BTC Sessions - Coinbase Insider LEAKED US Dumping $100B GOLD for Bitcoin | MASSIVE Buy INCOMING

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

A Coinbase insider just leaked that the U.S. is dumping $100B in gold for Bitcoin—and a massive buy could be incoming. If true, this marks one of the boldest financial pivots in modern history.🔥 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

A top executive at Coinbase just made a jaw-dropping claim. The U.S. government could unlock a massive $900 billion by revaluing its gold reserves and used just a portion of that to buy $100 billion worth of Bitcoin. At current prices, that equates to 1.04 million Bitcoin, perfectly in line with the proposed Bitcoin Act from Senator Lummis. Ignore slippage. I know what you're thinking and no, this isn't some Moonboy Twitter posts. This information is coming directly from Sebastian B, president of Coinbase asset management.

He says this move wouldn't add to the national deficit, wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime, and would give the U.S. a sizable strategic Bitcoin Reserve almost overnight. So with that, let's take a look at exactly what he had to say in this clip here, which I'm pulling up right now. Let's take a quick little listen. So let me walk you through it very quickly. So today, because of law, the U.S. government still values gold

that it holds in Fort Knox at $42 in change, right? Now, if they were to just mark that to market, so it's worth probably an incremental $900 to, and I heard a billion to a trillion dollars, right? Now, if you look in the public press on Twitter, most people suspect it will revalue it and then sell some gold to maybe go buy some Bitcoin. We don't think that that's the most likely case. We believe it's most likely that at some point, it could be this year, they will go and change it such that they will revalue gold to current market prices. That would create a mark-to-market gain of $900 billion, right?

And if you look at, I think the Senator Lummis bill was calling for buying, I think it's a million Bitcoin over five years. Well, that's, what's $100 billion? If I have the math right. So our back of the envelope is that when the revaluation occurs, that creates a $900 billion, given today's market price, mark to market gain, which then is money that the Treasury could then take. And then the Treasury would be able to use that money in the sovereign wealth fund

in a budget neutral manner to go and buy a variety of things, we think probably including Bitcoin. And just to think about the math, $100 billion of $900 billion doesn't sound like that much. But the asset is about a $1.8 trillion asset. And if we go from no longer selling, right, which we just did, to here's a way by which we can actually take on a meaningful position. It's hard to see a situation where other governments don't feel compelled in some way to measure up. And then you have this arms race, as it were. I don't know if it's an arms race, but it's definitely a competitive situation,

as it is already today with gold, right? We have, I think, the largest stockpile of gold based on public data. And it's very well known that central banks around the world have been buying gold, right? Probably because of the overall level of debt that they see and the concerns around the global economy. But you've seen, you know, big participation from institutional investors, the most institutional, right? Central banks, they're not investing in gold. They're saving in gold, right? They're saving in gold.

That's what they would say. So does it seem so crazy to, maybe save in some Bitcoin at like, say, a 90 to 10 ratio, given the whole world is going online. Very, very interesting. Now, to tag on to that, in a brand new interview, the head of U.S. Digital Asset Advisory Council, Bo Hines, who has a direct line to the president, said, and I quote, the goal is to begin the accumulation process. as quickly as possible with initial steps prioritized for speed and scalability. So not only are things moving incredibly quickly at the federal level, we are also just one signature away from the first establishment of a state-level Bitcoin Reserve, with many other U.S. states not far behind.

So if everything plays out even remotely close to how it's being proposed, it won't just make headless. it would permanently reshape the global power race for Bitcoin. Suddenly, all these seven-figure price predictions are no longer an if, but a when. So stick around because later in the show, we're going to be covering how the White House is priming us for what's to come, which U.S. states are inches away from their own Bitcoin reserves, and how one top macro analyst sees this impacting Bitcoin's price. this year. Now, I'm going to want to miss this one. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your weekly session. Oh, and apparently I don't even have the intro. So we'll do it live. Let's just dive into it. So I want to welcome in my co-host, Mr. Nathan Fitzsimmons of Bitcoin Mentor. How you doing, buddy? Ben, there is absolutely no time for pleasantries. We've got too much to cover today.

I cannot wait to get your take on all the Bitcoin core drama that's going on right now. And I'm interested if you maybe have a little bit of opinion on that twice central banker, new ruler of Canada that they threw at us. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Bitcoin core stuff is spicy. So we're going to be getting into that later on the show. And of course, hot topic in and around the Canadian election. And impending Alberta sovereignty is Canada breaking apart. We're going to find out. But let's get to the topic at hand that we were just discussing. So I mentioned Boh Heinz. And so this is an article over here on Bitbo. So let's dive in just a little bit to it. So again, he's a White House advisor and the head of the U.S. Digital Asset Advisory Council.

And so their strategy of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, again, it's supporting a budget-neutral acquisition plan. So he's referring to this as a bit of a space race. So Heinz described the international accumulation of Bitcoin as a space race, stressing the need for U.S. to act swiftly. Again, the goal is to begin the accumulation process as quickly as possible with initial steps, priority for speed and scalability, as I said in the beginning. Again, he goes on to say there's a finite number of Bitcoin. I think there will end up being a race to accumulate.

