BTC Sessions - Genius Act LIE LEAKED – Secret U.S Bitcoin Attack | Joe Consorti, Leon Wankum, Tom Karadza

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

The so-called Genius Act isn’t what it seems—a secret U.S. Bitcoin attack may have just been leaked. Join Joe Consorti, Leon Wankum and Tom Karadza to find out what’s really going on, and why Bitcoiners everywhere should be paying close attention.FOLLOW TODAY’S PANELISTS:https://x.com/JoeConsortihttps://x.com/leonwankumhttps://x.com/tomkaradzaFOLLOW BTC SESSIONS on X/Nostr: x.com/[e-mail] 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/—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL - BUY BITCOINhttps://qrco.de/bfiDC6COINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://qrco.de/bfiDBVAQUA WALLEThttps://qrco.de/bfiD8gNUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://qrco.de/bfiDARHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://qrco.de/bfiDCpCRYPTOCLOAKShttps://qrco.de/bg5Dvo#btc #bitcoin #crypto

Did the U.S. just take a massive step towards Bitcoin leadership, or are we walking into a trap of sorts? The much-hyped Genius Act just cleared procedural voting in the House and heads for a final vote tomorrow. It's being sold as a historic chance for the U.S. to dominate Bitcoin and so-called digital assets, paving the way for stablecoin issuers, pumping global demand for dollars, and even creating. new buyers of U.S. treasuries and potentially Bitcoin, like we've seen with Tether. But not everyone's on board. Yesterday, 13 Republicans broke ranks, raising red flags about what's actually buried in the bill. And it might not be the pro-Bitcoin win that many were told it was. We always say that Bitcoin is a Trojan horse, but what if this time the government is trying to Trojan horse us?

So stick around. We're going to take a look at a clip from a prominent Republican, sounding the alarm on some hidden dangers in the Genius Act. And once you hear these quotes, you may understand why the vote could shape the future of Bitcoin in America for better or worse. So today, to discuss this and much, much more, we've got Joe Consorti, head of growth at Thea and institutional lead at the Bitcoin layer. We've got Leon Wankham, author of the upcoming book, Digital Real Estate, exploring how Bitcoin can enhance real estate portfolios. And of course, awesome, all-around guide, Tom Karadza, co-host of the Your Life Your Terms podcast and co-founder of Rockstar Real Estate. So stick around.

You don't want to miss this one. I am Ben with the VTC sessions, and this is your bullish session. All right. I want to welcome to the stage, Leon, Tom, and. And Joe, gentlemen, welcome. And thank you for being here. Before we dive in and kind of chat a little bit about what I showed here, I just wanted to quickly share my screen and show kind of that clip I was referring to in the intro here,

as well as a tweet from another Republican lawmakers. So I'm just going to pull up my screen here really quick. and maybe I'll put us off to the side so we can all look pretty together. So this is Andy Biggs, Republican. He said the Senate's Genius Act creates a framework for a layered central bank digital currency and does not guarantee self-custody the freedom to control your money. House leadership must allow an open amendment process so members can freely debate and improve the bill. And I want to show this clip here of Marjorie Taylor Green.

And she's talking about her concerns around the Genius Act. And this was just a couple days ago. But again, you know, some people voicing some concerns around the language in the bill. So let's take a look and a listen at what she had to say. Right, right. Let me inform you about a vote that I'm very concerned about the Genius Act, that the Senate passed, President Trump is demanding we pass it in the House. The Genius Act has a backdoor capability into a central bank digital currency.

And they are having a second vote on the ban on central bank digital currency. That should be included in the Genius Act. That should be a part of the Genius Act. It should not be separate. And my concern, Steve, is, is the Genius Act will pass. I mean, we'll pass, and this opens the door for a central bank digital currency. So there's things happening extremely fast. And these are not, these are things that regular Americans just are largely against.

We don't want a central bank digital currency. We don't want a future government or administration that can turn our bank account on and off and take our tax money without our agreement. just take it straight out of our bank account. And this is, you know, we want to support a future with digital currency, stable coin, crypto. I know there's a lot of people that want that stuff, but this has to be done the right way. And I'm very concerned about this bill and the fact that we're lacking a ban on CBDC.

All right. So gentlemen, I'll just kind of throw this out there for all of you. one, if you've kind of looked through, how do you perceive what's going on right now as it regards to, you know, this push for more stable coin issuers in a regulated fashion? Do you have worries about leaning into a quasi-CVDC through these mechanisms, or do you think that this is actually a positive thing? So whoever wants to dive in first, if you've got any thoughts here. Yeah, so I'll, I guess I'll start here. I did a couple of videos in a big write-up on the Genius Act, and I love talking about it. One thing I will say to preface is that in the United States, Republicans have control now.

They've got all of Congress. They've got the House and the Senate and the executive branch. And what do they continue to do? They continue to shoot themselves in the foot. It really is quite remarkable. Well, time and again, this is sort of what they do. So what I'll say about the Genius Act is that it doesn't have this provision in it, that outright bans CBDCs.

But the idea that there is this layered allowance for a CBDC to be created is not true, at least the one that they voted on. The big benefit of the Genius Act, to me, is that like right now, stable coins are largely offshore. You know, you have these stable coin issuers who are operating largely offshore. However, they do, you know, back themselves with the U.S. treasuries, right? There is something to the tune of, you know, $500 billion in overseas stable coins, if not a little bit more, that we don't know whether or not they are actually backing themselves by U.S. treasuries, right? And so bringing that into the United States, that'll make it so, A, stable coins are safer for people.

And, you know, saying safer in the sense that meaning you'll know as a consumer, it's backed by, you know, a dollar, right? This stable coin is backed by one equivalent unit of either a dollar or a U.S. Treasury, right? An equivalent unit of a U.S. Treasury. And so that's good. And then the other thing is that that'll bring all of that, like creating this act in order to try to foster innovation and kind of drive stablecoin usage in the United States. That's also great for the dollar, which is great for Bitcoin. It kind of seems strange a little bit of a round about way, but stable coins are a huge way in which people buy Bitcoin is one of Bitcoin's biggest onramps. The United States is the most free and open capital markets globally.

And so, you know, allowing, basically fostering that innovation, trying to draw that stable coin, you know, creation into the United States, onshoreing it. It's operating offshore now. It means that it's good for consumers. It's also good for long-term dollar demand. And it's great for Bitcoin, right? And so, you know, I've said for a long time and then I'll give up the mic, I think the Genius Act is, it's a good thing. I'm happy that it's moving through. And, you know, they still have to do one or two more votes on it, I believe.

I think it's just one and then it reaches the president's desk. I'm happy it's going through. But I've said for a while that the Bitcoin and the dollar are not necessarily competitors as much as they are complementary to each other. Right. That's not to say one day Bitcoin won't totally usurp the role that the dollar in U.S. Treasury is currently play. that's certainly on the horizon, right, you know, for 10, 20, 50, 60, 70 years from now. However, for the time being, having global fiat melt in other countries while the United States

takes this pro-stablecoin, pro-bitcoin approach, it's ultimately good for American citizens. It's good for stablecoins, and it's good for Bitcoin. And so that's where my head's at. I frankly don't know why the Republicans do this time and again. I voted for Trump, right? You know, I'll say it. I've tweeted about it before. And it's like, this is the mandate.

This is what he was asked to do. Then all of a sudden, the people who are in office who are supposed to be executing that mandate aren't doing it. So it's frustrating. They can't get out of their own way sometimes. But that's what I'll say there. Is this the final long bomb kick of the can down the road to like drive additional demand for the dollar? Like just, you know, like make it so that anybody, anybody, anywhere, where on the planet can get access to dollars, so why use their own currency, pump up demand for

treasuries, but is it also potentially the nail in the coffin at some point in the future? Because as with Tether, they've been, you know, taking in dollars, using them to, you know, peg to the stable coin, but holding treasuries, making a percentage back on those and then using the proceeds of that to then stack Bitcoin with the profits. Is that a gradual melting there? It is. So I like to you phrased it, this is like the Hail Mary Canyon kick. Ideally, several years, hopefully decades into the future. What it will do is it'll make it so that these stable coins are going to increase the global velocity of the dollar. So the dollar will be faster. More people will use it globally. And in doing so, it'll inject this treasury demand

at scale, but also what Tether is doing is just like you said, right? They're using proceeds, whatever spread they have to buy Bitcoin. And so even the stablecoin issuers are speculative attacking the dollar. We do it at an individual level. We may have a, we have anyone who has a mortgage is speculative attacking the dollar. You didn't pay off your house. You're buying Bitcoin with their freed up cash instead. So we're all speculatively attacking the dollar at the individual level. Corporations are now doing it. And now for the United States, in order to kind of entrench this demand for decades to come. I mean, it's already pretty entrenched. Now it's just, you know, there won't be another successful currency.

