BTC Sessions - Governments Target Bitcoin Privacy: What's at Stake? ep377

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

In this episode of "Simply Sessions," we explore the clash between governments and Bitcoin privacy, and the SEC's decision on 12 Bitcoin spot ETFs. We analyze the Biden administration's stance on inflation, highlight the Human Rights Foundation's global CBDC tracker, and speculate about Candace Owens' potential involvement in Bitcoin. Don't miss these insights and more in our latest Bitcoin-focused news roundup. #BitcoinPrivacy #SEC #BitcoinETFs #Inflation #CBDC #CandaceOwens #BitcoinNews #SimplySessions 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Coinkite offers the BEST Bitcoin hardware on the market. Use this link to get 5% off anything in their store: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions Nunchuk Wallet and their Honey Badger plan is a best in class assisted multisig setup with built-in inheritance planning and NO KYC. Pass on your savings to your loved ones with ease in a simple claiming process with full customer support. Check them out today! https://nunchuk.io/ SEEDOR is one of the most robust metal backups on the market today. Get your SEEDOR starter set today! Use this link for 5% off. https://www.seedor.io/discount/BTCSESSIONS?redirect=%2Fcollections%2Fprodukte For US based customers: https://a.co/d/1DkbfV2 Canadian customers: https://link.thecryptoboutique.ca/BTCSessionsSeedor Start9 is your Bitcoin & lightning node, and full personal server - enabling you to take back control from the gatekeepers of your money and data! Grab a Server Lite, One or Pro today and become truly self-sovereign! https://start9.com/ HodlHodl is a NON-CUSTODIAL, NON-KYC solution to stack sats peer to peer! Buy and sell Bitcoin while maintaining privacy. Furthermore, you can check out their Lend platform for p2p loans that are never rehypothecated. Sign up and try it out today! https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION Free video tutorials not enough? Need some extra hand-holding when mastering self-custody, multisig, coinjoin, running a node, or other skills? Book me for a private session on my website! https://www.btcsessions.ca/ Been watching the show for a while? Like what you see? Help me cover my video costs by sending some sats over on my Geyser Fund page! https://geyser.fund/project/btcsessions

What's going on, everybody? This is actually, unbeknownst to you guys, my second time doing this, because something weird happened the first time I did the intro. Anyways, we're here live now, I'm pretty sure. Welcome to the show. Another Thursday, another episode of Simply Sessions. And we've got our buddy Nico backstage ready to bring us the latest and greatest in Bitcoin, all the goings on, all the craziness, all the Fiat world implosion. It's all happening and it's all happening right now. And you get to live through it with us and chat about it too. I'll be bringing up the chat, the live chat in a moment. So please have those messages going. I'll highlight and bring up any ones that I think are relevant and or funny or both. Of course, this is live. Anything can happen.

So I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. We'll do it live. Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. If you have not already, please do like. like, subscribe, share that little like button just below the screen here.

Make sure you give that a tap. Share this to any social media that you may be on. And of course, if you have not subscribed already, I'm on the path. I'm on a war path to 100K. We got to get there in the next before the end of 2024. So if you want to help me smash that like button and make sure this is shared. Anyways, I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your simply session.

Before we bring in Nika, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. This is Timechain Calendar.com. And at the same time, I'm also bringing up that chat. So as of now, all of your comments will be live for the world to see for better or worse. Anyways, back to TimeChane Calendar.com. We're sitting at 36,132 cockbox per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 2,768 sats. In terms of fees, holy bejesus, 200 sats per byte next block.

any time fee is sitting at 48 sats per byte. And the mempool is purging anything below 23 sats per byte. So you need to learn those tools. You need to be using RBF and child pay for parent and more importantly, lightning and all that good stuff, maybe even liquid if you're looking to have cheap fees and be able to store on hardware, but you're cognizant of the tradeoffs. Who knows, I'm going to make a video on this.

I think stacking in a high-fee environment is one that people should learn. Anyways, and in terms of Bitcoin mine, 19.54 million of them, that's 93.07% of the entire supply. Shout out to sponsors of the show, Haudelhottle.com. If you're buying Bitcoin and you have priorities in mind that include peer-to-peer trading, instant self-custody, and no K-YC, this is an easy place to get started. Head over there. Sign up with nothing more than an email address. Choose your currency payment method. amount and start browsing immediately

all the offers. You can also check out their peer to peer lending. No rehyp obligation. Links are down below. Coin Kite, you're going to need to secure those non-KYC sats that you stack, of course, and they're killing it. I love all the stuff that they have. Of course, cold card mark four, that's my go-to. I have all their other goodies, tap signers, sats cards,

block clocks, all of that stuff. And I've pre-ordered the hell out of the cold card queue, and they keep on teasing how beautiful. It's going to be, if you want to pre-order that or pick up anything else I mentioned, head over to coin kite.com. Use code BTC sessions for 5% off everything in the store. Backups are also important. Seedore has one of the most beautifully designed and robust storage backups for your seed on the market. Solid steel disc and capsule design, their starter set comes with everything you need to get one or two seeds. And if you need to replace the seed, you don't need to rebuy the whole set. You just get some additional discs. and you swap them in easy-peasy. I've done a video on it, but if you want to check them out, links are down below, depending on your location, you'll get the cheapest shipping on the appropriate link.

