BTC Sessions - Joe Rogan Talks Bitcoin Apocalypse, Fed Wallet Inbound, Bloomberg on BTC + Gold EP095

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

SUPPORT THE SHOW: LEDN offers Bitcoin backed loans – Sign up and get $50 free https://bit.ly/2ZqdkDw Get Wasabi wallet and enjoy your Bitcoin privacy https://wasabiwallet.io/ Buy a Cobo Vault to secure your Bitcoin! https://bit.ly/2GgMFlH Crypto Cloaks: Get the BEST Bitcoin swag out there https://www.cryptocloaks.com/shop/ If you value my work and would like to send me a tip, they are always appreciated! LIGHTNING tips: https://tippin.me/@BTCsessions Join my Telegram channel! https://t.me/btc_sessions SHOW RESOURCES: Joe Rogan podcast: survive the apocalypse with at least 1 BTC https://cointelegraph.com/news/apocalypse-survival-requires-1-btc-says-joe-rogan-guest Bloomberg says Bitcoin/Gold correlation at highest level in a decade https://cointelegraph.com/news/bloomberg-correlation-between-bitcoin-and-gold-reaches-its-highest-level-in-10-years Fed wallet complete with UBI and negative interest rates could be coming. https://twitter.com/Breedlove22/status/1303068132152496128?s=20 https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-116s3571is/html/BILLS-116s3571is.htm LN markets building BTC derivative trading on lightning https://www.btctimes.com/news/lnmarkets-closes-pre-seed-to-build-bitcoin-derivatives-on-the-lightning-network?s=09 Bitcoin Hashrate ATH crushes Ethereum https://twitter.com/Karalhoin/status/1303596081100607488 Smaller Wasabi coinjoin rounds using Chaincase https://twitter.com/chaincase_app/status/1303042596709728257 Bitcoin Solutions ATM company goes public https://medium.com/bitcoin-solutions/bitcoin-solutions-provides-corporate-update-and-progress-on-becoming-the-first-publicly-traded-48b6c83c287b

Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What's up everyone? I'm Ben with the BTC sessions and this is your daily session. Hodel their Bitcoin. Before we dive in, of course, shout out to sponsors of the show, ledden.io. This is where you can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different services. I have been working with and using these guys for well over a year now and I love it. It saved me in my time of need. The first thing I ever use them for was a Bitcoin.

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to instantly buy more Bitcoin, effectively doubling your Bitcoin on the spot. So if you want to check them out, there is a link in these show notes down below, and if you use that link to get a loan, they'll actually give you 50 bucks worth of Bitcoin for free. So be sure to check them out. Now, secondly, love these guys.

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And finally, we have the Kobo Vault. Now, I did an in-depth dive into how to utilize the Kobo Vault. I was using the Kobo Vault Pro. It's excellent. They have Bitcoin-only software firmware if you choose to use it. They are also 100% air-gapped, meaning you never plug the device into an actual computer. Everything is done via QR codes. keeping your seed phrase, your backup for your wallet,

safe and offline. So I really love this. And one of my favorite things about, I can't talk about it enough, is the fact that they are interoperable with a bunch of my favorite interfaces, my favorite wallets. They have Bitcoin Core.

You can easily interface. You can use Electrum on desktop. You can use Wasabi Wallet on desktop. No kidding there that I'm a huge fan of Wasabi. And you can use Blue Wallet, which is my number. one used mobile wallet for Bitcoin. On top of that, they are really rolling out and getting out the big guns when utilized with multi-six schemes on some of these wallets too. So really, I encourage

you to check out Kobo. They are awesome. Also, free shit alert. This is going on for all the way into the end of November. I will be doing a giveaway of one of these bad boys, the Kobo Tablet Plus, for every single show that airs. So the Kobo Tablet Plus, you can store your seed phrase on it in solid steel. This, in my opinion, much better than storing it on paper because it protects from fire and water damage. So, again, if you want a Kobo Tablet Plus, what do you have to do? All you have to do is get on Twitter. You need to retweet the show that I will be tweeting out today.