Like the United States dollar will be the last one to die, essentially. So it's kind of a funny situation you described it perfectly. This is the Hail Mary can kick down the road to buy the U.S. dollar a couple more decades, several more decades maybe of time. But ultimately, everyone flocks to Bitcoin, right? It's kind of a strange situation we find ourselves in. Leon, I want to go to you and get any of your thoughts that you may have on the situation, too. And then I'll go to Tom.

Yeah. So I agree that Bitcoin doesn't need laws and regulation to function. If there would have been a law to stop Bitcoin, it would have not worked. But the regulation helps, especially when you look at housing, dual collateralizing real estate and housing, for example, it's not possible if the regulatory framework doesn't exist. So I think that in order to see the positive secondary order effects of Bitcoin, especially on housing,

in order to lift some of the pressure of the housing market that exists right now because people need to invest into housing to outperform inflation, to lift that pressure off. I think regulation is very, very helpful. So I see this as a step forwards to create guidance in a legal framework for entrepreneurs to operate in. So that's a net positive. Awesome.

Tom, I'll go to you as well. Thoughts around kind of this frenzy of activity we're seeing. in and around the U.S. trying to regulate and proliferate stable coins and its effect on Bitcoin. Yeah, I guess I'm torn. First of all, I'm battling internet here, Ben. So if you've got to kick me off, kick me off. I think I got it sorted.

Yeah, okay. I'm torn because I think like I agree with what Joe's saying. I like what Leon said there. It takes some pressure from the real estate market because when we have regulations, we can now use some of this stuff to, to our advantage. But I want to see Bitcoin adoption purely. So I look at this as a long-term distraction. I can see some of my friends getting distracted, talk about stable coins,

stable coin issuance, takes the conversation a little bit away from Bitcoin, delays the inevitable. So personally, I think I'm not, you know, I just see it like a system dying, clawing like you said, Ben, at the last straw, Hail Mary attempt to keep things going. Of course this was going to happen. I'm not too excited about it. I think what I saw, did something get passed in that act? You guys probably know better than I do where they are now, some of the banks in the U.S.

are going to be forced to look at Bitcoin as actual collateral to qualify for lending and that kind of thing. Was that also in there? I thought I just saw that before jumping on here. No. Something about it, Joe, you might know better than me. So I didn't see that ruling. The most recent thing I can think of as far as Bitcoin as collateral goes,

was the FHFA ruling, which wasn't that Bitcoin can be used as collateral for a mortgage, but that it can be used as an asset during loan qualification for a mortgage. Like people wouldn't need to sell their BTC. It would count as an asset. However, banks are moving in that direction. Like JP Morgan, I think a month or two ago, was talking about allowing Bitcoin to be posted as collateral for some of their clients. However, it was via ETFs, but either way, it's a step in the right direction.

Because that's Bitcoin's ultimate role, right? It's pristine collateral. It's the rails that underlie the entire financial. system. The market just isn't caught on yet. Yeah, fair. Well, gentlemen, I'm going to put a little bow on this topic and enough of the stable coins and CBDCs. I'll just say to everybody out there, self-custy or Bitcoin, and don't put your hand in the mouse trap of any CBDC that comes your way. But, of course, this is why are we bullish. And so the show is all about why you guys are so bullish what you guys are so excited about so we're going to uh start down that rabbit hole now

of course everybody that's watching live right now please do give that like button a smash give this a share wherever you happen to be watching helps a ton and shout out to everybody that's in the chat right now but i'm going to toss it to leon first and leon you're going to get the same question everybody else gets uh why are you so bullish yeah i want to pick pick up where joe where you left because I think the monetization of Bitcoin and its use as collateral. That's the most interesting part to me, the replacement of the 10-year treasury and real estate as that global bedrock of the global financial system.

And I think that the relationship between real estate and Bitcoin is really important in order to see how Bitcoin is going to absorb, I'd say, like the next level of the monetary premium that sits in the Fiat system. Because we've already demonetized. silver, we are going to demonetize gold, but calling Bitcoin digital gold is actually a bit, it's not an insultment, but it's like it leads to maybe underestimating what Bitcoin can do. And I feel like real estate being the biggest store value in the world gives a better idea of what

Bitcoin can do. Bitcoin will surpass real estate as well. And it will serve as digital real estate. I agree. It will be that collateral. It's being used that the global financial system being built around both on the individual level in private markets and also in public markets. We're seeing it at the moment in public markets, but I'm also pretty excited about the monetization of Bitcoin on the private side. Because there are within real estate and especially within Bitcoin, you have the ability to build wealth in a privacy preserving manner. And I believe that the public markets give access to larger pools of capital on the corporate level, which is great. And at the same time, it also gives some space for Bitcoin entrepreneurs on the private

level, I think, to really make use of Bitcoin as this pristine form of collateral. So when you talk about unlocking these pools of capital, like on what scale are we talking here as it moves into some of the private markets that you're talking about? I think when, when Saylor said he wants to tap into 1% of the global bond market, his preferred offerings. I think the same thing could be said about real estate because especially, I don't want to talk about these individual instruments now, but I just quickly talk about strike, which is the preferred offering by micro strategy, which has both the option to convert on the upside into common A shares and it has a fixed distribution. So there's an upside in it,

there's income in it. So it's almost like a digital real estate play, less the tax advantages and the leverage opportunity, but there's also less headed. So I think with these preferred instruments, and the same can be said about Metaplanet in Japan, I'm jumping now between real estate and these companies that are using Bitcoin as collateral, but I'm doing that because a real estate company, like an insurance company, essentially is a balance sheet play. So what Michael Strategy is doing, leveraging the difference between the value of their balance sheet and whatever the market attaches to their company is similar to how real estate investors

refinance their real estate portfolios to leverage the value of the properties when they build it, taking away the inflation and whatever the market then prices the portfolio in. So I believe that with these, with some of these offerings, these corporates like strategy, they can tap into the demand for real estate because I'd be interested to see also what Joe and what Tom are seeing. But what I'm seeing is that traditional real estate investors, the ones that wanted to go into Bitcoin, they've done so over the past three years. But there's a large percentage of individuals that save in real estate that have not yet made the leap into Bitcoin. And that is because of regulation of mental frameworks they operate in. and now they have more familiar products that are not Bitcoin and self-custody,

but there are products which are priced around the risk and the yield that is associated with Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is repricing risk and opportunity cost in global markets, not necessarily by the adoption and self-custody, but by offerings, securitized offerings by companies that hold Bitcoin. So this is not something I expected five or six years ago. I didn't see this coming at all. And it's happening faster than I expected. But this seems to be the adoption of Bitcoin at this point in time on the corporate level.

And also on the individual level, because a lot of these securitized products are being bought by average investors. I'll let Tom chime in here because this is your wheelhouse as well. So do you have thoughts around what Leon's seeing here? Yeah, I guess now in the real estate market, I guess for context for anyone listening, we've worked with several thousand clients in Canada on several billion dollars worth real estate investment. And these are like mom and pop adding real estate to their lives. They've over allocated to the stock market.

