BTC Sessions - BlackRock JUST Confirmed MAJOR Bitcoin Price Manipulation — You Have 8 Days

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

🚨 BlackRock & Larry Fink just confirmed what many feared… There’s massive Bitcoin price manipulation happening right now — and you’ve got just 8 days before the next major move. This isn’t a drill. From ETF flows to leveraged institutional games, we reveal the strategies being used behind the scenes.Join BTC Sessions as we break down what this means for your Bitcoin stack — and how to protect yourself before it’s too late.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/—------------------------------FOLLOW BTC Sessions on X: x.com/BTCsessions—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL BUY BITCOINhttps://qrco.de/bfiDC6COINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions ABUNDANT MINES:http://abundantmines.com/boomersAQUA WALLEThttps://qrco.de/bfiD8gNUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://qrco.de/bfiDARHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://qrco.de/bfiDCp#btc #bitcoin #crypto

Larry Fink just let slip that Bitcoin is one of his major indicators, saying it reacts sharply to global events and shifting geopolitical tensions, describing it as an asset of fear. According to him, pullbacks in price are not reflective of problems in Bitcoin, but global risk being repriced. And there's more. I want you to watch this clip with me because he had some interesting things to say at a recent event. Let me just get myself out of the way here. But, yeah, so Larry, I want you to pay attention to what he says close to the end of the clip

because it's the most important part. Bitcoin is an asset of fear. And when you're less fearful, like we had a trade agreement with China, you saw a shift downward. There is conversations this week that there may be. some type of settlement in Ukraine. Bitcoin fell a little bit. So you own Bitcoin because you're frightened of your physical security.

You own it because you're frightened of your financial security. The long-term fundamental reason you own it because of the debasement of financial assets because of deficits. And so to me, even the movement in the last week, and we've had about a 20-25% drawdown, and this is the third time since I've been, it was created our ETF.

And so this is, you see these shifts and it's, they're actually pretty non-correlated shifts and that's, and so the role. But then some people say is that really insurance, right? If you had bought it at $125,000, and it's now sitting at $90,000 or $1,000, you're saying if you bought it for a trade, you know, it's a very volatile asset.

You're gonna have to be really good at market timing, which most people are. If you're buying it as a hedge against all your hope, you know, then it has a meaningful impact on a portfolio. The bigger, the other big problem of Bitcoin is it's still heavily influenced by leveraged players. Bitcoin, oh, the key takeaway here is this. Bitcoin is heavily influenced by leverage players. Now, how does leverage, how is it shaping price action?

Why do these massive moves up and down very suddenly keep happening? And why have investors flagged December 26th as a critical date? What happens in eight days? We're going to discuss that and much more on today's episode. So drop a like and stay tuned. I am Ben for the BTC sessions. This is your weekly session. So I want to welcome to the stage, my co-host with the most,

Mr. Nathan Fitzsimmons, how you doing, man? I'm doing all right. I appreciate all the leverage players out there keeping the price down for me so I can keep accumulating because I'm still in that phase of my life. But I want to ask you, did you happen to notice that it looks like America might be going into another oil-rich country and spreading some democracy and freedom?

I'm not sure why there's always that large energy deposit, but coincidence. Yeah, it must be. I know that Dick Cheney was a huge freedom advocate. Huge. You know, he got big in the business of freedom back in the Bush era. So it's just continuing on the trend. But we'll talk about that more in a little bit.

Yeah. Now, let's chat a little bit about these markets. First off, good Lord. Like, I see these moves. I see these moves in the price. And you'll see it shoot up, you know, three, four, five thousand dollars. And then flatten and then shoot down the exact same amount. And it's just ping pong.

There's like a ceiling and a floor. And it's just hopping between them. And I have to shake my head every single time because the Fiat games that are being played. And again, it does as a long-term holder, it doesn't affect either of us. And probably most of the people in the audience, as long as you can keep your wits about you and shrug it off. But can you imagine? Can you imagine decades from now when people are like, grandpa, what were you doing? Bitcoin was below 100K.

Oh, I was, you know, I got wiped out because I bet everything on on price predictions between $85 and $90,000. It's absolutely ridiculous. My wonderful block clock back there that actually won on one of your Christmas specials two years ago, I think it was there a little bit longer. It looks like a random number generator lately. Like it's been absolutely unreal to me how fast and how violently it's been just pivoting up down, up down.

I just stupid Fiat games. Stupid fear games. Exactly. Now, there's something very important coming up on December 26, and we're going to lead into that, but I want to set the scene a little bit first with where we're currently at. So right now, and maybe I'll make us pretty off to the side here, the fear and greed index, again, indication of what general market sentiment is at, is still sitting at extreme fear. And this is the longest streak, consecutive extreme fear streak in history, which is funny to me.

sitting at like 85k, 90, you know, in that range that people are still, it's just, it speaks to the sentiment that people are expecting something to play out as it has historically. People are expecting that, you know, 2025 was supposed to be the bull year. 2026 is now bare market because four years must happen. And we'll get into that momentarily. But like some of these charts, this is what I'm talking about. When you're seeing shit like this on the daily and you're like, oh, it's going back. Wham, straight back down to 85.

And people are commenting on this. Again, Kobay-Sse letter saying liquidations are back again. Again, Bitcoin news. Bitcoin just shot up 3% 20 minutes. Chilled for half an hour went straight down 3% in 20 minutes. What is going on here? Even zero hedge remarkably consistent algo when it shows Bitcoin shooting up to a certain range, dipping down to a specific price level, making its way back up, down to the

exact same, like it's just ping pong and people are swatting back and forth. Again, you zoom out, here's the five day. You just see these spikes and dips, spikes and dips. And again, even on the one month, it's more of the same. It's like right in this range the entire time. All this while Bitcoin ETFs, like the market's just not having it. They're not super keen on it. ETFs facing 100 billion in losses.

So 60% of ETF inflows are currently underwater, totaling $100 billion in unrealized losses. Miners, of course, are feeling the pain. They're responding by pulling back hash rate. In fact, BitFarms more or less has pivoted to AI. You think that's a bad move. I do, yeah. I think it's going to come back and bite him in the ass. I think that the winning strategy here is just focus on cheap energy, geared down if you have to.

But I think the AI, while still important, has gotten out over its skis. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. And then again, Bitcoin's correlation to the S&P 500 and NASDAQ has risen considerably. So it's actually staying more in line with traditional markets. Now, last night, we had some awesome guests to cap off, or not to cap off to kick off the annual Christmas show, which if you guys haven't seen the Christmas show yet, it was a banger, go back and watch it. It was four and a half, almost five hours somewhere in there. Oh, yeah, dude, it was two and a half, it would be like three and a half hours of great content. I really went downhill at the end there when everybody came in and had a couple of whiskeys in them.

