BTC Sessions - BlackRock Just Did The Unthinkable – Bitcoin Collapse or Brutal Bear TRAP Incoming?
Episode Date: November 20, 2025BlackRock just made a shocking move—and Bitcoin investors are scrambling to figure out what it means. Could this trigger a full-blown collapse… or is it a setup for the most brutal bear trap we’...ve ever seen? In this episode, we break down exactly what happened, why it matters, and what you should be watching next.FOLLOW TODAY’S PANELISTS:https://x.com/adamobrienhttps://x.com/Matyas44Cookhttps://x.com/khalliburtonFOLLOW BTC SESSIONS on X/Nostr: x.com/BTCsessionsbtcsessions@getalby.comBOOK 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/—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL - BUY BITCOINhttps://qrco.de/bfiDC6COINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://qrco.de/bfiDBVAQUA WALLEThttps://qrco.de/bfiD8gNUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://qrco.de/bfiDARHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://qrco.de/bfiDCp#btc #bitcoin #crypto
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Did the Bitcoin bull market just die?
The price is crashing.
Sentiment is falling off a cliff.
And yesterday, the BlackRock Ibit Bitcoin ATF logged a record,
$523 million outflow.
This is the single biggest single day exit in its history.
And for many, that's the moment that alarm bells started ringing,
including maybe some new people that are in the room here.
But on the other side of this, on the other side of all this chaos, we have people like Michael
Saylor and Microstrategies stepping in and grabbing 8,200 more coins, another $835 million added to
their stack without hesitation.
And right around the same time, a surprise buyer will get to in a second, out of nowhere,
suddenly scooping up an additional $100 million in Bitcoin, a move that nobody really saw
coming and we're going to talk more on that in a moment. So what is going on here? Is there market
manipulation? Is this just a temporary shakeout in a much larger extended bull trend? Or are we staring
down the barrel of the most disappointing Bitcoin bull run in history? So today on Why Are We Bullish,
we'll dig into this and much more with an incredible panel. We've got Adam O'Brien from Bitcoin
well. We've got Kent Halliburton from Saz mining. And we
We've got Mateus Kukar from BTC Prague, the best Bitcoin conference in the world.
So drop a like, stay tuned, and let's get into it.
I am Ben with the BTC sessions.
This is your bullish session.
So I want to welcome to the stage, Mr. Adam O'Brien, Mattias Cougar, and Kent Halliburton, gentlemen.
Welcome to the show.
How are you guys doing?
What's up, man?
It's great to be here.
Doing great.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Yeah, good.
Good to have you, man.
Mateas, how are you?
You're a trooper.
You're staying up late for this one.
Hello, everyone.
Yeah, it's midnight here in Cold Sugar Public.
But I'm pumped to be here.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Well, gentlemen, we got to address the elephant in the room.
The price, people are a little panicky.
So we're going to take a quick little peek.
Although it's not as bad as it was earlier today, I still just want to kind of
Again, we're in the, you know, we're in the 90s.
We're sitting 91K.
We've been down to 88 and, you know, zooming out the last little bit.
Like, it wasn't long ago that we were scraping those all-time highs.
So people are wondering what the hell is going on.
There's been a few things.
That Black Rock, the ETF, massive outflows the other day, the biggest in history.
there's that fear and greed index i'm sure you guys have seen uh seen this little ticker here
before showing how scared everybody is which is is at uh historic well not historic but uh it's quite low
at the moment um however we do have micro strategy still stacking stats like crazy almost 8200 coins
um we also had the other day el salvador
Just out of the blue, like they're, normally they've been stacking a coin a day and then all of a sudden a hundred million dollar buy on a dip. So like they're not, they're not phased by it.
One other funny thing I wanted to quickly show is, is that we had the inverse indicator, Mr. Jim Kramer, saying it almost feels like a cabal is trying to keep Bitcoin above 90,000. So he's got his,
he thinks that the conspiracy is to keep Bitcoin up.
He said, I like Bitcoin, but I do not like any of the derivatives created to play it or game it or mine it.
So Max Kaiser pulled the inverse Kramer and said, Jim Kramer says, almost feels like a cabal is trying to keep Bitcoin under $100,000.
So yeah, I just, there's people in the room here that maybe this is, this is kind of their initial foray into Bitcoin, this past.
couple of years there's going to be some veterans in the room that aren't sweating too much
but I'm curious your guys thoughts how are you feeling this is you know not typical for a year
and a half post-having in terms of where we're usually at but I mean Adam you we've been friends a
long time we've been through some cycles together how are you feeling right now yeah dude I mean
percentage wise this is a this is a dip for
ants, I think, not to, not to diminish anyone's like, it's scary though, you know, percentage
wise, it's a dip for ants. But if you think about like the, you know, 10, 15, 25,000 dollar drop,
like, you know, I remember Bitcoin going from $1,000 to $200 and I was losing my mind.
You know, now that like that $800 candle is literally an hourly, that that happens all the time now.
And so I think it's, it's good. It's, it's the shakeup. This, this feels like the
shakeup. I am, maybe just this is like a bolt hard sentiment, but I just think there's going to be
a face melting rip. All economic forces point towards melting faces in the near future.
We've got money printing, stimmies. This feels like a tax. This feels like somebody just wants
some tax losses. Maybe bought coins at 110, needed coins at 90. You know, this market is
tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny and incredibly liquid. This feels like big companies.
just doing what they need to do to fix their IRS liabilities.
And we're going to be melting faces here imminently is my, is my prediction on price.
And so for any newbies in the room, please do not buy into this dip.
The fundamentals are unchanged.
Everything is progressing as foretold by the prophecy.
And we're in good shape, I think.
Yeah, that's fair. Again, it's, you know, it's not typically a time to panic. These are the
opportunities that present themselves if you can have the resolve. But, Mattias, I'm curious. Cross
the Pond. How's sentiment? How are you? Well, very well. I mean, stack some cheap salad hands
Bitcoin while you can. I'm very bullish. And, you know, it's been a few days or a week,
actually when I was talking to Andre Dragos from Bidweiss,
and I expressed my fear that the institutions will be the golden hands,
holders, never sell.
And he actually told me that, no, it's like they really do it only for money.
They don't have the conviction.
And this really shows the biggest outflow from BlackRock
from other institutions actually shows that this is true.
And they are there only for money, not for technology, not for free.
So I'm actually very happy for this from two reasons.
One is from my personal reason, so I can stack some more Bitcoin in discount.
And the second one that actually shows that Bitcoin will stay with the strongest hands.
And that means that it won't be captured in future so easily.
I love that.
I love it.
Tatea's basically calling out the institutions as a bunch of lettuce-handed pussies.
That's how it is.
Kent, I'm curious your thoughts as well.
You're looking at this.
People were thinking, end of 2026, we're going to multiple hundreds of K,
where some of the calls, some people were saying a million, and we're sitting here sub 100K,
yellow's crying again.
You know, like, what's your take on this?
Well, it's not the Q4.
I anticipated us for sure.
But at the same time, I look at this situation in the context of, you know, my third cycle.
And I think if you're new here, welcome to the rodeo.
30% pullbacks are normal.
They happen to every bowl cycle.
I just checked the chart.
We're exactly 30%.
And guess what?
I don't know in my third cycle here that there's ever been a major top that was noted by fear.
And that is exactly where we've been.
since like 125k, which is crazy.
The all-time high price and people were panicking when we went down like 5 to 10K from there
and that panic has only increased.
So it's crazy to me that we are sitting here at 92,000, I think the block clock next to me says.
And five years ago, we couldn't have imagined it would be at 92,000 and we are at Max Fear.
So, you know, hang on to your house.
This is normal.
and quit focusing on the highs and instead look at the all-time lows each year.
