BTC Sessions - Fiat Economists and Politicians MELTDOWN Trying To Control Bitcoin ep182

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Facepalm worthy notes from Brad Sherman, Dean Baker, and Bill Foster  - as they demonstrate their total lack of understanding around Bitcoin's inner workings. Also: major developments from NYDIG, Ark Invest, news out of El Salvador & more! 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Buy Bitcoin In Canada With Bitbuy - get $20 free! https://bitbuy.ca/en/sign-up/?c=BTCSessions LEDN Bitcoin backed loans –  get $25 free https://bit.ly/397rlLN Get Wasabi wallet for Bitcoin privacy https://wasabiwallet.io/ Keystone Wallet: secure your Bitcoin! http://bit.ly/KeyStoneSessions BillFodl: get your wallet backups in solid steel. https://privacypros.io/btcsessions Bitrefill: use Bitcoin to purchase gift cards https://www.bitrefill.com/buy/?code=O04UMic9 BITCOIN LIGHTNING tips: https://strike.me/btcsessions

Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Hope you're having a good week. There's been lots of stuff going on this week. Lots of economists and politicians just not having a good time realizing that they can't control Bitcoin. They're not super happy about that. So we're going to talk a little bit about that.

Plus some exciting stuff on the horizon, some new stuff that just dropped. before we got into before I went live here. Lots of fun things. As always, this is live. So I defer to my good friend Bill here. We'll do it live. We'll do it live. Do it live.

I'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. Now, of course, make sure you smash that like button. Give this a share. I see people already piling in and dropping some comments in the chat. Let's get even more eyeballs in here and have a good day. So, of course, as always, I'm Ben with the BTC sessions.

This is your daily session. All right, before we dive in, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. We're sitting at $33,473 per coin. A single US dollar will grab you 2,987 sats in terms of Bitcoin mined, 89.27% of all Bitcoin have been mined. And for fees right now, now, I'm going to touch on this little bit. There's a lot of hash rate, a lot of miners that came offline in China because of the ban. Those machines, it seems, are still being relocated in the midst that could take a bit to get back online.

So that means for the time being, we have slower blocks. We have more expensive fees to get in slower in those slower blocks, but it's being retargeted ASAP here. Right now, you're looking at about 85 sats per byte to get into the next block, which actually, given the context, isn't that bad. If you're willing to wait an hour, around 23 sats per byte, will do you. In terms of difficulty adjustment, we're looking at a negative 27%, almost 28% change in difficulty for mining. So that means, and by the way, that's going to hit at some point tomorrow in about 130 blocks now. each block is roughly 10 minutes, but they're taken longer now.

So sometime tomorrow that will hit, and that will mean all of a sudden will be back to around 10 minutes per block. There will be less miners currently mining, but all of them will be divvying up the Bitcoin mine amongst themselves. So they're going to be more profitable per capita at that point. And that also means that the fees are likely to drop quite a bit once. that happens and the mempool starts to clear out a little bit. So keep an eye open for that.

If you're moving some Bitcoin around, that's not super urgent, then I'd probably wait a couple days. Maybe hit it up on the weekend and you'll be doing just fine. Of course, if it's urgent, you have the stats per byte that are necessary there. Quick shout to sponsors of the show, lend. You can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different services here. Of course, they're Bitcoin back loans. If you're in a pinch and you need to get your hands on dollars,

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Everybody's so salty lately. Everybody that wants to control things is salty. I should clarify. Bitcoiners aren't salty. Well, we're salty too. Everybody's salty. Okay, so let's start here. Market Watch. Government must have power to reverse crypto transactions, says co-chair of blockchain caucus. Oh, man, there's so much wrong with this already. This Illinois Democrat, many in Congress see Bitcoin users as de facto participants in a criminal conspiracy. Seriously, are we still at this? Come on. Let's read a little bit of this.

Many in the cryptocurrency industry have long demanded that Congress provide regulatory clarity on how it will tax and regulate digital assets. But as powerful figures in Washington way in is doubtful crypto-enthusi. are liking what they hear. Well, okay, let me interject here. It depends who you listen to. If you listen to idiots like I'm about to tell you about, then yeah, you might not be too excited. But if you listen to people like Warren Davidson,

if you listen to people like Cynthia Loomis, then you might be a little bit more positive. So let's take it with a grain of salt. Democratic representative, Bill Foster of Illinois, co-chair of the House Blockchain Caucus, which is hilarious because clearly he doesn't know what he's talking. talking about you think he'd have a bit of knowledge being in the blockchain caucus. Maybe not.

