BTC Sessions - Is Trump About To Make America a Bitcoin Tax Haven?

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

🔴 LIVE: Trump Wants to End Income Tax, Top Trump Officials Hold Bitcoin & Ripple Attacks BTC! The Bitcoin world is on fire with breaking developments that could change the game! In today’s show, we’re diving into: 🔥 Trump Moves to Abolish the Income Tax! – The 1913 Federal Income Tax was supposed to be temporary, and now Trump is calling for its elimination. What does this mean for Bitcoin adoption and financial sovereignty? 🔥 Trump and His Top Officials Hold Bitcoin! – Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, just revealed he’s stacking Bitcoin, joining Trump himself. Could this be the most pro-Bitcoin administration in history? 🔥 Ripple’s War on Bitcoin Exposed! – For over a decade, Ripple has aggressively lobbied against Bitcoin, pushing ESG-driven anti-mining narratives to policymakers worldwide. Now, they are actively sabotaging the movement for a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. What’s their endgame? Don’t miss this high-stakes episode—subscribe, hit the bell, and join us LIVE to stay ahead of the biggest moves in Bitcoin! 🚀🔥 —------------------------------ FOLLOW Simply Bitcoin & BTC Sessions on other channels: Simply Bitcoin on Youtube: youtube.com/@simplybitcoin Simply Bitcoin on X: x.com/simplybitcointv Nico on X: x.com/bitvolt BTC Sessions on X: x.com/BTCsessions —------------------------------ 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: BITCOIN WELL My favorite self custody bitcoin platform in Canada and USA! They offer KYC free accounts, 1% spread, no on-chain fees and tons of other incredible features. Check them out at bitcoinwell.com/btcsessions https://bitcoinwell.com/btcsessions 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 HODLHODL is a NON-CUSTODIAL, ANONYMOUS solution to stack sats peer to peer! Buy and sell Bitcoin while maintaining privacy. Sign up and try it out today! https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION Speedwallet - your one wallet to send, receive, shop & earn. Simple, fast and convenient! Download now, use code BTCSESSIONS10 via this link & get 5,000 SATs on your first transaction. https://speedbtcwallet.onelink.me/cGph/ssbtcsession DEBIFI is a non-custodial Bitcoin backed lending platform with institutional grade liquidity providers and no rehypothecation of your funds. Find them at: https://debifi.com/ MINING DISRUPT is the world's largest Bitcoin mining conference and expo. And it's happening March 25-27th, 2025! Get 20% OFF tickets via this link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mining-disrupt-conference-2025-fort-lauderdale-florida-tickets-980017277057?discount=BTCSESSIONS #bitcoin #crypto #btc #money

What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Thursday, another episode of Simply Sessions. Lots going on this week. Trump is talking about axing capital gains tax. What does that mean for Bitcoin when it comes to his role as a currency in America? And on the opposite side of the spectrum, we saw El Salvador today. Did they just ax it as legal tender?

We're going to be talking about both those things and much more. Nico is on the road in El Salvador, but he still was able to put together a little something for us. What a hard worker. So without further ado, I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your Simply session. So of course, Nico is down in El Salvador right now as this very interesting kind of new news has been breaking. But he obviously is on the road. He's at the Plan B forum, which I'm feeling real FOMO for.

But nonetheless, he did put together a bunch of stuff. We're going to chat about the Trump-related news first and plenty more. And then on the other side of this, I'm going to be touching in on this El Salvador situation and what that means and why it's coming to fruition. So we're going to examine some of that. If you can before we bring up Nico, please do hit that like button. It really helps get this content in front of our eyeballs. But here is Nico with the news. Yeah, welcome to another episode of Simply Sessions.

We have so much news to unpack today. Apologies. I am on the go. I am traveling. But three, two, one. Yeah, welcome to another episode of Simply Sessions. I am traveling, but the news don't stop. It's been a crazy week in Bitcoin.

