BTC Sessions - Gaining Attention: ECB’s Lagarde Calls for GLOBAL Bitcoin Regulations ep138

Starting point is 00:00:18 Wasabi wallet and fairly private. Hello everybody. Welcome to the show. It's a nice Thursday, almost noon, here where I am. And we've got some stuff to talk about today. One of the main focuses will be Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, calling for global Bitcoin regulations and some of the deep-seated hypocrisy in demanding, such in light of the traditional banking system. So we're going to dive into that and a whole bunch more today for the news. As always, welcome. If you're in live here in the chat, then be sure to smash that like button. Give this a share. It gets this in front of more eyeballs.

Starting point is 00:01:08 But without further ado, guys, I'm Ben with the BTC sessions. And this is your daily session. All right, let's dive in. Let's get some of our stats up here so we can see where we're, at in the market right now. So I am here on the bitbo.io dashboard. Right now, we're sitting around $39,340 some odd dollars per Bitcoin. A single US dollar will still get you $2,542 sats, although that is gradually trending down. So stack those sats while you can. If you're looking to get through transactions relatively quickly, well, I mean, next block you're going to be paying

Starting point is 00:02:05 around 134 sats per byte, within the hour closer to around 45. Now, as far as total supply that's been mined, 88.5% of all 5,7% rather, of all Bitcoin that will ever have been mined, have already been mined. And that means we're going to be around 90% by the end of the year. Yeah, but I mean, we've kind of bounced back from that dip that we had. We had some people panicking freaking out. You know, we went up to 41, close to 42K, and then we had a big drop down to 30,000 something. And, well, I mean, we're back up.

Starting point is 00:02:46 It's funny watching the news cycles because it's just such an echo of 2017 where as soon as the price went up, there's all these super bullish, exciting articles about how Bitcoin is the next big thing. And then when it drops, as it always does, because it's volatile, it's over, it's dead. I guess Bitcoin's dream is crushed of ever being a currency. We saw all those kinds of articles happening over the past few days as we went through that correction. And I mean, we're basically double from the all-time high of the 2017 rally. And we've done that very, very quickly. And we seem to be turning back upwards.

Starting point is 00:03:28 So yeah, take those articles with a grain of salt. Now, before we dive into the news, of course, quick shout out to sponsors of the show, leaden.com. You can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different services here. They've saved my butt on a couple occasions, particularly with their Bitcoin back loans because I needed to get my hands on dollars, but I didn't want to sell my Bitcoin because that is a taxable event. And I was worried about having to buy back in at a higher price.

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Starting point is 00:04:32 It is 100% air-gapped, meaning you never plug it into anything internet connected. It's all done via QR code. And this means that the keys to your money are held safe and offline. It is open-source firmware. It has a secure element, and it works with all my favorite wallets, ones like Bitcoin Core, Electrum, Blue Wallet on mobile, which is my go-to, Spector, Sparrow, Wasabi, which I regularly use on desktop. So lots of great options there. Check them out. Link below. I'm using the pro. It has the fingerprint scanner and the rechargeable battery. I live on Bitcoin. Of course. I'm all in. Why would I not put my money where my mouth is? So I live on Bitcoin. One of the things that

Starting point is 00:05:14 helps me do that is bit refill. They have just insane amounts of gift cards that you can get for Bitcoin, both on-chain and via the Lightning Network. So a great utility for myself. I can get pretty much anything I need here. And on top of that, when I shop, I earn Sats back. So you actually earn Bitcoin back as rewards as you shop. So be sure to check them out. Link down below as per usual. And finally, if you're backing up any wallet, whether it be on your phone or whether it be

Starting point is 00:05:42 a device like the COBOL or whatever you may have, consider not putting it on paper, consider putting it on solid steel. Because if you back it up with paper, there's the worry of fire damage or water damage. Or potentially just throwing it out because you accidentally mistake it for something else. Solace steel, you will not encounter those types of things. So check out the bill foddle over on privacyprose.io. And with that, let's dive into the news. And as I was mentioning, Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, has been calling for global regulations on Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:06:22 So let's read a little bit here on the Financial Times. regulators are sharpening their focus on Bitcoin and its use in the international financial system after the value of the digital currency raced higher in a volatile rally that fed concerns over its lack of robust oversight by financial watchdogs. That's exactly what we need in Bitcoin, of course. Both the UK's financial conduct authority and the president of the European Central Bank highlighted the need for more stringent regulatory scrutiny for cryptocurrencies this week, noting the extreme volatility and criminal activity often associated with the market. That's a bit of subjective statement, as we'll see in a moment. Anyways, the ECB president Christine Lagarde said at a conference on Wednesday that Bitcoin was,