And you'll notice that those are going up at a pretty nice clip.
And the other thing that I'll mention is to, I like facts to break through the herd mentality fear that sets in in the marketplace.
And the other fact is a 200-week moving average, which is the equivalent of four years, you know, 52 weeks in a year.
It's a good proxy for four years.
It has never once gone down.
So if you can just have the conviction of not the institutions that don't that consider fiat money, which I do not.
I consider Bitcoin money, not fiat.
But if you can have the conviction of four years, which is the equivalent of getting a bachelor's degree, you've never really lost money here.
So just hold tight.
Don't look.
Some of the best holders I know actually don't look at price.
So try to do that.
And you'll be off better if you just have a four-year time conviction.
Hell yeah. I mean, yeah, it's a pretty solid set of advice there. And again, like it's
I'll interrupt quickly. Just on that note, four-year price conviction, Kent, is so real. We actually
at Bitcoin Wells started fiscally planning in a four-year cycle. The yearly budget cycles for
our business just absolutely wrecked us. Like I was getting nuked. We were unable to look at any
type of like any type of revenue projection or forecasting it was terrible and when you move that to a
four-year time horizon it's like it's almost like down to the day uh predictable i i feel like the overlords
have stuffed us into a 12-month calendar fiscal cycle and quarterly earnings and it the financialization
of the whole world as a result is just like so unnatural and we need to just zoom out as a society
I'm going to just say, let's just do some business on air here as founder to founder and just say, that's wonderful piece of advice.
I'm budgeting right now.
I'm going to heavily consider doing so.
Yeah, man, do it.
Four years.
Budgeting your business, especially your Bitcoin business, if it's, if it's gauge, like we obviously Bitcoin well, Bitcoin platform, like we're, we're a heavy sentiment driven business.
And I think probably cloud mining is equally sentimental.
And so I'll take coverage of cloud mining, but, but, but you did.
I'm sitting at all 100% so as well.
You know, the price is like the tide of the ocean here.
The price goes up and everybody's, okay, cool, boats are rising.
Tide goes down.
Okay, nobody's walking in the boat.
Yeah, 100%.
On a side note, I've started, you know, how a lot of people will base their,
even just like personal goals on a single year.
oh, it's a new year and, and, you know, the New Year's resolutions and stuff like that.
I honestly think that setting your goals in Bitcoin epochs is an incredible way of looking at things
because you can accomplish so much in four years.
Four years ago, I'm like, oh, my God, like that the improvement in your life, the things
that you can do in that.
And it just gives you that low time preference look at things.
Like, hey, you know, like a single year, things can flit up and down.
but if you zoom out a little bit and you have longer-term goals,
I think that's a great way of doing it.
For those of you that haven't been here for a long time,
Ben today looks like he ate the Ben from four years ago.
That is true.
I saw some pictures, some videos from like early on.
Actually, I was looking through the very,
because we're coming up on 10 years of the channel next year.
Wow.
And the first video of the channel was an event.
Like, well, not entirely, but like there's clips of it from an event that myself
and Adam through, which was like a bunch of local, you know, performance artists.
And, you know, you could tip in Bitcoin.
You got some Bitcoin with your ticket.
There's an ATM there.
All that kind of stuff.
But I was looking back at that footage.
And yeah, I look like I'm a twig comparatively.
So, yeah, stack and stats.
stacking gains.
And plays, baby. Let's go.
So, gents, price talk aside.
We're here because everybody has a reason to be bullish about Bitcoin.
And those reasons tend to transcend just price.
There's so much more to it.
And so we're here to find out why you guys are so damn bullish.
And so I'm going to go, Adam, to you first.
I'm going to give you the same question everybody gets, why are you bullish?
Okay, man. I think for me, it's definitely not anything to do with Price. If anyone who's
watched my stuff in the past, you know that I'm incredibly like sentimental and philosophical.
I have talked to more Bitcoiners over the last maybe two or three months that are having kids.
The Bitcoin scene is just like kid, kid, kid, kid, kid, kid, bitcoiners are are multiplying.
We are bringing new bitcoins in. I swear my Bitcoin Twitter feed is like half of it is birth announcements with
block height, which is so dope.
And I think it just comes down to the fact that Bitcoiners are so optimistic about the future.
It's like when you have a kid, you're not thinking about one year down the road.
Like the kid is yours for life.
Literally, that's how it's, that's how it works.
This is the physics.
And it's like you, when you have a child, you, you know, if they're bad for a day or for a
week or even for a year, it's not like you're not worried.
You're not feeling some kind of bad way about it because you understand the lifetime that you have to be with and nurture and lead into and grow and be with that child.
I think that Bitcoiners understand this so well because of shakeups like this and the price.
But I think that we have this incredible optimism for the future because we understand that our economic certainty is like all but guaranteed.
Like Bitcoin is objectively the number one asset on the planet.
and we hold it and we're going to give it to our kids who are going to give it to our grandkids who
are going to give it to our great great grandkids and so on and uh i think that whether consciously
or not bitquiners understand that they feel that they love that and i am seeing more like i'm this is
not data driven whatsoever this is completely based on my bias x algorithm but i bet bit coiners
are having double the national average of kids per household or more um just
just based on my conversations, my circle, who I run with.
Like, it's just 10 to 10.
And I'm so bullish on the next generation.
I'm so bullish on bitcointers who are objective truth, freedom maxis,
like just stacking stats, taking self-custody and teaching good,
low-time preference values to their kids.
How good is the world going to look when we are raising up leaders and the next generation
in that way?
So I am bullish for my kids.
I'm bullish for your kids.
I'm, Mateus, I don't know if you have any kids in Kent, like, obviously, like, I'm just,
I'm so bullish on our ability, the world's ability to, to fix itself and heal itself through
its population will be done in part and probably in large part at the hands of the bitcoins
who are procreating because of their optimism. And so that's why I'm bullish.
Hell yeah, man. Hell yeah. I love that. Yeah, actually just, when was it? Was it last
week. I think it was two weeks ago. The whole panel was Bitcoin moms. It was Carla. It was Katie from
Plan B Passport or Citizen X now. And then Stacey, who works on the Bitcoin Debt Project. But all of them,
you know, with kids. You know, I think Katie's, she's at least got a couple two or three,
you know, Carla. I think Katie's probably due right away. Shout out of Katie, who introduced me to
this couple in Vegas last year called J.D.
I forget his wife's name, but they have eight.
They have eight kids.
They live in a bus, and they tour around America with their eight kids and a bus.
It's like an intentional thing that they do.
She's like an Instagram bus.
Liver.
I don't know.
But yeah, it's awesome.
I'm just like, I'm so bullish on that.
That's amazing.
There's so many good in terms of like raising the next generation and setting them
on the right path.
I feel like Bitcoiners and and kind of people in the same mindset like that that have
tangential views of the future.
There's so many good resources to help educate our kids.
So my daughter's eight and the teachers were on strike here a little while ago.
And so I was like, oh, what could we do at home?
My wife was doing like math and English and all that stuff with her.
And I was like, okay, well, let's order these Tuttle
Twins books.
Let's go.
And I started going through.
And so if anybody's unfamiliar with Tuttle Twins, just very well-written, like, freedom-oriented,
Austrian economics-based, just like good lessons for a moral and fair society.
And so we started going through some of these books.
She was actually, she was getting it.
And I'd pair it with, we'd read a book.
And then there's a cartoon series as well.
And so I'd pair the book.
with like this similar cartoon that was made
and we'd watch it afterwards.
And man, like, it's, it's so cool seeing her begin to get,
you know, I was asking her about like,
well, what do you think if like the government promised,
like a whole bunch of free stuff for everybody?