Like, when is it not? So let's jump straight into it. So who is this guy? Who am I showing on screen? This guy was nominated for the Secretary of Defense, and he actually got confirmed in the Senate last week. I believe the vote was 50 to 50, and the vice president had to be the tiebreaker,

but now he has been official. officially confirmed. And I know what you guys are thinking. This is a Bitcoin show. What are we talking about? Why is this important? Well, I'll show you guys why. Let's check out the clip. By the way, you're a Bitcoin guy. Bitcoin is $82,000 this morning. Are you selling? Look at Trump, making Bitcoin great again also. All it took was signaling to that market that they weren't going to be over-regulated, which Trump embraced them. And as a result, no, I actually did sell some. pretty high, Stewart, but I'm holding a bunch as well. So I feel good. Yeah. Okay. Veterans Day. No. So we just got confirmed confirmation that the Secretary of Defense holds Bitcoin. We also have confirmation that J.D. Vance, the vice president, owns Bitcoin. We also got confirmation that RFK Jr. at the Nashville Bitcoin 2024 conference, he confirmed that, quote,

most of his net worth is in Bitcoin. So all of Trump's cabinet have Bitcoin, hold Bitcoin, and we talk a lot about aligned incentives on this show. This is what we are talking about. What about the man himself? Well, here is a clip of David Bailey from the Michael Sailor 100K party. And he has some things to say about President Trump. Let's check it out.

You know, Trump told me before all of this went down that, you know, he owns a significant amount of Bitcoin. I'm not going to disclose the number that he told me, but, you know, he doesn't manage his money himself. The president of the United States holds a significant amount of Bitcoin. The Secretary of Defense holds a lot of Bitcoin. The vice president holds a lot of Bitcoin. I mean, you kind of see where this is going. Now, one of the latest updates from David Bailey says, just talked this was yet or two days ago, just talked with Dr. President Trump and thanked him for keeping his promise to our industry

and to Ross. I asked him if he wanted to share a message with the Bitcoin community. He said he's with us 100%. We're going to send Bitcoin to much greater heights and we're going to out-compete China and other countries that want to take it from us. Thank you, President Trump, for being the first Bitcoin president, it, promises made, promises kept. Now, I think it's very important to talk about the politics in general and just something

that I think Bitcoiners are getting firsthand exposure to. I think a lot of the community are inherently libertarians and they have this aspect of I don't really care about politics. We were kind of thrown into it last year with Operation Shook Point 2.0 and our industry was forced to react. And I think what people have to understand is that. Trump isn't perfect. So we got the repeal of SAB-121, which is going to enable banks to custody Bitcoin. We had the freedom of Ross Holbrook and with the end of Operation Choke Point 2.0.

But at the same time, we got Trump coin and I suspect we're going to have a mean coin extravaganza. So if you were to ask me, is this a better situation that it was last year? Absolutely. Ross is free. We're not being attacked. But is it perfect? No. And this This is where you have to understand that politics is about concessions. Now if President Trump had the majority that Naim Dulekla has in El Salvador, where he has a super majority, we'd be having a different conversation. But that isn't the case here in the U.S. And Canada, I also believe, you know, with Trudeau, it seems like if you look at the odds,

it looks like the liberal party is going to be voted out. The conservative party is going to be voted in it. But Pierre Polygar is going to be, you know, appointed prime minister. he's going to be a Bitcoin or two. So it's very exciting stuff all around. Here's Emily Bailey. She says, Ken confirm. He called to say thank you to David and to the Bitcoin industry. Most of the call was about Ross and Lynn, justice and peace. It was just a friendly moment. But for the record, he did acknowledge that David is a lucky man. That's hilarious. So moving on to Trump's executive order is the executive order that was released January 23rd, 2025.

I believe we covered it on last week, Simply sessions, but just going through some of the highlights. So specifically, I love this part, right, which is essentially protect the rights of American citizens to maintain self-custody of their digital assets. It's also expressly forbids the launch of a central bank digital currency here in the United States. Now, a lot of Bitcoiners were taken back because there was no specific mention of Bitcoin here in this executive order. I just had a podcast with Pierre Richard and asked them the same question. He said that it's essentially to avoid the political blowback. Within 180 days, they have to make a decision. And essentially, the reason that it's digital assets and not Bitcoin is because the ripple,

as in the company with the alt coin attached to it, has spent a lot of money lobbying Washington, D.C. This is the same ripple that also donated $10 million to the Kamala campaign, and they actually wanted her to win. This is the same ripple that is actively advocating for central bank digital currencies. In fact, they're not only advocating for, they're actually developing products for governments to release central bank digital currencies. Like, Ripple is by definition an enemy of Bitcoin. and if you're an enemy of Bitcoin, you are an enemy of freedom. Here's Pierre Rashart. He says the biggest obstacle for a strategic Bitcoin reserve is not the Fed, Treasury,

