BTC Sessions - HUGE: GameStop’s Bitcoin Pivot Could Change Everything!

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

🔴 LIVE: Trump Backtracks on Crypto, Bitcoin's Worst Ever Bull Run & GameStop’s Bitcoin Pivot Rumors!The Bitcoin revolution is accelerating as major institutions and governments make game-changing moves:🔥 Elon Musk Taps Ron Paul to Audit the Fed! – Could this shake up the Federal Reserve and expose hidden truths about U.S. monetary policy?🔥 U.S. Caught Funding “Independent Media” – Elon Musk & Nayib Bukele expose government-backed narratives in journalism. How deep does this go?🔥 Metaplanet Follows MicroStrategy Playbook – The Japanese firm’s Bitcoin strategy sent its stock soaring 48x in 12 months—is this the new standard?🔥 GameStop’s Bitcoin Pivot? – Could the meme stock legend become the first Bitcoin-only consumer bank?🔥 U.S. Endowments & Bitcoin – Top U.S. endowments quietly build Bitcoin portfolios as adoption spreads.🔥 Trump Backs Off Crypto Council – Is Trump shifting his stance on digital assets?🔥 Bitcoin’s Worst Performing Bull Run? – A closer look at the current cycle—why does it feel slower than previous runs?All this and MUCH MORE in today’s LIVE show—hit subscribe, turn on notifications, and join the conversation! 🚀🔥—------------------------------BOOK private one-on-one sessions with BITCOIN MENTOR! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more - all from a team of top notch educators that I've personally vetted.https://bitcoinmentor.io/—------------------------------FOLLOW Simply Bitcoin & BTC Sessions on other channels:Simply Bitcoin on Youtube: youtube.com/@simplybitcoinSimply Bitcoin on X: x.com/simplybitcointv Nico on X: x.com/bitvoltBTC Sessions on X: x.com/BTCsessions—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL BUY BITCOINhttps://bitcoinwell.com/btcsessionsMINING DISRUPT CONFERENCEhttps://www.eventbrite.com/e/mining-disrupt-conference-2025-fort-lauderdale-florida-tickets-980017277057?discount=BTCSESSIONSCOINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions AQUA WALLEThttps://aquawallet.io/NUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://nunchuk.io/individualsHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://debifi.com/#bitcoin #crypto #btc #money

What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. GameStop's CEO, Ryan Cohen, has met with none other than Michael Saylor. The world of meme stocks and Bitcoin Treasury Reserve assets are colliding. Will GameStop use the strategy? Strategy. We're going to talk about that and much more. Coming right up.

I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your Simply session. And we're right in and we're bringing in Nico. Yo, buddy. How's it going? Yo, dude. I mean, bro, that intro was fire. Memops.

GameStop. New micro strategy. Bro. So much things going on in the world of Bitcoin like always. I might sell some Bitcoin to buy GameStop. I'm not kidding. No. Oh, no.

The meme. The meme is it's going to suck away. are sets. No, I'm, I'll be happy to see more people jump on, on, on that, on the strategy strategy, but the strategy strategy is also my own. Bro, I mean, dude, like the metaplanet 48x this year, bro, since they started. That is crazy. That is, I have been seeing that. So, I mean, micro strategy, what? Like, they, they 5x this year? So, like, I mean, If GameStop is like, yo, we're buying Bitcoin,

like it might be a good idea to get a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I guess if you've got Fiat tied up in the Fiat system that you can't easily unfiatt, then yeah, maybe not a bad idea. You know, if you got it like a, it could be worth it.

I don't know. So what is going on here? What's the story behind that? I mean, I like that they match the sneakers and the whole get up. It's great. Dude, I mean, he's going to be wearing a,

Bitcoin hoodie soon. I'm going to have a little Bitcoin B here. But this is a GameStop CEO. He's with Michael Saylor. That looks like his house. What do you think they talked about? I mean, like, what do you think they talked about, bro?

That's number one. And number two, here's the actual article from CNMBC. It says, video game retailer, Retailer turned meme stock. GameStop is considering investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, according to sources familiar with the matter. GameStop is exploring investments in alternative asset classes,

including crypto and Bitcoin in particular, three sources said. Shares of GameStop soared as much as 20% in extended trading following the news. The retailer could decide not to follow through the investment. The company is still in the process of figuring out if this makes sense for GameStop's business. last week Ryan Cohen posted a photo on social media site X with Michael Saylor the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin however Sailor is not involved in Gabe Stop's decision about crypto investments in 2022 GameStop launched crypto wallets that let users manage their crypto and non-fundable tokens however the firm shut the service down in

2023 Cohen co-founded a co-founder of Chewy bought shares in GameStop in 2020 and joined the board in 2021 as GameStop became one of the key meme stocks in the trading media. His e-commerce experience fueled hopes that he could help modernize the brick-and-mortar retailer, but the company is still struggling to adapt to changing spending habits by gamers. Under Cohen's leadership, GameStop has focused on cutting costs and streamlining operations to ensure the business is profitable, even though it is not growing. As of November 2nd, the company has amassed a $4.6 billion cash pile, has been using those funds for investments, according to a December security filing.

Companies consider adding Bitcoin to their balance sheet would be following in the footsteps of micro strategy. The company recently rebranded to strategy has bought billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin in recent years, effectively transforming from a software stock to a Bitcoin holding vehicle. The decision has helped feel a rapid, if volatile, rise for strategy stock. In December 2020, GameStop's board approved a new investment policy. it allows Cohen plus two independent board members and other necessary staff to manage GameStop's portfolio of security investments. Those investments have to conform to the policy's guidelines or be approved by the committee by unanimous vote or the full board by majority vote. Very, very interesting.

