BTC Sessions - HRF $50K Grant For BTC Privacy, Bitcoin US P2P Record, Microsoft ION on BTC EP069

Starting point is 00:00:13 Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What's up everyone? I'm Ben with the BTC sessions and this is your daily session. Before we dive in, of course, I want to give a shout out to sponsors of the show, ledden.com. This is where you can use your Bitcoin for a bunch of different things. I've been working with these guys for well over a year now and using them for the same amount of time. Now they've got a few things here, of course. They've got their Bitcoin back loans. This was the first thing I ever used.

Starting point is 00:00:54 I was in a pinch. He did some dollars. Did not want to sell my Bitcoin, though. I was worried I'd buy back at a much higher price if I did. So I was able to park my Bitcoin in a dedicated address, which I could audit 24-7. I got dollars in my bank account within 24 hours. And when I repaid those, I got the exact same Bitcoin back. Now, they've also got a couple of other things.

Starting point is 00:01:15 They've got their Bitcoin and USDC savings accounts where you can earn up to 7.5% interest per year. and they've got their B2X offering, which uses the same loan mechanism to buy more Bitcoin instantly, effectively doubling your Bitcoin on the spot. So if you want to check these guys out, there is a link down below in the show notes. And if you use that link to get a Bitcoin back loan, well, they'll give you 50 bucks worth of Bitcoin for free. So do go ahead and check them out. And secondly, we've got coin cards.

Starting point is 00:01:45 Now, I use these guys. I've been using these guys since 2014, so six years. years now. The first time I ever used them, I was doing an experiment about living on Bitcoin, and now I definitely walk the walk because most of my income is Bitcoin now. Anyways, besides the fact, coin cards really simple, you can buy gift cards with Bitcoin, and that can help bridge the gap for you if you're trying to make that leap into being less dependent on banks and a little bit more self-sovereign. This can be an excellent way to do that. They accept Bitcoin on main chain and on lightning. And, you know, if you've got some shit coins that you want to dump here,

Starting point is 00:02:25 great option to do so and get something of value out of it. Anyways, they've got pretty much every brand that you could imagine. And they also allow you to top up your mobile device if you want to do that. So be sure to go to coincards.com and check them out, US and Canada. And it looks like they're looking at expanding over time as well. With that, let's dive into the news. So something really cool here, the Human Rights Foundation is funding Bitcoin privacy tools despite, you know, some stigma around coin mixing. So I'm going to read a little bit here from this Coin desk article. The Human Rights Foundation took a strong stance on Bitcoin Privacy Tech Wednesday by announcing its new Bitcoin developer fund. The first $50,000 grant from the fund has been awarded to freelance coin swap

Starting point is 00:03:16 developer Chris Belcher. If you recall, we talked about coin swap last week on the show, which is a way of swapping your Bitcoin without even looking like anything different than a regular Bitcoin transaction. Anyways, going on here, coin swap is a mixing technique originally invented in 2013 by Greg Maxwell. It's a part of a comprehensive suite of privacy tools being developed by Bitcoin advocates. The fund's next gift apparently already earmarked for another developer working on strengthening Bitcoin pseudonomy at the network level will be announced later this summer. Alex Gladstein, the Human Rights Foundation's chief strategy officer, said in an email. The HRF or Human Rights Foundation, will also crowdsource fundraising for such privacy tech, he added, using both dollars and Bitcoin while making it possible for activists to more safely receive

Starting point is 00:04:13 donations, earn income, and continue their important work under increased financial pressure. Now, Belcher said he hopes to have a primitive test net available for coin swaps near the end of the year. He quote said, it will be a bit like lightning where there's never a single day when it's finished, but it slowly gets more and better features and bug fixes until one day you realize it's everywhere. He plans to keep as an open source hobby, this project, and not a revenue producing company. Theoretically, any wallet provider could use the open source code to add the feature to their mobile app or desktop app. Privacy-focused wallets could even use coin swap features as another layer to current coin join offerings. So I find this stuff very, very exciting. I'm very big on Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:05:08 privacy. I think it's an excellent suite of tools that's being developed for Bitcoin, which in and of itself is obviously not private, can be linked to identity and then tracked from there on. So having these different methods of actually making it fungible is very much needed. And, you know, I'm, I obviously, I partner with Wasavi for the show. I also regularly use samurai wallet. I love that people like BTC Pay Server are starting to use pay to end point, which is another way of obfuscating what's happening on chain. And again, coin swaps is just another excellent suite, which I've seen multiple wallets be interested in implementing, and I'm very excited to see it proliferate. So moving on, the United States sets a new record for peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading.

