BTC Sessions - BlackRock: NEW Report Suggests You Could Retire on 1 Bitcoin?

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Why is no one talking about Blackrock's NEW report that they quietly released this past week?🔴 LIVE: Bitcoin vs. Sh*tcoin Reserve, White House Crypto Summit & China’s $1.4T BTC Play!🚨 MAJOR moves are happening in Bitcoin this week:• Strategic Bitcoin & Sh*tcoin Reserve Official – What does this mean for Bitcoin’s future?• White House Crypto Summit – What’s being discussed behind closed doors?• China’s $1.4 Trillion Bitcoin Price Boom – Is this the real catalyst for BTC?• Jack Dorsey Is NOT Satoshi – Confirmed!• El Salvador Accepts IMF Loan – But with new Bitcoin restrictions!🔥 Don’t miss this action-packed episode! Subscribe, hit the bell, and join us LIVE to stay ahead of Bitcoin’s biggest moves! 🚀—------------------------------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 Simply Bitcoin & BTC Sessions on other channels:Simply Bitcoin on Youtube: youtube.com/@simplybitcoinSimply Bitcoin on X: x.com/simplybitcointv Nico on X: x.com/bitvoltBTC Sessions on X: x.com/BTCsessions—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL BUY BITCOINhttps://bitcoinwell.com/btcsessionsMINING DISRUPT CONFERENCEhttps://www.eventbrite.com/e/mining-disrupt-conference-2025-fort-lauderdale-florida-tickets-980017277057?discount=BTCSESSIONSCOINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions AQUA WALLEThttps://aquawallet.io/NUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://nunchuk.io/individualsHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://debifi.com/#bitcoin #crypto #btc #money

Why is no one talking about BlackRock's new report that they quietly released last week? Was the distraction of Trump's strategic crypto reserve enough to take everyone's eyeballs away from this week's real news? BlackRock's newest report rings the alarm bells that your chance to buy enough Bitcoin is running out. The report highlights that not even every millionaire in the U.S. could own one Bitcoin. if they were to ask their advisors to buy it for them. But what they did next was even more interesting.

Why did BlackRock officially begin recommending buying Bitcoin in their model portfolio only two days after dropping this report? Why is BlackRock so interested and so concerned with that number of exactly one Bitcoin? Are they advising their high net worth clients to include Bitcoin in their retirement plan? Now, we're going to be coming back to this little black rock rabbit hole, and we're going to be discussing also how much Bitcoin you need to retire at the very end of the show. But in the meantime, we've got Nico here with all of the other important news that dropped this week. I am Ben with the BTC sessions.

This is your Simply session. All right. Let's get Nico in here. Yo, buddy. How's it going? What's up, dude? Yo, happy to be back. happy be back on the show.

That Black Rock report was absolutely crazy. You guys definitely want to stay tuned to the end of the show to listen to some of that because it was it was pretty nuts, bro. Like they just admitted it. If you don't own Bitcoin, you're going to have fun staying poor. So yeah, man, happy to be back on the show. Happy to be back on Simply sessions. Anyways, we got a ton of news lined up for you guys, like always on, you know, just nothing.

There's never a dull week in Bitcoin. First, we're going to start off with moving. the Overton window. You guys know that I love talking about the Overton window. Essentially, for anyone who's new to the show, it's essentially the acceptable window of discourse. And our goal is Bitcoiners should always be to move that said window so that more and more people get used to this idea, get comfortable. I think that's the correct word. Get comfortable with the idea of Bitcoin has money, ending the Federal Reserve, questioning the income. tax, you know, questioning things that, you know, right now seem like, you know, they're just,

just it is what it is. They feel like they're, they're, you know, they're, they're, they're part of mother nature, so to speak. So first off, starting with this, again, Trump questioning whether gold, Fort Knox has that gold. Let's check it out. We have found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud so far. And we've just started. We're actually going to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there because maybe somebody stole the gold tons of gold so I think it was actually there was a lot of genius in sending it we're trying to find out if people are working and so we're sending a letter to people please tell us what you did last week if people don't respond it's very possible that there is no such person or they're not working so I mean he's using the word stolen

he's using is the word gold he's questioning if the gold is there like again again, like, this is crazy. This is the Overton window shifting, breaking in real time. And the reason that this is so historic was Fort Knox was literally built to house the gold that was taken from American citizens during the 6102 order. It's extremely symbolic, right? And here you have the first pro-Bitcoin president questioning, Fort Knox, and could you imagine the scandal that would happen? I honestly think that if Trump and Elon and whatever, if they didn't find any gold than Fort Knox, or they found less gold

that that was reported, I personally think they wouldn't say anything. Like, it would be that damaging to the reputation of the United States. And also the social contract that was signed with the American people because the justification that FDR used back in the 1930s to steal that gold was essentially, listen, guys, we're doing this to stabilize the economy. We're not taking this from you. We're actually giving you dollars in return, and you could exchange those dollars for gold back, right? So, like, we're not really actually stealing your gold. We're just exchanging it for dollars, stabilizing the economy, it would be a scandal if the American people found out that the gold that was stolen from them was gone. It was like it was it was just they the government used it

