BTC Sessions - It’s OVER: BlackRock JUST EXPOSED Coinbases Secret Paper Bitcoin ATTACK! | O’Brien|Barbour|Mechanic

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

It’s OVER — BlackRock just exposed Coinbase’s secret paper Bitcoin attack, and the fallout could shake the entire crypto space. Adam O’Brien, Steve Barbour, and Bitcoin Mechanic break down wha...t this means for Bitcoin’s future.FOLLOW TODAY’S PANELISTS:https://x.com/adamobrien_https://x.com/SGBarbourhttps://x.com/GrassFedBitcoinFOLLOW BTC SESSIONS on X/Nostr: x.com/BTCsessionsbtcsessions@getalby.comBOOK 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/—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL - BUY BITCOINhttps://qrco.de/bfiDC6COINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://qrco.de/bfiDBVAQUA WALLEThttps://qrco.de/bfiD8gNUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://qrco.de/bfiDARHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://qrco.de/bfiDCp#btc #bitcoin #crypto

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Starting point is 00:00:01 Coinbase is the largest exchange in the world holding 2.5 million Bitcoin. But if they were so trustworthy, why did BlackRock just silently move a portion of their massive $45 billion worth of Bitcoin away from Coinbase to the custody of a much smaller firm, only one-tenth the size, called Anchorage Digital? This is not the only time BlackRock has made moves to potentially distance itself from the world's largest Bitcoin exchange. After rumors were circulating in 2024, BlackRock officially amended their custody agreement with Coinbase, only adding fuel to the fire of speculation concerning rampant paper Bitcoin. So, does Coinbase hold the Bitcoin they're supposed to?
Starting point is 00:00:53 Well, today I've selected the perfect group of Pamelaide. to discuss this and all the potential risks of this centralization of funds. Adam O'Brien, self-custody maximalist and CEO of Bitcoin Well, Steve Barber of upstream data and, might I add, the finest mustache in all of Bitcoin, and Bitcoin Mechanic, Chief Boiling Officer at Ocean, and Champion of All Things Self-Sauverin. It's going to be an awesome rip, so stay tuned. I am Ben with the BTC sessions.
Starting point is 00:01:25 This is your daily session. All right, before we bring in our panel, let's just take a quick little peek at what I was talking about here. So I'm just pulling up my screen, and we're going to first take a look at what I referred to the tidbit of news of the amendment to the custody agreement. This happened back in September, I believe, of last year, September 16th. So the title here, Black Rock Amends Coinbase Custy Agreement,
Starting point is 00:02:01 to require 12-hour withdraws amid debt rumors. So the beginning of the article, BlackRock has amended its custody agreement of Coinbase updating operational procedures for its I-share's Bitcoin Trust ETF. According to the SEC filing dated September 16th, the amendment to the Coinbase Prime Broker Agreement introduces changes aimed at improving withdrawal processes and asset management during unsettled trades. the modification shortened Coinbase custody withdrawal processing time when handling withdrawals from the vault balance to a public blockchain address while trade credit remain unpaid. Bumping forward a little bit here, and this is the interesting part,
Starting point is 00:02:44 Coinbase custody must now process a withdrawal of digital assets to a public blockchain address within 12 hours of receiving instructions from the trust, where it's authorized representatives subject to specific balance requirements. This development comes amid recent allegations against Coinbase, claiming the exchange was not using BlackRock's funds to purchase actual Bitcoin for the ETF. Social media rumors suggest that Coinbase was issuing letters of debt instead of backing the ETF with Bitcoin and manipulating Bitcoin's price using BlackRock's funds. This is the thing that I focused on in this article, again, from back in the fall. Bloomberg senior ETF analysts Eric Balchinoos, I'm not sure how to say that name.
Starting point is 00:03:30 I'm sorry, Eric, refuted these allegations stating that BlackRock would act if Coinbase were screwing around with their Bitcoin. Well, did they just act? Because BlackRock expands Bitcoin custody beyond Coinbase. SEC filings reveal Anchorage Digital with. will safeguard a portion of Bitcoin for BlackRock's 45 billion I shares Bitcoin trust. And again, the kicker, BlackRock cites the move as part of its, quote, ongoing risk management and growing presence in digital assets.
Starting point is 00:04:12 So the question is, which risk are they managing against? So with that, let's bring in our panel and let's chat a little bit about risk management. and beyond. So welcoming to the stage, Bitcoin Mechanics, Steve Barber, and Adam O'Brien. Gentlemen, how are you doing today? Yeah, good, good. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I'm glad to have you all. This is going to be an interesting one. Now, of course, this is why are we bullish. We all have reasons for being bullish, but I wanted to sprinkle a little topic to start here in and around, you know, the big question
Starting point is 00:04:49 that people, it always seems to come back to this, is their paper Bitcoin, which You know, there's going to be paper Bitcoin somewhere. But, you know, are these huge custodians? Are they effing around? And will they find out? So, I mean, Adam, you are, as I said in the intro, a self-custy maximus. So I'm going to tee you up a little bit first. What are your thoughts in and around what's going on here?
Starting point is 00:05:16 Yeah, man. I mean, I'm actually going to change my title right now to just self-custody maxi. That's probably the best title I've ever had. But yeah, I mean, it's listen. I don't think, actually, I was surprised here you say two and a half. I didn't really was that meant, like, is that Coinbase holding 10% of the total possible Bitcoin supply, not including the estimated 4 million coins that are lost. So Coinbase all of a sudden literally having access to 20% of like real supply of Bitcoin,
Starting point is 00:05:43 pretty scary, pretty insane. I think that, you know, BlackRock, whether you think, you know, it's like just loose risk management or something's going on behind our backs, I think that, you know, you know, oftentimes when a big scandal happens, you can kind of look backwards and be like, oh, hey, this was pretty obviously happening. And, and, you know, the, the, the devil was in the details or the, the cards were lying down. And this is one of those times. I think platforms that hold Bitcoin are not Bitcoin platforms. They are anti-Bitcoin. It's anti-freedom. And, And hey, I didn't have Black Rock calling the self-custody alarm bell in 2025 on my bingo card.
Starting point is 00:06:25 But if they're going to listen to our boy, Gary, about why you need to take self-custody, then, you know, hashtag delete Coinbase and take self-custody. It doesn't matter who says it as long as people are listening. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well said. Again, it's it's always in the back of people's minds. Like, what is truly going on and behind the scenes?
Starting point is 00:06:44 I'm curious, rather mechanical. or Steve, whoever wants to jump in first. Do you guys have any thoughts in around this? Of course, they're selling paper Bitcoin, Ben. I mean, obviously. I mean, they do tend to do that over time. I mean, there's a lot of bank runs throughout history and a lot of trust put into the biggest names.
Starting point is 00:07:05 And they still end up with their pants down when everyone comes to get their money. So I would assume there's some kind of, and I mean, I saw that river today. And I don't, you know, I didn't see that article today. That was the first time I've seen that. I don't know if the market like blew up overseeing that or if that was just like just out. Like was that a decent source like that would spook people or was it sort of obscure?