banks, or Elizabeth Warren. It's ripple slash XRP. They are aggressively lobbying against the SBR by throwing around millions at politicians, desperately trying to derail it. They did the same to attack Bitcoin mining under the Biden administration. Obviously, they want to protect their marketing narratives and push for CBDCs, built on their platform. Ripple is prioritizing

themselves and the well-being of their company versus the well-being of the American people. And I would say the world in general. So, like, shame on Ripple, a big, big no-no, not surprised whatsoever. I think people have to remember that

alt coins are inherently centralized. And because they're centralized, they need the state in order to sure their survival. Like that is the natural evolution of an alt coin if it gets big enough. The only way is for them to get to the state, use the monopoly, the use the state's monopoly and violence to essentially give them like special, you know, a special deal. Uh, the proof of stake, you know, like crazy. Bitcoin doesn't need that. Bitcoin relies relies on mere incentives alone. It doesn't actually need.

government or a president for it to succeed. Its incentives ensure that it's going to win. It's pure and simple. So big contrast. A ripple, I'm going to say it. I'm going to say evil company, bro. What's going on there? Anyways, so let's talk about shifting the Overton window. I would say the Overton window has been shattered in so many ways. We saw the complete elimination of the legacy media. We saw the essentially the rise of independent media. We've been seeing the rise of critical thinking. We're seeing the rise of alternative non-sovereign currencies, like Bitcoin, of course.

But now, also, President Trump just introduced the idea of ending the income tax altogether. Who could have thought? Let's check it out. Very rich again. And it's going to happen very quickly. It's time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before. Do you know, the United States in 1870 to 1913, all tariffs, and that was the richest period in the history of the United States, relatively speaking. In other words, relatively.

And they set up the great tariff commission of 1887, and this commission had one function, what to do with all the money that we took in. It was so enormous that they had no idea. It was a blue ribbon committee. was set up 1887 and what to do with all of the money that we had. And again, Teddy Roosevelt was a beneficiary because when McKinley was killed, he took over this vast sum of money and he did all of those national parks and all of the other things. And I'm not knocking him, but he was given a vast amount of money. And that was all made through tariffs.

We had no income tax. The income tax came in in 1913. As I said in my speech last week, instead of taxing our citizens to enrich foreign nations, we should be tariffing and taxing foreign nations to enrich our citizens. Does that make sense, right? Absolutely crazy. Shifting the mother effing over to the window. Last piece of news today, again, the strategic Bitcoin reserves are moving forward on the federal level, on the state level.

The state of Arizona, Arizona lawmakers have advancing Bitcoin. Strategic Reserve Bill, which seeks to deploy the world's first cryptocurrency as a savings technology for the state. The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act, co-sponsored by Senator Wendy Rogers and Representative Jeff Winger, was passed by Arizona State Senate Finance Committee with a 5-2 vote on January 27th. The bill will now move to the Senate Rules Committee for final debate and amendments. Approval by the Senate would advance the bill to the House of representatives. The bill proposes the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve by the U.S. Treasury for the storage of government Bitcoin holdings, which would allow other public funds

to store their digital assets in a, quote, secure, segregated account within the strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The bill would allow up to 10% of a government's entity or public funds capital to be invested in Bitcoin and other digital assets. It opens the door for pension funds to reallocate to allocate resources of Bitcoin, potentially increasing public interest in cryptocurrencies. So yeah, this is massive. This is real. Bitcoin is exiting the shadows. It's entering into the mainstream political discourse. It's entering into mainstream finance. And I think in five years, Bitcoin will be mainstream. But that's just a theory. Anyways, guys, this was your Simply sessions. I'll see you live.

Thank you, Nico, for putting that together, despite being en route and now in El Salvador. And speaking of El Salvador, we're going to be touching on what the hell is going on there. There was a bill put forth that seems to be undoing the whole legal tender thing. So we're going to touch on that. There's been a lot of back and forth, a lot of different thoughts on either side of whether it's good, whether it's bad. So we're going to be touching on that. If you can, please do hit that like button. Thank you everybody being here in the chat.

I see you all. James, Karen, David, Deb, everybody in there. David Wrong, of course. But we are going to be diving into that. Before we do, we are going to get a quick word from our sponsors. And we're also going to give away some stats as well. I also want to let you guys know that I am going to be at Mining Disrupt This is the first mining conference that I'm ever going to attend.