But, you know, hats off to Tatum. Actually, yeah, Tatum removed that hat forever, please. Never wear it on my show again. But it was a good time. But nonetheless, beginning panel, we talked macro. We had Joe Consorti, friend of the show, Samson Mal from Jan 3, Aqua Wallet, but also going in spreading the good words to nation states around the world. And we're talking about market factors.

And again, both of them echoing leverage traders up and down, back and forth, fighting. And they're both convinced that the institutions are trying to wipe out all these leverage traders for the end of the year. Just get rid of them, you know, send them back with their tail between their legs. So they're swatting them around. Now, in talking to Mao, we were. also talking about other potential worries in the market. And the quantum thing has been coming up quite a bit.

He does not think that this is a realistic thing that's actually affecting price. He says quantum computing can't even factor 21, yet people are panic selling because they think it will kill Bitcoin. And then he quotes it again and says, like, you're seriously selling Bitcoin for dollars to keep your quantum safe bank account protected by a four-digit. pin. I couldn't make this up if I tried. So he's not sold on that. Where are you standing on the quantum thing?

I think it's, I'm even more, would you say bearish on quantum? I don't think people talk like five, ten years out. No, no, no. I think this is going to be like Iran and nuclear weapons, not to make everything about war. But I think it's even further than that. I think it's the, to actually get to the levels of there's any sort of threat that

it's going to get increasingly more difficult. It's on their very strict conditions. And largely, it's not going to impact Bitcoin first. There are less secure infrastructure out there, there are things like city water pipes, there are things like bank accounts, or things like nuclear secrets, there are things like espionage secrets. It's not going to be used on Bitcoin.

If you're not reusing addresses, if you're using Native Segwit, you're already in a wonderful position. We've got time to fit. I don't think it is a threat at all. And I think we have way more time. I think in five years time, we'll still be talking about how it's coming in five years time. Funny enough, when you're talking about, you know,

what's vulnerable, what's not. I have seen, and I don't, think it's related but there's been a large reduction in the number of people utilizing taproot addresses and tap root addresses are should quantum get to that point are the first ones that would be quantum vulnerable whereas the segue addresses are are not and so you know so i had saw somebody tweeting and and reflecting on that and saying oh are people worried about quant i don't think so i think just people aren't using taproot. I think it's a little bit of both because I think people were just weren't using taproot for the most part.

They really weren't. Like silent payments is cool, but that's about it. That's all I've seen of any interest to me. So it's not really widely adopted or used. There's not really a whole lot of benefit. And then you add on that like it may not be as secure as a native segue address in the future. It's like, oh, then why would I bother pivoting? Everyone's still using this and it works great.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And also if quantum becomes a real threat, it won't be over. night and it's not going to be like, oh, your coins are gone. It's going to be like, oh, this is, this is moving in that direction quicker. And there will be a pathway for, okay, move to this type of address. It's, it will be clear before it happens that it's going to happen. It reminds me a lot of the, if you remember, the Y2K bug, right? The Y2K bug, right? The Y2K bug, planes were going to fall out of the sky. It feels very similar to that. We will pivot. I'm sure we'll

get a quantum resistant address before that, which is great. We'll have tons of time. And I think we'll have it well in advance. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, so let's chat December 26th. What the hell is happening in eight days? And Stamson talked about this on the show, too. He kept on cryptically saying December 26th. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

I guess I missed the memo. But yeah, something interesting. So this tweet was kind of the best one that I found that kind of lays out what is happening. David, David actually has a whole bunch of, pretty fire tweets explaining a lot of market dynamics. So, David, I see that you follow me. I started following you, but if you want to come on the show and chat about all the stuff that you've been discussing, the market structure and all that, we'd love to have you.

It seems like you've got a lot of insight. Either way, let's see what he broke down here. Bitcoin's Christmas present. The setup, Bitcoin is trading around 89K. Obviously, this was before another Bart dump, but quietly compressing volatility. after the October peak at nearly 126K. This calm is not organic. It is mechanical.

A massive December 26th options expiry is acting like a lid on the price. What's happening now? There's a large call open interest sits at 100K to 118K, with a dominant wall at 100K, meaning there's basically cell pressure at that point. if people are trying to buy and they're buying, buying, buying,

there's a ton of people selling at that level. It's hard to get beyond that price point if there's so much sell pressure. So that also puts support clusters around 85 to 90K, so meaning trying to sell, there's people that are buying at those levels. Dealers hedge this exposure by selling the rallies and buying the dips, knowing that is going to ping pong back and forth. The result is a narrow range and suppressed volatility. until the expiry on December 26.

This is not distribution. It is pinning, pinning the price. So the Christmas catalyst on December 26th, a large share of options gamma expires. When that happens, dealer hedges roll off. The artificial price gravity disappears and volatility returns quickly. Historically, this is when Bitcoin moves.

So the likely outcomes after Christmas, Number one would be an upside gift, which has a higher probability than downside. Now, if spot holds above 90K and breaks 100K with volume, so not just a little bit, but a lot of buy pressure, dealers must buy to hedge their short calls. The price acceleration follows, and the targets go from 100K to 110, 112, somewhere in that range with upside extension if momentum feeds itself. So if it really gets momentum going, it could go past that. But this is, he's kind of saying like a likely outcome of all of the resolving of all of these options is going to be to the upside somewhere 100 to 110. Now, before the expiry, Bitcoin looks weak and boring. After expiry, structure changes.

This is a textbook setup, volatility suppressed by design, then released by the calendar. So the key takeaway here, Bitcoin's Christmas present is not a price. today is the removal of the force holding price still. Once the wrapping comes off, movement follows. And he shows all of the expiries that happen on December 26. So yeah, it could be an interesting end to the year. Now, I did want to mention here as well. He does have another extensive tweet on this whole gamma-flush,

talks about the next eight days, all of these different things. I'm not going to go super deep into that, but I recommend you give it a read. It's pretty interesting. But there's other people saying that the long-term Bitcoin selling is nearing saturation. So K-33, they say that the prolonged sell-side pressure from long-term holders is nearing saturation after multi-year distribution phase. So this is from their December 16th report. The head of research, Veltalunday said supply held in unspent transaction outputs older than two years has been declining since 2024. They estimate around 1.6 million Bitcoin worth roughly 138 billion at current prices has been reactivated over this period.