Starting point is 00:07:31 Yeah. You mean the amendment to their custody agreement? Well, that first one that you showed that was basically insinuating that like they're getting out of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's coming from SEC filings. showing that and it didn't reveal specific numbers, but it did say that, hey, a portion of our,
Starting point is 00:07:52 yeah. Well, you'd think that like it's just rational for any big entity to have options. So I wouldn't like personally see that as getting too spooky. But I really don't think I've said it forever. And I think everyone here would have been an agreement that like when you look at the aggregate, all the custodians on the market, someone is selling paper Bitcoin. And like someone is mishandling customer deposits, like through good intentions, but they'd screw it up. So it's happening. It's like just what degree is it in is it fractioned is always the question. And, uh, and I just like, you know, yeah, building off that, I found it interesting over the weekend or over this past week, how much price action we've had and how the PEM pool is like just empty.
Starting point is 00:08:39 Yeah. Well, that's like one block of, of transactions, one sat per bite for like, next block. Historically, when we've had, like, I think this week was probably pretty high trading volume. I don't really track, you know, institutional trading volume too closely. But I know, you know, usually like our trading volumes track kind of the general populace trading volumes. And we were high, which means I assume the world was high. And when you don't have block bloat during periods of high volume, you just know it's
Starting point is 00:09:11 paper Bitcoin. Whether or not it's fractional Bitcoin, maybe is a different. discussion, but it, we, it is scary to me that we have this much price action, this much movement, and no Bitcoin actually moving. Mechanic, I love you to jump in, too. Yeah, it's, it kind of all ties in together. And this is like the dark heart, the dark part of Bitcoin where you need bad things to keep happening to keep everyone oriented on how they're supposed to be doing stuff.
Starting point is 00:09:39 And we had these miracles, really, when you look back at it with Mount Gox collapse. and Gavin Andresen and all these people trying to take over Bitcoin and make it something else. All that stuff is amazingly useful because when you see stuff that in theory can be self-correcting, go actually wrong and watch Bitcoin manage to stay on track anyway. That's what justifies people putting billions of dollars in it. So I don't dare hope for it, basically. Coinbase has been a thorn in the side of Bitcoin's existence forever. you have the CEO that refused to even say the name Bitcoin for three years in service of all this
Starting point is 00:10:19 absolute garbage. And now he's suddenly, suddenly when Trump starts investing in all these scam coins, he's suddenly, whoa, wait a minute. It's only Bitcoin you should really invest in. I've been, I don't mind scamming normal Americans or whatever, but I don't really want to get in trouble with Trump. So Trump, it's just Bitcoin, by the way. Please don't be buying all this other crap that I've been selling for the last 10 years. So, and they have a pathetic treasury, right? They've got like a couple thousand bitcoins or something when they've been in for, again, a decade.
Starting point is 00:10:50 Haven't they significantly under, even just blatantly underperformed just Bitcoin over time? Yeah. They're having no treasury. They've just been, their investors have just been totally wrecked because of their anti-Bitcoin, you know, treasurer. Yeah, they've been drinking their own shit coin Kool-Aid for it forever. They've been sniffing their own farts. And this is the thing.
Starting point is 00:11:14 You already said, F around and find out sessions. You already said that. And it's not like whether this isn't a true or false claim. It's a I don't want to live in a universe where people can F around and not find out. So I want people holding massive amounts of Bitcoins with third party custodians, whether it's people I don't like like BlackRock or whether it's people I at least used to really like like Michael Saylor. like I would love for them all to get wrecked and learn stop holding paper Bitcoin. We know the whole point is it's gold with an upgrade,
Starting point is 00:11:46 where gold is useless when it comes to verifying what you have yourself or storing it or using it as a practical medium of exchange. Bitcoin is supposed to fix all that. It's supposed to be a bug fix for that and be gold 2.0 with other stuff too. And if you're not going to make use of any of that stuff, then it's just gold again. If you're going to store it all with third parties and use paper stuff to move it around, then you didn't do anything and we're just we're you know what how would you put it with definition of
Starting point is 00:12:13 insanity do the same thing over and over again and expect different results if you're just going to do gold again then we're just going to get manipulated and confiscated and 6102 and all this absolute garbage that that we're supposed to have progressed out of and it seems to me the only way you can hit people over the head with it is okay you did the wrong thing now your life savings have been stolen that's like the only thing you can do to people and make they go all right all right I'll buy a $20 hardware wallet and actually take some responsibility for us. Yeah. Sadly, that's sort of true and it's unfortunate.
Starting point is 00:12:47 Like, people just got to get burned to take it seriously. Yeah. We need a sailor to get totally wrecked, liquidated, and then all of his proxy hobblers will learn a hard lesson. Yeah. I'm not actually wanting that. I love you, Michael. Can you imagine, though, that like the implosion of Coinbase? and the shockwaves that would send.
Starting point is 00:13:11 But again, the gradual recognition, I say gradual because I feel like this is just going to be a series of larger and larger rug poles over time, right, whether intentional or not, until the entire world learns its lesson. Like we've seen it from cycle to cycle. Again, we mentioned Mount Gawks, but, you know, the world didn't learn its lesson from that because next cycle will happen, Quadriga CX. world didn't learn this lesson from that because next cycle what happened well it was FTX even though everybody's like oh we've moved past this this is the shining beacon on a hill this is where we want to be no it was the worst rug pull yet so what the hell do you think is going to happen as we get more and more costly like coinbase would be the would be insane to see that go down all the ETFs that are stacked upon it all the you know other millions I don't know millions but many hundreds of thousands presumably of investors stacked upon that it would be it would be epic but i mean i don't
Starting point is 00:14:13 i don't think i think it's inevitable like there's you know trace mayor a few years ago before he uh disappeared and did something different for a while was uh advocating for the january 3rd like keys day or whatever whatever they call that proof of keys day and that needs to happen like because i i am i am personally fully convinced that if enough of i don't know what the threshold is but but if enough of people pull their keys out of custodial care, it's going to trigger a snowball insolvency. And it's going to be pretty ugly. It'll be a big fractioning of people's coins again.
Starting point is 00:14:49 Do you guys think, like, will the government, the same way that the government backed up and kind of bailed out, like Lehman, do you think that Coinbase, just with their prevalence and how many coins, this is a thought exercise I've been going through is if they, like, if they get honeypotted or they get outed that half the coins aren't there or whatever,
Starting point is 00:15:06 either the government goes into mass print to make those people whole, does it fork and turn into like some coin base Bitcoin kind of proxy? Like where where does the the buck stop? Well, I think I think that trying to fork would be impossible because you have other nations that are starting to eyeball. If they're not doing it kind of low key, they're, you know, they're starting to debate should we have a reserve. And so as much as I'm not cheering on governments holding Bitcoin because, you know, like I'm not, I'm not super keen on them being able to dig themselves out of their own hole. at the same time, when you have multiple governments around the world, especially ones that are antagonistic towards each other, and one screws up in a fashion where they lose their strategic reserve because they relied on some shit heap to custody it for them. Well, I mean, they try to fork in every other nation is like, well, you guys can have USA coin over there. That's fine. Or whatever. Maybe it's the opposite. You guys can have China coin.
Starting point is 00:16:16 or Russia coin or whatever. But the rest of the world goes, no, this is the money. And so it just becomes that, well, what are you going to do? What I think is more likely that could be possible is if it was, depending on when that hits, as Steve, you said,
Starting point is 00:16:34 I think it's inevitable. I kind of agree something like that is inevitable at some point. And if it's big enough, I think there's a possibility that they print to rebuy the Bitcoin, but depending how far down the line it is, what if they can't, you know, what if the printing is devaluing the currency at a rate at which it's impossible?