So if you've kind of been watching, I've been playing around. Mining was always a blind spot for me, but I'm very excited to be partaking in mining disrupt this year. I've been getting more and more interested in it. And so you've probably seen me. I've done videos on the nerdax and the brains mini-miner and the future bit. I've got a bid axe, and I'm going to do a video on setting that up. I also did a space heater using an old S9 that's also in my office. So I'm going to be kind of diving more into this.

I've also done some cloud mining with blockware. I've kind of done a little bit of everything. I do also have an M30 plus that I'm looking at making a little, maybe heating the garage with. So lots going on. But mining disrupt is going to be March 25th through 27th in Fort Lauderdale. So I'm going to be down there. So is the whole simply team. And there's going to be, it's going to be a great time.

I'm very, very excited about it. They've got awesome, awesome speakers. I'm all fancy here on the page. There we go. There I am. But there's Nico. We've got, of course, Samson Mao. We've got Dennis Porter.

We've got a whole bunch of great people going to speak. So if you're curious about mining and you want to check it out, there's a QR code on the screen right now. If you want to scan, that'll give you 20% off your tickets for the event. So yeah, if you're in Florida area or you want to be, make your way down to mining disrupt. It's going to be absolutely awesome. I'm very excited about it. But with that, let's give a quick shout out to our sponsors.

And then we're going to chat about El Salvador coming up next. So we will see you in just a moment. 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. And you can share your own personalized referral link to earn commissions.

Coin kite has been in the game for years creating hands down the best and most secure hardware when it comes to securing your Bitcoin. The cold card Q is an absolute powerhouse and my daily driver, and it's ideal for newcomers and advanced users alike. The tab signer gives you a low-cost, user-friendly option for those just getting started or for convenience when traveling. You can head to coincite.com and use code BTC sessions for discounts or simply scan the QR code on the screen to get started right away.

All right, we are right back in. And we got to give away some sats first. I'll get Bitcoin well up on my screen here. Over on the right there, if you haven't checked them out, you can scan that to sign up today. This is a great place to be stacking sats in Canada and the U.S. Very, very simple. But the way that this works on the screen is when you sign up, when you buy Bitcoin, and when you refer friends, you earn points.

Those points can be used to toss a coin in the Bitcoin wishing well. And every time you do, you have a chance to win up to a million sats. So to partake in this, you don't even need to have an account yet. You can simply get your lightning wallets out and try to scan the QR code that pops up first before anybody else. So we're going to do that right now. And I'll also say we're going to do this giveaway right now. But for every 100 likes on this video, I will do another giveaway at the end of the episode. So start smashing that like button.

So you get some extra giveaways towards the end. So off it goes, and 210 sats for whoever scans it first. Best of luck to you. Maybe I'll make it nice and big for you guys just for a moment. Some people have been complaining that QR codes aren't big enough there. But there's 210 sats to whoever scans it first with their lightning wallet. Best of luck to you all. And guys, we got to chat, El Salvador. What is going on down there? This has been littering my feed today. And so this is Zach Gugnard. He tweeted out following a $1.4 billion deal with the IMF in December,

the International Monetary Fund, devil people. El Salvador's lawmakers have quickly approved a new bill that makes Bitcoin acceptance in the private sector voluntary. So here's the article from Reuters. And it says El Salvador's Congress. on Wednesday swiftly approved a bill sent just minutes earlier by President Naib Buckelly to amend its Bitcoin law to comply with a deal with a key international lender to make acceptance of the cryptocurrency voluntary.

The Congress is dominated by lawmakers from Buckelly's New Ideas Party. In 2021, of course, El Salvador became the first country to make Bitcoin specifically legal tender alongside the US dollar, which had adopted two decades earlier. Of course, myself included, this peaked the interest of a lot of Bitcoiners. There's a lot of people that upended their lives and started looking at El Salvador and have moved down there.

So what is this specifically? It says in December, the government struck a $1.4 billion loan deal with the International Monetary Fund that scaled back its Bitcoin embrace after the lender, lender, rather, urged officials to limit its exposure. The lender specifically advocated making acceptance of Bitcoin voluntary for the private sector, which is spelled out in the hastily

approved law. Prior to the vote, ruling party lawmaker Alisa Rosales framed the reform as needed to guarantee Bitcoin's performance as legal tender while facilitating its practical implementation. The reform won passage with 55 votes in favor and only two against President Trump's election when late in the year, along with the expectation more favorable cryptocurrency policies in Washington have sent Bitcoin's value to records highs. But Kelly's government has recently indicated they will continue buying Bitcoin to add to its reserves. So there's been various takes on this. Here's Francis Pooleyot of Bull Bitcoin.