for things that they never agreed on, right? It would be a huge scandal. And again, the Overton window is shifting. Also, here's Elon Musk basically calling social security a scam. This is another FDR policy, by the way. And essentially, I know in Canada works differently, but social security is essentially like, you know, after you get back, it, there's a percentage of, if you're a W-2 employee, so if you work for, you know, a company, you're not a contractor, your employer has to take out not only your income tax, but your social security tax to pay for your social security so that when you retire, though the whole thing is that when you retire, you don't have to pay for medical expenses and all that. On paper, it sounds really awesome. The problem is the amount of liabilities

the U.S. has and the amount of debt the U.S. has, you know, I doubt I'm ever going to get any type of social security because they can't afford to pay for it, right? And this is exactly what Elon Musk is addressing now, right? So it's all come full circle. right, which is crazy, right? And a lot of these policies that were established during FDR were essentially established during the last fourth turning when everything was breaking apart, right? And it seems like we are in a fourth turning right now and essentially the world is trying to see where it's reorganizing itself. And it's so symbolic that a lot of the policies that were established during the last fourth turning are now being called into question. Like, what do you mean you

stole the gold? Is the gold even there? The social security thing, it sounds great, but it also sounds like kind of a Ponzi. And again, this is not only Trump talking about this on mainstream media, this is Elon Musk talking about it on Joe Rogan. Fing crazy. Well, I mean, the government's one big permit scheme if you ask me. Yeah, well, you can tell us better than it. Social security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time. Right. Explain that. Oh, so, well, people pay into social security and the money goes out of social security immediately, but the obligation for social security is your entire retirement career. So you're paying with your, you're paying, like if you look at the future obligations of social security,

it far exceeds the tax revenue. Far. Have you ever looked at the debt clock? Yes. Okay. There's our present-day debt. But then there's our future obligations. So when you look at the future obligations of Social Security, the actual national debt is like double what people think it is because of the future obligations.

So. I'm just going to pause it there for a sec. So what is Elon talking about? This is what he's talking about. Future obligations, right? This is what they don't tell you. Where is it? Yeah.

It's absolutely. ridiculous. Like, this is insane, right? This is unsustainable. And the whole social security thing goes into this conversation, right? So, like, Elon's 100% right. And again, why am I talking about all this during a Bitcoin show? Because Bitcoin is the answer to this. Bitcoin is how you escape out of this. But it's not just Bitcoin. You obviously want the political situation in your country to change, right? And I think, again, the term of the Overton window, it's slowly shifting Elon Musk, again, he just talked about Social Security. Trump is talking about Fort Knox.

He's hosting a crypto summit at the White House tomorrow. Elon Musk's is now following Senator Lummis. I mean, I don't think it's that hard to connect the dots. And last but not least, like Elon Musk is literally saying that Keynes was a great evil, right? So what is the opposite of Keynes? Opposite of Keynes is obviously Austrian economics or whatever, the Austrian School of Economics. And he's basically saying Keynes is crazy. the whole modern monetary theory, printing money. And of course, look, you have Michael Saylor

in the chat or in the in the comments. Cain's Enrich the Overlord, Satoshi, and Power the People. So I'm just trying to connect the dots for you guys. Like the Overton window is shifting and all roads lead to Bitcoin. And that's the really exciting part. Dude, it's, it's again wild to see, as you said, that shift in the Overton window and speaking back to the fourth turning, this dissolution of, of trust in our institutions because that's kind of what always happens, a breakdown of, you know, either everybody's on board with kind of the new thing in a new turning, but then that gradually, there's push back against it until you get to a point where everybody's

saying, why do we trust this? Why are we doing things the way we currently are? And the whole Fort Knox thing is just further examples of that. Is the gold really there? And, you know, I see these things, oh, well, there's an audit that happened and everything. But again, no individual can go and verify that themselves. All they can do is say, was there an audit that took place and who did the audit? And then you have to ask the question, was there misaligned incentives with the people that did the audit? Or could they have been coerced into inaccurately representing what's going on there? And the answer is, you don't really know.

Nobody can ever know for sure. And this is what Bitcoin was brought to us for. It's that certainty. It's like, hey, take a look. Here's our on-chain. You can't mess with that. And again, the example of El Salvador and their Bitcoin reserve and showing the on-chain addresses, hey, more, more and more as it adds.

And I know there's lots of stuff going on with El Salvador right now. But I'm just painting the point that you can do that because of how Bitcoin works. You cannot do that with a gold standard, which is why the gold standard eventually was able to be rug pulled. So interesting times. 100%. Super interesting times and perfect, you know, it's gold failed, right? You hit the nail on the head, Ben. Like gold failed.

It's physical characteristics, I think, allowed it to be inevitably co-opted. I think this is where Bitcoin's going to shine. And I think, you know, I forget who said this. but I think the essentially the defining moment of this fourth turning, the defining question is what is money, right? And I think that by the end of this fourth turning, by the end of this moment in history, I think people are going to, you know,

I think that's the question that people are going to ask. Anyways, moving on. So, I mean, ladies and gentlemen, we got it. This is amazing. This is the biggest news of the show, I would say, of today's simply sessions. the Bitcoin Reserve is happening. It's 100% going through.

