BTC Sessions - Dave Portnoy Wants Bitcoin, Cashapp BTC Volume Explodes, Bcash Fork Fail EP085

Starting point is 00:00:13 Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What is up, everyone? I'm Ben with the BTC Sessions and this is your daily session. Hodel their Bitcoin. Before we dive in, I want to give a big shout out to sponsors of the show,ledon.io. I've been working with and using these guys for well over a year now and this is where you can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different services. The first thing I ever used them for was their Bitcoin backed loans. So in my instance, I was in a pinch, I needed dollars, but I didn't want to sell my Bitcoin because that's taxable and because I was worried I'd have to buy back in at a higher price point.

Starting point is 00:01:02 So I was able to deposit Bitcoin, get a loan to my bank account in U.S. or Canadian dollars within 24 hours. And when I paid that back, I got back all of my Bitcoin. Now, they have a couple other offerings. They also have their Bitcoin in USDC savings accounts, of which the interest rates have actually just gone up again to a maximum of 10%. And they have their B2X offering, which uses the same loan mechanism to instantly buy more Bitcoin, which effectively doubles your Bitcoin on the spot. So if you want to check them out, there is a link in the show notes down below. And if you use that link and opt to get a loan, well, they will give you 50 bucks worth of Bitcoin for free. And it also helps out the show.

Starting point is 00:01:45 So do check them out. And secondly, if you want to help out the show in another way, and your big on privacy. One of the tools that I use in kind of my privacy arsenal is NordVPN. And so what this does is it hides your IP address. It encrypts your browsing data and it has lots of other added benefits like unlocking geo-blocked content. So I have this on my computer, my tablet, my phone, everywhere. And it's very, very useful, particularly when you're using any sort of public Wi-Fi. It's kind of a must because you never know how secure the network you're logging onto is. And so having a VPN is very, very important. So be sure to check them out.

Starting point is 00:02:22 If you check out the link in the show notes down below, you can get 70% off and a month free. It ends up being about $3.49 a month. And if you opt to pick that up, also, again, you're helping out the show. But let's move into the news. Now, some of you will be familiar with Barstool Sports and Dave Portnoy. I think that's how you say his last name. That's how I'm going to say it anyways. he's been all over the news doing his Davey Day Trader segments where he's basically just speculating on the stock market saying it's the easiest thing in the world to play

Starting point is 00:02:59 and I mean he's kind of been right as of late because after the crash in March it's no secret that that money is just being pumped into assets and money is being printed out of nothing and funneled into and other hard assets because why would you want to hold, why would you want to hold dollars at this point? I think he called them shrewd bucks. But besides the fact, he's now looking at Bitcoin. He's been a bit of a Bitcoin skeptic up till now. Now, again, like how much value does he add to Bitcoin? Probably not really any, to be honest. He's a heavy speculator. If anything, he may bring minions of of speculators and pump and dumpers to the space. But such is the evolution of Bitcoin. Like this is just a symptom of Bitcoin working the way it does.

Starting point is 00:03:56 The supply gets cut. You start to see the price go up. People who are speculative will pile in with people like Dave. Some of them will remain after that eventual mania and bubble pops. And those people will become Bitcoiners. Does Dave become a bitcoiner? Maybe does he dump when it dumps? Also, maybe. We'll see. But besides the fact, let's dive into a little bit of this article here on Decrypt. So it says, Barstool Sports President, Dave El

Starting point is 00:04:29 Presidency Portnoy, is well known for being outspoken and often abrasive. And over the last day, he's turned his attention to a new subject. Bitcoin. In recent months, Portnoy has been sharing regular Davey Day Trader Global, or DDTG. live streams in which he shares perspectives on his investments and generates significant social media engagement in the process. Yesterday morning, although this is a dated article, but the other morning, Portne began talking more and more about Bitcoin, jokingly asking if he needed Bitcoin goggles to see if he could touch it with the green hammer he was holding in the video. Today, again, dated video. So the other day, he dug deeper into the subject explaining he didn't

Starting point is 00:05:12 want to deal with a wallet or lengthy passwords suggested that he bought Bitcoin in the original Bitcoin age. So I don't know when he's specifically talking about. He spent about 20 grand and it's just sitting out there in the ether and he doesn't know how to access it. Yeah. So it sounds like he had some Bitcoin at some point and just wasn't careful with it. That's probably worth much more now, but God, who knows? Anyways, he then started talking about the Winkle boss twins. And he said, if the Winkle bosses want to come over and tell me how to do this in a way that I understand I will look into Bitcoin. I want both the Winkle bosses. I want them in their little fucking row outfits and I want them sitting in this chair being like, this is how you do it.