A couple comments here. So, like, what people forget, I mean, not forget, but I know Bitcoiners know this, but micro strategy was like essentially like a zonial. company. Michael, Michael Sale even said, like, I was thinking about retiring. I couldn't compete with Microsoft. I couldn't compete with Oracle. Like, they didn't die, but they weren't, they weren't able to compete. And if you look at their stock, they were essentially going sideways, right? Then they adopted Bitcoin, and they went from a $1 billion company to a $200 billion, sorry, $100 billion market cap company. That's the first thing. Second thing, Metaplanet, which we're going to talk about in a little bit.

They were essentially a dying hotel chain. The pandemic really messed them up, and they were just into hotels. They had nothing to do with Bitcoin or whatever. And essentially, they adopted a Bitcoin strategy. They hired Dylan LeClair, and in 12 months, their stock has 48X. GameStop has almost $5 billion in cash. it's it's a dead business model very similar to meta planet hotel chain and micro strategy software company but if you have an xbox or a playstation you buy the game through the app store of that console

right like when i was growing up there was discs and ben i'm sure like we're like around the same era you'd go to game boutique or game stop and you'd buy the latest and greatest game that was like i remember our childhood memories of that. It was great. But like digital changed everything. And I would say like the same analogy is if GameStop doesn't want to become a blockbuster, they should absolutely buy Bitcoin. And GameStop will transform from a, you know, brick and mortar video game store to a Bitcoin holding company. Like I think they have the opportunity to do so. Micro Strategy has already proved that. And so has met a planet. And neither of those companies, he's had anything to do with Bitcoin.

They just had first mover advantage. And I think Saylor with Micro Strategy only started with like $200 million or something like that. And then he was like able to like financial engineer and leverage his company to like continue to raise. Use the traditional financial system to raise more money to buy more Bitcoin and it just continued to snowball. Right. And I think Micro Strategy is going to be one of the largest Bitcoin financial services company in world. I think they're going to own up to 5% of the supply. And I think any company that, even if you're second or third, you have the opportunity to position yourself and do the exact

same playboat that micro strategy is doing. So I think this is a no-brainer. Like Ben said, if you have cash, right, don't sell your Bitcoin, but if you have cash, and you can't get that cash out of the financial system because it's an IRA or, you know, retirement account. it might be a good idea to get game stop because in my eyes I think this is like this is absurd and financial advice yeah yeah it's again to your point of what you're saying in and around even though they're not first they still stand to gain substantially I mean really when it comes down to it even the last company on the planet to enact this strategy will still be better all than they were before they enacted the strategy, right?

Like it's the difference between sitting on cash that is perpetually losing value versus sitting on an asset that actually is scarce and accrues purchasing power over time. Like it's just it's it's it's like saying, nah, I don't want to, just because I'm last, I'm never going to do it because I prefer to lose my money perpetually forever or lose my purchasing power perpetually forever. Like, no, it's still, it's still better to be last than to never do it at all. So, like, yeah, like, like, the third is going to be way better than, you know, 100,000th. But it's still good.

It's still a good move. It's still really good. And where else are they going? Like, this is where, and this is, like, where, like, the similarities of metaplan and micro strategy reminded me, like, microstrat, I've said this, like, where were they going? going. They weren't going anywhere and neither was Metaplanet. Right. Like these were, I didn't even know what Metaplan. It sounded like a video game or some weird, you know what I'm saying? Like, what is Metaplanet? Like what the fuck is going on, right? Um, but, uh, you know, they pivoted to Bitcoin,

and they're essentially Bitcoin holding companies and look how successful they've become, at least from a stock. I still don't know what they do. Like, if you were to ask me, like, what is micro strategy's core business? I would say software, but like, what does a software do? I have no idea. I didn't know micro strategy was even a thing before the Bitcoin thing. I didn't know Metaplanet was a thing. I know GameStop is a thing. Could you imagine all the, and someone in the comments too is like GameStop has a cult following too. Could you imagine?

Because like the GameStop story was really interesting. It was like a bunch of head funds were like shorting the stock because they were just basically, they're going to make a lot of money of it dying because it is a failed business model, bro. Like brick and mortar isn't coming back. right um and like so many people have such good memories of game stop that they like rallied together and they're like no f you um you know and the whole like meme stock thing came about a hedge fund went under they had to stop the trading there was like testimony in congress could you imagine if game

stop's like yo we're buying bitcoin all the wall street bets crowd is going to go nuts they're going go bananas you know so if only bed bath and beyond or to jumped on it first exactly bro so it is funny so the one the one little bit of pause where I'm like it's it's good for game stop to do this but part of me in the back of my mind is like it's it's um more of an observation than anything necessarily negative but like you said the the company is like they're business model is it's clear that that's no long it's their their blockbuster but for games and I know blockbuster had games but like that that same physical medium that has basically gone obsolete is their main primary business model and so you know they're doing the same thing that you know

record stores and stuff like that started to do where they'd introduce like oh we've got collectibles and things like that now to try and you know up sales and all that um but at the the end of the day, the business model itself is kind of doomed. So in a funny way, because they're a meme stock and they're subject to, I mean, the fiat mentality of everybody that that is the people that have basically overtly admitted that gambling is the only way they're going to make their way out of this mess or haven't found Bitcoin first. Because they're part of that meme where it's like, Ascarat, we'll just gamble on this thing that's a, that's a, a doomed company and we'll just pump it up because we hate Wall Street, they can,

they actually stand a chance at capitalizing on that and not only just surviving, but thriving because of the absolute mess that is our financial system because of fiat. So like a company that technically should not exist is, is potentially on the cusp of absolutely fucking killing it just because people said, let's gamble on this thing that shouldn't exist anymore. And they may rightly place those chips on a winning bet here. 100%. And it would be poetic, bro. It'd be like the ultimate check move for Wall Street because like the actual fundamental value of the stock would make sense. Right. Like it was being artificial. I don't want to say artificial. Look, value subjective. Right. So, you.

you know, some people are just like, look, I know game stops earnings or shit, but, you know, I love the stock, right? And if you have enough people that do that, like it, bro, I mean, it's kind of like Bitcoin in the early days, bro. Like, Bitcoin didn't go to zero because there are some absolute psychopaths that were like, nah, like, I'm holding this thing. I'm holding this thing to the end. Like, I'm not letting this thing die.