This is insanity. I mean, we knew it was coming, but we didn't like, no, no, it was coming, I would say. But essentially Trump has admitted that, you know, that it's happening. Now, the downside, and I know there's going to be people in the chat, and it'll be like, Nico, there's like, there's like all coins in there. And I would say, yeah, you're absolutely right, bro. But he also admitted that Bitcoin's going to be a reserve. So what am I talking about?

This is a truth social post, by the way. Don't trust, verify. Go on truth social. You can check it yourself. But it says a U.S. crypto reserve will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden administration, which is why my executive order on digital assets

directed the president working group to move forward on a crypto strategic reserve that includes XRP, Solana, and Cardano. I will make sure that the U.S. is the crypto capital of the world. We are making America great again. Now, he posted that originally, and I said, damage control, you know, because Trump essentially quote tweeted that. And he said, and obviously, BTC, he definitely got a call from David Bailey or something.

And he definitely got a call from David Bailey or, you know, something like that, basically saying, like, yo, like, what about Bitcoin? And, yeah. I wonder how many messages and calls he got in that. moment. Exactly. And also too, like guys, and I want to emphasize this enough because I think a lot of Bitcoiners were extremely disappointed in terms of like, yo, are you really just going to like put Bitcoin in a basket of all these? And it's so funny because the reaction from the industry, Brian Armstrong, the Winklevi Twins, which is CEO of like some of the biggest alt coin exchanges where like it's probably

not a good idea to have all these all coins in the exchange or the reserve we should probably make it bitcoin only like even the altcoin casino maxis like CEOs were saying essentially the same thing and also just to be specific this is a big win guys here's the commerce secretary Howard lupnick and he says bitcoin to be treated differently from altcoins and u.s. crypto reserve that's very important to keep in mind something that trump said and his original post and here is michael Saylor being asked about the reserve on legacy financial media. Everybody's dying to know about the summit and what they think is going to be announced. How do you think this crypto reserve will be financed?

Well, I think that there's a six-month process that's been laid out by the executive order. And I think the president was fairly deliberate in that. There are 12 members on the presidential working committee. There'll be involvement from the industry. There'll be involvement from the Senate and from the House. And it's above my pay grade to decide how it is determined. But the Lummis bill has laid out the idea of acquiring Bitcoin strategically over four years, just consistently day by day, in order to reach a million Bitcoin target.

Okay. The government has 200,000 Bitcoin, as I understand it. We equal about 17 billion at today's prices. So to get up there, they would have to purchase Bitcoin, right? So as the government purchases these Bitcoin and other tokens, what is that going to do to the price? I mean, supply goes down, the price goes up. Well, the most responsible thing would be to go slow and steady and deliberate with clear telegraphing and transparency. So that the real key about Bitcoin is for people to understand that it's digital property.

It's a savings account that empowers every single American to save their wealth and preserve it over time. All right. So leave it at that. And let's check out these comments because it's hilarious. Brian Armstrong, excited to learn more, still forming an opinion on asset allocation, but my current thinking is just Bitcoin would probably be the best option. Peter Schiff, I get the rationale for a Bitcoin Reserve. I don't agree with it, but I get it.

We have a gold reserve. Bitcoin is digital gold, which is better than an analog gold. So let's create a Bitcoin Reserve, too. I mean, so let's create a Bitcoin Reserve too. But what's the rationale for an XRP reserve? Why the hell would we need that? Anthony Pompeiano responds, Peter Schiff, Bitcoin Maximus. Absolutely hilarious.

I mean, dude, this timeline, bro, reality, stranger and fiction, Ben. That's wild. I mean, okay, so first off, Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, him saying that I think Bitcoin only in a reserve would be best is a low-key admission that he knows everything else on his platform is hot trash that he's marketing to retail. He knows it's not good enough for a national. reserve and that it's not a good idea to have it in there. He knows what happens when you hold the rest of this garbage long term. He's seen it through many different cycles, but his business model

relies on retail, wanting to pump and dump and trade and leverage and all of that garbage. So, you know, that's the signal that I'm seeing here. And also, I love, I love that Peter Schiff, literally what was the can you bring up that tweet from oh yeah i got you i love that so so much he literally just like it looks like you or i would have tweeted that it looks like it looks like it could have been one of us i get the rationale for a bitcoin reserve like we have a gold reserve bitcoin is digital gold which is better than analog gold i love that that was typed from his fingers is that deserves to be framed, I think. So again, what is this world?

What is this timeline that we're in? It's beautiful. What a crazy effing timeline to say the least, man. It's just, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Anyways, Ben, I think we have some messages from some. We are. We're going to be back in just a moment.

Do you want to give a little tease about what you got queued up next? What you might want to be touching on? Yeah, absolutely. I smash the like. and we still got so much content left for you guys. Ben's going to be dropping the Black Rock story at the end of the show. Definitely want to stick around for that. And of course, we're going to be talking about the White House, the summit that's coming up tomorrow.

It's going to be absolutely historic. President Trump is going to be hosting essentially the who's who of the industry. We actually have the guest list for you guys. We're going to show it off. Who's going to be there? There's some alt-cointers. There's some bit-coiners. But it's going to be historic.

We're going to be talking about that. And then we're going to have an update regarding El Salvador versus the IMF. I think we're watching history in the making unfold on social media. And it's extremely exciting. Hell yeah. We'll be right back in just over a minute. Bitcoin Well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the US. 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.