Starting point is 00:16:59 At this point, it would just be kind of like a, but we're going to print some money and buy some Bitcoin. Yeah, and anybody's stupid enough to take the dollars that were just printed in exchange for their scarce Bitcoin. I wonder if, like, if you can follow the chain, assuming it is there and you can follow that chain through, I wonder if it becomes kind of like a fungibility problem where those coins get almost.
Starting point is 00:17:21 I remember a few years ago they were trying to like reduce fungibility of Bitcoin with some kind of climate nonsense, deeming some coins green because they were mined a certain pool or whatever, which is like obviously complete garbage. But I wonder if like the stolen coins from Coinbase, assuming they're there, get blackmarked and tainted. And then I mean,
Starting point is 00:17:42 theoretically to Satoshi's promise it like becomes it becomes a donation to us all because those coins effectively go to zero or have to get cleaned I guess but yeah I don't know it's interesting to see all the downstream effects of like just just don't like we're misaligning incentives right now we're we're kind of ruining we're losing the plot in favor of like leverage and fiat and paper it's kind of like hey just stop doing that and you know stack responsibly stay humble and and you know keep it sovereign. Can you imagine the incentive for a really good coin join protocol? 10% of all Bitcoin gets stolen?
Starting point is 00:18:20 All of a sudden, Samurai's out of prison and they're like, hey, guys. Yeah, that'll be funny watching Michael Sayless 200,000 Bitcoins get mixed with 100,000 SAT UTXO on Sparrow. Pretty sure we'll be able to unwind that one. I love it. That's great. gentlemen, we are here, of course, for why are we bullish? And again, you guys, I'm sure, have many different reasons to be bullish. And so we're going to dive into the meat of the show. And I'm going to tee it up for the first topic of the night. Mechanic, I'm going to toss it to you
Starting point is 00:18:57 first. So that's cool with you. And simple question that everybody gets, what's currently top of mind? Why are you bullish? I'm bullish. And if I can sort of toot my own horn here, ocean is growing faster than network difficulty is increasing. That means miners are moving towards sovereignty. They want to make their own templates. They don't want to give up pooled mining in general because it's pretty suicidal for miners to do that unless they have a couple X ash. So what they want to do is they want to split rewards with other people. This is something Satoshi envisioned happening.
Starting point is 00:19:28 Not everyone just mining completely lotto. But someone needed to basically say, look, this is how Bitcoin works. mine is a gunner pool, but pools have been doing too much. They have been deciding what goes in the blockchain. And just because of the way Bitcoin works, you can only really have a few pools. You can't just keep spinning up more pools to decentralize stuff. Click on the dashboard there, if you wouldn't mind. Because you can see we've got these things that have been dubbed hash rate boners,
Starting point is 00:19:56 where people just come along and they get excited. That's the first time I heard that. Yeah. Yes. Well, when the guy finally stayed, this guy that just came on with like an ex-ash and a half, now Ocean finds a block every, you know, every morning I wake up and I'm drinking my coffee. Ocean finds a block. It's like the best possible start to the day.
Starting point is 00:20:19 And yeah, so we're just saying, look, we need to design a pool so that it wouldn't matter if that pool had 51% of the hash rate pointed to it. It needs to be the case that if the pool had a gun held to its head, it can't really do anything with that kind of power. So, yeah, Ocean still has some influence over what goes on, but very little. If Ocean miners find blocks, they make the templates themselves, then they publish them directly to the network. So the worst thing we can do is on a share-by-share basis, say, we don't like this share. We're telling the rest of the pool not to include you in their split when they make blocks. This is so minimal, as opposed to like the traditional model of pools like, you know,
Starting point is 00:20:58 foundry and ant pool and all that. they just straight up decide what goes in the chain. And if you're not going to work on that, you're not doing valid work. So that gives the miners almost no power. And all they do is that, you know, they do the these, to do that, you don't even have to run a node. So it's been this long-winded answer, man, but I promise I'll round off to a point. This not your keys, not your coins, and you have to run a node. All that kind of mentality that was in the hoddle space, just never made it to mining.
Starting point is 00:21:26 No, like you'll talk to a miner with $20 million worth of. of hardware and he's not running a Bitcoin node. And you're like, wait a minute, there's some disconnect here. Like you cannot be a Bitcoin or if you're not running a node. You're asking permission every step of the way. So this was the whole point of what Ocean did, is making miners run their own nodes, create their own blocks, but still be able to use a pool.
Starting point is 00:21:49 And rather elegantly, they've been making a ton of money, not just because we've had insane luck lately. We're running at like 180% luck over the last month, which is insane because, When we're lucky, miners actually get that benefit. So they've been making a fortune. But that's luck is what luck is. But we're not using FPPS either, which it took miners a while to get away from the allure of getting paid every second of hashing.
Starting point is 00:22:18 But it turned out to just be too expensive for pools to promise that to their miners. So Ocean doesn't use that. Ocean says if we don't find blocks, you don't get paid. That means you end up getting a lot more money. you just have to deal with a bit more variance. So slowly but surely the ecosystem's coming around to it. It's been a grind, but now we're over 6X hash and we're outpacing the network difficulty bumps.
Starting point is 00:22:40 I'm like with mining is moving to a good spot. And if anyone wants to like to bring it back to the previous conversation, we're talking about, you know, malicious behavior from governments, what happens in, you know, rugpole events do they start trying to fork and do things like that? Their ability to do that is rapidly falling apart. because they are losing control over the entities that make all the templates by virtue of what ocean is doing. If you want to do some malicious stuff, having like two pools in the world, i.e. Bitmain's entire family, which is all these tiny pools and ant pool and foundry, it's pretty easy to exert censorship over the chain
Starting point is 00:23:19 and start imposing your will as a government. If, however, those pools all are broken up into their constituent minors, with hundreds, thousands of miners all pointing to the pool, and they are the ones that decide what goes in the chain, there's just way less influence you can do. So Bitcoin, if they want to do some nasty stuff and treat Bitcoin like it's PayPal or deputize it and take advantage of centralization, they're almost out of time.
Starting point is 00:23:43 And probably within the next 12 months, ocean will be big enough that it's just straight up, not realistic again. And we can genuinely be like, we're decentralized again. We're not just crypto, we are Bitcoin. We are genuinely decentralized. So that is why I'm bullish. I love that. And again, before we started the show, I was saying to Mechanic again, thank you for, he helped me through quite a bit exploring. Again, there's a push for kind of like hobbyist home mining right now. And it's been more accessible to just kind of, especially for a learning tool or like lotto mining or whatever or heat, you know, space heater kind of thing. But he helped me through. setting up a bitax with datum on my start nine and and basically everything that I needed to do to
Starting point is 00:24:34 kind of get it to mine to myself, both solo and then I did like an example of how to do it through ocean and get lightning payouts to your own lightning note as well. So that was a huge help. Thank you. You were very generous with your time, which really expedited how long it took me to get this rolling. So I appreciate it. But anytime, man, and it was curious that you, it was nice of you to admit that it is kind of been a blind spot for a lot of people. Like you obviously know more than, you know, 98% of Bitcoiners and you're still like, wait a minute, what's a Stratton server? Like things like that. This is all just unfamiliar territory for Bitcoiners.