Said Tuesday that laws must be passed to allow federal courts to identify digital asset holders and then reverse transactions in Bitcoin or other digital currencies. Christ. Okay. Yeah, he says you have to be able to go to court to unmasked participants under some circumstances. I don't know like the writer here. The writer here, Chris Matthews also equally doesn't understand as much as this representative here. Anyways, says Bitcoin, for instance, is largely anonymous as every transaction is on the public network for anyone to investigate.

However, there are methods of discovering someone's real world identity by studying this transaction history and searching the internet. instances of whether Bitcoin user may have accidentally linked their Bitcoin wallet address with personal information. And then they go on to say that, oh, it's apparently, it's not as anonymous as originally promised. It wasn't promised that it was anonymous from the get-go. You can identify transactions on the public blockchain and people will link transactions to their identity.

of course if they're on KYC to exchanges, but even still if they're not, if you're not careful, if you make purchases and you're trying to preserve privacy and you have an account associated with your name and you make a purchase with a certain amount of Bitcoin, not only do you identify what you've spent, but you can also identify a portion or all of your holdings

depending on how you utilize Bitcoin. So anyways, he says that the representative says, says that for most people, if they're going to have a big part of their net worth tied up in crypto assets, they're going to want to have that security blanket of a trusted third party that can solve the problem. No. No.

That's not what they're going to want. Anyways, the idea of reversing Bitcoin transactions, that's literally what Bitcoin was made to prevent, the reversal of transactions. You want your transactions to be immutable, to be censorship resistant. That is what Bitcoin is best at. That's why miners mine. And that's why there's so much energy that goes into securing the network. Because in order to do that, you would need to obtain more than 51% of the hash rate of the total

amount of competing power protecting the network. And you would need to maintain that percentage in perpetuity moving forward in order to successfully reverse transactions. And then, yeah, again, maintain it to prevent those transactions from ever getting through and actually staying on the blockchain, which would be incredibly capital intensive and just very expensive for anybody to execute. So they basically have to be default mining Bitcoin and mass at a rate faster than the rest of the globe in order to enforce those rules.

stupid, stupid. Let's move on to more stupid, though. This guy, Dean Baker. This is a piece of work here. The Center for Economic and Policy Research, this guy. He starts it off. Like most economists, I have always been a Bitcoin skeptic. An economist, a Fiat economist, that's a Bitcoin skeptic. You don't say color me surprised. Let's see what he has to say. Let's take a look. at how many checks he gets on the list of Bitcoin fud talking points. The idea that it would be useful alternative to currency is lappable on its face. How can you have a currency that wildly fluctuates in value year to year and even hour to hour? Volatility. There's one. Imagine you have wage or rent contract. Okay, so he's talking about volatility for like a paragraph here.

So it may not be useful as a currency, but maybe we can just. treated as an outlet for harmless speculation, like baseball cards or non-fudgerable tokens. Well, it turns out that Bitcoin is not entirely useless. It is the currency of choice for those engaging in illegal activities. Oh, there's another one. Look, drug dealers and criminals. Paragraph 2, guys. Oh, this is where he says, apparently Bitcoin is not as untraceable as advertised. Again, never advertised that way.

And then he goes on to, oh, there's the energy fud. Bitcoin's are brought into existence using up an enormous amount of energy. And then he, more energy than the country of Argentina. Greenhouse gases are being emitted for essentially nothing. Essentially nothing. Again, this is a pretty privileged position to be saying it's totally worthless and that the energy use for Bitcoin is useless when it's just useless to yourself.

There's a lot of people in places where remittances are incredibly fucking expensive like El Salvador where 30% in some cases 50% of low value remittance payments can be scraped away by intermediaries and things like Lightning Network and strike effectively erase all of that and stand to up the GDP of the country substantially just by adopting an app. So, good Lord.

Okay. So what's this guy proposing? He's proposing a Bitcoin transaction tax. Literally, he's, okay, first and foremost, a tax of Bitcoin transactions would raise revenue. And he goes through all of these things. He's proposing a tax of 1% on every Bitcoin transaction. not like if you go on an exchange and you purchase Bitcoin, but like if you send Bitcoin to any other address than the one it's currently sitting in,

he wants to add a 1% transaction tax to that. Does he not understand how this works? It's not possible. I do not think it's possible. What are you going to do? Like, are you, what are you going to do? You're going to track down every single person doing a Bitcoin transaction on, on a pseudonymous network. Like, yes, you could feasibly try to find who's doing what, but this totally discounts the idea of the lightning network where you really have no idea what the fuck is going on.

It's unenforceable. It is literally unenforceable. It's just so stupid. And let's move. If you're not already, like, if your blood pressure isn't already rising, this will get you. Brad Sherman is back. This U.S. Congressman compared Bitcoin investment with playing the lottery.