Starting point is 00:05:59 They saw this and they replied, Tyler Wingle Boss in particular, replied, Invention Accepted. And Dave Pordeny said, let's do it. I want to buy all the Bitcoins. and then today there was a tweet that he dropped where there's it's like him again ranting about bitcoin and he said dear bitcoin people i'm coming and there's like this overlay of some like group of people in like a stadium and a UFO comes down and he steps out a bit like hoisting a bitcoin and it's it's ridiculous but this is the ridiculousness that comes with mainstream eyeballs looking at Bitcoin. And if just this is any indication of what we may see in like a 2017 style mania with brand new on ramps, institutions actually able to custody this stuff,

Starting point is 00:07:01 Joe Rogan getting cash app sponsorships saying it's the easiest place to buy Bitcoin in the cash app. Again, I don't think we've seen. anything yet. This time next year into late next year holy hell. It could be a hell of a ride. But anyways,

Starting point is 00:07:25 should be interesting. I will be watching whenever the Winkle Voss swing on over to Davies House to get... I kind of wish that it had been somebody a little bit more I don't know,

Starting point is 00:07:41 less shit-coiny, I guess. I mean, like, you know, I guess like, again, the Winkle boss, sure, they're doing their thing, but I'd love to see somebody a little bit more like Austrian economics sound money giving him kind of the value of Bitcoin spiel instead of the Wingle Boss. But hey, hey, whatever. We'll see what happens with it. Let's move on. I mean, as this is happening, the Federal Reserve is now saying that it's considering inflation. rise in inflation. It's now looking at everything. So a U.S. regulator debated raising inflation rates this week to jumpstart the economy. Yeah, they could pursue high inflation. They could be

Starting point is 00:08:25 drafting policy that favors low interest rates and higher inflation in pursuits of returning to pre-pandemic levels of economic activity. This according to someone, some people with knowledge of the matter talking to CNBC. Now what that means, who knows. Regardless, they want above average inflation, above 2% annually is what they typically target. And so Ed Yardini, Yardini, I'm not sure how to say the last name, Yardinni, I'll go with that. And he's of the sell side consulting firm Yardinni research. He told the article, or this outlet, we believe. that the Fed publicly would welcome inflation in the range of 2% up to 4% as a long overdue offset to inflation running below 2% for so long in the past.

Starting point is 00:09:25 Again, we're seeing people realize that dollars don't have value. We're seeing a flight to any and every asset outside of dollars. And I mean, this is only going to further exacerbate it. Now, I mean, we do see like a de-leveraging of some debt as this is happening. And obviously, as they're creating more money, they're kind of filling the gaps of that, that I guess deflationary debt deleveraging that's happening kind of across the board. So it's kind of meeting up. But as the base money grows, it'll also allow for more debt in the future

Starting point is 00:10:06 because people will leverage themselves on a larger monetary base over. time. So we'll see what happens, but again, it's just, it's just fuel for Bitcoin to do what Bitcoin was meant to do. At the same time, you've got Bloomberg, and they're now comparing Bitcoin price to the price of gold. There's an article from Bloomberg saying that Bitcoin is stabilizing at six times the price of gold. Of course, this metric doesn't really line up because, again, like, if you just say a unit of one Bitcoin, it's kind of like, you're an arbitrary unit, right? There's a hundred million Satoshi's in one Bitcoin and one ounce of gold is kind of a, again, like an ever-growing supply of gold at around, you know, in and around

Starting point is 00:10:55 2% per year growth of new mined gold. But when you look at, it's more a measure, I'd say, of the total market cap of Bitcoin versus gold is a better way to measure. But besides that, Bloomberg isn't looking at it that way. It's saying, okay, Bitcoin is stable. at six times the price of gold. And they're talking about that the correlation between the two assets reaching an all-time high as of late, especially over the last few months. They talk about how Bitcoin is on the verge of becoming digital gold. The actual quote from Blurberg says,