And you need to tag myself in Kobol and let us know why you want one of the Kobo Tablet Pluses for your seed phrase. Now, I should say this is only eligible for people in Canada, the U.S. and the EU. So if you're in one of those places and you want one of these, retweet the show. Let us know why you want one and you could be today's winner. With that, let's dive into the news. So in a recent interview on the Joe Rogan podcast, one of his guests, one of his guests said that in order to survive the apocalypse, would need one Bitcoin. So let's dive in a little bit here. Celebrity podcaster and Adam Curry described the importance of Bitcoin to podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan. He posited the assets importance

amidst internet-based world, which thrives on personal data sales, banking activities, and centralized control. The quote here says, the apocalypse is coming and you're going to need a Bitcoin. At least one. Curry said this in an interview on September 8th with Rogan. Rogan said, are you a Bitcoin salesman, Adam Curry? Rogan responded and he was put off first by the comment. In response to this, Curry said, I was very anti-Bitcoin until they sold a shitload of them at like $900. I got them for nothing. People just gave them to me in the beginning, and I denied it. He then referenced the industry's progress over the last decade and including mentions of alt coins.

Now, they don't fully go into what he said, but he basically said that all coins are total bullshit and Bitcoin is the one. So I'll read a little bit on here. Rogan responded opening the age old can of worms. He asked Curry why Bitcoin remains in the number one go-to position amongst thousands of other crypto assets, wondering if another asset will overtake this one's spotlight.

10 years of data have shown that Bitcoin really is the only one you can trust, Kuri said, referring to the asset's resistance against manipulation and its trailblazing technical makeup. Much talk of a flippening, a digital asset overtaking Bitcoin's market cap, has come and gone over the years, but no asset has yet achieved such a feat. And I think this is an important point to touch on. Again, there have been multiple instances of people yelling, flippinging over the years that something's going to overtake Bitcoin. I think, well, number one, the ones that have mainly done this have been Ethereum. They were saying flippinging in early 2017.

They got close. They got to about 75% of Bitcoin's market cap. They have thus shed most value in terms of Bitcoin in terms of SATs since then. There was Bitcoin cash, of course, there's a split. There's a lot of market manipulation around that. mostly based out of like a South Korean exchange and that kind of drove the market. There was also some shady stuff going on

when it got listed on Coinbase where insiders kind of got the inside scoop before it was listed and started buying it. You saw the price pump before Coinbase let everybody know at the drop of a hat that it was being listed. But since then it has had a massive decline and it's worth what like 2 or 3% of a Bitcoin

at this point and it's about to fork again. And there was, for a brief time, there was XRP. They were saying that was going to flip in Bitcoin, but that clearly has not panned out. Now, what I will say, what will probably happen is that a stable coin at some point will flip in Bitcoin. Now, why do I say this? Well, it's because there's an infinite amount of dollars and thus an infinite amount of stable coins that can be created and people are valuing Bitcoin in dollars. And so when your

measurement, the metric by which you measure something is infinite, then it's only a matter of time before that infinite thing overcomes the asset you're measuring it against in terms of the infinite value. So at some point, people will need to start valuing things in sets instead of of in cents and dollars, just because it will be the more true reference of value because it cannot be inflated. If you can inflate your measuring stick, if you go to measure something with a meter stick or a yard stick, but the size of the meter stick or the yardstick constantly fluctuates and grows, then you're not going to be able to get an accurate measurement by using that metric

anymore. Anyways, let's move on here. Kind of along the same lines here, Bloomberg, the correlation between Bitcoin and Gold reaches its highest level in 10 years. So I'm going to read the article, and I'm going to give you a few thoughts on this. So in its latest crypto newsletter, Bloomberg said that according to its records, the correlation between Bitcoin and gold is at its highest level since 2010. If you look at the chart above or find other charts online tracking correlations between the two assets, you will likely see something that will contradict Bloomberg's assertion. Yet, according to Bloomberg, it stands at 0.8. I should make reference here that 0.1.0 is like absolutely correlated. Anything above or below that means it's not quite correlated. It's

less so. And a zero would mean zero correlation. Okay. Anyways, the caveat here, however, is that Bloomberg calculates this metric differently than other data providers. Quote, on a 12-month basis, the quasi-currences are about 0.8 correlated, the highest in our database since 2010. Bloomberg analysts and author of the newsletter, Mike McGlone, further explicated the firm's calculus. Bloomberg default and simple percent change function. The percent monthly changes on a rolling 12-months. month basis, past 12 months, the highest in our database. So essentially what they're doing is they're

taking the data over the last 12 months and averaging that. And so to me, it's no surprise that in, especially over the longer term, the two scarcest assets on the planet, Bitcoin and gold, Bitcoin actually being more scarce than gold, would correlate more closely than other markets. and I suspect in the long term Bitcoin and gold will be some of the more closely correlated assets in terms of the entirety of the market, or at least Bitcoin will most closely correlate with gold, which Bitcoin's issuance and scarcity was meant to mirror and improve upon. Again, I don't think that this should be any surprise, but I do think that over time, Bitcoin will break ahead of gold. And it has already done so over time.