And yeah, they're really, really pushing hard. And he's referring to it as digital goals. to emphasize its scarcity. He's not the only one making these references and comparisons to gold and commodities. And so what I wanted to bring up here is a recent interview from Bitcoin Magazine with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik and how he's talking about Bitcoin and gold. Let's just take a quick listen. And then maybe Nathan, I'll get your hot take on how he's chatting.

about it. You've never seen the United States of America embrace something, and then they're turning back on it later. That's never happened. Yeah. So now you've turned that page. You're in the positive world of America, and I think what's going to happen is Bitcoin will become more and more part of the just ordinary talking.

People can hold it as assets. They'll trade it like a stock. There's no difference from it. Maybe it's not really a stock. It's more a commodity. You know, I believe, like the way you talk about it is, what is Bitcoin like? It's like gold. To me, it's a commodity.

Why? There's only so much of it, right? And it's like gold. Now gold trades anywhere. No one stops me from buying this ring when I went to the ring of gold, right? So gold trades everywhere. Exchanges, okay. If you want to be an exchange, you can be an exchange.

But if you want to buy and sell gold, you can buy and sell gold, right? So I think you should be able to buy and sell Bitcoin. It's a commodity. It should be treated like a commodity. It should be treated like oil. It should be treated like gold. It's intellectually correct. I know people have all sorts of things to say about it, but in the end, it's not a currency.

It's a commodity. And once you embrace the concept of a commodity, you'll see how beautiful that is and how that fits into almost every thoughtful box, right? No one stops someone from selling oil from one person to another. No one should stop someone from selling Bitcoin from one person to another, using Bitcoin. However they want to do it. You want to put it on an exchange? Fine. Call it a commodity exchange.

But let's understand that Bitcoin, if it's treated like a commodity, is the freedom that we all, who are watching this podcast, we all look for. Understood. So, Nathan, hot takes, Bitcoin, not a currency. What are your thoughts there? I saw you maybe cringing a little bit? You know what? Yes, but at the same time, it's like, I guess you're kind of just being a gracious loser at this point. because it appears to me that the U.S. government has completely given up on battling on the store of value front.

There's a blatant admission in there that like, okay, yeah, your dollars, they don't hold value. But we still need them for medium exchange, guys. They're retreating. They're backing off. They're going to go to another sector. They're going to try and live to fight another day. And now they're going to go after a medium exchange and currency. And I don't really know what more you could possibly want from a currency, especially something like if you're using it on lightning,

like there's no way that you can't think of this thing as money, right? Even on main chain, especially with fees right now, guys, it's money, it's a currency. It's being used as a currency. I use it as a currency, but I can see which way they're kind of setting up the next battle, right? They're going to treat it as a commodity. It's just a savings. It's just like gold. No, this isn't just like gold.

This isn't a dumb rock. This is the future, the complete, this is the future global currency for the world, neutral asset, like it or not, you're going to bend the need to the medium exchange aspect as well, too. That time is coming. And then the next one on the list is we're going after a unit of account. Yeah. Honestly, it's all of these narratives that I cringe at, I think I'm now leaning into treating them as Trojan horse narratives. As you said, it's bending the knee to one tiny aspect, thinking it's not going to go the full, it's not going to go all the way. It's going all the way. It's going to be the currency. I'm already using it as the currency.

Many people are already using it as a currency. I live on Bitcoin. We're doing things like the sat market here in Calgary. to have circular economies. I mean, in a world where legal tender laws become unenforceable, because, I mean, even look in countries where they've got a garbage currency, what do they do? They use something better, and it's just like a black market for the U.S. dollar on the streets. What happens when that becomes accessible to everyone, instant? It's digital.

You can use it everywhere, and people around the globe accept it. You're just going to use the better money. Why are you going to deal with the crappier thing? So it's inevitable. We're heading that way. Again, they're making excuses. They're trying to get their foot in the door and stop it. It's like they still think that they can stop parts of it.

I think it's BS, man. It's very cute that they still think that they can win. And I know that they'll eventually come around as well, too. But to your point, even on the Trojan horse aspect, like, you're absolutely right. I mean, sometimes we get pushback or people upset. And rightfully so about like institutions and governments coming into big. Bitcoin. But how did you think we were going to sneak through the gate, right? There's just one admission after another inch by inch. We're going to keep pushing forward. And there's no,

there's no stopping this train, Ben. There's no stopping this train. Don't make me tap the sign. Lynn's here somewhere. Speaking of everything that we've been talking about in terms of government adoption and strategic reserves, on the state level, Arizona, they've passed their Bitcoin Reserve bill and it's basically awaiting a single signature to be signed into law. And so the Arizona legislature pushes for state Bitcoin Reserve. They approved a pair of bills Monday that could pave the way to create the country's first state Bitcoin Reserve, the fate of the bills, which mimic President Donald Trump's

moves on a national level. It's now in the hands of Democratic government, Katie Hobbs. The pair of bills, both led by Republicans and passed largely along partisan lines. through the House and Senate would allow the state to invest up to 10% of its public funds in digital assets like Bitcoin. According to a 2023 audit, Arizona holds more than $30 billion in state-managed assets. If Hobbs signs them into law, Arizona will become the first state to have its own. It says cryptocurrency, but we know what it is going to be. Bitcoin Reserve.