And he said, Buckelly bends the knee to the IMF and officially abandons the original Bitcoin law that had caused Bitcoiners to move and invest there in the first place, exactly at the same time as the Bitcoin Conference in El Salvador attracting Bitcoiners from all over the world. Now, there was some pushback from some people here in the replies here. Bitcoin law is still in full force. It is modified, yes, but not repealed. The IMF's starting point would have been to demand. repeal. It's disappointing, yes, but I think El Salvador has been smart in negotiations here. Some people saying legal tender law was dumb, let people accept whatever they want to accept. Somebody said that isn't what happened and you know it. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of different takes here. Now, the interesting part is, again, the IMF in this. And if you don't know, how predatory the IMF is, you have to read this book by Alex Gladstein called Hidden

Repression, How the IMF and World Bank sell exploitation as development. And as soon as you get in bed with the IMF, they can really start to screw you over. Now, I know a lot of people are hoping that this is a bait and switch and we're going to use the money to stack more sats and all of that. But I mean, the IMF is not to be trifled with. And, um, I was really hoping that there would be no need to be involved with the IMF whatsoever. Like, just screw them. Like, we need to stop these people from ruling the world. And again, we see opposite sides of this.

Here's John Denehy. He is head of me premier Bitcoin or my first Bitcoin educational initiative that started, in El Salvador and has grown across the world a way for people to learn about Bitcoin, educate others, open source education. But it started there in El Salvador, and they actually did it permissionless without anybody's permission. I think they caught a little bit of flack for that, but then because of the Bitcoin community was so excited about it, the government, I think, changed its tune over time. And so John Denahy here, here is saying, good morning from El Salvador.

After three plus years of having Bitcoin as legal tender, yesterday El Salvador passed a bill sent by Buceli to revise that law and rescind Bitcoin's status as legal tender in order to conform with IMF conditions for a loan. I don't care how much you try to spin this. This is a huge disappointment. The IMF was the enemy three years ago and they remain the enemy today. The government also, for the first time since the Bitcoin a Day program, began skipped multiple days of buying this week. What does this mean? Grassroots adoption and organizations here just got a whole lot more important. They will need your support now more than ever. Waste no time in the morning. Organize. And here you can see the Bitcoin buy a day. And there were,

okay, to balance this out, there were days where they stacked multiple Bitcoin instead of one. but you can see this week where it was just kind of flatlined for a few days, you know, they stacked a little bit and then flatlined again for a little bit. So, I mean, does it necessarily denote that they're not stacking Bitcoin anymore? I don't think so. But the main point here is I think John Dennyhy, he hit the nail on the head with his position. Grassroots movements are so much more important than government. approval. And I want every person watching this right now to internalize this message. I want you to

really, really think about this and not just think about it, but go and act upon it. Okay. It is so important for those grassroots movements, not just meetups and talking about how great Bitcoin is, but using it, using less of the fiat currencies that have been destroying our lives for decades. Use Bitcoin. Use it in your day-to-day life. It's so, so important. The IMF, they can coerce governments. They can offer them predatory loans and then start to mess with their policy. And so even in instances of the most favorable legislation, look what happens three years later. You start to see an inch taken here and an inch taken there. Buckelly and El Salvador, like, I think while many didn't like the idea of legal tender and like the idea of forcing people to accept Bitcoin, at least it was a focused, thoughtful approach that didn't lend itself to degeneracy, right? Like in the U.S. right now, we've got degeneracy.

We've got Trump coin and Melania coin, and we've got all this insanity that's happening. And maybe that in and of itself is a good thing because it's like ripping off the Band-Aid. It's a whole bunch of degeneracy all at once, and people maybe learn their lessons on a global scale. But we shall see. Either way, you cannot put trust in just the government to rubber stamp it and say, this is okay, because what's going to happen? The IMF and the Bank of International settlements, they're going to come along and they're going to say, this is not okay. You're not allowed to do this. Hey, don't you want more of our sweet money that we're going to dangle in front of your face? No way. We need to organize and have a...

actually build ground-up grassroots movements. It is so important. And again, seeing this lights a fire under my ass because we here in Calgary are doing the sat market. And this is so, so important, building these circular economies where you are. So go to your local meetup. If there's not a local meetup, make one.