Starting point is 00:11:30 stabilizing at about six times the per ounce price of gold, Bitcoin's increasing correlation and declining volatility relative to the precious metal indicate an enduring relationship for price advancement in our view. Unparalleled global central bank easing should remain a tailwind for the quasi currencies. Now, they speculate that Bitcoin may appreciate to $18,000 while Bloomberg sees the potential upside for spot gold towards $3,000 an ounce. I don't know about gold, but, you know, in a mania, I think, 18,000. is pretty low for Bitcoin. But again, who knows on the time frame with that.

Starting point is 00:12:13 Looking at Bitcoin price right now, again, we've kind of seen there's the big run-up recently where we went all the way over 12K, pretty close 12,100, and then had a massive sell-off of like $1,500 in a very short period of time. We're now kind of in the mid-to-high 11,000s. Until we kind of close above the previous, closes, which would be like 11, what, 118 in and around there. Until we're above those levels and like close out a day, we may be kind of like sticking around in a range. So I don't know

Starting point is 00:12:53 if that's happening. Nobody really knows that that's happening anytime soon. The nice part about just dollar cost averaging and not trying to speculate on this too much is you can like look at the price fluctuations and kind of take wild guesses. And it doesn't really matter. because you're just gradually accumulating again. It's a game of accumulation as opposed to trying to time the market. And that's kind of what has given me solace and watching these swings. I don't really care at this point because it's like a multi, you know, if really the end game is to not sell Bitcoin,

Starting point is 00:13:29 but to use it over time as it appreciates in value when you need it. It's a very, very long-term play, in my opinion. but let me know if yours is differing. Now, the other thing to point out in relation to the craziness that we're kind of seeing build up in this second half of the year is Cash App. I was referring to sponsoring, you know, obviously they sponsor Marty Bent and Matt O'Dell at Tales from the Cript, one of my favorite podcasts. If you don't listen to it, listen to it.

Starting point is 00:14:01 But also they sponsor Joe Rogan and Joe Rogan now in his spiels for Cash App. piece, you know, easiest place to buy Bitcoin to stack sats. It's becoming very, very mainstream. Like, how do you get more mainstream than like Joe Rogan? And I mean, we're talking about like, again, Dave Portney. We're talking about Bloomberg and all of these different things that are kind of like they're building up to this perfect storm in the face of a failure of central banking. It's it's kind of becoming, I don't know, I don't know what happens next, but it's cool to see. regardless cash app, the volume just from last quarter is up 150%. So they did $875 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2020. And now that's up massively from the first quarter that they

Starting point is 00:14:57 actually offered Bitcoin. So in Q1 of 2018, they did 37 million. So they've done more than 20 times. times from the first quarter from two years ago. So the growth, and it's just, it's hockey sticking up. So it's important to know also that that's a massive portion of the supply of newly created Bitcoin that happened within a quarter. I think it's something like 70, 80%, it's way up there. And then that's not even taking into account. you have digital currency group DCG or gray scale investments all you know these companies that are eating up large portions of Bitcoin and even if there's net selling they're taking it they're

Starting point is 00:15:46 taking it up the other issue we need to think about here is worrying about rehypopification or I guess essentially fractional reserve because if a lot of it is sitting with institutions that's going to be happening and so I'm a big advocate of not your keys, not your coins. I really like the proof of reserves idea and I wish more people would do it and I think it would be a good idea. If somebody wants to really like lead the way with that, then, you know, how do you go to an entity that does proof of reserves, real-time proof of reserves, and then not expect that from everybody else? Furthermore, proof of keys is an excellent event every year on Bitcoin's birthday, January 3rd, taking your money off of exchanges and holding it