If Hobbs uses her veto power, the bills are debt, can you imagine? Can you imagine her vetoing this bill at this point? Like, what a slap in the face? Do you think, what do you think would, do you think there'd be major pushback there? Oh, I think so. I think if anything, if anything, Trump's recent election or recent-ish election showed the power of the Bitcoin voting block and how we can definitely throw support or throw some shade at you if need be as well, too. This is not a group of people you want to pick a fight with.

not only the principled and active and very invested in this actually succeeding, but they're increasingly having more purchasing power to fund the things that they want as well, too. So the nice thing, you know, Bitcoin is for enemies and everyone's incentives align. I think she's just as incentivized as everybody else to sign off on this and try to hold her position in office. If it's what got pushed through and it's what the people want, you're better off just rolling with it, even if it has those long-term consequences that, you know, maybe hurt the state. I mean, if I was going to be sneaky and kind of corrupt about it,

The only thing I do is delay and take out the biggest long position I possibly could. Then I'd sell the bill. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, Arizona isn't the only one. Also, North Carolina Reserve Bill just passed all the committees. And what that means is that they are now onto a House vote. So, according to the official site, the House passed North Carolina's Digital Asset Investment Act or House Bill 92 on its third reading on April 30th, with a vote of 71 to 44, so quite a lot of support.

The investment bill is now headed towards the Senate for approval or rejection before it can be passed to legislation. So just in general, taking an overview of all of the states that have initiatives, you can see Arizona up top here is the closest. It's just waiting on that single signature to be passed into law. You have Arizona, sorry, you have North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Texas, just one step behind them. And then you've got a whole load of states that are currently on the committee one section here. So basically it has to go be introduced, go to a committee, voted on committee two, go to a vote, and then signed into law by the senator.

So, you know, a bunch on their way. Like, this is a lot of states that have introduced them. There are some that have died. The one I was most surprised about was Wyoming. Yeah. Yeah. Like, that's wild that I got killed on. But again, as soon as one of these gets through, then it's going to be, you know, the precedent has been set.

And I think you start to see a lot more of these. So, yeah, very, very interesting to see. Now, how does this type of stuff impact price moving forward throughout the next perhaps calendar year? And there's lots of people out there speculating. There's one that I saw just the other day that I thought was very interesting. And again, I'm not a big TA person. You know, it is a little bit of astrology for men. But, hey, sometimes you just need a good star chart reading, right?

Sure. So I want to bring up Jesse Myers and his one that he found here. Again, Bitcoin has topped in the last two cycles at the trend line of the prior cycles earlier bull market. I don't know if this means anything, but I found it interesting. So if the trend continues, it would mean $300,000 within the next 12 months and $800,000 by 2029. So just to kind of show the in and around the 2012 to 2016 and kind of the trend line there. And that trend line resulted in the absolute tibity top of the 2017 blowoff top. Same thing with the trend line of the 2017 was the blow off top.

Well, we didn't really get a blow off top. but it was the top of the 2021 rally. And so this is kind of roughly where it would coincide somewhere on this line. If that held up, does that hold up? I have no idea. But it is in line with what Pantera Capital was saying. He was projecting, again, 745,000. So that kind of falls in that trend line there as it's going up.

But both these men would be considered incredibly bearish by our recent guest on this show, Adam Back, who thinks that this cycle we could surpass the market cap of gold, albeit if that happened, I think it would be brief and then we'd have our bare market afterwards. But if we surpass the market cap of gold, that's like 1.1 million per coin. We were on there with all the guests sorting it out. And yeah, we had James Check and we were kind of working it out. Yeah, around 1.1 million per coin if we surpassed the gold market cap. So I don't know.

What do you guys think? Let us know on the chat. Give us your most D-Gen guess for our tibbity top of this cycle. I'm curious to hear what you guys think of where we're going to be. But actually, Nathan, give me your D-Gen. What do you think? Okay. I'll give you one.

I'll give you two quick points. Point number one. I think I should go into TA. Maybe we should do some T.A. kind of YouTube show because it's very easy, at least if I just zoom out and it's up into the right, I'm close enough. It's going to hit it eventually. So I can always say, hey, I was correct team. I was absolutely correct. For me, I think this is going to be a fun one because I suspect that one, we're going back above 100K. And two, I don't think that that DGEN-FOMO and that leverage,

and even like large institutions can be stupid with leverage too. So I would not be surprised to see something like a slow grind up, maybe a little grind up over the summer. We kind of start to float around, maybe 140, 180. But there will be that little breaking point. where everybody goes, oh my God, this is it and piles in and uses a whole bunch of leverage to their mistake, I would not be surprised to see, like, I know Dr. Jeff Ross, I think was like 425 was his call. I would not be surprised to get past 500K and then come crashing back down to the 80s. That would be completely in line with everything that I've seen in the past and it fits for me. All right. I'll take your word for it, man.

