BTC Sessions - EMERGENCY BROADCAST: Special Guest About To Make LIVE Announcement — Bitcoin Attack Happening NOW
Episode Date: December 12, 2025🚨 EMERGENCY BROADCAST — A coordinated Bitcoin attack may already be underway. Our special guest joins BTC Sessions LIVE to drop a critical update you CANNOT afford to miss. From stealth regulatio...n to financial warfare, something BIG is happening behind the scenes.Join BTC Sessions now — and prepare before it’s too late.BOOK private one-on-one sessions with BITCOIN MENTOR! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more - all from a team of top notch educators that I've personally vetted.https://bitcoinmentor.io/—------------------------------FOLLOW BTC Sessions on X: x.com/BTCsessions—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL BUY BITCOINhttps://qrco.de/bfiDC6COINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions ABUNDANT MINES:http://abundantmines.com/boomersAQUA WALLEThttps://qrco.de/bfiD8gNUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://qrco.de/bfiDARHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://qrco.de/bfiDCp#btc #bitcoin #crypto
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Money printing is back.
QE has quietly resumed.
Interest rates are being slashed.
Once again, the powers that be are trying to kick the can down the road at the expense of every
man, woman, and child except those who manage to shield themselves with Bitcoin.
But as bad as that is, it pales in comparison to how far governments are now willing to go
to crush anyone who dares build tools that protect your money.
financial freedom. Today's special guest is experiencing that living hell firsthand. What's happening to
him is beyond horrendous. You'll be shocked to hear some of the details. Maybe you don't think
the right to privacy should be defended. I've got nothing to hide, right? But if you do,
are you really going to allow this to happen? We'll outline the critical steps to fight back,
protect your privacy and your dignity. This episode,
is incredibly important. So stick around. I've been with the BTC sessions. This is your
weekly session. So I want to first welcome to the stage my co-host, Mr. Nathan Fitzsimmons,
Bitcoin Mentor. How you doing, man? I'm not going to lie, I can feel the gravity this episode.
This is probably the most important one that we've ever done. And I, yeah, it's a lot.
Yeah. And we were just chatting with our guest just before.
And this whole channel started with tutorials.
And this was actually one of the early first tools that I ever covered.
So let's welcome our guests to the stage, co-creator of Samurai Wallet,
Kian Rodriguez.
Buddy, how are you doing?
Hey, Ben.
Hey, Nathan.
Thanks for having me on.
Yeah, yeah.
Thanks for being here.
Again, I was saying before we started,
I wish it was under better circumstances.
You are being put through the ringer here.
And I'm really sorry to see somebody who created something that Bitcoiners need just as basic day-to-day privacy.
It sucks to see somebody whose tool I used for my own.
day-to-day privacy as an absolute necessity, in my opinion, having to go through what you're
currently going through.
So maybe we can just start out because there are going to be people.
We've had a lot of new people come to the channel and begin to learn about Bitcoin.
And some of them have come in through the traditional kind of, hey, I bought a Bitcoin
ETF for Microstrategy.
And then they come and they hear stories about that.
but then we try to preach to them, hey, like, you're not getting the benefits of Bitcoin.
You should look at self-custasy and privacy and all these things.
And so, Kiann, can you maybe start by telling us what yourself and Bill built?
Yeah, sure, sure.
So in 2015, Bill and I created and built what we called Samurai Wallet.
And to really understand what Samurai Wallet was about and what it was.
you actually have to go back a few years to 2012 when that's around the time we both got into Bitcoin.
And there was no ETF.
And there was barely any exchanges selling the thing.
If you wanted Bitcoin, you had to earn it or you had to mine it or you had to trade around for it.
It was a whole different time.
I said, once I discovered it, I was like, man, I have to have this thing.
How do I get as much as possible?
And I found a job building a Bitcoin wallet at blockchain. info.
Now it's called blockchain.com.
And I was happy because I got to take my entire salary in Bitcoin and earn my Bitcoin.
But doing that, you quickly are confronted with the issues of privacy on Bitcoin.
When you're earning your entire salary on Bitcoin and you have a need to spend to pay for rent,
to pay for groceries to live on, you suddenly realize that the open and public transparent
blockchain comes with some pretty severe privacy downsides.
So there really wasn't a lot of solutions at the time for this.
Satoshi already identified the issue, but not a lot of people were working on it.
So fast forward to 2015, we decide, hey, we're going to do something about it.
We're going to build a tool.
We're going to build a wallet that prioritizes transactional privacy on Bitcoin for users like us who really do have a legitimate need to spend their Bitcoin to live on their Bitcoin.
And because they're doing that, they need financial privacy.
So that was the whole ethos of Samurai wallet.
It really wasn't about a product for huddling.
Those are great.
Those have their own place in the market.
this was a product for people who needed to spend and needed to spend privately and securely.
Yeah, and it was very, I'll say it was very intuitive. It was very well built. I use it a lot.
It evolved over the years. And you guys also thought of some great things, some of which got removed
by, you know, overzealous app stores. But I loved the, the stealth mode, how you could go into your
your phone keypad and type in a special number and it would you know the app would be hidden things
that like were very real threats you know that that somebody could get into your phone and find a
bitcoin wallet and then be able to access your funds and you get you guys started really thinking
through you know how can we help users and again for those unfamiliar with the the back end of
how bitcoin works um you can think of it like you know your your bitcoin wallet hold
pieces of Bitcoin, kind of like a physical wallet, would hold bills.
And so when you go to make a payment, not only does the person see the amount you're paying
them, but they see the change from the bill that you use.
So if you've got a large bill sitting in your wallet and you go to buy something small,
you don't want to be buying a t-shirt online with a million-dollar bill.
Because not only does the person see that you have a million dollars, they know where they're
shipping that t-shirt.
to and they may want to come pay you a visit when they become privy to that information.
So again, you guys built something that helped regular users of Bitcoin rightfully protect their
privacy and prevent themselves from becoming physical targets of potential predators that
would like to steal their funds or cause them harm.
Right.
So thank you for that.
But this has come back around and unfortunately for you and Bill is just horrible circumstances.
So maybe can you detail what has happened over the past year in a bit and how it came to be?
Sure.
Yeah.
So we operated Samurai wallet for 10 years, almost 10 years, without any problem.
And then suddenly on April 24th, 2024, 40 or 50 armed FBI agents raided my house, complete with drones, an armored vehicle, guns trained on my wife, and me, and arrested me right then and there.
I had no indication that something like this was going to happen.
No law enforcement requests had ever come in.
We had legal counsel, so I expected if something was ever going to happen, they would first,
go talk to our lawyers, right?
But none of that happened.
I was arrested and I was charged with two crimes, conspiracy to commit money laundering
and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money service business.
Two crimes that I thought were impossible to commit considering we never had anyone's
money to launder and we never had anyone's money to transmit.
We were entirely a non-custodial software, open source software.
That's it's absolutely wild.
And so how did they argue that you guys could be guilty of these crimes given the fact, again, this is open source software.
Anyone can use can replicate.
And most importantly, it is non-custodial.
Users hold their own keys.
So what was their argument to make the case that you guys were guilty for the crimes they charged you of?
Yeah.
So they came up with a novel new theory.
It was Biden's DOJ.
The Biden administration were engaged at this time in what we call the war on crypto.
It was led by Senator Warren, who really hates crypto, like really would love to see it banned.
And she had influence in the administration.
So the administration was openly hostile to crypto.
And the novel theory that the government came up with is that custody and control,
aren't actually required to transmit or to longer.
Right. So their new theory, which went into the face of spit into the face of FinCEN guidance.