Starting point is 00:07:12 quote, a highly speculative asset, which has conducted some funny business and some interesting and totally reprehensible money laundering activity. Ms. Lagarde's comments follow a grimly worded warning from the UK's regulator, which reiterated, where am I here? Sorry, guys. Which reiterated to consumers this week that anyone dabbling in Bitcoin schemes should be prepared to lose all of their money, rather. Now, another thing here that I wanted to highlight from Ms. Lagarde, she warned that criminal investigations have, demonstrated very clearly that Bitcoin was used in money laundering, and she called for regulations of cryptocurrency to be agreed at a global level, potentially at the G7 or G20 groups of rich

Starting point is 00:08:06 countries. Quote, if there is an escape, that escape will be used. If anything, it shows that global coordination, multilateral action is needed, she said, adding that the financial action task force on money laundering was increasingly focused on focusing on cryptocurrencies. So let's talk a little bit. She mentions that Bitcoin is being used so much. It's unbelievable.

Starting point is 00:08:37 How much is being used with money laundering? Well, let's fact check that shit right now because only about $2.5 billion have been laundered with Bitcoin since its inception back in 2009, this is significantly smaller than what single banks have discovered to have laundered in a single year. So the total amount laundered through Bitcoin is significantly less over the entire 12 years has existed compared to what a single bank may launder within a single calendar year. And furthermore, every single Bitcoin transaction is permanently recorded in the Bitcoin blockchain and publicly viewable. So contrary to popular belief, Bitcoin transactions are not actually anonymous.

Starting point is 00:09:22 This characteristic makes it significantly harder to launder Bitcoin than a full anonymous form of money, like physical US dollars, which is the most prevalent way to launder money other than the banks, which do not leave any record of transactions. I really like Jesse Berger here. He's the author of Magic Internet Money, a book about Bitcoin. And he quoted this and he said, meanwhile, $2 trillion is laundered through the legacy banking financial system. Every year, more than double the total value of Bitcoin. The ECB should try leading by example and getting their house in order before condemning others.

Starting point is 00:10:07 And the cherry on top here is even Christine Lagarde has been found guilty of financial. crimes, although not punished in the past, found guilty of criminal charges over massive government payout. So effectively, what happened here is she was convicted over her role in a controversial $400 million euro payment to a businessman. French judges found misled guard guilty of negligence for failing to challenge the state arbitration payout to the friend of former French president Nicholas Sarkozy. I highlighted down here a little bit more detail about it. Investigators suspected the payment to the 73-year-old Mr. Tappi or to pay was the result

Starting point is 00:10:55 of a behind-closed doors agreement with the then-president Mr. Sarkozy in return for election support. IMF managing director at Ms. Lagarde was suspected of rubber stamping a deal to effectively buy off the business magnate with taxpayers money. This is the person who's worried about Bitcoin, who's worried about the funny business happening with Bitcoin. She seems to have quite a bit of funny business happening herself. But I digress.

Starting point is 00:11:25 Let's move on. This is making the rounds. And we see stories like this make the rounds literally every single bull run. A computer programmer has just two guesses left. for his password to access $220 million in Bitcoin before the digital wallet locks forever. So effectively, this guy, he holds an estimated 220 mil worth of Bitcoin in a digital wallet but can't remember his password. He was gifted this back in 2011.

Starting point is 00:11:57 It's over 7,000 Bitcoin. But he put it on a thumb drive that it's called an iron key. and these thumb drives, they have their password encrypted. And if you try to utilize the password or you put in 10 different attempts and you're incorrect, well, then it will lock out the entire device, basically bricks it. So that's the situation that he's in. He's got two attempts left. The dude's not going to get his money. Like, I'm very, very, I don't think it's going to happen for him.