So check them out. Nunchuk has you covered with your assisted multisig needs. This program is just absolutely awesome and super easy to set up. You set it up on your mobile device with things like the tap signer, cold card, and a ton of other hardware options. Nunchuk holds one key. You hold the rest of the keys in a multi-sig quorum, at which point your stack is secure and you have baked in inheritance planning so that your

sats get to your next or kin if anything should happen to you. Of course, one of the my favorite things about it is it's no K.C. You don't need to give them your private information to set it up and have it work for you. So check out my tutorial and check them out in the show notes down below. And finally, start on your sovereign computing solution. These guys sell plug and play devices to host your digital life, including your Bitcoin stack. so you can host things like Bitcoin Core, Lightning, Mempool, Join Market.

Also, files, passwords, photos, AI tech, as well as Noster Relays and clients and plenty of other things. So you can check them out. They have entry-level devices all the way up to what I'm running, which is a Start 9 server pure. It's beautiful. And also on the Pure, they just reduced the price. And you can further use my discount code for that product in particular. It's BTC sessions with a plus sign at the end. That'll get you an additional 18% off.

off. So check him out, start9.com. And now for my rambling, though, let's get our buddy in here and get after it. Dude, welcome. How are you doing? Yo! I'm happy to be back, bro. It's happy to be back for another simply sessions. And I always get the same feeling every day. Every Monday, Ben. I'm like, I am going to have nothing to talk about. But like we said on air before, I mean, when we were talking before, something always happens.

There's always, there's always, this is, I don't know, I feel like I said this last week too, like crazy shit going down, but like crazy shit going down this week too, especially. I don't know. Where do you want to start with this? What kind of journey are we going to go on here? You know this guy? I'm familiar. Yeah. Joe Biden.

Well, I mean, I kind of said the quiet part out loud. And let's just check it out. I mean, the level of gas lighting is through the roof here. I'm sick of this stuff. We have to talk about it because the American people think the reason for inflation is government spending more money. Simply not true. So I'm sick of this stuff. I mean, dude, like, what else could you say?

Like, what, like, what? I don't know how else to, you know. It's lies. It's like that it's that that meme. So that was a fucking lie. Like dude, but like the level of gaslighting and is just like it's just crazy. Like I don't know what to say, dude. I like that he's frustrated though.

I like that he's frustrated because it shows that people aren't believing him. And so he's getting angry that people aren't believing him, which is great because you shouldn't believe him or any other politician ever. Dude, it's, it's, uh, what is there to say to this? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, you're going to keep hearing it louder and louder. And there's going to be, I mean, how many different skategoats have there been for inflation? Okay.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Ben, I have a question. Do you think he believes this? I think he doesn't have the cognitive facilities to know what he believes. Okay, fine. Let's say if he was 10 years young. And he said the same thing, right?

Do you think, or 20 years younger, do you think he believes it? I think at that point, it's, what's the, what's the quote? It's very difficult to convince somebody of something that they're directly incentivized not to understand. I think that would be the case, right? Because, like, you can't, I don't know how I could possibly hold a position where I was, I knew I was blatantly lying to everyone, and I had to, with a straight face, go on with the facade, knowing the inevitable was coming. So I think it's just, again, a function of he has to believe those things.

At least, like, he has to believe, like, the underlying reason for him doing things is correct. And, yeah, I just think he's completely wrong. Yeah, yeah, dude, it's, it's, it's, it's, dude, it's perplexing. It's perplexing to say the least. Anyways, um, so speaking of, you know, of, uh, I think we were talking about this on air, so many things happening. Um, that led to a series of events, uh, but we kind of have to start from the very, very, very beginning, right? So we've been covering this on simply sessions to give everybody a little bit of context. So essentially, the anti-Bitcoin politicians in the U.S. government took advantage of the tragedy happening in the Middle East to basically

use their media allies, the Wall Street Journal specifically. They wrote an article, and then they used that article to write a letter to the White House. And then the White House pressured the Treasury and then the Treasury, I guess, taps FinCEN to recommend these crazy proposals that we read to you guys on Simply Sessions before. Some of these proposals would include essentially every single use Bitcoin wallet address would have to be reported to the FinCent. The Lightning Network transactions would have to be reported. It's so unenforceable, but the proposal was so all-encompassing.

so broad, I believe it was on purpose. But we have to go to the very, very beginning of what the series of events were that emboldened the government to make this type of move. And then the latest of the latest, it started affecting certain exchanges. I would say basically every exchange, but Swan was the one that was the most vocal about it. Because banks started to enforce policy that were recommended by the FinCent proposal, even though the FinCent proposal hasn't been enacted into law. But banks are, I guess, taking a defensive stance before it gets enacted. But I think it also highlights how vulnerable the on and off ramps are.