Let me explain FinCEN for a second for your listeners. FinCEN is the financial crime enforcement
network. This is an agency that's part of the United States Treasury. Their entire job is to regulate
money transmission businesses, money service businesses. FinCEN since 2013 has had incredibly clear
guidelines. I mean, for a government agency, it's one of the most sensible regulatory environments
that I'd ever seen. Their position was, in order to transmit money, you actually have to have
control of the money. Shocking. Makes sense. Yeah. And in 2009,
team, they even came out with expanded guidance reiterating that in order to be a money transmitter,
you have to take custody of the money to transmit it. And explicitly said, if you are an anonymity
service provider or an anonymity software provider, like a mixer or a tumbler, you are not a money
transmitter. That's what the guidance says. So everyone in the industry, us included, our lawyers included,
thought this is case closed.
The Biden DOJ had other things in mind.
They explicitly said,
FinCEN's guidance doesn't matter for this.
We will tell you when you're a money transmitter,
and we're telling you you're a money transmitter.
I don't understand how that's even possible.
Like, is this skirting the rules?
Like, are they able to just rugpole the regulators
that say what the regulations are?
Yeah, absolutely. It took me by surprise as well. I didn't know that was something that could happen. I guess it's naivety, but this is something that happens in the justice system quite often. So it's called regulation by prosecution, right? So if the or legislation by prosecution, Congress never said that a non-custodial software developer is a money transmitter. The Bank Secrecy Act doesn't say that anywhere. But the Department of Justice wants that to be the case. They want to get.
go after the types of tools that we created.
And using the existing framework doesn't give them that option, right?
They went after custodial mixers successfully for years because they were custodial.
And that gave them a reason to shut them down.
Samurai wallet wasn't custodial.
There was no previous reason to shut us down.
So they made one up.
And unfortunately, it worked in this case.
Yeah, that's okay.
So knowing what we know now about how they came to your home, you know, basically guns ready, trained on yourself and your wife, this was what time of day?
Five in the morning.
And so I imagine the neighborhood just must have been a blaze.
like it was a big show.
Huge show.
Yeah.
That's how horrendous.
My God.
Okay.
So they take you away.
You begin learning the case and everything.
You go through, you go through court and everything.
And they say, that's it.
You're guilty.
What are you currently looking at in terms of what you may be facing?
and how soon?
Sure.
Yeah.
So we've been convicted on unlicensed money transmission as a part of a plea deal that we took.
And that means that we were sentenced.
I was sentenced to five years of federal prison.
And I will report to the federal prison camp in West Virginia on December 19th.
And Bill was sentenced to four years.
He hasn't been designated location yet, but he will report there.
I believe it's January 4th.
God, okay.
And so at this point, what can be done?
What is, you know, you're chatting to as many people as possible.
You're trying to get the word out.
There's people here watching right now, and they're wondering,
Okay, well, what the hell can we do to help?
So, you know, let's get a call to action out there.
And people that are watching this right now,
please don't just, you know, click away and, oh, well, that's a horrible story.
There is still something that we can do.
So, Keon, what can people do?
Yeah.
So if you see under my name, there's a website, billinkeone.org.
If you visit that website, there's two, oh, perfect.
There's two call to actions.
This is a professional show.
We had to make sure we were ready.
There's two call to actions.
One is to sign the petition.
I know people think those don't matter.
They don't do anything.
Believe me, they really make a difference.
I was on an ex-space the other night,
and Ross Ulbrook entered that ex-space.
First time, he entered any ex-space,
and we chatted one-on-one for five to ten minutes.
And one of the things he said was,
how important the petitions were in his case and how he got a pardon.
So petitions matter.
Click on that sign the petition button and it's free to do.
You don't have to pay them anything.
So please sign it.
Share it with your friends.
Share it with your family.
Share it on social media.
And then the second thing you can do there if you would like is to donate to us using
Give Send Go.
Bill and myself are not allowed to make any crypto transactions, receive any
crypto transactions directly or indirectly.
That's why there's no ability to donate Bitcoin at this time.
Once both Bill and I go into custody, I'm sure this website will be updated with
crypto donation possibilities, Bitcoin donations.
But as it is right now, I'm in over $2.5 million of legal bill debt.
And I have an additional $250,000 fine that I need to pay.
So they've wiped me out financially.
So any little bit will help.
It will go 50% to my wife, Lauren, and 50% to Bill's wife, Sabrina.
That's how we're doing it.
So that's really the best thing right now.
That petition is super important.
So if you do that, we're working overtime behind the scenes to get this in front of the president
because we truly believe that if the president looks at what happened here, he will give us a pardon.
You know, he knows, he knows what the Southern District of New York is about.
They've targeted him.
This same Department of Justice, the same Biden Department of Justice targeted the president.
So he knows it's just about getting his attention.
And that's what we're, that's what we're trying to do right now.
Wow.
Yeah, this is absolutely wild to see.
And again, I implore everybody to, you know, scan the QR code.
I've also pinned the website in the live chat right now,
but it'll be in the show notes down below afterwards as well.
So everybody, please, please, please.
I see like 25 people have already scanned the QRCO.
So that's good.
Thank you guys for doing that.
And please go once you've gone through,
once you've gone to the link,
go share it on every social media platform you're on,
whether it be X or Instagram or Noster or Facebook or what.
It doesn't matter.
Just get the word out there.
sign the petition,
contribute if you can.
Again, the families are going to need help in this situation as well, as they said, as Kian said,
you know, just wiped out financially going through this whole mess.
And it's super important.
And so Kian, I want to also ask you, what are the implications if this is allowed to stand?
not, you know, we've outlined what you guys are looking at, but what are the implications
for Bitcoiners around the globe, for people in general, for privacy in general, what do you think
this says about the future of Bitcoin and personal privacy and financial sovereignty if
what happens to you is the norm?
Yeah, I mean, there's serious implications here.
First and foremost, the concept that a software developer of a neutral tool is somehow responsible for what the users of his software may or may not do is terrifying.
Right.
Think about Signal.
Signal is a piece of software.
And I guarantee you bad people use Signal.
Yeah. Signal developers and the Signal Foundation may find themselves responsible for that for housing terrorists, Tor, VPN, all of these neutral tools that improve privacy for non-criminal uses can be targeted because some users are criminal. It's an insane proposition.
More specific to Bitcoin, I think if the government's theory of money transmission continues,
Lightning node operators should be pretty worried.
Liquidity providers should be pretty worried.
Bitcoin miners should be very worried.
Think about a Bitcoin miner for a second.
If a non-custodial software wallet that can compose a transaction is considered,
a money transmitter than a Bitcoin miner who selects a transaction and puts it into a block
that actually makes it a real transaction and broadcasts it to the rest of the network,
that's definitely a money transmitter.
No question about it under their theory.
So they can very easily start pressuring U.S.-based Bitcoin miners to censor what transactions go in a block.
They can say, you can't include any transactions that don't come from a white listed entity, that don't come from Coinbase and Cracket.
That's a very scary proposition.
Now, what does it truly mean for Bitcoin?
Not that much.
What it means for American Bitcoin companies, a lot.
Miners will leave the country and software developers will leave the country.
We saw that happen almost immediately after our arrests.
Wasabi Wallet shut down operations in the United States.
States. I think it was Breeze who left the United States. Yeah. So that is, oh, sorry, Phoenix, yeah,
that left the United States. That's a chilling effect. And that was the goal. Now, this administration
has been better. They haven't been bringing the same type of prosecutions. But that's because we have
someone in the White House who's quote unquote pro crypto. He understands crypto and to some degree.
and he's not interested in prosecuting it.
But what about the next guy and the guy after that?
So it's a real serious problem,
but it's more so America shooting itself in the foot
because the Bitcoin network will go on.
It will just leave America behind.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
It's, it is.
It's chilling to see.
Nathan, I want to give you the opportunity
if you had something that you wanted to ask of Keon here.
I'm not sure that's necessarily a good idea.
I'm just sitting here quietly raging and shaking because it's absolutely fucking preposterous what's going on here.
The thing that I, one, I want to know what you currently think.