They decided they want some real estate exposure. And from the years 2008 until about, I guess this year in the last 12 months, it was all real estate discussion. So even on the last Bitcoin cycle from 2000 to 2024, beginning of this year, we really couldn't change the narrative with our real estate clients about Bitcoin, even though we were doing the, you know, talking about this for four or five years. And now I see a change where some of the leading edge of our real estate clients who might have between, you know, five and 10 rental properties are deciding to do a mini Michael

Sailor play kind of to Leon's point there, where they're tapping into the equity that they have in some of these properties that they've owned for 10 years and they're refinancing it and allocating to Bitcoin. And some of them who are really aggressive and are really orange-pilled are deciding to outright sell some of their real estate to buy Bitcoin. And this is something I've really not seen until I would say the last six months. And Leon actually spoke at one of our client events where we had about a thousand people out there.

He went on the stage and basically said, hey, you know, Leon, I don't mean to some, I mean, you were much more articulate than this. I'm about to bastardize what you're about to say here. But Leon basically said, hey, listen, there's this real estate stuff over here, but there's this Bitcoin and you better start allocating to Bitcoin or you're going to lose out. And I think the message to a crowd of a thousand people

who are predominantly real estate investors was very well received. Leon, I'm sure you were probably shocked by that. And then Ben, can I just give an example on a number? Am I too early for that? Yeah. Okay. So this is, okay, and this is kind of what's getting me excited is that for the first time we have an example,

on how to share to real estate investors, how they can think about Bitcoin. And I think to any Bitcoiners, they're going to hear this and think this is, of course, this is obvious kind of stuff. But to this segment of the real estate market, we really haven't done a good job penetrating it. And so one of the reasons I'm really bullish right now is we finally have a way to articulate how Bitcoin can be added to their portfolios and their lives and it's getting their attention. And then they can take it from there. So I just want to give a quick example.

If you take a rental property that is worth in the greater Toronto area of about $750,000, so the value itself doesn't really matter. Every market around the world is going to be different. In this particular example, I'm using a standard rental property for that particular area, $750,000. And in Canada, property has appreciated at about 7% a year. So basically it matches M2. So it's been 7% a year.

Property appreciates 7% a year. So if we take a property at $750,000 and we tell real estate investors, it's going to appreciate it about 7% a year. We all know it's debasement, but let's call it appreciation. At the end of 20 years, that $750,000 property is going to be worth $2.7 million. But now we've started testing this little example where we're explaining to some of our investors, hey, listen, if you're fortunate enough to have some equity in your real estate, you can tap into that equity and allocate it to Bitcoin.

And for some real estate investors, this is a nice way to start thinking about Bitcoin because it's brand new to them. They think it's volatile. They think it's risky. They're not completely orange-pilled yet. So in this example, if they were to tap into their real estate, extract some equity, let's say $100,000. The interest rate on that right now is about five and a half percent or about $456, $458 a month, whatever that works out to. And some of our investors will have like $500, $600, $700, $700 in cash flow. So the cash flow from the property can pay for extracting a $100,000 worth of equity out of that property. If they then allocate that $100,000 of equity that they've pulled out of that property to Bitcoin, the numbers go bonkers over the next 20

years because if we take $100,000 now and we allocate Michael Saylor's 29% compound annual growth rate for the next 20 years to that $100,000, I know I'm generalizing and everyone's going to like, you know, debate if 29% over the next 20 years is accurate or not. But if we do that, listen to this, The $100,000 from the $750,000 property, the $100,000 over the next 20 years turns into $12.6 million. The property at $750,000 appreciating at 7% turns into 2.7. So I just want to recap, you had a property. And if you did nothing with it and just kept it for 20 years, the $750,000 property at the end of 20 years would be worth $2.7. But if you just pull out $100,000 of equity from that property and allocate it to Bitcoin,

a 29% compound annual growth rate over the same 20 years, the Bitcoin value surpasses the property value at year 12 and ends up at $12.6 million for a combined value of $15.3 million. You now took one rental property, again, that was going to be worth $2.7 million at the end of 20 years, but by allocating a little bit of Bitcoin for that time, you turned the property that was is going to be worth $2.7 million into a combined real estate Bitcoin value of $15.3 million. Am I being clear with that example? And this example, and it's the first time because Ben, we've tried everything. You know we've tried everything.

So I know for Bitcoiners, this is going to sound like overly simplistic and everyone's going to be like, you know, yeah, of course, that's how it's going to work out. But for the real estate crowd, the reason I'm bullish, it's the first time we have an example where somebody who has two, three or four rental properties were getting their attention. And they're doing it. I had somebody after we shared this example, grab my arm at the end of one of our events and say, hey, guys, you know what? I was going to do some stuff refinance a property.

You made me think because they were going to refinance it and buy another piece of real estate. But now they thought, hey, wait a second. I'm not going to refinance it and buy another piece of real estate. I'm going to refinance it and buy some Bitcoin. And this is how we alleviate some of the pressure off the real estate. market, we get more and more people allocated to Bitcoin. So now how much capital gets funneled into Bitcoin just from the real estate community? And then of course, some are just going to outright sell their property and say, hey, I'm done with it. I'll allocate. So I'm not sure if I'm,

I shared a bunch of numbers. I'm not sure if that was completely clear. But that's kind of, that's the stuff that I see now. Finally, after years, we finally have a way to get people's attention. Yeah. Sorry, a cricket just landed. I'm in Croatia right now. A cricket just landed next to me. that is like freaking this big. I've never seen something like if I get attacked here. That's why. But anyway, I'd like to know, like, Ben, if that's clear to you or Joe, to you or Leon, I know you have much more advanced thinking on this.

So my example is very basic. But I love to get your take on this. Like, is that something that seems too simple for you guys? Or is that something where you guys think, oh, yeah, like I can see how people are getting it? I mean, I'll let Joe chime in here. I can't believe how well you guys teed this up. Ben, you made a fantastic show here, I'll say, because what I wanted to talk about was exactly this. Nathan, I think you just put in the chat, how big is the global real estate market? Jesse Meyer's latest estimate at Cresis underscore BTC on X.

I assume most people follow them at this point. You've probably seen this chart a million times, but it's real estate is a massive portion of the total global asset value. The total global asset value, as of his latest estimate, is one quadrillion. So we've hit one quadrillion. And real estate is a $370 trillion global market. Now I actually went in earlier today because I was going to write a post on that. I was going to make a video, but then time kind of got ahead of me. I'll make this video tomorrow.

But I actually have some fresh data because I went in and calculated it. The total, and I'll actually pull it up right here. Okay. So to calculate like the monetary premium in real estate, right, like the difference between what its market value is and actually the underlying intrinsic value, if you will. Basically, the formula you can take is monetary premium equals market value minus intrinsic replacement cost. If we take a home in the United States, for example, the median home price in the United States is about half a million dollars, $503,800. The intrinsic replacement cost, right? So the labor

materials, everything, that's $324,000. So the monetary premium, which is the difference between those two, is $179,800. So that means that your house, right, on average, right? Roughly speaking, if you live in the United States, it varies by region. But on average, homes in the United States have 35.7% worth of monetary premiums sitting in them. So that's all speculation, right? You know, that's kind of the investment component of real estate, right? More often than not, if you actually, and there's another data point that's pretty helpful,

if you look at most people's portfolio, their largest asset, bigger than their 401k balance, is their home equity. It's their house. And so houses aren't places to live anymore. You know, like my mother bought her home in, you know, 2003 or 2004 for $400,000. She hasn't updated it. I can tell you. And it's worth $1.2 million now.

And that's solely because we treat homes as investments these days rather than what they are, which is a home. And so if you extrapolate, so that's a pretty crazy statistic, but if you extrapolate this to the entire global real estate market, which is $370 trillion in size, then there's a $132 trillion monetary premium resting inside the global real estate market. And so what that means is that there's $132 trillion today, they are roughly speaking. If you just extrapolate this to the entire global real estate market, again, the calculations need to be more in depth. You can't take the United States as the total global example. But a rough estimate would be $132 trillion, right? And so, you know, these vehicles are now existing, right?