And as long as people are purchasing their Bitcoin through their banks, that's always going to be an attack vector. But first, this kind of break it down. the series of events how we got here because it really paints a really good picture on how nefarious this attack was, how surgical it was. They really knew what they were doing. And it all started with the tornado cash founders being charged with money laundering and sanctioned violations. This was the first time in American history that open source software was sanctioned. This happened back in August 23rd, 2023.

We covered this on SimplySessions, and we said we made the claim that this was going to set a precedent for the rest of the industry, for open source software for the rest of the industry. And that's exactly what happened. So Coin Center fought back. They sued the Office of Foreign Asset Control. They sued the Treasury saying that this is a blatant, you know, this is completely against the Fourth. Amendment. This is impossible. The government won that case and they decided to keep it going. They said, yes, you know, you can sanction open source software. Fast forward a couple months. All they needed was a crisis. And that crisis was the conflict happening in the Middle East.

And that released this infamous Wall Street Journal article that claimed that Hamas militants behind Israel attack raised millions of dollars in crypto. It was discovered after the fact that this turned out to be blatantly false. That was not true. Senator Cynthia Lummis even came out with a graphic that pointed out that 99% of illicit finance was actually happening through the traditional financial system. It wasn't happening through Bitcoin. But it doesn't matter.

The FinCEN proposal stood. It kept going. And some banks have already started to take action. Now, this applies to the entire industry as a whole. It doesn't only apply to Swan, but Swan was the most vocal about it, and I think that's why they got the most heat about it. But here is a no BS Bitcoin article. It says Swan Bitcoin to limit customers interacting with privacy services due to partner policy. It goes on to say, in light of the recent proposed ruling from FinCEN regarding Bitcoin mixing,

they will no longer service clients who directly interact with Bitcoin mixing services, such as wasabi, samurai, and similar services. Please be advised that depositing from directly from or we're drawing directly to a mixing wallet may result in the termination of your account with our banking and custodial partners. Now, initially what happened on Bitcoin Twitter was that a lot of people were like, oh my God, it is Swan who is stopping the mix. But if you read between the lines, it literally says directly to, directly from and directly to.

And if in case it's still not obvious enough, here is Cory Clipson, the CEO of Swan. He says, we're negotiating with the banks working on a lawsuit against many friends versus Vincent, if needed. And in the meantime, just don't withdraw straight to wasabi or samurai unless you want a bank to maybe ask one of our settlement partners to freeze your account. see you on the battlefield. So a couple things to unpack here. Obviously, Swan got the heat because they were vocal about it,

that no BS Bitcoin article broke. But make no mistake, this affects the entire industry. If you're using KYC and you're using your bank account to buy Bitcoin off a regulated exchange, whether that's one of the shit coin exchanges or whether that's one of the Bitcoin-only exchanges, this FinCEN proposal that they got through with false bullshit news will affect you. And banks have already taken preemptive measures to basically say,

listen, if you used a Bitcoin mixing service, we're going to think you're guilty, even though we have no proof of that whatsoever. Mixing is not allowed. Privacy is not allowed. And I'll say, and I know I've been rambling for a bit, but I'll end it with this, Ben. This is the continuation of the demonization and the criminalization of self-custody.

That is what their end goal is. To get rid of self-custody altogether. We played you guys a video on Simply Sessions last week of Elizabeth Warren literally saying the quiet part out loud. Ben, you made a joke about it. You said sophisticated. Are you sophisticated enough to take self-custody? So that is what their ultimate end goal is. and this is what they're creeping towards.

But like, bro, look at all the things they did to get to this point. And the worst part is that they got away with it. Yeah. It's, again, in the short term, it's a massive pain in the ass for a lot of people. In long term, this too is good for Bitcoin. Because what it's making a lot of people realize is that, like you said, these on and off ramps when you have to provide ID

and you have to give all this personal information they're always subject to the whims of the current government and whatever the FUD happens to be in this case where it was just full on fake news that ended up driving and I don't even want to say policy

because it's not policy. It's a proponent. that is being enforced by the banks. So at the end of the day, if you're a business in the space, then you're already subject to the proposal, let alone when it actually passes, if it were to pass. And so, again, so I kind of was bothered when this dropped, because, like, to me, well, two things. Number one, like you said, it applies to everybody.

Like, it's going to apply to every single company and banks are already starting to do that. And I saw a ton of people bitching about it, but not taking any initiative to do anything about it. And you can look at that one of two ways. So, Jan, obviously, he's like, yo, we need more comments on, on the actual proposal there. And he shared links and everything like that. And so I think it's good now because it's up over 1,100 comments on the proposal,

which is great. And I encourage everybody to do that. At the same time, I also think everybody, everybody needs to be privy to the tools that make this type of thing not matter, right? You at least need, It's far better to understand how to use tools that wrote around this prior to needing them than when you're all of a sudden in a pinch and you're learning under pressure.