Starting point is 00:16:36 yourself. I think it's all excellent ideas. Do enough people do it? In my opinion, no. Can we encourage more to do it? Absolutely. Could that potentially contribute to liquidity crunches and make people realize that it's fractional reserve? Absolutely. So I encourage you to partake in that when you can. Anyways, all in all, crazy shit going on. Crazy. I'm sure that's not the last time I'll say that. move on. Outside of the positivity in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash is potentially headed to, or apparently headed to another fork. And so what they're doing is they're looking at changing the difficulty adjustment algorithm. Okay? So in Bitcoin, every two weeks, I can't remember how many blocks it is. But anyways, there's a set number of blocks. And if those blocks have been coming in

Starting point is 00:17:32 too slowly or too quickly, the difficulty of mining Bitcoin will adjust to kind of target that 10-minute range for every block. And that's an aggregate. Again, over around, it's supposed to be around two weeks. I can't remember the number of blocks and I'm kicking myself right now for that. Anyways, Bitcoin Cash is different and they're looking to adjust that, or at least a subset of people with Bitcoin Cash are looking to adjust that. And there was a tweet out from the lead developer of Bitcoin ABC, which is the main implementation of Bitcoin Cash, and the CEO and founder of Via BTC announced a fork of Bitcoin Cash under the ticker of BCC, which funny enough was actually the original ticker for Bitcoin Cash until it went to BCH

Starting point is 00:18:17 pretty much everywhere. He said, this is very unfortunate, but also an amazing opportunity for these who have been unhappy with how things are going. Some will want to start a war. Those who want freedom must not let them. Again, I think this is just a symptom of the people that people that could not accept that what they wanted was not the will of most people in Bitcoin. They split off. But when you have that mindset of it's my way or the highway,

Starting point is 00:18:52 it's going, a group of people like that are going to continue to subdivide, whereas some people didn't like the idea of keeping Bitcoin's block size at one megabyte, which technically is more of a segue, but besides the point, some people didn't like that constraint, but they stuck around because they said, well, hey, this is the consensus and this is what Bitcoin is. And I don't get to decide that. I get to have a voice in that. And if I wanted, I could split, but I'd rather be with consensus of what Bitcoin is.

Starting point is 00:19:22 And even you have the opposite side of the spectrum, you have somebody like Luke Dash Jr. who develops for Bitcoin. And he wants a smaller block size because in the long run, he sees it being very, very difficult to run a node over time. But he's sticking around with Bitcoin because he knows that right now that's just not going to happen. But he's okay with that. And he does what he can to try and encourage people to do things. things that can help mitigate that risk. But besides the fact, you know, a different approach, right? Different group of people, different approach. And again, the market has very much decided that Bitcoin is Bitcoin. I just find it funny that a group of people that split off and said,

Starting point is 00:20:09 this is the real Bitcoin, there's now three different, like three different alt coins that are now going to be like actually maybe functioning from that single split. They couldn't even keep themselves together in a cohesive group, but hey, that's what you get. Let's move on back to Bitcoin. Wasabi wallet has a new release that I'm actually very excited for because there's a couple cool things in here. Number one is that they're now supporting pay join along with BTC pay server. So what this is is it makes a regular spend look like a coin join. Now, Samurai Wallet has their own version of this called Stowaway that you can do with another samurai user pay join is, I believe, a little bit more standardized and I believe also green wallet is looking at implementing it.

Starting point is 00:20:57 I think blue wallet is looking at implementing it, both of which I love, but it's really cool to see Wasabi adding it along with BTC Pay server, which now enables you if you want to go on and buy something from a merchant that is using BTC Pay server and you have Wasabi wallet on your desktop. Well, now you can go make a transaction and the way it works is when you go to spend money, normally if it's identifiable, you can see a certain amount of Bitcoin going to from one individual to another or from one address to another and then change reverting back. And it's pretty easy to kind of determine what's what. However, with Pay Join, the merchant would also contribute some Bitcoin to the transaction so that those two UTXOs or those two chunks of Bitcoin are

Starting point is 00:21:48 combined and then the merchant not only gets your payment but also their change and then you also get back your change and so all the sudden the actual amount spent is not even shown there and it looks on the outside um like a regular transaction but in fact it's it's kind of a coin joint so cool to see also uh they updated um the hardware wallet segit vulnerable vulnerability fix i'm not going to go into what the vulnerability was. But besides the full point, they updated this. So in order to update your Wasabu wallet, you also need to update the firmware on your hardware wallets as well.