All right, here we go. The U.S. Congress Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee held a hybrid hearing on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. these. The institution summoned Alexis Goldstein, blah, blah, blah. Let's go ahead a little bit here. Not every member of the committee was an advocate of Bitcoin. So there were a number of people that were quite positive on Bitcoin. So this flies in the face of the previous article from Market Watch where they're like, if you're listening, you're going to be upset. But I digress. Let's jump back here. So there was some positive stuff, but I want to focus on Brad for a second. because he's such an idiot.

Representative Brad Sherman claimed that he would rather people make bets in equity markets or the California lottery than invest in Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. He added, The only advantage of crypto is avoiding K.YC and it's supported by anarchists for tax evasion. Representative Anthony Gonzalez seemed to support cryptocurrencies and encouraged everyone to listen to opinions of all members of the committee, not just the hostile ones. He classified the idea of investing in the key. California lottery over Bitcoin as ridiculous.

So Representative Gonzalez basically clapbacked at Brad Sherman pretty quickly, said that it's so stupid to compare the lottery to Bitcoin, an asset that has been around for 12 years that has consistently year over year appreciated in value as people add onto the network. He did talk about the stupidity of. trying to ban anything where there's a possibility of making and or losing money. Because then what? Do we ban stocks? Just because something can go up or down does not make it a scam.

And then when he was clapping back on how Bitcoin is quote unquote used for criminals and money laundering. And he said the typical argument against Bitcoin is stupid because $99,000, 9.9% of money laundering with fiat currencies goes unprosecuted. Man, Brad Sherman, he, it's funny, though, because a little bit he gets it. There was testimony from him in, I believe, 2019, where he's like, this greatly reduces the power of the U.S. as the head of the World Reserve currency and our ability to control markets and so on and so. Basically, he said, this, this ruins our control of everything. And you're damn fucking right it does.

That's the point. That is the point. All right. Let's keep going here. There was new regulations targeting exchanges and derivative products worldwide, particularly derivative products. So most of this just pertains to trading with like 100x leverage and shit like that stuff. that is typically regulated within certain jurisdictions when it comes to regular financial

products. Turns out any financial product, including Bitcoin on an exchange, is also regulated by the same rules as trading stock with leverage. Okay. But one such where it doesn't apply is June 25th, Binance the world's large. exchange updated his terms and service to include Ontario, Canada as a restricted jurisdiction. So I'm not in Ontario. I'm in Alberta. So I guess it's still available here. Not that I utilize it because I just buy Bitcoin. But nonetheless, they are no longer in Ontario. I don't know if

that comes down the pipeline to exclude other parts of Canada. You can get around stuff like this with a VPN. Although if they start demanding KYC, then that's a whole other thing. issue. So there's that. But the rest of these, Japan, UK, Binance, China, most of this has to do with, again, trading derivatives, trading like complex financial instruments. So Binance, they basically got booted out of the UK, but just for their derivatives platform, their regular platform where you just like buy Bitcoin, that's still there. So really nothing has changed because even the derivative stop wasn't even available there in the first place. It hadn't launched.

So effectively, it was kind of nothing. A lot of people played it off as, oh, they're just outright banned from the UK. That's not the case. Yeah, that's pretty much it. So kind of final note here, while exchange related restrictions have little influence over the Bitcoin network, they do present regulatory hurdles that could make Bitcoin more difficult to access. If governing agencies throughout the world were to coordinate to try and block Bitcoin

adoption, exchanges would provide the perfect centralized choke point to do so. That's true. That is true. However, these recent crackdowns seem to revolve around levers trading and derivatives in particular. So in most cases, they do not affect users' ability to buy, hold, and use Bitcoin. Over-leverage trades were likely a major factor in Bitcoin's price crash in May, also true, which means the crackdowns could prevent future volatility. Yeah.

Some are arguing that this legitimizes Bitcoin and shows maturity. Yeah. Anyways, it's, you know, regulator is going to regulate. By the way, if you're not a huge fan of the worry of having exchanges crack down upon, just use Bisk. I did a video on Bisk. It is a decentralized exchange. Effectively, it links you up with other people in your local jurisdiction, whether that be Canada or the U.S. or the UK or wherever,

finds other people that are willing to transact with you through a variety of different means, whether it be bank transfers or whether it be gift cards or whether it be stable coins or whatever you have. And there's like an escrow aspect to it. But basically, you're trading peer to peer with an individual. Please do exercise caution. Try to find people with good ratings on there because there is a risk involved. but that escrow element to it does help insulate a little bit.

Anyways, go back, watch the video, just search BISC BTC sessions. There's a full, there's a full walkthrough of how to use it. And again, this is like a no KYC, no ID kind of deal. So you can check that out. It's not super user-friendly, but if it's top of mind for you, then, yeah, check it out. Okay, a few more things in this realm. the Australian Securities and Investment Commission. This is from the financial review.