You make a very, very compelling case for other people and other entities involved in the Bitcoin space being targeted.
I think that's absolutely going to happen.
If not now, just later on down the road.
What we're seeing here in my opinion is that at least some people started to figure out that there was actually an escape hatch from the cage that we were trapped in.
and they immediately tried to use fear and extreme excessive force in order to dissuade people from even exploring these sort of tools or even considering that that's something that they need.
The thing that there's a couple things that are really standing out with me.
One, if I understand correctly, too, there's been changes in regulation that had you not been basically, what would you say, tortured into literally tortured.
I'll go with that.
Literally tortured into taking a plea deal that we would be in a better situation right now.
So for anyone listening that has any qualms, like, oh, but what if they're enabling bad people?
that if they hadn't have been absolutely just this should not have been happening and they've been
put in a unbelievably unfair situation it's tragic beyond belief the one thing that i really did just
want to say is like i'm trying to like keep it kind of cool satoshi was pseudonymous for a reason
for a good fucking reason sorry that's right the guys that built the tools so that you could be as
well too, or having their lives destroyed.
If that's not enough to sign a petition, to share it around, to be vocal, to tweet at Trump,
to actually take action, if you saw a kid on the street being beaten by a giant,
you would intervene, you would step up, you would do something.
This is all you got to do right now.
Sorry, it's just a lot.
I apologize for being emotional.
Really fucking pissed.
This is the least that we can do.
Yeah, 100%.
Thank you, Nathan.
Yeah. So, Kian, again, the wild thing about this is, to me, it seems a little bit like, even by punishing you and Bill, it accomplishes nothing because what has happened, it's the project itself has been forked anonymously.
And it's now under the moniker of Ashigaru.
I've already done a tutorial on how to use Ashigaru,
and it's just out there.
And so, like, to me, it feels like the early days of torrenting and Napster and stuff like that.
And they, you know, they're finding grandpas and 12-year-old girls.
And all for what?
Just to make an example when it's something that one, you know, is quite,
questionable in in terms of
you know why why this is evening happening in the first place but but two that just
cannot be stopped anyways and so do you see a parallel here to that time oh absolutely
I mean that that was the my heyday on the internet so I remember that day those days very
well you know Pirate Bay would get seized and and then suddenly within 20 minutes there's a new
Pirate Bay URL and nothing,
nothing was stopped.
Pirate Bay still exists today.
That's exactly what it is.
They took us down. They were successful at it.
We had maybe four months left of development
time to fully decentralizing
world pool.
Had they waited
just a few months before
raiding us, it would have been
a kind of a different story.
But that being said, it was a
wasn't long before our open source code, which was out there in the wild, was forked by what
seems to be a very competent team who learned that even if you think you're following the
law, even if the regulator says you're following the law, that's not enough of an assurance.
So we have to go underground, right?
We have to not have a domain.
We have to not have social media.
We need to go only tour hidden service.
And it's sad that that's the case, right?
Why shouldn't they be able to have a domain and social media and the telegram?
But they learned from our case that the Department of Justice won't follow the law.
They'll make up the law and they will go after you if that's what they want to do.
So Ashigaro figured that out and now they're more resilient than samurai was.
They are, you know, tore hidden service only.
And they're able to leverage all the decades worth of code that we created and build on it.
And that's a beautiful thing.
That's the whole point of open source.
So I'm, you know, and they released World Pool.
That's unbelievable, unbelievably brave.
And I saw that happen and I was just so happy.
So happy to see, you know, the stuff that we built poured our heart into over a decade still live on.
Yeah, it's, again, it's amazing to see that this stuff transcends individuals and governments.
And again, the takeaways here, I think that I'm getting is, one, it's not too late.
We can fix this.
I see 53 people have already scanned to go through to the petition.
If you're watching this and that is not you in those numbers, you need to do that now.
And then you need to share it.
And then you need to share the show so people unfamiliar can learn the story here.
But two, if you're a developer and you're in the realm of Bitcoin self-sovereignty and privacy and all these tools,
the lesson that we're learning from all of this is you can't be.
public about it. You have to, you know, we're being shown that individuals that are building this
kind of stuff, even with the best of intentions, even just with affording your average person,
just bare minimum privacy are targets. And so if you're a developer that's looking to create
tools for Bitcoin, it's probably in your best interest to not be public about it, create a pseudonym,
and, you know, develop in a way,
where your identity is not known to the world.
And that's unfortunately in the current state of the world.
That's just how it is.
So, Kian, I want to say a massive thank you for joining us.
You have been going at it nonstop with these interviews
and getting the word out there.
And again, I implore everybody that is watching this to please, please, please.
scan that QR code on the screen or go to bill and kion.org where you can sign the petition.
And please, you can also contribute to their families.
Again, massive, massive bills, just completely financial, complete financial destruction brought about by the state to these individuals for building incredible tools for Bitcoiners like you.
And for me who was able to, you know, cover how to.
use these things in the early days and see them come to fruition over the course of a decade.
I feel like samurai story is a part of Bitcoin story. And Keon, you and Bill are woven in there and are going to be in the history books, in my opinion.
And hopefully without a lengthy prison sentence. And I think hopefully everybody here can help make sure that that's
the truth. So Kian, do you have any final words for people?
Yeah, I mean, I think what I'll leave is by saying is I'm going to be going away on the 19th.
And when I get out in five years or whatever it may be, I hope that what I see the Bitcoin
space has turned into is something that I can be proud of, right? If it's a completely captured Wall Street
asset that, you know, has no privacy, has no censorship resistance, has no self-sovereignty,
that will hurt. That will hurt as much as anything else to see that happen. So keep the spirit
alive. Remember what the point of Bitcoin is, right? The point of Bitcoin is self-sovereignty.
No third-party intermediaries required, right? No one can stop me from transacting. The transaction
must go through.
And that's what Satoshi built, and that's what attracted all of the early builders onto Bitcoin
because it's a powerful, powerful idea.
And it's not just an idea.
It's a requirement.
We will need this.
You know, surveillance, privacy, it's been getting, privacy has been degraded immensely over
the last decades.
Surveillance is growing immensely.
And it's only going to get worse.
and we do need an opt-out.
And Bitcoin can be that opt-out still.
But if we're not careful and if we don't build the tools that really are required for that,
it will turn from an opt-out to what enslaves us.
So please be mindful of that.
And when I get out in five years, I want to look at Bitcoin and go,
oh, thank goodness.
They were building.
And it's better than I left it.
Yeah, 100%.
Well, dude, I really appreciate you coming on and joining us.
And more than that, I appreciate the people that are here that are, I see actively clicking and sharing and signing that petition and hopefully contributing to help both of your wives through the immense mountain of bills and everything that have piled up.
So, you know, let's give this an incredible push.
Let's make a difference and let's see if we can't change the course of history here.
Thanks, Ben.
Thanks, Nathan.
Awesome.
Thanks, Matt.
And we'll see us soon.
Cheers.
All right.
Well, Nathan, quite the beginning to the show.
Yep.
We are not done.
We are going to chat more about some tools and some helpful items in and around privacy in the third segment.
Also just, you know, all of the culmination, not just with the samurai story, but with all of the encroachment on people's privacy.
There's some crazy stuff going on around the globe.
We've seen in the UK.
We're seeing some new stuff out of Australia, Canada, of course, but the U.S. as well.
And there's no shortage of encroachments on people's sovereignty.
So we're going to be covering some of that, but we're also going to be covering, you know,
the other thing that I alluded to off the beginning of the show of, you know, the whole reason
that this is all needed is because the money is so broken.
And we're seeing a lot of that in the economy right now.
So we're going to be chatting about kind of where we're at globally with the economy
and also how they're about to kick the can down the road yet again, let those money printers go burr.
As of we have news in the past couple of days here of exactly what's going down.
Yeah.