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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 them. All right, we are back in. We're going to give away some stats really quick. By the way, if you're going to be in Miami,

oh, sorry, Fort Lauderdale, rather, near the end of March, then come see myself, Nico, Opti, plenty of other bitcoinsers are going to be down there for mining disrupt. If you want to come check it out, I'm very excited at my first mining conference. That is the, Niko, remind me the dates,

the 25th, 26, 27th, correct? Yes. I believe that's correct. 25th through the 27th. Yeah. Yeah. So come on down. I'm going to be down there.

It's going to be an absolute blast. The QR code on the screen will give you 20% off some tickets. But let's give you guys some free sats really quick before we continue with the news. All you need is to have a lightning wallet handy. And you need to be the first to scan the QR code here over on Bitcoin Well. You can check out Bitcoinwell.com slash BTC sessions. If you want to check them out, don't snipe my code, Nico. Yeah, he's trying to do it.

He's trying to do it. But the way it works is when you sign up, when you buy Bitcoin, when you refer friends, you earn points. And those points can be used to toss a coin into Bitcoin wishing well. Every time you do so, you have a chance to win up to a million sats. We're going to do that right now. Whoever scans the QR code that pops up in the browser window first will steal the sats from everyone else.

Off it goes. And I'll leave it up there for a few seconds. You've got to be quick, though, if you get an error. You weren't quick enough. 210 sats up for grabs. I hope Nico snagging. That would be funny one day. One of these days.

One of these days. In case you couldn't scan it really quick, I'll make it a little bit bigger. But two, one. And we are out of here. Opti gets all these, man. Opti just, he just waits. He just waits on the sidelines. He's been stacking so much sats.

It doesn't say a word. Dude. Okay. All right, guys. is a lot of big news. I'm not going to lie. A lot of big news. And so of course we got, you know, basically the reserve being confirmed. The Bitcoin Reserve, Howard Lutnik confirms that Bitcoin's going to be treated differently. Okay, you know, sweet like, well, bam, we'll boom. But where's all this going to, where are all these details going to be released? Well, for the first time ever, and I believe

it's going to be an annual summit, I believe. The White House is going to host the first crypto summit. The White House is set to welcome professionals in the cryptocurrency industry on March 7th for a first of its kind summit. Attendees will include predominant founders, CEOs, and investors from the crypto industry, as well as members of the president's working group on digital assets. The summit will be chaired by the White House AI and CryptoZar, David Sacks, and administered by the working group's executive director, Bo Hines. One of the president's first executive orders signed during his second term stated his administration would aim to support the reasonable growth and use of crypto

digital assets and blockchain technology and related technologies across all sectors of the economy. Trump has pledged to make the U.S. the crypto capital of the world after his family embarked on a business venture in digital currency, earning Eric Trump a keynote address at Bitcoin and Mina in Abu Dhabi. All right. So, excuse me, let's go through some of the details of the summit itself. The White House Summit guest list is out. Only one bitcoiner.

I would disagree, but let's go through the list. So, of course, you have President Trump. You have Bo Hines. You have David Sachs. You have Brad Garlinghouse of XRP. You have Michael Saylor of Microstratory, obviously, Bitcoiner. You have Paolo of Tether. I consider the Tether guys Bitcoiners, to be honest.

Kyle Samani from multi-coin capital. Apparently that's Solana. Kathy Wood, Arc, Charles Hodgkinson, Cardano, Anatoly from Solana, Vitalik from Ethereum, Nat Ellison from Undo, never heard of them. Mark Andreessen from A16Z, Paul Atkins, SCC chair, Brian Armstrong, Coinbase, and CZ. CZ is very interesting because, of course, Binance is the largest all-coin casino in the world. but he was convicted and he's not a U.S. citizen. So they essentially had to give them some type of special permission,

which I find quite interesting. But yeah, I mean, again, really the way that you have to look, the way you look at it, and I'll get to that in a sec, I'll get to that in a sec. Here's the post from David Sachs. He said, President Trump has announced a crypto strategic reserve consisting of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This is consistent with his one, was week one executive order,

14178, President Trump is keeping his promise to make the U.S. the quote, crypto capital of the world, more to come at the summit. So pretty exciting stuff, man. I mean, let's see what happens. And what I will say, it's important to remember is like, yeah, this is a lot of shit. I'm going to be blunt. There's a lot of shit-ointers in the same room. But Bitcoin is going to be treated differently.

Bitcoin will be treated differently. And I think Bitcoiners underestimated. the power and influence of the alt-coin lobby in the United States. Definitely, Brad Garlinghouse paid to be there. Charles Hodgson paid to be there. The Salana guy, Anatoly, he paid to be there. Battalic, they paid to be there. All of them paid to be there.