Tom, you mentioned that, you know, some of the people you had spoken to, you know, 100 plus real estate investors were now, you know, refinancing their home or doing a he lock or what have you. And instead of using those proceeds to buy another property, one of them was convinced maybe probably a lot more of them were convinced to buy Bitcoin instead. At least people are coming around to see Bitcoin as a superior investment to homes. Leon, you mentioned this as well, right? And so for individuals, right, as more people come around to this, I have no idea how this,

you know, this became so popular over the last month, two months, three months, five months. But it seems like the conversation is really shifted into, okay, metaplanet, micro strategy and others are really hitting the equity market heart, right? They're off, you know, they're issuing common stock and using the proceeds to buy Bitcoin. Microstrategy, right, through their preferreds is hitting the $138 trillion bond market. But there's a $318 trillion bond market, excuse me, there's a $370 trillion market out there, right, with $132 trillion of it being used as an investment vehicle when it shouldn't be. And so this is like the largest asset market in the world, but also the most egregiously priced

asset market in the world. And it seems more and more people are coming around to it. And there are more and more options every day for people to just move out of one into the other. Right. And so that's why I'm bullish. Right. You know, I think if Bitcoin were to siphon, even, and I put the numbers up here because, you know, again, I mentioned I was going to do some research on it. Well, I was doing some research on it, but if 10% of that, 132 trillion dollar monetary premium rotated into Bitcoin, Bitcoin would be a 15.6 trillion asset and it would be $7,000 per BTC. If half of it rotated in, then you'd have $3.5 million BTC.

And if all of it rotates in, then you have $6.7 million BTC. And that's just real estate, right? And of course, it's not factoring in inflation, how much more of these asset markets are going to get marked up and other vehicles entering the bond market, right? If Metaplanet does a Japanese equivalent of preferred stock to hit more of the fixed income investors. And that's how we get from here to there, right? From where Bitcoin is currently as this relatively new small store of value asset

to really consuming all of the speculative premium that's everywhere else because people are treating these other asset markets like stores of value. when they really shouldn't be real estate chief among them. So that's why I'm bullish. I want to pull on this thread more. I'm going to, I've got a kind of, I was having a conversation just earlier today about somebody in regards to real estate and Bitcoin and inheritance and planning for the future and all of these things versus kind of the speculative nature

that we see out of a lot of people nowadays, a particular, particularly young. people and kind of what they're what they're looking for and how things have shifted with Bitcoin. So I have a question pertaining to that. I'm going to give you guys that on the other side of the break. I'm going to make a hop right now. Do a quick shout to sponsors. But on the way back, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. So we will take a quick one minute break here. Everybody that's watching live, please do give that like button to smash if you're enjoying the conversation so far. And also get your lightning wallet. out because on the other side of the break, we'll give away some stats as well, and all you need is a lightning wallet.

So we'll be right back in one minute. Bitcoin Well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the US. 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. Their white glove service gives you fast transactions, no slippage, and the lowest fees. You can scan the QR code on the screen or simply head to Bitcoinwell.com slash BTC sessions to sign up today. And you can share your own personalized referral link to earn commissions. If you've been around Bitcoin for more than a minute, you've definitely seen something made by crypto cloaks. Since 2017, they've been the go-to for badass 3D printed Bitcoin gear,

from custom home mining rigs to sleek hardware wallet bounce that make your setup look pro. I've been stacking Cloaks gear for years, and most recently I grabbed their gamma case for my miner. Let me tell you, it turns some heads. You can customize everything, and of course, the legendary Bitcoin grenade. Yeah, that's them. Hit the link in the show notes or scan the QR code to visit Cryptocloaks.com and stack your own custom cloaks gear today. Debify is the best and easiest way to borrow against your Bitcoin in a non-custodial way. Funds are held in a multi-sig escrow where you hold a key, and the platform allows for excellent hardware like the cold card mark four and the queue.

You have access to flexible conditions, the best rates, and institutional grade liquidity. 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 the QR code on the screen. All right, we are back in. We're going to give away some stats really quick before we continue the conversation. I'm here on Bitcoin well. The way it works is that when you sign up by Bitcoin, refer friends, all of that, you earn points, and you can either use those points to get some swag for yourself, or you can toss a coin in the well.

And every time you do, you earn the chance to win up to a million sats. So we're going to do that right now. Whoever has a lightning wallet that is watching live, all you need to do is scan the QR code that pops up, whoever scans it first actually snipes the sats from everyone else. So you steal them away. So it doesn't work for you. Then you weren't quick enough, but 472 sats to whoever scans it first. If you do snag them, let us know on the chat.

We love to hear it. But with that, I'll get this off the screen for now. And I was talking a little bit just before this about a conversation I was having earlier, actually with Nathan from the show as well. And we're talking about the dynamic in and around who is looking at Bitcoin right now. And every prior cycle, it's been so heavy retail, but it's also been heavily speculative and with an air of gambling, I'd say. But it seems to have shifted.

He was having a conversation with somebody about, okay, well, you know, this is what I'm passing onto my family and so on and so forth. And he was talking to this individual. And the person basically expressed that Bitcoin was too boring. it was too conservative for him to look at. And I, like, he was astounded to hear this that like the best performing asset of, I don't know what, like, I mean, our lifetimes for sure, but like in a generation is, is boring. And it kind of speaks to where your average younger person is at, where,

everything is just it just seems very, very hopeless. And so when you hear something like, oh, something's up, you know, 100% from last year. Okay, so like you doubled your money in a calendar year to your average person that's basically already thrown in the towel on the idea of ever retiring, they hear that and they're like, yeah, well, where's my lottery ticket? Like, where do I roll the dice? where's the craps table? Where's the investing equivalent of that?

And so my question to you guys is, is this the indication that Bitcoin is beginning that shift from speculative asset that trades like a tech stock to the safe haven that we actually all know that it is? And the comparison that I would draw right now is if somebody wanted to gamble in the 70s, they weren't buying homes. They weren't buying that long-term store value that it became. They weren't investing in real estate.

They were gambling. And so is this the equivalent of that? The people that want to speculate and gamble are moving to other more irresponsible things. And the institutional wave and now the real estate investors are going, oh, this is the thing that I park myself in to actually preserve my wealth. Is this the indication? I'll let anybody dive in here. Yeah, if I just, just a quick, quick comment maybe.

Because Tom, you said earlier in your example, you said, oh, maybe it's a bit boring. But then I was thinking to myself, simple is good, boring is good. Something that's simple usually works. And I agree with you. I'd also say that now that we have a new risk of asset, right, it took time for people to understand that Bitcoin is a risk of asset, a reserve asset. But I think that mindset is slowly setting in. And that also has to do with the interest rates that were increased because most of the real estate investors that I know, including myself, sort of lost touch to reality since 2008 interest rates were so low. that it was considerably easy to make money in real estate.

I don't want to take anything away from anybody because real estate development by itself is a skill, construction is a skill, and the real estate business by itself is a skill. So as the speculation moves from Bitcoin into real estate, there are also new Bitcoin-based skill sets that real estate investors, I think, have to learn. And I think they are willing to,

once they understand that they can make their life easier with Bitcoin. I'll say is, oh, go ahead. No, no, Joe, it's all you. So, so this, this talks about the financial nihilism thing. And I think, I'm in a pretty good spot to talk about it because I'm 24. And, you know, thank God. I went to school, you know, with Dylan and Tyler, Tyler Laroche from BTC, Inc, Dylan Leclair. Because, you know, if I hadn't, I'd probably be in that same position, financial nihilist, writing a desk somewhere, not knowing about Bitcoin. Most people, you're exactly right. They want lottery tickets. And why don't I know that because all of my friends from high school and college text me when Bitcoin's doing well and they say, hey, dude, you see what fart coins doing or something to that degree, right? They really don't care because ultimately people are so drained of their optimism that they want to buy a lottery ticket or some lottery ticket equivalent rather than buying Bitcoin. Like you see, you know, but there is this, there is this divergence that has occurred between the financial nihilists and the financial optimist.

Bitcoin has become the asset for financial optimist, despite the outlook for why you own Bitcoin being nihilistic, Bitcoin allows you to be financially optimistic, right? Because it offers you to hedge against what's going on. Even though the situation won't correct itself, I mean, we literally had a rocket scientist go in there with an independent agency. He hired all the top guys you could find. They found waste. And we still couldn't cut spending, right? So it's never going to get fixed. But at the individual level, you can now be financially optimistic thanks to Bitcoin. So there is this divergence. On the other end of it, you have the rise of sports betting apps and just degenerate gambling.

