BTC Sessions - IT’S ALL FAKE!? El Salvador Bitcoin Exposed By IMF (WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON?)

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Is El Salvador’s Bitcoin success story actually fake? The IMF just made bold claims that raise serious questions—and what’s really going on behind the scenes could shock the entire crypto world.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://qrco.de/bfiDC6COINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions AQUA WALLEThttps://qrco.de/bfiD8gNUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://qrco.de/bfiDARHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://qrco.de/bfiDCpCRYPTOCLOAKShttps://qrco.de/bg5Dvo#btc #bitcoin #crypto

El Salvador has been parading daily Bitcoin buys like clockwork. One coin a day, every day, no matter what the IMF says. President Bekelly even declared, we're never stopping. But what if it's all a lie? A bombshell IMF report just dropped, and it claims those so-called purchases, they never happened. Just smoke, mirrors, and wallet shuffling. Is this the unraveling of Bitcoin's, flagship nation, or is the IMF taking a page straight out of confessions of an economic hitman,

executing another reputational hit on a nation that dared defy their control? And while the accusations fly, Buckelly's doing something no one expected, teaming up with another IMF controlled nation to spread Bitcoin adoption. So are we witnessing betrayal or brilliance? Don't go anywhere. we've got the receipts, the players, and the global stakes behind this unfolding drama. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your weekly session.

All right. I want to bring in my co-host with the most from Bitcoin Mentor, Mr. Nathan Fitzsimmons. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing good, sir. How are you doing? Did you see the news very recently? The U.S. seems to have passed some things. And, of course, Bitcoin ripping back above 120.

And more importantly, because this one I thought, was really interesting. Do you see that the UK basically went with like political sepacu? They've just decided to go down a terrible path. I did see many of those things. My feet is blowing up. There's a lot to take in. So yeah, I mean, we'll tackle that. There's plenty to get to today.

But yeah, let's dive into this, this IMF slash El Salvador stuff. Because I don't know about you, but I don't know what to think of any of this. It's very confusing. Like one group is saying one thing, one group is saying the other. And there's always a rebuttal on either side. And it's ping ponging back and forth. So like who is BSing and who's not? So let's take a look at what's in front of us.

And, you know, we're going to need some help from the comments section to hear what everybody's thinking here. But so here is a tweet from Joe Nakamoto. Now, he's not the first one to kind of notice what came out of this IMF report. It was highlighted by John Denahe of me Premier Bitcoin. And then Joe dove into this report, which, by the way, this report is damn near 150 pages, I think here. Yeah, 149, 149 pages for this IMF report on El Salvador. So some of the key points here, Joe tweeted, as many suspected, the IMF report suggested, or to suggest, rather, that El Salvador has not been buying Bitcoin, just reshuffling it internally. The quote is, increases in Bitcoin holdings reflect the

consolidation of Bitcoin across various government-owned wallets. Another quote, Chivo does not adjust its Bitcoin reserves. This leads to an increase in net public sector holdings. And then he also added, plus only teeny tiny top-ups are pre-approved to maintain a safety buffer, establish a buffer of at least 3 million net of Chivo client's deposits and the continuous

QPC ceiling. So he says pretty awkward to say the least. So here's the footnote here saying that basically there's other government wallets that are not public

and that the one Bitcoin deposit every single day that's been tweeted by the Bitcoin office and touted by Buckelly is just them moving one Bitcoin at a time from one wallet that they already own to that one to keep up the frequency, which would be crazy if that was true. And again, I kind of don't know.

We'll get into that in a second. Again, this is interesting. They're talking about Chivo here. So Chivo, that is the government lightning wallet that now has to be sold on the public market because that's part of the condition of the IMF deal that the government can't control that anymore. So Chivo does not adjust its Bitcoin reserves to reflect changes in clients' Bitcoin deposits. As a result, when Chivo clients' Bitcoin holdings decrease and Chivo does not sell the corresponding amount of Bitcoin, this leads to an increase in net public sector holdings as defined

by the TMU. Since program approval, these fluctuations have been minor and short-lived, resulting in deviations from the QPC ceiling, no larger than 1% of total public sector Bitcoin Holdings. Bitcoin holdings are monitored using signed statements. So a few details there. But basically they're saying if Chivo users sell Bitcoin, then there's potential for them to basically not actually sell the Bitcoin, like send them dollars, but then keep the Bitcoin. and then maybe use some of that to reallocate to the public wallet, again, which is a wild accusation here.

So again, and here's the establish a buffer. So Bitcoin, establish a buffer of at least $3 million equivalent between the level of public sector Bitcoin holdings, net of Chivo's clients, deposits denominated in Bitcoin and the continuous QPC ceiling. So they're just saying that, hey, like, they're not. buying they're just shuffling around stuff they already have however however on the other side of this is what the i'm f is saying and i like i don't know about you but i don't trust the i mf as far as i could throw them so um so i was going to say satwise had a nice comment i leave f the i mf was probably the right response yeah exactly um but okay so stacy herbert uh who's part of the like leading up the bitcoin office there down in El Salvador. She tweeted this like very shortly after this report broke and everybody started

humming and hawing over it. She said, I have some really bad news for the haters. Your pain is about to intensify. Now, is she referring to whether or not they're actually buying Bitcoin, whether or not the report is BS? I mean, there's not a whole lot of detail here. But there is some interesting action on behalf of El Salvador and Bekele that's going on that you wouldn't think would be going on in the face of, you know, them bending the knee to the IMF. And that is alignment with Pakistan. Now, if you guys remember, Pakistan went to the Bitcoin conference in Vegas and announced, hey, we're going to do a strategic Bitcoin reserve. And we're also going to use our excess energy to mine Bitcoin. And then shortly thereafter,

the IMF was like, oh, no, you're not. You're not allowed to do. that with your own excess energy, which again is fucking insane that this unelected body could tell a nation what to do with their, not like energy that was being used for something else or whatever, which already would be crazy. But to say like, hey, you have excess energy and you want to use it for something, we're going to tell you what you can and can't use the excess waste energy for it. That is mind-numbingly crazy. So anyways, what are they doing with El Salvador?

