BTC Sessions - Fidelity & BlackRock Send Chilling WARNING to ALL Bitcoin Investors | VP Message from Strategy World

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Fidelity and Blackrock just made some huge predictions about Bitcoin's price... only to be outdone by the man himself... Michael Saylor! Tune in to find out what they said!🔥 Don’t miss this action-packed episode! Subscribe, hit the bell, and join us LIVE to stay ahead of Bitcoin’s biggest moves! 🚀—------------------------------BOOK private one-on-one sessions with BITCOIN MENTOR! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more - all from a team of top notch educators that I've personally vetted.https://bitcoinmentor.io/—------------------------------FOLLOW Simply Bitcoin & BTC Sessions on other channels:Simply Bitcoin on Youtube: youtube.com/@simplybitcoinSimply Bitcoin on X: x.com/simplybitcointv Nico on X: x.com/bitvoltBTC Sessions on X: x.com/BTCsessions—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL BUY BITCOINhttps://bitcoinwell.com/btcsessionsMINING DISRUPT CONFERENCEhttps://www.eventbrite.com/e/mining-disrupt-conference-2025-fort-lauderdale-florida-tickets-980017277057?discount=BTCSESSIONSCOINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions AQUA WALLEThttps://aquawallet.io/NUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://nunchuk.io/individualsHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://debifi.com/#bitcoin #crypto #btc #money

Fidelity just told every public company on the planet, buy Bitcoin now. Not in five years, not when the time is right, now. At Strategy World 2025, the $4.5 trillion asset manager laid out a chillingly bullish case, while Black Rock's Larry Fink double down recommending a 2% allocation across the board. If that happens, we're staring down a market case. cap of $18 trillion and a Bitcoin price over $850,000 per coin. Let's take a listen to what the VP of Research at Fidelity Digital Assets, Chris Cooper, had to say.

We'll pull up the screen here. Here we go. And then you compare this to Bitcoin. Average annual return last five years, 65%. So the question to companies out there is, number one, What's your return on invested capital? Have you calculated it? How does that compare to your cost to capital?

Are you generating shareholder value? Do you have extra cash? And if so, what are you doing with that extra cash? And then the ultimate question is, what's your current opportunity set? What are the investment ideas and opportunities that are in front of you? And do you think or do you believe the return on those ideas or opportunities will exceed the opportunity? cost of Bitcoin. Very interesting thoughts from Chris there.

Now, the interesting part here is that Michael Saylor says, that's just the beginning. He's now predicting that AI will ignite a tidal wave of demand, pushing Bitcoin valuations that make BlackRock's target look tame. His latest projection, it's way higher than you think. And he's betting micro strategy on it. All this, while Fidelity's ETF sees surging inflows, gold looks ready to pass the price action baton to Bitcoin, and governments, yes, plural, are now making historic public moves that could reshape the global financial landscape. This isn't hype. It is indeed a coordinated global shift, and the FOMO has just begun.

Stick around because we're breaking down all the numbers right now. I am Ben. with the BTC sessions. This is your weekly session. All right, and I'll bring in my co-host with the most. Nathan, how you doing, buddy? Ben, I told you like 10 minutes before we started. I'm great. I'm not sure why you're asking me again. But I am curious. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on that Spanish banking situation I saw kind of floating around there. I feel like honk honk, you might have some feelings about the banks. And also, I hope we can kind of get into it a little bit later. Did you see the contentious push from

core that they're going ahead with that definitely no consensus pull request? Yeah, there's a lot going on there. I think we'll get into that in the later segments of the episode. I guess for now, let's go ahead and tackle everything that

I discussed from the get-go. Let's chat about this Fidelity presentation that went on. So, of course, Fidelity is Chris Cooper. was presenting the investment case for Bitcoin at Strategy World 2025. I believe this is the third very Bitcoin-centric one, if I'm not mistaken. And so he had some interesting things to say.

Quotes here, corporations often focus on volatility, but volatility isn't risk. Permanent capital loss is. He cited inflation and currency debasement as the real threats-facing-facing balance, sheets today showing how even traditional safe havens like U.S. Treasury bonds have suffered negative real returns over time. And again, this is a thing that a lot of people that are chasing yield forget to account for. Like, what's your actual purchasing power at the end of the day? And then he says to address concerns about Bitcoin's volatility, he offered two practical strategies. One is position sizing and two is long-term thinking. He said Bitcoin doesn't have to