So, yeah, it's a very similar concept, in my opinion. but different in some ways. So anyways, I was talking about GameStop. Next thing I want to talk about is, and I'm looking for it. I usually have this stuff organized. I apologize. Next thing I want to talk about is Metaplanet, which is just nuts. So Metaplanet follows micro-strategy's lead, announces $11.5 million debt sale for additional

Bitcoin purchases. It goes on to say Tokyo listed Metaplanet has announced a debt sale to boost its Bitcoin Stash following the lead of U.S. listed business intelligence for micro strategy on Monday, Metaplanet announced on Exit is issued one-year ordinary bonds with a guarantee, excuse me, totaling $11.3 million for an annual interest rate of 0.36%. The funds raised will be used entirely to snap up BTC. Metaplanet started buying BTC in April this year as a hedge against Japan's debt issuance issues and volatility in the yen. Since then, it has accumulated 1,018 BTC worth 92 million.

According to data source Bitcoin treasuries, the company has also used options strategies to boost its holdings. You know, it's kind of bullshit that like you have a public company and you could just leverage the broken financial system to just like, like, I wish we had that. But take a look at this. This is crazy. So Bitcoin hoarder stock source 4,800%. That's a 48X, ladies and gentlemen.

The ripple effects of U.S. President Donald Trump's pro-cry are fueling a surge in Bitcoin demand in Japan where one hotel, it's a hotel company. Hotel companies. I don't know that until this episode. I didn't know that either. I met the CEO of Metaplanet. at Sailor's New Year's Eve party. And I still had no idea why they did until right this second.

Right. Like, dude, it's, it's like surreal. It was a hotel company. It's like a dying brick and mortar store company. It's like a software company that no one knew. Anyways, the ripple effects of, yeah, so it keeps saying, like a pivot to stockpiling the cryptocurrency, is delivering eye-watering returns for shareholders.

Shares of Metaplanet are up around 4,800% over the past 12 months. The largest gain among all Japanese equities in that period, one of the highest globally, according to data complied by Bloomberg. Bitcoin itself hit a record of $109,000 on January 20th on Trump's inauguration day, although it's since erased some of these gains as his trade policies planned global instability. Oh yeah, that's right. Ben, I think we might be in the same country. 51st state. Bro, have you seen the latest video? Like, he's dead serious. I thought it was like a negotiating tactic. He's like, no, like, it's serious. And I'm like, what the fuck?

I don't think he's just doing it to troll Trudeau. There's no way he actually believes that. Um, anyhow, um, MetaPlanetit is one of a number of outfits around the world that aim to emulate the success of Michael Sailor's aim. They did, bro. 48x is more than what Michael, what, what micro strategy has gone up. Anyways, Metaplanet's CEO, former Goldman Sachs equity derivatives traver, Simon Gertritch said he was drawn to the idea after hearing Sailor strategy on a podcast. He'd been running Metaplanet, formerly Red Planet, Japan, Inc. as a hotel

developers since 2013, but shifted to a Bitcoin first strategy in early 2024 after a pandemic slowed down, forced the company to shutter all but one of its hotels. Since then, Metaplanet shareholders have increased to almost 50,000 growing by 500% in 2024. According to the company, shareholders include Capital Group, which also invest in strategy, but the vast majority are retail investors, many of whom have limited experience with volatile crypto assets, quote, Metaplanet has such high exposure to the volatile retail base that, quote, they need to make sure shareholders understand exactly what their strategy is. I mean, that's bullshit.

You know what their strategy is? Their strategy is to buy an F ton of Bitcoin, man. This is crazy, bro. This is nuts. This is ridiculous. You know what's insane is the part you read where they are a company, that literally now owns one hotel. They have one hotel, and then they just bought Bitcoin.

They went up 4,800%. So basically, like, there's nobody's investing in the hotel portion of this business. Like, it's just, it's hilarious. Like, you may as well just say, like, hey, we're just a bunch of guys and we bought some Bitcoin. Like, yeah, there's nothing else. What do you guys do? What's your business? Do you want to do? Let's do the same thing, bro. How about we buy some Bitcoin and then people invest in us because we have Bitcoin. Yeah, dude. What a, what a move, right? We're just really, we're just cutting out an extra step of having a business that does things. And instead, we're just going to buy things. And that those things are just Bitcoin.

It's so effing crazy, man. It's so. crazy. I just, I can't believe it. Um, and, uh, we should totally start something. Like Simply Sessions, Inc. Um, what do you guys do? I mean, we, we, we make content, but we actually just buy Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah, man, absolutely, absolutely hilarious. Awesome. Awesome. Well, uh, Nico, can you give us a little tease of what we may chat about after the quick break here? Absolutely. Right when we get back, we're going to be talking about comparing the different cycles. man. To be honest, and it also depends on perspective, right? This cycle seems like it's been underperforming compared to previous cycles. Also, there's news that U.S. endowments are buying

Bitcoin, which I think is really exciting. And we're going to have an update on state-level strategic Bitcoin Reserve legislation. So that's really cool. And then also kind of exposing the New York Times, Elon with Doge, not the cryptocurrency, but the Department of Government efficiency has essentially exposed that a lot of these, quote-unquote, independent legacy media outlets have actually been funded by the federal government. Ooh, sounds good. All right. We will be right back.