So here it is. Pakistan's special assistant on Bitcoin. I'm not going to try that name. Met with El Salvador's president, Naid Bikeli in San Salvador, to discuss strategies for Bitcoin adoption and knowledge sharing. The president, praised Buckelly for, or rather the special assistant on Bitcoin, praise Bikeli for his forward-thinking leadership. Eileen Bekele's early commitment to Bitcoin.

He's a leader from the future who saw the future first because when it wasn't cool to back Bitcoin, he stood with conviction. Pakistan is looking to us Salvador's example amid an ongoing 7 billion IMF loan program. Pakistan is seeking to learn from El Salvador's approach to integrating Bitcoin into its national policy. The two countries formalized their collaboration

by signing a letter of intent between El Salvador's Bitcoin office and the Pakistan Crypto Council. Now I'm going to skip over to this actual tweet. Again, Stacey Herbert right here with the Bitcoin Office. Bitcoin Office signed a letter of intent with the Pakistan Crypto Council today. It says the purpose of the letter of intent is to outline the mutual intention of the parties to explore and establish a strategic collaboration in the fields of Bitcoin education. Bitcoin mining, remember this is what the IMF said was a big no-no for Pakistan. sovereign Bitcoin reserves again, IMF, no, no, no, don't buy an established reserves, not allowed,

and broader efforts to advance financial inclusion and digital economic empowerment through the responsible use of Bitcoin and decentralized technologies. That doesn't sound like backing down to me. Again, like I'm so torn. I feel like it's tough because inside of me says, don't trust politicians. But deeper inside of me says, but really don't trust the IFF.

Nathan, where are you at with this? How are you interpreting all this? Man, there's so much to tease apart there. And I agree. It feels like there's just a wave of noise recently too and a ton of distractions, think Epstein. Like, I have no idea what's going on. It's hard to discern between them.

I will say, without giving it away, I maybe did a podcast today with somebody. I'll talk a lot about the IMF. That will be coming out later. We'll just call them A Gladstein. But my two kind of main thoughts is that one, there's no way these two countries got together and did not also discuss their IMF loans

in that situation as well. Going back to, you know, we're just, it's kind of a balance sheet movement game, which I suspect there's a lot of that going on. We're seeing people announcing that they're buying Bitcoin, but really it's just moving from one balance sheet to the other. There's no USD exchange,

and that's why we've seen no changes in price. But I couldn't help but think about this as I was going through it there with you, is maybe, maybe this is quite simple. Maybe Buckelly realized at some point in time that a lump sum payment tends to outperform DCA. He saw his opportunity. He smashed bought a bunch of Bitcoin. I'm like, I'll just move that over later.

I'm going to continue with this. I want people just to save and not speculate, but maybe he has just a big pile that he was sitting on. And he's just move him over one at a time. It's not outside the realm of possibility. I really do like Max and Stacey. At least they're longtime, very interesting characters here. So I'm curious to see what they have to say. It feels like this weird back and forth constantly.

and really I just don't know what to make of it, but I can tell at least from what's going on there. I had this realization in the conversation today that so like the IMF wants to continue to have these countries in debt. That's their goal. They need to continue to re-up and refinance and keep them in debt. If somebody defaults on the debt, right, that's taking an asset off their balance sheet. That's no good.

But at the same time, if somebody pays back the debt, that's also taking another asset off their balance sheet. So the IMF is directly threatened because if these guys are piling into Bitcoin, and we saw in other countries that maybe we'll talk about a little bit later, but if they're piling into the Bitcoin to the point where they could actually repay their IMF loans, they don't want that. They need to try and cut this out at the knees if they can. Anyways, it's a lot to tease apart. I want to stay on the optimistic side, but you should never trust a politician. Yeah, yeah. And we saw some rumblings, speaking of which, stepping outside of

the realm of El Salvador's holdings in Pakistan's potential holdings here. We saw some stateside rumblings because there were questions around, does the U.S. hold as much Bitcoin as they claim? And so we're going to clarify a little bit of what's been rumbling around the last couple of days here. So there is a Freedom of Information Act response. And so Lola Leitz went out and reached out to inquirember. regarding the U.S. government's holdings.

And initially it looked like, oh, geez, these guys only hold like 29,000 Bitcoin. And it was anticipated that the U.S. government held over 200,000 Bitcoin. So that would have been 15% of what they prior held prior to this, meaning they would have dumped all the rest, which would have been crazy. And Senator Lummis was fuming over it. I'm alarmed by reports that the U.S. has sold off over 80% of its Bitcoin reserves, leaving just 29,000 coins. If true, this is a total strategic blunder and sets the United States back years in the Bitcoin race.

And again, this would be blunders to the tune of shit that countries like Bulgaria, we saw people dunking on them earlier in the week in 2018. they sold over 213,000 Bitcoin, now worth $25 billion, and it would be enough to wipe out the country's entire public debt, which is just wild to think. Right. And I mean, even in years prior, Germany misses out on $3.5 billion because they sold 50,000 Bitcoin.