be all or nothing. It's not a switch. It's a dial. I'll actually quite like that quote. He said even a one to five percent allocation can significantly improve a corporation's risk-adjusted return while limiting drawdown exposure. And actually, we're friends with some people that have been trumpeting this very same narrative. Do you want to maybe chat a little bit about our buddies over at Rockstar? Oh, yeah. These guys have been saying the same sort of thing. They been real estate experts for so long and they're helping their members see like, hey guys, you got to take a look at Bitcoin. You got to take a piece of it. You got to add it to it. But I got to love it. There's something about the like, you know, think about a long term time

horizon and also correct positioning for your life circumstances. I feel like that should be obvious. Like he's like he puts that out as like great advice. It kind of reminds me, even as talk in the beginning, again, I could be off on this, but it reminded me of, do you remember, oh, what was it like the relevance? No, it was the two guys from office space that just set you down and go like, what exactly do you do here? Like going to these companies and mean like, you should increase shareholder value and I can't think like they're sitting there going, damn, I have, you know, what have I been doing this whole time? I've just been burning capital for no apparent reason. What would you say you do here? Right. It seems so obvious to us in the

space because we've had, we've found something that allows us to tap back into savings again. And it's incredible to watch even people at this level are friends at Rockstar. They're all starting to get it, but really, realistically, the end of the day, it's just going back to savings. And I love it. I absolutely love it. Yeah. And it's, it was really cool to see the rockstar guys presenting on stage in front of like 1,100 real estate investors and showing charts side by side is here's, here's your regular portfolio of owning a few properties. And here's your portfolio owning a few properties plus maybe five or 10% exposure to Bitcoin. And it wasn't, not even in the ballpark, not even close.

you blew them out of the water. And this Fidelity and, you know, rockstar real estate that we're talking about, it's very much in line with Black Rock and their strategic, you know, allocation that they've been trumpeting. And, you know, so they had Robbie Mitch Nick, head of digital assets at Black Rock. He was at token 2049, which, oh, good Lord, but regardless, talking about how institutional views on Bitcoin could dramatically shift if it can behave independently of risk on equities. And so he stressed that Bitcoin trades with low or even negative correlation to left-tail events.

Then it becomes potentially a very important portfolio asset to all manner of institutional portfolios. And in his conclusion, he suggested that Bitcoin could transition from a speculative bet to a strategic necessity in the eyes of large investors. This quote was, the conversation goes from, is it too risky for us to it might be risky not to own any? And that's something we've definitely heard in the Bitcoin space. And furthermore, to mention their allocation preference,

Larry Fink's gone around and he's been saying, you know, that sovereign wealth funds, they should be putting in two to even five percent. And that, again, that's a dramatic shift just in this past calendar year. He's saying you should at least be having two percent allocation. And when you go and you do that back of the napkin math, it's something like it puts you up in the range of what I think it's in and around between $900,000 per coin. if there was that 2% allocation across the board. So it's pretty wild.

And the interesting thing is we're starting to see this actually play out. So earlier, just last, yeah, about a week ago now, Fidelity was like, it looks like gold that just had a pretty epic run, especially for gold. Especially for a dead rock. Yeah, exactly. It just had a pretty epic run, but Justin Timmer over, he's at Global Macro at Fidelity, he said that it's Bitcoin's turn to take the lead and that there's going to be like a passing of the baton. And I mean, what has very much happened, even just price-wise, if I flip over to what we're at

$102,000, we were up in mid-hundred and threes earlier, like we've been, we've been, we We've been having a good month. Like, it's been pretty solid. It wasn't, just a month ago, we're in the 70s. Holy shit, that was a month ago. Yeah. Yeah. Again.

Oh, God, I love Bitcoin. For such a low time preference bunch, our memories are very high time preference. Yep. Nope. Fair enough. I like to congratulate everybody. We've now re-entered the You Were Right phase of the Bitcoin cycle, enjoy it while it lasts, right?

Take it in, breathe it in. His girlfriend's time, totally fine. Don't tell the wife. We're all okay on that. But even I just got to add jumping back for one second, too. I couldn't help but think about it. But I love, like Leon Wencom was at that rock star event as well too. And these guys do an amazing job of showing how just the smallest little allocation can do huge things for your portfolio.

And what I can't help but think about is like, yes, even a little bit amount of freedom is good for everyone. Everyone needs at least a little bit. And it just boosts everything right up. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, just the price action is not. the only indication that gold has indeed passed the baton to Bitcoin, the ETFs, BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF, surpassed gold, the gold rival with $6.96 billion in inflows this year. So once again, you know, gold tends to go first and then Bitcoin replicates that. And so I mean, all of this

points to some of the reasons why sailors probably so damn bullish lately. So there's a couple clips of his that I want to play. One, where he's talking about how AI is going to be responsible for massive amounts of productivity and thus purchasing power in Bitcoin. And then another where he's talking about the size of Bitcoin as a global asset, as it matures. Let's take a quick listen to him here. Companies are going to create extraordinary products. extraordinary services, there's going to be a hundred X increase in productivity.