And she, you know, she's like, well, like,
they have to like get the stuff from somewhere.
So like somebody has to like do work for it, right?
So like how.
And she's piecing together the life.
Like, there's no such thing as free stuff.
It's like somebody has to work for it.
So how are they extracting that?
So like there's these amazing tools out there to get kids on that path.
And like my daughter has her Bitcoin wallet.
And we do the local market here.
And she comes and pays and sats.
And I've got a couple miners hooked up.
And she's starting to see like 50 cents a day pop into her lightning wallet because of it.
And so we're learning.
And yeah, I think it's great.
But I'm curious to hear from Mateus and Kent what you think about what Adam had to say here.
So, Mateus, maybe I'll toss it to you first.
Well, I absolutely agree.
And it's hard to say anything against it.
I believe that the next generation will be really ruling the world.
And the world will be much better place because we are just in the time when the Fiat experiment is going to end.
And I think our goal should.
should be to make the transition phase for our kids smooth, nice, and not so, and quick.
Because we can achieve that in perhaps 30 years for sure.
Can we do it in 20?
Can we do it in 15?
So I want this word to be really nice for our kids.
Like we are pretty much building the next future.
So, I mean, it's just too big.
you know it's just too philosophical because it's uh we are really fighting for for freedom for next
generations not only one and finally we also have bitcoin which we can lock not only for our kids
but for our grandkids and grand grandkids so um establishing trust to really make sure that our vision
for the future will be um at least um at least a little bit closer than uh was
might the next generation want and tweak our ideas.
So I really love it.
I have two kids myself still small.
So looking forward to to be in the place where I can actually talk about Austrian economics.
Now it's different stuff.
That's amazing.
Kent, I'll talk to your way too.
Ben, just I set my oldest gray up.
Just this week, we've been vibe coding.
and it is unbelievable.
He's making like games for his siblings and stuff.
And it's cool, man.
But like seeing the brain go from,
I have an idea to the mouth,
to the fingers,
I guess to communicate it and then having the problems come up and then change it.
It's,
it's game changing for our,
we're homeschooling this year and it's game changing for our education.
So definitely recommend you get some vibe coding going with your daughter.
That's so cool.
We've got to try that,
got to try it.
Kent, I'll let you dive in.
Yeah, well, how rad is our culture, right?
This Bitcoin culture, like look at us.
Forefathers, joyful, happy, looking forward towards the future, thinking multi-generationally.
You know, this is what it's all about.
I don't know if there's any other culture out there.
And, you know, I know we've been accused of being a cult, but I always like to remind people that the root word of culture is cult.
So every culture has got a bit of that to a degree.
And I just think that why wouldn't you want to be part of a culture that is having this much fun and caring about the future?
I mean, what a horrible place to be if we didn't have that, right?
And it's thanks to Bitcoin and us all just staring at this thing that we didn't understand for so long and slowly as it comes into view.
It's like, oh, this is reality.
Bitcoin's just bringing the laws of physics and nature to the internet environment.
And guess what?
doing so is like nature is healing right and that what they say and and we've actually got nature
showing up online for the first time and what do you what do you know it's uh leading to have
healthy or happier productive people so yeah i think our community is astounding and i've i've given a
presentation a few times at a couple different conferences but the last slide i give is it's a picture
of the cathedral of milan and it's a cathedral that took 569 years i believe to build and and and i
always like to just ask the audience, hey, can you imagine a group of people that would actually
set out on a project who would take 570 years to complete? And then, you know, to me, that is what
we're doing at Bitcoin, you know, we're building something that's not, like you said,
Mateus, it's not, it's not even for our kids, but for our grandkids and they're great grandkids,
you know? And so anyway, it's, it's weird to know that you're working on something that is not going,
you're not going to see the fruits of, but it's extremely gratifying as well.
So, yeah, anyway, I'm just grateful to be on a show with a bunch of fathers.
It sounds like we all have young children, and we're all kind of of the same mindset.
It's just frigging rat.
It's going to be so cool.
The idea that our, you know, our grandchildren will witness the last sat be mind
and know that their grandfather is witnessed the first.
Isn't that so cool?
Like I think that will be, again, like I can only imagine the amount of change that this could bring about in a couple of generations.
And the, you know, I've got to imagine the people then in that moment will have this unique appreciation for like, wow.
like the the the people that were either stupid enough or like bold enough to to be like no no you know everyone else is wrong and uh and to to um you know be be in the early innings of uh what i think is a um you know a generational a societal a a cultural shift uh you know a species wide shift i think um
It'll be a pretty interesting moment.
I wish I could be around for it.
I don't know that I'm going to make 2140.
That would be pretty, you know, pretty cool.
120 years away, man.
Let's go.
Hey, maybe.
Maybe some bit corners will figure out some incredible medical technology
if we don't piss away all our money with Fiat.
So yeah, we'll see.
Either way, either way.
Love the topic, Adam.
I think it's great.
And again, if you're,
If you're new to Bitcoin and you're listening to us for the first time,
welcome to the cult.
It's a fun one.
It encourages saving and family and treating people around you with respect.
So enjoy.
But with that, we're going to do a rotation here.
We're going to do a quick sponsor to our shoutouts.
I'm going to be a complete shill for Adam,
because he's a sponsor of the show.
But we will be back in one minute.
We're going to head to Menteus next
and find out why he is so damn bullish.
So stay tuned.
Also, get out your lightning wallets
because we're going to give away some sats
on the other side of this.
We'll be right back.
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All right, we're back in.
We're going to give away some quicksats.
All you need is a Bitcoin, a lightning wallet.
What I'm going to do, I'm here on Bitcoin well.
And, of course, you earn points when you sign up, when you buy and sell Bitcoin.
And basically, you get your chance to either redeem it for some awesome swag.
Adam, I'm working towards my cyber truck.
I don't know if I'm going to get it.
And just so everyone knows, if anyone gets the cyber truck, which is 69 million points,
I will personally deliver that to you.
Like, wherever you are in the world, I will personally deliver it to you.
Perfect, perfect.
All right.
Well, get to work, everybody.
I'm going to, I'm going to redeem some points.
I'm going to toss a coin in the well.
Every time you do that, then you have a chance to win up to potentially a million sats.
So toss it in.
All you need is a lightning wallet.
The first person that scans the QR code on the screen steals the sats from everyone else.
669 stats, great number.
So everybody, whoever scans that first steals it.
If you get an error, you weren't quick enough.
You've got to be quicker next time.
But with that, we're going to dive into our next topic.
And Mateus, I am looking at you.
And same question everybody gets.
Why are you bullish, man?
Well, that's a good question, you know.
And I think that I'm always bullish.
And I was always bullish because I'm a big believer in Bitcoin.
but I had a moment of realization.
I have so many moments of realization, but this was big.
It was because I actually realized that we are living in extremely exciting times,
and it's not only about Bitcoin.
And we kind of touch this like a civilizational shift towards some better world.
And I think it's not only about Bitcoin.
It's about a few more important technologies.
which are converging now like AI robotics,
like biotech like sequencing genome,
and of course Bitcoin and few others.
And this will mean that we will quantum leap
into a different productivity level.
So like I would compare it to the early 19th century,
or early 20th century, sorry, with industrial revolution.
So before industrial revolution,
we had zeroish GDP for thousands of years.
We were just working all day long on the field agriculture.
And then we had steam engine, telegraph, electrification,
assembly line, sewage system, like urban architecture
and infrastructure.
And those few very important technologies,
technologies with very important people who had like really great ideas for with in mathematics,
physics, chemistry, uh, really made the chance that we, uh, leaped from zero-ish, zero point two
per year to three percent, two and a half three percent, which we are keeping pretty much until now.