Start getting together with all the other Bitcoiners. You all know that Bitcoin is better money. you all already earn money and then buy Bitcoin with your paycheck. Why don't you cut out one of those steps? You already have skills or products or services that you offer. So offer those to your community of Bitcoiners and start using Bitcoin day to day in a peer-to-peer, private and unshakable way. So go out of your way and build something.

If you want to check out what we're doing with the Sat Market in Calgary, you can scan that QR code on the screen. I think it's just so, so important that we do more because we've just been sitting there and hoping that getting people elected is going to do the trick. And it does help. It does buy time, but you can't bank on that. That can't be the only thing you do. You need to be active.

You need to rally your community. if nobody is being that lightning rod, if nobody is being that person in the community to stand up and say, let's go do something, then if not you, then who? Go do it. Check out what we're doing the sat market. But more importantly, check out what other circular economies are doing.

Learn from them. I think we can do this together. This is my rallying cry for you guys. Top-down approval was never hit. Bottom-up grassroots. is what changes the world. Go change the world. And again, we're seeing examples of, you know, Czech National Bank approves proposal to assess investing into additional asset classes such as Bitcoin. Yay, we all cheer. That's so fun and everything. And then, you know, same day, ECB president,

Christine Lagarde says she's confident Bitcoin won't be added to the reserves of any central banks of the general counsel. She specifically said she spoke to the, central bank there. So if you're waiting on governments to approve and make Bitcoin, you know, make the world of Bitcoin Citadel, it's not going to happen. It's on you. You're the one who has to do it. Anyways, guys, I'm very passionate about this. You guys have to act. You have, have, have to act. It's so important. We are going to continue. There is more news when it comes to mining. Somebody just mined another solo block on a future bit,

which I've done a video on. You have to hear this story. There's a lot of nuance to it. It's very interesting, but somebody just mined another block on a home mining device on a future bit, and it was caught live on a live stream. Wild, wild news.

So we're going to say a quick shout out to our sponsors before we do that. If you can, please do hit that like button right now. We're at 77 likes. If we get to another 100, we're going to do an extra giveaway at the end of the show. But quick shout out. We'll be right back. Debify is the best and easiest way to borrow against your Bitcoin in a non-custodial way.

Funds are held in a multi-sig escrow where you hold a key, and the platform allows for excellent hardware like the cold card mark four and the queue. You have access to flexible conditions, the best rates, and institutional grade liquidity. If you're looking to make use of your capital, don't sell your Bitcoin, borrow against it. You can head over to debify.com to check them out or simply scan the QR code on the screen.

Speed wallet is the easiest to set up and use Bitcoin wallet out there. When you sign up, you can, of course, buy Bitcoin within the app. You can send and receive Bitcoin transactions via the Lightning Network. And you can also send, receive, hold, and swap between stablecoins, aka EUSDT, via the Lightning Network. They baked in a ton of other great features as well, where you're able to earn Bitcoin.

This can include referring your friends, shopping your favorite gift cards, or playing fun games via the Speed Arcade. I encourage you to sign up today. There's a QR code on the screen to do so, or you can hit the link in the show notes down below, and when you do, you will earn 5,000 sats as you create your first account. All right, we are back in and let's chat what the hell happened. Who mined a solo block yet again on one of these home miners?

Again, I've covered a bunch of them. There's the NerdX. There's the BitX, NerdX being a fork of the BitX. There is the Brains mini-minor. There is the future bit. And there's also, I saw somebody in the chat talking about the Avalon minors that just came out, the home miners. Actually, I think they've been out for a little bit.

I'm going to do a video on them anyways. Nonetheless, this was a future bit. And the way that this happened was actually kind of interesting. So here over on No BS Bitcoin, the first ever Bitcoin Telehash fundraiser, as in like a telethon, but a telehash actually found a block. So block 881, 423, mined by Future Bit Apollo Solo for the 256 Foundation during the telehash event marks the first time a fundraiser has been conducted through Bitcoin hash rate, raising 3.146 Bitcoin, that's the 3.125 plus fees in rewards worth approximately $330,000. So the 256 Foundation, a non-profit foundation, founded by Econo Alchemist and BitKite down at Bitcoin Park, with a mission to advance free and open-source Bitcoin mining

software, firmware, and hardware solutions held its first annual fundraiser, the telehash, to raise money for open source mining development. Quote, we thought it would be good, it would be appropriate to raise the money by having miners point their hash rate to our self-hosted node. Again, incredible odds we actually solved a block, Citicono Alchemist. So it's really cool. So basically, if you haven't seen what the mining interface, and I have mine off right now because it makes a little bit of noise, but I'm going to show you guys what it looks like here. This is my future bit.