Well, we are going to take a quick little sponsor shout out here. If you're enjoying the conversation, make sure that you're smashing that like button helps a ton. But on the other side, you mentioned you wanted to get a little bit spicy this episode. There's been drama afoot. Bitcoin core. Are they making Bitcoin into a worthless alt coin? What courses of action do we have? Are they censoring and banning people from the GitHub?

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

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when you refer friends, you're in points. Those points can be used not only to have chances to win up to a million sats every single time, but also to accumulate and purchase things from their point store. So things like metal backups and much more. But we're going to be given away some sats right now. So we're going to play. We're going to toss a coin in the well. Whoever scans it first with their lightning wallet will steal the sats away from everybody else. If it doesn't work for you, it simply means somebody else quicker. There we go. 614 sats. That's an odd number. I've not seen that number. They used to be round numbers, and now it seems, it's seemingly more random.

So whoever scans that first, congratulations. If you want to check them out, there is a link in these show notes down below. But with that, hey, let's get into the drama here. I'm going to frame this. I'm going to start with a couple tweets here just to kind of set the stage. So this is John Hughes. Tweeted out, Bitcoin Core developers are about to merge a change. that turns Bitcoin into a worthless alt coin, and no one seems to care to do anything about it.

I've voiced objections, lost sleep over this, and despite clear community rejection of the poll request, it's moving. Furthermore, Bitcoin mechanic. I have avoided inflammatory language for the last two years and tried to remain a cooler head, despite how passionately I've disagreed with Core. But it's undeniable now, Bitcoin Core is overtly malicious. and attempting to destroy the one chance we get at breaking away from fiat. And the cherry on top here, someone pushing for a major change to Bitcoin is affiliated

with a company whose current exploit of Bitcoin was the motivation for the change. Pointing this out on the GitHub discussion has resulted in me being banned. So mechanic was indeed removed from the GitHub unable to comment. on that poll request. So what the hell is going on? What is the drama about? Let's kind of back up and see what is happening. So again, developers are at war over a controversial change to Bitcoin core,

the dominant software for full nodes. So if you run a Bitcoin node, you're more likely statistically running Bitcoin Core. Peter Todd formalized a proposal to remove data limits via the op return data carrier outputs, the temperature of discussions rose to incendiary levels on X, GitHub, and the Google Group mailing list.

We'll get into what the op return data carrier is. So, again, the disagreement among developers has skyrocketed. Indeed, it seems like almost every Bitcoin or on X and GitHub wants to have their say about what's going on with this database. a limit. Again, there's a lot of people talking about fix the filters, all this stuff. This all surrounds putting arbitrary data into the Bitcoin blockchain. So, you know, last year we had all

the stuff that was coming up in and around ordinals and putting JPEGs and all this other crap onto Bitcoin. Not personally a fan of it. But there is something called the Op Return and you can put data in it, and currently the data that can be put into that thing is 83 bytes in terms of the limit. Now, this can be subverted by running different forks of Bitcoin core and entering the data that way and removing the limit that way. But there's a number of different groups that have kind of formed distinct viewpoints. Again, the group advocating for the higher return data limit, operative data limit, they're trying to explain the limits in effectiveness and its futility amid plentiful alternatives for data storage elsewhere within blocks. The opposition is arguing for

the limit to remain, usually by alleging that storing arbitrary data, it violates, again, the intent of Bitcoin as a financial network. There's other onlookers that are criticizing the good faith of the arguments producing historical receipts and airing dirty laundry of ulterior motives. And then there's undecided observers that are also concerned with moderation and platforming of the debate itself. Again, blaming admin for censoring speech like on the GitHub. So again, you had mechanic, get bumped because of that. the issue in and around, we'll say, the conflict of interest, Jameson Lops' conflict of interest,

here's the quote from Mechanic. I think it would be appropriate for you, he's talking to James and Lomp, for you to disclose that you're one of the VCs backing Citria. Citria is a for-profit project that publishes zero knowledge data onto Bitcoin's blockchain and could benefit from lifting the OP returns, Op Returns, 83-byte threshold. Again, others criticize founders and advisors to taproot wizards, including Shinobi, Rindindel, a number of people.

So all around, there's kind of this back and forth, people saying, like, this is going to happen anyways and we may as well do it in an efficient manner and then people saying well no if just because something that we don't like is happening anyways doesn't mean we should further encourage it now to throw in one little uh we'll say like a devil's advocate here because i deeply respect vortex he was a foundation for me in my early days in bitcoin and my understanding of it and helping me come to Bitcoin only. And so this is a bit of a threat here, but Samson Mao quoting James and Lobb, talking about how people who don't get their poll request through, just get mad and go on social media. Samson says, Bitcoin Core is not a democracy governed by votes. It's supposed to be

based on rough consensus. Anyone can see that there is no consensus on relaxing operatin limits pushing ahead on this change is going down a slippery slope. I would agree with that statement. However, Vortex said there is no slippery slope. This is a small technical change for a very specific reason that is beneficial to the network. Somebody asked, how is it beneficial? He said that removing the operanturn limit will incentivize people who are already putting data in the blockchain to do it in a much safer place since nodes can easily exclude that data as opposed to the nefarious ways they're including data into blocks currently that nodes can't filter out.