Starting point is 00:12:35 So now I did want to highlight something here. A couple different things. Number one, one of the most common ways to lose Bitcoin is not actually being hacked, but user error. And one of the ways that user error can occur is overcomplicating your setup. So like this guy, at the time, the Bitcoin he was holding wasn't worth a lot. And so he wasn't really thinking as much about it. and he put it in something and was kind of careless with being able to remember that password. And, you know, this is what happens.

Starting point is 00:13:12 That Bitcoin, if he doesn't get it in those last two tries, will be locked forever, never to be moved again. And you can basically count that as deflation of the currency because that's, it's like taking that Bitcoin and shooting it into the sun. You're not going to, you're not going to see it again. So I would count that as gone. So you can thank this gentleman, Stefan Thomas, for deflating the currency and upping the value of any sats that you may be holding. So thanks, Stefan. The other thing I wanted to highlight is the bad takes and journalism that we see in Bitcoin every day. Just a little quote here.

Starting point is 00:13:53 It says, according to the New York Times, 18.5 million Bitcoin, which could currently be worth about $140 billion. are currently being held in lost or stranded wallets. Now, there's a lot wrong with what I just read there. Number one, 18.5 million Bitcoin is the amount of Bitcoin that have been mined to date. Not how many Bitcoin are locked in wallets untouchable. No, that's the current amount of Bitcoin that have been mined. There will be 21 million maximum. Furthermore, that does not add up whatsoever with the numbers they've got.

Starting point is 00:14:30 They said 18.5 million Bitcoin. If you actually divide that, if you take 140 billion divided by 18.5 million Bitcoin, the way they have it set, they're saying that Bitcoin is worth about 7.5 grand right now. So clearly they didn't do the math here. Maybe the $140 billion is the worth of what is locked up, but it's definitely not 18.5 million Bitcoin. So anyways, journalism. Let's move on. Okay, new Bitcoin ETF application has been filed in Canada this article on CoinDesk.

Starting point is 00:15:10 A prospectus for a new Bitcoin exchange traded fund or ETF has been filed with the Ontario Securities Commission in Canada. Arks Novum Investments Incorporated file documents for the Arks Novoem Bitcoin ETF on Monday. The ETF is planned to be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker. BIT.U. The manager behind the ETF is Sean Cumbi, CEO of ARCS Nobun Investments. Previously, Coombie held the position of CIO at 3IQ Corp, the Canada-based digital asset manager behind the launch of the Bitcoin Fund, which is also listed on the TSX, which is called the world's first regulated Bitcoin Fund.

Starting point is 00:15:54 Now, New York-based Winklevoss owned Gemini Trust Company will be the sub-custodian of the Bitcoin ETF, the subcustodian is a trusted company qualified to custody the products, assets held outside of Canada. Yeah. So anyways, just another kind of example of, I guess, the maturing of Bitcoin, people taking it a bit more seriously and people actually finding value in it and wanting to have products like this. Now, of course, myself, I'm more of a self-custody kind of person.

Starting point is 00:16:26 I imagine a number of you watching this probably are. Probably most of you are. I'm not super keen on holding something that's actually held by somebody else because I'm not holding that thing actually. So not your keys, not your coins. But that said, there may be some people that are, you know, they're growing up, they've grown up with the traditional banking system their entire lives. Not super keen on change, but maybe they want exposure to the movements of Bitcoin as it is. monetized over time. Hey, this might be for them.

Starting point is 00:17:01 And I mean, companies, things like that. It's a double-edged sword because once again, these are honey pots and you never know what could happen. So not for me, but maybe for some people. Let's move on here. Kentucky proposes to exempt Bitcoin miners from taxes. This is very interesting to me. We talked last week about a consortium of North American

Starting point is 00:17:26 miners that are purposely trying to, they're trying to purposely blacklist and whitelist transactions. They want to mine clean blocks, quote unquote, and only mine ones that are deemed safe by various on-chain analytics software. So if a Bitcoin transaction was maybe linked to something that may be kind of iffy and they're not quite sure, oh, could this have been used in something that is. potentially not allowed within the US, then we just won't mine those transactions. We won't put them through.