There's going to be a hundred X increase in everything. We're going to produce more of everything in every way that everybody can imagine. And if you're a corporation, if you're a private actor, if you're a capitalist, what are you going to do with that capital? You're going to roll it into Bitcoin. The AIs are going to want to buy the Bitcoin. The companies are going to buy the Bitcoin. the Bitcoin, the demand is going to be for the most scarce, desirable, liquid, fungible capital asset. And so the explosion of productivity with digital property and digital intelligence and digital labor will create an explosion in demand for digital capital. And I think all of those

are just mutually beneficial trends. And if you're a company, you just want to figure out how your shareholders benefit, how your customers benefit, how your employees benefit from this trend. And let's take a look at this second clip of him where he's talking about Bitcoin's market cap in the coming 21 years. There we go. See, we see an industry that's growing from $2 trillion to $200 trillion. You know, when Bitcoin is a $200 trillion asset, what is it? Okay. Well, it's still going to be smaller than equity in real estate and bonds. It's just going to be noticeable. It's the emerging global monetary asset.

It is digital gold. It is 10 times better than gold, maybe 100 times better than gold. So what? So I mean, again, 200, Nathan, do you want to do some napkin math? I feel like you've already done this. But let's do some quick napkin math, a $200 trillion, market cap for Bitcoin. What's our per coin price in that realm? Easy back at the napkin is from two trillion to 200 trillion. We're looking at 10 million per coin. So if I'm going a little more

specific, it's going to be just slightly shy of 10 million per coin, something like 9.5 over the total 21 million. But of course, it's not even accounting for loss and all that fun stuff as well, too. Holy hell. Yeah, it's pretty wild. And again, so again, I see people that when people are chatting about, oh, are we celebrating corporations and governments and all this kind of stuff, you know, and there's this, in my opinion,

there's a completely misguided opinion that other other like large institutions and governments getting into Bitcoin somehow co-ops it. That's bullshit. That's total bullshit. Because what it does is it puts a level playing field for all. And if you're stack and stats,

but there's also governments and, institutions around the globe stacking stats at the same time, even though they are perceived as and rightfully labeled a lot of times as potentially your enemy, the thing about Bitcoin is, your enemy being able to use Bitcoin actually makes it better and stronger for you. And this is something that Jeff Booth often says. The fact that anybody can use it, like, did you really think that governments and corporations were just going to stand idly by as, as every average PLEB stacked a completely new reserve asset on the globe. And they just sit it out to the bitter end and then switch over it.

No, they're going to understand what's going on. And they do understand what's going on. Again, Fidelity, alluding to that, governments will be significant Bitcoin investors in 2025. They said this back in January. And we have plenty to talk about in that realm. But why will governments be significant buyers in 2025? Well, they know what's up. They know that global M2 money supply is skyrocketing.

And Bitcoin tends to follow that. It lags, but it tends to look, it's like perfect lockstep with M2 money supply. And look what money supply is done. and Bitcoin is just keeping up. I fully anticipate it's going to follow along with M2 money supply here. So what was the thing you were saying before we started? They're both the... Oh, they're both the firemen and the arsonists.

The government gets to come in and then print and then try and clean it up and then take advantage of it now, too. They're going to be capturing their own kind of inflation spread. Yeah, yeah, it's wild. So on the other side of the jump, we're going to take a quick break here. If you're enjoying the show, please do smash that like button. It helps a ton. And also, we're going to be chatting about there's been a number of governments. There's been a lot of change on the state level in the U.S., some big moves, some historic moves,

and we're going to address those in just a moment. So we'll see you guys in a sec. Get your lightning while it's ready too, because we're going to give away some stats too. See you guys in a minute. Bitcoin Well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada. and the U.S. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place to be making large buys at their OTC desk of over $50,000.

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If you're looking to make use of your capital, don't sell your Bitcoin, borrow against it. You can head over to debify.com to check them out or simply scan. All right, we are back in. We're going to give away some stats really quick before we dive into all of the latest news in and around. Government's making moves here. This is, of course, Bitcoinwell.com. If you're not already signed up, scan that QR code there. You can check them out and you'll learn some points that you can toss in the Bitcoin wishing well.