The returns and the value of Bitcoin has increased exponentially. It just hasn't reached the size of gold in market cap to more easily show the growth of it. So at which point Bitcoin hits the same kind of market capitalization as gold, you'll see a very, very close correlation, but you'll see Bitcoin making incremental gains past that point because it won't be as easily influenced. It won't be as easily tossed around by market volatility, but it will still have that kind of store of value aspect to it just less volatile. Anyways, let's move on here. This tweet from Robert Breedlove, he brings up a bill that entered the government, the U.S. government, just recently entered the house, I believe. So he wrote, the ultimate weapon of economic tyranny is coming. He quotes, all Federal Reserve banks shall, not later than January 1st, 2021, make digital wallets available to all residents and citizens of the United States and businesses domiciled in the United States.

And so he references this document here, which talks and outlines a proposition. By the way, I should say that this was put through the Senate in March 23rd of this year. So it's just kind of coming to light because it was kind of low key. doubtful that this one specifically will pass. However, something like it, I think eventually will. And so what does it outline? It basically says that the Fed and all member banks of the Fed with over $10 billion in managed assets will have to,

if this bill were to pass, which, again, I don't think it will, but something like it, they would be mandated to offer digital wallet services to anybody. And it should be a few things. They talk about the digital wallet maintained by Federal Reserve Bank on behalf of any person for the purpose of holding digital dollar balances. And they talk about how it's not subject to any account fees,

minimum balances or maximum balances, and shall pay interest at a rate not below, the greater of the rate of interest on required reserves and the rate of interest on excess reserves. So what they're getting into here is you holding a digital wallet that is directly or through proxy issued by the Federal Reserve or a central bank of sorts if it were applying to another country. And this wallet would allow you to have digital dollars directly issued by the central bank. My guess is the way they incentivize people to use this is through a form of UBI, universal basic income, where people just get money deposited every single month into their account. You could also transact individually between people.

you know, if you're a business, you might be receiving digital dollars into your digital wallet. However, what's the slippery slope here? In an instance where the central bank has the final say in how your dollars work, they were making reference to interest rates here. And in a world of negative interest rates, they could feasibly make it so that these wallets function And if funds are unspent after a certain amount of time, they could feasibly invoke some sort of a tax or an interest rate on it, a negative interest rate, where your money is basically whittled away over time if you do not spend it, being the ultimate kind of, the ultimate disincentive for people to save. You know, we're already discouraged from saving because what happens? You save your dollars and you just keep them as dollars.

You send them in a savings account that gets you a fraction of a percent in interest. And you're definitely not outpacing inflation, especially stated inflation. They say it's 2 percent and it hasn't been reaching those levels. However, inflation itself, the metric is completely fudged because if you look at actual inflation and the cost of what you're actually spending your money on, it's more in line with 10, 11, 12% annually. And I'm not screwing up those numbers because there are sites that show city by city

the increase in cost for the top 500 items which Americans spend their money on. So stated inflation versus what's actually going on are completely separated from reality. The size of fact, again, this would disincentivize people from saving. They would be encouraged to spend their money and the quicker the better depending on what would happen and whittle away their savings. I got to say this is seeing even just a bill for this and the way that they've set this up,

pass through the Senate, even as a recommendation, even if it doesn't pass, this quickly and this early is concerning. Like, thank God there's a release valve in Bitcoin, but I think people won't understand what's happening here. They'll see something like UBI

as a carrot at the end of the stick, and they will not understand why they're worse and worse off and why the divide of those who continue to gain wealth and the the wealth gap continues to increase. And it's because it doesn't matter how much money there is in the system.

It matters what percentage of that wealth you're maintaining. And the percentage of wealth, when you're the one printing the money and allocating it, goes to those in positions of power. And then they allocate it out from there. If you're just getting the pittance, that is UBI. And percentage-wise, the people at the... top are getting a higher percentage than you, then that gap continues to grow more and more and more. Meanwhile, you think that you're getting free money, but actually your piece of the pie is

continually shrinking more and more and more. So I see this as a very slippery slope. And again, thank God there's an off ramp in Bitcoin, but I may want to utilize that ramp sooner rather than later. Let's move on here. LN Markets closes pre-seed to build Bitcoin derivatives on the Lightning Network. So reading here from the Bitcoin Times, BTCTimes.com, they say lightning-based Bitcoin derivatives trading platform LN Markets announced it has closed a pre-seed funding round

from investors such as BitFenex, Fulger Futures, and Arcane Crypto. LN Markets told BTC Times that since launching their Alpha in March earlier this year, it has aggregated over 10 million in total volume, despite implementing maximum margins of 0.01 Bitcoin. Traders on LM markets application execute trades directly from their lightning wallet without needing to rely on an exchange as a custodian, which further eliminates withdraw cues that occur at centralized exchanges. The quote here, we did a demo with one of the largest fund managers in France, and it was like magic to them. When you settle a traditional financial instrument it can take up to three days. With Bitcoin, it can take between an hour and one day.