And the article says too early, but we all know that you just, it's always too early to sell You can use it, but you should always be saving. But again, I thoroughly enjoy seeing governments shit the bed on their Bitcoin holdings and make bad financial decisions. And it's funny, Carla was just laughing about Germany, what, like four days ago. And then the 30,000 Bitcoin news about America broke and, you know, here she is crying, which is a hilarious tweet. But it all may not be exactly as it seems. And so there was some clarification from the person who actually did the Freedom of Information request. She said, all right, my guys, since we all have our pennies and a jumble over the U.S. government, quote, selling their Bitcoin, I'd like to alert you

to the fact that there's a difference between seized assets and forfeited assets. The United States Marshals. Service? Is that the final S? I don't know. But anyways, the U.S. Marshals is mainly in charge of forfeited assets, meaning assets that have been made property of the government. So the government officially owns those assets. The list I received from the Marshals is a list of BTC held by the Marshals as requested by David Bailey here. The Marshals can be in charge of seized assets, but these can also be held with seizing agencies like the DEA or the FBI, meaning that there may be other custody

offices other than with the U.S. Marshals. To the geniuses that have linked Arkham's government wallet tracker, these do not seem to be the Bitcoin that have made the Goves been made government property, at least not exclusively, which means they can't sell them. For example, Arkham lists 94,000 Bitcoin from the Bitfinex hack, but for, for meaning that the government would own it, in that case hasn't been decided, at least last time I checked. That means that the U.S. government has, it doesn't mean that the U.S. has sold Bitcoin. It means that whatever these U.S. Treasury sites estimate is likely wrong as they don't seem to differentiate between seize and forfeited coins, which TLDR, yeah, there may be 200,000 coins, but the U.S. government doesn't necessarily own all of those. They are holding them and there's a legal process behind them.

And it would seem that 30,000 coins are the ones that are actually owned legally by the government at this point. And again, on-chain analysts, Sannie EXP, clarifies use government does in fact control UTXO is worth 200K, the 29K Bitcoin reported by the marshals are only forfeited coins excluded, confiscated BTC still held with agencies like the FBI. and the IRS. So does the U.S. government have 200,000 Bitcoin? Kind of. I mean, I mean, you're a good point. Yeah. And why is that, Nathan? Because not your keys, not your coins, good sir. If they're the ones that control the private key to those wallets, regardless of any legal framework for all intended purposes, they own the Bitcoin. They're the only ones who control the Bitcoin. And I'm sure when it comes to ruling on whether or not it's them or theirs, the government ruling whether or not the government gets that property probably going to go that way anyways as well too so well there's the legal distinction between the two if they control the bitcoin they own the bitcoin so i would put in the camp of that yeah they have it doesn't mean they're not going to do anything good with it but they have at least for the time being and the other thing that was thinking about where you're going there is that it's funny this speaks to me about the idea of like proof of reserves both with buchelli's visible wallet and then us trying to audit what the u.s government actually has i don't think this idea of people companies governments being able to claim

ownership over Bitcoin without giving the proof of reserves. I think culturally that'll just become completely untenable in the next, I'd say like five years even, that it's going to be expected that anybody who claims like, yes, we've got this much Bitcoin in our company and this much Bitcoin behind our government. It's like, okay, put up or shut up. You're going to have to show us that address. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it may even come to the point of proving ownership by signing messages pertaining to

the addresses, right? So, yeah, it can get pretty. dicey there i wouldn't trust a lick of what you see online and when somebody says that they have x amount of bitcoin without any sort of proof of reserves you'd be amazed how many people tell me they bought bitcoin in like early 2000 it's like mm okay sign a message for me yeah 100% well we're gonna uh on the other side of the hop here uh we're gonna be chatting about all of the the bills that basically are are are now more or less past they're on their way to Donald Trump's desk for final approval. What are these bills? Why do they matter? What do they mean for the

US? What do they mean for Bitcoin? Are they good? Are they low-key bad? We're going to chat about that coming back after the break. We're also going to give away some stats. If you're enjoying the conversation, please do give that like button a smash. And we'll be back in one minute. Get your lightning wallets ready. We'll see in a sec. Bitcoin well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the US. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place to be making large buys at their OTC desk of over $50,000. Their white glove service gives you fast transactions, no slippage, and the lowest fees. You can scan the QR code on the screen or simply head to Bitcoinwell.com slash BTC Sessions to sign up today. And you can share

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So nonetheless, let's chat, Nathan. A bunch of stuff just happened. U.S. House passes all three major Bitcoin and crypto bills, The Clarity Act, the Genius Act, the anti-CBDC Act. There's some nuance there. We'll talk about it in a second. These are all going to Trump's desk, I think, tomorrow. Now, it's interesting because that wasn't the case just the other day, right?

No, no, it looked like this was not going to get through, and some people were pretty pissed off about it. I don't blame them. They should have control of the Republicans, but I guess for whatever reason, they couldn't come up with some shady backdoor deal to get it through at the time. They had to reconvene during the evening and then vote again. Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, whatever happened, I think Trump had all the dissenting. There were 13 dissenting Republicans that voted no. And he had meetings with 11 of them, if I'm not mistaken, and said that he got the votes to make it happen. And it would appear that he was indeed right. So these are going to his desk now. Now, the big one here, in my opinion, or the one that most people are talking about is this genius act. and how it pertains to this, a big push for stable coins. Now, why is that?