Starting point is 00:25:13 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Steve, I want to, I want to, given that you're in the mining realm, you know, thoughts here on this or just like the current state of mine. in general? Yeah, all the spin-off, I was going to add a thought on that last bit. You know, a lot of people have discounted the value of, just because we were talking about mechanic helping you set up a bid axe and understanding mining protocol.
Starting point is 00:25:42 I find that like, you know, over the years, there's a lot of fud going around around Bitcoin. I find if you, for a lot of Bitcoiners, you never bother to learn the mechanics of how Bitcoin works. When you don't do the deep dive on Bitcoin, you will be more susceptible to Bitcoin mining and how it works, like functionally, you'll be more susceptible to FUD. FUD like the government can shut it all down, like all these things. And I've generally advocated it's really important for Bitcoiners who have normally just been into memes and like learning about self-custody and all the good stuff. You should get into mining in some like tutorial.
Starting point is 00:26:24 or some fashion to understand how it works. It's nothing better than what you just talked about, like mechanic walking you through it. And then you'll start clicking and you'll be like, man, this actually has the capability and the functionality to resist, like censorship and oppression and like means to redistribute and all these things. And I wanted to say some positive things about the Bidax project. Because, you know, I run a Bitcoin mining infrastructure company.
Starting point is 00:26:52 in North America. I guess one thing I will shill, like, they're very bullish on, is we just started our U.S. shop as of this month. It's going to be a slow ramp up, but it's like a big milestone for us. So we'll finally be like dual country, Canada and the U.S. But on the bid acts,
Starting point is 00:27:12 I wanted to say something that I think a lot of people miss, something positive, especially in the mining community. The mining community, I mean, mechanic knows a lot of these. people, these guys that represent the big mining companies. We're talking about big capital, hundreds and thousands of machines, right, and all the bid axes in the world and all the bid axes that will ever be. And that, that call it more niche like home mining will never match it
Starting point is 00:27:38 in any significant way or not. I won't say never, not likely. And we can go debate that. But why everyone's missing in the mining community and I see it because I'm in the, I'm in these like private channels and like people will mock the bid acts movement all the time in these like in these like CEOs of mining companies and stuff like that i'm like guys you're missing the point of the bid acts yes some people are marketing it's just going to decentralize everything and that that's a nuance but you know topic but not exactly true but what it will do it's it's like orange pills all over the place like everybody's learning like there's no better tool in my mind than like learning my my learning tool was a was a gecko science stick miner like sort of like a bit X but you know he's sticking in the
Starting point is 00:28:24 USB and I wanted to functionally understand how do I do this and like what a CG minor how does it run like I'm not a coder but I went through the whole process and I was like man this is functionally incredible and then it made me super bullish on Bitcoin because I I started from the foundation of like how does mining work whereas I think most people start in a different area and eventually learn about mining but there's nothing more nothing will make you more bullish and fud resistant than understanding mining as much as you can and i wouldn't say i'm an expert on it like i don't have mechanics uh level of understanding of pool infrastructure and node infrastructure and stuff but i know enough to be dangerous and it makes me much less susceptible to being like uh fudded into uncertainty and like to sell my coins right or give him to michael sailor by buying his garbage stock and stuff like that Yeah, fair. By the way, just for people that are watching, if you're unfamiliar about what the hell we're talking about regarding bid access, it's just this funky little credit card sized device. I've got like a little 3D printed case on it, but it's just got a little screen on it, got a fan on the front. You just plug it in. You access it from your browser. And again, you can run it like it's a lottery ticket. And if you get a block, then you get the whole block. block or you can you can mine you get very minimal payouts on something like this you'd get like
Starting point is 00:29:54 you know sprinkled with a few stats here and there yeah you can pool mine yeah yeah exactly but it's i mean it's cool so i don't know adam you go ahead let's shout out to scott 9000 by the way the maker of the bit acts like yeah i think it i think it kind of solves the problem that we experienced in bitcoin which is and i i can't speak for everyone other than ben i know for sure had to a shit coin phase. I had a chip coin thing. But it solves like when you find Bitcoin, you kind of understand it as an old horse and you're looking for a faster horse. And so you ape into a bunch of little scams trying to see that thousand X return. And I think that, you know, talking about aligned incentives, like the bid axe completely aligns those
Starting point is 00:30:42 incentives to try to have a fast horse. You know, you've got this lottery ticket, lotto mining. I love that concept. you can spend a little bit of money and then put the work into like Steve said actually understand the importance and the reasons behind mining, which kind of, you know, fulfills that lottery scratch that I think most like, you know, I will call them recovering Fiat Maxis are going to have and come into Bitcoin with. And then, and then once you understand Bitcoin, you realize, oh, hey, I don't really need to play the slot lottery or the, you know, the, the shit coin lottery. I can just, you know, comfortably buy Bitcoin and feel good about it. And I think.
Starting point is 00:31:18 you know, just building off of mechanic, what you were mentioning, again, this is the aligned incentives of Bitcoin. This is the Bitcoin promise where we have a Bitcoiner who's passionate about decentralization, able to build a profitable business, which helps that passion and that mission. And this is what happens when the money is deflationary. We get to, you know, forget, like right now with a, with a, you know, a Fiat monetary policy, we are forced to gamble, not on what we care about, but mostly only on what we think will give us
Starting point is 00:31:52 the best return in the future. And, you know, people like to, you know, virtue signal and blah, blah, blah. But we watched the woke crowd completely back off of that. Why? Well,
Starting point is 00:32:02 turns out it wasn't profitable to be woke. And so we're watching these massive companies, you know, ditch these DEI policies, ditch these woke policies because all they care about is parking their broken money and trying to have a return in the future.
Starting point is 00:32:14 But on the flip side, when you've got Bitcoin, guaranteed to to provide value in the future, you get to be a purpose-driven investor. And you can spend your time, your efforts, and your, and your money on what you believe will make the world a better place. And in this case, it's decentralization of the most important protocol on planet earth, which is like pretty good. You know, that's much better than funding like, you know, whatever DEI nonsense policy
Starting point is 00:32:41 is going to be. And so I just love the aligned incentives of like fix the money, fix the world mantra. and yeah, I think it's fantastic. Awesome. Awesome. I love it. Well, jents, we are going to make a pivot. We're going to do a rotation to our next reason for being bullish. Of course, everybody that's watching right now, we've got 560 plus people live on YouTube right now, which is great.
Starting point is 00:33:03 And we've had 2,500 across all platforms watching us so far. So thank you guys for being here. Give that like button a little smash. If you're enjoying the conversation. We're going to continue on. We're going to give a quick shout out to Adam, our sponsors, but also on the other side of it, if you've got a lightning wallet, get it handy because we're going to give away some sands as well.
Starting point is 00:33:26 I'm going to plan this too. Yeah, Adam, if you read this shit. We will be back in just a moment. Get those lightning wallets ready. We'll see you in a second. 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.
Starting point is 00:33:59 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. DeBify is the best and easiest way. to borrow against your Bitcoin in a non-custodial way. Funds are held in a multi-sig escrow where you hold a key, and the platform allows for excellent hardware like the cold card Mark 4 and the Q. You have access to flexible conditions, the best rates, and institutional grade liquidity. If you're looking to make use of your capital, don't sell your Bitcoin, borrow against it.