The original strategic reserve that was supposed to be announced during an executive order was initially only going to be Bitcoin. And it was the alt-coin lobby that essentially lost their minds and they said no. And they started throwing money and donations to the Trump administration. But one thing I'll say about Brad Garlinghouse, Brad Garlinghouse donated to the Kamala campaign. Brad Garlinghouse has been advocating for a central bank digital currency, which is against Trump's current policy. So, you know, if any members of the Trump administration are listening to Simply Sessions right now, like you've got a wolf in the henhouse, bro, you know, like he's not there because he believes in

all these other projects. He's there because he has no choice. He needs to be in that room. He needs to be in that conversation if XRP is to have any type of future, you know? The last thing I'll say and I'll shut up. And none of this matters because everything trends to zero compared to Bitcoin. So they might, you know, get it in there. The sovereign wealth fund might buy Cardano. It might pump Cardano a little bit. But if you look at any of these things, not in U.S. dollar terms, but if you compare them to Bitcoin, they've all been trending to zero.

None of them have made all-time highs. I'll leave it at that. So a couple thoughts here. Number one, very happy that there will be a difference between the Bitcoin Reserve and the rest. because if they are to separate them out, it's going to be beautiful to watch the results of those things over extended periods of time. Because we all know, as you said,

everything trends to zero versus Bitcoin, especially over the course of cycles. And so what you'll see really, and you'll have a specific date of time, and you'll be able to say, you could have got this much Bitcoin for this shitcoin reserve over here. look what happened to it comparatively. It may be up in Fiat terms because they just keep on printing the Fiat too, but it will be a stark contrast.

Furthermore, you've got this contrast of the U.S. approach, which of course has lots of capital and can print money and all that kind of stuff. But then you've also got El Salvador and they've got their Bitcoin-only reserve. And while they don't have enough capital to buy as much Bitcoin as the U.S. can, and of course, the U.S. is just going to inevitably have more because they've got the exorbitant privilege of yielding the money printer, the percentage gains in terms of fiat will be stark when you look at El Salvador going the Bitcoin-only route versus U.S. doing like a Bitcoin reserve, but then like a spray-and-pray, shit coin pay to be part of it reserve. And I think that's going to be huge. And the best point in and around all of this,

hey, Garlinghouse paid to be there, all these people, you know, paying to be there. My favorite comment here is, why not the Bitcoin CEO? It was unavailable for content. He had prior engagements. Dude, that is hilarious. Why not?

Oh, my God. That is fucking hilarious. Yeah, it is unbishop. Could you imagine they just, they have like an empty chair. with the name tag, Satoshi. So what do you think? Craig Wright or somebody?

I think that would be a step too far. The blowback there for Trump would be, you know, he's already walking on, he's already walking on eggshells with Bitcoiners. Bitcoiners are like... He's stomping on eggshells right now, man. Like, Bitcoiners are like, dude, like, you got shit corners in the house?

Okay, fine. At least you have us in there too, but like, goddamn. Okay. All right. So moving on. to move on to the El Salvador news. I think other big news of this week. So it was an absolute roller coaster ride. I'll start off with the news from No BS Bitcoin. So IMF board approved a $1.4 billion

loan to El Salvador with further Bitcoin restrictions. The International Monetary Funds Executive Board approved a $1.4 billion loan for El Salvador on the condition that the country will further restrict the government's Bitcoin-related economic activities, including transactions and purchases of Bitcoin. Now, this was a saga. This was, you know, this was pretty effing crazy. I'll walk you guys through essentially what I walked Ben through before we went live. Okay. So, let's go through the timeline. This was March 3rd. The IMF. M.F. made that announcement, by the way, on March 4th. Okay.

So essentially, imagine if you're the IMF, right? And you're like, ah, listen, we got, we won. The war of optics, we won. We just got El Salvador to say that Bitcoin is no longer legal tender. Wah boom, wabang, right? We're like, okay, we're winning. Naim Buckele is basically saying, okay, fine, we'll say it's not legal tender. People could still use it as money.

people don't have to pay capital gains, but we'll say it's not legal tender. We'll take that $1.4 billion. And at the same time, he's meming, bought the dip, the dip, the actual dip, the dip of the dip, the dip, the dip of the dip, right? So, like, essentially, you know, it doesn't look like, right?

Like, it doesn't look like they really stopped it that much. And then what happened is there is an exactly 15-hour difference between this post and this post. So between March 3rd and March 4th, the IMF made that announcement in between. There was a 15-hour difference, and then Naim Buckele responded. The Bitcoin office, there was no communications either.

Stacey Herbert, no communications. And then all of a sudden, Buckele just came out of nowhere, and he said, this stops in April, this stops in June, this stops in December. No. It's not stopping. If it didn't stop when the world ostracized us and most Bitcoiners abandoned us, it won't stop now and it won't stop in the future.

Proof of work versus proof of whining. Now, I want to go through some of the comments. Of course, the Bitcoin, Chad Saylor says Bitcoin adoption is unstoppable. Preston Pish said, thank you for your posting this. Pierre Richard said, said, based and legendary. And I'll get to like some of the people are still like a little bit like, okay, hold on a second. You agreed to these terms. Here's Javier Bastardo.

He said, then can you please clarify why in the technical memorandum of understanding the IMF published on March 3rd, the non-voluntary accumulation of BTC is explicitly prevented. Okay. So what I want to kind of explain to you guys, right, is what you're witnessing is essentially, politics happening on social media. You're seeing the front stage. Naim Buckele and El Salvador was at a fork in the road. They essentially had to make the decision

on whether they were a sovereign nation or not, or whether they were going to allow an authority in Washington, D.C. to get to dictate what El Salvador could and could not do with their money. And Naim Buceli boldly made the decision. There's nothing left to interpretation here. He boldly made the decision after thinking about it for 15 hours.