And it forces people to these systems.
And this is why we Bitcoin.
So we're going to do a quick shout out to our sponsors.
We're going to be back in just a moment to talk on some of the money being broken stuff.
Again, please do scan that QR code or go to Bill and keon.org and sign the petition and support the families if you can.
And we'll be back in just a moment.
Of course, give a like on the show if you enjoyed the beginning conversation.
We'll see you guys in just a moment.
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All right, we are back in.
We're going to chat a little bit about how broken shit is right now.
let's uh let's we've got we've got quite a heyday uh to take a look at um again i'll remind
people bill uh bill in keon or i see somebody yelling at me in the chat keony uh i've heard it both
ways so but um maybe i just mess that up beyond all recognition so uh i'm just going to
blame my canadian accent so that's exactly what it is and even too as we go into this man it's
really important to outline why are they trying to shut the doors why are they trying to
prevent you from exiting the system is the shit that we're going to outline right now right they can't
steal from you if you can escape exactly exactly so number of things here's larry lepard
quoting a tweet healthy economy global markets uh u.s bankruptcies are running at a pace consistent with a
recession u.s large bankruptcies have reached 717 year to date the most in 15 years this is already
higher than all full years since 2010 which is
wild. Moving beyond that, U.S. manufacturing employment is plummeting. U.S. manufacturing payrolls dropped
down 18,000 in November. The second largest decline since October, 23. This also marks the fifth
monthly decrease this year, according to the ADP report. Manufacturing employment has now fallen
in 25 of the last 35 months.
Meanwhile, the ISM
manufacturing employment index fell
to 44 points in November
posting its 10th consecutive monthly
contraction. This has historically
been a leading indicator for U.S.
manufacturing jobs suggesting
further declines ahead.
It is not looking so hot.
Again, U.S. manufacturing
activity has contracted
for nine straight months, as per
routers.
This, this is
ridiculous. Almost never
in the history of the U.S. economy
has consumer sentiment been this
depressed. The U.S. consumer
sentiment current conditions
assessment fell to an all
time low, an all time
low. This is likely the
worst perception of the U.S. economy
since the 1930s
Great Depression, and
here's that chart showing
just how bad
it is.
It's funny because
you'll see that and it doesn't matter the administration you know there is no red there is no blue
there is the state and there is you and so no matter who it is they hype it up they cook the books
they they exaggerate the numbers they'll go out and say this is the best economy we've ever
seen incredible recovery everybody's doing amazing the reality is
everybody is eating a shit sandwich right now.
It's really bad.
And again, consumer sentiment,
worst since the Great Depression.
The numbers aren't, the math isn't mathing.
US is slowing, hiring is slowing at an alarming rate.
US-based employers have announced plans to add 497,000 jobs
year to date, the weakest total since 2010 when 392,000 hires were planned in the first 11 months
of the year. This also marks a 35% decline from the 761,000 announced during the same period in
2024. Hiring is now on track for its fifth consecutive annual decline. In November,
companies announced just 9,000 hiring plans, the second lowest for this month since at least
2016. Meanwhile, seasonal hiring intentions fell to 372,000. The lowest on record since data collection
began in 2012 with no new announcements in November. U.S. hiring demand is at crisis levels.
But wait, there's more. There's more.
Polymarket breaking U.S. layoffs set to surpass the Great Recession levels on track
to be worst since Great Depression.
Again, at a time when people are saying everything's fine, this is great.
The America is doing incredibly.
81% of recruiters admitted to their organizations posting fake job listings performs.
Now, this is a curious one for me.
I don't quite understand the reason behind this.
Nathan, you were saying that this is a funky one for you too.
you like do you have any perception of why this would be there's a few things kind of at play there
so um things that i've heard one each r has got to do something they were used this to begin with
but we at least have to give them some business work so you must have post some jobs you're not
actually going to have additionally i believe they're trying to keep like new recruits and new talent
coming through the pipeline so they might not even be hiring somebody but they constantly want
to be seen on all the jobs boards so they can get people when they necessarily want them and i do
believe in some areas it might be related to regulation in terms of like rules for being able to
hire outside of like the u.s or high outside of canada like there may be specific benefits to the
company but they have to say that they posted the jobs and they couldn't find anybody so there's all just a
bunch of fiat shenanigans going on behind the behind the scenes plus i know too with those jobs data
and talk about jobs postings they don't double count for like the same position in different
areas so you might have like the same job posting in you know texas and
in California, there's only one job available, but there's like between all 50 states,
there's 50 different job posting. So it's count as 50 job posting. So it's even like,
not only do we have fake, but we have duplicates throughout the system as well, too. It's looking
atrocious. And I do want to touch on that sentiment aspect, because I think it's the,
it's the perfect, we say, like, bellwether of the like case-shaped recovery, right?
If you own all the assets, of course, you're feeling great. Things are up, whatever,
right? Because inflation and risk expectations and just money printing and sucking up all that
liquidity. But if you actually talk to people, the plebs, the ones of us that have to deal with
this, we are struggling beyond belief. And I'm not surprised that we're approaching great depression
levels. 100%. And again, to your point, when you talk to the actual people, check this out.
People stop paying their credit cards first, then they stop paying their auto loans. And lastly,
their mortgage payments. We will see a foreclosure spike in Q2 to Q3, 2026. Look at this chart. This is a
chart of and i'll just bring it up here uh new york fed credit access survey this is a rejection
rate among applicants for credit of all types uh which indicate they're not credit worthy and it is
spiking to what a level of around 20 looks like 25 percent um and this is we weren't even close
till just like post great recession this is not looking good 25 percent of
of applicants being rejected here.
And then furthermore, this is Canada.
It's also doing great up here north of the ice wall.
The construction doom loop is officially starting.
New forecast predict 160,000 layoffs in 2026.
That's 10% of the 1.6 million workforce in construction.
This is in a cycle.
It's a collapse.
And there's a clip from CBC.
Slowing housing market will trigger construction job,
losses, Ontario Builders Group says.
Now, this has triggered a response, all the stuff before it, everything that's been going on.
The powers that be do not want things to self-correct because it's the economy as it is
in a debt-based economy, you cannot stop.
You need to be perpetually moving forward.
It's like being on a bicycle.
You stop pedaling.
You fall over.
That's how our economy operates.
And so here's Lynn Alden.
The gradual print begins.
This is decisions regarding monetary policy, Federal Reserve.
And the part she highlighted, they want to increase the system open market account
holdings of securities through purchases of treasury bills and, if needed, other treasury
securities with remaining maturities of three years or less to maintain an ample level of
reserves. If that sounds like Greek to you, let's simplify it. Quantitative easing is back.
The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates by another 25 basic points and they are looking to
buy $40 billion worth of treasury bills over the next 30 days. Somebody has to buy them.
Treasuries are being dumped on Americans to pump stocks again. This is de facto money printing.
Normally the way bonds would work is the government would say we're looking for citizens to invest in us in the country and we will pay you back at a particular interest rate.
And they put forth those bonds and the public at large says, excellent, I will invest in my country and what you're building and the government is least likely to default because obviously they control the money.
And so I'm happy with the interest rate you're offering.
I will buy those bonds and get my interest when they come to maturity.
Problem is that right now, everyone is fucked royally, just financially.
And part of that is debt repayment is expensive, rates are high.
So the Fed needs to be cutting rates because the economy is in shambles, as we just discussed.
So they're cut interest rates.
But what that does is all of a sudden when the government says, hey, buy our bonds because we need money too, the interest rate is too low to entice the public to buy those bonds because it's not outpacing inflation or it's barely outpacing inflation if you use official numbers, which are cooked anyways.
And so nobody buys the bonds.
and it pushes up the interest rates that they have to offer to the public
in order to get people to buy them.
The problem with that is they can't fucking afford to repay it
because their debt repayment is through the roof.
And so what is the solution?