And I think that we are in the time when we will do another leap from two and a half, three
percent per year to perhaps 10 or 12 or even 15. And imagine what this can mean. And it's happening
quite fast. So this will happen in our lifetime. So it's like, how can you not be bullish?
You know, like we are creating the future here. Just really. And I'm also very bullish because I feel
like we are the leaders and by we, I mean, uh, Bitcoiners, most.
mostly and because we will become a very powerful social economic group which can make a change,
which can change the cause of his of future and the history books will be written about this time.
And I feel very proud to be part of this movement, you know, and very confident that we can
make it.
I'm very hopeful and that's why I'm bullish.
That's great.
I, I, to your point about various technologies,
at the same time.
I think you're very right.
And I think that if the rest of those technologies were converging and in the absence of
Bitcoin, it would be a huge problem.
Because when you are, when you're in a system, like the current system right now,
that with these huge leaps is able to extract well,
from the masses.
And you have these huge leaps forward and productivity.
It's just a very few at the top that benefit from these increases in productivity.
And the people at the bottom just get left behind and don't understand what's going on either.
And so, yeah, we've seen technology, the only reason that, you know, up until kind of this generation that every,
every generation was doing better than their parents was because the pace at which technology
was going was faster than the money printing. But as soon as that changed, like now, Gen Z,
they're screwed comparatively. And so in a system where, yeah, our technology is doing amazingly,
and it should be making all of society's life easier. And we should be able to work
less to accomplish more.
You know, these Gen Ziers are,
they're stuck with like crap jobs that pay nothing.
And they can barely scrape by.
And, you know, it's like to Adams earlier topic,
like they can't even fathom the idea of having a family
because they, again,
the wealth has been extracted elsewhere.
And so, yeah, it's, it's,
I think all of these things happening
and having a release valve of Bitcoin just switch over to this standard.
Look, people are actually benefiting from the increases in technology.
Things are getting better and cheaper for them.
It almost might expedite the process of people understanding, at least I hope so.
So I'm curious your guys' thoughts on that too, but great topic, Mattias.
Yeah, well, you know, I think that it's right.
The Bitcoin is necessary part for the next next.
stage of human evolution.
And I cannot imagine robots accepting fiat's, you know, and AI.
They are just not so stupid, you know.
So I think that it just must make absolutely sense.
But I'm curious about your take, Adam and Ken.
Yeah, I think I love this sentiment.
I think that I was actually talking about this today.
I sometimes forget when I'm in like Normie land in the meat space here,
space here that I'm talking to people who don't think like us. And I made the comment that
Bitcoin is going to, you know, probably be worth like, it's going to be, like, have a market
cap of $450 trillion in the near future. And he was just like, like, you know, you can see
his brain exploding at the time. And I went on to explain kind of that we're watching right now
in real time what will be called like the separation revolution or some type of defund the government
revolution and you know i don't think people going through the industrial revolution were like look at us in the
middle of the industrial revolution it was only the history books you know decades later or a decade later
that were like oh and we will call this period the industrial revolution when uh when we when we
when we when we systematized and brought a production line and and you know technology was so good and
we were able to you know make everyone's life easier and better due to manufacturing and we're going
through right now this separation revolution where we are actively defunding criminal and corrupt
state organizations. The government, every single government on the planet would disappear if they
couldn't cheat. And that's like that's such an insane metric that we are so offside. The governments are
so unchecked and they run the world, they run our world, our societies in such a way that if they
didn't have this infinite money glitch, then the physics don't work. And that's not a,
it's not sustainable. That's just that's mathematically speaking impossible to last. And Bitcoin
gives us and economically incentivizes us to learn about that, to research that, to either
agree or disagree with that and to reward those that understand it correctly, um, the greatest.
It's like the perfect aligned incentive economic advantage.
You don't have to be smart. You don't have to be in the right place at the right time. We are witnessing governments lose power and like the government's pretty powerful and and we know that power is not created or destroyed. It's only transferred. So guess what, everyone? The power that the government holds is actively being taken away and given to you the people and you have the opportunity to acquire that power for you know, $91,000 per coin or I think more aptly you can buy 1.1.1.1.
1,000 sats per dollar.
And it's like, when you think about it that way,
you can buy 1,100 units of power and simultaneously defund the government by 1100 units,
that's like, that is so good.
And I echo this sentiment, Mateas, I think that the societal shifts that are happening right
now, which will be called the great defunding or the whatever we're going to be calling
it in the history books in the future, assuming they write them correctly, I think
there's probably some history books that are not written too well. I think that I'm just really,
really bullish on society being able to recapture and reclaim the freedom and the power
that is rightfully the peoples. And yeah, I'll end there, because I could go for miles. I could bring
a Bible analogy into this, God's will for our life. Like, you know, I can go for hours on this one,
but I'll turn it over to Kent before we get, you know, before I just derail us here.
Well, man, I'm always happy to run off the train tracks with you there.
So if we want to go back to it, I'm happy to.
But no, I think what you talk about, Matthias, as I think about it is, and I think actually
Ben, you said it best, like I can't imagine this without Bitcoin going through this.
It feels like the quickening, like we're going through like a societal wormhole right
now where we're just being propelled and nobody can really keep up with it or warp speed.
and it just feels like Bitcoin is the substrate for that new reality when it get out on the other
side. Like right now the substrate is like the dollar. Like that's the transactional force that
holds social fabric together and on the other side that warm hole, which I think most Bitcoiners
are far advanced in is Bitcoin as a substrate. And it just grounds us in reality.
And all these technologies that are amazing being grounded in that reality are going to lead to a
new societal structure and civilizational force is what I believe.
I, you know, you look at other similar, like the sovereign individual talks about these macro
political forces and how they, how they reorganize society.
And I think Bitcoin is one of those, you know, so you look at it, things like gunpowder
or ones in the past or the printing press.
I think Bitcoin is another one of those.
And what we will see with it is some new form of societal structure.
And, you know, if the Bitcoin community is in any, you know, if the Bitcoin community is in,
indication to kind of tie in what you were talking about, Adam. Like, it's going to be a wonderfully
positive future because we're going to be focused on families and, and creating a lot of
wealth and happiness. But it remains to be seen. I'm not one of these people that's like
polyanish that thinks like, hey, cool, Bitcoin's going to fix everything. I mean, we're still humans, right?
We're going to have our warts and problems when we get to the other side of this. But I do think
that, you know, quote by Buckminster Fuller is something I really lived by.
here on the Bitcoin community, which is, you know, you don't fight the existing system.
You just build a better system and people naturally move to it.
And I believe that that's what we're doing in the Bitcoin community.
And that's why we look to Normies like we're so freakish is because we just said,
hey, cool, we've stacked ourselves out of that fiat reality and we're just going to go over here
and play a different game.
And you guys can keep, you know, trying to keep up with that hamster wheel.
And we'll just go over here and raise families and enjoy life.
If I can just comment on the very last thing, what you said, Kent, we don't fight government.
I don't agree with that.
I think that we need to fight because if we just opt out and let them do it, like, I think that there is a point of no return, which is quite close.
And I think that this is a fight worth fighting.
And it's necessary because the other side of the country, the country, the other side of the country,
coin is a dystopian future full of surveillance, CBDC, and I don't want to continue to be very
depressing. So just to say, I think it's really important to stand up now. And again, I'm
confident and we can do it because even the politicians are now listening to us and we can
make the change. So fighting doesn't need to be always only with a sword. It can be with ideas
and with very smart, sophisticated discussion. But I think that it's important to stand up
against the state and not just let them do their thing and wait until they die. Like this
starving the beast thing is good. But let's do it more quick. And that's when
the fighting comes in.
I want to,
you mentioned CBDCs,
there's a really good resource.