I'm sure Stacey was included in the conversation. A lot of people were included in this conversation. And he boldly made the decision and said, no. El Salvador, El Salvador is a sovereign country. And we get to decide what we want to do into the future. Now, make no mistake. the IMF will respond to this. They haven't yet, but they will respond.

And Ben and I were talking essentially before we went online, before we went live, the IMF doesn't necessarily have a good history or track record of people saying no to them. But before I get to that, if you guys want to get the signal out of all of this, and if you guys want to have, if you guys still have any doubt whatsoever about Bick, not winning or where we are, the fact that the IMF is blocking a sovereign country from buying Bitcoin is the signal. That's the signal.

They fear Bitcoin so much that they're willing to essentially put their reputation through the mud and come off as tyrants, because that's how they, that's how they come off when they do stuff like this, they don't care. They fear Bitcoin that much. And that tells me that we're winning.

That tells me that we're on to something. Because they wouldn't go through this effort to try to stop El Salvador. One last thing I'll say. Back in 2021, when Naimu Kelle first made his announcement, it seemed like there was so much momentum. Like it seemed like there was going to be 20 other countries that were going to follow in the footsteps of El Salvador. door. The next Bitcoin conference, Bitcoin 2020, which was in Miami, no other countries announced that Bitcoin was made legal tender. And I was scratching my head. I was like, wait, why did that happen? Now we know we have a pretty good idea of who was behind that. And if you break down the

numbers, currently the IMF has existing loans with 94 countries. And the IMF just told all those 94 countries, I'm sure they did this privately, but they just now did it publicly, that you, those 94 countries, you cannot buy Bitcoin if you want a loan from us. Dude, that's like almost half the world. You want to know why no countries made Bitcoin legal tender since then?

Here's your answer. The IMF, to use Ben's own words, is the final boss. I'll leave it at that. Yeah, man. And just, I'm going to tag one thing on. They didn't just say, you can't buy Bitcoin anymore. They literally said they couldn't mine it.

So can we take just a brief moment to appreciate the insanity that is the IMF prohibiting a sovereign nation from using their own renewable energy to power computers that execute a specific type of computation? That is absolutely insane. but that's what they would like to do. And so, again, like you said, there was nobody followed suit with El Salvador because of the IMF,

but maybe El Salvador needed to set a secondary example of also telling the IMF to go fuck themselves. And we'll see how that plays out. We will see how that plays out. I mean, again, we're watching history in the making, trying to see if we have, yeah, we have enough, a little bit of time for one more story.

And we'll see how all that stuff plays out. So last thing I'll read, this isn't a title, a YouTube title. This is an actual headline from Forbes. Watch out. Forget Trump. China is quietly printing a $1.4 trillion Bitcoin price boom. Sounds like a YouTube title. So anyways, the article goes on to explain, obviously, the situation with Trump.

But essentially, it's making the argument. that watch out for China. And according to Arthur Hayes, a final filthy fiat financial market convolution before the globe led by the U.S. can reflate and take Bitcoin beyond $1 million. Xi Jinping wants to keep the yuan stable against the dollar, whether for good or bad, if the dollar supply increases, he can instruct the people's bank of China to increase the yuan supply, ensuring that the dollar yuan exchange rate remains stable. This week, the China's central bank governor, confirm the People's Bank of China will cut interest rates and inject liquidity into the financial system through cuts to the amount banks are required to hold as

reserves. China's stimulus plans have been accelerated by Trump's trade tariffs on the country, which are threatening to escalate into full-blown global trade war. In November, China unveiled a $1.4 trillion debt package to ease local government financing strains and stabilize flagging or flageling or flagging economic growth amid pressure from the re-election of Donald Trump as U.S. President. So it goes on to say, and I think this is a signal from this article, in previous instances when China has ramped up monetary stimulus and injected excess liquidity into the system in 2015 and in 2020, excess liquidity found its way into alternative assets, aka Bitcoin. So China, money printer, go Burr. I think the U.S. is going to go.

go money printer go Burr as well. But anyways, guys, this was your Simply sessions for March 6, 2025. I'm Nico from Simply Bitcoin. I'll see you guys later. Peace out. Cheers, man. All right. Now, everybody, stick around because we're going to be touching on that BlackRock report,

what they have done in terms of adding that into their model portfolio, their recommendations, and this one Bitcoin number, why it's so important to them. and we're also going to be touching on plenty of other stuff in and around your self-sovereignty, the crackdown on privacy and encryption and how you can rise above that. We will be back in just a moment, but if you can, we have 225 people on the live stream in YouTube, 23, 2,400 people across all streams. Smash that like button if you're in the room. Would love to have you do it.