Also, get your lightning wallets ready because we're going to give away some sats on the other side of the break. We'll see you guys in just a minute. Bitcoin well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the U.S. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place. to be making large buys at their OTC desk of over $50,000. 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.

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Use the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen right now to receive 20% off your tickets. Don't miss out. 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 4 and the Q. 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 it. All right. We're back in. We're going to give away some quick sats here. Also, myself and Nico are going to be down at Mining Disrupt coming up. I'm very excited to get this. This is going to be my first mining conference. And I've been smashing a lot of mining related content, including I just finished my Bidax tutorial.

I'll be chatting about that later in the show. But yeah, if you want to join us down there, You can scan that QR code up on the screen over off to the right. I'll give you 20% off tickets. It is March 27th through, sorry, 25th through 27th in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The 27th is actually my real 40th birthday. And then we'll be heading up to Pub Key a couple days, well, that day. But having my 40th birthday celebration at Pubkey in New York,

just a couple days after. So let us know if you're going to be in town in either place. But let's give away some stats really quick. We're here on Bitcoin Well. You can check him out. Of course, links are in these show notes down below. Great place to be stacking stats in Canada and the U.S. Where it works is when you sign up, when you buy Bitcoin,

when you refer friends, you earn points. And those points can be used to toss a coin into Bitcoin wishing well. Each time you do, you have a chance to win up to a million stats. We're going to do that right now. All you got to do is whip out your lightning wallets. and try to scan the QR code first. Whoever scans it first will steal the sats from everybody else. So off it goes, I'll make a big shibum.

And 210 sats to whoever scans it first. Congrats if you get it. If you do, let us know in the comments. We would love to hear it. Anyways, with that, Nico, I'm going to, I'll get your stuff up here instead. and we can continue on. So yeah, let's keep going, man. What are we continuing on here with?

What do we want to start with? Bro, I just got to say, whoever is doing your new ads is absolutely amazing. That was beautiful. And I saw Opti in there. That's so nice, man. It's so pretty. That was really good editing, bro.

Holy shit. That was really awesome. I had tip of the hat to Matt who will watch this and then probably also clip it up into a short. That was great editing, dude. Very, very good ads. So the, the, like, I was entertained. That's when you know it's a good ad. Okay. So, moving on, we got, okay, so so much, so much to get to. So yeah, this whole thing that's happening in the U.S. is really, really interesting. I think this phenomenon is going to spread worldwide. I think this is happening in every Western democracy. And yeah, I think, just to put it simply, I think that there's a misalignment of incentives when

governments have the ability to print money. And I think inherently, if you dig deeper, you're always going to find that they're using that ability to print money to pay themselves. It's not a coincidence that the wealthiest suburbs in the world are in Washington, D.C. That's not a coincidence. That's the home of the money printer. That's where it comes from. So all of this stuff that Doge is discovering in every single department is not surprising whatsoever. And even if Elon is successful, and I think he will be, we're just one administration away from all of that being reversed.

So the only long-term solution to this is separation of money and state. There's no other solution because they're just going to keep doing the same thing. It's human nature. And I think that's one of the most, that's one of the best things about Bitcoin is there's an alignment of incentives, right? Where the miners, the node operators, the content creators, like whatever you say, that's why Max Kaiser said that Sailor's the Bitcoin employee of the year. By him promoting Bitcoin pumping his bags, if you're holding Bitcoin,

you're benefiting percentage-wise just as much as everyone else holding Bitcoin, right? So it's an aligned incentive structure system versus a misaligned incentive structure system. That is the Fiat system. So anyways, here's Shamath from the All-In podcast. All dude's also a billionaire. But this is a podcast where David Sachs used to be on. I think he made a guess appearance. But David Sachs is now the AI and CryptoZar, apparently.

But he had some comments about what Elon is doing. the media, who are supposed to be this intermediary layer that's totally objective, between the government and the people, were not independent at all, but had all kinds of hidden incentives, $8 million to Politico, several million dollars to the BBC. I think it's important to ask what's going on. And by the way, that also has historical context. This is exactly what happened in the 60s and 70s, where it turned out, that record companies were paying DJs to pay songs.

There was a huge set of lawsuits and trial cases, and the result was a change in the law. And we call that peola now, which is you cannot take this money without disclosing it. And so had this money been absorbed by these entities and actually disclosed, maybe we'd be okay. But Nick, I sent you a link. Maybe you can throw it on the screen for these guys.

This is a very simple manifestation of this cycle. We talked about this, guys, And we didn't realize how connected it all was. But we were asking our... Okay. So what are they talking about? What does this have to do with USAID? And most importantly, what does this have to do with Bitcoin?

This is a Bitcoin show, Nico, what the F are you doing? Bear with me. I'm going to connect the dots for you. So, essentially, the Biden administration, what Elon's doing with Doge has discovered that USAID was directly funding legacy media. outlets, including political and the New York Times. Do you guys remember how the New York Times treated Bitcoin, right? So now that we know that the Biden administration was funding the New York Times, all those hit pieces on Bitcoin start to make a whole lot of sense.

The New York Times was paid, I think I saw $8 million from the federal government, and we know how Biden felt. We know how the Biden administration felt. And do you guys remember this article? which we covered on Simply Sessions, the real cost of the digital race for Bitcoin where they doctored the sky, you know, it's hilarious.

And I think they changed the text. But essentially this paywall used to say, like, subscribe for, you know, independent media, which I find hilarious. Apparently they got rid of that. And it wouldn't make sense that they would call themselves independent media. They're funded.

And this was one of the biggest, scandals in modern American history because this wasn't just happening on a local level or in a domestic level. USAID was essentially funding media outlets all around the world. Check out this post by Naim Bukele. Today, the entire local opposition called for a massive demonstration against mining. Every political party joined the call along with 90% of all NGOs, universities, churches, and activist groups. They ran a month-long mainstream media and social media campaign, had the backing of the country's most powerful news outlets,

chose a holiday, so no one had to work, organize preparatory events, and more. This is what they achieved. It's clear. There is no opposition without USAID money. And here's a kind of drone shot of the top. That's the protest. That's nothing.