And so I'm going to everybody that's watching this right now, please just take the time to try once. How do you obtain and use Bitcoin without having to give away private information? How would you do it? How would you go about doing that? And the other thing that I'll say is see if you can earn Bitcoin, see if you can also spend it, not just through a service, but locally peer to peer. And so when I saw this news break and I was getting annoyed that everybody was just bitching

about it, but not proposing any solutions, it was that moment that I was like, you know what, fuck it. We're doing it. And so I put together a thing. and it's now happening in a month called the Saturday Sat Market in Calgary. And it's going to be, I don't know exactly how often, but basically a collection of local merchants that are willing to accept Bitcoin and were creating a mini circular economy right here in my city.

And I've already got between 20 and 25 merchants that have reached out that want to be a part of it. I just got back from a haircut, can you tell? And I, and I, my barber is now like, yo, can I come to that? Can I, can I do? Yeah. And so like, and we've got all kinds of people. We've got like three different farmers, all of which who are bringing things like

beef and chicken and eggs and lamb and dairy and all this stuff. We've got plumbers and heating specialists and we've got bakers and we've got, we've got like financial planners. We've got all kinds of different people from different walks of life that are all freedom-minded that are coming together. And they're not just from Calgary. The crazy thing is I had people reaching out from like different provinces, from different cities in Alberta that are all making the pilgrimage to come to the Saturday Sat Market for the inaugural kickoff. And there'll be, there'll be messups. There'll be things that we don't get right. But we're going to keep doing it. And it's partly coming from a fully selfish point of view in that I want to be

able to live on Bitcoin locally and just pay people that I know in Bitcoin. And I don't want anybody to tell me no. And so this is my new mission. I'm going to do it. And I challenge every single person to do the same wherever you are. So this is what this story did for me this week. Yeah, and dude, but I love that you took action. You took action instead of complaining and bickering and saying, oh, my God, this and this and that, you took action and you one step forward towards building a circular economy in your local area and a Bitcoin circular economy in your local area. And that's what's important.

I remember we talked like that morning or something. And I was like, Ben, holy shit, like my tip, I need a retip my tip. and I called you. I'm like, how do I do this? And you're like, Nico, no, we got to talk about Bitcoin. I'm like, no, we got to talk about the tip. But yeah, it all seriousness, I remember when you told me that, I was like, holy cow, man, like, that's true.

Like, because if there is a Bitcoin circular economy, they can do whatever they want. They could label it uncustodial, unhosted, on whatever. They can have fun with their words and their stuff and their whatever. But if everyone's using Bitcoin, to get paid to save, there's nothing they could do about it. Yeah. You know?

So I love that you took action and you actually made that happen, man. Dude, you should get a video of a farmer. Oh, yeah. You know, that would be amazing. The number one goal is going to be not, not that everybody comes to this one location. And then that's where everybody has their connections and they just show up and that's the only place.

No, the goal at the end of the day is going to be, I want everybody to take everybody else's information there. And then even in a nightmare scenario, all of a sudden the government like kicks open the door and is like, no more peer-to-peer markets anymore. No no peer-to-peer Bitcoin transactions in this. You're never allowed to rent a space and do this again. Well, who fucking cares?

Because we all know each other now. Tough. We know each other and we can transact freely between each other. So I think that's where it needs to go. People need to think local and take initiative with the people around them. Because if we have pockets of that around the globe, then there's no stopping it. 100%. Self custody is the revolution.

If enough of us do it, we win. And there's nothing they can do about it. 100%. And they're going to keep doing this. They were so sneaky. It wasn't even, it's not even sneak at this point. It's right up in your grill. They just don't care.

They're just like, you know what? we know it's a fake article. Who cares? Oh, man. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man. All right. So in other news, this is kind of hopium, I would say, but it is, I mean, it is what

it is. SEC's first window to approve all 12 spot Bitcoin ETFs to begin today. And you know when it ends? Hmm. Tomorrow. November 17th, we're going to find out if a Bitcoin spot Bitcoin, if a spot Bitcoin ETF will be approved in 2023. Tomorrow is the day.

We will find out if it will come this year. If it does not come tomorrow, it will be pushed back to 2024. Here's this awesome little graphic that shows you all the little dates. And tomorrow is the Franklin Bitcoin ETF and the hash decks Bitcoin ETF. By the way, breaking news, the hashdex Bitcoin ETF, surprise, surprise Ben, has been denied. So that is being pushed back once again. But the Franklin Bitcoin ETF, that still has a possibility of being approved. But if that one, if that one isn't approved, then it's going to be pushed back towards next year. So I mean, that was a lot of the, you know, price movement started

with that fake coin telegraph article, man. And that started this run up, you know, so everyone's expecting. Everyone's excited that this spot Bitcoin ETF is going to be approved, but it looks like it's not going to be until next year. Yeah. Well, I mean, again, obviously, I feel like tomorrow we get a big donut, right? There's nothing's going to happen immediately. The SEC in every other instance has pushed every ETF proposal to the absolute limit of how long they're allowed to delay. And so I don't think that this is going to be any different. Even if they are going to approve, they're still going to run out the clock all the way to the bitter end before they go and do that, in my opinion anyways.