Why is the U.S. government so damn interested in stable coins? And in my opinion, it is, we were talking about this last night on the show for why are we bullish. We had awesome people on. We had Tom from Rockstar Real Estate. We had Leon Wankham. and we had Joe Consorti and we were chatting about,

so why this interest in stable coins? We kind of came to the conclusion that this is the final Hail Mary of Fiat. And it's the last way to drum up demand for what will likely be the last Fiat currency to survive. All the rest are just, it's all going to flow into USD

and then it's all going to flow from USD into Bitcoin. But what do I mean by that? Well, they need people to continue demanding U.S. dollars. And right now, a lot of nations are trying to pull out of the petro dollar system, right? Like there's less demand. People are beginning to buy oil in other currencies. And previously, if you tried to pull that shit, the U.S. would bring you some freedom. They would operation freedom all up in your country.

country. But that doesn't seem to be the trend. There's not as much power there when it comes to that kind of influence and large nations have broken away from the petro dollar system, which means a decreased demand for dollars, at least in part. And so the U.S. is seeing the writing in the wall, and I think one of the solutions is, what if we drum up demand for U.S. dollars from anybody that wants access to them easily via stable coins? And what this means is, okay, if you're in a country that has a shit currency, which, to be fair, that's all of them. But comparatively to the U.S. dollar, you know, there are many nations that have their

own currency, but people prefer using U.S. dollars. But sometimes it can be harder to come by. You got to, you know, you've got to get paid in dollars. You're using cash. You're using whatever. You probably can't have it in a bank account. But stable coins can fix that for you. You can use a U.S. dollar backed equivalent.

And this opens up the U.S. dollar to like the entire global market of anybody who wants U.S. dollars. So you would have a company or multiple companies saying, okay, if you deposit dollars here, we will then issue a U.S. dollar stable coin that is backed. I believe the regulation would be, it would be backed one to one in some form. so it could either be actual U.S. dollars or we'll discuss what else it could be. But then the demand comes just from anybody that wants to use U.S. dollars around the globe and store their value in that as opposed to their own inferior currency. So right away, more demand.

But it also creates additional demand for U.S. debt or U.S. treasuries, which also have had less demand. So they need people to be buying up U.S. treasuries. Who the hell is going to buy up U.S. treasuries? Well, the stable coin issuers, because it makes a whole lot of sense if you want to be very conservative, but you also want to earn a yield on the dollars. If somebody deposits dollars with you and then you go to the actual issuer of dollars and say, I'm going to buy your treasuries, and the U.S. is not going to,

they're not going to default in a traditional sense ever on this. They will just inflate the currency. And so for these stable coin issuers, it makes a whole lot of sense for them to simply take other people's money, buy treasuries with them,

so that they're earning a yield on dollars other than theirs. And so that props up the U.S. treasury market and demand for the dollar Now, the interesting Bitcoin part, how does this pertain to Bitcoin? Is this even good for Bitcoiners? If the stablecoin issuers follow the same trajectory as what Tether is doing, then it could drive a whole bunch of extra demand for Bitcoin because what is Tether doing?

They're doing the exact thing I just described, getting dollars, buying U.S. Treasuries, earning a yield on this treasuries. What are they doing with the yield? What are they doing with the interest they're earning? They're buying a Bitcoin reserve. Because they know that even the game that they're playing is with a dying currency. And so they're using this whole thing to perform a speculative attack on the US dollar and stack sets. And so if you have this happen en masse, could be very good for Bitcoin.

Do you have thoughts there, Nathan? I do. Even just kind of on that same note and going in different directions as well, there's the demand for even just having banking infrastructure of some kind. Like, I want everybody to go to Bitcoin. I need them to go to Bitcoin. You're going to love it. It's the best.

Don't even worry about it. It's huge. It's great. But a lot of people do want those U.S. dollars. And don't forget, there's like the U.S. population, the Canadian population, is relatively small relative to the global population. And there's a ton of places out there that don't really necessarily have the banking infrastructure or even remotely, like, good enough rule of law to trust the existing banking infrastructure. But they do have a phone. And in the same way that, you know, if you are coming online with telecommunications now, you're not going to put in landlines. There's no point. You can just go right to cell phone technology.

I think a lot of people that Tether could end up kind of being their first bank. So they'll be buying increasing demand. But the other aspect, and again, I'm hoping that because they're similar in some sense, they'll find their way to Bitcoin very soon, especially if they have some capital accumulation, something to save up, they'll find the better savings technology. But the other aspect in terms of why it's Polish for Bitcoin is that essentially this is unlocking another aspect of M2 money supply. And don't forget, too, that it's the creation of debt that is the creation of dollar units.

This is essentially another one that we can lump into that basket. So it's another way of printing more dollars. It's going to be increasing, inflating the supply of USD. And you know that value is going to find its way to Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah. And so when it comes to all of this passing and going to Trump's desk, a lot of people are very happy about it. A lot of people are celebrating.

It would seem that the market is looking at this as very positive. As soon as it passed, you can see we went from like 118 and a half all the way up to damn near 121. So, you know, we did get a bump in price from the news. But not everyone is super keen on this. And why is that? So, you know, you get the Genius Act. Yeah, okay, stablecoin stuff, maybe benefiting Bitcoin through proxy over time.

There's an anti-CBDC Act. Okay, that sounds pretty good. Ban on the Fed creating a CBDC. That's, you know, I don't mind that. But some people are questioning if this is enough based on what is present in the Genius Act. And we, again, we chatted about this briefly yesterday, but there's a few prominent Republicans that seem to think that the Genius Act does not do enough to ensure that

a CBDC in some form does not end up happening. So I'm going to read a tweet from Republican Marjorie Taylor Green, and she's been all over the news doing clips and all this stuff talking about her concerns. She says here, remember when Canada froze the truckers, the Freedom Convoy bank accounts and crypto when they protested against vaccine mandates. Canada, not China. Congress is passing a bill today, the Genius Act, that opens the back door to a central bank digital currency. By the way, just so you know, this was prior to the vote, but she's stating her intent here earlier today. It opens a backdoor to a central bank digital currency. The Fed has been working on this for years.

The ultimate goal is to move to a cashless society in digital currency. House Republicans want a ban on CBDC, but the Senate says they don't have enough votes to pass a ban on CBDCs. Johnson refused to allow us to make amendments to the bill and says he will put the ban on CBDCs in the NDAA. Just for reference, the NDAA is the National Defense Authorization. Act. But if it won't pass now, it won't pass then. So why are we passing bills to lay the groundwork for CBDC that can be used against us in the future by another authoritarian regime?

