BTC Sessions - Bitcoin's Birthday, Proof Of Keys, Iran Tensions EP002

Starting point is 00:00:01 Wasabi wallet. I'm fairly private. What's up everyone? Ben with the BTC sessions here and this is your daily session. Before we dive into the news, of course, shout out to sponsors of the show, ledden.com. This is where you can use a Bitcoin for a variety of different services. Of course, they've got their Bitcoin savings account where you can earn interest on your Bitcoin paid in Bitcoin. They've got Bitcoin-backed loans. This is where you can use your Bitcoin as collateral to secure a Canadian or US dollar loan. So if you're in a pinch, you need to get your hands on dollars.

Starting point is 00:00:44 And maybe you don't want to sell your Bitcoin. You might think it's a bad time. Worry you can't get back in at the same price. Well, this could be an option for you. And finally, there is their B2X offering, which gets you double the exposure to the price fluctuations of Bitcoin. If you want to check any of these out, there's a link in the show notes below. And if you opt to get a Bitcoin back loan, they'll actually credit your own. account with an additional $50 worth of Bitcoin. And secondly, very happy to once again have

Starting point is 00:01:13 RISE wallet partnering with the show. This is a Bitcoin gift card that you can gift to anybody. It's super easy to use. All you have to do is you run to a store near you. You pick one up and each one has a face value to it and there's an activation fee much like with a prepaid visa card. When you gift that to somebody, all they have to do is download the app, scratch the back of the card and scan the code, it creates a personally held Bitcoin wallet for them and then sends an on-chain Bitcoin transaction directly to their newly created wallet. It is super idiot proof. It's an awesome way to onboard newcomers. And I love it. I gifted some for Christmas myself. So be sure to check them out. You can head over

Starting point is 00:01:57 to risewallet.com and click on locations to see where you can pick one up. Now keep in mind, this is currently only in Canada, but keep an eye on. it because they are looking at expanding. And if it's not near a location, uh, near your place in Canada, you can always go to coincards.cah to get one delivered to your home. And with that, let's dive into the news. It is Bitcoin's 11th birthday. Hard to believe. January 3rd, 2009 was the Genesis block of Bitcoin. And it has been running like clockwork, really, uh, for the past 11 years. So what I wanted to touch on today was a number of the milestones and the amazing things that Bitcoin has been able to accomplish over the past 11 years. And I found it was best summed up.

Starting point is 00:02:51 I saw this tweet actually before seeing this article on DeCrypt, but by Rhythm Trader on Twitter. And he said in Bitcoin for the past 11 years, it has enabled 488 million. transactions. We've mined over 600,000 blocks. There are zero confirmed fraudulent transactions. It has absorbed $130 billion worth of value. It has secured 10,000 full nodes, which, by the way, those are just listening nodes. It has supported a 99.98% uptime, which is unprecedented when you get into payments in general banking wishes that it could have that kind of uptime. It has produced 100 terra hash, although I think that's actually wrong. I think it's ex a hash, more than 100 xa hash. It has, there's a number of things here, but I'll just get to the last couple. It's obviously

Starting point is 00:03:55 maintained a 21 million monetary policy, so only 21 million units will ever be created. And we've successfully laughed at 379 Bitcoin obituaries, people who have claimed the death of Bitcoin multiple times over the last 11 years and have entirely been wrong, bar none. So very, very impressive. Now, also to note here, the first recorded price point for Bitcoin was point, was actually less than a penny. So, 0.008, or I guess, 0.8 cents. Now, it's currently at 7,300 in that range, basically over $7,000. And so that's like a 9 million percent return. So pretty, pretty wild. Now, this isn't the only special thing about today. It is also proof of keys. Now, if you're unfamiliar with proof of keys, then it's time to acquaint yourself. This is the second annual proof of keys event.

Starting point is 00:05:11 This was championed and invented by Trace Mayer, a longtime Bitcoin advocate, hosted the Bitcoin Knowledge podcast, and investor in a number of early companies in the space. So I'm just going to read a little bit from the page here on Proof-Keeze. Every January 3rd, the Bitcoin community of hodlers of last resort participate in Proof-of-Kee's. It's a celebration that demands you take possession of all Bitcoins held by trusted third parties on your behalf. By demanding and taking possession of their assets, individuals will learn real fast with blockchain proof whether they are part of the elite hodlers or not.