Starting point is 00:34:40 You can head over to debify.com to check them out, or simply scan it. All right, gents, we are back in, and I hope everybody has their lightning wallets ready. Of course, Bitcoin Well here, there's a QR code off to the right if you want to check them out and sign up today. But the way it works, of course, when you do sign up for Bitcoin well, when you buy Bitcoin, when you refer friends, you're in points. And the points can be used to toss a coin in the Bitcoin wishing well. Every time you do, it's a chance to win up to a million sats. And we're going to do just that right now. And so we'll do a quick little jump over, and I'm going to toss a coin in.
Starting point is 00:35:22 I'm going to make it a little bit bigger for everybody so they can go ahead and check it out. 210 sats to whoever scans that first. So whoever gets it first. And let us know in the chat, if you do, it's always fun seeing who snagged it, who sniped it. I did have one time a guest took it first because I think there's like a couple second delay. I also just learned that, Adam, I didn't realize Bitcoin well was like a wishing well or like a well. I always thought it was like, feel good. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:35:56 And now it makes so much sense to me. Dude, it's all of them. It actually started like a water well. So it's been, yeah, it's been all of it. Look at that. It makes a ton of sense. I like it. Like the logo.
Starting point is 00:36:08 Like everything makes total sense now. Like. It's great. Well, nice to see our brand strategy. is working a little bit. As I actively explain it to Steve. Oh, that's awesome. That's also.
Starting point is 00:36:23 Well, jents, we're going to keep it rolling here. And Steve, actually, I'm going to go to you next. Key up with the same question. Why are you bullish? Oh, well, first of all, Ben, you know, I'm a perma bearer. So why are you saying this? No, I guess I'm bullish on a few things. Like, I mean, anyone that actually follows me,
Starting point is 00:36:42 I don't know how many people follow me the crowd, The guys on stage know me. I am bullish on, uh, generally like the energy sector, specifically coal. That's literally all I talk about. So I'm, and that's sort of like a meme for me,
Starting point is 00:36:58 but it's more like I'm bullish on the, I mean earlier you, I think it was Adam. You said like, uh, you're starting to, or it might have been you band just, they're starting to get rid of these crazy woke policies like DEI. But they haven't really attacked yet and they really got to start like,
Starting point is 00:37:13 uh, you know, Trump's administration and just the powers that be across the world is all this crap throttling Western energy production. Okay. So I mean, for the crowd, I'm biased. I work in the oil and gas industry. I don't work in the coal industry, but I'm a very big advocate of freeing this coal from the censorship so we can get some cheap, reliable basal of power to reduce the cost of living for people across the West. And what I'm bullish about, um, in just, general, because I think anything good in life is good for Bitcoin, is that I like to see some of the energy people, the people that are suffocating the industry and development. Because listen,
Starting point is 00:37:55 you can't, I don't know what people think about manufacturing in the U.S. and wanting to return it and whether that makes any sense. And certainly I'm not a huge fan of tariffs. But if you want to manufacture in the U.S., you have to reduce everyone's cost of living. There's only one way to do that is to reduce energy costs. It's upstream. And the supply. client. So I'm very bullish on seeing like the EPA, for example, who's been the biggest sensor of low-cost energy, reliable energy development in the U.S., wake the hell up and start looking at their policies and revising them because they've, I could go on for like hours about what they've done to destroy the energy industry across the board. And so that is, I think,
Starting point is 00:38:42 that kind of stuff that we're seeing in the American administration, hopefully it takes hold and spreads across the world, like the West in particular, because they never got in the East, like Russia and China and the rest. They don't care about this bullshit, like this ESG bullshit. And it's causing major problems for everybody,
Starting point is 00:39:00 whether you know it or not. So that is what makes me ultra bullish. And hopefully that continues. We'll see. I find it very interesting, too, that now that we have a couple of things that a couple of industries that demand um not just energy but like the most efficient forms of energy uh that we're starting to see these ships like yeah you've got bitcoin mining is one of them um but also the data centers for AI like they they they are using a lot
Starting point is 00:39:36 right and they that that's a very interesting thing that's happening because like For years, a mechanic would have been a part of it, like me and him, particularly in the mining side of the industry. For years, they've been fudding Bitcoin about being bad for the environment, right? And only in the last, say, four or five years is the narrative shifting because of, like, everyone's realizing, like, the woke crowd anyway. Like, it's becoming undebatable that it's flexible. It doesn't compete with other users. And it can just shut off whenever the prices tell it to. The funniest thing now, though, all the people that have been pushing ESG and fudding Bitcoin
Starting point is 00:40:16 who are the same interests, they don't want Bitcoin to succeed, the people that benefit from the carbon accounting scam, for example. You know, they've been, they've been fudding Bitcoin for being like a big hog of energy, but the same people want AI to succeed because they own the whole damn thing. They own the whole infrastructure stack. And AI cannot, is not flexible, can only operate feasibly. on reliable power is a direct demand, it's indirect demand with everyone on the grid. There's very niche applications where you can just flex the load.
Starting point is 00:40:49 You have to keep it running. And you can pay, it doesn't matter what the power prices. The margins are so gross margins are so high. You just have to keep it running. And so my hope is that all these vested interests in ESG and AI will have to kill ESG entirely to like unthrottle AI in the U.S. Because the only way the U.S. is going to compete with China on AI compute is if they unleash the cheapest power it has, which is natural gas, coal, and others. And nuclear, like, hopefully that comes down.
Starting point is 00:41:24 Let's go nuclear. Problems, like, with that. That's interesting. I'll let the other gents chime in first before I run my mouth. Yeah, I agree so much. like this is my spirit animal talking Steve it's it enrages me because there's nothing more annoying than knowing look than disagreeing with someone's politics but knowing their own position better than they do and seeing them work against themselves and you care about the environment do you
Starting point is 00:41:59 and you want uh you want to bootstrap green energy and you want to do um you want to move you want to move to cleaner solutions. In every case, whenever you talk to someone that's sort of, you know, your classic climate communist, whenever you talk to these people, you're like, how else are you going to do this thing than have something like Bitcoin mining? It's perfect because as you, you already mentioned all of its characteristics that make it so good. And you have gridless in Africa finding rural areas where there's no incentive to build power infrastructure. And Bitcoin miners go there and say, hey, if you build a power plant here, I'm will give you exactly the demand you need to make everything viable. I will use it whenever
Starting point is 00:42:42 no one else is and I can turn off if you ever need to have like a peak rate or anything like that. And that's enough for all these power companies to go, I would never have considered building any infrastructure out here. But if you're going to mine here and you guarantee me consumption, then I will. And so, and Mike Schuter made a movie about it going around there, showing these people that would never have dreamed of having electricity and now they just have it. thanks to Bitcoin mining. Just get off anyone's high horse talking about any sort of egalitarian
Starting point is 00:43:14 hippie-style movement where they want to make the world a better place. I'm like, there's nothing better than something like that. That's real. And then there's electric cars, which are good until Elon Musk was suddenly a Nazi. And now you care about the environment so much, but not if a guy I don't like is making money.