So essentially, were all these protests real? Was this news actually real? Or was it being funded by the Biden administration the entire time? And that is exactly what was discovered. And for what Shemot is showing on screen right now is ex-political reporter reveals editors quashed slow-walked negative Biden stories with no explanation. Like, I wonder why that was happening. right and remember like we we all saw the reporting by the legacy media and we're this is a this is a

bitcoin channel so as it related to bitcoin it's like they hated bitcoin where did that coverage all go have you noticed that when was the last time you've noticed a new york times article that has been negative against bitcoin what was the last time you saw a wall street journal article when was the last time it's just like they just disappeared with the new administration and now we know why they were literally funding the media. And we were all like up in arms like the media is so corrupt. They're so political. It's like whatever. They were getting paid by them. Like it all makes sense. It's so crazy. Right. And then the last thing I'll end it with this, right, which I think is a really important statement. So apparently a judge stepped in and halted Doge from freezing payments and all

this. And here's Jeffrey Tucker. And I think he makes a really good point. The Supreme Court is going to have to rule soon if there can be an actual president elected by the people or if this whole voting thing is just a fake veneer covering a permanent government. I think this whole what people call the administrative state or the deep state, I don't think it's a deep state. I think it's, administrative state is not a conspiracy theory. It's essentially the unelected bureaucrats that remain in government regardless of who gets elected into office. And I think that, that because of Fiat money, that government is essentially funded unlimitedly. They have no accountability whatsoever.

They print their own money, which they use to fund themselves. And now they've been caught essentially using that money printer to fund propaganda in order to ensure that they stay in power. the reason this is happening and i think this you're going to hear about doge from so many different people and news outlets and commentary but i think from bitcoin channels uh you're going to hear a different spin the reason this is happening is because governments have a money printer and Elon or Trump no matter how well intentioned they are if we don't fix the root cause it's inevitably going to happen again.

Yeah. That's it. Yeah, man. I mean, it is a little bit blowing my mind when you're seeing, again, all this waste and all these ridiculous things where it's like, oh, we, you know, we want, you're, we're buying this with this amount of money and the prices are like 5 to 10x, what you would normally pay for a particular item, even if it seems like it's a legit thing to spend money on. And it's just money disappearing right, left and center.

There was something the other day, or today, I think even that came out where it's like, oh, we're funding programs that technically they gave, they had given funding to them for a set period of time. And that set period of time expired in some cases 40 years ago. And those programs are just still being funded, just left on a big. nobody says anything. They're just getting money for generations. And so it does blow my mind when there's such an outward and loud negative response to it. Because I'm at a loss as to how somebody could, with a straight face, say that they're against trying to find all of this fraud and, like, pumping the brakes a little bit.

it to be like, okay, where is the money? Like hundreds of billions of dollars are just being pissed away on garbage. And you're going to say that this is a bad thing? Like it's, it's staggering the amount of fraud that we've seen here. And yeah, again, like in general, yes, of course, I know there's people that aren't going to like the existing government, but as a general concept, don't we want to discover the money that's being wasted and be more efficient? Yeah. So I'm I'm cheering on the wrecking ball. And yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I think that government should be as small as possible. Like it should be like absolute lightest touch that it possibly can be. Like realistically, it should be there to like, you know, if there's an emergency. to make sure that you're safe from external forces, like foreign military and stuff like that. But outside of that, like, you know, let people live their lives and people will figure it out. Anyways, that's 100%.

No, I mean, dude, I think you absolutely, you 100% nailed it, bro. And it's, yeah, man, and this is why we Bitcoin, bro. I mean, Ben, you were like kind of a victim of this, man. I mean, you powered through and, like, you know, freedom fighter, and I think it's going to have a happy end. Didn't he resign? Well, I'm so confused. He, so he basically said, I will resign.

And then he shut down parliament. And right now we have, like, basically no acting government. They're all, like, on vacation or whatever. And the Liberal Party is actively campaigning for the new leader. And then they'll come back together when they have a new leader. so that they can then have an election. Like, it's insane. Everybody in the country wants an election right now.

And, like, there's basically a lame duck prime minister sitting in office that, you know, our parliament should be, like, dealing with shit right now. Like, there's very real geopolitical things that need to be dealt with. And it's just at a standstill. And everybody's too busy, like, campaigning for the next leader of the next party. And there's, like, nothing can get done. And I saw a really disconcerting poll the other day where if this one guy who literally was like, you know, one of the top lackeys of Trudeau through his entire campaign is getting a decent amount of support in like if there was an election. And I'm like, you know, if Canada elects the exact same people again, we deserve exactly what they get.

at what we get. Like, you know, that can't fucking help you. And it just, again, serves the, serves the point very neatly to everybody. Even if you get a favorable government, that is a very transient thing. And you should always be thinking about how you can make government itself obsolete and build systems that they can't fuck with. Yep. Beautifully. Beautifully said, man, have to because if not man this is going to keep happening this look and you can't get upset with the thing they did their best right but 2009 since bitcoin was invented it needs an update right and it's resisting the update because you know a lot of these people whether this is happening what what doge discovered i guarantee it's happening in canada i guarantee it's happening in the u k it's

happening in every country that has a fiat money printer. There's a bureaucracy that benefits from the ability that it could print its own money. Look at shit coiners, right? Imagine if shit coiners ran your government. That's essentially what's happening, right? Because they're able to just come up with money out of thin air. And that's, it's a misalignment of incentive and there's obviously moral hazard. Okay. So I'll end it with this because I know we're almost at the top. So I think this is important to talk about. I think there's two different ways to look at this, by the way. So don't get too sad.