But get your lightning wallets out because whoever scans the upcoming QR code, code first is going to steal the sats from everybody else. The way that it works is when you sign up, when you buy Bitcoin, when you refer friends, you're in points. You can use those points to toss a coin in the well and win up to a million sats every single time. You can also redeem it for swag now too, which is pretty cool. So let's go ahead, toss it in the well.

And whoever scans first will run away with the sats from everyone else, 575 sats, up for grabs. You've got to scan that with a lightning wallet in order to redeem. If you get it, let us know in the chat. We love to hear it. But with that, let's continue on. So I want to frame up this next section here. I want to frame it up with a clip of the new Treasury Secretary here, talking about the United States should be the premier destination for digital assets,

and then we'll see how that's playing out in practice. So let's take a quick listen. We believe that the United States should be the premier destination for digital assets, and as members of this committee and the Senate are attempting to do, create good market structure around that so that U.S. best practices are used around the world. And that's really the point, right, is having American U.S. best practices to sort of set the pace for others to follow rather than us trying to fill in the holes that others, that may be created by it as others set that pace. Yes, sir. And also, the digital assets are an important source of innovation that will drive the

that can drive usage of the U.S. dollar around the world as with stable coin legislation. there is speculation that there may be up to $2 trillion of demand over the next few years for U.S. government securities from digital assets. This is an interesting play on their part, given that they're like, oh, no, there's a push to get away from the U.S. dollar. But if they lean hard into this, then they could maintain that demand a little bit longer than would have been natural. So before where it was like putting up barriers, now they're like, take our stable coin, please. That's my read on this.

I love that Scott Bassent looks and sounds exactly like AI would generate the Treasury Secretary if I asked it to. I feel like he just fits that to a T. But aside from that point as well, too, I had a wonderful conversation with Tom Luongo on this, but I find it interesting

that in particular, Tether is really setting themselves up to take both sides of this trade. We've got 21 with Jack Mallors, and they're stacking Bitcoin themselves, as well too. And then they're going to be the ones that's going to be issuing the dollars to the rest of the world. And so the rest of the world goes, no, no, I'm good now. I want just Bitcoin. It's quite the, it's quite the move. Yeah. I've got to say, they've got a hell of a racket going on

there. They're going to, they're going to facilitate what's perceived to be a way to save the US dollar. and then they're going to use that position to stack the dollar's replacement in their coffers. And then when it all collapses, they'll have the replacement and like just just coffers absolutely full of it. It's hilarious. It's quite the picks and shovels move on changing global reserve currency. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And now this favorable kind of environment has contributed. to a lot of states being interested in having their own strategic Bitcoin Reserve. We've got the U.S. one where they're finding, how do they refer to it? Tax-neutral, right? Yeah, taxpayer neutral. Yeah, yeah, budget neutral. Yeah, exactly. So they're not spending money.

They're just finding waste and then stacking stats with it. So last week we had kind of like a disappointing, Arizona slapped it down. However, we first saw this two days ago, New Hampshire, first state to pass a strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill into law. Pretty wild to see. I was kind of worried that we're going to get a whole bunch of slapdowns initially, and then it would be the time would be later. But now the precedent has been set in New Hampshire.

Again, first state to pass a strategic Bitcoin Reserve. bill into law. And, and this one comes with some nuance and maybe I'll get you to dive into it. But funny enough, after slapping it down, Arizona signs strategic Bitcoin Reserve into law. So Nathan, you did some peeking around on this. What is the deal with this? Because it was vetoed. Yep.

And now it's signed into law. So what the hell is the difference? Why would they approve this one but not? There were multiples. So what's going on? Arizona really missed the boat on this one because they have the opportunity to be first as well, too. But essentially, there were two bills that were moving through. And they struck down the first one that would have allowed them to allocate a 10%

like the state's kind of coffers towards a Bitcoin position. The second one that they moved through, I've got it here, do, do, do to do, that essentially she rejected the first one, deciding it is untested. However, there was another bill that she did allow to pass, which would allow them to move basically already seized assets into that position, doing the same sort of taxpayer neutral move. So they can, things that have been unclaimed, which is such a weird way to say, but like unclaimed Bitcoin or things that they already have in their custody, they can then move into that strategic reserve position. So a little bit nuanced, not as great. But man, I got to give the shout out to New Hampshire. Of course, of all places, I'm so happy.

I'm so happy for all the plebs that are there. Of course, it's the free state project state. It's the pork fest state. It's the ones that are going to be the first ones to move in on this. And I would add as well, too, and I know we're going to get into a bit more, but I think we're only halfway there to massive state adoption. Because first things first, we need that first mover, and then you need that first follower. But from there, everyone comes into play.