Well, it's that the central bank says,
hey, we're going to cut rates and then we're going to buy the bonds
that nobody in their right mind would purchase.
And so we're going to have our cake and eat it too.
do you see a problem with that nathan oh i see a lot of problems right now it's very reflective of
growing stress in the monetary system i think this is going to go beyond that duration that will see
a lot more getting bought up by the fed here in relatively short order like even just for
clarity because you're right it's like like riding a bike it's like being on the back of a tiger we
cannot get off this beast it will collapse the system and i think you're going to see the
fed stepping in and buying up more in order to prop up basically acid values and more importantly
collateral values between different financial institutions.
Because don't forget, they don't have to go to the Fed if they need money.
They can loan to each other.
If you see that start to drop off, like we saw with the repo market spikes there a little
while back.
I haven't checked what it's at today.
It's reflective of higher perceived risk in the economy.
And what we just outlined in terms of layoffs and employment, yeah, I'd say the Fed and
and then all the commercial banks are seeing what we're all feeling.
and they're starting to panic and prepare
because they don't forget the reactionary as well too
the damage is already done it's going to continue to get worse from here
100% and here's uh here's the uh
the 10 year u.s treasury spiking uh and that this was
this was uh obviously this person q e infinity here uh
they they knew exactly what was going to happen uh i'm sure we'll get another rate cut
this wednesday uh we'll help or sorry i'm sure another rate cut
will help this Wednesday, which indeed we did get a rate cut.
And that's only going to further exacerbate the treasury spikes in rates there.
Because, again, nobody's going to want them.
I would kind of anticipate that it's not like yield curve control at the longer end is not out of the cards.
That the Fed will just start buying up long duration treasuries to push that rates down.
Because don't forget, guys, those interest rates are a combination of growth, inflation, and risk expectations.
Risk is definitely going up.
We're seeing what they're doing with the money printer.
Inflation's probably there as well, too.
I don't think this is actually coming from a growth perspective.
I think what you're seeing in the Treasury yields rising is basically fiscal deficits
going to be insane.
And we're going to see inflation.
And we're going to see perceived risk between basically counterparties in terms of credit.
Well, I think the best thing to do here is looking forward.
What can we expect for Bitcoin?
And I think I'm not a big fan of TA, but this might be the best.
the best DA that we can muster here.
So shout out to our friend, Brendan Gentile.
Am I doing this right?
I'm no chartist, but either we're about to break out
or it will be CBDC and UBI for all.
And he shows a interest over time of Bitcoin searches.
And it looks like either it's going to drop off a cliff
or it's going to burst through the roof
and we're going to go parabolic.
That's absolutely right.
This is a classic descending wedge right here.
We've got that lower bound, that upper bound we can see going on.
It's all converging right now.
So it looks like maybe spring of next year here.
This graph is going to have to resolve one way or the other.
If there's one thing I've learned, it's TA is always right.
And it's definitely going to rock it up in terms of Bitcoin adoption.
But in all seriousness, I kind of think it will.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, again, it's crazy to think that we've technically had quantitative tightening this entire cycle, like all the way through.
And so like the last time we had a QE and a Bitcoin cycle was like the 2017.
I think we got it over COVID as well too.
Now technically I don't know if they called it QE,
but you can look back at both of those as a wonderful,
because there was the 2019 repo crisis as well.
So yeah, but we, so we kind of capped off.
It's interesting because we kind of capped off the,
well, we've been pontificating on four-year sites.
in the last couple of shows.
And I do think that the four-year cycle is indeed being disrupted.
And we were talking about that yesterday on the show.
But it was interesting the timing of everything because 2021, if the four-year cycle was intact,
was clearly kind of like where that was going to be.
And a number of things impacted the upside of that, the China mining ban, FTX, fuckery, all of that, fake paper Bitcoin.
All of that, which I think...
Was Luna then too?
I didn't even remember when Terraluna was.
Yeah, all of that was that cycle.
So much bullshit was going on.
And so there's a number of things.
And then they really went into top gear over the course.
I'd say, that would have been towards the end of 21.
I'm trying to think when they started printing.
But we kind of got, I feel like we kind of got screwed.
I'm wondering that what,
this shift means of of us going back in to QE infinity does to Bitcoin on top of a host of new buyers.
And I'm no like massive fan.
And as our guest was saying earlier, Keone, Keone, by the way, my name is now Bean in the chat.
So thanks guys.
But either way, I'm wondering what the implications of this are on Bitcoin.
Like is the four-year cycle broken?
Like, is this going to be, as with most other things this cycle, our expectations completely
subverted.
Everybody thinks, well, end of year four.
And so that's it, bare market.
Is that the case?
I don't know, is what if we do hit, what would, for me, what would be most bullish would be if we kind of crab walked a little bit and then like peaked up a little bit over the previous all time high and then crab walked up and kept peaking up.
And it would indicate to me that while it's not going to be like parabolic right away, it's just going to be a steady climb.
And it may be, it may not be as exciting, but it'll be an incredible way to make sure you're not getting screwed by the money printer.
Yeah, so we'll see.
I don't know.
What do you think is in the carrots?
Well, I think the best case for the four-year cycle still being intact is that everybody thinks the four-year cycle is not intact.
So usually we tend to get burned by that one.
But we're kind of running out of time here for the end of the year.
I think the stair step up, particularly like if you look at the gold, the launch of the gold ETS,
and the price action over like the next decade.
I think that's probably somewhat in line with what we're looking at here.
What if I was going to be a little bit conspiratorial.
And I suspect, because we had Larry Fink coming out and talking about sovereigns stacking in around the 80s, right?
And I was talking about that publicly.
Why would you share that publicly?
You'd want to do that quietly in the background.
Maybe just trying to get people into Ibit.
But at the end of the day, I think the evil commercial bank players that were up against here,
big one is money for enemies.
I think they're at or near filling their bags.
Now, they can play a whole bunch of dirty games,
and they've been caught doing it and charged and have to pay obscene fines for it often,
that I think they can try and manipulate the price in the very short term, very short term.
Again, if we take self-custody, they can't do that, right?
There's less for them to don't leave it in an ETF, don't leave it in treasury company,
take self-custy.
It's how we keep them kind of in check.
But I have a sneaking suspicion that we have everything lining up for a ton of fiscal spending
combined with the Fed doing everything they can to inject liquidity
and make boring conditions as easy as possible.
Plus, I think those evil corporate bankers,
I think they've nearly filled their bags.
And when they filled their bags,
and especially if the administration is trying to show,
like, look, the economy is amazing.
And they always point to the stock market.
That's not your job.
That's not your grocery bill.
But it's the stupid heuristic that they use.
Like the S&P, although like the S&P 500 kind of is the economy,
it's the tail wagging the dog.
That's what they'll direct to.
I think there's a very good chance
that not only do we have all the kind of conditions,
but anything in the background, any attempts to kind of hold it back,
they're going to have every incentive to just let it run.
I think it really could be, it could be almost like a delayed euphoric, just rip.
Yeah, it could be Laird Lippards, the big print.
Yep.
Could be.
Well, we're going to change gears here.
We're going to do a quick hop to our final sponsor showup.
But on the other side of the hop, again, we had our guest on talking
about privacy implications.
Is this the death of Bitcoin privacy?
I think our, I think our conclusion was fuck no.
In that people can continue to build these tools, they just need to think about it differently.
They need to protect themselves as they're building.
And so we're going to be discussing a bunch of these crazy, crazy things that the governments are trying to do.
and some wild stuff more recently out of Australia.
And there's this girl down there in Sydney.
And she's talking about these wild new laws that are enacted, I guess, as of now.
Yeah, I think it was yesterday came into effect.
Which is insane.
Anyway, she's a bit coiner.
She seems pretty based and gives some good advice in the video.
But we'll watch what she has to say as well.