And so I've got this pause right now, turn it on again after the show, but more or less, you can solo mine, and maybe I'll turn it on right now for just a sec so you can see. But it gives you basically everything you need. And not only can you mine just with the device itself and it has its own Bitcoin node, so it creates the Bitcoin block itself, you're not relying on a pool to do that for you, but you can point other miners to basically your own mining pool that you make on the device as it's running. So it's really, really cool. So what they did for this telehash is they said, okay, here is our future bit and here is our mining pool that is running on the

device itself, if you want to donate to us, instead just point your miners at our mining pool for the course of this telehash. And if we get a block, then awesome. So it looks something like this. There's the miner, everything. And then if I go to solo mining here, it lets you know where to point your hash rate on your local network, but you can do it externally as well. And so I've actually got two devices pointing at this. And so once this boots up, it'll show two workers here. But I've got a brains mini-miner and I've got, there we go, two workers, both pointing at my future bit. So this is what they did for their fundraiser. And they actually ended up hitting a block, which is super awesome. So the event ran for almost 10 hours. And at one point, there was over

1.1 to X a hash from approximately 350 different entities at the time. the block was found, about 881 Petahash was directed to the 256 Foundation's pool. The winning nonce came from one of the, one of megawatts minors. In total, we raised 3.146 Bitcoin to support the 256 Foundation's projects. We wouldn't have been able to do this without the amazing community of people supporting us and our vision. We thank you. Special thanks, OGBT, PubSource, Future BitBorst, Not Mandatory, and Bitcoin Park.

Super, super awesome. I love it. What a great idea for a fundraiser. Point your hash right here. That is super awesome. Nonetheless, let's continue on. Now, if you are curious about how to run a future bit, I did do a tutorial on it, and you can find that on the channel.

So just search Future Bit. It's just from a couple weeks back, and a lot of people have been checking it out. Continuing on, Iris Wallet for Desktop version 0.1.0. This is for RGB on the Lightning Network is the first experimental release of a wallet that integrates RGB protocol on the Lightning Network. The initial release is available for Linux and Mac offering support for both TestNet and Reg Test environments.

You can find two versions. So basically this is another way of having assets on Bitcoin using Lightning without having to deal with other blockchains. Pretty cool. Also, ARC Labs releases ARCWallet SDK or software development kit. Today we're releasing the SDK. And so it simplifies building Bitcoin wallace with seamless support for both on-chain and off-chain transactions while it's still early. We couldn't wait for developers to start tapping into the ARC protocol.

So this is another way of scaling Bitcoin that has some tradeoffs that are better and some that are not as good as light. but it gives us just a whole other mechanism to scale Bitcoin, and it's really, really cool to see. So I'm excited to see the types of projects that come with this SDK now released. Albi, I love Albi. The Albi Hub is incredible. It's a great way to be able to host your own node. You can see mine hooked up right here.

And so it's hooked into my Noster, but it's running on my Start 9 node behind me. So Albi, of course, is a Bitcoin Lightning browser extension. that connects with different wallet interfaces and brings deep lightning integration to the web. The most recent update for Albi Extension brings several improvements and new functionalities for the Lightning browser extension.

New features include a dedicated card for importing your Noster Keys along with improvements for language. There's also a number of fixes. But yeah, the easier import of Noster Keys is much welcomed. If you haven't checked out, I'll be yet. You should probably try running it.

I love it as a way to be utilizing lightning in a self-sovereign way. We're going to continue on. Make sure you are smashing that like button. We're north of 100 likes. We're getting close to 110. Let's pump those numbers up. But again, this is another thing that I use so, so often. ZapRite.