Yeah. And let's, I want to outline a couple little things on this New Hampshire one. It's kind of cool. So this is what the bill actually delivers. So lets the treasurer buy Bitcoin. It says it authorizes reserve purchases of Bitcoin or any digital asset with a market cap above $500 billion, which today it's only Bitcoin. Then it says it caps holdings at 5% of the total state funds. And then it says it mandates robust U.S. regulated custody.

assets must be held in state-controlled multi-sig with a qualified custodian or through U.S. exchange traded product, maximizing security and transparency. Now, I'll say that exchange-traded product, a CIG thing better with a qualified custodian. I don't know. It'd be pretty sweet if New Hampshire could just hold their multi-sig

strategically. That'd be pretty good. And this takes effect 60 days after passage. So, pretty cool. Even on that note, I just got to throw out there. New Hampshire, if you're looking for someone to help you with that multi-sig, mentor Ed is living there. One of our great guys.

He can definitely set that up. I couldn't help but notice that 5% as well there too. It looks like somebody's been listening to BlackRock. Exactly. There's a common thread here that's going on. Now, these are the only two states. There's more ground been made in Texas. Texas just passed the reserve bill out of the House committee.

They are this close to being third. in line. And last week we took a look at the State Reserve race. Here's that page again. Before there was nothing in the enacted. Now we got to Arizona and New Hampshire. And then these are the other Arizona bills that were there. And then Texas right behind. So they've moved on to Chamber 2 and it just needs to be enacted. So basically vote here. And then they've got either a veto or not, right uh north carolina not far behind they're at committee too and then we've got all these other bills that are just waiting to move on of course there haven't been all successes you can see some of the ones that were stopped dead in their tracks earlier on but now that precedent has been set i have a

feeling that we're going to be seeing a whole lot more uh people making it to the finish line here or states making it to the finish line here which is interesting uh now you brought up it's It's not just the states that are looking at this stuff. There's been some other interesting. Our favorite world gallivander, who's been on the run there, Nathan? Yes, the Pied Piper of Bitcoin, Mr. Samson Mao, has been traveling the world and getting everybody to follow him. He's been hanging out with a number of different countries, including Japan, which you've

got pulled up there as well. Yeah. So he met with the Bank of Japan. Their second meeting. The first one is in 2024 with Adam Beck, who was recently on the show. actually, met with the Ministry of Finance. I'm not sure what diet member means, but... He's trying to lose weight, but thank you.

Yeah, exactly. Vice Minister of Justice. So he's been making some moves in Japan there. Also, looks like Taiwan. Again, Bitcoin Reserve Strategy being considered in Taiwan. And of course, Samson Mao has his fingers. Yeah, so again, he posted this. Taiwan is moving towards a Bitcoin strategy.

He met with a legislator, Zhu Chunko, to discuss the possibility of adding Bitcoin to the nation's financial reserves. Again, they met in Congress, discussed the significance of Taiwan establishing their reserve, not only for national security, but also for financial resilience. So, yeah, he's been, I've never been to Taiwan, but it looks pretty sweet. I'd like to visit one of these days. And I mean, it's not even on, it's not even on a country level, state level. It's also happening a lot more locally municipal, friend of the show, recent guest. Also, mayor of Vancouver, Ken Sim, awesome dude.

And his quote here, it would be financially irresponsible for the city not to buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin could fund the city for the next 100 years. I will die on this hill. It's not mincing words there, is he? No, he's definitely jumping in two feet. Well, he's got the Bitcoin monk, Jeff Booth, behind him, whispering in his ear and guiding him on this journey. So when you've got advisors like that, it's very easy and right to be so damn confident.

The other thing, even jumping back to Japan and Taiwan, there's two things that didn't necessarily see mentioned there that I think are major influences on what's going on. And I think as to the likelihood of they get on board, we have the kind of Asian adoption, Bitcoin, boom, is one, Japan, Metaplanet. I feel like they're kind of like another case study the same way that micro strategy was for the U.S. So with their success, you can't help but think that the officials, again, governments are just people. They're also greedy too. You can't help but see that success and maybe think that there's something there. And the other one is, correct me if I'm wrong, Ben, but doesn't Taiwan make a whole bunch of chips?