The firm argued the scale suggests meaningful distribution rather than purely technical movements. Again, they cite that explained by events like Grayskills, Bitcoin Trust converting into an ETF, wallet consolidation, sorry, and security-related address upgrades. However, he said those factors not fully explain the magnitude of supply returning to circulation. Yeah, so a number of things going, they say that with 20% of Bitcoin supply reactivated over the past two years, we expect on-chain cell side pressure to approach saturation. So they think that this is kind of as bad as it's going to get. Now, I will note we had also, again, when Samson was on last night and Joe, he was saying, like, you can't reliably say that OGs are selling. Like he said some of these movements could be anything. Like just because it moves addresses doesn't mean it was a sale.

It could be consolidation. Again, it could be security upgrades. It could be, you know, large institutions moving things back and forth. Also, I do find it funny that long-term holders in some circles are considered six months, which is just set. The general standard is five months. Good Lord. Talk about high time preference.

Jesus. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't necessarily, I don't know if I fully buy the reasoning behind this. I definitely think that people are just exhausted in general. But we'll see. And beyond this, the other thing that we spoke about last night echoed by the Bitwise CIO is that the four-year cycle is breaking. Actually, Samson said that the four-year cycle doesn't even exist. So I don't know.

What do you think about the cycle? Are we going to see something similar or is 2026 going to break that expectation too? The only reason I think that the cycle could possibly be intact is that the most interesting and unexpected thing tends to be the one that happens. and that would be the most interesting and unexpected thing. I think that the cycles are done. I kind of pseudo-agree with Samson in the sense that I absolutely believe in the early days. Like when you're when you're your coin, sorry, the coin base, when the mining reward is 50 Bitcoin, like it's a huge proportion of the new coins coming online.

That's a huge source of supply. There's going to be a lot of cell pressure coming from mining operations that need to hold up, I mean to meet costs. So it made sense that earlier days the cycle had more of an influence and I believe that it did. And then there's kind of like an echo of it. There's kind of the expectation, almost the same way that the only reason my stupid Canadian dollar would have any value today is because somebody thought it had value yesterday. There's kind of that continued effect. So I think it was to some extent kind of an echo of the early having days.

But largely, I think that it is probably done. And right now, even with the ETFs, I mean, and look at gold following the launch of the ETFs, the bigger players entering the space. I think that, in fact, it's gone. I think it's gone. Of course, being surprised is exactly what Bitcoin would did. And I didn't want to add just even quickly, too, for anyone that has a hard time following along with like the puts and the calls, because I do from times. the time as well and chat correct me if i get this wrong but basically what we're seeing there is the largest players in the space we're selling contracts at the top of that channel and selling

contracts at the bottom of the channel basically saying like okay i promise you that you can buy bitcoin from me for a hundred thousand dollars that contract has no value while bitcoin is below a hundred thousand dollars so i'm going to do everything that i can to keep that price down and on the flip side i say look ben i promise i will buy any bitcoin from you for 85 000 right or $80,000, which as long as it's above that price, that contract has zero value. And I have every incentive to try and keep it range bound there. It's the stupid call-and-put options that we're seeing in these Fiat games. And I would also like to remind everybody going back to the fear and greed side of things.

And I'm pretty sure this is a completely original idea that I didn't steal from anybody. But if you think of it, like, it's a good kind of good framing is that you should, you should be fearful when everyone is greedy and greedy when everyone is fearful. I'm pretty sure that's a completely original idea. So if you see the fear and greed index down in like the tens and 15, 16 right there, it's like, yeah, guys, you know what you have, you study this thing, you keep learning, you keep stacking skills, keep stacking Bitcoin. Yeah, 100%.

And at the end of the day, it's funny, we were like, oh, we should use this meme. But in a way, I think the big problem right now is people aren't entertained their board. We need some more dopamine hits, please. That's what's on the docket. But we're going to be talking momentarily here about kind of the larger macro picture, all of the stuff that's been going on that can have downstream effects on Bitcoin. And that Bitcoin responds to as Larry Fink referred to it as an asset of fear. And so what kind of fear is out there right now? What is the market doing?

what is happening geopolitically. So we're going to be chatting about that. When we come back, we're going to give a quick shout out to sponsors of the show. And we'll be back in a moment. But if you're enjoying the conversation, make sure you do slap a like on this video. And if you're new here or if you haven't already subscribed, please do. So you can catch us every single week for tutorials, panel shows, and of course, your weekly session and mentor session where Nathan and Gary get to interview some amazing guests.

We'll be back in one minute. Well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the U.S. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place to be making large buys at their OTC desk of over $50,000. Their white glove service gives you fast transactions, no slippage, and the lowest fees. You can scan the QR code on the screen or simply head to Bitcoinwell.com slash BTC sessions to sign up today. And you can share your own personalized referral link.

to earn commissions. Coin Kite has been in the game for years creating hands down the best and most secure hardware when it comes to securing your Bitcoin. The Cold Card Q is an absolute powerhouse and my daily driver, and it's ideal for newcomers and advanced users alike. The tap signer gives you a low-cost, user-friendly option

for those just getting started or for convenience when traveling. You can head to coinkite.com and use code BTCC.7. sessions for discounts or simply scan the QR code on the screen to get started right away. Abundant Mines is an Oregon-based husband and wife owned Bitcoin mining company, making Bitcoin mining accessible to investors of all ages and experience levels. They're fully managed, white-gloved service allows you to own all of your own equipment and earn steady Bitcoin-denominated income without lifting a finger. Whether you're starting with 10,000 or 10 million,

abundant mines is your one-stop shop. No overseas call center. No, surprise up charges with one-on-one onboarding consulting and help navigating both bitcoin and the bitcoin mining space at every turn you can rest easy while bitcoin flows to you 24-7 learn more in abundant mines.com all right we're back in and yes of course we're entertained and there's no short of uh shortage of entertainment when it comes to the mess that is the economy and global macro events uh joe consorti again on last night uh but uh this was tweeted out from him a couple days ago. Unemployment rate in the U.S.

hits 4.6% the highest level in over four years. The aggressive upward slope on this chart is not ideal, up 50 base of points since June. And the Fed may be behind the eight ball considerably here, meaning they are acting way too slow because shit is beginning to hit the fan. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. you know, a zero hedge chiming in here ugly.