So the first way of looking at it is, so this compares all the different halvings, right? The first having is the blue line, 2013. The second halving is the orange line is the 2021 halving, right? then the pink line is the 2017 halving and then the yellow thick line on the bottom is the current halving. As you could see, it's essentially underperforming

every single cycle. However, and this is a big however, this is from the halving. And there's something to keep in mind. For the first time in Bitcoin's history, and I think this had to do with the ETF, Bitcoin made an all-time high before the halving. If you change where it's actually covered from, for example, if you start the cycle from the bottom, then it's actually on track with the 2017 halving.

If you track it from the having, it's underperforming. But if you track it from the bottom, it's doing exactly what it did in 2017, which is really, really interesting. So I think I want to cover this because I think a lot of people are just like, dude, like Bitcoin has been going sideways for three months. It's important to just zoom out sometimes. And look at this. It seems like everything is going to plan. And I think the reason that this is different is because we made an all-time high before the having happened. Can you go back to from the bottom there? Yeah, because I remember like the 27, cycle, those peaks in between, they felt like forever.

It's like we would hit a top and then it would, you know, just chill out for like four months. And then we would just like blast off again and like double or triple. And it would just be like eye watering. And then we would just dump and then chill out for another like four months or something. just felt like it was just taken forever. Like each one of those little chunks of time just felt like it was dragging. That's kind of how it feels right now. The early 2017, when we first went over the previous all-time high,

so like over like 12 or 1,300 bucks, and then it went to like four grand, that first huge pump. And then it just chilled out. a dump to like 2000 something. And then we just hung out there for quite some time until like later in the summer. And then we had another peak in the fall around 10K or something like that. And then like the jump from 10 to 20 was the blink of an eye. And so but like it started the year at a thousand bucks under.

And so like it was it was these bursts where if if you were just sitting through it and you were holding on, then you got exposed to all of it. But if you were trying to time it, you got absolutely hooped because guaranteed you missed those upswings. So like really the secret formula is just save your, you know, save Bitcoin. Like just don't piss around. Don't try to time things.

Just sit it out. And, you know, like I'm curious there because it, it actually is quite close to tracking that 2017 line there. That's interesting. What is it? It's coming to like the like February and then it started like it hit a new peak in and around what April May it looks like for the 2017. Something like that. So like we had our January and then it went up to. Yeah. So like that. It's on track. It's on track. I like and I've said this too, Ben. I've said this on the show before I saw this data.

This cycle reminds me of the 2016, 2017. And if it's. anyone was around for that era in january of 2017 bitcoin just went sideways the entire month and it went sideways at a thousand dollars right yeah by the end of the year i'm not saying this is going to happen again but at the end of the year it was a 20k yeah so that's a 20x now what i said on what i said on x was and the post actually did super well i got a ton of traction um but what i said was something along the lines of like, what I'm seeing this cycle is everyone in their mother

is anticipating 150K to 250K Bitcoin. Everyone. That's like the general consensus. The general consensus in 21 was that Bitcoin was going to hit 100K guaranteed. It never did.

It underperformed. It hit 61 or 69 or something like that. Yeah. Bitcoin does the exact opposite it of what everyone thinks. So either we go below 150K or we go above 150K, I mean a 250K. The majority can't be wrong. That's not how markets work, right? And what I see this cycle is like everyone's like 150K, 250K. That's like, you see it on Twitter. That's the general diminishing returns, 150K, 250K. So that's what I'm seeing. And Bitcoin every single time.

time to something different. I mean, I could be wrong, but just an observation, just an observation. Yeah. We blew through one, never going below previous all-time high. And then we also blew through we never hit a new all-time high before the having. Both of those things were completely blown away this past cycle. So whatever is going to happen is probably not what people are expecting. So, yeah, buckle up. It should be an interesting year nonetheless. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, guys, this was your Simply Sessions for February 13, 2025. I'm Nico from Simply Bitcoin. Ben. I will see you later, brother. Cheers, man. Talk to you soon. All right. Everybody, stick around because we've got some

interesting stuff to talk about after the break here. There's a platform with over 100 million worldwide users, and while they teased it before and had a limited launch, they've now officially launched it openly to their entire platform. They've integrated a Bitcoin wallet for every single one of those 100 million users that care to use it. So we're going to find out and chat about who that was next after the hop. We'll see you guys in just a moment. Looking for a simple and secure way to manage your Bitcoin on mobile,

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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're right back in. If you do want to check out CoinCite and you want to grab yourself a cold card, then you can scan that link right there. It'll give you 5% off. And yeah, you can stack up. I've been actually just dropped a tutorial on some of the advanced features earlier this week.

We'll chat about that in a sec, but yeah, feel free to check them out and grab yourself a queue. But let's get chatting about what I was just talking about before the break. Let's chat about that platform that just launched Bitcoin wallets for their 100 million users. And that, of course, is proton. So you are likely familiar with proton mail, very privacy-focused company. They've got cloud storage, password manager, all that kind of stuff. But proton wallet. Now, you probably saw a bunch about this earlier last year because they launched a very

closed, limited launch for people. And you had to have like an invite to get into it and everything like that. I did actually do a tutorial on Proton Wallet when it launched. And I chatted a little bit about what I liked, what I didn't, everything. But let's hear a little bit about what is going on here. Of course, Proton Wallet, a self-custodial, end-to-end encrypted Bitcoin-only wallet by Proton, now available on iOS, Android, and Web, after successful Early Access program. So it says, thank you to everyone who participated in the early access period, your feedback

allowed us to dramatically improve the app, such as improving blockchain syncing performance, adding replaced by fee feature for speeding up transactions. Thanks to your support. We have ambitious development plans for 2025. Please continue sharing your input on X, Reddit, and user voice to help us further refine the user experience and develop new features. So again, existing Proton account holders can begin using ProtonWallet

by visiting wallet.proton.me. We're downloading the app for Android or iPhone. simply log in with your existing credentials to get started. Again, the key features here, it's self-custodial, end-to-end encrypted. So all of the transactions, notes, messages, all of that is encrypted before being sent to Proton servers. So the company doesn't know your transaction history of balances. You can get Bitcoin via email.