They say that a Bitcoin ETF could create real risk of harm, but that's really not, again, it's like the editors pick, they go through and they pick a title that doesn't really reflect what's written here. So the gist of this article is ASIC, or funny enough, that's their name, ASIC, or the Australian Securities Investment Commission, basically say that while there's some risk here, also the lack of an ETF is pushing people to riskier platforms. And when it's not there for Australian residents as an option, then they're more likely to get burned. So it's important that they have something that is an option for Australian residents so that they have something that has certain safeguards in place.

Now, I'm not super keen on this line of thinking in that I prefer people to get it through other means where it's not sitting with a custodian. And that's what an ETF would be, which kind of negates the point of Bitcoin. But, you know, if there's if it's a difference between somebody having zero exposure to Bitcoin because they're too worried and they're not tech savvy enough where they just, they'll never take those steps. And having exposure to Bitcoin through an ETF, then I would choose the ETF. over zero exposure at all. And some people do this through a tax-sheltered way. So it's an option. Anyways, there was input from a lot of different people.

I'll read a little part here. Martin Rogers, chief investment officer of KTM Ventures said, every day a Bitcoin ETF is denied to Australian investors. They are lacking consumer protections. Canada has moved on this and billions of dollars have moved into Bitcoin ETFs, providing safe access for investors to get access to Bitcoin. That is true. There's, I believe four, I might be behind the A ball here a little bit.

I think there's four Canadian Bitcoin ETFs now. There could be more. Anyways, quote, most Australian trade in Bitcoin is on unregulated Chinese exchanges. The sooner we have a Bitcoin ETF for customers in Australia, the sooner we can create protections to provide exposure to Bitcoin in a safe and effective manner. Beta shares managing director Alex Viocher, Vianoker said a regulated managed fund structure would be the best interest of investors. We agree with ASIC's view that there is a real risk of harm to consumers if these products are not developed and operated properly.

There's a significant risk of harm to Australian consumers who may be obtaining access to assets directly through exchanges that are not a licensed market. operator. And I would say, yes, if they leave them on said exchanges. Never, never leave it on exchanges. Get it into your own custody ASAP, which ties back to an ETF doesn't allow you to do that. So, you know, I'm all for them allowing this type of a thing to exist. Would I be interested in using it? Not so much. Would I advise people to use it? Probably not. But more options is better. in my opinion. Anyways, one more thing that's kind of like annoying regulatory. And then we're going to get into some more positive stuff here. So Mexico's central bank blocks Ricardo Salinas plan to bring Bitcoin to Banco as tech up.

So Ricardo Salinas, there's this video with 1.3 million views. Palm put it out there. Anyways, he went through and he was talking about how. Bitcoin is an excellent store of value over time. He doesn't want any fiat. He called fiat a full on scam. He said that when he began his career in 1981, the peso was 20, 20 pesos to one US dollar. And nowadays, 20,000 pesos to one US dollar. Of course, there's been some tinkering around like the denominations,

but had one peso remained the same as one peso instead of combining, pesos into a single unit, then yeah, it would effectively be 20,000 to 1. That's how much has been devalued versus the dollar. And the dollar itself has lost purchasing power. So imagine that compounded. Anyways, I'll read here, Banco de Mexico, Mexico's central bank was quick to shoot down plans voiced by the country's third richest person, Ricardo Salina, for his bank, Banco Azteca, to become the first bank in Mexico to accept Bitcoin. Late last week, Salinas spoke about Bitcoin as an asset that should be part of every investor's portfolio and that is traded with an enormous liquidity at a global level. In his now widely quoted statement, Salinas famously said that fiat is a fraud and called the dollar as a hard money a joke.

This seems to have displeased Banco to Mexico, you don't say, which took to quickly issuing a counter statement, reiterating warnings. It has published about Bitcoin in 2014, 17 and 19. The country's financial institutions are not authorized to carry out an offer to the public operations with virtual assets such as Bitcoin. The statement reads, adding that those who do will face, quote, applicable sanctions. So you have the central bank coming down and basically saying that a private bank can't fucking touch Bitcoin. Yeah, this is why we Bitcoin. Again, to escape this kind of authoritarianism over your own wealth.

It's insanity to me. Basically, they're saying, no, you're not allowed to have a currency that hasn't been devalued by a thousand X. Just not allowed. You're not allowed to hold that in a bank here. We're not going to let you. Well, no wonder, no wonder you want to protect the currency that you've devalued so much since 1980. of course. But not everybody has a negative view of stuff going on in Bitcoin right now.