Full-time workers plunged by 983K in the two months since September to 134.17 million, the lowest of 2025. So worse than it's been all year. Part-time workers soared by 1.025 million in the two months since September to 29.486 million at a new all-time high. So basically people are not. not getting full-time jobs. They're getting gig work and part-time stuff to pay the bills. Or they're taking on additional part-time jobs too. Exactly. Exactly. This is not a healthy thing. It's people, it's not like there's a sudden

influx of incredible part-time jobs that people are just chomping at the bit to get. It's, how am I going to afford to live? And the answer is multiple jobs. Yeah, that's rough. On top of that, now this is interesting. We're talking about this before. we started the show. Inflation in the U.S. just unexpectedly posted one of the largest monthly declines since 2023. And when we say that inflation is declining, it doesn't mean things are getting cheaper and things are getting expensive less fast. They're still getting more expensive. So while a 10 basis point increase in inflation was expected, it actually fell by 40 basis points. This puts core CPI inflation in the U.S.

at its lowest level since March 2021. According to this data, inflation is now at its closest point to the Fed's 2% target since the pandemic. 2026 is going to be a wild year. Now, we're chatting and I was saying, okay, so how do you, like, how does one interpret this? Because, you know, typically when you, you know, when there's a lot of spending, when, when things are happening, then you're going to see.

increase in inflation, but you had an interesting take on it. And I think a lot of people, it may take them a second to sort through it in their heads as to why this could be bad. Yeah. So when we see like a disinflation drop of this level and kind of unexpected as well, too, what that's at least singling to me is kind of twofold. It's one that the consumer stretched out, right? If you still have, if there's still like monetary inflation pressures, but prices are not rising as much, it's usually because businesses know they can't just always pass along the price increase. It can't be done. If there's, if there's decline, If they're seeing consumer stress, they just can't possibly keep up with it, so they can't adjust prices higher.

The other one is it can be a reflection of kind of the risk and fear out in the market in the monetary system. Because what most of we don't realize is that the vast majority of the broad money is coming from the commercial banking system. And so if we're seeing, even though we have incredible government spending and we have just fiscal irresponsibility globally going on here, but we're seeing inflation start to slow down. It can be reflective of basically a slow down in the economy or increased precede, perception of risk, meaning that there's less credit being issued by the commercial banks. There's less loans being issued to people, so they're not going out there and starting businesses, taking on new loans, which means there's less currency units because they're

all debt-based. And it can be the result of the banks choosing to give out less loans because they're seeing perceived risk in the system. They're concerned that they won't necessarily get paid back. So we want inflation, like we're Bitcoiners. We want zero inflation, right? It's basically flat. But especially because this was such a big miss is giving you a warning sign that they're

could be problems either in the monetary side in terms of people not letting out, it's usually reflective of the credit. That people, there's less credit issued, there's some risk, there's some fear kind of at play. There's a slowdown in the economy. Yeah. So it's, it's not that inflation is dropping because we've stopped, you know, because the, the U.S. government has decided to be financially responsible. It's not that the Fed is being reasonable or something like that.

and somehow we're fixing the system. It's that things are so bad that people have stopped spending money. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. It's that there's less money spending and there's less loan creation. Yeah, yeah. Now, in response to this, obviously, I can hear, if you listen closely, the were of the money printers beginning to warm up here. The Federal Reserve Bank earlier this month, of course, said that they would begin.

How did they? the reserve management purchases. So what are those? They will be purchases of secondary market of, sorry, they say that they want to maintain an ample level of reserves through purchases of secondary market of treasury bills or if needed of treasury securities with remaining maturities of three years or less. they call it RMPs or reserve management purchases, but it sounds a little bit like something

that they've done before with a different name. Nathan, this is this ringing bells? This is not QE, Ben. This is totally different than QE. This is different. Instead of purchasing longer-durated treasuries and purchasing the short-term duration treasuries and we gave it a different name.

It's different. It's not QE. Okay, okay. Just if you insist, then I will take, your word for it that this is not the return of QE. Yeah. There's been some, there might be a few people that maybe see similarities as well, but the US is not the only one that is looking at a similar policy. Japan, Greenlights, 118 billion debt-fueled stimulus biggest post-COVID spending splurge, the 18.3 trillion dollar yen supplementary budget

passed the upper house after clearing the lower house last week, exceeding last year's 13.9 trillion trillion. Wow, they really outdid themselves on that. 13.9 trillion up to 18.3 trillion. Good for them. What's a couple trillion between friends? Yeah, yeah. Most of the funding will come from new debt issuance. That's always good. Highlighting Tokyo's aggressive fiscal stance despite mounting concerns over public debt. Why would you be concerned? I don't know. The budget is designed to finance a broader 21.3 trillion. Trillion, like the words, the numbers don't mean anything anymore to me. It's just trillions, trillions.

Like, you know, they're talking tens of trillions of yen. We're going to see tens of trillions of dollars, you know, long before. Now, beyond this, of course, Bank of Japan also increasing interest rates to 75 basis points. Or at least that's what's expected. Now here it says it's confirmed. It's probably going to happen, but yeah, pretty much. And so this can present something interesting because there's the carry trade, right? Like they just had the lowest interest rates forever.

And people were basically banking on those interest rates just being low forever. And so they've been basically betting on that. And so as interest rates go up, it's bad news bears for a lot of positions. and it can really wreak some financial havoc, if I'm not mistaken. Correct, because basically Japan is just like funding the rest of the world. It's the ability to borrow cheap and they go spend it in other markets, right? And that's because of these sort of mechanics is why they can get away with that, it's stupid high debt to GDP.

And so if they're increasing the interest rates, that's actually a contraction on liquidity globally so that would see that like impact Bitcoin and other things like that. We expect to actually have a pullback. But with the spending at home, it's almost like a bit of a, it seems to me like a Triffin's dilemma. trying to help out at home while defending the yen. They're trying to defend the dollar by raising interest rates. And I don't think it's going to end up going well.

I bet these rates come down again pretty quick. Yeah, yeah. Beyond that, also China looks like they are beginning to inject capital as well. 500 billion to one trillion yen by the end of 2025. So just stuff and cash into the system to prop it up. Yeah, Fed will be forced to print. even more money. Yeah, they don't want

if the U.S. dollar is considerably stronger over other places, especially when Trump is trying to bring back manufacturing to the U.S., they can't have the dollar be that strong. Correct. Because it becomes too expensive

in order to export goods to the rest of the world. And yeah, somebody asks, this is true. Larry Lepard chiming in from what he's read, sounds like that's what's going on. Now, it's not, just central bank policy and fiscal stuff and you know job reports that are affecting things

coming into the new year. Also geopolitical tensions kind of rearing their heads again. Looks like war with Venezuela. Breaking President Trump, this from CBS News, President Trump orders a total and complete blockade of sanctioned oil tankers in and out of Venezuela. And there's a clip here is Tucker Carlson and he says that members of Congress were briefed yesterday that a war with Venezuela is coming. Let's take a listen to the clip. The 9 o'clock by the president. Is Trump going to start a war in Venezuela? I don't know. I don't know when this program airs, the one that we're on right now.