Actually,
these guys have gotten a grant
from the Human Rights Foundation,
but it's a CBDC tracker.org.
And you can go and check every single country
and see where they're at
in terms of rolling out CBDCs.
So like I'm in Canada,
we can see that we've got
the digital loonies and the research phase
There's a proof of concept for something called Jasper in the U.S.
Digital Dollar Cancel.
Project Hamilton is something going on.
There's a whole bunch of different places that actually have, you know, rolled it out or are close.
They've got proof of concepts.
But you can basically filter for whatever you want and see how close you are to actually having ACVDC.
There's only a few that have launched, but there's more.
have pilot projects and there's even more that have proof of concepts so um it's coming it's
something you need to be aware of uh i'm guessing they'll incentivize it but you do not want to uh
you don't know not want to be living under a cbdc standard uh without having um an escape valve
and so i'd encourage you all to learn about how to actually use bitcoin day to day as well so that when this
becomes a reality for everyone around you, you have an alternative way of living.
It is super, super important.
And I'm glad you brought it up, Kent, but the sovereign individual for anybody unfamiliar
is absolutely essential reading, written in the mid-90s, prescient as hell,
talking about life in the information age, the digital age.
and more or less calling the need for a digital non-government currency
and saw a lot of the writing on the wall,
very prescient in talking about how nation states will handle this post-digital world,
the idea of flag theory, the idea of nation-states collapsing into smaller,
more localized governance.
Very, very good book.
And then finally, Adam, to your point on
talking to Normies about how much the government sucks.
I just need to, you know, again, I'm in Canada.
A lot of people, they saw the whole Justin Trudeau basically, you know, the mutiny that happened.
But can I just say to the point of governments being unable to stop the spending,
Justin Trudeau was ejected effectively because the budget that they were expected to put out was a deficit of $40 billion.
And his, Christian Friedland, his second in command and the finance officer or whatever the title is, she quit because she didn't want to announce the budget, which was $60 billion instead of $40 deficit.
So that was the first thing that started the snowball rolling that got Trudeau ejected from office.
Basically, that caused our election.
We then elected his financial advisor for the past 10 years, two-time central banker, who is now the Prime Minister of Canada.
They just released their budget for this year just now.
And remember, Justin Trudeau was basically.
booted out because his deficit was $60 billion.
The budget they just dropped was $79 billion deficit.
And on top of it, people then went through it.
And they basically took things that are just them spending money
and recategorized them as investments.
So the actual deficit is something to the tune of $95 billion
and had the same categorization of these expenditures existed when Trudeau was on office,
everything would have been above board.
They would have actually been on track.
So just the insanity that has happened and the financial fuckery that has happened just for them to drop a budget that was already 50% worse than the previous one is unbelievable.
There is no stopping it.
The only thing that you can do is just opt out, use something different, and arm yourself
with the tools to be able to navigate the world in a self-sovereign way.
So rant over, but good God.
Well, I have to comment on that map that you were just showing because I think, you know,
something you said, Matthias, about fighting versus opting out, I think is actually reflected
in that map that you were looking at because if you look at it largely,
the global south has not been impacted in the same way that the northern north america and
europe is for the cbdc's and what you actually see like so i live in peru uh part of the global south
and there's like 16 or 18 circular economies here in peru it's one of the nations it's adopting in
latin america at least uh bitcoin and uh tether at some of the highest rates and a buddy of mine just
completely out of the blue sent to me today that one of the major payment providers was just
integrating bitcoin and tether like it's not a regulated environment and so here you can see where
there is generally in the global south like the rule of law is weaker and so it's kind of more free
in some ways in some ways that could change like overnight too so it's not like you know it's all
rainbow and unicorns over here but at the same time you can see when the free market is just allowed
to do its thing without a lot of influence like it's naturally adopting these technologies because
it's making people's life easier and so i'm actually quite like excited to see how that plays out
and to the technology of bitcoin it does allow you to you know vote with your feet so if things get
really bad and you can't continue to fight well great like maybe all these other nations that
have slowly been allowing this technology to just do its thing in the marketplace will allow for
Bitcoin to just up stakes and find a better jurisdiction to be in.
And that is something that the sovereign individual talks about is that ability of being able
to vote with your feet that Bitcoin enables.
So I have no idea where this all goes, but I like that there's jurisdictions where it's
not being clamped down on, you know, these digital IDs and CBDCs and stuff.
Like those are kind of the pockets where, hey, as long as Bitcoin adoption can continue to
flourish, price continues to go up, you know, there's going to be places that it gets
reinforced and it's going to protect itself. Like I was in El Salvador last week and my gosh,
that country is just absolutely blowing up and taking off. Like it's total a counterpoint to like
what you just described in Canada right then. So there's all these jurisdictions around the world.
And I think that that competition from government to government and people moving, like I met
Canadians that the first, this is the first time I've ever heard this where they were saying,
hey, I'm going back behind the Iron Curtain when they're referring to Canada.
And I was like, wow, okay, and not unfair.
So, you know, it's the reality of different jurisdictions is really starting to change here, guys.
And I think that that's part of the, whether you decide to fight or opt out is sort of jurisdictional in nature.
That ties into, Kent, to something that Ben said and that you just brought up, which is Ben said something to the effect of, you know,
Steve these are bad.
They're going to incentivize you to use them,
but try to resist.
And it's to counteract the inability to leave and vote with your feet.
Everyone, like everyone thinking they have Bitcoin exposure,
as if exposure to Bitcoin price is the only thing that we need
through an MSTR, through an ETF,
or sue them, some kind of other, you know, thing.
It's like, that's how they will incentivize you.
You have fallen into the trap.
This is how you are going to get your Bitcoin captured.
and this is how you're going to eliminate your ability to vote with your feet.
Because last time I checked, it's pretty tough to leave the country with your MSTR stock held in a Robin Hood brokerage account.
And I think that when we look at, I give a presentation called self-custity or bust.
And I just changed it actually to like how to unlock the value of your Bitcoin or something.
And it's like, it's this concept that Bitcoin has kind of five key parts to it.
And one of them is price protection.
One of them is is preserving the value that you create.
with your time and that's amazing and very important but the other four are freedom
focus is the ability to move around the ability to do so without permission the ability to to
to have a monetary system that you can verify and and all types of sound money principles and it's like
when you don't take self-custody of your bitcoin real bitcoin on the blockchain or through a
protocol that can interact with the block blockchain like like a layer two then you give up four
of the five value props of bitcoin and it's like you're still paying the same price and still
paying the same price. It's like, what are you doing? The math is broken. Like we, we discount. We just,
the money, the world, the economy is so financialized that we've kind of, we've gotten ahead of
ourselves and we've put this, this golden ticket around price when really price should not really
be something that we, that we consider as heavily as we do against freedom. And when people are
actively trading their freedom for price, like, man, we're not.
much better off than hookers at this point, just trading our, our values and our, and our,
and our freedom to somebody else for money. And that's, uh, that's a sad day. It's a sad society.
And once again, why real Bitcoin actual value is able to change the way that society thinks,
which hopefully builds a better society.
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, I'm, I'm looking forward to all of this coalescing. Um, we get to
watching in real time. Hopefully, you know, it's, it's, no matter what, it'll, it's going to be a little
bit rocky as, as things ebb and flow. But I can't think of a better group of people to do it with.
So, you know, I think it's, it's going to be a hell of a ride. And if you're new here, again,
strap in, whoever said it before, welcome, welcome to the party. It gets wild. So, gents,
we are going to do another rotation here.
Mateus, did you have anything else
that you wanted to tap in there before we rotate?
Or I want to give you the last word on this topic here?
Well, so much.
You know, like this topic, I could be talking about it
with you guys for four hours.