Starting point is 00:43:32 Then I have to start vandalizing these cars. It's just, it's so annoying. hypocrisy of it and you know knowing this I don't agree that carbon dioxide is going to kill us all I don't agree that cows are bad for the environment or any of that I think it's nonsense but if I did I'd be in favor of Bitcoin mining and you're still not because I don't know orange man bad or whatever these stupid NPC opinions are that they just get handed and I'm like you have no coherence to your position at all how is zero emissions car like Pierre Rochard smashed it with that like sticking these zero emission Bitcoin miner stickers on the side of
Starting point is 00:44:06 of s-19s. It's like I can plug my Tesla in, it's zero emission. I plug the same outlet into my Bitcoin mining and suddenly I'm boiling oceans. Like it's zero consistency, infuriating. Yeah. By the way, Adam, you haven't had anybody kicking in the doors or drawing swastikas on your vehicle, have you? No, not yet. It's been it's been swastika-less for the last few weeks, which is positive. But yeah, man, I mean, mechanics talking about talking about incentives. Like, look at- Are they flipping you the bird though? Like, you know what? I actually haven't had any hate. I drove past the cyber truck in Calgary and I gave him a thumbs up.
Starting point is 00:44:46 Then I was like, man, he probably just saw me flash and thought it like, you know, like, you probably didn't see it. This is, if you're in- that's Canada, so you probably called the cops and reported Nazi activity. But the cops take eight days to show up because Because we're not quite paying the bill. Steve needs a coal-powered cyber truck is what I think would be the perfect, perfect marriage. I've seen a diesel.
Starting point is 00:45:14 I've seen a cyber truck mounted with a diesel engine. That's cool. I don't think it works as good, man, because you need to change the whole axle system. Like, no, listen, I've been driving Tesla since 2017. And maybe, like, I actually tweeted this either day, you know, it used to be the right flipping me off because they thought I was anti-oiling gas. And like, you know, I'm pretty obviously pro-oil and gas. I'm like pro-coal, pro-nuclear, like definitely not, you know, mechanics said it perfectly.
Starting point is 00:45:42 It's like your car zero emissions, but, you know, somehow you're your Bitcoin miner isn't. And then now it's, yeah, it's all the liberals. I was going to say Librar's the Liberals all upset at me because they don't like Elon. It's laughable, man. And I think that's like back to the incentives. the aligned incentives that Bitcoin represents and kind of has inherently means that from my first principal's perspective, Bitcoiners can ask one question, like, oh, Bitcoin's bad for the earth. You ask one single question and that point is just completely derailed. You know, oh, Bitcoin is bad for
Starting point is 00:46:18 privacy. You know, one single question point completely derailed. But then back to what Steve said, only if you understand it. And I think that that's why we're so susceptible to FUD. I've got a colleague here in Edmonton, very prominent entrepreneur, great local guy. Like he's been around the business space in Eminton for 30 plus years, highly regarded. He's got a good following on Twitter and on LinkedIn. And he shows me his engagement. When he talks about Bitcoin, it's zero engagement. No reposts.
Starting point is 00:46:46 No one's liking it. No one's commenting. He tweets about like something the city of Edmonton's doing. It's like, you know, hundreds, thousands of likes, piles of kind of like shares and all this stuff. And it's like we've got so much fun. in this industry and I was talking to him about this this sporting actually funny enough and he was like yeah I guess that's the downside of having decentralized money with no marketing department and you can really pinpoint like where are where the problems of the world are by the consensus um like ignorant take and when someone
Starting point is 00:47:18 says like oh i don't bitcoin's boiling the oceans you just know they're being fed propaganda you have to look at who that is and then you'll find the misaligned incentive and so you know props to bitcoin for spreading the good news in a decentralized way. But I think as Bitcoiners, it means we've got to lower our time preference because it's not going to be an easy. We're going to keep having this fud because there's people that don't want Bitcoin to succeed. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:47:41 It's it's an ever, again, reality, at least with Bitcoin as like a backdrop of neutral money, it's very good at letting reality assert itself in in a quasi expedient manner. Like in one way, you know, you see exchanges that blow up a lot quicker than, you know, the clown show traditional financial sector, right? Like we get a, we get some sort of a big blowup. The last one was 08 more or less. And now we're starting to see the craziness, you know, ping pong back and forth. On that note, did you see recently it was announced that more mortgages are under, are not being paid than even in 08? Like, we just passed the 08 point for the amount of people behind on their mortgage in the USA,
Starting point is 00:48:32 which was a mind-blowing stat to me. So sorry to derail you there, but yeah, it's happening. It's the big show again. It's that we're in the same world again. Yeah. Yeah. It's a bubble. It's happening.
Starting point is 00:48:42 I can say as someone that, like, is manufacturing stuff, it's like, I have no idea what to think every day. So, like I said earlier, I just started the U.S. shop. The tariff thing did kick me in the ass to start it. I was planning it anyway because I got to build out of the U.S. and service it. So now I have now I straddle two countries and every freaking day. It's like what is going on with tariffs and like trade war? Should I import this to Canada and like package it in Canada and ship it to the U.S.?
Starting point is 00:49:13 Like should I do it in the U.S.? Like it's madness. I don't know what it was like in the financial crisis. Like I was just, I think a student and I think I just learned how to buy a stock at the time or something. Like, you know, I was learning, I remember I was sort of trying to figure that out back then. I don't know what business owners were trying to deal with back then, but I feel like this has got to be one of the craziest times to try to run a business if you're in physical business. Like I don't know if it affects digital, but for physical, it's this is nuts. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:49:43 Well, yeah, it's from week to week. It's like, what's going to happen? There's going to be mechanic. There's going to be tariffs on your hash rate soon, buddy. You know what that was. Hashtray is not domiciled in the US. It's already coming from the other spot, so that's fine. This is like, well, only if I find a block with my bitax, right?
Starting point is 00:50:05 They don't tax you on blocks you might have mined yet. Who knows what's happening tomorrow, man. Unrealized blocks. I wake up and hope to just like, unrealized blocks. That's great. Jens, I'm going to, I'm conscious of time, I'm going to do one more rotation. And Adam, I'm coming to you next.
Starting point is 00:50:29 But I'm going to say, again, everybody, we've got damn near 650 live watching on YouTube. And we've had north of 3,100 people tuning in so far to the show. So thank you guys for being here again. Give that like button and tap. If you're enjoying the conversation, we're going to do a quick shout out to our sponsors. And hell, I'm feeling. and good. On the other side, we're going to do another role. We're going to toss another coin in the wishing well. So get those lightning wallets ready. We'll be back in one minute.
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Starting point is 00:53:08 And again, there's a QR code off to the right if you want to check out and sign up for Bitcoin well. So you can do this yourself to your heart's content. But I'm going to toss one more in here. Off it goes. And again, if you weren't here earlier, the first person to, scan the QR code in the middle of the screen right now. We'll snag 210 sats for themselves.
Starting point is 00:53:30 If you do, let us know in the chat. Always love to hear it. And we are now, and by the way, again, if you want to check out Bitcoin, well, off to the side there. So congrats to whoever got them. I'll keep my eye on the chat to see if it was somebody there on YouTube. But with that, let's dive into our final topic.
Starting point is 00:53:50 And Adam, I'm throwing it to you. Same question everybody gets. Why are you bullish? Well, I'm not going to lie. When I signed on, I was bearish because Steve doesn't have a mustache anymore. He's got a bunch of crap on his beard or on his chin. But then he started talking about how he finally understood what Bitcoin Well means. And that made me a little bit more bullish.