Starting point is 00:18:05 The issue with that is they give themselves a greater degree of compliance burden, which is very costly. And they leave those transactions out there for the rest of the globe to mine. So people in jurisdictions that don't give a shit about this are just going to mine Bitcoin as they see fit. And that will, like I said, it will cost the white listing miners more money to comply, and they will have less revenue from available transactions to mine. So I think they'll kind of price themselves on the market.

Starting point is 00:18:40 Now, Kentucky is trying to do something quite the opposite. They're trying to incentivize miners to come there. So Kentucky lawmakers have submitted a bill that proposes to offer tax breaks to Bitcoin miners seeking to tap into the energy-rich region. Representatives of the lower house of the Kentucky General Assembly have presented a draft tax incentive for Bitcoin miners. It aims to increase the attractiveness of the state for commercial cryptocurrency mining.

Starting point is 00:19:11 Now, the measure entitled an act relating to the taxation of the commercial mining of cryptocurrency was submitted by state representatives, Steve Rudy and Chris Freeland, In the preamble, they pointed out that Kentucky could become a national leader in mining because of cheap electricity. The bill exempts miners from paying 6% sales tax or 6% excise taxes on electricity and equipment bills. According to lawmakers, the benefits will help the region compete with other states. So I think you're going to see this all over the place.

Starting point is 00:19:48 I think you'll start to see jurisdictions rather than what we've seen in the past, penalizing Bitcoin miners, offering incentives so that industry will move there. Kentucky is just one example. You've seen similar things, not necessarily in mining, but in general in Wyoming, trying to attract businesses and financial institutions that want to deal with Bitcoin. I think you're going to see this. And you're going to see it not just on a state level, but you're going to see country by country trying to woo Bitcoin miners or Bitcoin related companies and entities and financial

Starting point is 00:20:22 institutions to their jurisdiction. These are just kind of the first inklings of what we'll see because people will jurisdiction shop when you have a global decentralized censorship resistant money. Yeah, this is just the first of many examples that we will see. Up next, and happy to see this too. This is from the Bitcoin Times, BTC Times. Bitcoin scaling comes to Coin Corner as the exchange launches Lightning Network support. So Coin Corner seamlessly launches Lightning Network support.

Starting point is 00:21:01 The United Kingdom-based Bitcoin Exchange has become the latest major trading platform to support Lightning Network. Traders can now use Lightning Viacorn Corners website with a mobile implementation in the works. Those unfamiliar, if you don't know what I'm talking about, Lightning Network, effectively regular Bitcoin transactions incur minor fees and these pay the miners that are securing the network. And because Bitcoin itself can only handle a limited number of transactions or a limited amount of data every 10 minutes, you basically bid with fees to try and get through. first. And if it's busy, then you might have to pay a higher fee. If it's not busy, you can drop your fees or if you're not in a rush, you can drop your fees. They're set by the user, not by the

Starting point is 00:21:48 network. It's just a free market. Now, in order to get away from that, if you're trying to do a lot of small transactions and you don't want to be paying fees and you don't want to be waiting for confirmations, you can utilize the Lightning Network. And so what this does is it locks Bitcoin up on the base layer so that it can be used very, very quickly in layers above. You can kind of think of it, I guess. A comparison would be if you used your savings account to do your regular day-to-day transactions, you get dinged with fees all day long. Whereas if you use your checking account, then you can do as many transactions as you want.

Starting point is 00:22:25 You don't have to worry about it. Similar with Lightning Network, you're paying maybe fractions of a penny to get transactions through and they instantly are available to be spent again. So here it says under the title gradually, then suddenly, despite being around for almost three years, Lightning has yet to make sweeping inroads when it comes to exchanges, making coin corner an early mover. Leading Exchange BitFinex as well as younger platform River Financial are among

Starting point is 00:22:56 those already supporting Lightning, while U.S. Exchange Cracken announced in December that it planned to integrate Lightning in 2021. For Scott, head of Coin Corner, however, the protocol's mass rollout is a matter of if and not when. Quote, the Lightning Network is clearly the frontrunner for making Bitcoin payments at scale, so innovating now and staying ahead of the game is what we want to do. He added, other exchanges will follow suit in the coming years. They are just prioritizing their developments in a different order to ourselves. Unfortunately, at the detriment to the progression of the Bitcoin network and infrastructure.