Starting point is 00:05:51 Proof-Kee's is an annual hodler initiation. And just to add on to that, every year, Hodler celebrate with a test of trust. We test people, exchanges, corporations, and other services. Get withdrawals limits are ready. Plus, one can easily forget where small amounts of Bitcoin are, which is a good point. You may have Bitcoin on of some exchanges or with some third-party services, but until you really test yourself and go through and think, what services have I used? You may be forgetting about some Bitcoin that has, well, long been for,

Starting point is 00:06:25 forgotten. So remember, find them. Most importantly, haulers can test themselves. On January 3rd, haulers everywhere celebrate Bitcoin by withdrawing all their Bitcoin to wallets-day control that perform network consensus and use best practices like the Glacier Protocol. So if you want to read more about Proof-of-Kees, head over to proofof-keys.com. If you have Bitcoin on a third-party custodian and exchange anything, if you're using certain services, I would consider participating in proof of keys today. If you're hearing this now and you have not yet removed your Bitcoin from your centralized exchange or you have never, maybe you're new to Bitcoin, maybe you've never actually held

Starting point is 00:07:08 it in a real wallet. Well, it's time to practice. It's time to get yourself a Bitcoin wallet and practice sending Bitcoin to yourself and holding it for yourself and practice your monetary sovereignty. This is very important. it is directly to do with the ethos of Bitcoin being your own bank and once again practicing your monetary sovereignty. So be sure to check out proof of keys.com for more details on that. Let's dive into the next story here. So there were headlines a lot about, I mean, it was hard to

Starting point is 00:07:45 miss, but there was an airstrike carried out in Iraq, which ended up taking out one of of the major generals from Iran, and tensions are boiling over when it comes to Iran and the U.S. Because this airstrike was approved by President Trump. Now, at the same time as this happening, Bitcoin has actually surged in price. We were beginning to dip down below $7,000 the other day. We're in the 6,900 range, maybe a little bit below. and then we bounced a good 5 to 6% up from there. At the time of recording this video, it looks like we were sitting around the mid-7300s or so.

Starting point is 00:08:35 And so obviously this spurred on a number of articles that questioned the correlation between the surge and Bitcoin price and the tensions with Iran and global uncertainty, global unrest. So what has happened here? Well, I mean, like I said, we pumped a good five or six percent, a few hundred dollars there, four or five hundred dollars. And people are quick to kind of point that out. There's a lot of mainstream media that tends to point to this kind of stuff. But there's also a lot of people that are calling into question these correlations. So there were some tweets people like Alex Kruger saying, talking heads. will soon be discussing how Bitcoin is a safe haven and is going up because of Iran, which is absolute nonsense. Round numbers are there to get run over in both directions. I have a small, long, so I'll be happy if speculators use the narrative to push prices up. Yeah, so I would have to agree with that mention there from Alex Krueger that I'm very skeptical of whether Iran has anything to do with it. Now, to play devil's advocate to myself, gold and oil also bumped in price today. So those are traditionally seen as some safe haven assets, and they have

Starting point is 00:10:04 notably gone up. But I think this is more speculation than anything. Why do I say that? Well, let's look back historically at some things that have happened to correlate with Bitcoin price rising. So there was this Cypriot banking bailout, and that caused a major surge in Bitcoin. It was up like 87 percent and then continued to pump even further beyond that. There was the Greek banking crisis where Greeks could only withdraw certain amounts of cash. I believe it was 60 euros per day from banks. And again, there was talks of a bailout happening in Greece at the time. This was back in 2015. By the way, Cyprus was 2013. Here's an article from TechCrunch where the title is Bitcoin surges past $650.

Starting point is 00:10:56 Funny to say that now. As Brexit results, sends UK pound tumbling to a 30-year low. So this article was drawing the conclusion or alluding to the fact that Bitcoin price was directly affected by the pro-Brexit vote that happened. in 2016. And even furthermore to this, you see on December 7th, 2016 in Fortune, Bitcoin is expected to surge 165% thanks to Donald Trump. And this had to do with his election in 2016 as the president of the United States and the speculation as to what would happen as he took office. again the reason I bring up this particular line of stories here is because all of these have to do

Starting point is 00:11:52 with global economic uncertainty but are not directly impacted or not directly impacting bitcoin itself and so in this I did not include things like when China says it's going to ban or unbanned Bitcoin for the umpteenth time, of course, that's going to impact Bitcoin itself because it's directly related to it and people are going to speculate upon this. These instances are just instances where something that has caused global uncertainty happens to correlate with Bitcoin moving. And I've seen just as many headlines that have happened that have been about global unrest and and, you know, think of the yellow vests protests and other major happenings around the globe. That did not correlate with major increases in the price of Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:12:51 Particularly, one of these that comes to mind is the Greek banking crisis when people were saying that the price of Bitcoin was rising because the Greeks were rushing to Bitcoin. This is from CNN business. The title here is Greeks are rushing to Bitcoin. And I think that is completely inaccurate. And the reason I say that is because if the Greeks only had access to 60 euros per day, odds are they weren't taking those 60 euros every day and pumping them into Bitcoin. Odds are they were taking those 60 euros every day and using them to feed their family and pay their bills or pay whatever they could pay, they needed to survive.