But the reason I feel,
and I can talk about is because of our history.
The Czech history is full of personal breaches.
And it was just very recent, you know, my parents lived in the time when they didn't really have hope.
They didn't see the end.
And it happened.
So I think my point is just never stop fighting and believing in the future, even if you don't see it, because it can be really behind the corner.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I thought that was a great topic.
Very excited for the future.
And we're going to do another rotation here.
So, Ken, I'm coming to you in a moment.
We're going to do a quick final sponsor shout out.
And then we'll be right back.
Everybody, if you're enjoying the show, make sure you drop a like on it.
Love seeing you guys all in the chat.
And we'll be back in just a moment.
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All right, we're back in.
And Kent, I'm heading to you.
Final topic of the night.
Same question everybody gets.
Why are you bullish?
Yeah, man.
So I got to say Adam stole my thunder,
but in the best possible way.
I was going to say community too,
but for a completely different reason.
So I'm still going to lean into being bullish on the community.
And so I've got two anecdotes to share,
two maybe not anecdotes is the wrong word,
but two specific things to share.
So one is I mentioned being in El Salvador last week
and being at adopting Bitcoin
and just getting the vibe of the country there,
you know, here is a country where Bitcoin has been planted
deep in the roots of the culture
at the time that Naïvo Kelly, you know,
roads to power in the country, get rid of all the crime on the streets.
Somebody that visited El Salvador since 2000, went there for the first time to surf,
went there again, 2013 to surf.
Actually, like, Bitcoin Beach was a surf spot I visited and have pictures there,
and it was well before it was Bitcoin Beach.
And then last year I went, this year I went.
Last year it felt like the plane was on the runway.
I'm getting ready to take off.
This year it feels like the plane is lifting off.
I mean, the place is unbelievably.
exciting to visit just the momentum and the vibe in the air.
You know, I don't know Dubai too well, but that's a Fiat version maybe of like, to me,
like El Salvador is like the Bitcoin basics are going to build something equivalent to Dubai,
but build off a Bitcoin instead of Fiat, right?
That's kind of where I feel the trajectory is going.
That's really deeply exciting.
And it couldn't have happened without that Bitcoin community jelling to make it happen.
And then the second reason for community,
for me being bullish is something that happened to me that got reported this week in Wired
magazine.
So clear back in August and I'm not going to bore everybody with the story of how if you want
to read that story, feel free to go into my Twitter handle at K. Halliburton, it's all there.
You can get to the Wired article.
It's got lots of you.
It should be easy to find.
But I was the victim of a social engineering attack.
It was an in-person social engineering attack.
I still don't know exactly how it was executed.
It's a really well-written article.
The article is behind a paywall.
Unfortunately, that's not my choice.
I didn't know that was going to happen.
And I'm not going to undercut Joel, who's a fantastic reporter that researched it,
vetted the article and wrote an incredibly well-written story about the entire thing.
So if you can get access, he can read it.
But the way the community has responded to this.
So I wanted to get this out there publicly.
I specifically went the reporter route instead of just doing like a Twitter feed
about the scam and how I was a victim of it,
because I wanted it to serve as a bigger public service announcement.
And I hope that it would actually put pressure on the authority,
since the authorities really aren't reacting to the theft.
And I'd ultimately like to get the funds back that were stolen.
But the way the community has reacted,
so I think out of like 100 plus comments on the story,
there's been like one negative comment.
The rest, like DM supporting about people supportive.
But crazy to me is, I would say like 20 to 30 percent in the comments have been, yeah, I was scammed or I know somebody else was scammed.
So just the fact that like my story served to like let people feel comfortable to share about how they've been scam.
I mean, it's a crazy digital environment right now.
And I think it just actually shows greater need for Bitcoin.
That way there's consequence online.
So you got to, I think we're going to see more a gating of using Bitcoin so there's more consequences for bad behavior online.
I think that will come about as a scam.
continue to proliferate. People will just be willing to pay to avoid that in the future.
But the bottom line is just how our community reacted to it. And I was worried, genuinely,
when the story published, I didn't know how the reporter was going to choose to publish the piece,
nor did I know how our community was going to react. I mean, it was a painful experience to go
through. And just to see how the community takes care of its own has been incredibly bullish
and lets me believe. I mean, that's what you need for fundamental social fabric to grow like
a new institutional force, which is what I believe we're building here with Bitcoin as that
multi-generational project that we're all set out to deliver. So anyway, I'm super bullish on
the community, but not, I'm bullish for Adam's reason, too, about family in the future,
but I'm just bullish on who we are in the cut of our jib, so to speak, as a community.
You know, we're a bunch of rad, high integrity people here. And I love being part of this movement
and being with you all on it.
What do you, what do you think?
I agree with you in every way about the community of rad, high integrity people.
Do you think Bitcoin incentivizes or makes us rad in high integrity?
Or do you think rad high integrity people find Bitcoin?
Both.
So I think that Bitcoin, so you can see it in the Myers Berry personality data, right?
So there's this weird thing.
If you guys, I don't know this, but I'm intip and high.
I and TJ personality types tend to proliferate in the Bitcoin ecosystem and an unusual
statistic.
It's a statistical anomaly, but those folks are generally somewhat disagreeable and curious.
So I think that's what's gotten here first.
But I also just met too many people anecdotally that don't have that personality type,
but eventually understood Bitcoin and invested in it with conviction.
And I think when you eventually have conviction around Bitcoin, you're answering the question, what is money for yourself?
And when you answer that question with Bitcoin, you're actually standing on a firm foundation then and you get off the hamster wheel.
And that firm foundation orientes you towards the future.
And that shift of time horizons, I think is the fundamental shift that people go through is they shift and look forward to the future.
And that encourages hope.
And that encourages you to ultimately align yourself.
I think with your better angels, so to speak, because there's most every person I know in the
community thinks, hey, I'm more than my five senses. Well, if you believe that, like, regardless
of what you've got that part of yourself, like that part of yourself that's outside the five senses,
it's timeless. And you go pointing yourself towards the future and extending your time horizons.
You align yourself more with your higher self, so to speak. And I think that that's what you
see with Bitcoin is that firmer foundation, that ability to have hope, have,
from savings to or hard savings to count on,
I think that that shifts our time perspective
and leads to high integrity as well.
Nice.
Yeah, that's good, man.
You just made me think of something like,
I heard this quote one time that was like,
money doesn't make you who you are.
It amplifies who you already are or something like that.
And I feel like Bitcoin does that even more so.
Like, you know, the crypto bro stigma of which
I don't think any of us are, but that does exist.
It's like, it's like, you know, you would suck if you weren't in crypto too.
So, yeah, that's interesting.
Good insight.
I'm always curious about that.
I appreciate that.
I'm wondering if, and again, because we often get, maybe some people that are newer,
that may not have encountered some of the common scams that,
can happen. Maybe we can just toss out there a few things that we've encountered and like,
you know, look out for this, be careful for that, this, that, and the other thing.
What I would say is fishing is very, very frequently used. So you get an email from a wallet provider
or an exchange or something like that, something that you've used.
And it sounds urgent.
It's playing on fear.
And it will say something like, hey, your wallet was compromised or there was a hack.
In order to save your funds, you have to go on here and you have to do this, that, and the other thing.
And it may include giving up your credentials to, like, signing in quickly.
It may include, oh, your hardware doesn't work anymore in order to save your funds.
You need to go on this website.
and it'll tell you to take what's known as your seed phrase,
12 or 24 English words, a backup to a wallet,
put it in here so that we can lock it down in a vault.
They'll use some terminology like that,
but they're just banking on you being too scared in the moment
to think through what you're actually doing,
and then you end up giving people the ability to take your funds.