Starting point is 00:23:36 And I echo this because I agree that the people that move on lightning early will definitely be in a much better position. Because if you're allocating man hours and resources to adding coins so people can gamble, I don't think that's a long-term proposition. Of course, people are always going to want to gamble on alt coins, things like that. people always love to speculate. But I think in the long run, the people that will be most benefited are people that utilize exchanges like this that have the interests of their users actually at heart. So yeah, kudos to Coin Corner.

Starting point is 00:24:13 Happy to see Lightning rolling out even more. And if you're not familiar with how to use Lightning Network, if you've never used a Lightning Wallet, I do have a playlist. I'll include that in the show notes. It's not down there yet, but I'll add it in. Or you could just search on YouTube. I've done a few different videos on how to use the Lightning Network for the first time. My favorite is probably Breeze wallet right now.

Starting point is 00:24:37 So you can look that up. It should pop up right away for you. But check it out if you're looking at doing that. I wanted to finish up with a couple last things. Elon Musk, the world's richest person. I think he's dropped down to second again, but he wants to be paid in Bitcoin. Now take this with a grain of salt because it was just a funny tweet. But I liked this.

Starting point is 00:24:56 And I also liked Robert Breedlove's tag on to. it. So Ben Mesrich, he is the author of accidental billionaires, which was turned into the social network, the movie about Mark Zuckerberg. He is also the author of Bitcoin billionaires, which is the sequel to the previous book. And it's all about the Winklewoss twins after the whole Facebook fallout and how they went on to discover Bitcoin, own a large portion of it, and build their new exchange, Gemini, kind of their path through Bitcoin. I really loved that book. It was a lot of fun. Anyways, Ben Mesrich, he tweeted out, he said, I'll tell you one thing. I'm never turning down getting paid in Bitcoin again. And then Elon Musk replied,

Starting point is 00:25:42 me neither, which, you know, he seems to like to kind of poke and prod the Bitcoin community. Anyways, really loved this reply here. Robert Breedlove, he said, a lesson for Elon Musk. Money is simply a tool for moving value across space time. Gold was great for moving value across time, but not space. He's talking about the physicality of it and the tendency to centralize in vaults because of its mass. Fiat currency is great for moving value across space, but not time. And he's talking about the fact that we have all of this legacy banking financial institutions. We have paper money, which is easier to transact with and subdivide. and digitally kind of use that, but it is inflationary.

Starting point is 00:26:32 And over time, it's basically whittles away your value. Now, Bitcoin, he says, is optimized for moving value across both space and time. So I really love that take. Robert always has the best take. Another funny thing about this tweet, by the way, of course, you just know that Peter Schiff had to chime in here. This makes no sense. If you want to buy Bitcoin, do so on your own timing, not someone else's. That way you can buy Bitcoin when you think it's a good price to buy, not when somebody

Starting point is 00:27:03 else decides that it's a good price to sell. Peter, Peter, I always want Bitcoin. I want Bitcoin. I always want to be paid in Bitcoin. I don't want the dollars. That's what he's not getting here. I don't want the dollars. Take the dollars away.

Starting point is 00:27:22 I want the Bitcoin. Pay me in Bitcoin. or if you must pay me in dollars, there's a premium. Anyways, guys, I'm going to wrap it up there. Thank you guys so much for watching and or listening. If you're here on YouTube, please do hit, like, subscribe, and share all of those things. Really, really do help. Thank you guys for being in the comments as well.

Starting point is 00:27:42 I love seeing you there, even though in the news videos, it's hard for me to reply, but I do see you. If you want to help with the show in another way, hit up the sponsors I mentioned down below. That was Ledon, Cobo, BitRefill, and PrivacyPros. io and if you really liked what you saw since we're just talking about lightning you can hit me up with a lightning network tip at my tippin dot me page t i p p p i n dot me slash at b tc sessions with that i'm out have yourselves a wonderful day wonderful evening wherever you may be and i'll see you next time for your daily session

BTC Sessions - Gaining Attention: ECB’s Lagarde Calls for GLOBAL Bitcoin Regulations ep138

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