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All right, we are right back in. And I want to do a little outline that has to do with some updates. And I see people that are chatting here about personal servers, running nodes, all that kind of stuff. So it ties perfectly into this. And it has to do with the crackdown on being able to be private online in any way. many of us just default and begin using things like Google, cloud, or Amazon Web Services, or our Apple Cloud accounts, whatever it may be, you are setting yourself up to give away all of your data. You're basically, that's what you're doing. And so this recently in the UK,

Apple is now dragging the UK government to court over this backdoor order. And what they wanted to do in the UK was force Apple to create a backdoor to the encryption that they had on people's private devices and iCloud and all of that so that the government could get into it anytime they wanted. The problem with that, let's just put aside the fact that the government often doesn't have your best interests at heart in the first place. But let's just say that they were incredibly respectful with that and they only did it for the worst of the worst, criminals. Just because you create a backdoor for one person doesn't mean that other bad people aren't going to use it. That's not the nature of a door. If there's a door, anybody can get

through it. And so Apple basically said, no, guess what? We're just going to not allow the encryption at all in the UK. So now there's like no protection for anybody. And now they're dragging the UK government to court over this order. But at the end of the day, the court will decide and we've seen even worse things happen than this. And all of Europe isn't looking too nice when it comes to allowing citizens to have their own personal privacy. So with that, let's chat about some updates that just happened. So I saw some people chatting about Umbrell and also some of their own personal server stuff that they've set up independently. The main point here is that you can self-revelling.

host your data. So this Umbral OS update allows you. So Umbrol, if you're unsure what it is, it's a home server operating system for self-hosting with a built-in app store. So you can, of course, run a Bitcoin node, a lightning node, but you can also host data and files and photos and passwords and a whole bunch of other stuff. So what does this do? This brings files, our brand new file manager that turns your umberl into a full-blown home cloud along with some language support and bug fixes. It allows umbral node runners to easily create, upload, and organize their files on their home server as well as share folders over a local network and add them as network drives on Mac, Windows, and Android. This release also includes support for external storage devices like

USBs on umbral home and some bug fixes. So, I mean, again, this is just another. step towards sovereign computing. And I think Umbrell is a simple step for people that are maybe a little timid around the idea of self-hosting your data, but you're starting to recognize why it may be important. The whole interface, it looks like an iPad. Like it's very simple. Now I lean towards Start 9.

Start 9 is pretty badass. It doesn't look like an iPad. That's okay. And regarding the infrastructure, it's a lot more self-sovereign and unshakable, meaning that, yeah, they've got a similar app store type design with the marketplace here. But if their service were to be shut down by the government, anyone can make a marketplace. And as long as you have that link, you can paste it in and your start nine is not useless. It actually can now use the community marketplace and any other that comes from then on in.

So it's kind of meant to future proof against top-down pressures. So I quite like Start 9. But of course, if you've got the technical know-how, you can do a lot of this yourself. So either way, I think it's really, really cool what they're doing. And if you want to dive more into that, we launched a new show on the channel this week called Mentor Session. It came out on Tuesday. And the first episode with Nathan and Gary, they interview Matt Hill of Start 9 talking about sovereign computing. And one of the major things that I gleaned from that episode is the law states that as soon as you opt into using a cloud service and you give information, your private information, to a hosted service or you send a text message that is not encrypted on your end or whatever, that information in the eyes of the law no longer belongs to you.

they can go warrantless to any of these providers and say, show us that data. We need that data. Give that to us. It is no longer yours. In the eyes of the law, you have given it up. You have given up that right. It is not in your hands anymore. They can just grab it.

The only way around this is if it's all encrypted by default, which would be very nice in some instances, and there's no backdoor, or if you self-hryptuble, or if you self-hryptured, host. They need a warrant to come into your home and take your personal server. And furthermore, if you protect it encrypted, passwords and all that kind of stuff, it becomes even more difficult. So I would consider taking a look at sovereign computing, what it can do for you. But if anything, go listen to this week's episode of Mentor Session because Matt Hill from Start 9 has an an awful lot to say about it, and you will be very interested to see. Anyways, continuing on, Albi Light, a lightning address server for Noster Wallet Connect

wallets. So if you're familiar with lightning wallets and lightning addresses, it looks like an email so that you can receive money. You can receive Bitcoin. In a lot of instances, it can be difficult to get yourself a lightning address because there was a chilling effect with the last administration, a lot of lightning wallets that allowed you to do that, that were typically custodial, kind of took off out of the U.S. So in the U.S., you're kind of screwed in that department at the moment.

Albi and Albi get Albi is another way that they're referred to. And the Albi hub that you can host on Start 9, Umbrel, and lots of other options, is a great resource. While they are now, they now have Albi Light. This is basically, through the power of NosterWallet Connect, a tool that easily allows you to connect wallets for various things, becomes easy to seamlessly connect your self-custodial wallet such as Albi Hub to other applications. One such application is a lightning address, which allows you to receive multiple payments to your wallet via human readable address, like hello at, again, albi.com. So Albi Lite, so consider you run a business that sells multiple products.

Each product can have its own lightning address that you could pay as a QR code that customers can easily scan and pay. Or perhaps you have an app and you want to offer lightning addresses to your users. Ideally, these addresses should be compatible with Noster apps, enabling users to receive ZAPs. So why Albi Lite? Again, it's open-source lightning address server built by Albi, and you can run it to generate one or many lightning addresses for your own wallet on your own domain. So super cool. Albi's killing it. I love Albi Hub. Check it out if you have not already. Earlier this week, I dropped a tutorial on Crux. This is, if you've heard of Seed Siner, it is in the same vein. It's the ability to build your own hardware signing device, your security device for Bitcoin, from run-of-the-mill computer parts.