We're live now and then it'll be posted immediately. So right now, right now. My sense is, I don't know the answer. I certainly mean on the phone a lot about it. I have no power. I'm a podcaster, but I'm very interested. And so here's what I know so far, which is that members of Congress were briefed yesterday that a war is coming and it'll be announced in the address to the nation tonight at 9 o'clock by the president. Who knows, by the way, if that will actually happen? I don't know.

And I never want to overstate what I know, which is pretty limited in. in general. Is Trump going to start a lot? That is very interesting. So I mean, that that's, uh, when things are tough financially, oftentimes when shit really hits the fan, just wars begin. What? No, go to war in order to reset the clock and get rid of the pension problem. No, no, no, no. Yeah, they would never do that. Yeah. So I mean, it's there's a lot of things kind of stacking up right now that seem to have been boiling over for or or on the cusp of boiling over here um and it's not just that but beyond that there's also the the looming uh kind of hearkening back to the previous points in and around um in and around the jobs uh there's the AI thing too and the AI thing obviously

you know is is sucking away certain low-like level jobs, even high level jobs at this point. But it also plays a role in and around Bitcoin. And there's a gentleman who wrote a book a while back, but he just popped up on Twitter again for the first time in a while. And he's talking about AI and how it pertains to Bitcoin. So I do want to read his post because we're kind of enveloping all the different things that are currently playing into how Bitcoin is reacting.

And so Jason Lowry, in hindsight, the counterbalance to the threat of AI will be obviously Bitcoin. Here's the billion-dollar answer that nobody seems to understand yet. AI agent hackers, the inevitable end state of infinitely collapsing marginal cost of computation, systems that are capable of outsmarting and exploiting any human-made cyber defense system that attempts to use conditional, permission based logic alone. Bitcoin is the world's chosen proof of work protocol. Want to defeat an AI agent hacker? You can't rely on conditional logic alone.

You have to introduce something into the equation that AI can't defeat. Brute force physical limitations. AI's Achilles heel is computational cost. And it just so happens that the world has adopted a proof of computational work protocol where we treat the electromechanical cost of computing as a tradable digital asset that can be used as a form of restrictive collateral. It's called Bitcoin. Understand this. And you understand the fundamentals about how Bitcoin will become the thing that all computing systems rely on to defend them against the threat of AI. Digital gold barely even scratched

the surface of the importance of Bitcoin in 2030 and beyond. That's a pretty fire tweet, my friend. I think I can sum it up really succinctly as well, too, the main idea. I could have it completely wrong, but I think I get what Jason's throwing down there. It's if the barrier, let's say you want to hack into my account, right? And it's like eight characters or whatever. Okay, then it's just the how fast can you compute and try those different passwords, right? That's the logic constriction on there.

You must find the right answer to get through. But if I say, here's my account and you must also pay one set every time that you enter a attempt, well then all of a sudden brute forcing doesn't really matter anymore because there's a cost imposed on a trying. Yeah. Yeah. Even insofar as people will have to have to be using a money that's based on proof of work. Because as he said, if our existing systems or our existing money is based just purely on the systems of the past that are trivial to continually try to brute force, those are going to be the first ones to go.

But when you're trying to brute force something that requires that proof of work, then, you know, it's like, is the juice worth the squeeze is kind of what he's getting at? And, you know, it's prohibitively expensive to fuck with Bitcoin. Just imagine if every time you had to log into something, you had to pay a thousand cents. Like, okay, whatever, I'll pay for that security. But then if someone was trying to guess my password, it's going to get very expensive, very quick. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, there's one other thing I wanted to touch on here, and majorly because you just had a fire interview with Simon Dixon and Dr. Jack Cruz.

And so we're going to go down the fun conspiratorial rabbit hole here just because it sits in the geopolitical overarching theme of things that we're touching on here. So we're going to start here. Justin, nuclear scientist, MIT professor, Nuno Lerero. I think shot and killed in his home in Boston. So a nuclear scientist from MIT shot and killed. This is like... Straight out of it. Yeah, this is like already it's like a science fiction thriller reads like it.

Now, seemingly the timing of this is just wild to me. But Trump Media merges with nuclear fusion company. Trump Media and T-A-E Technologies announced a $6 billion all-stock merger that will combine Trump Media with the Fusion Energy Company creating a new holding firm spanning social media, streaming, fintech, and advanced energy. The combined company plans to begin construction in 2026 on what it says would be the world's first utility scale fusion power plant with 50 megawatts capacity with additional plants planned at 350 and 500 megawatt. Beyond that, it's part of the deal. Trump Media will provide up to 200 million in cash at signing and another 100 million upon filing with the SEC. TAE says it has built and operated five fusion reactors and raised over a $1.3 billion

from investors including Google, Chevron, Goldman Sachs, and others. Trump Media holds 11,542 Bitcoin, and it said in its Q3 earnings report that it is earning significant income from its unique Bitcoin strategy, generating 15.3 million in realized income from option premiums tied to Bitcoin-related securities. Okay. Ben, are you noticing things? Are we noticing things? We might be noticers. Let's see what Dr. Cruz has to say. So he again pulls up something on this MIT professor shot to death. Yeah, so the director of MIT's plasma science infusion center was shot to death last night in his home.

One of the greatest minds on the planet specializing in nuclear fusion is assassinated. It seems like a bad omen. Dr. Jack Cruz says, if you do not think this death today has to do with the top 1% of the pyramid I was speaking about, you do not know shit. Once a government-led pursuit, nuclear fusion is now a private capital race, much of it financed by the same people building energy, hungry, AI, and pursuing the goal of creating systems with human-like intelligence. known as artificial general intelligence, AGI.I. This is led by the transhumanist technocrats I mentioned in the podcast. The fusion energy industry's total funding has jumped from $1.7 billion in 2020 to $15 billion as of September 2025, according to a report by EU Body Fusion for Energy.

Alongside Altman, who has said AI's future depends on an energy breakthrough, investors in Helion include OpenAI founder SoftBank, as well as Facebook co-founder and early Anthropic backer Dustin Moskowitz. Nvidia has backed Helion rival Commonwealth Fusion Systems, CFS. So too has the Google Transhumanist Boys, which have also invested in another player, T-A-E Technologies. AI is a big driver due to the energy needs to power their data centers. says Troy Carter, Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratories Fusion Energy Division. Nathan, what's your read on this?

Break this down to me. How are you interpreting this? Oh, yeah, it's going to take a lot of energy in order to control the population. That's basically all summed up in a nice little cracker there for you, is that if we're going to have our large AI models, we're going to brainwash and monitor and surveil and throw out the particular algorithms and manipulate the entire population to doing exactly what we want to do, if we want to have control over them, we're going to need a lot of power behind that,

because that's resource intensive. There we go. That's what I'm looking for. I was telling you, I listen to Jack Cruz, and I get lost quickly, and I feel like a moron. Yes, that is definitely a thing there. This is kind of one of the only podcast that I've listened to on like half speed to follow along sometimes with everything that is going through, because it does jump quite quickly. But it's power games that we've seen for years.