As of today, maybe just the other day. When was this? This was June 30th yesterday. $6 billion NCR opens Bitcoin purchases to 650 banks and credit unions. So what is this? $650 U.S. banks will soon be able to offer. offer Bitcoin purchases to an estimated 24 million total customers. As part of the deal between enterprise payments and giant NCR and digital asset management

firm, NIDIG, community banks, including North Carolina-based for Citizens Bank and credit unions, including Bay Federal Credit Union in California, will be able to offer their clients' cryptocurrency trading through mobile applications built by the payments provider. So some of the notable stuff in here, a lot of these banks have seen that one of the biggest outflows from their depositors is moving money from the bank to exchanges like Coinbase, said Stone Ridge co-founder Jan Zau, who joined Nydig as president in December 2020. And so that's part of why banks are so excited to have this capability for themselves and for their customers.

Phase one of the NIDIG partnership will let NCR's banking clients buy, sell, and trade Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from their mobile application. While the purchaser will feel like they're working directly with the bank to make these purchases on the back end, the actual assets will be custodied by NIDIG. When a customer wants to buy Bitcoin, it is sourced from various regulated OTC desks and exchanges and sold at a slight market. markup based on the size of the trade and other factors. Nighting in turn receives a per user per month fee from the bank.

I think you'll see cheaper transaction fees through the banks than you would have today in the marketplace, says Nideg's head of bank solutions, Patrick sells, but the banks do get to determine what they want that transaction fee to be. So my thoughts on this are awesome that people will see this option. in, albeit smaller banks and credit unions across the U.S. gradually. So not all banks are going to offer this right away that fall under this umbrella, but some will.

And if they enjoy some success with it, more will offer it. And if they see it, if they see success with this and larger banks are missing out on this, and they see outflows into these types of banks, then there may be even more incentive for larger banking giants to offer these types of services. Now, this also falls down that same rabbit hole of custody. In this instance, if you're using an app through your bank to purchase Bitcoin, it just said right there that the custodian, the custodian would be Nidig. You don't have Bitcoin.

At least they don't show that you're going to have Bitcoin. You have an IOU for Bitcoin, which seems to be irredeemable. You basically can hold the IOU or you can sell the IOU later. I'm not a fan of this model again. In a way, I like that it legitimizes Bitcoin a little bit in that people will have more touch points. They'll see it offered by a bank and be like, oh, maybe this is legit. And a lot of that stigma will start to go away. However, I very much, again, think that people should self-custody.

I also, the part about the fees, you're going to see why that's effectively obsolete. Like, Coinbase has pretty high fees already. other options do not I know Cash app Coinbase is like 3 to 4% Cash up is like 2% I think Swan I think are quite a bit cheaper Swan Bitcoin quite a bit cheaper than Cashab

But you'll see what's coming down the pipeline That basically wrecks for sure the banks and Coinbase And probably a little bit square too I think Swan might be all right But we'll see anyways Moving on here, Kathy Woods Ark Invest to create a Bitcoin ETF under the symbol ARKB. So Kathy Woods, Ark Invest is creating a Bitcoin exchange traded fund in partnership with 21 shares.

The SEC said last week again postponed a decision to approve the first Bitcoin ETF. Wood, a longtime Bitcoin bull, has been buying up proxies for the digital asset in names such as Coinbase and grayscale Bitcoin truck. So effectively, yeah, you have Ark Invest throwing their hat in the ring with another Bitcoin ETF. They're just piling up. And they just, it's like they're just pushing, kicking the can down the road, trying to put it off as long as they possibly can. It's laughable to me that there's no Bitcoin ETF in the States still. Canada having four plus already just north of the border, which U.S. investors do have access to.

if they ask their financial institutions, you can get your hands on those. You have gray scale trust. You have people investing in micro strategy to get like proxy, uh, to get like a proxy exposure to Bitcoin, micro strategy effectively becoming like an ETF themselves now.

So you have all these people jumping through hoops to get Bitcoin through traditional investment options. Why don't you just give them the fucking product that they want? Like if institutions need to have it in a certain way, just give them the damn product. I would be surprised if we didn't see a Bitcoin ETF at some point in this calendar year or maybe early next year. But I feel like it'll probably be this calendar year. That's just, I'm not really basing that on anything. It just kind of feels like in 2017, when everybody is all hyped about a Bitcoin ETF happening,

I did not think it was going to happen at all. I thought it was going to take years. now I feel like it's going to happen at some point here. Probably, again, within the calendar year, in my opinion. But hey, we'll see. Maybe they'll just keep kicking the can down the road. Regardless, they've got like eight ETFs all piled up. And they can kick to the can down the road.