And so I'd say that's one of the most common things out there
is praying on fear to get you to do something,
that you may not have done if you took a step back and thought about it for a second.
So I'm curious if you guys have other suggestions or things to avoid, things that you've seen.
Yeah.
I mean, I feel uniquely positioned to answer on this.
We, we combat scam victim, or we help scam victims and combat fraud daily at Bitcoin.
Well, it's a massive undertaking for us, especially as a, as a self-custodial business.
Like we are actively sending money off platform every single transaction is a is is goes off the
platform.
So we, you know, we got to make sure that that it works.
One of our, our biggest, um, problems that we see right now is done through like investing
scams.
And so it will be usually somebody click on a Facebook ad or clicking on, which I is so brutal
because we can't advertise on Facebook yet somehow these, these actual scam artists are
advertising on Facebook.
Um, there's another problem with.
point of failures, they'll think that they're investing money into a scheme or into a
into some sort of fund or into some sort of club. And what will happen is, and this happens every
single time, you are not the anomaly. If this is happening to you, I will tell you what to do
shortly, but just like listen very, very closely. You put a little bit of money in and they double it or
they have a return. And then you take it out. And you could walk away and have profit. But you don't. You
put more money in and then they do it again they double it 50% gain 20% gain whatever and then you
can withdraw it again and this will go on i have seen victims have this go on for years guys i'm
not kidding years hundreds of days 500 600 600 700 days someone will play to put money in over a few
months it bounced up and down they withdraw they put more in they withdraw they put more in they
withdraw until finally they get a loan against their house they sell their assets they found the
magic well and they're going to put their life savings into it and it is at that moment when they have
put unfathomable months hundreds of thousands you start with thousands you move to tens of thousands
and you can walk away green okay but they don't and and and and it's just it sucks you with dopamine
it's a hundred percent scam and fraud it's Bernie made off it's a Ponzi and it's
so, so sad. I think we recently just had, I subscribe to the Coin Kite Bitcoin calendar on my phone,
and it reminded me that BitConnect day has just passed, which BitConnect was the original
Ponzi. It was the original put money in, take money out, tell all your friends, and Rugpole.
And your investment club is not an exception. If you are putting money in, getting money out
due to some crypto investment.
It is a scam and they will run away with your money.
Withdraw everything you can immediately and do not talk to them again.
I think it is catastrophic.
And once again, the deeper layer here, the reason this is even possible is because of Fiat money.
If we were not forced to gamble our savings in order to preserve value, we would not all be so hungry for profit.
Because our money, because our dollar does a terrible job.
job at preserving value, we are forced to put our money in someone else's hands.
And because of that reason, we get sucked in and now it's getting worse.
If you're 60 years old, imagine being 60 years old, your pension was set 25 years ago
and costs of living have gone up enormously since your pension was set and since you've
been able to withdraw.
You now can't afford to live on your new or on your existing wage based on the new cost of living.
What do you do?
Your savings are running out.
your pension is no longer, your income is no longer, you're cooked.
You have to take your savings, gamble it, in order to have a shot at survival.
This is the state of the fiat economy.
And unfortunately, they're rugging these senior citizens.
They're rugging these 50-year-old men and women that are putting money in.
And it's, yeah, it's catastrophic.
So the general rule, if it's too good to be true, it is stands here.
people just think that numbers on a screen and history of taking profit is enough.
It is not enough.
There is if you do not own and control the asset that you are holding, meaning if that server went down,
if that website didn't exist, could you still access it?
If the answer is no, I would withdraw your money immediately.
Yeah.
Mateus or Kent, do you have anything you want to chime in in terms of just general,
best practices, things that people should avoid, just keeping safe in general.
Yeah, I got two that I'll say.
So just, you know, again, I'm not going to go through the whole story, but it was novel to me that the scammers that got me met with me in person.
And I didn't know that that was even a possibility.
I've heard and experience a lot of people trying to get the fishing scams and all that.
But it was novel to me that they targeted me and met with them in person, built trust,
and then convinced me to, anyway, it gets quite complicated, but in essence, the in person part was something that was novel to me.
I hadn't heard of that happening to anybody in the space.
And so just be aware that people can pose as even clients and want to meet with you in person
and ultimately figure out a way to get your funds.
The other one, though, was a recent Telegram scam that I think is worth mentioning, too,
because it involves AI.
So there is a, if you're on Telegram, you know, it's not the most secure platform,
but unfortunately, a lot of Bitcoin business is done there still.
and you're sort of forced to use it because so much is there that's got the network effects.
But somebody I work with had a salesperson reach out to him.
Somebody you knew, right?
So it was in his social network and said, hey, hop on a Zoom call.
They hopped on a Zoom call with them and the other person was there on the other side of the screen,
but they couldn't hear the other person.
Hey, can you click on this link and update your Zoom app, right?
Boom. In fact, it is computer.
he never did then the next thing it still wasn't working he couldn't hear him but then they said hey go type this on the command line that that was the point he said oh this is this is this is this is no point no so shut it all down hopped on a flight got off his flight opened his phone turn on telegram and they asked for his phone number and to set up a new account so they'd taken over his account compromised it and now uh his account was being used to fish other people um he has no way to get it back there's no support uh but it digests all the the AI
agent, whatever is behind it, is digesting all the information in his telegram account and now is
mimicking him. Sounds exactly like him. A digital version of him is showing up on on on Zoom calls as well.
And so it's it's really sophisticated because you know this person or do you think you do and it's
really a scammer and it's all driven by AI and it's just like proliferating. I see it continuing
to spread. So be careful. If somebody had to
the blue asks you to jump on a Zoom call and is insistent that you jump on the Zoom call,
even if you know them. Just be cautious. I wouldn't. I don't know exactly what the end goal of the
scam is, but it seems like it's trying to infect computers and I guess log keystrokes,
grab passwords, break into accounts, that sort of thing, but don't really know.
Yeah. Mateus, anything for on your end too? Well, it's horrible to hear those stories.
And I think the one thing which we can be sure of
is that there will be more and more.
And there will be better, they will get better,
more sophisticated, very difficult to recognize with AI.
I think that we will hear our voices being replicated
and trying to convince our family to help them.
You can imagine crazy stuff.
So I think that,
We need to really educate ourselves and the rule of thumb is to not be the easy prey.
Because it will be happening, but first take care about yourself.
So don't be the victim.
So don't be the easy prey.
Make sure that you are just better than 95% those others.
Because the attackers will always try to attack the easy victim,
which has the biggest risk and reward ratio.
So if you, I think like, yeah, if you just Google it and spend two hours with like very
basic education of how the phishing emails works, what are the most common social
engineering tactics, and then take care about your privacy, like use burner emails, burner phones
when you order a hardware wallet, for example, try to not.
by Bitcoin with KYC, that's hard, not in check, but most of the, most of the part of the work
is hard.
So don't make yourself a target.
That would be my advice.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And again, if you're, if you're conscientious and you self-custody and, you know, you are very,
very careful and, you know, keep your keys safe, that's a pretty,
a pretty solid head start on most people, right?
If you're sitting money on exchanges and stuff like that
and it's just sitting there in the custody of somebody else,
that becomes an easy, an easy target.
Yeah, so there's lots to dive into in that respect,
but just always, always question,
if you're doing something that seems a little wild,
if you're doing something where you're moving large amounts of money,
always take your time, step back, and ask yourself, is this a good idea?
And even just those little pauses, I think, can do wonders.
The other thing, yeah, AI, that's going to be a problem.
Even a year and a half ago, I think, two years ago, I had a fake me call somebody that I know
and ask, like they were trying to get them to invest in something.