So you can send directly to recipients using their email address, as long as they have a proton wallet. Each address is signed with PGP. If you would like to try sending Bitcoin via email while supporting our fight for financial privacy and freedom, you can send Bitcoin donations to the nonprofit Proton Foundation at Foundation at Proton.mys at the company. Again, you've also got automatic address rotation. I'd say that's an expected feature. So new address every single time.

It is open source. You can buy Bitcoin from the app, though it's what have they got? Ramp Network, Banksa. I've never heard of those. And then Moon Pay, I have heard of, I think it's a little expensive. Proton Sentinel is their advanced account security system that uses machine learning and human analysis

to prevent attackers from accessing your account. And again, they do have a 24-7 help desk. Yeah, exactly. They're really dependent on community feedback here. Now, I will say when I use the wallet, It definitely was lacking some features. This was last year. So a lot has happened since then.

But I'm glad to see that they added replaced by fee because it sucks if fee spike and then you're kind of stuck. Some of the privacy features, it would be nice if they would consider doing things like integrated coin join or pay join. it would be great if you could connect to your own node. Some of the other features, I mean, somebody I saw on X asked if they were integrating lightning. They said that they haven't really looked at this, but they would consider it if they have feedback. I think that's kind of a given because, again, they are, it's a hot wallet, right? And so I kind of feel like, yes, fees are low right now, but they can spike at any time. And, you know, lightning is kind of becoming the norm for lower value transaction.

So it would make sense to have some integration of that in Proton wallet. I actually reached out and said, I tagged Zeus because Zeus has their lightning service provider. I said that they should work together and be able to do self-custodial lightning channel that way. I think that'd be great. And Evan from Zeus replied and said that they'll love to help. I don't know what will come of that, but that would be really cool. The other thing would be

great is if you could actually just incorporate hardware, right? If you could use your cold card with Proton, I think that'd be sweet. So anyways, it's a positive thing in that they've done it in a very simplistic way that will be accessible to people that are already using things like

proton mail from day to day. And they've got a huge user base I think this is all in all, like a pretty positive development. Okay, let's move on. Coldcard, they just had a new update, new message signing features, address display, and more. So the big thing about this is now they display addresses a little bit differently, so it's easier to kind of take a look at chunk by chunk and kind of eyeball. It's just easier on the eyes being able to see what you're actually looking at.

They've also got Delta mode, some updates there. So Delta mode enhancements hide secure notes and passwords. You can hide seed vault in Delta mode. So this is like a special trick pin thing where you can move to Delta mode where things are hidden. And then you can wipe the seed if the seed vault menu is accessed. And you can catch more Delta mode cases in XOR submenus. Yeah, and then you've got a whole bunch of other new updates here. But the Delta mode and the address display are kind of the things that peaked out to me the most there.

Fountain app version 1.1.16. So Fountain now has Noster live streams and storage managers. So that's super awesome. So Fountain, if you're unfamiliar, this is like a podcasting 2.0 app where you can zap and do all these other things. You know, you can listen to the audio version of this over there. But this show does stream live to Nostr. So I guess now it's on Fountain. I wonder if anybody's watching it on Fountain right now.

Let me know. I would love to hear it. But yeah, this does go to Nostr. So I guess we're on Fountain now, too. Yeah, you can now watch Nostra live streams directly from the Fountain app and join live chats during the recordings. Hell yeah, that's awesome. Rabbit Hole Recap, Bitcoin Podcast, Simply Bitcoin.

Damn, they didn't mention me. Guys, I'm here. Live streams from accounts, you follow Noster, appear on the top of the screen. That's great. That's the one thing about Zapp.DStream, it doesn't automatically share to like my Noster feed. So a lot of people on Nostra, unless I manually do it at the beginning of the show, which is tough because I'm running the show.

A lot of people don't see it. It's a beta feature. We still have a lot of work to do. We'll continue to make improvements to the live streams over the coming. months, so we would love to hear your feedback. That's super awesome. Moving on, Primal version 2.1, they have Noster Wallet, connect support for the Primal Wallet and web app. So what does this mean? So Primal users can now connect any Nostr app allowing zapping within Nostra's ecosystem. You can manage connected apps in your Primal wallet settings. So if you're using Primal, your Nostr app, as also your Lightning

wallet. You can now use this feature to connect to any other Noster related thing, and it will pull from your primal wallet when you go to zap or spend. So you can kind of connect and set thresholds and spending limits for different things. I think that's super awesome. Let's see. Same thing on the web app. You can do that. You have improved feeds as well. They've been enhanced for richer and smoother experience. Also, Legend Car. implemented legend cards featuring primal shoutouts for each legend. View these by clicking the legend badge on the user profile screen. Anyways, love primal, works great. Check it out.

Albi Go version 1.9.0. Push notifications, pay zero amount invoices and more. So Albi Go is a way to connect to your Albi Hub and other, I guess, other Noster Wallet connect wallets. So a few little updates here. Again, you can get your push notifications so you can see send and receive payments. You can pay zero amount invoices where you manually put in the amount after you scan. And yeah, just some updated flows and quality of life improvements. Zeus has a new version in Alpha. So they've got channel renewal.

So if you bought a channel, you can renew it there. Noster wallet Connect, which again, this is the standard moving forward. It's just so easy to connect lightning wallets and payment things in this way. And so, yeah, there we go. Alpha testing is open to everyone. And again, what's new? Channel renewals, you can renew and extend channel leases from both channel services, from Olympus. That's the one.