So yeah, it's it's it is what it is. Either way, everybody watching, don't go buy the ETF, just self-custody Bitcoin. Yeah, exactly. Self-custy. And there's fees. Oh, yeah. Like there's, you pay like it's like it starts to add up.

Like there's literally no point. But I guess it's easy for it. But anyways, Ben, I think this, go ahead. You're going to say something? Oh, no. Again, like the ETF stuff. Poor Winkle Voss twins. They've been trying to do this shit since like 2013 or something.

But Ben, you're going to. Yeah, I know, dude. Poor Winkle Voss twins, about the same not at the same time, not poor Winklevi twins just because they bought so much Bitcoin so early. Yeah. Off that Facebook money. And now they're rolling in dough from. Oh, man.

Exactly, right? They just, they went down the shit coin, uh, shit coin path. Anyways, Ben, this is going to put a giant smile on your face.

So not only is, uh, you already have a smile on the face. Beautiful smile by BTC sessions. Um, are we having a moment? I think so. I think we're having a moment.

I think it's, I'm, I'm being drawn. Uh, my, my, my, The tip is getting closer to the camera.

It's hard. Oh, man. Remember when we created life? We created life. Anyone doesn't know. On the, on the celebrity Hollywood squares.

Yeah. Anyways, okay, okay. So, check this out. This, like, this is, this is beautiful. SEC is struggling to hire

crypto experts, partly because the agency's employees can't own cryptocurrency. It goes on to say the SEC, one of the major federal regulators looking to rein in the crypto industry is having trouble hiring crypto experts, according to a new report from the agencies Inspector General. Most federal agencies have an Office of Inspector General or an independent authority that reviews and oversees operations of, say, the Federal Trade Commission or the Social Security Administration. On Thursday, the SEC Division published a report on the financial regulators management and performance

challenges. These challenges include keeping pace with evolving technologies like AI, as well as maintaining an in-the-no workforce. Quote, the SEC also faces challenges in recruiting specialists in crypto assets, which enforcement considers critical to strengthening its capabilities to investigate new and emerging issues in crypto asset markets. As for why the SEC is having trouble recruiting crypto experts, the report cited a small candidate pool of qualified experts, competition with alluring offers from the private sector and candidates frequent conflicts with rules that prohibit the holding of cryptocurrencies. The prohibition, according to SEC officials, has been detrimental to recruiting as candidates are often unwilling to divest their crypto assets

to work for the SEC. I mean, how beautiful is that? Like, Bitcoin's incentives are so strong that it's like, why would a Bitcoiner want to get rid of their Bitcoin to go work at this? agency. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, they're literally saying no to cushy government jobs that I'm sure have high paychecks because they're like, well, I'm going to sell my Bitcoin. You're crazy? No. I don't want to work there. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. I think it's I, yeah. I mean, it's imagine not being able to use the thing that you're trying to regulate in any instance. Right?

Imagine not being able to dabble and learn and do anything around. And then being part of the enforcement around said thing. It just seems so backwards to me. 100%. But I think this is another testament of just Bitcoin's incentives ruling the day. And they just like, what are they going to do? How are they going to match this? You know, it's like, of course, of course you don't want to go work for, you know,

your so-called enemy. You don't wait. It's like, dude, like these people hate us. Why would, why would I want to sell my Bitcoin for this type of job, you know? But anyways, that's, it's, it's, I puts a smile on my face when I read that. Anyways, in other news, I do want to talk about Candace Owens. Candice Owens is, is huge, very popular influencer, also very, very, very popular content creator, broadcaster. She has 4.4 million followers on Twitter, on YouTube. She has 2.3-7 million subscribers. Ben and I both know how much fucking subscribers that is. That is absolutely fucking massive. Huge, huge platform. So for her to talk about something like Bitcoin would really move the needle. Because with a lot of Bitcoiners, Bitcoin content creators know and a lot of Bitcoiners don't understand is that Bitcoin content creators make content for other Bitcoiners.

So how do you break the Bitcoin echo chamber? Well, you get the likes of Candice Owens, Tim Pool, which he has mentioned it. And other, I'm slipping my mind. Tucker Carlson has mentioned Bitcoin on his show. That's really how you move the needle. So she went on Tucker Carlson's new show on X. And, you know, I tweeted it out this morning. I said, hey, Candice Owen, you should really look into Bitcoin because it's

Seems like she has correctly identified exactly what is going on. Something is wrong with the money. Something is wrong with the monetary policy. But just because you pointed out, if you don't provide the solution to people, a non-political solution, you're just, you're just screaming in the wind. Like, you're just not doing anything. So anyways, let's check out the clip. Who do you read or listen to to try to make sense or bounce ideas off of it?

You know, I have been obsessed with Thomas Soul, and everybody knows that. I am pretty much a Thomas Soul Groupie. Everything he rewrites, I read. And it is because he finally, he was a part of my awakening story into politics and made me focus on the economics, which is to say block out the noise and pay attention to the economics, go backwards in history to understand where we are. When has this work? Oh, it's never worked.