Wouldn't this be a wonderful place to maybe get into the mining side of things? If you've got access to the foundries and the A6 kind of on hand, them not being involved with Bitcoin based on some of their major industries seems like a huge missed opportunity. Yeah, yeah, 100%. I think that all of these things, again, to harken back to the earlier conversation, all of these things, whether or not these entities are friendly or straight up, up enemies, it's just making Bitcoin stronger and better for yourself. So if you do like the people that are stacking sats, you should probably stack more sats. If you don't like the people

that are stacking sats, you should probably stack more sets. So like it all comes around. And that's not the only reason to be stacking sats because you mentioned something off the top of the show. That was a little spooky coming out of Spain when it comes to banking. And I mean, we say it all the time, but the money in the bank is not yours, and we're going to find out exactly what is going on in Spain. On the other side of the jump, we're also going to get spicy with a little bit of chat about what the hell is going on with the contentious stuff with core. It's been a week. It's been something. So we'll be right back.

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The New Rules in Spain, shout out to Mags who shared this or tweet. Black Mirror called, they want their plot line back. New Rules in Spain, cast withdrawals over $3,000,000 requires strict reporting. So the headline here, new rules in Spain, cash withdrawals over $3,000 under strict control. From now on, anyone withdrawing 3,000 euros or more from a Spanish bank, like, at all, this isn't ATM. This is like walking into the branch and being like, hey, can I please have the money that I thought was mine? You must notify Agencia Tributaria, which is Spain's tax agency in advance. If you want to use your own money, you need to tell the tax authorities in advance.

If you're planning to take out over 100,000 euros or more, you'll need to give at least 72 hours notice for smaller sums. A 24-hour notification is now mandatory. So you need to check in with the people that steal your money that you want to take out some of your money. And furthermore, if you fail to notify, you risk a fund. between 1% and 10% of the amount withdrawn, starting at 600 euros and climbing up to a massive 150,000 euros depending on the seriousness of the violation. Banks are now required to block

withdrawals if they detect missing paperwork and must report suspicious transactions, which apparently is just asking for your own money to the authorities, even if amounts are repeatedly just under the threshold. So if even if you're like, you know what, I'll take out $2,500 and then like a few days later, $2,500, and you do that a few times, they're going to be like, that seems mighty suspicious because that's pretty close to the limit in which they would have to then call up Spain's equivalent of the IRS and ask pretty please if they can have their own money. This is fucking insane, but it's coming, as Brad Mills said, coming to a bank near. you in Canada and everywhere.

So watch your ass and self-custy. I use banks so little now, and I love it. Nathan, thoughts here. I actually love this. I think it's very indicative. And you never want to interrupt your enemy when they're making mistakes. So first and foremost, the fact that it's like that $2,500 limit there to not be detected, it just seems ridiculous because $2,500 goes so far these days, right?

I'm sure in Spain, you could get like a bag and a half of groceries. So great on that front. But my immediate thought was like, okay, thank you. You're clearly outlining the major use case of Bitcoin. Appreciate that. And number two, if the tax authority is so concerned about this and the banks are so concerned about this, isn't that scream just like, oh, we should be so confident in their liquidity and funds and availability?

To me, it just reeks of desperation and something perhaps getting a little bit closer towards the end. Like, you don't need to do this if your coffers are totally full. this is this is the counterpart of like oh shit we've got no money we think that people people might be buying things peer to peer between each other maybe trading a bike or buying a stake for cash and we're not getting our cut and if we don't do that we're going to fall apart so i like the fall apart aspect yeah yeah we've i mean and we've seen this before we've seen things like cypress the cypriot banking crisis we've seen it in lebanon we've seen it around the globe in various capacities um we've even even seen it state side what was it uh silver i'm forgetting silver gate bank yeah and and a number of others but but money moves a lot quicker than it used to and so like they they just like got wiped out it's wild to see but it's not it's not even that far from what we have here so like just a quick like we're not quite what spain did but like we're just a stones throw away so like r bc for instance

ATMs will allow you to withdraw cash using your debit or credit card. You can withdraw up to $500 per transaction. So a piddly $500 in some instances with like a large family, that wouldn't, that would like maybe just cover groceries. Like that's how bad inflation is, especially if not a Costco run, dude. If you got to get some toilet paper, you're screwed. Seriously. Yeah. And if you're watching from the U.S., these are Canadian dollars.

So it's even worse. and then $2,000 per day. So like if you're buying a used car, you can't even go to the ATM and like it would be a total shitbox and you still would be able to get up enough cash to buy like a junker car. And then branch withdrawals. Customers can only withdraw more than $1,000 in person at the branch.