Starting point is 00:54:10 And now I'm actually, I'm hyperbulous. Like, wow. Yeah. But I'm hyper bullish because of a recent orange pill event that I had. and it was actually with a 16-year-old girl who babysits my kids. And so she comes over, watches the kids, and I just, like, she can't drive, so I have to drive her home. And I was just like, hey, like, you know, I've got cash or I can pay you in Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:54:40 Like, do you know much about Bitcoin? And so, you know, the first time she took cash. And then the next time she was like, hey, you know, I'll try Bitcoin. So it's like, great. So we start with a little wallet, you know, get her downloaded. I send her some sats. And then she's like, this is so cool. And the next time it's like, you know, I ask her again, it's like Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:54:59 She's just stacking nonstop, you know, however. I'm like we're paying her whatever, 15 bucks an hour, whatever. And so she's just stacking little micro amounts of Bitcoin DCA, DCA. And then whatever, 10 times later, I'm like, hey, like, how's it going? Do you have any questions? Make sure you tell me, like, I'm happy to help you or whatever you need. And she's like, well, I've been talking to my friends at school about it. And they're all like, she's like, I'm like the Bitcoin saw.
Starting point is 00:55:23 I'm the one at school that is telling everyone about Bitcoin. And she's understanding how it's about sovereignty and how it's about freedom and how it's uncontrollable money and how it's rules and not rulers. And, you know, all the propaganda that I've been feeding her, she's like parroting out to her high school friends. And it made me so bullish that the high school age kids are so receptive to that language. And it gives me so much confidence for, you know, the next kind of generation. We're seeing right now in Canada.
Starting point is 00:55:50 I think Mechanic, do you still live in Canada? I'm not sure if you're still here or not. But like, we've got some problems on the horizon. Polymarket has more liberal government by a landslide. They've got some new shiny globalist central banker as the primary guy. Accelerate. Accelerationists rejoice. And it's like, hey, we've got a problem on the horizon.
Starting point is 00:56:18 And I was thinking, like, I know it's not the boomers. You know, there's some people in my tweet this morning who were like, look, I'm a, I'm a Gen Z male or, you know, the right wing movement, the libertarian movement is strong amongst Gen Z, which in my mind, it's like, oh, it's just us idiot millennials that are getting like swayed by the liberal propaganda. And so hearing that from her and how the freedom movement is alive and well amongst, I don't know what this next generation, like, what's the next generation. after Gen Z, is it like whatever, alpha or whatever they're called. But those high school, those 16 to kind of 20 year old kids right now, I'm so bullish on their, you know, accelerationist requirement for freedom and for, you know, limited government exposure, self-custody maximalism, freedom maximism, independence maximalism. And yeah, that made me super bullish.
Starting point is 00:57:11 And I was pumped to share that with you guys this week. Hell yeah. I love that. I'm going to tag on to that story with, uh, with, with my own kind of younger generation, Bitcoiners growing up story. And that is that my daughter, who is currently seven, just started doing, you know,
Starting point is 00:57:32 she's doing chores around the house, she's cleaning up her room, she's doing a bunch of different stuff, helping to make her own lunch for school and all that, and a number of other chores. And she's getting allowance now. And so I made a deal with her where her allowance, she automatically, so she gets, you know, X amount and she will, I say, you're going to save half of it.
Starting point is 00:57:57 And so we give half of it to her in cash and then the other half goes into her own lightning wallet. And he's been stacking stats for a while now. And she's getting curious about one, like she knows how to use Bitcoin. Like we've done the sat market here in Calgary. She showed up last time with her iPad and she was going over to booths and like buying things. And like, and she was, she was able to go through the wallet interface and pay for things faster than the merchants. Because a lot of them were brand new being like, I don't know how this works. And she's like, I got it.
Starting point is 00:58:37 And then she's like, scan. They're like, who is this girl? But now she's being exposed to the idea of saving, spending. less than you earn and saving in a money that nobody can print. And so the conversations coming out of it are, well, at first she was like, okay, well, what if I saved in cash? Because she liked the physical feel of it. And I was like, well, the problem with that is that money is going to buy you less and less
Starting point is 00:59:04 the longer you save it. But if you keep Bitcoin, it's going to buy you more and more if you save it for long periods of time. And she's like, oh, then I want that for sure. So she's like, she's, she's asking the right questions. Other proud dad moment. The other day, she was like, I want to, I want to be older. So I want to be like 20 something so that I can do something.
Starting point is 00:59:28 And I was like, yeah, but then you have the, uh, the crushing reality of, of, of adulthood where you have to like pay for things and the government takes half your money. or I said something like where it's where it's much harder to get by and and where half your money gets taken from you. And she interjected and said, because of the government. Yeah, shout out Tuttle Twins for feeding that propaganda. That's good. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:00:01 So I mean, that's my own little next generation of Bitcoiners coming up. That was a moment for me. but I'm going to open it up to the rest of the panel that want to tag in. Do you guys have hope for the future? I mean, I know there's another, there's at least a couple more kids on this panel than there are people in the room. Yeah, dude, a lot of hope for the future. I got two myself.
Starting point is 01:00:32 I don't have any Bitcoin kids stories yet because Ben, my little boy, Ben, who I named after you Ben, by the way. He's already on the high council of Bitcoin Ben. He did get the honorary high council shirt. Yep. He doesn't know, he's three, but my brother 3D printed him some little bitcoins
Starting point is 01:00:52 that he uses in his little money machine. He's becoming, he's attributing positive things with his bitcoins. So we'll see how that plays out. I don't know if I have any like things super special other than say you asked, like, I haven't met a Bitcoiner who isn't on average more hopeful for the future than most. So I'm very, very much optimistic. And I honestly, like anyone, I have some exposure to stocks and the like.
Starting point is 01:01:25 And I look at it, I'm like, this is just a stupid game. And there's all kinds of stupid, I'm sure, trading manipulation happening by the politicians, like announcing tariffs pulling tariffs trading it and just like stealing from everybody and I'm just looking at it I'm like this is all bullshit like stack some sats and I don't know like there's nothing you can do about it so stack sats long term be happy yeah mechanic yeah I don't know where I lie on it really like I spend most of my time adversarially thinking and trying to make sure that like Bitcoin doesn't just magically it's not just bullet like people have to actually use it right and treat it well like people have to write stuff in it
Starting point is 01:02:11 like it's constantly being worked on and like um so i do i do kind of push back on the sort of casual i'm not accusing either of you of this this is just a general thing in the space where it's like oh bitcoin is invincible and gregg maxwell pointed out it's not you if you just assume bitcoin's a preordained success and it's fine and nothing can ever go wrong then it will just fail like someone has to actually be out here grinding away and building the products and doing the education and and that's not even a selfless act right you can you know you can you can you can do these things and develop a reputation for yourself and be you know celebrated in the space for doing it so it's all good but people need to actually work on it and i think when it comes to the future more
Starting point is 01:02:56 generally um i i have my ted kaczynski days i have my optimistic days it really depends um generally i I look at Bitcoin mostly as a tool of insulating me from the idiocy and corruption of others rather than the redemption of them. Though it does do both. It's a mixed bag. It's too sophisticated a thing with too many implications to be like orange coin good. Like even though orange coin is good. So I don't know exactly where I stand it.