So there's telling me about it's going to work into the future. And there's no evidence to support that. So I think a lot of times in this environment it's important to almost block out the noise and to focus on the things that matter. The economic debates that people are having right now, which don't make sense. How much more debt can America be in as you're trying to convince us that we're going to get out of it if we just commit to one more more war? By the way, where is all this money going? It's incredible to me that the government has the ability to reach into our accounts and to read every single line of what we spend down to your Zell payments and your pay. PayPal and yet we just can't get in accounting for how they're spending their money.

Yeah. Like Bitcoin fixes this. Now, she mentioned Thomas Sol, right? Yeah. And he wrote this incredible book called Basic Economics, which, by the way, I think Safedine's book is like the continuation of this, which is called Principles of Economics, the latest book that he released. But anyways, here's a video of Thomas Soul.

And you know what they asked him? They asked him, would you? And the Federal Reserve, and let's take a look at what he had to say. If you could, if we could make you dictator, would you abolish the Fed? Yes. You would. So quick. Yes.

I mean, for the reasons I just gave, history. There's no, you know, the Fed represented wonderful hopes. But we've had so many programs that represented wonderful hopes that ended in disaster. I don't doubt that someone who was sufficiently scholarly could come up with examples of where the Federal Reserve made things better. But the question is, overall, what was it supposed to do, was supposed to not only prevent bank failures. It was supposed to prevent huge changes in the money supply, in particular great deflations. The greatest deflation in American history occurred under the Federal Reserve system. There was a crisis in 1907, J.P. Morgan, the original J.P. Morgan, called the other banks

into a room and supposedly locked the doors and said, we've got to do something, we're going to all collapse. And they did something, and they didn't all collapse. But the progressors were shocked that one man could come in and take command of the situation, and especially someone who wasn't even in the government. Right. So what would you do? You'd move us back to the gold standard or you'd like banks issue their own currencies

the way they did up through the Civil War, say? You could, I could like... Well, they weren't doing any of those things as the time the Federal Reserve was created. We were on the gold standard though. But whether we're on or off the gold standard, that's another whole set of arguments. There's no evidence that I can see over this vast period of time that the Federal Reserve has existed. The things on the whole have been better.

The great post-World War II inflation was fed by the federal. the Federal Reserve doing exactly what they're planning to do now, namely buying up the bonds issued by the Treasury. But what would you replace it with? How would the currency, who would, how would the currency run? We would replace it. We could replace it with what existed when it was created. See, bro, Ben, they're right there. They're right there. They're right there. They're so close. I love it. I love it. I love the very, can you play the very end because it's my favorite line? Which was the gold, gold standard. Well, maybe the gold standard, but maybe not.

But there's no evidence that these, what would you replace the things? Always bother me. You know, when someone removes a cancer, what do you replace it with? That's the best line of the whole thing. When someone removes a cancer, what do you replace it with? Absolutely. Yeah, Seoul is awesome. He's written a lot of great stuff.

Actually, that basic economics book is just up on my shelf over here. But yeah, man. So many people. I think there's a lot more people that are like that in the world than people realize. The people that are there and they're this close, they just don't realize yet that Bitcoin has achieved the thing they wanted through their whole lives. And when they understand that, which is, you know, it takes work to understand it. when they get it, then there's no turning around from that. Yeah.

But it's like, it's like so, so I feel like he like Hayek, like they were before their before their times, right? Like Hayek was like there has to be a sly roundabout way. Like he's basically like without even knowing that Bitcoin was going to exist. He's like, look, this is the way to fix it. So all the same thing. Like they laid out the groundwork. Now, but for these, you know, content creators, like Candace Owens Interprime, you know, massive platform.

Do you know how much adoption she, she would be responsible for if she, because all the, like, and again, it's not to bash on any of them, but there, it's always a political solution to this. And it's like, it doesn't matter if you vote progressive or if you work conservative. The issue remains the same. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't fix anything. And then all the infighting between people, I truly believe Ben, or maybe I'm naive AF to think this, that if you fix the money, dude, like a lot of these issues that we're having, they would just go away. They would go away.

I think people would like learn to live with each other rather than like fight each other for the control of the money printer, which is essentially what politics is basically. Well, yeah, like you think of everybody's so. angry because life continually gets more difficult to afford. Right. And so imagine a world, and this is Jeff was just on with John Val. Jeff Booth was on John Ballot. So good. But again, he outlines like the default, the default society on a fixed supply money

is that in a fixed supply money society that is an open and free market, the default there is that you have is that you that everything every day gets continuously cheaper and more accessible to everyone simultaneously imagine living in a world like that we're just every single day everything is getting cheaper and easier to create and easier to obtain not just for you not just for me but for everyone because everybody's on a sound money standard and they're able to afford their basic needs and the innovation that's unlocked there because people spend their time actually moving on to the next big thing and creating things that will benefit generations to come instead of trying to solve the absolute mess of Fiat in the current time.