We saw that what a politically weaponized government look like the past four years. Just wait until we get another one that can turn off your bank account and stop your ability to buy and sell. I'm voting no. So, you know, she was very concerned about the this. Obviously, it passed anyways. It's going to the president's desk. But is there a low-key something in there as it pertains to as it pertains to CBDCs? There's a few other Republicans that have been raising alarms here and saying like there's not enough here. Even with the Anti-CBDC Act, there's something. There's finicky language in the Genius Act that allows some roundabout way for CBDC later. Nathan, I don't know. Do you have thoughts here? Are you

worried? Well, we've already got CBDCs. They're called commercial banking accounts, right? They can be shut off and seized and moved however you like at any point in time. So honestly, I was thinking about this is like, I think at some point in time, it probably does happen. Like, I think it's just one of those things that kind of inevitable in the last dying gasps of a Fiat currency and Fiat empire. I would like to see it postponed or stopped, but I think they're going to attempt it at some point in time, whether now or later, it doesn't particularly matter. But the best thing is, we already have basically rules against the CBDC. It's called Nakamoto Consensus.

As long as you're on Bitcoin, they can't fuck with you. Pardon the language. Perfect. Perfect. Yeah, I mean, you can opt out of this by just not using their money anymore. I think that would probably be the best path for most people. Now, this isn't the only thing that is happening in and around the U.S. government. We also saw something else today.

That is that Trump is preparing to open the 9th. $9 trillion U.S. retirement market to, quote, crypto, gold, and private equity. This would be via executive order, and it would allow 401K plans to include alternative assets. And so here's the article. Donald Trump is preparing to, again, open the $9 trillion U.S. retirement market to cryptocurrency investments gold and private equity in a move that would spur a radical shift in the way American savings are managed. is expected to sign an executive order as soon as this week.

That would open up 401 plans to alternative investments. In the U.S., 401K plans are among the most popular ways working Americans save for retirement, allowing them to invest a portion of their salaries in publicly traded securities tax-free. But virtually all such investments are housed in public stock and bond mutual funds. So this would open that up potentially to Bitcoin. Now, Nathan, I know you did some back of the napkin math when it comes to $9 trillion. If we got a modest percentage of that, what it might do to market cap and price. Do you still have those numbers kicking around?

I do. I have them handy. Yeah. So from a $9 trillion pool of capital coming in, if we had just a 15% allocation of that finding its way to Bitcoin, that that would then. and add a $1.35 trillion to the market cap. It would bring us up to a $178,000 U.S. per Bitcoin. So not a bad little run.

And funny enough, in my mind, I always figure that's when retail and euphoria comes back in. So, you know, $180K, and then maybe things go off to the races as we get this little pump and crash. Yeah, I mean, and this is just one aspect of new inflows and new ways that, you know, capital is being unlocked and potentially moving.

towards Bitcoin. And so because of this, we could just kind of be getting started. And Jack Mallors was talking about this. Again, having fun, don't let Fiat fool you. The party hasn't even started yet. And he outlines Bitcoin versus gold, although I'll show the updated one of that in the second. The Mag 7. So what are, what's in the Mag 7? I can't recall. Oh, geez, Navidia, Apple, Google, Tesla, I think. I don't know. I'll be. completely honest i don't own a single stock so i don't even pay attention to it that's that's fair that's fair but again like just showing that bitcoin hasn't even reached an all-time high against those yet uh again bitcoin versus the dollar again just kind of following that curve um you know it still looks like

it's relatively low let's take a look at bitcoin versus gold right now so we did pierce an all-time high in gold just uh just in january but like Just. Just. We're basically near where right now, we're currently basically at the peak of the market in 2021 when priced in gold, which would be a much more reliable pricing mechanism than dollars. So what this means is if you decisively break up from here versus gold, it could mean, again, we're just kind of getting things. started. And you said, what was that price point you said with 15% of the retirement there? 178,000. Yeah. And so that's just with that, it gets us pretty close to Bernstein was predicting

that Bitcoin could reach 200K by early 2026. And just with that one influence, you know, we're not far off of that. So I'm not saying exactly where we're going. I'm just saying that there's many many, many different things in motion right now that allow many more pools of capital to access Bitcoin. And those things are kind of just coming online right now, allowing people to loosen up and begin allocating to Bitcoin. And so it feels like we are a little bit on the cusp of something, but my rational brain is trying to tell me, no, stop, shut up, diminishing returns, what are you talking about? Don't disappoint yourself. No, no, no, dream. Dream big, Ben. It's going to, if it's not going to zero, it's going to a million and then 10 million and

then 100 million because essentially the denominator is going to just crash and burn. But why not, right? I mean, at the end of the day, whether or not I think the Bitcoin USD price is going up or going down does in no way, no way affect my behavior. I have cash. It goes into Bitcoin. There's nothing sitting on the sidelines. I'm not going to like get out and get back in. That's a terrible idea, terrible idea. Just as you. As you. You always say, add more value, spend less than you earn, and then save the access in Bitcoin. But that doesn't mean I can't have wonderful little daytime fantasies of like, oh, that would be nice, or I could do this and I can dream. So why not?

I think this bull run has been very muted. Again, I know you brought up yesterday as well, too, that most people not in the Bitcoin space, they've been almost bored by the lack of volatility. And I don't think we're done with cycles, and I don't think we're done with volatility. And who knows, maybe it could be wicked strong to the upside. Yeah, yeah, we shall see. But we've got more to talk about on the other side of the jump here. We've got some developers that are raised the alarm regarding quantum and a certain percentage of all Bitcoin that could be affected as it pertains to actual ability to unlock those coins in the future. So we're going to talk about that and the proposal to maybe prevent that from. eventually coming to fruition.