This is where I do all of my invoicing. Again, living on Bitcoin, using Bitcoin infrastructure. Zappright launches BTC pay server integration. I've been waiting for this one big time. So Zappright is a, it empowers merchants to seamlessly accept payments in Bitcoin and Fiat through its self-custodial wallet and agnostic payments platform. So the nice thing about this is if you do have customers that need to pay in Fiat, you can do that. But what I do is I charge a premium if they want to pay in Fiat, which is fantastic.

It rightly communicates how awful fiat is and how much you don't want to deal with it. BTC pay integration is now available. Connect your BTC pay server to ZapRite and accept Bitcoin and lightning payments side by side with Fiat. Using your own self-hosted Bitcoin infrastructure, learn how to connect BTC Pay Store to ZapRite to receive Bitcoin and lightning payments alongside Fiat through ZappRite invoices, payment links, and point-of-sale, e-commerce connections, and ZapRite API right here. again, you can do a ton here from Parker Lewis, very excited for this feature releasing integrating BTZPay. Now all existing in future BTZPay users can leverage ZAPbright apps, commerce tools.

I think this is a marriage of two of my favorite things in Bitcoin. If you haven't tried BTCPAY or Zapprite, go check them out. I just, again, so great. Both teams are doing God's work here. Also, hey, we got something coming. up next week. We are doing a live audit of the Bitcoin supply, and I'm doing it with Pierre Richard. We are going to hashtag run the numbers. So if you want to run the numbers with us, of course, first hit that like button because I'd love to have you there. I just dropped a

tutorial at the beginning of the week this week on how to download and set up Bitcoin Core and how to run the command to audit the supply of Bitcoin without having to trust anybody else to do it for you. And what we're going to do during the live stream this coming Tuesday, February 4th at 2 p.m. Eastern time is we're going to do a live stream with myself, Pierre, and some other special guests. And I want you guys to show up.

I want you to all be in the comments. And I want you to run the command at the same time as us on your Bitcoin core node so that we can all audit the code globally, together at the same time. We will let you know which block we're going to do it on, how to do it and everything. But for now, check out on the channel.

I released a video called Anyone Can Audit Bitcoin's Supply, Bitcoin Node tutorial. Get on that, download, do what you need to do. It also shows how to connect Sparrow Wallet and some other node options out there. But we're all going to audit the supply of Bitcoin together to show globally how powerful this network is. Let's do it together. I'm excited. Let me know. Other than that, I want to give you guys some free stuff right now. You can get your free copy of Magic Internet Money by Jesse Berger. Of course, Jesse Berger is a friend of the show, and he's with my company, Bitcoin Mentor. And so we do one-on-one education sessions with people teaching people how to

level up in their Bitcoin journey, wallets, multisig, hardware, whatever you need to learn, nodes, any of that. We would love to have you, of course. You can visit Bitcoin Mentor.io. But more importantly, if you want a free copy of his book, which is incredible, it's such an accessible read for people really looking to learn a lot about Bitcoin in a very concise and accessible way, I highly recommend. Scan the QR code, drop an email, and you get a copy of the book.

So I'll read a little bit here. Magic Internet Money, a book written by one of our top mentors, Jesse Berger, explains many key concepts underpinning Bitcoin in simple and relatable terms. Beyond the basics, it explores topics such as banking, cryptography, economics, governance, and more. This added context highlights how Bitcoin can address many problems facing the global economy and why it is positioned to usher in a brighter future for us all. If you haven't read it already, it is worth checking out. Super awesome. And of course, share it with your friends. You can share the same link with them, and we'd love to have them read a copy of the book.

Anyways, guys, that is it for me. I'll leave this QR code up for you. But let's see. Are we, yeah, we got over 100. So I'll give you guys another crack at the giveaway here. I think we may as well. Let's see here. I'll bring up my screen one more time.

Get your lightning wallets ready. And I see in the chat there, when is it? Is it happening against? No, it's happening Tuesday, February 4th at 2 p.m. Eastern time. We are doing a global Bitcoin supply audit. All right, here we are. With the main screen, I'll get this free book off the screen here. Here we are.

So we're going to toss a coin in the well one more time. We got over 100 likes, so we got a bonus toss here. Off we go. And if you feel, if you're feeling spicy, then of course, drop a another like if anybody hasn't done it already. Really do appreciate it. 210 sats for whoever scans that first with their lightning wallet. Congrats to whoever snipes the sats.

Anyways, guys, have yourselves a wonderful day or evening. I want you guys to keep stacking sats. I want you guys to keep stacking skills. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This was your Simply session.