So Vortex is basically saying people are shoving shit and data onto the Bitcoin blockchain in a way that you can't easily filter out. And he said if they were doing it through Op return, then node runners could actually easily just be like, I don't want that on my node. So that's the argument there. The other argument in and around Op return is when you put data in other places in the block, it benefits from the Segwit discounts. So it's actually cheaper in fees. But when it goes into the operturn, you have to pay the full fee to get the data into the block. So this is kind of where it's sitting in terms of like where do the incentive fly, you know, what do we do?

How much do we bend a need to, you know, potentially things that we don't like happening on Bitcoin? and is not doing this actually going to hurt it more. So those are kind of the current thoughts. So before we show people what they can actually do themselves, because we're all about education here, how do you actually make a decision but also act upon it? And we're going to do that in just a moment. Nathan, I want your hot take on what's going on here

and your, dare I say, position on it. I absolutely love it. It's like, please, please, guys, go out there and fight for my love. Battle it out in the arena. This is exactly what I want to see. Bitcoin is supposed to be an adversarial environment. And realistically, like, I'm smarter enough to know that I'm a goddamn retard. Like, I should not necessarily be waiting deep into these technical waters.

I want to. We all want to get in there and fight, but I got to be careful about that because I know my own limitations. Now, first and foremost, I kind of err on mechanics side. I'm definitely more of a Knott's fan, and I go in kind of that direction. But I do acknowledge that I am very possibly wrong on it. I don't, I think the negotiating with terror. tactics. I'd be like, if we just appease them, I think it's the same reason that we increase the block size a little bit. They'll ask for more. They'll ask for more. They'll continue to do it.

I'd rather discourage this behavior in any and all forms and not make it a hospitable environment for them to come. But I acknowledge that, again, I may not be the best person to report on it, I suppose. But the one thing that I do like, and I'd like to see more of us, I would love to see more people adopt Bitcoin knots. And I would love to see different iterations as well, too. The thing that kind of throws me off kind of raises concern for me in this moment is how many people are by default running core and how dependent on them that we become. I'd like to see

fierce competition in the space. Even if I'm wrong, even if Core does have the right answers, I think we again, we benefit from that competition of ideas, competition of offerings. I'd like to see a new iteration. We'll get the Bitcoin Sessions implementation. We'll throw that out there too, right? 10 kilobite blocks and everything

is filtered. I want to see different people trying different things, battling it out, trying to fight for consensus and so that we're not so dependent. The same reason that there's concern over a block template centralization. I don't want Bitcoin implementation being centralized as well, too. So for nothing else to have a more robust adversarial environment, I can see additional implementations. I'd like to see knots adoption rising as well too to try to have a little bit more of that kind of balance of power and decentralization. And I think that would overall benefits

the entire network, right? The other thing too that I'll point out is that in both these situations, you know, that code's been written by people. People are going to have their biases. They could be corrupt. They could be white hats. They could be black hats, right? Even if we say that, like, I'll just say that like maybe Knott's the good guy now, but who's going to be maintaining that later? Maybe they take a black hat in a bad position down the road, and core would be the one that we want to switch to. So I think it's important

to have that optionality and that we can constantly be vying for it. And lastly, there are two Samson's point in Israel too, though. I think that Bitcoin is not a move fast and break things. It's a move an incredibly slow thing. And for the amount of social consensus that, like the lack of social consensus that's

involved here, I like the same, just like, hey, we'll We'll pump the brakes on this. Let's maybe let it cool down a little bit. Let's talk about it and we'll revisit it down the line. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, when things are actually controversial like this and there's this much vitriol, it doesn't work out well for the people trying to make the change.

And that's historically speaking. Like, if you go back and, you know, to a degree, and I know people are making these parallels a lot and actually pointing fingers to each camp being the side that. lost in that example. But either way, the idea being that controversial changes that don't have consensus can result in splits. And now, so what we're seeing here is we're seeing like, okay, we want to make a change. And people that are like, no, I'm not going to, I'm not going to run that. And I do like the idea of holding that to account. Because I do agree that, again, it's supposed to be based around rough consensus. And so if you don't, if you clearly don't have

consensus, pushing something through is not an ideal way to do things and preventing people from discussing those. Again, I think that puts a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. So with that said, let's say in any case, regardless of the current situation, let's say the implementation of Bitcoin that you're running, you don't agree with the trajectory or proposed changes, how do you go about changing that? Well, first of all, you have to actually run a node yourself and point your wallets to it. So if you're just using a Bitcoin wallet by yourself, you've not done anything with nodes, you're basically whatever that wallet software is pointing to, whatever node it's pointing to, which you don't really, you know, if you've done

nothing you haven't chosen, it will just default to that. So you'll just be running whatever node software it points to by default. So you need to actually, run a node yourself. There's a number of ways to do this. You can actually just download it onto your computer and then link a local wallet and then through that local wallet, use your cold card or whatever hardware you're using, all that stuff. Or you can have these plug and play devices, start nine, umbril, my node, all these different ones and download a Bitcoin node on that and then connect to it remotely from anywhere, really. So let's take a quick look at just practically what that looks like. there is going to be a tutorial on this.