Starting point is 00:06:04 So reading from Coin Telegraph here, peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading activity in the United States surged to a new all-time high during the week of June 7th, according to data published by useful tulips. Over the past seven days, nearly $29 million worth of Bitcoin has changed hands for U.S. dollars on leading peer-to-peer marketplaces, local Bitcoins, and Paxville. The past week saw only North American and Middle Eastern-Slerfican trade increase, while other regions posted slight declines on seven-day volume. Over $24 million in Bitcoin changed hands on Paxville in the United States, alongside 4.6 million traded on local Bitcoins.

Starting point is 00:06:48 With roughly 1 million trading on Canada's peer-to-peer markets as well, the past week comprised of the second strongest on record for North America trade with 29.8 million in weekly activity, which is trailing behind only the week of May 20th of 2018, which posted 30.2 million in North American trade. So not too far behind. Interesting to see increasing volumes there. Let's move on. Microsoft is building identity system that runs on. Bitcoin. It's called Ion. So let's read a little bit here from Decrypt. IT giant Microsoft has announced the launch of its open source decentralized identifiers network or dids dubbed ion on Bitcoin's blockchain. So the technology

Starting point is 00:07:40 allows users to create decentralized digital credentials such as driver's licenses or university diplomas that could be used to identify them online. Alternatively, these credentials could be used to log themselves into websites and apps. Additionally, DIDS decentralized nature ensures that people have full control over their data. We're thrilled to see Ion make the leap to Bitcoin mainnet for its public beta. Ion is an open public permissionless layer two network built on open source code that anyone can review, run, and contribute to, said Daniel Boucher. one of the developers of the Side Tree Protocol on June 10th. DIDS are a new type of identifier that

Starting point is 00:08:27 enables verifiable, decentralized digital identity. For example, a did identifies any subject, a person, organization, thing, data model, abstract entity, etc. That the controller of the did decides that it identifies, according to one of the drafts published on the World Wide Web Consortium's website. I have some thoughts about Microsoft building identity on a layer above the Bitcoin network. I mean, it's inevitable that people are going to be playing around with this stuff. But it's important to remember that just because there's a blockchain doesn't mean that the information is good. If you try to take real world information other than the value of the token on the actual network itself,

Starting point is 00:09:14 if you try to take external information and plug it into a blockchain and expect it to just be immutable and true, or a beacon of truth, well, it's only as reliable as the input. So if like they are saying, digital identities, driver's licenses, if I just spin myself up a driver's license on the Bitcoin blockchain and have it pegged there in some way, shape, or form, I mean, it's only as reliable as the information that I put in, especially if I'm the one putting it in. If you want a driver's license that is accepted across an entire region or country, then you're still going to need that centralized entity that deems whether or not you're worthy of having a driver's license. So it's all relative and I think anything said here should be taken with a grain of salt.

Starting point is 00:10:04 Now, I do like the idea of digital identities that are based on past actions. So you can build up a reputation, much like you would on an online marketplace or whatever. where people can review you and your actions. And so once you build up a good reputation over a certain amount of time, then that gives you certain privileges and to use certain services. So I could definitely see that. But when it comes to actually identities of real people day to day, it gets a little bit more complicated than just,

Starting point is 00:10:39 hey, we're going to stick it on the blockchain. So we'll see how this develops. Moving on, China is losing its dog. dominance over Bitcoin mining. So this, again, this I kind of always expected to happen. It was only a matter of time before Bitcoin mining would start to proliferate around the globe more and more so and not be as centralized in China. But regardless, let's read on with this decrypt article. China is losing its dominance over the Bitcoin mining industry, according to analysis published today by Cryptal Analytics firm, Token Insight. Token Insight,

Starting point is 00:11:17 cites data from Cambridge University's Center for Alternative Finance, which estimates that the overall electricity usage of Bitcoin miners that comes from China has fallen from 75.63% in September of last year to 65.08% by the end of April, so a drop of more than 10%. Cambridge's estimations provide a rough indication of the hash rate produced by China, Johnson Zoo, China. chief analyst at Token Insight told Decrypt. The hash rate is the overall computational power that secures the Bitcoin blockchain. Now, in the same time frame, Cambridge's data shows that electricity consumption from Bitcoin miners in the U.S. has increased from 4.06% to 7.24%, so just over 3. Bitcoin mining in Kazakhstan, oddly enough, also appears to have boomed. Back in September, Kazakhstan's

Starting point is 00:12:14 mining industry accounted for 1.42% of the hash rate. By May 7th of this year, it accounted for 6.17% of the hash rate. So getting close to 5% increase there, almost sex tuffling what they had before. So about a 5x increase there. So what is the reason for some of this? Well, again, Bitcoin mining tends to seek out the most efficient uses for that hash power. the most efficient power, the cheapest power. It seeks that out and it sucks it up and uses it when it's being wasted otherwise. So in the instance of the U.S., I mean, it was only a matter of time because there's a lot of waste when it comes to things like natural gas. And if you can capture that waste energy and utilize it and make profit from it, then that's going to happen.