So the world is diverging and young people certainly are feeling more destitute and left behind than ever, but Bitcoin represents hope for those people. And you can see that in the data, per your question, is Bitcoin becoming this thing that we know it to be? I wouldn't say that it's decoupled from risk assets, right? I think that's going to be something that happens gradually over time. What you are seeing is like transient periods of outperformance, for example, like earlier this year when we had the tariff scare. Bitcoin was up while the S&P 500, NASDAQ and Russell,

were down for a couple days. But I don't think that'll be the going trend forever until we, you know, see Bitcoin at 10 trillion, 20 trillion, and it reaches gold parity, wherever that is at the time. But I do believe that in the data, right, you are seeing the divergence as well, financial nihilists and financial optimist crypto from Bitcoin, right? Because last cycle, right, Bitcoin dominance was inversely correlated with Bitcoin price loosely. That's always been the case. When Bitcoin does well, everything else is high-bated to Bitcoin, right, in the crypto market. So it rips too. But this cycle has been the first cycle where Bitcoin and Bitcoin dominance are rising in tandem. So that tells me, right, in 2022, 2023, at the very least, like the notion

that there would be next, you know, Bitcoin died on the vine. And now it's kind of actualizing its destiny is a casino, you know, this hotbed for the financial nihilists, whereas Bitcoin more institutionalized. And it's present in the data and the, you know, the makeup of the cohorts of people who are allocating to it now that Bitcoin is for the financial optimists. And so that's what I'll say there. But I think you're right on the money, Ben. And Ben, Joe, odd to what you're saying, Ben, it's funny that you're saying that

because we have multiple clients now buying Bitcoin and saying this is for my estate. I'm never, you know, I don't even know if I. ever need to touch this thing. I'm going to buy it and I'm going to pass it on. These are not clients who are looking to flip it for quick money. We've never had those discussions before. So you guys are all right. I think there's been a shift in the last, to me, to me, it's been the last six months or so where we just have this new entry of person in our, in our sphere of influence anyway, who is saying, hey, I'm just going to allocate to some Bitcoin and I don't need to sell it. I'm just going to leave this. I'm going to pass it on to my estate. I'm going to pass it on

to my kids. This is for my kids. So these are people in their 50s and 60s who are never talking about Bitcoin before, who are now saying, hey, I want to allocate to it. I want to leave it as part of my estate and pass it on. And then, you know, Joe, I didn't know you were so young. You guys are like so articulate. You're a Joe, Leon, Ben, all of you guys. Yeah, no, it's impressive. And this is what gets me completely pumped because, you know, if you look at the property market in the real estate market and I grew up in the Toronto area. So if you look around Toronto, It's all like the big city, Chicago, New York, L.A. It's all the same. All these people who bought land all around the city when they were like in their 20s and their 30s and just sat on it for years.

And then eventually the city grew and grew and grew. And if they bought some farmland on the outskirts of Toronto, if these people sat on that land for 10 and 20 years ago, sorry, for 10 and 20 years, they were totally made fun of. Like people made fun of them saying, why are you buying that land on the outskirts of Toronto? It's farmland, there's cows on it. No one's living there. There's no subdivisions there. Like what the heck are you doing? The city grew and grew and grew.

Those people became millionaires and multi-millionaires. They're building wings to hospitals with their names on it. They're donating back to the colleges and universities. And now I see digital real estate where you young guys are buying Bitcoin and all your friends are laughing at you. Everyone's making a joke at your expense. if I just extrapolate this, you guys are like the new guys who are buying the land around the cities, but you're buying the much better digital property. And in the next 20 years, like 20 years

from now, how much, how much wealth are amazing Bitcoiners going to control? Like, I don't think anybody here fully grasps the potential in the next 20, 30, and 40 years. Like, I'm 52. So by the time I'm 92, assuming I'm still around, and you guys are all, Joe, you're going to finally be in 40 years, you're going to, what did you say, or 24? You're going to be 64, Joe. And how much wealth are you going to be controlling? Like, it's you guys that give me the bullish outlook. Because you're sitting on the property, everyone's making fun of you, just like people made fun of the landowners back then, right, in the 1950s and 60s. So, anyway, that's why I'm pumped. And all the, all the millennials who are pissed at the people own all the property values,

get ready for you guys because you guys, people are going to point at you guys and going, they're going to be pissed at you guys saying, hey, I remember when Leon was buying Bitcoin at like, you know, 119K US or whatever it was, right? So Leon, get ready. Yeah. Get ready. When Joe's 64, though, he won't have any Bitcoin because there's going to be so many boating accidents between now and then.

That's right. Of course. In fact, I don't know. That's to be assumed. Yeah. I brought out last weekend. I lost all my Bitcoin. It was devastating.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now, so it's interesting, again, when, when you look at kind of what has happened, you know, with real estate over the past number of decades. And, and yes, like there's value creation there, but it's also just an indication of the scale of theft that has occurred through the debasement of the currency. And it'll be very interesting. interesting to have that indicator change.

Like right now, again, you hear your grandparents or whoever, and they talk about, oh, like, you know, when I was a kid, it cost this much to go to the movies, and a candy bar was, you know, half a penny or whatever. They're just ridiculous, super cheap prices for everything. And then, you know, you kind of chuckle about it. But again, it's glossing over the scale of things. that has occurred over that period of time.

But moving forward, you're going to hear the exact opposite of that, just everybody's iteration of the Bitcoin Pizza story. And it will sound like, ah, damn, and I lost something. But it'll actually be a very positive thing because that will more closely track the scale of human ingenuity that has happened over that period of time. Like, wow, we have a fixed supply money and we were able to elevate our society to a point where we're able to produce that much more and get that much more bang instead of for your buck for your for your bits. So like I think it's the the price disparity between when you're younger and older will be an indication of the progress of society. I think that'll be an interesting dynamic.

I agree. I think, you know, we're moving back and Jeff Booth talks about it, right? You know, like the natural order of technology is deflationary. You know, we're now talking, we're at all different points across the world right now, right? You know, I'm the Northeast, Ben, you're in Canada. Tom, you're in Croatia. Leon, are you in Germany right now? Okay, there you go.

Look at that. We're talking to each other from all corners of the world with low latency, you know, over something we call Wi-Fi, wireless internet, you know, on SuperCube. computers, it's remarkable. The natural order of things is that all of these things should be getting cheaper and cheaper and more abundant and more abundant. And the important things aren't. And that's the, you know, that's the grand illusion of fiat money, right? You know, the 4K OLED television at Costco is $500 less expensive than it was a few years ago, but your house is 200 grand more expensive, right? The TVs are less expensive. The things you actually need are more expensive. And I just can't wait for a world

where that's not the case, where that's backwards, right? Everything you need is incrementally less expensive, saving is rewarded rather than rewarding immediate consumption. It's going to be a beautiful world. Yeah. And if you guys will allow me, Leon, I don't know if you're up to this, but can you also talk about how you think it's going to change the real estate market from a product quality point of view in real estate, Bitcoin, and what it's going to do to the way you kind of handle some tenant issues? Remember, you were talking about just like rent and that kind of stuff and maintenance.

Am I, am I, is that okay? Yeah. Can I just, before Leon goes on his, sorry, Ben. Yeah, it's your show.

Sorry. No, this is, this is me, hearing what you said, you used the term quality. And, and I just wanted to inject this before Leon,

because it might seed in some additional things. But, yeah, so I moved into a new build in 2020. And, and Fiat architecture is real. Like this

home that was just, you know, you think over time we get more proficient at making better things with less effort and time and we're more efficient with our resources. And we move into this home.

And I swear to God, we've been in here for five years now. And my floor is just like chipping apart. Like the flooring is just like chunks of it are coming up. I've, I immediately, like as soon as we moved in, we had to replace the stove.