I'm busting my ass to try and get it done for next week. I'm going to see if I can get it out by Monday. That will depend on what tomorrow looks like. If not, then the week after, but I really like to have it for Monday. So let's just take a peek. I've got my start nine up here. And if you'll notice, there is Bitcoin knots on it.

Okay? I actually used this recently for a Bitax tutorial where I was linking it through datum and all this other stuff. So I just want to quickly go and show how do you get Bitcoin knots? Because normally this would be Bitcoin Core. And so what you need to do is you go to the marketplace. It's not in the regular Start 9 registry. You have to say change registry and go to community and then hit Connect.

And then you're going to see, and I believe you'll just have to go into Bitcoin. There's Bitcoin knots. You click that. You download it. You install it. It actually replaces Bitcoin Core as your implementation. of choice and then everything just works with it. So your regular node connections, all of that just work as normal. With Umbral, it's a tad different. Again, you can download Bitcoin

knots, but you can also have Bitcoin core at the same time. And so most people connect remotely to their node through something called Electrum Rust server. And by default, that'll point to Bitcoin core. So if you have Bitcoin knots and it's all synced up, how do you get this to change? It's really simple. You just right click on it, settings, and then you choose Bitcoin Nats as your implementation. So pretty slick, pretty easy. Now, this will download independent versions of the blockchain. So you'll double up here. NOTS will give you the option to prune it, meaning that it'll only keep the most recent few gigabytes of data. So that'll save you some space. I should say that start nine, when you install NOTS, it actually uses your existing copy of the blockchain and then just

changes the implementation to NOS. So you don't have to re-sync, which is actually really, really nice. And then finally, if you're just running Bitcoin Core on your computer and you're connecting to say like Sparrow wallet that way, you can literally just download Bitcoin Nots, install it on your computer. It installs in the exact same folders and directory as Bitcoin Core and just replaces it, and it uses your already downloaded copy of the blockchain yet again. inside of it, there is all these different settings in terms of what you want to filter out,

what type of data is okay, what's not, if any, only transactions that are economic in nature, all that kind of stuff. So you can basically set it. I'm going to cover that in the tutorial. But more or less, I, you know, Sparrow wallet is kind of my command center for a lot of my Bitcoin stuff. And so I just connect that to typically my start nine, but I can connect. it to my knots node now if I want to, all of that. So just so you know, it is possible if you do want to have, you know, if you want to either you really don't like what Core is doing and you

want to run knots as an alternative, or you just want to kind of balance the scale of things where different implementations can have a little bit of a say and kind of hold the feet to the fire of consensus, you could also do this as well. Or if you agree with what you. core is doing, just run core. Okay. So anyways, that's kind of where we're at. Any, any, any quick thoughts on that before? Oh, yeah. I have some, I have some very quick thoughts. I want touch on that. First and foremost, if you've made it this far in the episode and you're enjoying the conversation, that means you're another Bitcoin on test like us. And if you haven't set up a note yet, I know it sounds silly, but it's so much fun. Like I had so much fun setting up my own,

like out of old computer parts and then getting it running and then it synced and connecting with everything. So you're part of the weird ones, right? You're part of this group here. And we love that you're here. If you haven't set up a node, whether core or nots, doesn't matter. Give it a try. Make it a weekend project. It's a fun little puzzle that you can put together in it. Trust me, it feels good. It does. It does. And hey, if you're in the middle of setting up all that stuff and you're having trouble and you need somebody to handhold you, lo and behold, you can reach out to Bitcoin Mentor. Again, you can check us out at Bitcoin Mentor.io. and yeah, this can kind of be your outlet if you're very, very timid on that front.

So just wanted to throw that out there. But Nathan, on the other side of the jump, there was another hot topic you wanted to discuss. It's been an interesting week in Canada, hasn't it? It's been a little bit crazy, and I'm very curious after the break to get your take on what's currently going on in Canada and what it means for maybe that kind of sovereign individual thesis playing out here and where we might be going. All right. Yeah, well, it's been a roller coaster, but we're going to address that. There's a lot of interesting things happening here in Alberta.

And there's actually even an event that I'm going to be at about a week and a half here that's going to be, I'm sure, heavy into that. And perhaps Bitcoin's roll in it as well. So we'll be right back. If you're enjoying the show, give that like button a smash. We appreciate it. It helps a ton. We'll see you guys in just a moment. Looking for a simple and secure way to manage your Bitcoin on mobile, Aqua Wallet has you covered. It's user-friendly and puts you in full control of your Bitcoin with secure self-custody.