We're also going to talk about, man, Germany just can't get their shit together. But there's another fun little tidbit out of Germany as it pertains to just the worst loss. I don't, I, what are they even doing over there, man? We're going to talk about that in a second. I also want to highlight some of the fun stuff I've been playing around this with this week. And also, no surprise, but the IRS is coming after your Bitcoin. Yeah, watch out. So we're going to talk about more of that on the other side of the hop.

If you're enjoying the conversation, please do drop a smash of the like button. We really do appreciate it. Keep your comments coming. And we'll be back in just a moment. Looking for a simple and secure way to manage your Bitcoin on mobile, Aqua Wallet has you covered. It's user-friendly and puts you in full control of your Bitcoin with secure self-custody. Aqua also supports lightning and liquid network, making fast, fast, cheap, Bitcoin payments and asset transfers easier than ever. Plus, it even supports stable coins

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to get started right away. All right, we are back in. And by the way, we do give away a cold card cue every single month. And the way that you can get your hands on one is by going to the website, QR code right there, BTCSessions.ca, very nice modeling. I've got one handy right here as well.

It's all covered in full. fingerprints because I've been using it all day. Nonetheless, the QR code there leads to the website. And if you just scroll down a little bit and you sign up for the newsletter, you are automatically entered every single month to win a cold card cue. And you'll just get an email and we'll put you in contact with CoinCite and they will deal with the shipping and getting you the device. It's badass.

It's my daily driver. I love it. The queue is incredible. Anyways, we're going to continue on. Let's talk quantum. Of course. Yeah, of course. Now, this is actually some developers' warning of this.

And basically, there's a proposal to try and make some of the Bitcoin supply, or all of the Bitcoin supply, quantum-resistant. And they're basically saying that 25% of Bitcoin could be threatened right now. So what does it say here in the article? A group of prominent Bitcoin developers has unveiled a proposal to protect the network from the looming threat posed by quantum computing. Their initiative targets coins held in older address types, which could be compromised if quantum computers reach sufficient power to break existing cryptography. Now, to be fair, or to be clear, this isn't shot 256. This is elliptic curve cryptography. it pertains to the public-private keys that manage your wallets. And so when the public key is exposed, meaning you've sent and exposed the key and made a

purchase or sorry, made a transaction and kind of revealed the public key, at that point, remaining funds in said wallet could be potentially attacked if ECCC. is broken through quantum. Okay, so basically, uh, da-da-da, 25% of Bitcoin, again, 25% of all existing Bitcoin is vulnerable because it resides in addresses with exposed public keys. This includes long dormant coins, some allegedly linked to Satoshi Nakamoto. Developers argue that this is a real and urgent issue, not just a hypothetical concern for the distant future. They warned an attack on Bitcoin may not be economically motivated. An attacker may be politically or maliciously motivated and may attempt to destroy value and trust in Bitcoin rather than extract value.

There's no way of knowing in advance how, when, or why an attack may occur. A defensive position must be taken well in advance of any attack. And they have a transition plan at three phase one. So they say first, all new Bitcoin transactions would be limited to quantum resistant address types beginning three years after the adoption of something called BIP. 360. Second, and I highlighted this because, damn, okay, second, after another five years, so this would be eight years in, spends from legacy addresses would be invalidated, freezing coins that haven't migrated. That sounds scary. But the third point, finally, users who missed both Windows could recover legacy funds using zero knowledge proofs, though this option,

remains under research. So there may be a way to recover, even if you miss the whole eight years and you're not paying attention. Still. Okay, now there is some debate and concerns. Some commentators, including Jacob Youngman, raised concerns that the plan could amount

to confiscation of inactive or legacy-held coins, including those associated with Satoshi. Youngman argued, the best we can do would be to give users an opt-in solution. that protects them from quantum computers. Jameson Lop, one of the proposals authors, responded that failing to act would leave those funds

equally vulnerable to malicious actors. So I don't know, man, that, hey, legacy addresses would be invalidated, freezing coins that haven't migrated. That's, I don't know, that raises alarm bells for me. I don't know how exactly we would handle that, but also the writing would be on the wall if we're getting close to that point.

What are your thoughts on this? I'll give you my uninformed dumb pleb thoughts on it. So feel free to tell me I'm an asshole and I'm wrong in the comments and that's totally fine. First and foremost, you know what it reminds me of

is I immediately kind of want to ask the people involved like, okay, I just want to know, in your opinion, is carbon raising the temperature of the planet and is quite an existential threat. Because anytime they're talking about something that is going to cap in and is possible

and down the line, don't forget, they would have to enact this before the quantum threat was actually real. Right? So you're going to impose these restrictions on people on addresses before the threat is actually here. Because rightfully so, they would argue that once it's here, it's too late. But that means that you're having to guess. You're having to guess when it comes into play. And I don't, I find that a little bit like my instincts are like, nope, I go with the other comment. It needs to be a voluntary opt-in. It has to be a choice to move to a quantum-resistant address. It can't push this on the users.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that if developers try to push something on the users, it's got to blow up in their face as well, too. Even just from that kind of base fundamental principle. The other one, my other little hot take on this too, is that I'm not really opposed to someone using quantum computing to recover old coins and legacy addresses, even potentially Satoshi's. The reason being is for me, it kind of falls into the same realm as like treasure hunters, pulling up gold from the bottom of the ocean. like there's a good portion of those coins that are probably lost. It's not inflating the supply. If somebody is able to recover sunken treasure, I don't view that as theft or malicious.

I think it's just something we'd have to deal with. If they dump it on market, well, they dump it on market and you get stats for cheap. But it doesn't seem to be in any way, like a violation of the non-aggression principle to recover stolen treasure. And I kind of, that's the mental model that I'm working with.