It was just broken. We had to fix the dishwasher twice, again, brand new when we moved in, and then just fully replace it earlier this year. Like, everything is done so shitty and so quickly. They built the place in Ford. Yeah, yeah. And so the quality in the workmanship is just. absolute trash and the homes are more expensive more expensive inferior quality it's crazy so again

when you say when the second you said quality i was like absolutely can we get back to building houses that will still be standing when a friggin tornado rips through like build me a stone house please uh but leon i'll let you take it uh there uh based on what tom teed you up for for sharing that story. Because I was thinking, Joe, when you were sharing the monetary premium part that sits in real estate, I haven't particularly, I haven't calculated it exactly. I thought you were pretty nice, actually, because what you're saying, it's true. What's the cost of the property?

If the property costs 500,000, but it only cost 350,000 to build it. That is the utility value. But I think what we also have to count in is that between, let's say the 1940s and today the dollar lost 99% of its value meaning the cost of building the house so the cost of construction and the labor cost they've also inflated that has you're exactly right it hasn't adjusted for the dollar debasement or for population growth but go ahead yeah so it's even more yeah it's yeah it's even more might be maybe double i don't know it's something we could look into in particular so it might be even more which would would play into

your point. And I'm just actually at the moment, I'm writing a newsletter. So I'm sharing a newsletter, which is for free. There's no advertising in there either. I'm just sharing whatever I think about at the moment. And what I'm writing about next month is about Bitcoin urbanism. So that is a term that Kelly Lainon from Austin and Tudemista term, and they talk about quite a lot. And it's the idea of bringing it back individualism into housing. Because if we look into the last 100 years for the last century, it was the fiat century and also the century of standardization. Because what happened in the 1920s was the Bauhaus movement, right? And the Bauhaus movement was inspired by a lot of architects from Germany. And they were also inspired by an architect called Alfred Lowe's,

who was from Vienna. He was also sitting in the cafes where Karl Gustav Jung, Siegbut Freud, and the Austrian economists were hanging out. And he was thinking about. And he was thinking about, how to modernize housing and he wanted to standardize housing and that was also around the same decade that the federal reserve was introduced that wanted to standardize money and i think generally speaking the standardization of things is a bad idea it's a collectivist idea that does go hand in hand with with socialism and the idea of an inflationary currency and what happens if constructing a property becomes more expensive over time you have less time and less money to spend on details.

And I can tell from my personal experience, what we're seeing right now in architecture is the result of the investor or the developer constantly wanting to save on construction costs. And as time moves on, you always have to standardize the way you build in order to save cost, which takes away the soul of the building.

That's how I feel about it. And also the way that cities are constructed today, they're mostly constructed around the use of cars. This might sound a bit strange. Why am I bringing this up? I'm bringing this up because the individual is seen as a unit that needs to produce and work. And cities are centered around the use of cars

for the suburbian population to go into downtown to work and then to leave again. That also takes away community living. And if you go and stroll through Europe, you see this community-based cities that are now as well being torn apart for other reasons in the communities are also affected by some of the policies, policies, excuse me, that are being put in place. But historically speaking, if we think about the way that cities are built, it's important to center a city around the individual and around a pedestrian and not around a car.

And these are three things that are mixing now. mixing the fiat standard the age of standardization which brought around bow house which is a nice architecture style but over time i feel now what we're seeing it's just a cheap knock off at what bow house used to be maybe a hundred years ago and we are seeing the individual being classified classified as a worker as a unit which led to cities being built around cars which is a big problem and you know actually leon you just saying that sorry ben can i just add one thing in there. The reason that real estate, you just guys, both of you guys just kind of triggered this for me is that, you know, it was the financialization of real estate and the, and the,

the offerings of mortgages that became more and more common through the, you know, 50s and 60s and into the 70s that really made the real estate market explode. So as much as I don't really care for all the stable coin stuff that the U.S. is doing right now, like we, I think we all get what they're doing, creating demand for treasuries, Ben, that you were alluding to, right? this new demand for U.S. Treasury is going to come through the stable coins and stuff. What it's doing to me to the Bitcoin market is what mortgages did to, let's say, the real estate market in the 1960s and 70s, that the financialization of this whole Bitcoin industry is going to happen and it's going to really propel the dollar price of Bitcoin much higher

because of the financialization of the Bitcoin industry. And we can all debate whether we want that, we don't want that, whatever. That seems like the natural thing. because if you didn't have mortgage products, for example, in the real estate market in the 1970s, 80s, it would not have propelled the real estate market the way it has the last 40 or 50 years. So to me, this is now Bitcoin's moment. And again, I don't necessarily care for it myself, but it's going to happen. So, you know, Bitcoin's for friends and enemies like we all know.

So, you know, we can kind of see how this is going to evolve over the next 10 years now. It's getting more and more clear. And one last thing, Leon, you said something to me. before on some of your real estate projects that what Bitcoin was going to allow you to do with allocating Bitcoin to the balance sheet of a real estate development project was that if you kept that project as the developer over 10 years because you had a tenant, let's see you had a commercial tenant, a restaurant, you know, go into your commercial building. Because Bitcoin was on the balance sheet of that commercial real estate project, in 10 years,

when the windows need to be updated or replaced, it's now not a situation. when you, holy shit, when you have to, where you have to, I'm telling you, these things are massive out here. It's not a situation where you have to put the cheapest windows in the building anymore because if you allocate a little bit of Bitcoin to that commercial real estate project, you have now enough purchasing power to put fantastic windows into this building. And you don't have to really kill the tenant on increased rent because you, the property owner have this on the balance sheet of the project. Leon, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you were talking that way and it was

really making me think how it changes real estate in more ways than we had originally anticipated. Yes, sorry, I forgot to do on that. A great point because right now you constantly have to raise rents to deal with inflation. So I think that I understand why people critique landlords a lot, but sometimes there's no reason to critique them because they have to fight with the same issues that the tenants, have to because they have higher construction costs and higher financing costs with higher interest rates. And that's why they have to raise rents all the time. And adding Bitcoin on the balance sheet of a real estate property takes away the pressure to raise rents all the time.

Gentlemen, I'm going to do one last little break here. And on the other side, I want to change gears a little bit. Now, I know that our reasons for being bullish basically kind of perfectly melded together. But barring, I'm just double checking, everybody's kind of gone through what they wanted to get out in regards to their reason, or did anybody want to tag in anything extra before I brought up a different topic here? I'm good. We're good.

Okay. All right. Great. So on the other side of the hop here, I'm going to do one more shout to sponsors. But a bunch of people today, and I'm sure people, people in the chat watching this have been seeing all the rumbling on social media and everything.

Everybody's freaking out. They're worried that or worried, I don't know, maybe just speculating and either being worried or making fun of the U.S. government for seemingly not holding the 200,000 Bitcoin that they had previously stated, instead holding far less. So I want to talk about that on the other side. Is that true or is there something going on there?

But also, I think it's also a good time to celebrate and dunk on some fantastic blunders of other governments that have indeed sold their Bitcoin in the past year or two and just absolutely shat the bed on it. So on the other side, we'll address, does the U.S. still have the two? 200,000 Bitcoin that they had said they had before. And also, we'll, we'll dance on the graves of the treasuries of a couple other countries. So we'll see you guys in just a sec. If you're enjoying the show, please do. Give that like button, a smash. And we'll be right back. Looking for a simple and secure way to manage your Bitcoin on mobile, Aqua Wallet has you covered. It's user-friendly and puts you in full control of your Bitcoin with secure, self-coucour.

Acqua also supports Lightning and Liquid Network, making fast, cheap Bitcoin payments and asset transfers easier than ever. Plus, it even supports stable coins giving you ultimate flexibility. Built on open source code, Aqua is transparent, trustworthy, and perfect for beginner and pros alike. Ready to upgrade your Bitcoin experience? Click the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen now to download Aqua Wallet today. Securing your Bitcoin doesn't have to be complicated or invasive. With Nunchuk's Honey Badger Plan, you get state-of-the-art multisig with built-in inheritance planning and no K-YC required. Nunchuk is trusted by users to secure billions of dollars in Bitcoin.