Jack and Simon had a wonderful conversation. Jack was more, and they largely, I think, agreed on almost everything, particularly on the solution. That's the most important part. They agree on the solution. It's about taking care of yourself, your community, Bitcoin, building out this network. But it's basically just putting forth the case that, like, if you've gone through the monetary history to know that, like, yeah, the bankers used to control a lot of shit and were very

manipulative behind the scenes and had a lot of influence and power, especially the case that, like, now it's kind of the technocrats. The bankers are a little bit more at their behest. It's not the guy's in charge of the money. it's the guy's in charge of the data. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, if you haven't already watched Nathan's pod with Dr. Jack Cruz and Simon Dixon,

go check it out. It's been crushing. People seem to have really, really liked it. So go back, take a peek. It just came out, what, on Tuesday? Just came out Tuesday morning, yep. All right. So, yeah, yeah, very interesting.

But we have more to chat about. We're going to take a quick breather, say, a quick shout out to our final sponsors here. When we get back, there's a few things. Man, Canada. Canada. Every week. Just a hot mess.

Some interesting data that we have out of the Great White North. But also, on the more positive note, I mean, the Canada sucks section is always fun. But on the more positive note, we also have some new software updates and launches, some really cool stuff. actually some stuff that you as an individual might be able to earn a little bit of living in not even just your local community, but by kind of being like a service provider with some of your node infrastructure, the rise of Uncle Jimming for profit, perhaps. So we're going to talk about that in a little bit too. So we will be back in just a minute.

If you're enjoying the show, make sure you drop a like if you're having fun with the conversation here. And if you're brand new to this channel or you haven't already, please do it. Do subscribe. We'll see in one minute. Looking for a simple and secure way to manage your Bitcoin on mobile, Aqua Wallet has you covered. It's user-friendly and puts you in full control of your Bitcoin with secure cell custody. Aqua also supports lightning and liquid network, making fast, cheap Bitcoin payments and asset transfers easier than ever. Plus, it even supports stable coins giving you ultimate flexibility.

Build on open source code, Aqua is transparent, trustworthy, and perfect. for beginner and pros alike. Ready to upgrade your Bitcoin experience? Click the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen now to download Aqua Wallet today. Securing your Bitcoin doesn't have to be complicated or invasive. With Nunchuk's Honey Badger Plan, you get state-of-the-art multisig with built-in inheritance planning and no KYC required.

Nunchuk is trusted by users to secure billions of dollars in Bitcoin. The Honey Badger Plan offers 204 assisted multi-sig guiding you step-by-step on mobile or desktop. It works seamlessly with hardware wallets like tap signer, cold card, Jade, and plenty of others. So you're always in control. Plus, with non-KYC inheritance planning, you can ensure your Bitcoin goes to your loved ones. No private info needed. Take control of your Bitcoin today. Click the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen to check out the HoneyBadger plan. Debify is the best and easiest way to borrow against your Bitcoin in a non-custodial way.

Funds are held in a multi-sig escrow where you hold a key, and the platform allows for excellent hardware like the cold card mark four and the queue. You have access to flexible conditions, the best rates, and institutional grade liquidity. If you're looking to make use of your capital, don't sell your Bitcoin, borrow against it. You can head over to debify.com to check them out or simply scan the QR code on the screen. All right, friend. Let's take a look at what's going on in Canada here. Always, always some fun, spicy things. Fun, bad word.

Well, for us, for Yale Burton's over here, it's interesting to look at the dumpster fire of Canada as a whole. Yes, yes, exactly. So financial post in Canada publishes this December 15th. How did Canada's young people become its unhappiest generation? and finance a lot, which I quite enjoy his account, quote tweeted, because they have to compete with the poorest people on earth for jobs

and the richest people on earth for housing. That's why. Yeah, yeah, Canada, the charts of how many people we've brought into the country in the past little bit, it's just a hockey stick the past few years. It's insane. And it's not like we're bringing in people that are like brain surgeons and people like that.

It's like, no, we're bringing in people to work in Tim Hortons. Right. Like, that's that's kind of like where the bulk of the new people coming to Canada are going. It's unskilled labor. It was just human QE to prop up our failing economy. Yeah. Yeah. And now, yeah, young people, they're like, where I can't even get an entry level job at anything.

Like, I can't get a coffee shop job. I can't get. Like, it's just, yeah, they're competing with, you know, millions of new people in a country of 40 million people, adding millions of new people. Yeah, dude, we brought in like 10% of our population. That would be like almost 40 million showing up in the U.S. Yeah, which is crazy. So it's, yeah. So, I mean, this is one of the major things.

And like, it's funny because at the same time, there's a really interesting chart. Maybe we'll lead with this. Let's pull it up. So in real dollars, which I mean real dollars, I'd say poor vernacular on that. But what the person is getting at is like if you exempted like inflation, I think, this is CPI adjusted home prices. So like if our money didn't suck and wasn't printed to oblivion, what do house prices look like? Well, they've currently now fallen back to the same prices that they were in February of 2017. So this is inflation adjusted.

So like here's where we like where we would have printed to no end is like as it's falling up a cliff here. So it's it's, you know, there's there's the spike as people started as we were printing. They're like, let's put our money in something, something. Assets are going to go through the roof. But at this point, if we hadn't like if our money supply had remained constant, Like, look at this. This is just like absolute decimation. And yet people still can't afford homes.

That's the scary part. People still talk about housing being unaffordable, but in inflation adjusted terms, it's right back to where it was in 2017, which just tells you how much the economy has deteriorated. Yeah, yeah. And on top of that, Toronto, biggest city in the country, adding zero condo starts right now, only rental. So Toronto, CHMC apartments start for November, zero condos, 1,300 rentals. Also, this is basically what happened a year ago.

Start is based on foundations. So I wonder how things will look next year. Year to date, we are down almost 11,000 apartments starts, 3.5 billion in construction value, give or take. Rental ticked up 2,500, and condo went down 13,200. Chart below is apartment starts. So like you were saying, there goes construction jobs. That's exactly it, right? Screw with the system.

It causes such violent and swings, right? Like, basically, they had zero percent interest rate. They were giving out money to anybody who just signed up online. They're allowing people to defer their mortgages. Inflation was rocketing out. So everyone was buying up condos to be like a mom and pop landlord all across Canada, right? Prices shot up like mad. Now they're correcting back down because no one can afford them.