So if you want to go and get more than $1,000 out in a single go, if you have a deposit of $5,000 or more with the bank. So you can't have the privilege of going into the teller take out more than $1,000, even if you have more than $1,000, unless you've given them $5,000 of your money. So like the hoops that they make you jump through to access your own money,

again, it just makes me so glad that I just, I've moved to a Bitcoin standard, and I rely on banks as little as possible, which means that if we got this, I would more or less be unaffected, which is a beautiful feeling. So I don't know, man. Like what we really need to do is be telling people,

hey, if you don't know how to self-custasy Bitcoin, then you need to, one, check out the tutorials on the channel. You can find stuff for free and you can do your own research and you can find videos where I walk you through it step by step and it's great. But if you need some handholding, come find us over at bitcoinmentor.io, myself, Nathan, and we've got a ton of other incredible educators that can make sure not only that you actually have self-custy, but you secure it appropriately, perhaps with hardware, perhaps with a multi-sexual, SIG and yeah, we'll have you covered.

But anyways, I digress, Nathan. Maybe we should switch gears and chat a little bit about what the hell has been going on with Bitcoin Core and this contentious fork. Not fork. Sorry, bad term. Don't worry, guys. He's new. Don't say the F word. Don't say the F word.

This contentious push for this change. Do you want to maybe tap on it a little bit? Yeah, so essentially it looks like Core is going forward with the pull request from Peter Todd. That was getting rid of the data carrier size limit on Opper Turn. And the part that really grinds my gears is removing the ability to configure it. So it's not even like default, we're not going to have a limit. It's you can't go in and change it as well too. And regardless of where you come down in this debate,

I think that the way that it's moving forward with a clear lack of social, consensus is kind of concerning, right? That's a little bit of a warning flag. It's like, hey, guys, like, even if you think this is the right move, it's not that we necessarily have to do it now, right? In Bitcoin, it's one of the best advice I ever got from NVK. In Bitcoin, don't rush to do anything, right? You never want to panic.

You never want to rush. And this feels like it's being forced through in record time, which would be a major warning sign. If it was any other situation, maybe it's this one, too, I would consider it a scam. If someone told me that they were being rushed or pushed into an urgent, like, oh my god something's not safe i would go that's a red flag for a scam dude slow down check it out so with that ben what are your thoughts well what i'm what i want to say is i think that the check on actions like this is people being able to run whatever client they

want and so we've seen some shifts in that i want to bring up uh clark moody dashboard here because it keeps track. Yeah, it keeps track of a whole bunch of different metrics, but over here on the far right, right beside our faces here, you can see top node versions. And you actually see knots has been climbing the ranks here. It's now actually, in terms of percentage, it's above the number of nodes running knots

are above the latest version of core. Now, it's nowhere near like a majority or anything, that but you know knots was down in the two or three percent range not that long ago dude beginning of March it was sub like 1.6 I was finding and back then when the mid to early March when it was hitting like 1.6 numbers there were people were talking about that like oh my god it's growing so fast yeah yeah so again like so what it what is knots it basically allows those configurability you know you don't have to turn on those filters but you can and so like I'll just I'll just

show you right now. I did a tutorial on knots earlier in the week. So far, 10,000 people have gone through and watched how to run knots on either desktop. So you don't have to have a plug and play a device. You can just run it on your desktop and connect Sparrow wallet to it pretty easily. But if you have an umbril or a start nine, you can run it on there as well. So I go through kind of the details of how to do that. But I just really quick want to show here. So like here's the Bickrillard. Bitcoin node on Umbrold, just as an example. And so if you go into advanced settings, it gives you all these little toggle switches, like, hey, do you want to relay transactions with embedded data?

Do you want to reject certain types of transactions that are non-monetary token transactions? You can click it on to filter those things out so that you're not hosting those things in your mempool, and it's all configurable here. And so you can pretty much filter whatever you want, and then you can link your wallet to it, and that's your node. And so, you know, at the end of the day, if non-monetary transactions are mined and added to the blockchain, you're still, you still have a copy of it on your, but in terms of the mempool, which is the transactions and waiting, you do have control over that, which can slow the propagation of those, maybe force people to find other ways to do it. But it's more just kind of a show that, hey, Bitcoin, you know, if you're trying to push something that is clearly contentious into production, then people will choose other alternatives. And I think that's the more powerful message of just, hey, like, we don't like this. Okay, we're going to run something else.

If that's how you feel, then go do that. Absolutely. And in that same vein, I've got a session suggestion. And I've been playing around with something new this week. And it is called Parmanode. And so Armand the Parman has made this. It's a pre-installed, fully synceded Bitcoin machine. And so what you can do is you can actually run this yourself.