But yeah, you're not going to want to miss it.
And if you're unfamiliar with some of the tools to use, you're going to want to stay tuned for that.
Because, yeah, you've got to learn the tools to be able to partake in the benefits of Bitcoin.
And I hope that's why you guys are here.
So we'll be right back in just a couple of moments.
We'll see you guys on the other side.
Make sure you hit like on the video, by the way, if you're enjoying the conversation.
See you soon.
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All right, we are back in.
Let's talk about some of the draconian things coming down the pipeline.
And we dug up a few examples from actually are in and around the time that all this mess happened to the samurai guys.
And so we're going to take a trip down memory lane and then take a look at some current stuff as well.
Because it's not like a bunch of this stuff went away.
It's still here.
So let's just take a quick peek here.
So this was a post from April of 2024 in and around the same time that the samurai developers got rated.
I don't think crypto will be pseudo-anonymous or privacy preserving anymore, at least in the U.S.
Yesterday, the IRS issued the long-awaited draft form 1099 DA.
The first tax form specifically designed to collect your ID and detailed transaction data
at scale from, quote, brokers.
Brokers, centralized exchanges, certain defy exchanges, and wallets will be required to generate this form for each sale transaction and submit that info to the IRS and EU starting the first of 2025.
Now, some of this stuff may have been delayed.
There has been some clarification on wallets and those for the time being are exempt, but make no mistake.
they want that eventually.
The forum captures unsurprising data points such as date acquired, date sold proceeds
and the cost basis of the assets sold.
This information is needed and helpful for taxpayers to complete their crypto tax filings.
Yeah.
So there's a whole bunch of details here, but basically they want to know everything you're doing.
Beyond that, this was from.
Just what, a couple, a few months ago here, September.
Yep, back in here.
Yeah, and this is based on an article from the rage,
U.S. government to bring Patriot Act to digital assets.
FinCEN director reveals Treasury.
It's finalizing a ban on privacy tools.
Representatives revive special measures to fight modern threats act.
And Francis Pouliott, Bull Bitcoin, he did a screenshot.
He said, I strongly recommend Americans read this article.
The Orwellian scenario may not come to pass entirely, but it's a signal.
If we let them, they will establish that any use of Bitcoin except tracked custodial wallets is suspicious.
Here's a list of things that would be no bueno.
Pooling or aggregating from multiple persons' wallets, addresses, or accounts.
using programmatic or algorithmic code to coordinate, manage,
or manipulate the structure of a transaction.
So basically like sparrow wallet, self-custody,
the little like privacy tab that like makes your transaction a little bit different
to either help with fees or to make it more private.
Yeah, that's illegal.
splitting
splitting
cryptocurrency for transmittal
and transmitting the cryptocurrency
through a series of independent transactions
so rather than sending just the full amount
sending pieces of it separately
not allowed just super suspicious
creating and this is
this is butt fucking insane right
this is insanity
creating and using single use
wallets, addresses, or accounts, and sending cryptocurrency through such wallets, addresses,
or accounts through a series of independent transactions.
So basically how every fucking Bitcoin wallet in existence currently works of generating a new
address each time for basic user privacy.
So no one can just go and look up a single address and ascertain your entire net worth
to the entire planet.
anybody can see it, if you don't allow people to do that, you're suspicious.
Exchanging between types of digital assets and facilitating user-initiated delays in transactional
activity.
So if you don't send all of the intended funds to the person at the exact same time,
it's suspicious, not allowed.
This is crazy.
But Ben, what do you have to hide?
Exactly, exactly.
And I mean, even beyond that, okay, let's take a look at this.
This is the EU, DAC8.
This is tightening crypto reporting and supervision.
The key takeaways, these new rules mandate crypto firms to report transaction and holdings
in a standard digital format starting January 1st, 2026, just around the corner, my friends.
European Securities and Markets Authority may gain direct oversight of major crypto exchanges,
replacing fragmented national supervision.
Switzerland delays its crypto data sharing start to 2027,
despite adopting a parallel legal framework from 26,
and privacy advocates raise concerns as EU regulations,
expand data collection and due diligence requirements for crypto users and platforms.
And we know people personally that have been saying it's getting bad in the UK.
Just the other day, speaking to somebody like,
hey, there's a whole bunch of new crap,
then I need to fill in any time that I'm using Bitcoin through a regulated exchange.
It does not sound good.
The Cliff's notes here is this regulation could be the biggest crackdown on cryptocurrency as a whole so far.
As of January 1st, 2026, the EU will turn every exchange into a taxation reporting machine.
Yeah, it's absolutely.
Furthermore, there's stuff from the EU ban privacy coins by 27.
And while people may be watching this saying, yeah, whatever, shit coins.
I mean, if they're doing this to coins that allow for additional privacy,
what do you think they're going to do when they realize what things like lightning and liquid?
E-cash.
And all of that stuff, too.
They're not going to be like, that's different.
That's fine.
We'll give it a pass.
So all of that.
And then I want to take a look at this Australia thing.
So this is a tweet from L. the Freedom Ferry, who seems to be, I haven't met her, I haven't talked to her, but seems to be a relatively based Bitcoiner out of Sydney, Australia.
So for those outside of Australia who don't know what's going on inside, let me tell you, our government has implemented new laws.
took effect today, banning children under 16 from social media apps.
This comes after prior legislation that enshrines heavy penalties for hate speech violations in criminal law.
Now, I am fully aware that my face and data are collected by the platforms I choose to access,
but providing ID, having to essentially register accounts to my name in light of heavy penalties for free speech.
I'm not a fan, but it is all part of the growing censorship and control creep our government is all too
keen to advance. Fight back against tyranny, adopt independent censorship, resistant money,
and engage in decentralized social media. Find me on Noster. I look forward to seeing you there.
So let's take a listen to what she had to say. I'll speed up the video a little bit just so we can
get it all in because what she has to say is pretty good. Here we go.
For those of you outside of Australia who may be very confused about what on earth is going on
with this youth social media ban, let me spell it out for you. As of today, December 10th, anyone under the age of
is now legally banned from having a social media account.
Platforms are facing massive fines, and I mean massive, if they allow minors to remain active.
Now, the government says that this is about protecting kids online, and sure, kids deserve protection from their parents,
but this law is not about the kids. Let's be really honest here.
This policy is actually about control, surveillance, the removal of parental responsibility and individual choice.
Parents now have no legal discretion to decide what their child can or cannot access.
The state has well and truly inserted itself between the state has, well and truly inserted itself between
families and technologies and in order to actually make this law well reliable how are they
going to enforce age verification it's going to be through ID checks surveillance
back-end monitoring of activity online not to mention by the way facial analysis and data
tracking and once you build that infrastructure it does not stay limited to kids to actually make
sure that everyone online is above the age of 16 they're going to have to put everyone
through this testing process this coincidentally is happening at the exact same time when
Australia is expanding its hate speech and anti-vilification laws now I don't believe in being an
nasty person but it's very clear that laws like this these particular laws have one purpose and that
is to squander any sentiment of remaining freedom of speech in australia and what is actually so
disturbing about movements like this is that when you get these anti-freedom of speech laws and this
under 16 social media bill which requires platforms to identify who is posting what you actually
don't need overt censorship anymore even though we do have that people naturally self-censor people are
and they will continue to regulate themselves out of fear so that is a very very very
quick rundown of the state of Australia today, December 10th, but what is the antidote for a
situation like this? In my opinion, as always, I think Bitcoin plays a really major role in
liberating any society. And I also think platforms like Nostra decentralized social media are very
important. So my message today, of course, as always, is stack some sats, go make an account on
Nosta and give back to the community and speak your mind freely.