No one can buy them. And so they're not starting to build new ones. We have a housing crisis essentially that we don't have enough housing, but now because prices have corrected back down because the artificially pushed them back up in the first place, no one's starting to put new ones in the ground. No one's starting to put shovels in the ground because no one's buying right now, which means in like five years' time when that would have been completed, we'll have the same cycle all over again because there won't be any new ones coming online for people to buy.

It's just amazing to me how, and you guys get it. Austrians get this, Bitcoin, get this. When you screw with prices, you mess up the entire system. Yeah. And on top of that, even if you did have a house, maybe now you don't. Yes. Because apparently, if you own your home, it can still be taken away by some sort of land treaty that existed like 150 years ago. I identify as a cohesion or cohesion or whatever it is.

I identify as that. So I'll take some of those houses, please. Exactly. BC's cooked. These properties won't need new loans because there are no buyers. up to $1 billion in BC loan guarantees needed after Cowichin ruling. So basically, again, nobody wants to buy these properties. Nobody can sell them even because it's just, it's a big question mark.

Like, who actually owns this land? Probably not you. And this is happening all over Canada. People are like, I, you know, am I at risk? Like, why would you, at that point, like, if you're looking at, land and there's some sort of a treaty on that land. It's like, why would you buy a house? No, they're not touching it.

So I did an interview with Steve just last week, not this week. And we touched on this in great detail. And he's very plugged into the real estate scene in Canada and lenders won't land on the won't lend against the disputed land. They won't do it. So if you're renewing a mortgage to save face for public backlash, because it would look terrible for them not to renew, they'll renew it. But they will not, they will not issue loans against that collateral because it's in

dispute. It was like, okay, who the hell owns this? And it can be tied up in the courts for like a decade. That is rough. And so you again had Steve on recently. All of these factors and more are contributing to something very interesting. We just said that we added like 10% of our population in kind of like low-skill labor. And Canada's population is now outright contracting.

The population declined by 0.2% in the third quarter of 2025 with almost 77,000 fewer people in the country. And to add to that here, Canada just saw the largest outflow of residents in history. Among them, Jeff Booth, great boyciner. He got out of Dodge. I remember talking with him in the summer. He's like, I think I'm out. And he literally made it happen very, very quickly.

So, you know, again, we were talking before the show and I was like, that's got like the, That outflow has got to be productive people, people that are like builders and people that have capital and people that are seeing the writing on the wall. But you said something interesting. You're like, but also some people are re-immigrating back home because it sucks here. Yep, yep.

They get sold on Canada where you get a whole bunch of free stuff and it's awesome and you get a job and everyone takes care of you and it's lovely and they get sold this kind of false fill of goods. And you're actually seeing people that immigrated to Canada going back home. because at least there they could get work and afford a place. Like that's how ridiculous has gotten. That we, it's like the complete opposite of Europe. Like if you have Europe, you have the flood of migrants coming in.

It's like Canada, we had the same thing. We had a whole bunch of people flooding into the country. And now they're going, oh shit, I can't afford anything. My job sucks. And now it's minus 18 outside or like minus six Fahrenheit for the Americans. Like, okay, screw this. I'm just going to go back. Yeah, that's crazy.

You can't even keep the people that fled to Canada in Canada. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. What are we doing here again? I have no idea. We'll figure that out. We'll talk off everything. We're in Alberta. We'll have some plans. We'll figure something out. We'll make something happen. We'll get our fancy new Alberta passport.

I completely agree. It's funny too. Just want to point out, like, the influx of immigration was also based. It was a human QE that was popping up our economy, which was already like doing terrible. Because on a per capita basis, the Canadian economy, I believe, was like, down. Like, we were in like recession territory for like, was it like eight quarters straight. It was ridiculous. So now if we have. people leaving Canada, we have Canadian population contracting combined with the productivity declining

in the economy tanking. It's like, it's, you know, the classic, you know, the tide goes out. You see who's swimming naked. The tide is just like running away from Canada. We are so screwed here. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We're standing on a beach and we can't even see the water.

Yeah. Turns out it was just a mall. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I'd like to say, I hope it gets better, but we know that this segment is going to continue on very strongly for the foreseeable future. So I'm going to...

By the way, sorry, I saw a quick comment down there. There's no rats in Alberta. That's not true. There's a lot of NDP and Emmington. Amazing, amazing. Clip that, everybody. So I want to move on to some positive stuff, some cool stuff. This really neat.

I kind of alluded to it at the beginning of the segment or the end of last segment. BTC Pay Server, version 2.3 is out. Has something very unique about it. Starting today, you can charge merch. a subscription fee to use your BTZ pay server, making it sustainable for local enthusiasts to onboard businesses to accept Bitcoin while undercutting credit card fees and preserving merchant self-custody. So you can Uncle Jim for local merchants, if you're unfamiliar with the term Uncle Jimming is basically being like the helper that helps people get set up with their Bitcoin stuff. So you can basically be running the node, the lightning infrastructure, whatever it is, and have people link. their stuff to your node infrastructure as backend, run their BTC pay server for them,

even though it's still self-custy, it'll still go to their own wallet, but they don't have to worry about running a server. And so if you're technically adept to be able to run like a Start 9 or something like that or cloud host or whatever it is, you can then go to merchants and be like, yeah, just plug into me. It'll just be like a small percentage of transactions or something, something less than when you accept credit cards and then you might have over time a viable business model. So clubs out there, get the work, see what you can do.

I love this. I love this. This is so cool. It reminds me of like an emerging Bitcoin gig economy, right? How can you take your Bitcoin knowledge and actually use it to generate some more stats for yourself? And it's still offering like a method of decentralization. I think about all the people out there that are doing their own cloud hosting and stuff too. you could do cloud hosting as a service for local businesses or things in your community, in your area for like small subscribers, which still gets us away from like Apple and Google having all the data. So even though it would be ideal that everyone runs their own server? Yeah, probably, but still having like a whole bunch more of them out there that people could pay a small

subscription for that service for is fantastic. Yeah, I love again the whole Matt Hill start nine sovereign computing idea. I think that's huge. I think I want to see so much more of it. So I've, I'm downloading the alpha and I'm getting 0.40 on, I've got a little mini PC that I picked up a little while ago that I've been meaning to act on. But trying the new Start 9 update, be playing around with it. So I'm fully informed so that when the public beta comes out, I can Likdi Split do a full tutorial on it. So yeah, very, very excited about that. Now, in the same vein of things that I'm excited about, Bull Bitcoin wallet just keeps on. crushing it. If you haven't tried the bull Bitcoin wallet, it is so good. But yeah, so they

continue to add support for various hardware. So they've obviously got the cold card cue. They've also added Seed Siner and Crux. I think there was something else on there beforehand. Seed Sender Crux, Jade and Cold Card. Jade and Cold Card. Also, they added Specter DIY. Yep. And now Foundation Passport. So they're continuing to work. and add support for mobile-friendly devices, which is great to see. So yeah, very, very cool. Actually, Nathan, can you tell the story?