You know, it's instead of, instead of borrowing from our great-grandchildren to fix our problems now, we'd be building shit to make their lives better. 100% 100%. Dude, like you see the buildings, the cathedrals, right? Like all these things that were built under a sound money standard compared to now, you know, it's, it's, oh man, that, thank God for Bitcoin, thank God for Bitcoin. Thank God it. Indeed. Oh, man. Oh, man. All right. Well, guys, this was your Simply sessions. I'll see you next week, Ben. Thank you. Later, man. All right, everybody, a few more things to wrap up before we get all done here. I want to share my screen here.

And we're just going to cover a few of the tech updates this week. Number one, Zeus, this is an interesting one because there's two stories that tie in together here. So Zeus Wallet, I was chatting about just last week. And I was chatting about their recent update. There's 0.8.0. And they've had a series of beta ones. And so what this allows you to do is a lightning node on your phone with everything automated in the background in Zeus wallet. You, of course, can still connect to your own lightning node if you have one or whatever.

But it brought that, but it also brought something that was a lightning address that is self-hosted on the node as well. And something that will, if you get paid to the lightning address because in order to get paid on lightning, you need to be online, it will do something called a huddle invoice where it will basically temporarily hold the payment and then as soon as you come online, you can claim it. And so this is what's been kind of going on with it the last little bit. I've tested it pretty cool, some bugs and stuff,

but like, cool. I like what they're doing. And Zeus by itself is badass anyways. So they did just a few things. They did some bug fixes and some language support and some new branding and everything. But mutiny wallet, another awesome wallet. They're not a fan of Zeus's current implementation of how they're doing the lightning addresses and the quote-unquote hoddle invoices where it'll freeze up the payment until you come online.

They came out. They disabled sending Zaps over Noster to Zeus wallet users due to force-closed channel issues. So they said, quote, we petition Zeus to move to a more responsible node implementation like LDK unless their plan is to add shit coins or break LN further states a message by Mutiny. We have recently disabled the ability to zap Zeus wallet users from Mutiny. You may still pay their invoices or lightning addresses normally, but a big problem we were seeing is force closed channels due to stuck payments to Zeus due to their workarounds with locked payments, which harm both the user experience and other lightning nodes on the network.

Since Nostr users are mostly unaware if they're zapping Zuse users or not, we are taking this step proactively to protect users from having a 10-SAT zap costing them serious on-chain channel closing and reopening fees. The approach we are working on, and this is interesting, the approach we're working on for solving lightning addresses on mobile wallets is a Fedomint hybrid approach where the SATs end up at a federation if you are offline, but get swept to your self-custody channel when you come online. Payments will settle instantly with the federation and won't lock up unnecessary HTLCs or hash time-locked contracts on the network.

That's super interesting. And I don't know, again, some of that probably sounded like Greek to you guys, but if you're interested in fetaments, take a look at what fetaments are and how those work. that's a very interesting solution to this issue of, I want to have a lightning address and accept payments anytime, but I need to be online. Not anymore.

Anyways, they say, ideally we get the ability to do offline receives normally on Lightning Network, but that future is looking really grim with L&D's continued priorities on shit coins instead of features, and offline receives depends on a network-wide upgrade. Zeus will never block payment to our competitor's wallets, disparage or belittle anyone trying to push Bitcoin adoption forward or give up on trying to ship self-custodial solutions. We will, however, continue to push the limits of what is possible

in lightning in order to provide an amazing payment experience in a self-custodial manner for as many people as possible. Yeah, so super interesting here. I like both these wallets, but I see the issue therein. And in fact, I think I may have had, because I set up a lightning address on Zeus, but it was linked to my start nine node. And the start nine node did have a force closed channel the other day, and I did have some zaps that seemed to be stuck. And so I think that may have actually been the issue. So just be aware that the, you know, the self-hosted lightning address on Zeus may not be,

you know, ready for prime time. and there may be other options and other workarounds in the future. Nonetheless, Zeus is still awesome if you're not using that kind of zap locker lightning address thing. And it's awesome to connect your own node. And Mutiny is super cool. You should check it out. I did a full tutorial on it. Anyways, it's really awesome.

Either way, both projects, awesome. But hopefully it can be ironed out and figured out. Moving on, cashew nutshell, fruit. Big wallet improvements and everything. that cash or nutshell it's a chomian e-cash wallet and mint for bitcoin lightning cash who nutshell is the reference implementation uh so new features and improvements completely redesigned approach to use e-cash spending conditions uh and the ability to transact offline uh protocol changes are according to new specifications um yeah anyways cashew is super awesome i played around with it

basically uh near perfect privacy but there's tradeoffs in and around custody there uh and is super easy to use and it's cross-compatible with really any lightning wallet. So worth checking out. And in that same vein, big updates to a cashew wallet called MiniBits. So they got bug fixes and improvements. Again, they've had a number of issues with the App Store. And so there's been delays with lining up what's in the App Store versus what is the APK file. you can just download. But nonetheless, some updates, bug fixes and stuff like that in mini bits. I haven't done a video on this one yet.