Ooh, sound advice from our audience here. That's solid. But that's a solid. But that's pretty
sounding. And if you wonder
where it's headed,
look no further than the UK, where
however many thousands of people this year alone
have already been arrested for
social media posts. Dude, Gary
and I covered last week, a guy took a picture
with a gun. He wasn't even holding it right
in the US and then had to deal
with that when he got home. So even you're taking a picture
in a country where it's completely legal for you
to shoot, recreationally said gun,
when you fly home, we'll now get you
in shit. That's how bad it's gotten.
That's wild.
Like I, it's to the point where when I'm planning on going to conferences,
because there's like some some awesome conferences over in Europe,
a shout out to like Baltic Honeybadger and BTC Prague and events like that,
like I don't want to go through London.
Yep.
Like I would actively choose different airports at this point when it, when it,
Like, it's just, yeah, because I'm not confident that somebody is not going to be at the airport being like, boy.
You've got a license for that.
Yeah.
Yeah, like, it's just, it's brutal.
So, again, she makes some solid recommendations there.
So obviously, stack and stats, but also checking out things like Noster.
So I did a video on how to use Primal.
You can check out that tutorial.
If you do want to follow me on primal, I'm right there.
BTC sessions at getalb.com.
There's QR code that you can check out.
You can go back and scan it afterwards.
But also useful if you're in a draconian shit hole, which, you know, what countries aren't at this point, check out VPNs.
Those are important.
Mulvad is solid and you can pay with Bitcoin.
And there's no sign up.
It's just like a user ID that's a number.
And you can, yeah, you pay with Bitcoin.
And then how it's like five bucks a month.
So you can just pay for a full year if you really wanted to or month by month.
And you can just top up the account with Bitcoin anytime you want to, which is super useful.
And then outside of that, just in general, go on the channel.
I've got a full privacy playlist.
And actually one of the things featured in there, shout out to Samurai, is the fork of Samurai wallet, which is Ashi Garu.
And there's kind of two parts to it.
there's the dojo node and the wallet.
And so you can build your own dojo node and then link your wallet to it.
And it actually has gotten easier since I made this video.
Now there's like Ashigaru that you can install on like your Start 9 and stuff like that.
There's other options out there of ways to more easily do it.
But yeah, I would check out this playlist.
There's a whole bunch of different stuff being able to obtain Bitcoin.
No K-Y-Y-Y.
You know, Wasabi is now back to functioning.
They have random coordinators popping up in the wild.
Cashew, running your own node.
Again, non-KYC options, a whole bunch of different stuff here.
So yeah, check out the playlist.
There'll be a bunch of things that you can kind of take a peek at.
Any general thoughts in the realm of privacy here, Nathan?
I do, yeah.
So I had a wonderful conversation with Dr. Jet-Cruz.
And he brought up the issue of privacy and had another one with him and Simon Dixon.
And that is kind of the big underlying theme of one of the things that is absolutely under attack.
Yeah, stay tuned.
It is absolutely in the editing process right now.
They spoke specifically about samurai wallet.
But the case that they're making is it goes even well beyond that.
Basically the digital cage is being built around us and most people aren't even remotely paying attention.
The thing that I would say is that I think one of the unfortunate drawbacks of 2025 was that we've been lulled to sleep by our own
success to some extent that we've lost a little bit of that adversarial nature.
It's gotten way too comfortable with treasury companies and Ibit and all these other options
out of convenience.
And we've forgotten the most important thing is that this is money that cannot be censored.
It cannot be stopped.
It cannot be confiscated.
It is your free speech of value, but only if we hold it in self-custody and only if we defend it.
I think particularly what's going on with the samurai devs is the reminder that even though
it's been kind of peaceful with the administration for now.
Make no mistake that we are a threat to their ability to collect tax revenue, right?
We are a threat to the government's ability to issue,
we're threat to the scenery is, right?
We're separating money and state,
which defangs them to a level that they are not going to accept peacefully,
and they are trying to keep us within the existing crumbling system.
It was nice to maybe relax with Trump getting in for a while there,
and Ross getting out,
but make no mistake, we're all back on the battlefield.
right now, get the tools, get prepared.
We've got a hell of a fight ahead of us if we actually want to use Bitcoin.
They will say that you own it.
They might give you the Fiat equivalent of that value at some point.
But if you want to use Bitcoin for its intended purpose, be prepared.
Yeah, 100%.
And I'm going to add something to the using Bitcoin momentarily.
But before we get into that, Nathan, I think more than a few people in the chat are going to burn
this thing to the ground if they don't find out when they're going to.
this episode drops.
When,
when Cruz and Dixon interview?
I promise I have it done for Tuesday morning.
I'm actively working on it right now.
I might even,
guys,
I think I might do that one as a premiere and hang out live with you in the chat if you
want to come stop by,
but I am working on,
they went long.
I have a lot to go through.
I want to make sure that I do them justice and it looks great and it sounds
great and everyone's happy.
Awesome.
Amazing.
I'm looking forward to this one.
I feel like it's going to be an absolute banger.
So excited, excited for it.
Okay, another quick thing.
This is not like breaking news or anything.
This dropped on December 3rd, so about eight days ago.
But just so you know, dolphin card on Aqua, which was awesome.
Sadly, it wasn't meant to be due to an unexpected issue from our card provider.
All cards in our program were suspended.
As a result, your dolphin card has been disabled, effective immediately.
Here's what users need to know.
Dolphin card will no longer work. Any remaining balance will be fully refunded.
Refunds will be sent in USDT on liquid.
Pending merchant refunds will not return to your dolphin card.
If you're expecting a merchant refund from a recent purchase, please provide the merchant
with an alternate card or payment method.
So if you have some sort of refund coming, let them know, hey, this card doesn't work
anymore.
Refund me here instead.
If you're expecting a merchant, hold on.
We've sent all affected users an initial service update, and we'll follow up soon with instructions on requesting a refund, confirmation once your request is submitted, and a final email when your refund has been sent.
So this is not like Aqua shitting the bed.
This is fiat or is being fiat.
Wait, are you saying that there may have been some people that had an issue with the no KYC credit card that was powered by Bitcoin in the background?
Why would they ever have an issue with that whatsoever?
And guys, I do know that they are working on trying to get it back.
Hopefully they can.
I'm also immediately reminded, Ben, do you remember the post office?
I do remember the post office in Canada and walking up with cash and being able to buy Bitcoin,
sometimes more than once.
And as I recall, the post office and the government was not a fan of that.
Yeah, we used to, in the Great White North, you used to be able to take your cash to the post office
and buy non-Ky-C Bitcoin with our friends over at Bull Bitcoin there.
So I miss that, but of course, that had to get shut down pretty quick.
The government wasn't going to allow that to continue.
Yeah, yeah, it's unfortunate.
I was hoping that this one could duck under the radar a little bit longer,
but such is life.
That's just kind of the game you play in the world of Bitcoin.
I'm wondering if there will be something that comes,
some sort of loophole that allows this type of stuff to stand the test of time.
Right now you can go and buy like prepaid Visa and MasterCard, things like that.
It's just they're more of a pain in the ass because like once you get down to the last few bucks,
like you really have to know exactly what's on the card.
You can't just like tap and pay the remaining balance and then and then settle up the rest.
You need to like because it gets declined.
And so it's it's more of a pain, but it's at least some.
something. But yeah, I really hope that there's some solutions. But outside of that,
actually before I do that final segue, I do want to say we did release a video just earlier
today tutorial. We're trying some new formats here. So we've got an incredible new editor that's
helping out with this stuff. And the idea is some people are a little timid on clicking on
tutorials that are, you know, an hour plus long.
I'm still doing those, of course.
But we're also, whenever there's something that's a lengthy tutorial, we're also going to have a very shortened bare bones basics tutorial that will release just before the long one.
And so the one that I just released today is Treasor Safe 7.
So Treasurer Safe 7 basically a couple different things about it.
Number one, it's mobile-friendly.
So not plugging it into mobile, I mean like actually just pairing the thing to the phone app,
which is cool, which is nice to actually have that functionality.