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when it comes to securing your Bitcoin. The cold card Q is an absolute powerhouse and my daily driver, and it's ideal for newcomers and advanced users alike. The tab signer gives you a low-cost, user-friendly option for those just getting started or for convenience when traveling. You can head to coincite.com and use code BTC sessions for discounts or simply scan the QR code on the screen to get started right away. all right we are back in uh nathan do you want to uh outline for the people uh what a horrendous night

monday was yes everyone please take a moment and mourn for the country of canada that is no more it is finally done and i think it was a perfect example of the polarization that we're seeing in the tribalism within politics that's just going further and further to the extreme so for you those of you that don't know basically the poster child of like the world economic forum, the Davos crowd there, a twice central banker, not only in the Bank of Canada, no, no, no, he was also a governor at the Bank of England. I don't believe he even lived in Canada beforehand before rising to prominence, was elected as the Prime Minister of Canada in a recent snap election. And as expected, we saw just a complete polar divide between east and west, excluding the weird

ones in BC. I love you guys. I'm sorry if you're stuck there, please come to Alberta. The things are getting tense and getting heated, particularly Alberta has just become kind of the whipping boy for the rest of the country. And realistically, looking at the data that was coming out after the fact, it's like, I don't think that a conservative government can even possibly get in again. It's the balance of power and there's a disproportionate, disproportionate voting kind of power, particularly like the maritime, if we compare them on a population and the number of seats and representation, that I think we're basically just stuck with liberals. And this country is just going straight down, straight down the two. But with pain comes learning.

an opportunity, and I think there's going to be some excitement on the horizon there. Mr. Sessions, any thoughts? Yeah. So within 24 hours of the Canadian election, we had the Premier of Alberta, Daniel Smith, who actually is a bitcoinser. She used to actually have a radio show. She had myself on the show three times to talk about Bitcoin. She's had Francis Pouliott, and she's also had Dave Bradley and others. And so she gets it. She's also been very favorable towards Bitcoin mining in the province, which makes a lot of sense because we have a lot of like flare gas and all that. She's been up to visit Steve Barber with upstream data who's doing incredible work, capping gas wells and converting that into Bitcoin. But she announced

24 hours after the Canadian election, not even, some changes or a proposed bill to make some changes to the way that what's known as citizen initiated, what's the name for it? Citizen, Lord, now I'm forgetting. As you pull it up, she's basically saying, here are the rules you guys need to play by in order to make whatever decisions you want. Yeah. So citizens can raise issues that can trigger a vote, a required vote within the province on various issues. And so the thresholds before, do you know the numbers on what the thresholds were?

I do. I do. So believe it or not, as the kind of freedom focused person, I may have been floating around in some of these separatist waters beforehand. And the current threshold was unbelievable and completely unrealistic. I think it was 20% of total voter registration. But the number was you needed, you need this. In a province of like 4.4 million, you needed 600,000 signatures within 90 days. Like it was an unbelievably tall order in order to get an issue on the next. election on the ballot to have a referendum and actually cast a vote. And so for a while there, there were a lot of great people in the background trying to move and organize so that they could try and achieve that. Because again, huge requirement in terms of signatures and a very, very short window. But right, I won't lie. I was initially a little disappointed with Daniel Smith. You have to play politics, but of course, as soon as, you know, Banker Carney won,

it's the classic, like, congratulations and hope we can work together kind of feel. And I was like, ah, crap, you know, it used to be such a spitfire. I like to have more beforehand. But you're right. In less than 24 hours later, she comes out with a new bill that would change the rules, change the rules so that we'd only require 177,000 signatures and 120 days to pull it off. So more time and basically a quarter of the requirement. Now, people have already been organizing.

And Ben, I don't know if you have it ready to pull up as well too. I do. But what they've been doing is people have been basically pre-registering as interested in signing this so they can be found identified and get there within the time limit. Can you walk us through what you're seeing there on screens are? Yeah. So this was a tweet from just this morning. And so the idea is, yeah, you before they go to the government and trigger and say,

hey, we want to have a referendum on Alberta's sovereignty and leaving Canada, we're going to start collecting votes. Instead of just doing that and then trying to get the votes after the fact and rallying the troops then, they're having people actually register with their intent to, vote yes and so they want to get to the threshold of actual registries or registrants so that they can then immediately reach out and be like hey it's on the table we're we're doing it come sign so that they can actually quickly do it within the the time window so now that it's greatly reduced and then the time window has been lengthened by a further 30 days they're basically they're

They're aggregating them already, and the Alberta Prosperity Project reports over 113,000 registrations. Again, that's 63% of the signatures required because we needed 177. I think it's 177, yeah. Yeah. And so this was this morning, or sorry, yesterday at 925. Okay. Well, right now, it looks like we're at 126,000. So it's already stacked an addition. whatever it was. It's already stacked an additional, yeah, like 10,000 on top. Yeah, on top of that in like the past day and a half. So they're likely going to hit that threshold of potential signatures. They're likely going to trigger the, hey, we intend to collect the votes, and then they're likely going to put it forward. Now, this bill does have to be passed. However,

the UCP is a majority. So that looks likely to happen, if I'm not mistaken. And yeah, so we might see a referendum on whether or not Alberta will be a part of Canada directly as a result of this election. And this comes, the reason that this is so interesting, apart from like the whole just geopolitical craziness of it. is that this was more or less, I'm going to say foretold by one of the favorite books of Bitcoiners everywhere, the sovereign individual.

