much worth checking it out. But Zebedee is creating a developer dashboard for companies and game developers that want to incorporate Bitcoin into their games. So I'm going to read a little bit from their post here. They said, what if the points collected in a game were worth something? What if they could be collected and then taken out of the game? What if they could be given to someone else and have universal value? What if value and rewards were digital and programmable in the same way that all your other game developer tools are? Our Unity SDK opens up a new dimension of creativity and monetization capabilities by enabling value flows within the gameplay itself.

Starting point is 00:18:14 We do this by building on the internet. internet of money, the global network of Bitcoin. Zebedee takes care of the heavy lifting for you and does away with any complex parts of the system, letting you focus 100% of your time in building the best games and gaming experiences with no need for prior knowledge of Bitcoin. Our developer tools and SDKs aim to simplify away all of the operational complexity of building games that integrate Bitcoin and our developer dashboard is simple and intuitive, uh, is is a simple and intuitive interface, which allows you to manage your game integrations and analyze transaction activity.

Starting point is 00:18:53 They've got some breakdowns of how it'll work here, and you can sign up for developer dashboard access. So I think that the idea of having in-game rewards that are actually just Satoshi's are fantastic because it does. It drives a whole new digital economy around that kind of stuff, and it exposes people namely gamers that typically may not have checked out something like Bitcoin to it, and they may not even realize they're using it until they see that they can take the money out of game, and then they start interacting with Bitcoin in the real world.

Starting point is 00:19:31 At that point, it flicks a switch in somebody's brain, and they say, oh, this actually has value, and oh, I can earn money within the game, and again, these economies start to be created through this mechanism. think is very interesting. Now, of course, this isn't without issue. One, do you want to separate yourself from your Bitcoin via a game? It is a little bit of gambling, right? You've got to put money on the table and you can lose or gain money depending on how you perform in the game. Now, secondly to that, there is, of course, the idea that what happens when somebody figures out how to compromise a game. Now, instead of just points and user rewards that can be reversed, well, once they remove Bitcoin via Lightning Network from the game, that money is gone. And so exploits are going to

Starting point is 00:20:27 have real-world consequences. So that's something that does have to be approached very carefully, and I'm sure there will be stumbling blocks that happen and speed bumps to be encountered, but we will see how that plays out. Now, one of the games, and this is from a different company, but one of the games that I'm interested in is called Light Night. And so it's kind of like a battle royale type thing. Very much looks like, oh, God, and now, of course, I'm forgetting the name of the game.

Starting point is 00:21:03 God, everybody's screaming at their screen right now. Fortnite. Oh, my God, I'm an idiot. Of course, Knight. Anyways, very much. Fortnite style, but they are incorporating Satoshi's into the game, and they are launching very, very soon. These guys are going to be at Bitcoin 2020 showing off some demos and everything. They actually reached out to me, and they were like, hey, do you want to mention this?

Starting point is 00:21:27 I had already heard about it from Tales from the Crypt and a few other people, but they're actually making a skin in the game that is going to be my stupid logo face somewhere on something. so I'm excited about that. But anyways, yeah, I'm very interested to play this. It'll be dropping. So I think their aim was, yeah, to have the single player in like this month and then potentially multiplayer next month. Of course, who knows, roadmaps can a lot of things can be thrown at the mix.

Starting point is 00:22:01 And then early access in May, game polishing in July, Bitcoin meta game in September, beta official launch as of the beginning of next year. So, yeah, they've got some previews of what's there. You can sign up in advance. So yeah, feel free. I'll include a link down below if you want to check it out. But yeah, I'm excited to play around with this and I'll let you know what I think. And I'm excited to meet these guys at Bitcoin 2020 as well. So if you're, if you want to to check them out, Lightnight, L-I-G-H-T-N-I-T-E dot I-O. And you can get a little preview of what it looks like. And also there's a link down below that I'll include where you can actually sign up to

Starting point is 00:22:51 or pre-order the game if you really want to, which comes with his own benefits. So yeah, I'm going to wrap up with that. Thank you guys so much for watching and or listening. If you are on YouTube, please do hit like, subscribe, and share. If you're on the podcast listening to audio only, then please do share that on your social media. It's always great to get more people on the podcast end of things. If you want to help out the show in another way, you can always hit up the sponsors that I mentioned down below, Leden and Rise Wallet, as well as Wasabi Wallet to help protect your Bitcoin privacy.

Starting point is 00:23:25 Check them out. And finally, you can always check out NordVPN to help this show. This is something that I use regularly on my computer and my phone. it hides your IP address, it encrypts your browsing data, and it allows you to unlock some geoblock content. So if you can't access something in your locale, well, you just change your locale within the app and it'll unlock for you. Yeah, if you want to check them out in using my link, then it'll get you a deal where it's 70% off, plus you'll get a free month, and then it ends up being about $3.49 a month, so pretty damn good. Yeah. And with that, I am out. Have a wonderful

Starting point is 00:24:04 evening and I will see you guys next time for your daily session.

BTC Sessions - Bitcoiners revolt against Trace Mayer, Buffet dumps his BTC, Avanti bank to serve BTC industry EP023

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