Of course, you can still plug it in.
Or you can actually pair it wirelessly to a computer running the Treasurer Suite software as well.
So that was really cool.
It does have wireless charging as well.
It is quantum ready in the long form.
I go through what that is and if it matters and like all the details there.
It also has the first open source secure element in it.
It's actually got two secure chips.
One is a non, they don't have to sign NDAs in order to use it so they can disclose vulnerabilities.
But the second one is their fully open source.
chip. So I discuss a little bit about that as well. A ton to go through with it and I cover all the
advanced stuff that I can in the full version. But check out the 15 minute one today. And when it
drops on Monday, it will be linked directly from there to the full version. So yeah.
You and NVK had a good discussion about the secure element and stuff as well too. We did.
NVK skeptical. Skeptical. I will say, like, I had a good time playing with.
with this i think it's i i think that treasur has been going in the right direction the earliest versions
of the treasur all the way up to the model t not being safe one yeah yeah they they didn't have
they didn't have a secure element at all so physical access to the device if you didn't have a
passphrase somebody could uh feasibly extract uh your key material with the safe three
and five they implemented a secure element with the seven two secure
your elements, one of them being the open source one.
So yeah, you'll get to take a peek at that.
You can check it out today and the full-length one in just a few days' time.
But I did want to mention in the realm of being self-sovereign and really becoming
unshakable in the way that Bitcoin was meant to be, we have been championing an initiative
here in our city called the Sat Market.
And it is a local circular economy that I kind of had a fire lit under my ass one day.
I just got riled up that it wasn't happening.
And so we just made it happen.
And so now the sat market has been running, I think, for a couple years now, if not more.
This is the third Christmas, if I'm not mistaken.
I think it's the completion of two years.
Yes, yes, absolutely.
So this would be kind of that, yeah, full two years of running it.
we've been doing at least a couple a year.
And so the impetus was to create a community of people,
not just artisans and like apparel and mcnacks and souvenirs and stuff like that,
which are obviously all great and we have artists there and everything,
but also things that can help you meet your day-to-day needs.
We have farmers with eggs and beef and chicken and all of that stuff.
We have tradesmen, roofers, floors, plumbers, all kinds of different stuff.
We have lawyers.
We have personal trainers.
We have hypnotherapists.
We have all kinds of stuff there, stuff that you can actually use day to day.
Hell, we have an excellent hotel in the Rocky Mountains that we're going to be flitting up to over the weekend after the market.
So shout out to the Kenrick Hotel on Bath Avenue.
If you're ever going to be in the Canadian Rockies and you want a place to stay that accepts Bitcoin,
the Kenrick is the place to go.
But yeah, so we have our market tomorrow night and I'm very excited for it.
It's the perfect kind of jump into the holiday season.
So we're going to have our Christmas market.
We've got a whole bunch of vendors.
there. And it's going to be a great time. So I'm very, very excited about it. Nathan, you've been at
every single one. Every single one. Yeah. Yeah. What are your thoughts on the on the sap market?
You miss the most important thing. Yes, we got beef. We got amazing hot sauce and mustard I picked up
last time too. I've seen wine at these things as well. But the most important thing that
we have at the sat market is gay as this is sound is community. And I cannot stress that enough
that like it doesn't take a lot to get things going.
And one of the most defensive things you can have for yourself and your family is to start
to make the connections with the Bitcoiners, the like-minded people in your community so that you
can support one another.
You can buy goods and services from one another.
You can exchange Bitcoin from one another so that you have that around you because that's,
that's something that we're going to need going forward for sure.
If you don't have one, start one.
Yeah, 100%.
This is how, this is how Bitcoin becomes unshakable.
I am way more bullish on 30 to 50 communities like this popping up around different cities
with a community of a few hundred to a thousand people than a large-scale event attracting 10, 20, 30,000 people.
I think this is where it gets into communities and it becomes impossible to stamp out.
It's when you have direct relationships with other people that are like-minded and appreciate
a money that can't be censored and that nobody else can print and you can interact and transact
with each other voluntarily, I mean, that's the way to be. And so I'm very excited about it. We don't
just rely on the event itself. We encourage everybody to keep in contact with each other vendors
in-between events so that when we need things, we can just go to our local bitcoins and
kind of lean on each other for that. So super excited for it. If you're curious about it,
head over to Bitcoin satmarket.com. We put together a website there. And we would love for people to
we would love for people to be able to not just visit us, of course, if you're in Alberta, if you're in
BC, if you're in Saskatchewan.
Even if we've had people fly in from Montreal and Toronto, we've had people in from the U.S.
So if anything, visit if you're able to.
It's tomorrow night, so short notice.
But outside of that, emulate it, replicate it.
We're making a blueprint for how we did it.
You can look at it.
You can pull it apart.
You can make it your own and you can do it in your own city.
I just want to add, you never know, like, were these friends and,
connections are going to lead.
I met Ben for the first time at the first sat market.
So you have no idea what's going to happen and what like amazing people you might be able
to add to your life if you just go out and start finding Bitcoiners.
Yeah.
Think of that.
Nathan attended a sat market and now he's hosting BTC S Satterj.
That's really how it played out.
This could be you.
That's awesome.
Yeah, that's super awesome.
Okay.
So with that, I'm going to make.
one more plead to the audience.
Please, please, please.
This QR code on the screen is so, so important.
This is to sign the petition to get a pardon for both creators of Samurai Wallet.
One is heading to prison in just eight days.
The other, it looks like early January.
The first five-year sentence.
the second four-year sentence.
This is incredibly unjust.
They built open-source software that anyone could use,
and they were painted as unlicensed money transmitters and money launderers
while never having taken anybody's money into their own custody.
If you think that is a load of steaming shit,
then you need to not only scan the QR code or go to Bill and kione.
dot org, sign the petition, contribute so that you can help Olivia the immense financial stress that
they're under and their families.
But share the ever-living hell out of the link or the show or both to get the word out.
And if you see any other interviews, pieces of content in and around these guys, share that
as well.
They could really use the vote of confidence to help the megaphone to get somebody that could perhaps help them.
And yeah, let's try and make a difference here.
Yeah, 100%.
Everybody in the audience, there's at least like six degrees of Kevin Bacon to President Trump.
To President Trump.
It's not impossible to get in front of them.
And don't forget, we got Ross out.
So do not think that it doesn't matter.
Do not think that you're sharing it doesn't matter.
Both them can be extremely power and have an expert.
exponential effect and it costs you nothing.
Doesn't cost you reputation, doesn't cost you money.
If you can make donations, it's wonderful and fantastic and I support that.
But it really just takes us not to be compliant or passive.
So all I personally, this one hits me right in the heart so hard.
All I personally, personally pleaded to the best of my ability is just what next time you're
sitting on the toilet.
You got nothing going on.
Sign the petition.
It's the least you could do.
Yeah, 100%.
These guys built an incredible tool for Bitcoiners.
that will transcend them and has already because somebody forked the project
and it lives on in spite of the powers that be clamping down upon the previous project.
So I see a couple of people in the comments saying, done.
I really appreciate that.
Thank you.
Yes, absolutely.
Amazing.
Thank you guys so much.
I see 141 people have already scanned or clicked that.
Much appreciated.
So with that, we're out of here.
I always play a clip at the end of this show.
And it's in and around making sure that you are using the tools so that you are a self-solven bitcoiner.
If you own a Bitcoin stonk or ETF, it is not the same as being a self-solvering
Bitcoiner.
And just because you don't know how to do it yet, that's okay.
I'm not placing blame.
I'm not trying to guilt you or anything.
I'm just trying to say that there's a better way to do it.
And you can start by learning.
So pay attention to the clip at the end.
But with that, I'm out.
This was myself, Ben, and Nathan.
And this was your weekly session.
We'll see you guys next time.
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