And it was still janky then.
like it sounded a little bit weird so the person ended up messaging me like is this or did you
call me um but now it's like you know this this show anybody could get something that sounds like me
right like images turn into video and it's it's convincing as hell and so i think uh to matthias
is earlier topic about new or new or previously existing technologies that will will help with some of this
you know, things like Noster, where you have a key associated with your identity, all of a sudden
you have a mechanism to effectively prove that myself or the person that is in charge of this key
posted. Like, not to say that you can't have a key compromised if you're not careful with that
material, but at least it gives you a degree of certainty that somebody themselves has posted
something. Another tip, I'd say, in the advent of AI, if you have Bitcoin and you're worried about
your family getting scammed in that way, somebody pretending to be you, create a secret word
just amongst you and your family. And it's as simple as our word is pumpkin. And so like,
you know, somebody calls your wife and, oh, I'm in trouble. I need you to send the Bitcoin.
You know, this and that is happening.
And she says, what's the secret word?
And the AI fake voice of you has no idea, then you know, right?
And it gives you that pause.
So that's one that I put in your back pocket and just quickly discuss with family.
But yeah, anyways, gentlemen, the time has come.
We're going to round out here.
I do want to go quickly around the room and just one final time.
if you guys have any final thought on any of the topics we discuss,
also let people know where they can find you, what you're up to,
all that kind of stuff.
So Adam, I'll go to you first.
Any final thought, anything you want to throw out there,
and where can people find you and what you're up to?
Yeah, I think for any newcomers in the room,
I hope you feel encouraged that there are three people here
that have been doing this a long time
that are watching the price go down with you
and that are happy that we have a community
in here. I think that the Bitcoin community, Ben called it the cult earlier, is so strong and so
positive. And I just really encourage you to Hodel, hold on for dear life. And yeah, just
I think we're so lucky right now. Like there is a Bitcoin event somewhere in the world every
week. And some are 100 people, some are, you know, 10, 15,000 people. And everywhere in
between and and you know Ben is doing amazing things in in Calgary right now with being able to spend
Bitcoin. I am, you know, trying to get people spending Bitcoin here in Colona and in Edmonton.
And it's just like you can just go to a meetup, meet people and build in the community.
And that's that's so special and so good. So I encourage you to do that. I encourage that everyone go to their local Bitcoin meetups, talk with other Bitcoiners.
IRL. It's fine to watch, you know, for Bitcoiners on a screen who may or may not be real.
I'm probably real, but I'm not sure about all these guys with the AI bots and stuff.
But I just encourage you to go meet people in the meet space, meet Bitcoiners who are like-minded,
and work together to change the world.
Hell yeah.
Mattias, I'll go to you as well.
Awesome.
Yeah.
I'll just continue on Adam's thought.
meeting people in a meet space is absolutely necessary, going and asking the questions,
and that will just speed up the process of Bitcoin understanding, and it will give you the
conviction to stack stats even harder with being relaxed in the night, not taking really
care, not caring about the price volatility. And with this, I would say, like,
If you really want to meet a lot of people and just jump right into the biggest sea, come to BTC Prague, June 11 to 13.
It's a massive event, 8,000 people, four day long, all the big shots, all the big names, what you can even imagine, they're all will be there.
It's like, it's not just the conference.
It's the, it's the movement.
It's celebration of Bitcoin.
and it is the most hardcore massive Bitcoin event in the world.
And I'm absolutely confident that you will find it interesting, fun and educational.
The talks go through money, sovereignty, freedom, technology, and of course the community.
So I'm really, I cannot stress that enough go to any other Bitcoin conference.
But if you want to make make it big go to our conference to Prague.
Prague is becoming the Bitcoin capital of the world and we have a lot a lot to share.
So building Bitcoin bridges is very important in the future where we need friends all over the world.
It's good to start local, but once you have the local group, it's good to connect with others on the other side of the world when shit hits the fan and you will see.
that there is some fake news about Canada. I just pick up my phone and call Ben and he will tell me,
no, relax, we're good here. What about your Citadel, Matthias? All good here, yeah, keeping my eyes
on watch. So that's why we need friends, because we are really in the time when we are united under
one flag, it's orange. And with this, we will win.
recommend that you go visit Prague. It's amazing city. This is the fourth year. This will be my
fourth year attending as well. I keep on going back. It's it's definitely something special.
And you guys have in Prague, I can't remember what the payment system, but it's used by a lot of
businesses and then Bitcoin was integrated into it. So like there's an app that yeah, you can use
like your credit cards and everything, but you can also fund it with Bitcoin. So there's like all
over the city. What's it called again? Yeah, it's Quercco and you can pay in, I would guess like
2,000 restaurants in Chigrepublic with lightning. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's wild. Yeah, it's there's a lot
there. And yeah, it's it's a beautiful city. Love the old town. Love love, love check and everything out
there. So yeah, go go. I'll be there. It's June 11th to 13th. Yes, correct.
Awesome. Also, I have a code. I'm 95% sure it's just BTC sessions, but there's a discount there somewhere. So anyways, yes, go to Prague. But Kent, I want to toss it over to you as well. Final thoughts. Anything you want to point people towards, please do.
Well, right now I'm just feeling a little ashamed that I haven't made it to Prague yet. I had a conflict this year. I was going to be there. But yeah, it's on the radar. And I will meet you in person this year, Mattias.
because I just heard all the wonderful things about it.
Yeah, it's long been on the radar and seems like an amazing, amazing place.
But no, as far as my bullish thoughts, you know, yes, meet in person, Adam and Mateus.
You're absolutely right.
There's nothing better than actual real community and getting out of the screen and away from the digital confusion of AI is a wise thing to do right now.
But I want to actually say that I think, you know, as price pulls back,
Michael Saylor has one of his quotes that has always really stuck with me is, look, you're going to spend like 40,000 hours of your life earning money, spend 100 hours studying what money is.
And pick up books, deepen your conviction right now because I've never met a single person that has studied Bitcoin and walked away to sell it.
And that says something, right?
You study Bitcoin and you will start off with, hey, I bought $50 on Coinbase to,
like, oh, I have all my net worth into it and now I'm selling my chairs because I just can't get
enough Bitcoin, right? Like that's the trend, right? And there's a reason for that trend and
there's a reason why you find very few exceptions to that trend. And it's because people's conviction
in this asset when they realized that Satoshi Nakamoto figured out how to harness human self-interest
so that every actor in the ecosystem can play the game to maximize their self-interest and the value
of everybody's Bitcoin on the network only grows.
When they realize that and realize that they can't figure out any way that it can be destroyed,
you just realize it's the best form of private property you can possibly get your hands on
when you have it in self-custody.
And you will start to sleep very well at night as you put more and more of your life force
that you spend out there in the marketplace to earn value.
As you put more and more of that into Bitcoin, you will feel safer and safer
and look forward towards the future and work towards a multi-generational game like we are.
So, yeah, study Bitcoin.
That's it.
That's amazing.
Well, I want to say a huge thank you to all you guys.
And also a huge thank you to everybody that came and hung out with us over the past hour and a half here.
Side note, if, again, you're relatively new to Bitcoin and you're learning the ropes,
it is very important to learn self-custy, learn the tools, all of that.
It's fun to talk about the price.
It's fun to talk about the culture.
But if you don't act on actually taking your self-sovereity into your hands, it's all for not.
And so please, please, take the time.
I always play a clip at the end of the show, and it'll point you towards a page that I've made with free tutorials all the way down.
It'll start you from zero to hero.
And you'll be able to just step by step, learn how to actually use Bitcoin and how to be self-sovereign and unshakable.
So please, please start on that journey today.
And yeah, that's it.
So, gents, thank you guys so much.
And that's it for us.
We'll see you guys next time.
Cheers.
Thank you.
See you and Prague.
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