Starting point is 01:03:26 Bitcoin is like worked miracles in my life. But I really hope that's not it. I don't want it to be like, hey, if you made the right play, back in the early days of Bitcoin, you did great. I need the rest of it to come true as well. I need the permissionless payment network element to start. And that's been conspicuously failing lately. And real quick, hopefully I can say this real quick because it's been bugging me for a while.
Starting point is 01:03:53 I'm basically posturing at the moment that you had the block size wars, which was a bunch of people obsessed with one element of Bitcoin, which is permissionless payments. And now you have, and they couldn't care less about 21 million or scarcity or any of that stuff. And Bitcoin is both of those things. It has to be a permissionless payment network and it has to be a deflationary currency that moves around on that network. And now you have the inverse of the big blockers. You have the Michael Saylor type, sorry to say it, but the gold 2.0, the digital real estate,
Starting point is 01:04:23 they only care about the money and they do not care about the permissionless payment network because they never use it that way anyway. Everything they do comes under state scrutiny. So the payment network element is a ghost town. It's the most bearish market I've ever seen. Like I'm just looking at the chain right now, half empty blocks is just normal. And that's incredibly bearish on things like block space and future minor revenue and actual usage of Bitcoin in that capacity. And if no one uses it like that, then you don't have 21 million either.
Starting point is 01:04:51 So the whole thing kind of needs to correct course. And we need to when if people, if BlackRock are taking self custody and that sets a precedent, where other people go, I better do that too. That starts to manifest in a lot more on-chain activity and a lot more very, a lot more enforcing of the 21 million hard limit. Because if no one runs nodes, there is no 21 million. And if no one is using the chain permissionlessly and always using third parties,
Starting point is 01:05:19 that's paper Bitcoin and then there's not 21 million either. So these people need to stop treating it like it's a law of physics. 21 million is something you reinforce with your own behavior. And if that behavior just isn't generally what Bitcoinists do, then you lose it. So that's my sort of sounding of the alarm to everyone. And that's how we get on the right track with this thing and keep it good. I like that. I mean, I think when it comes to these shows,
Starting point is 01:05:47 I'm glad that we kind of went down this rabbit hole of people actually using Bitcoin. Because when it comes to this show, I think it's always nice when it, it shoehorns into a call to action. And so if there's any call to action that people can take away from this, is yes, of course, Bitcoin's an incredible mechanism to store the fruits of your labor, but it's also an incredible mechanism to make censorship-resistant peer-to-peer payments. And I think that this is something that people should get in the habit of actually learning how to do. Like if if tomorrow Bitcoin was banned suddenly, what would you do with your Bitcoin?
Starting point is 01:06:32 How would you then utilize it? You should you should actually kind of have an idea of like, well, I could use it for this and that and the other thing. And that would be great too. Like I'd still be able to make it work. And so I really like the idea of people building communities where you can actually utilize. Bitcoin for what it was meant to be used for, and that's to obtain goods and services from other people as well as storing your wealth. And, you know, if I can do like a mini, not a self-show, but like a shill to my community, it would be the sat market that we've been doing here in Calgary.
Starting point is 01:07:15 You know, I've now got all of, you know, not all of the things, but I've got a lot of stuff that I need and I can pay in Bitcoin. I get my freezer stocked with meat. I've got chickens and eggs and all this different stuff. I've got a personal trainer. I've got a dentist. I've got all these different things. And I can pay in Bitcoin directly.
Starting point is 01:07:35 And nobody has to stand in the middle of that. Nobody can stop me from doing that. And so, yeah, if anybody's in and around Calgary, Friday, June 27th is the next one. And it's going to be a night market. and it leads into the Bitcoin Rodeo that weekend. So definitely try and get out to Calgary. It's going to be a good time. And you too can partake in censorship-resistant peer-to-peer digital money as well as saving some as well.
Starting point is 01:08:07 So gentlemen, we're at the wire for time here. So what I'm going to do really quick, if you guys want to do a quick final thought and a shout-out to something that you'd like people to check. check out on your behalf. I would love to have it. Adam, I'm going to go to you first since you were on your topic. But any final thought here? And just anything you want people to check out. Yeah, I love that spend Bitcoin mantra. I think like, you know, this adage that like you never sell your Bitcoin is so dumb. That's Fiat mindset. Like you have to use Bitcoin in order for Bitcoin to be a success. You, the only people that don't sell Bitcoin are people that are not all
Starting point is 01:08:46 into Bitcoin because if I want to eat or drink a glass of water once this month, I have to sell some stats to do so because I'm all in. So be all in, sell Bitcoin and live. That's how this mission is kind of fulfilled. As far as shoutouts, super, super pumps tomorrow we're going to be announcing, but it's kind of live right now. In the U.S., you can now sell lightning and have that money deposited into your bank directly. It doesn't touch, like it touches our wallet when you give it to us, obviously, but then we send it. So Canadians have had that for a long time, but Bitcoinwall.com slash app. You can play the wishing well, Steve.
Starting point is 01:09:23 It's a wishing well. And you can also use Lightning Network now to buy or sell Sats from self-custody. So pretty awesome. Oh, yeah. Steve, I'm Tien it to you next. Final thought, anything for people to check out? No, I wouldn't say much for a call to action. I'm very bullish on supper right now.
Starting point is 01:09:43 My wife's cooking up there. It smells so good. good and give her, I would like to give her a shout out because I'm drooling. But not a whole lot. Working on some interesting things. We'll see how it develops, but maybe something more interesting to talk about next time. Nice. What's the website if people want to check out upstream?
Starting point is 01:10:02 Don't go there. It's a garbage website. It's one of the things that needs to get cleaned up. So do not know there. No, upstream data.com is the website. I'm British. I love the anti-marketing. just fantastic i i do have a lot of british heritage so yeah these show off americans man
Starting point is 01:10:22 full of themselves no no exactly mechanic i'm gonna keep it with you final thought something to point people towards yeah um so agree with adam spend your coins hide your wife it's absolutely the way forward um if you're not using bitcoin like that then use it or lose it i say second amendment means you have to actually have guns otherwise there's not point in the thing it doesn't do anything so um yeah go to ocean.xyz uh that's how you can learn about mining make your own blocks don't bother making accounts any of that stuff it's actually a lot simpler doing things without middlemen believe it or not um so yeah you point your mind as ocean or point them better yet at your own datum box and then you can mine on ocean but make your own blocks and
Starting point is 01:11:08 broadcast them direct to the network without a middleman everything's better you need less internet you need less permission. That's all I want to say. If you use Bitcoin and every way you interact with it, make sure you didn't need someone's permission as and when you did what you needed to do. As long as you stick by that, you are doing a good service to the network. Hell yeah. Love it. Great. Well, gents, we're going to round out here. I will say one last time to the audience, by the way, if you need any help, maybe exploring some of that stuff, getting into mining all that. You can check out myself and my team over at Bitcoin mentor.com. We can help you with self-custody and pretty much anything else in your Bitcoin learning
Starting point is 01:11:53 journey. And we can do one-on-ones with you. So that is linked in the show notes down below. But with that, gents, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you getting bullish with me on a Wednesday evening, early show this week. And have a great rest of your week. Everybody else, thanks for being here. smash that like button we'll see you guys next time cheers this was your daily session bye see you guys
Starting point is 01:12:18 see you guys

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