Starting point is 00:13:36 And investing in something speculative was probably the last thing. their minds. What likely happened here is people looked at the Greek situation and some people outside of Greece said, hmm, Bitcoin maybe could have fixed that. Maybe I'll speculatively buy some Bitcoin right now because I think some other people might find value in it too. So in a roundabout way, I suppose certain things could impact the price of Bitcoin, especially when it comes to banking, But when it comes to stuff like Brexit or Trump or this recent Iran development, I very much doubt that specifically this is impacting the price of Bitcoin. Some people may attempt to sway the price of Bitcoin in accordance with these things and hope that it takes. You may have some whales that make some moves during times like these and hope that retail investors draw.

Starting point is 00:14:34 correlations like this one, but I'm very skeptical as to this actually being directly the reason for Bitcoin happening to pump 5 or 6% in a day. Anyways, let's move on from there. Now, this is something that though it is, in my opinion, a long-term bullish thing for Bitcoin, I also don't think it has directly impacted the price of Bitcoin today. though I do find it to be a news item that is uniquely timed in that they opted to do this on the birthday of Bitcoin. So this is an article from Coin Telegraph. Europe's central bank proposes unattractive rates for digital currency. And so what they're referring to is the ECB recently released

Starting point is 00:15:26 kind of like a white paper for what their central bank digital currency would look. like if they were to make one. And so this is kind of a tag on to that where they're talking about they would be able to control the volume of CBDC or central bank digital currency, moved around by individuals and held by individuals by making it very unattractive to hold it. And so you would get a terrible interest rate, or perhaps if I'm not so, uh, if I'm not so shy about saying probably a deeply negative interest rate by holding an excessive amount of the base currency. So they're trying to encourage people to not hold specifically the central bank issued digital currency, but rather the fiat issued currency on top of it. So a bank

Starting point is 00:16:24 would hold CBDCs and would then issue loans based on how, how much CBDC they were holding. So let's say a bank held 100 million euros worth of the euro CBDC, while they could loan out 10 times that or more. And so the ECB is encouraging people to borrow and use like this inflationary non-backed currency, which the CBDC itself is as well. They're encouraging borrowing. They're encouraging spending.

Starting point is 00:17:00 And they're discouraging any type of savings. which is the absolute inverse of what Bitcoin was created for. And it is hilarious to me that a central bank is thinking they're magically going to stay in the race to be relevant by creating a digital currency that has the same awful monetary policies as their regular printed currency. It's unbelievable to me that they haven't drawn this conclusion that this is not going to work. It's not going to, just because something's digital, that's not the innovation. We already have digital currency. We have our debit cards. We have our visa cards.

Starting point is 00:17:44 We have online banking. That's not really the innovation here. The innovation was having a decentralized alternative and a way to opt out of these awful policies. And it just seems to not be cluing. in. So my best of luck to the ECB and their unattractive rates for digital currency holders, and I know that I will be opting out of anything of this sort that comes out of any central bank, be it the Bank of Canada, the Federal Reserve, or the ECB, I will gladly opt out and hold my savings and long-term, I guess, long-term value storage.

Starting point is 00:18:27 will be a Bitcoin for me. I don't know about you guys. Let me know what you think. With that, I'm going to wrap up you guys. Of course, if you're on YouTube, if you're watching this on YouTube, hit like, subscribe and share. If you're listening to this via podcast, welcome. This is only the second episode so far in audio only.

Starting point is 00:18:47 So be sure to subscribe to this if you're enjoying it and share it around your social media. I'm super excited to give people an option to listen audio only if you're driving home from work or whatever, and you need your daily dose of Bitcoin news. So very welcome for you to be here. Now, if you want to help the show in another way, you can always check out the sponsors that I mentioned before, Leden and Rise Wallet. Those are listed down below. You can also check out Wasabi Wallet, which is great for Bitcoin privacy. It is a desktop wallet. You can mix your coins that way and break the links between you and your Bitcoin. And finally, if you want to help with the show, you can check out NordVPN. This is a service I use all the time on my phone and my computer. It helps hide your

Starting point is 00:19:30 IP address. It encrypts your browsing data and it has a whole bunch of other added benefits like unlocking Geoblock content. So if you can't access something from your country, you just change which country you're from via Nord and boom, you got access. If you click the link below or if you use the code BTC sessions, all one word, well, it'll save you 81%. It amounts to about $3.49 a month. So pretty damn good in my opinion. Anyways, guys, I am out. Thank you so much for watching,

Starting point is 00:19:58 and I will see you guys after the weekend for your daily session.

BTC Sessions - Bitcoin's Birthday, Proof Of Keys, Iran Tensions EP002

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