And the whole project is open source. I show I got a particular device, flash the firmware, verified the download all of that. And then I show how to use it both with blue wallet and spare wallet on desktop. I highly recommend you check it out. It's an awesome, fun little weekend project. And furthermore, tomorrow on the show, I've got the mayor of Vancouver, Mr. Kenneth Sim coming on. I've got Jeff Booth, the legend, author of Price of Tomorrow. And I've got, of course, Robin Sear. And it's going to be an absolute blast. So make sure you hit that for 6 p.m. Eastern tomorrow. So let's take a look. Oh, one last thing. If you're going to be in New York at the end of the month, March 29th at Pubkey, I'm celebrating my 40th birthday. Bitcoiners

welcome. Make sure you come down. Check on my Twitter. I pasted it there. But let's get back to that Black Rock story. Let's chat a little bit about that and the implications. We're going to chat a little bit about my thoughts around this and how to think of it. Okay. So this Tour de Meester, BlackRock wakes up to Bitcoin's scarcity. And I'm going to read this excerpt. But there's more. This is from BlackRock. This is from the report. But there's more. Bitcoin has a defined monetary policy engineered into its DNA, perhaps more relevant now in an era of growing sovereign deficits and profligate government spending and is also uniquely inelastic in demand. Unlike gold to which Bitcoin,

is often compared, there's no ability to meet excess demand with increased supply. That's huge. As many note, there is a predictable issuant schedule of new Bitcoin until 2140 with a pre-programmed max supply of 21 million tokens. However, less widely known is that the real available float is likely far smaller with a conservative estimate of 3 to 4 million issued Bitcoins visible on the blockchain, but considered permanently inaccessible and therefore out of circulation due to lost, forgotten, or otherwise destroyed keys. And the absolute zinger at the end, to illustrate how few available bitcoins there are, if every millionaire in the U.S. alone ask their financial advisor to get them one Bitcoin, there wouldn't be enough.

This from the BlackRock report. And two days later, just in BlackRock adds its Bitcoin ETF to their model portfolio for the first time. BlackRock ads, Bitcoin ETF, doing so opens up a potential avenue of new demand for Ibit. It was one of BlackRock's several allocation adjustments. So let's chat about this a little bit. it. We've broken down kind of what happened and where. But let's just chat, you and me. So first up, and I got to make sure that I'm still here with you guys. Give me a thumbs up in the chat. If we're still all good. I had a, we're still good. We're still good. Okay. Let's chat a little bit

about this BlackRock thing and how you should think of it. Okay, so how much Bitcoin do you need to retire? Let's go down that rabbit hole. We've just broken down the latest Bitcoin report and why they're making moves now because they see what's coming. They are, they know not every millionaire can own a full Bitcoin and the window to accumulate is closing fast. But here's what you need to remember. It is never too late to see. start stacking. So the big question, of course, is how much Bitcoin do you need to retire? And really, guys, there is no magic number. But one thing is clear, the sooner you start, the better off you'll be. So you think about it, one Bitcoin may seem expensive today. But what will that look like

in 10 to 20 years? It's expensive for an individual right now, yes. But that will look expensive for a company in the future, expensive for a city, a state, a country, it's going to be wild. What if just 0.1 Bitcoin could set you and your family up for generational wealth? That's already a stretch for a lot of people in terms of disposable income, but it's still attainable to get to that place if you hunker down, provide value for others, and save in a money that nobody else can print. Now, every bull run we see people saying, I wish I'd bought earlier, but the truth is, the best time to start stacking Bitcoin was yesterday. The second best time is today. So what's your final call to action here? You know me. This is an educational channel. And that's how I'd like to frame these things. But secure your Bitcoin before the institutions do. Owning Bitcoin is just step one. And I would say if you have Bitcoin with somebody else, do you truly own it? I would argue against that. You have exposure to it, we'll say, if you don't control

your keys, you don't control your Bitcoin. Institutions are scrambling to secure their piece of the pie. Meanwhile, we've seen exchanges, fail, frozen funds, and custodial risks play out time and time. Again, I've been through a few cycles. It's, you know, time is a flat circle. History, it doesn't repeat itself, but damn, it rhymes. If you don't want to wake up one day and realize your Bitcoin isn't actually yours, you need to take self-custy. So I highly recommend you secure your Bitcoin

with a cold card is my choice. I regularly got mine kicking around for demos and stuff like that. I've got other cold cards for various purposes. But whatever your hardware is of choice, start learning now. Now I've linked down below in regards to Cold Card, if you want to check out them or anything else that you want to check

out. You can check out Cold Card here. But also, just beyond that, stay curious. Keep learning you guys. Not just exposure to Bitcoin, but self-sovereignty and security. You can learn so much. There's a QR where you can check out Cold, Cold Card, and Coin Kite, but so much more. And if you do need some help, reach out to my team over at Bitcoin Mentor.io. These guys are absolutely. Absolutely awesome. And we do have a cold card masterclass if you want to check out that. And that can help you through everything you need to know. But with that, guys, keep stacking sets.

Keep stacking skills. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This was your daily session.