The Honey Badger Plan offers 204 assisted multi-sig guiding you step-by-step on mobile or desktop. It works seamlessly with hardware wallets like TapSigner, Cold Card, Jade, and plenty of others. So you're always in control. Plus, with non-KYC inheritance planning, you can ensure your Bitcoin goes to your loved ones, No private info needed. Take control of your Bitcoin today. Click the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen to check out the Honeybadger plan. Coin Kite has been in the game for years creating hands down the best and most secure hardware

when it comes to securing your Bitcoin. The cold card Q is an absolute powerhouse and my daily driver and it's ideal for newcomers and advanced users alike. The tab signer gives you a low-cost user-friendly option for those just getting started or for convenience when traveling. You can head to coin kite.com and use code BTC sessions for discounts or simply scan the QR code on the screen to get started right away. All right. We are back in and we were going to throw out there a little bit about, you know, everybody was saying, oh, the U.S. has 200,000 Bitcoin, but then there was something that came out just earlier,

Today, the U.S. Marshals revealing that they seemingly hold significantly less. So what are the actual details of that? So I have it here, again, from Bitcoin Magazine. U.S. Marshals reveal the government now only holds just shy of 29,000 Bitcoin worth around $3.4 billion instead of the estimated 200,000 Bitcoin that was seemingly supposed to, be held. But again, you can see the community don't here, but I'll bring up a tweet that does better justice to it. So Lola here says, all right, everybody's in a jumble over the U.S. government, quote-unquote, selling their Bitcoin. I'd like to alert you to the fact that there's a

difference between seized assets and forfeited assets. So they say they're in, this Department of Government is mainly in charge of forfeited assets, meaning assets that have been made property of the government. The list I received from USMS is a list of all BTC held by them as requested by David Bailey, I believe. That's what she's alluding to. And they can be in charge of seized assets, but these can also be held with seizing agencies like the DEA or the FBI, meaning that there are many other custody offices other than the USMS. Basically, some people were trying to do some on-chain sleuthing.

She said to the geniuses that have linked Arkham's government wallet tracker, these do not seem to be the Bitcoin that have been made the government's property, at least not exclusively, which means they can't sell them. For example, Arkham lists 94,000 Bitcoin from the Bitfinex hack, But forfeiture in the BitFinex case hasn't been decided, at least last time I checked. Ergo, this doesn't mean the U.S. government has sold any Bitcoin. It just means that whatever the U.S. Treasury sites estimate is likely wrong as they don't seem to differentiate between seized and forfeited coins. So there's some nuance here.

Did the government sell any? It doesn't seem that that has actually taken place. So everybody, you know, I saw some people tweeting, oh, this country has more than the U.S. And, you know, this company has more than the U.S. and everything. I mean, first of all, it was all Bitcoin that they took from other people in the first place anyway. So like, don't celebrate too much. But I did want to take the time since we're on the subject of governments fumbling the bag. You know, let's recall back to Germany.

they sold 54,000 Bitcoin at $57,900 last year, which became one of the most costly government financial decisions in recent history. The premature liquidation cost the nation approximately $3.51 billion in missed profits. And then more recently, Bulgaria sold 213,500 Bitcoin back in 2018 that now would be worth $79,000,000. of its public debt. So, you know, I take great pleasure in government mumbling the bag. I think that's great. I think it's great to see government shitting the bed and making bad decisions with their money because they've never had to make particularly prudent ones when they have the money printer

and the tax base, right? There's no incentive to be efficient. You as an individual, when it's your money, you are directly incentivized to get the best product for the lowest possible price. Because if you screw it up, then you bear the brunt of that and you have to go earn more money to get a new thing or a product or a service. But the government will just always have more money because there's no real – there's no – there's no – There's nothing that happens to them if they misallocate capital, right? Like they're always going to be able to print more. But you and I are both Canadian.

At least the Americans we think have a ton of gold somewhere in the New York Fed, Barry or Fortnog, wherever it is. In Canada, we sold this country. Never mind Bitcoin. That's way too advanced for Canada. Yeah. The country of Canada sold off all its gold in 2016 was the final. I think Canada sits on on the balance sheet in Canada right now.

I think it's 77 ounces. Yeah. So Canada sold all of its gold. Never mind Bitcoin. Sold it's gold. And since 2016, I think it's like 4x in Canadian dollars since 2016. Yeah. So at least the Americans have some gold somewhere.

Yeah. Well, Tom, are you discounting our maple syrup reserves? Because those are important. Yeah, no, you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Those are priceless. of preserves. That's a thing. That's actually a thing, which is just embarrassing.

But yeah, I mean, I don't know. Do you guys enjoy seeing this kind of thing? Do you think that there's, do you think that there's going to be more instances of this moving forward? Or do you think that governments are also cluing in? Or is it kind of a mixed bag everywhere? Yeah. So, I mean, I think the United States is the furthest along, right? If you like, If you look at all the nations, right, the U.S. is the only one that at least in name has passed something like a strategic Bitcoin reserve. It separated it from a digital asset stockpile. It's outlined plans to accumulate more budget neutral ways. But even still, we haven't seen any action.

The deadline where they were supposed to come up with a plan and do a full audit has passed by several weeks, if not months. And so, you know, this is really Bitcoin's best shot. The United States government and the current administration is Bitcoin's best shot at having a really positive, you know, know, government friend per se, like the United States with the current administration is the most Bitcoin positive administration we've, we've ever seen. We're probably going to ever see, you know, if the USG doesn't move forward with what it plans on doing. And so that said, I do take great joy when countries decide to sell their Bitcoin.

It's very hilarious. And it's actually timely that we talk about this because, you know, yesterday I was listening to Jim Janos's conversation with Pierre Rochevier. They were debating on Preston Pish's show. Great show if anyone hasn't watched it. But it got me thinking, like, there are these two scenarios at play, right? We've talked about, okay, the strategic Bitcoin Reserve can help ease the United States fiscal concerns. If they decide to do that, right, if the U.S. government accumulates Bitcoin to ease its fiscal outlook, you know, just what we saw today, right?

Germany's Bitcoin holdings had they held on to them, it would have been able to pay down 79% of their debt. If the United States government does this and holds it, you know, they actively purchase it, that's good for you, the Bitcoin owner and good for Bitcoin. But if they don't do it, if they ignore Bitcoin, if they now allow the fiscal outlook to continue deteriorating, that's bad for you, right, as a U.S. dollar holder, but it's good for Bitcoin, right? So all told, whatever governments end up doing, they may fumble the bag, they may not, but all of it's good for Bitcoin. One of the situations isn't good for you, right?

So in that decision making matrix, right, these two scenarios that can happen, Bitcoin winds up good in all of them, right? So the bottom line is to buy Bitcoin. And whether countries adopted or not, whether the governments take a proactive approach to it or a negative approach to it, it's the asset that you want to hold. Yeah. The only thing maybe that I could add just a little comment, maybe this helps people to understand the inability of

government to make good decisions. That's what I would hope for. We'll see about that. We will we shall see. I'm not I'm not super confident. It does, Bitcoin does very efficiently point out bad decisions and and people effing around and finding out. It makes the finding out portion after the effing around more expedient. and we saw this we see this play out on an individual level when you play with fire and you start gambling we see this play out on you know poorly run companies that are you know doing fractional and and or just plain committing fraud it points them out so quickly and and in the past people have erroneously pointed to bitcoin and placed the blame there when realistically it's just bitcoin's very efficient at

pointing out when somebody is doing something shady in the background because you can't as easily paper it over and hide it. And so I think we are about to witness that in a couple different fields, which would be both government and institutional, because at some point, somebody is going to F around in either of those fields. They're going to be using Bitcoin in a way that, or pretending to have bitcoin or or leveraging or doing something silly with it and um that's not something that you can really really you know fake and hide forever and uh bitcoin's very good at pointing that out so once again um my my biggest worry is that the the public may be able to be uh gaslit into believing that Bitcoin somehow ruined the financial system if the blowup is big enough, when

in reality it was people doing dangerous things with a finite asset. Potentially. I mean, you know, when it comes to herd mentality, I can get it. That can become a pretty dangerous thing. The Cornell Bitcoin Club did a study, and Alex Gladstein quote tweeted it today. It's a 95% of Americans who know about Bitcoin don't know that Bitcoin has a 20,000, million supply cap. And so that's people in the know who know about Bitcoin. Imagine what people who aren't in the know, right, are unaware of. And so it's very, very easy. You think the US dollar,

and actually a lot of people continue to think that the US dollar is backed by gold, kind of insane. You know, it's it's been 50, what, 54 years now since the Bretton Woods conference. And so I think people have plenty of faith in the US dollar. And I think that can be weaponized against Bitcoin. it does what it says we're going to do, right? I tend to believe, I tend to err on the more optimistic side that hopefully, you know, this demonetization of other assets is a slow and steady process and the U.S. dollar is the last thing to die on the vine several decades from now. But if this comes to a head and, you know, the fiscal issuance continues accelerating and, you know, buyers are tough to come by at the margin. And as a result, the Fed eats its own tail,