Starting point is 00:22:27 So cold card, treasurer, ledger, all that stuff. There are updates available for it, but in order to kind of have it work in tandem, you're going to have both updated or you may get errors or it may not function. So if you get to a panicky moment, update firmware on both or software on both. Okay, and last couple things here.

Starting point is 00:22:48 There's a new article from the Bitsy Academy from the guys that verified. This one about trampoline nodes in regards to Lightning Network. So Lightning Network, tons of new innovations happening since its inception or its launch in 2018 when I first started using it. Very difficult, non-intuitive, getting easier and easier. So trampoline nodes are just a way where it's easier transaction routing without having to overthink and create your own channels and everything, particularly in Async's Phoenix wallet, they implement trampoline nodes and hopefully more do over time. But it helps with routing

Starting point is 00:23:26 and kind of puts some of that responsibility off on these trampoline nodes to make the user experience a little bit easier. So this explains kind of how regular node functions, how trampoline node functions and how it helps the users. Very, very nice kind of summary of everything here. And I included down below my tutorial for Phoenix Wallet, which, as I said, uses trampoline notes. So I encourage you to check it out, try it out, and just kind of see how it works. It's, yeah, pretty intuitive, pretty easy to use. And then finally, I wanted to bring this up. So I just finished the sovereign individual. If you have not read this book, I highly recommend it. It's a dense read. It's around 400 pages, but it's like you really got to buckle down and get through it.

Starting point is 00:24:17 It was written in 1997. However, it talks about kind of the consequences of a digital world and an information age. It goes with the pregone conclusion that digital money would exist. they were just a little early. And then it talks about the consequences of the breakdown of the nation state and how that relates to kind of free access for information and communication and interaction via economics globally without nations really being able to crack down upon that and what those consequences will be. Most, I'd say about 90% of the stuff in there is very,

Starting point is 00:25:02 very prescient, very applicable to today. I was reading part through so many passages going, this is literally what's happening right now and they talk about some of these social impacts. It's very reminiscent of the world we're living in right now. The whole thing to me seems a little bit like the, there's a saying, the market can remain, what is the saying?

Starting point is 00:25:32 The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. And this is kind of like the same sentiment wrapped up in a book with like the entire world. Because these guys called the hell out of it, but they were like two and a half decades early. But incredible read. And the reason I have this up on my screen is because John Valleys, he has a podcast. Also highly recommend. love the guy. Also Canadian, so A. Yeah, so he did a little chat

Starting point is 00:26:08 about, he did Bitcoin or Book Club. Now this is not the particular chat here, but he did talk about the sovereign individual for his first episode. And so they talked about kind of their takeaways from the sovereign individual and they kind of dive into it. Very excellent episode. If you've already read it, I highly recommend taking a listen to it. If you haven't read it, probably still worth a listen because it'll very much encourage you to dive in and they don't give too much away. Like there's still a ton to take

Starting point is 00:26:41 from the book even if you listen to the podcast. It's very excellent. So anyways, kudos or John. I'll link to that down below. Anyways, guys, I'm going to wrap up there. Thank you so much for watching and or listening. If you're here on YouTube, hit like, subscribe and share all of those things really, really do help. So please do them because more eyeballs, more likes, easier to find in the searches. It really does help. Now, if you want the audio-only version of this, I am on the podcast, everywhere you can find podcasts,

Starting point is 00:27:10 Spotify, Apple, Google, just search BTC sessions. You will find me, and then you can listen on the go. If you want to help with this show in another way, of course, you can hit up the sponsor down below, leaden.io. You can hit up my affiliate link for NordVPN. Or if you really loved what you saw, you can always drop me a Bitcoin Lightning Network tip, perhaps with Phoenix wallet, using a trampoline node, at my tipin. me page.

Starting point is 00:27:35 It is Tipin, tip-p-in. me slash at BTC sessions. And with that, I am out. Have yourself a wonderful day, a wonderful evening, wherever you are, and I will see you next time for your daily session.

BTC Sessions - Dave Portnoy Wants Bitcoin, Cashapp BTC Volume Explodes, Bcash Fork Fail EP085

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