I'm not sure how much leeway they have now. But it could be months before something like this happens. But at one point it gets to the point where they have to give an official yes or no. And if that final answer is no, then you bet your asset's going to take another few years. If that answer is yes, then expect to see a bunch of them hit the market. Anyways, keep going. Is this good? I don't know. I guess it means that anybody can use Bitcoin. George Soros Investment Fund has reportedly started trading Bitcoin. Well, I mean, that's a thing. Yeah, the investment fund billionaire George Soros,

otherwise known as the man who broke the Bank of England, has reportedly started trading Bitcoin. Speculation on the store to investors firm has waded into cryptocurrencies, stemmed from a report on the street.com, citing two sources who said Soros Fund Management Chief Investment Officer Don Fitzpatrick had given the internal greenlight to actively trade Bitcoin. The firm is also looking at other digital currencies, the report said. Interesting.

I don't know. How do you guys feel about that one? I know you're probably not a fan of them. Okay. The San Francisco's Deputy Sheriff's Association also have been stacking sats. They invested in it. They first made the decision in April 14th, although it took a while to get through. Luckily, they were able to catch the dip rather than buying the top. They even said at the time, Bitcoin is approximately 63 grand per coin.

We were lucky that a market correction occurred and we were able to buy Bitcoin at a lower price. I like to say discount. So kudos to the FSDSA for stacking those sets. El Salvador. I'm kind of excited with some of the developments down there that we've seen. Obviously, they are now making Bitcoin legal tender. That law has passed and it goes into effect a couple months from now, just over two months from now. but a lot of innovation and interesting things being brought down to El Salvador.

One of the ones that I like here, Blockstream, a Bitcoin infrastructure company, I'm sure many of you familiar, is one of the most ambitious in their pursuit. On June 5th, it pledged provisions to connect El Salvador with its Blockstream satellite program, a way to synchronize with the Bitcoin network during times of internet outages or shutdowns, and it announced plans to open Bitcoin mining facilities. You know where. You know where. Volcano mining.

I love it. Samson, now chief strategy officer at Blockstream, told CoinDesk, the company has shipped two satellite kits to the country and said early stage, but high-level conversations are happening around volcano mining or mining powered by geothermal. It doesn't end there, Mao said. Blockstream Financial, a new corporate division, is working to structure a few potential bond offerings on the liquid. network, a Bitcoin scaling system backed by Blockstream. That project is also in its infancy and details of what may be the first state-backed

blockchain-based securities offering are scant. One particular, the bonds might be floated to finance the state's mining operations, which would tap into currently stranded geothermal energy now said, volcano mining is capital intensive. The bond offerings we're proposing will be a critical component of the Bitcoin development in El Salvador, Mal said. It seems like they can get this done quickly. So you heard it fear first. You might be able to buy government bonds for Bitcoin volcano mining, which would be tokenized on the liquid side chain of Bitcoin and easily held in your Blockstream green wallet. We're living in the future. Interesting. I don't know if I would buy like volcano bonds,

but I could see why somebody might. And I like that they haven't spun up like a new shit coin to do so and made some other like is literally on on a side chain of Bitcoin and effectively uses Bitcoin as transaction fees to transmit. dead securities. So that's, I don't know, am I off base and saying that sounds kind of fucking cool?

And it's like government sanctioned securities based on their mining infrastructure in their country, issuing bonds on that. That's kind of funny.

I did not think I would be reading that right now, but here we are. More stuff in El Salvador as well. Athena says it will install 1,500 cryptocurrency ATMs in El Salvador,

Bitcoin ATMs in El Salvador. Anyways, yeah, so Athena Bitcoin plans to invest over $1 million to install ATMs in El Salvador, especially where residents receive remittances from abroad. A company representatives said on Thursday, according to Athena Bitcoin's website, you can use their ATMs to buy Bitcoin or sell them for cash. The firm expects to gradually install some 1,500 ATMs, hire staff and open an office to carry out operations in El Salvador, which in June became the

first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. The move takes effect in September. El Salvador's president Buceli presented us with a tough challenge of 1,500 ATMs. We will go for that, but in phases. We are a private company and we want to ensure that our development in the country is sustainable, said the firm's director for Latin America, Mattias Goldenhorn. I think that's right. Anyways, yeah. So more access. You know, one of the criticisms was how do you cash out? There's going to be multiple solutions for that, but this just kind of adds, adds to that if you want to get your hands on local currency and physical form.

Another way to do it. Now, I would say that ATMs can be expensive in terms of fees. So, you know, people down there may notice that that's an expensive way to do. do things, but that doesn't reflect on if you're just receiving Bitcoin regularly. If you're just, um, if you're just receiving like something through strike or a lightning wallet or whatever, those fees are negligible. It's if you want to cash out to like cash in hand, this way could be expensive. There are going to be some government buildings where you can actually go in and exchange like strike or exchange the credits from like the government wallet, um, and get cash.