And this is the same service that I was recommending Proton checkout. Also, NosterWallet Connect. It now supports those types of connections to external wallets like AlbiHub and cashew.me. Currently, it's for accessing NosterWallet Connect wallets in Zuse. client side, server side access to built-in Zeus wallet is planned for the future. Developer tools, a new section for developers is now available as well. So that is awesome. Moving on, Aqua.

I love Aqua. It's so good. Again, it's a free open source Bitcoin, Lightning and Liquid and Stablecoin wallet for Tether. What they have new, they have a selection of different price feeds, the ability to set a pass code. you can toggle between the Bitcoin price, total balance, and hide account balance in the header, which I like. It used to just be the price. I like having those other features.

You can send and receive liquid on other chains, which is, I get what they're doing there. It's not useful to me because I don't really use stable coins. But what they're trying to do here is they're trying to get people that are on these shit coin chains to use the wallet and be able to send into it. but then they convert them to using liquid and like the Bitcoin and lightning ecosystem and move them away from these other chains. So they want to be that swapability so that people can just be like, oh, I can just do this on Bitcoin. So I get what they're doing there.

But again, every time I see stuff like this, I'm like, oh, I wish that just come to Bitcoin, everybody. Like you don't need, you don't need this other stuff. added a button for clear inputs in address fields. Again, just again, some improvement, general improvements for the flow of things. But yeah, the price account balance and headers and all that kind of stuff are super nice. I've been playing around with it a bunch. As I said, I dropped a new tutorial this week on the cold card. And some of my favorite, I mean, I won't say they're hidden features.

It's not like they're hidden away, but there's features that people are very unfamiliar with when it comes to cold card. There's so much that you can do with this damn thing. Like it is so, so versatile. If you have no idea what's at your fingertips, then go check out this. Go check out this video. It just dropped on Monday. But I go in depth on a number of the most useful features for me. And actually, in that same vein, Bitcoin Mentor,

We have just dropped for a limited time a cold card mastery course. So it's not going to be around for long, but for a limited time, we're going to have this cold card mastery course, and it's here to kind of take your Bitcoin security skills to the next level. So we go at your pace, and we make sure that you walk away confident, empowered, secure with your cold card. You're stacking that knowledge. You're leveling up your cold card knowledge from beginner to

master. And so what kind of stuff does it actually cover? I'm going to give you a quick list. So the QR code there will take you to where you can book if you are in the market for a cold card mastery. If you haven't touched a cold card yet and you want to come out of this thing being an absolute expert, not just on the basics, but like you can school anybody on it. This is for you. So it's multi-session. So it's like you're going to be spending multiple, multiple sessions with us. But some of the stuff you're going to be covering, checking for integrity, making sure that it hasn't been tampered with when it arrives, initializing the device, getting seed words, formatting the microSD,

updating firmware, exporting your wallet into Sparrow, and an intro to Sparrow wallet on desktop. You're also going to cover receiving Bitcoin, address verification, sending Bitcoin using your microSD and other options, overview of the network like miners' nose and fees, wiping and recovering your cold card and identifying that is the same account being utilized on the cold card as Sparrow. You're also going to export into Nunchuk and learn how to use NFC and or QR scanning. You're going to send and receive with Nunchuk, export non-zero accounts, verify

non-zero account addresses, temporary seeds, seed vaults, BIP 85 wallets. You're going to check out trick pins, decoy and canary wallets, pass phrases. You're also going to see how you can permanently disable various data lines and make sure that if you are done with a cold card, how to truly destroy it. And then other additional things, multi-sick, calculate a login, passwords and notes,

tap sign a recovery, and then at the end of it all, we'll give you a little testing and certification to make sure you know your shit and so that you have some bragging rights. So it is, it's lengthy. Like we put some thought into this one and, and I'm excited. So, yeah, if you're looking to be an absolute boss when it comes to the cold card, then, yeah, check it out. I'll leave that up if you guys want to take a peek.

But also some other stuff I've been working on this week. Oh, I'm looking forward to this one. I've been working on my Bitax tutorial. And so Bitax, if you're unfamiliar, this is a home miner that you can sit on your shelf. This is a 3D printed case from crypto cloaks. It is badass. I love it. And so what I did is I took my miner.

I hooked it up and I connected it to my own Start 9 node, which is running Bitcoin knots and Datum Gateway. And it is basically the long and the short of it is. it's the most self-sovereign way that you can home mine. So you're not relying on any mining pool or anything. You are using 100% your own infrastructure, your own node, you're pulling from your own mempool to construct a block. Datum gateway communicates between your miner and your start nine node and your Bitcoin

knots and does everything. So you can lotto mine. But if you do want to pool mine and get lightning payouts, I'm covering that too. So that's going to be coming up. There's something else coming between then. I've got another hardware tutorial. I did cover the Treasor Safe 5 Bitcoin-only version. So that's going to be coming out next week.

But I'm super excited about this Bitax when I've been wanted to get on top of it for quite some time. So keep your eyes peeled and maybe hit that notification bell if you want to know when that stuff goes out. And finally, we've got a hell of a lineup tomorrow. I'm very excited for this. We've got Cedric Youngleman, we've got John Consorty, and we've got Seb Bunny on the show tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. It is going to be a black. I love all those guys. What a lineup.

You guys got to get in here and make sure that you are joining in for tomorrow night's show at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. It's going to be a lot of fun. Anyways, guys, with that, I'm going to round it out here. Thank you guys so much for watching. of course, help me spread education to everybody out there. Like, subscribe, and most importantly, share this to anybody you may, who may find it useful, and then keep stacking stats, keep stacking skills. I am Ben with the BTC sessions.

This was your Simply session.