So this was written in 1996. And they were talking about the implications of the digital age on nation states and on individuals. And it was very prescient for its time. It kind of talked about like the ability of people for like flag theory moving from place to place to wherever they're treated best. The only piece of the puzzle they said was missing was a digital money that could be as mobile as people in and around that aspect of it. And then furthermore, they talked specifically about larger nation states and that it would

likely result in the dissolution of larger nation states into smaller, more locally governed states and they referred to Canada as likely one of the first large nations to fall and split apart. At the time it was written, Quebec, the French-speaking part of Canada, was currently having a referendum in and around separation, which then failed. But in the book, they didn't say Quebec was the most likely to leave first. They said it would be Alberta. And they said it was because Alberta is so resource rich and they are so impacted by policies of the East and treated unfairly in that way that they are most likely and most incentivized to separate first. And to watch this playing out 30 years after it was written is absolutely wild. Dave Bradley, Bitcoin Brains,

he on the on the day of the election if I'm not mistaken he tweeted out mark my words by the end of 2026 Alberta will not no longer be a part of Canada wow it's absolutely so exciting and so exhilarating and it's the best part is like I was even seeing the chat there on my phone beside me just a second ago that I see tons of bitcoiners and people of Canada talking about relocating to Alberta and there's a few things that play there one it kind of reminds me like the free state project with New Hampshire I think we got our own little free province project going on in Canada. We're the best, the brightest, the Bitcoiners, the freedom-minded, the ones that we want

to work with, the ones that are producers, they're going to start flocking here. They're going to want that sweet Madex-style Alberta passport right away. And we're going to see immense growth, not only from that population influx, but being able to get to, be able to get to our resources and get them to market and negotiate for ourselves. And the other thing, too, that's wanted to come out is I didn't, I legitimately didn't check price today, but I think we're sitting around something like 97,000 at the time. This was when I looked yesterday, so I'm around there. But I have yet to get any Bitcoin text.

They're not coming in. No one's asking me about Bitcoin. They'll be like, hey, you know, it looks like it's doing pretty well. Maybe I could get into this thing. I've gotten a bunch of separatist texts. And that I find really, really exciting. The appetite is there. I think there's more people that are in support of it.

And I think it's going to end up being a better for your state for Alberta and for the people here as we shrink down in size and size and size. But with that, Ben, if you haven't read the sovereign individual, great book, go and check it out. I'm curious if you have any other suggestions that people should check out this week. Yes, absolutely. So first off, actually, I have a few. One is entirely self-serving. Well, it's not. It's helpful. But the other two are very interesting. So in and around this Alberta talk, I do want to recommend an event that I alluded to going to soon. So if you're in the Calgary area, hell, if you're in Alberta at all, you should probably make the trip. But it's coming up

on May 10th. It is called the Cornerstone Forum. So these are a bunch of kind of freedom-minded individuals in Alberta. It's put on. It'll be put on by Sean Newman, the Sean Newman podcast. He's had this event before. But yeah, he says, we're bringing together thought leaders from our communities to tackle four key ideas, sound money, how the West was captured, solutions in a world for problems, and geopolitics

slash World War III. Again, they've got a whole bunch of people there. I'm going to be on stage with a whole bunch of different, excellent people talking about sound money. And also, I would say, I'm going to try and throw in some censorship-resistant money talk there as well, which is important in the context of Canada. But it's going to be a great time. So again, go check out the Cornerstone Forum on May 10th. I'll see you there. Now, the other thing that I wanted to mention was this looks like a fire episode from Cedric Youngleman, the Bitcoin Matrix podcast. Again, the second, darling book, non-bitcoin book of Bitcoiners is the fourth turning. And so they've got the fourth turning panel. And they've got Brandon Quitem. They've got American

and Hoddle, Larry Lepard, David Collum, and of course, Cedric there. And damn, what a group. That's going to be some good conversation. So check it out. It's already on YouTube and audio. So hats off to Cedric for assembling that Avengers team of fourth turning goodness there. And the final session suggestion of the week is this week's tutorial for you guys to use should or Actually, should. No. For the inevitable moments when in our summer of up only as governments begin smash buying Bitcoin, you're going to start to get those Bitcoin texts.

The secession texts will maybe not stop, but there'll be a flow of steady Bitcoin texts that are above them. And they're going to need to know what to do. And so I put together a brand new guide that is specifically designed to get people started on the right foot with their Bitcoin with self-custody. So I walk through, you know, how do you set up a wallet? How do you get Bitcoin from the exchange to your wallet just initially as a hot wallet? And then how do you make the foray into cold storage all from a mobile device? And so I walk through the whole thing.

It is done in a way that is very, very bare bones basic. And then it alludes to deeper dives if people want more explanation on it. But it should walk them through all the steps that they primarily need to get started. So find that on the channel. It's the most recent tutorial. Nathan, any other final thoughts for today? Yeah. Move to Alberta, run a node, onboard more bit corners, and love your family.

We'll throw that one out there today. Good. Yeah. Awesome. Well, everybody, thank you for being here. Keep stacking stats. Keep stacking skills. I'm Ben.

This is Nathan with the BTC sessions. This was your weekly session. We'll see you guys tomorrow for Why Are We Bullish?