Starting point is 00:13:06 And we're seeing that happen a lot. We're also seeing it happen in Canada. Now, the question of Kazakhstan, what's the deal there? Well, that has to do with the cost of power itself. So in China, in a lot of regions, you've got specific costs associated with getting your electricity and being able to power these mining rigs. And a lot of the older generation mining rigs are no longer efficient when it comes to the the cost of power within China when it's not just something free that's coming off of hydro or whatever.

Starting point is 00:13:41 So a lot of these old mining rigs, the S-9s that are starting to more or less become obsolete, they get commoditized and they'll get moved to areas where they're still profitable like Kazakhstan. Now, I'm not sure exactly what the deal with power in Kazakhstan is, but my guess is it's either just straight up cheap or it's heavily subsidized, one of the two. Either way, to the person that's running those Bitcoin miners, the power is cheaper, which means that the inefficient hardware, is still profitable until eventually the hash power of the Bitcoin network goes up enough

Starting point is 00:14:17 that it's just no longer feasible to compete with more efficient miners. Anyways, let's move on to the last point here. Just a quick thing on, again, why Bitcoin is around. The US national debt reaches a record of 26 trillion dollars. So again, this is on decrypt here. Just a quick little snippet of it. National debt in the U.S. has hit $26 trillion. That's the highest it's ever been. Last month, U.S. national debt hit $25 trillion and $24 trillion the month prior. That means that U.S. national debt is increasing currently at a rate of around $1 trillion per month.

Starting point is 00:14:56 To keep that in perspective, that's $209,000 per taxpayer or $78,863 per citizen. This is according to the U.S. debt clock, which is linked in the article, and I'll have this down below as well. That calculates the national debt. And beyond that, we have the Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin. He said on Tuesday at a congressional hearing that the Trump administration is seriously looking at the prospect of another round of stimulus checks for Americans. He said, I think we're going to seriously look at whether we want to do more direct money to stimulate. the economy. And he added that the economy would need more federal help. Now, the Democrats have been pretty supportive of this idea, especially additional stimulus checks to Americans,

Starting point is 00:15:48 whereas Republicans, not so much. And again, if checks go out to Americans, you better believe that's not the only money that's going to be going out. There's going to be trillions going out for major corporations and poorly run businesses that should have gone under but did not because of this. And a lot of that's going to be funneled into purchasing equities as well. And when you look in comparison when it comes to what the American people get versus these large corporations and these banks and all of this money being funneled into the stock market, it will be breadcrumbs in comparison, as it was last time. Trillions printed and Americans actual main street American people saw a tiny, tiny fraction of that just to keep them happy. And

Starting point is 00:16:43 based on world events today, it didn't really work. So anyways, this is why we Bitcoin. Let's finish up here. Thank you guys so much for watching. As always, if you are here on YouTube, please do hit like subscribe and share but if you're on youtube please do check me out on my other platforms i don't want to rely solely on youtube so i am on facebook live i stream live to twitter uh i am on d live i'm on tv i'm also on audio only podcast so you can find me on apple podcast spotify google pretty much any podcast network that you you listen to links to all that will be down below also if you want to help with the show in another way you can hit up the sponsors i mentioned previously leaden and coin cards are in links down below or if you want to pick up yourself a hardware wallet. Number one, if your

Starting point is 00:17:32 Bitcoin is not already on a hardware wallet, what are you doing? You got to be careful. If you have that on your phone or any internet connected device, it can be hacked and stolen, especially if it's sizable some, best idea to get it on a hardware wallet. If you don't already have one, you can pick up a ledger. I use the Ledger NanoX and the Ledger NanoS. I have both of them for different use cases. And there's a link where you can pick that up for your yourself down below and help out the show at the same time. But even if you don't opt to get a ledger or if you don't opt to use that link, other good options, cold card I really love and trezer I use as well. And just be safe. Get your coins on a friggin hardware wallet. Other than that,

Starting point is 00:18:15 if you really loved what you saw, you can always hit up my tippin.combe page and leave me a lightning network tip. That's tippin.mee slash at VTC sessions. And with that, I will wrap up here. Thank you guys very much. Have a wonderful evening or wonderful rest of your day and I will see you guys next time for your daily session.

BTC Sessions - HRF $50K Grant For BTC Privacy, Bitcoin US P2P Record, Microsoft ION on BTC EP069

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