We had the sat market. So anybody that doesn't know what this is, we have a local circular market that we created here in Calgary in our city, circular economy, every merchant accepting Bitcoin. But we had somebody, you know, a number of new people there just last weekend. and Nathan onboarded somebody using the Bull Bitcoin wallet. What was that experience like? Oh, dude, it was phenomenal. And guys, by the way, too, when you're going out there,

orange-pilling people who are getting them on Bitcoin, historically, I would have to use something like Aqua or maybe use Wall of Satoshi just for like speed and convenience, keep it super simple. I just want to introduce them, maybe get them a couple stats, get them curious, get them thinking about it. But the recoverable for the Bull app so that they don't have to write down the 12 words while they're there is super awesome and wicked quick. And so I had one woman here who had never bought Bitcoin in her life,

didn't have any Bitcoin in their life. We had her signed up to Bull Bitcoin. We had the account approved, like all the stupid KYC bullshit approved. We had them fund the account, purchased Bitcoin, send it to the, immediately send it to the Bull app, which we had installed on her phone and had already backed up and recovered. We had everything from zero to exchange to app to go spend that a merchant in 10 minutes and 24 seconds. It was stupid, smooth and fast. I couldn't believe how quick we were able to do it. And it was such a wonderful experience that she bought another round of sats while there to go buy more stuff. Like it was, it was phenomenal.

It's a wonderful setup. Yeah, 100%. 100%. The same bull Bitcoin vein, just Francis Pooleyot tweeting out. We did it, boys, Bitcoin, new word added to Scrabble. Highlight of the year. Is this winning? Is this winning?

This is what adoption looks like. Yeah. Thank you, Hasbro. I don't know. Yeah. The other thing that I'm excited about, officially my second cartoon I've ever been in.

True. Yeah, so I was in Tuttle Twins, but now I'm in Maxie's Club. Yes, that frog-looking thing is me, apparently, hanging out with Grepels and Selly there.

I believe Samson Mal makes a guest appearance in here. Yellow's in there. Becca's in there. All the goodies. So make sure you check that out over at Maxis Club. They're on YouTube.

And you can find them on Twitter too. But while we were prepping this show, we watched a little bit of it. And quite the time, quit the time. Couple last things. I'm super excited for Prague this year. It'll be my, it's their fourth year and also my fourth year attending. But they just announced their theme this year, which is using Bitcoin. And, you know, last year, all of the events, you know,

all of the treasury company, ETF kind of stuff was getting, getting a lot of airtime. And the organizer of BTZ Prague started to recognize, like, listen, you know, we need to get back to basics. We need people to realize, like, how you as an individual or as a company or as an institution, like everybody,

how do you actually use Bitcoin? How is Bitcoin being used in different capacities? So it's a return for a lot of people to, as they say, starve the beast. And I think that's fantastic. So I'm going to be there. And we've got some interesting stuff in the works. I'm quite excited. So if you're going to be heading out to BT Prague, then let me know.

Hit me up. And there is a code. You can use BTC sessions. I think if I'm not mistaken, it gets you 10% off tickets. And the tickets do go up, I think, in the new year here. So you've got like a little bit of time before it eeks up and again, regular intervals. It'll start going up. So sooner rather than later is better and use code BDC sessions to get a discount.

90%. I see we got Ashley from Liverpool in the chat there. Prague's not that far. Get there. Yes. All right. Ashley, let's do it. I'll see you there.

Give you a high five. One last thing. Super important. Probably the most important thing of the entire show of the entire week of this past year and a half. unfortunately samurai wallet developers one of which reporting to prison tomorrow for five years this is like just horrendous um you know amazing guys built a bitcoin privacy tool non-custodial being thrown away for uh you know for money laundering and eating and abetting they never

took custody of anybody's funds they built an open source tool which, by the way, has now been forked into Ashi-Garu wallet and continues to live on even beyond their project. But yeah, these guys have been put through the ringer, one going to prison tomorrow for five years, the other one in early January for four years, and also put through financial health, too. Their families just financially ruined through all the legal proceedings. And so if you can, and I'll bring up a QR code here, please go scan the QR code or go to Bill and kione.org and maybe I'll put that down below as well, bill and keone.org. If you can go there, please sign the petition.

We're working hard to try and get a pardon for both of them because open source developers shouldn't be under threat of imprisonment for creating and writing open. open source code. And beyond that, if you can, you can also go and donate to the families because, as I said, they've just been, you know, financially ruined through this whole thing and they're going to need all the support they can get. So please do Bill and Keone.org or scan the QR code. It'll take it to the same place.

And then after you do sign the petition, share it out. It's super important. Bitcoiners need to come together on this and really show some support for these guys. they're important builders and they've created something that again will continue to live on whether or not they are involved and for that I'm eternally grateful

Samurai was one of the first one of the early wallets that I ever covered and I think Keone when he was on he said Ben I think you were the first person to make a tutorial on Samurai wallet which kind of hit harder than I expected but yeah kind of wild to see people that you've interacted with online

for years going away to prison. It sucks. It really sucks. But with that, hopefully we can make a difference and really call some attention to this. Bitcoiners have really come together over these past couple of weeks to draw some attention to this. And they even had, you know, somebody asked them point blank, Trump, have you heard of this case? Will you take a look at it? Would you consider partnering them?

He said he'd take a look at it. we'll see can you imagine the Christmas gift that would be so cross our fingers uh anyways guys we're gonna wrap there uh I hope you enjoyed the show make sure you do drop a like on the video make sure you give this a share and if you're not already subscribed please do uh we're gonna be back uh in the next week with a bunch of things any other things for you Nathan before we go I was just gonna mention so I have another podcast dropping with um John Denny He on Tuesday but next week we're coming Are we coming into the Christmas season yet? I know that next week we're still on, correct?

Or is next week the one we're doing the Tuesday? Next week? I think we're doing a Tuesday, yeah, Tuesday evening. No, the week after. Week after, yeah. Yeah, it's going to be funky. Obviously, we're not going to do a show on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, but we'll be popping in.

There is content coming out next week, so keep your eyes peeled. And then, of course, we'll say it next week, but have a very Merry Christmas. and go back and check out the Christmas special. It was a good time. So anyways, thank you guys so much. And we'll see you guys for the next one. I'm Ben. This was Nathan.

This was your weekly session. See you guys soon.