Bitcoin goes to $10 million sooner than we all think. And the finger gets pointed at the companies who facilitated that, I don't know. We could be in for something. You know, I love Bitcoin. I wanted to succeed, but I don't want it to get to these heights that we talk about in short order, because if that happened, something really bad will have had to happen in order for, you know, that to occur. I pray it's a slow and steady process with his few hearts broken and as few people

imprisoned and as few, you know, bucket shops, you know, kicking around Bitcoin and rehypothicating it as possible. but we all know that there are going to be a few of those along the way. It's going to be interesting, Joe, just hearing you say that, because I think Americans are going to be some of the maybe last to figure some of this out because in Canada now with the exchange rate so bad against the American dollar and against the euro, it's pretty normal for Canadians now to say, hey, I have this much Canadian, but I'm going to do some savings in the U.S.

I'm going to hold some of my savings in U.S. So they're not at the Bitcoin point yet, But they are now starting to articulate that some of my savings, I'm going to open a U.S. bank account and get some U.S. dollar exposure. That never existed in Canada just two or three years ago. So that's like a new thing. And because of that, I think it opens up people to thinking about Bitcoin as another thing they can add to their lives to possibly save them. And kind of they're a little bit open to that conversation. You know, it reminds me of my family here in this country when it was the DNR and it was hyperinflating.

It was very common at that point, even in the 1980s, to start. thinking about the German mark. So some people wanted exposure to the German mark because they knew the dinars were losing value and you were thinking about currencies and you understood debasement. And I think sometimes Americans, because the system has been so good and it's going to be the last fiat dollar standing, I think we all can kind of agree on that, that maybe it's just harder for Americans to see it. You know, so it'll be interesting.

And maybe that plays to your point that it will take multiple decades for this to play out because people will hold on to that American dollar and continue using it. I think best case scenario is that we get an SBR and then, you know, 10, 11 years from now, when I qualify, I run for president and I make it in. And we, you know, we sell everything we've got and we buy Bitcoin. We channel that American patriotism directly into Bitcoin and we make these two things completely interlinked. So if, uh, if Americans decide to attack Bitcoin one day, that'll minimize the fallout.

Who knows? But that's a great example. I like it. Uh, how do we, in your guys? opinion a quick final question here how do we in a world where uh joe becomes president and backs the backs the dollar with bitcoin um how do we prevent uh you know a future administration from uh a nixon shock 2.0 how do we prevent that type of rug pull from from happening or is it going to be just a different iteration of trust me bro the bitcoins in fort knox

Self custody. You go ahead, Joe. Yeah, Leon, you go first and then I'll get, and then I'll get Joe's presidential opinion on it. No, sorry, Joe. I didn't mean to cut you off there. I just wanted to put the emphasis on self-custody. Next to corporate adoption, which is great.

I'm a big fan of it. Just don't forget the importance of self-custody on the individual and also on the entrepreneurial level and also communities, religious institutions and so forth. Absolutely. Couldn't agree more, Leon. nothing to add. Ideally, no KYC self-custody services, right, or DIY self-custody. You know, the most they can do is figure out what exchange you bought it from.

If you want to go to the most extreme, you know, use a no KYC Bitcoin purchase service, go buy Bitcoin at an ATM. A couple things you can do to minimize it. But ideally at that point, once Bitcoin adoption is so widespread, you know, it'll be so much legwork to try to go in and figure out how many people own what. What? The amount of UTXOs out there. And I think when a Bitcoin adoption is widespread, UTXO management will kind of be very few and far between. Most people won't be doing it. It's still a very niche Bitcoin thing.

I just tend to think that there will be a lot of legwork and trying to seize people's Bitcoin. But people will try to do it. So maybe consider mixers. Always be doomsday planning. Always be doomsday planning for these things. You know, the best thing that we could do is enact a law for it. But we know that those things can be repealed in a heartbeat, particularly during emergencies. We saw it in Canada. We saw it in the United States, but we did see it in Canada

to a much greater degree during March 2020 and all throughout 2021 and 2022. So yeah, be prepared. I think at the individual level, my presidential advice would be to self-custody or Bitcoin and buy a lot of guns, as long as those are considered still legal in the country. Perfect. Perfect. I'm going to echo again, this is kind of, The whole impetus for the channel is to educate people in and around how to properly use and self-custasy and secure their Bitcoin and all of that. And so I'm glad that this is kind of the direction that the conversation eventually led to. You know, it's great sitting with a bunch of awesome people talking about how amazing Bitcoin is

and how it's going to change the world. But if you're sitting there watching it and you're enjoying the convo, but then you don't act and you don't become more self-sovereign, you're missing out on the entire benefit of Bitcoin itself. Like you're not actually participating in it. And so my call to action of every person that's watching this stream right now is to actually act and learn the tools. And I put a lot of effort into putting together step-by-step videos

and stuff like that to help people And actually just earlier this year, we put together a single page with just a short list of tutorials that you can get through that will give you like, basically like if you can get through this one page and I'll bring it up here so people can see it. And maybe I'll even, I've got like a QR code so you can get to it. So these are like free tutorials that you can just use. So it's a zero to hero on one page. But more or less, there's like a few beginner skills. like how do you get a hot wallet, how do you get a cold wallet, and how do you get Bitcoin, just an example. There's some intermediate stuff.

So like some basic privacy stuff with coin join. If you want to tinker with home mining with a device or run like an easy Bitcoin node. And then there's some more advanced stuff like running your own lightning node or or learning multi-sig or doing like inheritance planning and all that. And so if you can get through just these concepts just by watching the videos, you are so far above and beyond. your average bitcoinser, you're going to absolutely have an arsenal of tools in your tool belt. And beyond that, if you want to dive deeper down at the bottom, there's just full playlists on every single concept here with different options. You know, I kind of had to pick like an example video for each, but there's so many different

tools out there. So, you know, you want a different mobile wallet. Go to the playlist of it. You want a different hardware, different node. You want to learn more about mining or privacy or multi-sig. All this stuff is in there and you can just go to the playlist and you'll find tons of videos on those skills. So honestly, take the time, level up and become a good little bit coiner and self-custody. And don't leave your money in other people's hands.

Be self-sovereign. Be the person that Satoshi intended. So I'll leave my little rant there. But again, I think it's just so valuable for people to do. that. Anyways, gents, I'm conscious of time. Tom and Leon are in, God knows what time zone right now. And it would sit 1.30 in the morning for you guys, I think. Some like that. Yeah. Yeah. So I am conscious of time and you guys have been more than generous with yours. So I'm going to put a bow on it here. I want to say a huge thank you to all of you. Everybody that's watching the show right now,

Of course, leave a like on the video, but check out these guys. All of their handles are in these show notes. You can follow them. Check out what they're up to. And I highly recommend you do tons of amazing information coming out of everybody on the screen here. And gentlemen, I'll just finish up by saying thank you so much for the Convo. Yeah, thanks, man. Yeah, have a great.

Thanks, Leon. Yeah, thanks, Joe. Yeah. Thanks for me on, guys. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, thanks, Leon. Thank you, Tom. All right.

Thank you, guys. We'll see you soon and everybody hope you enjoyed the show. We'll see you guys next time.