So I've just been, I'm running it just on an old Intel nook that I've got sitting here. It's kind of, kind of slow the device I have, but I think I'm going to order like a pre-built one from him. But it defaults to Bitcoin knots. And then you just have like a little terminal window. You can actually have like a pre-install or like set up like Sparrow and everything and it all just runs in tandem. It's pretty slick. I like it. And you can like get it from him as like a laptop.

you know, it'll come completely prefab or, you know, as like a little nook. It's pretty cool. And you can install whatever you want. He's also got these really badass ones, Parma Drive. And it's like full data sovereignty. And it looks, it looks, well, I'm kind of tempted to do this because it just looks so badass. But showed it to Armand the Parman, because I'm having a lot of fun. And mine is syncing up as.

we speak. So I'm, uh, I'm pretty excited to get hands on and actually start, uh, actually start playing with it. So I don't know, man. What, what do you think? Are you, uh, are you running knots yourself? I'm running knots. And I got to say, I absolutely love that we've got more people building different options in the space. I, it just warms my heart when I see entrepreneurial and builders, uh, in Bitcoin. So like, that's awesome. I can't, I can't wait to come try it out in your office because I don't have any extra cash at the moment. It's speaking, which funny enough, I just had to throw this in there. I couldn't help it laugh at like that, the 5,000 balance at RBC, because how many Bitcoiners who are like Bitcoin wealthy would be under that limit because they just never keep anything in Fiat so they can't pull a thousand bucks out of the bank. But going back to it, I, yeah, I'm definitely running knots.

I know I'm not the most technical person and I might not have the right answer. But again, I love the adversarial environment. And I love that we have some competition in the space as well too. And a lot of the arguments against it or in favor of removing the data care of us, I'm just, not persuaded by. I think part of it also comes to kind of an engineering versus a philosophical standpoint and whether or not we're kind of acting in advance of things or looking back. So even for example, I've heard some arguments regarding the ability to scale that'll help with scaling options on top of Bitcoin. And my default position is even if it was lightning, I'm not sacrificing

anything on main chain to scale. Right. And then I heard some other comments about like, well, you know, you can just circumvent the network by going straight to these centralized miners. I'm like, yeah, that's a problem, but we don't have to make life easier for them. And I think that is also being corrected as well too. So the combination of notes in ocean and datum and everything that's going on, I don't think this move was necessary. I think that even some of the threats they were talking about would have worked themselves out over time and that we should have been more adversarial to people

who want to draw shit on our money. I love that. Now, I've got one additional suggestion where I, We hadn't announced this yet, but we're going to start doing giveaways, monthly giveaways. And I don't feel I'm overselling it when I say they're going to be fucking awesome. Because first official announcement, every single month, we're giving away a cold card cue, which is badass. And so how do you get that? You, oh, wait, Nathan's, no, do show.

I did my van a white one. I just got the sexy red one. Thank you, Dee. That's pretty sweet. I like that. I like that. So, yeah, we're going to be giving away a cold card queue every single month.

And the way that you get it is just head over to my website, which is btc sessions.ca. I think I got a QR code for that. Do I? No, I don't. I'll fix that later. But anyways, head over to btccessions. orgia. Scroll down till you see the cold card queue and sign up for the mailing list.

And there's a weekly newsletter that's just a recap of all the awesome stuff that we've done this week. And we're going to pick a random subscriber to the newsletter every single month. And we'll just give you a cold card cue. You know, Coin Kite will send it directly to you. I'm super stoked about it. Rodolfo was saying, yeah, let's do it. Screw it. We're doing it.

So, yeah, cold card queue on the monthly, head to BTCSessions.ca. And just scroll down and sign up for the newsletter. And I think starting next month, we're going to, we're going to start slinging cold cards every single month. So that's pretty exciting to me. I think that's going to be going to be sweet. Oh, dude, absolutely. For anybody who hasn't got one, it is my favorite device. It is the one that I love most.

And there's been a number instances. I've had a busy week educating and helping onboard some new people as well, too. And without throwing shade, they were on other devices. And we were just running into hurdle after hurdle after hurdle because features that I have on the cold card. It was like, oh, let's just use this. Nope, that's not available on that device. So now I've got to figure out some sly roundabout way to do everything securely. So if you haven't got one, check it out.

If you want one for free, sign up for the newsletter. And I suggest the red. The black is also quite sexy. Yeah, I like the gold. The little gold flakes. It's Peter Schiff is twitching somewhere. Anyways, with that, we're out. This is a good rip.

Thank you guys. If you haven't already, smash that like button. And most importantly, keep stacking stats, keep stacking skills. I'm Ben. This was Nathan. And this was your weekly session. We'll see you guys tomorrow for Why Are We Bullish?