So there's definitely optionality. So these guys will then have to compete with those low fee options, which may drive down their fees. Okay, man, we're going to keep going here. Even gold-obsessed Indians are pouring billions into crypto. I hope mostly Bitcoin, but it's early, so maybe not. Anyways, a growing number of Indians now totaling more than 15 million are buying and selling digital coins.

That's catching up to the 23 million traders of these assets in the U.S. And compares with just 2.3 million in the UK. I mean, you've got to take into account the populations of set countries. But the growth in India is coming from the 18 to 35-year-old cohort, says the co-founder of India's first crypto exchange, latest World Gold Council data indicated Indian adults under age 34 have less appetite for gold than older consumers. than older consumers.

They find it far easier to invest in crypto than gold because the process is very simple. You go online, you buy, you don't have to verify it unlike gold. Now, I would clap back to that and say you do have to verify it because, again, if it's sitting a custodian, you don't know what hell is there. If it's sitting in your own wallet, less of a worry. And if you really want to self-verified, then you've got to run a node. So not everybody has to run a node, but the more people that do, the more you keep the network in check,

the more you're not taken by some shady wallet. It is what it is. But nonetheless, again, I think this is such a generational thing. There are some older people that get it. There are some gold bugs that have been turned on to Bitcoin and realize the reasons why the gold standard failed where the Bitcoin standard may not.

But again, that hurdle of the lack of physicality is what gets a lot of older people that are used to physical cash and physical coins and stuff like that. They don't quite trust it. And they only trust banks because they've used bank accounts for so long. Tanzania's central bank is working on the president's cryptocurrency directive. So the central bank is working on a directive from the country's president to prepare for cryptocurrencies. He said, he said many countries in the world. have not accepted or started using these currencies.

However, I would like to advise the central bank to start working on those issues. Just be prepared. So this whole thing is pretty vague. It kind of seems like he's just jumping on the bandwagon trying to get some attention here. There's no specific, there's no specific details around what's trying to be done here. I wouldn't even say I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm just kind of looking at this with a question mark. It could be anything.

It could be, hey, we're adopting Bitcoin as our currency, or it could be, hey, we're making a central bank digital currency. So, you know, treat this one of the grain of salt. It could be a giant nothing burger. It's very likely that it will be or be partially a nothing burger and mildly favorable to Bitcoin. Okay. Guys, this is why we Bitcoin riots in Lebanon over economy, injure 10 soldiers and protesters. Lebanese troops deployed in the northern city of Tripoli, early Sunday, taking positions around major state institutions after a night of protests and riots again worsening against worsening living conditions left several protesters and 10 soldiers injured. Spiratic protests were reported through Lebanon on Saturday as the country's 20-month economic crisis worsened.

The world bank described their crisis as one of the worst the world has witnessed in 150 years. It is coupled with a political deadlock that has left Lebanon without a government since August. The largest protests were in the southern port city of Cedon and in Trinvally, Lebanon's second largest city and most impoverished. Spiratic protests and road closures took place in the capital of Beirut. The important part here, Lebanon has been suffering severe shortages of vital products, including fuel, medicine and medical products, angering the public. Lebanon's currency hit a record low Saturday, reaching 18,000 pounds to the U.S. dollar. The pound has lost more than 90% of its value since the crisis began over 20 months, over like a year and a bit.

That's crazy. Like shy of two years, 90% of value gone. People's savings erased. What this article doesn't go on to cover is why this is happening. happening. It's it's the currency debasement and what happens because of that debasement. The government keeps on printing more money expecting to fix the problem while they're just expediting things down the path they're already on. And merchants can't like if you try to regulate what the currency is worth versus let the economy actually figure it out and be a free market. Same thing happened in Venezuela. Right. You regulate the price of goods based on what the currency should be worth, but you can't import shit based on that logic, right? If your currency is said to be worth something within your own country as a facade, but is actually worth way less around the rest of the globe, what are you supposed to do when you have to import anything? Like, obviously, they import a lot of goods.

And so this happened in Venezuela, early on where they said, oh, hey, meat is too expensive. What we're going to do is we're going to mandate the price of meat be this. And the farmers were like, yo, that's less than their cost to make it. And they said, okay, great, we're taking your farms and we'll do it. And what happened was all of a sudden, they were right. It was lower than the cost that they can manage. So then they started importing meat from other parts of the world with their heavily printed currency and inflation started going and for a short time people were happy.

There was cheap meat. And now they just, they can't afford to even import shit. Same thing happened with TVs, with a lot of electronics, shoes, stuff like that. They tried to regulate the price of said goods, but then the merchants that try to sell those goods are forced at gunpoint to sell those goods at a particular price point. They stop importing because they're just, they know they're throwing away money by doing so. and so then the shelves go bare. And that seems to be what's happening here.