Can you imagine that down the line, this threat becomes real. There's an opt-in migration. And the first, like, imagine the race to unlock those Satoshi coins. Well, it might even spark like amazing computer innovation, right? That's true. Like, imagine the person that is just quick enough. And all of a sudden, they're like, I have trillions of dollars worth of Bitcoin,

except for by then dollars won't exist but still it's like i have however many million bitcoin i would have like 5% of the entire world's money what am i going to do with this yeah like it's i just there's that would be a good movie there's yes it would there's it there's also no reason to assume that it necessarily would be like it probably could be it might it might be maybe it's the most probable, but it also could be a white hat actor, right? It's possible that someone could get to Satoshi's coins and burn them in an unspendable address, right? It's, it's, we don't know how it's going to play out.

And I am always very apprehensive and cautious when people are telling me how things are going to play out. That is based on a lot of speculation and when as well, too. So long as it's opt in, I'm cool with it. I'd probably use option in quantum resistance. I have no issue with that, but old coins are old coins. Yeah. Interesting. Damn. Okay. Well, just when we think volatility is gone years in the future.

Wham! Oh my God. Yeah, that would be a hell of a time. Okay. Now, we're talking about Germany shooting the bed yet again. This is from Chris from Cedor. He tweeted out. Coindrian Chris, German court rules taking someone's Bitcoin via their 24-word seed phrase, isn't theft under criminal law because crypto isn't a thing and using a key isn't hacking. 2.5 million euros gone. No crime. Jesus.

How is it that nobody can explain to these people that it's like if I drop the key to my house in front of my house and somebody then picks it up and goes and takes everything inside of my house, that's a crime. Yes. No, it's like if someone were to steal, like, I don't know how you'd possibly do this, but if someone were to steal the entirety of like Twitter or X's servers, like it's just information, right? Is that not a crime?

Was that company not some intellectual, not intellectual party stocks? But you go what I'm saying, that the fact that something is not tangible does not mean it does not have value in the theft does not necessarily occur. Although it's no issue. Yeah. Well, I mean, again, this. The tweet from Mars just below, the comment below, basically he's like, okay, so does mean that anybody can steal your digital identity in Germany without getting punished? Because like we have laws against that.

Does that mean that if I stole some photos of that judge or maybe their family member and posted those for sale online? Is that not theft in some way? Yeah, I just, I just, Germany. What are you doing? Yeah, there's really nothing more to say here other than this is just so stupid. It's absolutely ridiculous. I do want to point out, though, because we alluded to it at the very beginning of the episode, but never explained necessarily what I was even talking about.

Germany is not only the dumb country doing dumb things in Europe currently right now, know that Canada is any really better, to be honest, but the UK, if you didn't see it, guys, the UK is lowering the voting age to 16. I don't know what you were like at 16, but that seems like a death wish to me. I made all kinds of great decisions when I was 16. Never a mistake. I definitely knew about politics and what policies would best benefit my country. How about you?

Oh, it was very much so the same, right? I mean, communism just hadn't been tried yet, Ben. That was the only issue in our youth, right? My God, I've seen your Trudeau sweater. I know what you used to be. Yeah. If I was that stupid in my 20s, good luck with the youth. UK and all those 16-year-old voters.

I mean, 18 is all right. Like, I was an idiot at 18. Oh, God, yes. Yeah, absolutely. I was so stupid. Yeah, I don't even know what to say. Anyways, let's continue on. I did want to highlight a couple things.

We're talking a little bit about, I've actually been working on a new tutorial, but the other day playing around with some minors. First of all, I need to give a shout out. Before I even show what's on the screen here, I'm just going to collapse that down. But I've got to pull something off my shelf and show you guys. Hold on.

Hold on. This is my custom nerd QX plus plus with the Sessions logo. How badass is that? Anyway, shout out to Crypto Cloaks for making that for me. But I've been filming a video on this thing, which is pretty epic. I've had a great time with it. But the reason for the reason for the screenshot there, I previously did a video on the future bit, which is another home miner. And then after I did the video on this nerdaxe, I pointed all of my little miners, like all my bit axes and Brains Mini Miner and this thing, all at the future bit, which hosts its own node and its own mining pool within the device.

and I have 12.3 terra hash there, and it gives you your daily chance of solving a block. And for a handful of Forever Lottery tickets sitting on my shelf, a one in 437,000 chance every day of potentially hitting a block and getting 3.125 Bitcoin, which is basically half a million dollars, I don't mind those odds. It's not bad. pretty good every day. It's not bad. I got to say that thing looks like a beast too. I'm not sure if it's just like you holding out a fish for the camera, but that thing looks massive when you're putting it up.

Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot bigger than the, the bid X. Yeah. So this is the regular bitax just for size comparison.

Yeah. It's like you and before after working out. Yeah. There we go. This thing has been hitting the gym. But yeah, pretty badass. So showed a CryptoCloaks who also did the print on this little one here too. But super keen on getting, I'm in a mad dash to record a bunch of tutorials because I'm going to be doing some traveling.

Speaking of which, I'm going to be at Baltic Honey Badger in August, which is going to be super awesome. If you're in Riga, come check it out. I was there last year, but before that, I think it was 2019 that I was there. So it's a pretty badass event. I'm also going to be out at, where is it, learning Bitcoin in Vancouver. So that's August 15th and 16th and 17th. And around there. There's a bunch of stuff going on.

So if you're in Vancouver, swing by and say hi when you're there too. But anyways, I just thought that was kind of cool. And the other thing that I've been working on that I released this week is it's not Bitcoin specifically, but I'd say it's Bitcoin tangential, just around privacy. And as we all know, privacy is important. And we'll touch on that pretty soon here as to why. But Mulvad VPN. So these guys basically just a nice simple VPN.