I did another one called E-Nuts, which is cool. You should check that one out, but I'll probably do mini-bits soon. Moving on, Primal, Android version 0.20.4, and iOS version 0.90.3 released. And so what's new? Visual overhaul, direct messages, muted accounts. You have settings, different feeds, you have local database encryption, and edit profile screen now reports errors correctly. Anyways, primal's pretty badass. I tend to use primal for Nostr on desktop mostly, and then on my mobile I'm using Amethyst at the time.

But let me know what you're using. I'm curious if you're on Noster, and you can also follow me on Nostor. Just search up BTCSessions at VLT.g at Voltage, but BTC sessions at VLT.com. And you'll find me on there. And one more thing here, Flockster in the Nostra camp. It's a Nostr client for creating and managing calendar events and RSVPs. So there's a demo that was just released. It allows you to manage events completely on Nostr.

It's done by utilizing a certain event type. And it works with calendars and everything like that. It says, I built Flockster using Next. as the front-end framework. Yeah, either way, I think it's the space, again, the quote here, space doesn't have much built out about calendar events. I had to figure out most of the UX patterns my own. I think that what we've come up with provides an elegant, familiar user flow

and should be seamless for users to start adopting. So that's super cool. Again, so many interesting things that I wouldn't have thought of being built on Noster. And it's all very early, but also cool to see so many different. things happening at the same time. A few other things in the pipeline here. Shout out to Gladstein and the Human Rights Foundation.

He just dropped this video that summed up the Global Bitcoin Summit that I attended in Nashville in September. It was amazing. There were people around the globe from 55 different countries there, human rights activists from all over the world telling their stories about where they're from

and the issues that they're facing and collaborating with each other to learn and to help solve those problems with Bitcoin as one of the tools in their toolset. It was an amazing group of people. I'm so happy I was a part of it. And I hope they continue to do it every single year because, wow, what a gathering. What else here? Yes, it was announced earlier this week.

I will be going to Madeira in March, on March 1st through 3rd for Bitcoin Atlantis. It looks crazy. Madeira looks beautiful in the first place, but the number of people that are going and the quality of people there looks awesome. I won't spoil too much, but I'm going to be hosting. I'm going to be very, very involved in this one

to the point where I'm basically going to have a dedicated education space the entire time where people can come and learn because there's a lot of locals that are going to be allowed to attend for a very cheap price in an effort to fully orange pill the island. And hopefully I can have a hand in helping educate them on how to use Bitcoin. So that is the goal.

I see Seafunk in the comments asking if I have a promo code to attend Madeira. I think I do. I think it's BTC sessions. I don't know what that gets you, but probably. I should find that out. I'm pretty sure I was told. But yes, if you are getting tickets for it, use code BTC sessions, probably. Either way, it's going to be an amazing time and you should go anyways just to check it out because it looks astounding.

Look up just YouTube videos of Madeira. It's stunning. Moving on, I'll pause it here, but I made a video on something called Zapal Pay. And this does also have to do with Noster. Basically, the Apple App Store in particular banned the ability to zap people, the ability to send a lightning payment based on somebody's note or post. And they said it's because it was unlockable digital content. And you need to go through Apple Pay for that. And we need to take our 30%.

So the fine folks at Zappel Pay made up this workaround where basically with a few steps and a couple copy and pastes. Now, if you're using an iPhone and you have a Noster client, instead of hitting the zap button, which is now disabled, you can just reply to somebody's post with the emoji of your choice and it will send them a lightning payment right away. And you get to designate how much it is. You also get to designate a budget that you're willing to spend per day or per week or month or whatever. But yeah, there you go. Zap will pay. I did a full tutorial on it. Check it out if you're using an iPhone and you would like to be able to zap people once again.

Coming up tomorrow, why are we bullish? That is happening tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. I've got Shane Hazel. I've got Nicholas Bertie. He's from Goloi, and they're doing a lot of work in El Salvador with Blink Wallet. And then we've got British Hoddle to come make us all bullish. What's his tagline? You buy Bitcoin, you shut the fuck up, and you get fabulously wealthy.

I like that. Anyways, come check at that one. It should be a good time. I'm sure we'll have a blast of that. So, yeah, tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern time. And that's it for me, guys. Thank you so much for being here. Of course, hit that like button.

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I think we can do it. But yeah, it really does help whenever you share and like and subscribe if you're not already for sure. Of course, if you want to help the show in another way, you can hit up the sponsors down below. Hottle, hoddle, coin kite, Cedor, Nunchucks, Start 9. They're all down below. And then also, I have a QR code up on the screen right now. This will take you to my website.

So if you really liked what you saw and you need some additional help, in and around your Bitcoin setup, whether it be setting up hardware, multi-sig, using lightning, really playing with your node, doing all kinds of different privacy stuff. You can hit me up on my website.

You just scan that QR code. It'll take you right there, and you can book one-on-one sessions with me to help you through whatever you need. I'm getting booked up more and more. We'll see how long I can keep it up when we get into the bull run. I have no idea what kind of time I'm going to have.

but for the time being, still doing it. So please do. Hit me up if you need it. And we'll get ourselves going on that. Anyways, guys, enough of me. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be. And I will see you guys next time for your Simply session.