Super unfortunate. Again, this is why we Bitcoin. Let's jump back to that old, the Nidig thing, the fees that I was talking about, how they were like, oh, we think that you'll find cheaper fees on this as compared to what you would get on the market right now with something like, Coinbase or Square or whatever. Well, not anymore. Jack Mallors. He dropped the Bitcoin tab on strike.

By the way, I did a video on strike, but this can now or will be able to buy Bitcoin with this. He said, yo, I'm truly unbelievably excited to announce the Bitcoin tab and the ability to buy Bitcoin on strike. Starting today, Strike will set out to be the cheapest and easiest place on the planet to acquire Bitcoin. He then goes on to say, first of all, he spends like half of this blog shitting all over Coinbase for their high fees and saying that they're using their high fees to then give away shit coins to encourage people to trade. So yeah, anyways, I like how he highlighted this.

Make no mistake when you buy Bitcoin on Coinbase, you are supporting shitcoins. So he said, and he lays out the cost here, $100 purchase. This is what you're left with in Bitcoin after fees. Coinbase 9701. Venmo 9770, cash app 9774. Then he goes on to say that at strike, we believe Bitcoin plus lightning network is fastest, cheapest, and most inclusive. The first open monetary network in human history,

we believe Bitcoin will dematerialize existing monetary networks. And we are in the beginning stages of a grant transition onto the world's first, truly open and global monetary network. As such, gone are the days where closed monetary networks can overcharge on fees. In an open system, the best experience wins, not who is first. As of our typing, our execution costs are below 0.3% and we expect that to drop below 0.1% over the coming months as our volume grows. The more our volume grows, the less our partners charge. We're committed to driving the price to buy Bitcoin done strike down as close to zero as we possibly can.

Yeah. So that's wild. Keep an eye out. I don't have access to this because I'm in Canada. I do have the strike app because I got access to that. But I don't have like updates or anything. I just I'm using it as is. So I cannot demonstrate that, make a video on it until it's available in Canada officially.

But if you have strike and you're in the U.S., check it out. That update should be dropping. I'm not sure exactly when, but soon-ish. And you'll be able to buy a sats for basically no fees. Kudos Jack Mallors. Nailed it again. Good for you. And I just want to finish off with kind of bunch of shit that has been going on lately.

Yes, I know, guys. This is an Instagram page. Shut up. This is just where it's easy to show pictures of like what I'm working on. Anyways, I just finished layered money by Nick Bion. Katya, solid read. I love the context that he takes this in, the layers of the monetary systems that we've seen in the past

versus the layered system of Bitcoin that we're going to see now. So check that if you haven't read it. I already told you guys that I've got the keystone that I'm going to be doing a video on soon. I just started a book called The Seventh Property Bitcoin and the Monetary Revolution by Eric Yakes. So far so good. I'm about three chapters in pretty solid.

Check it out. I also just received the foundation passport, another air-gapped hardware wallet. So again, this will be happening at some point in July. I'll get to all of these things. And I also just received my CASA multi-sig platinum package where they send you three devices, in this case, two treasers and a ledger and Faraday bags and everything. And that will be used to set up a three of five multi-sig, Rucasa. I'll also likely demo a two of three version of the multi-sig through them, which is much

less expensive. So yeah, anyways, lots of stuff coming down the pipeline. And those will be some of the tutorials I'll be working on in the coming weeks. I think I'm also going to do a blue multi-sig blue wallet using only the wallet itself. So not using any devices, just using like two phones. And the reason I'm doing that is because particularly in El Salvador, people may not be able to afford extra devices, but cheap Android phones may be a good way to secure Bitcoin via multi-sig. So I'm going to do that, get that translated to Spanish. Anyways, lots of stuff. This is a long one. I had a long one last week, too. Anyways, guys, thank you so much for watching and or listening. Please hit, like, subscribe, and share. All those things help so much to get more

eyeballs on the show. Thank you for dropping all your comments. If you want to hit up the sponsors to help out a show in another way, Len, Bit Buy, Bit refill, Bill Fottle, and Keystone, all linked below. And if you really liked what you saw, you can always draw up over to my strike. That is strike.combe slash BTC sessions. It'll take you to this little tip page. You can pretty much type in whatever you want, hit the tip button, and then it'll give you a QR code to send a Lightning Network Transaction 2, which is pretty rad. Actually, it takes regular Bitcoin, too. Huh.

You learn something new every day. I didn't think that the tip page did that. Awesome. Anyways, you can do that if you like. Either way, thank you guys so much for being here. As always, I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This was your daily session. I will see you guys next time.

Have a good night.