You can see I've got one open here. And I can, you know, it's not on right now during the show. But oftentimes if I'm traveling around, something like that, it encrypts all my traffic and all that. I like these guys because there's no no ID, nothing. like that. You don't need to give a name or even an email address. It's just, it gives you like an account number and you can pay in Bitcoin. So like I paid in Lightning and was able to get my Moldad VPN. So anyways, I quite like the way and it's cheap. It's like five bucks a month or something. So yeah, pretty solid. Anyways, if you're curious about a VPN or you haven't ever used one and you're just

curious how it works, go check out that tutorial. Speaking of privacy, the IRS wants to know everything about your wallets. That's what we call a segue. Yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous. Someone pointed out of this to me. Shout it to my brother down south that did that. It was the IRS. It's the 1099 DA for digital asset form that's coming out.

And it pertains to year 2025, but it'll be, I think, like enacted in 2026. And they're essentially going to the exchanges and they're going to be collecting your receive address information. So yeah, that's fun. That's fun. Yeah. Yeah.

Non-KyC Bitcoin is pretty neat. It's very, yes, it's very neat. Now, coin join is great. Make things a little bit harder to follow. Yeah, you should definitely, I don't know exactly where people might find information on how to use tools like that. But, you know, there's got to be something on the internet that may teach you about how to use Bitcoin privately. There may even be a deeper dive playlists that show all about Bitcoin privacy and many of the tools that are available, along with many other things. So anyways, if anybody's aware of resources like that, let us know, they've got to be out there.

Maybe just a quick Google, scan a QR code or two, and that might be helpful. Who would possibly take the time to do that for us, Ben? it's so nice. I don't know. It would be nice if it was one page. You could just get there and you just know all the things that you need to know and like you can dive deeper if you want or you could go to a group of people that could hand hold you through it, teach you exactly how to do it if you want to speed run your learning. But I don't really know a place like that. So no, maybe you could go to Banff next year and learn some of this stuff too. That's true. That's true. Now a couple of quick last things here. Just if you run a

Start 9 like myself and Nathan just a heads up, they tweeted this out earlier, there's a security alert, there's an email circulating to the Bitcoin community inviting people to download a new Start 9 desktop app and browser extension. This is a scam. The file is a virus for Windows

machines. This website is obviously fake using Umbril's aesthetic even. It's unclear at the moment who's being targeted since only one of the two reports we received had an email on our mailing list, stay diligent out there. So just so you're aware, you get anything fishy like this, please ignore, delete.

It is a scam. And then Nathan, you wanted to mention something interesting that's been going on in the Mempool as of late. Do you want to elaborate on? Yes, as we can see here with what looks like 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Is that 6.5? 6.5 blocks just sitting there. Sub 1 sat per V byte transactions are going through.

miners are picking them up because honestly it's been pretty quiet in the on the network at the moment. So if you haven't done so already, guys, make sure you keep it in your house in order. You're taking that time to consolidate any small UTXOs. Maybe you want to do some more coin joins. Maybe you want to start using wasabi and move those to some new addresses. Now is a great time to do that for very, very little. So if you haven't already, privacy, coin join, UTXO consolidation and management, now is a great time when you can sneak things in for one sat or less.

Absolutely. Well, dude, I think this is as good a time as any to give a tip of the hat and thank everybody for joining in. This is a blast. Again, I will bring up that QR code for real, that page that we were showing you. If you are not like a weathered bitcoiner that knows literally everything, if maybe you've just kind of, you know, learned a thing or two and you feel okay. but you're not quite sure. Please do visit the Learn page, Bitcoin or Zero to Hero in one page,

BTCSessions.ca slash learn. Basically what I've done there is I've aggregated three videos per level, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. And if you can get through that page, you're going to have so many more skills than your average Bitcoinser. I really, really do encourage you to do it.

And there's full playlists on all of those topics down below. So if the one video that I put on a particular topic on that page is not to your liking, you can check out all the other options that you have. And furthermore, as we said, if you want to speed run your learning journey and you need something a little bit more customized, some handholding, and you want to be able to ask questions on the fly as you're implementing and make sure you're secure and doing it right the first time, scroll to the bottom. You'll see Bitcoin mentor, and actually I'll throw a QR code just for Bitcoin mentor there. But you can book, get on a call with Nathan who will direct you to the perfect mentor for you, but we work

with some incredible educators that can give you that one-on-one kind of premium experience. If that's what you're in the market for, go check them out. Otherwise, check up the learn page. But either way, don't sleep on it. Treat your Bitcoin as if it's worth 10x what it is right now because you don't want to be scrambling when it actually is. So I think that's it, man. Man, we'll be chatting tomorrow, but I'm going to be on the road.

I'm going to be gone for a little bit. It's going to be gone for a little bit. Although we have something special plan for why are we bullish the next couple weeks. I, dare I say, one of those episodes is going to sail. And the other episode is long. but we're going to we're going to we got something special plan for why are we bullish i've been prepping for it uh in advance uh we've also got regular tutorials coming i have i've basically recorded six tutorials all in a row all all in advance i've got mad editing to do tomorrow

um and then you and gary are going to be heading up some news the next couple weeks aren't you that's right we'll be uh hoping to keep things going in the right direction and uh watch over it while you're gone. Awesome. Well, dude, this is great. Everybody that's been watching, thank you guys for being here. Don't forget to drop a like if you have not already.

And comment down below. And yeah, we will see you guys for the next one. And I'll be seeing you virtually for the tutorials and special editions of Why Are We Bullish next week. I'm Ben with the BTC sessions. This is Nathan. Keep stacking stats, but also keep stacking those skills. We'll see you guys next time.

Cheers.