But with Lightning, it's instant. Co-founder Romaine Rafael shared with the BTC Times. One of the biggest challenges Ellen Mark faces is capturing the Bitcoin derivatives markets on centralized exchanges. In the past 24 hours alone, leading derivatives exchanges reported between 500 million and 2 billion in trading volume only for their bit... BTC slash USDT products. According to LN markets, regulatory hurdles are the reason for the application's 0.01 BTC margin limit as European AML regulations only allow for transactions below 50 euros without triggering KYZ. That's insane to me.

However, it appears as if Lightning Network Derivatives Exchange has found a niche amongst traders, having recorded a spike in trading volume in April this year in a time when traders are increasingly requesting lightning implementations from exchanges. Yeah, so again, very interesting here to see kind of actual decentralized exchange options pop up, but those volumes are basically nothing. 10 million in total volume aggregated since March is nothing. Let's be real. They're talking about between 500 million and 2 billion in the last 24 hours alone. You know, so 10 million since Marches is actually nothing. But still interesting to see stuff like this being built and it will take time.

People are always going to go with the easier option until it's there, until major hurdles are introduced in what they're trying to do. So if it's easy for you to put in an email address and scan your ID and then you can start trading very, very quickly and people, you know, for people that want to trade, they're going to do that over jumping onto something with, with a lot of technical know-how necessary and with small, small limits. So we'll see how it builds out over time, but regardless, excited to see work there. I wanted to highlight this.

Hodlonaut tweeted out earlier today, new hash rate all-time high, logged yesterday. The Bitcoin network officially hit 146.6 xahash per second. He said, I expect 200, 200 xahash this year. Exahash or the hash rate effectively measures the amount of computing power working on and securing the Bitcoin network. This has been, again, growing exponentially over time. The interesting part here is down below Vandalay BTC Industries. Also, I love that Twitter avatar. Anyways, he said, let's compare with the number two coin just for kicks. And he shares this chart.

And at first glance, you look at it shows Bitcoin's history of hash rate, and then it shows Ethereum's history of hash rate. And at first glance, you look and say, well, I mean, Ethereum's doing pretty well. It's tracking pretty close. until you realize that this chart is in log scale. So each kind of bump here is an order of magnitude. And what he says is, I was being kind, I was being nice showing it in log.

Here's the linear scale. And he shows the actual, ETH doesn't even register on this chart. You can't even see it other than the color like tracing the flat line at the bottom of the chart. Meanwhile, Bitcoin continues to just blow through the roof. Now, the other thing to consider here is that the way that the hashes are calculated also don't quite mesh here. Because Bitcoin relies on ASICs, application-specific integrated circuits.

That means that these mining rigs, these computers that are securing, and hashing out new blocks are effectively specialized. You have to buy specialized equipment just to do this. Meanwhile, Ethereum uses GPU mining, meaning that these are just general purpose computers that are utilized to mine the network. So, in my opinion, that makes it even worse for Ethereum because anybody could be mining on Ethereum

and they're still not even coming close to the hash rate of Bitcoin. It really speaks to the security backing up transactions that are actually allocated to the Bitcoin blockchain. So anyways, I found it interesting. I'll link to this down below so that you can check out the charts yourself. But regardless, cool to see. This I found super interesting. We were talking about Wasabu Wallet earlier.

Obviously, I love the thing. But Wasabi Wallet, it defaults to rounds that are around 0.1 Bitcoin, which for some, that's a lot of money to deal with, right? Like, 0.1 Bitcoin at $10,000 Bitcoin is $1 rounds. And I guess I'm getting ahead of myself here, but Wasabi Wallet, anybody not familiar, it helps anonymize or break the links between you and your Bitcoin. So if you don't want people peering into your balances and knowing how much Bitcoin you hold and potentially targeting you and coming to your house or hacking you online or trying, you know, trying to get you through fishing attempts, whatever, basically if you don't want to advertise your wealth to people outside of your family, then Wasabi Wallet is a solution,

potential solution for you. But as I said, it requires a minimum amount of Bitcoin. to partake in a mixing round. Again, near 0.1 Bitcoin or at current time of recording this, around $1,000. However, you apparently using Chaincase can link up with a separate coordinator that has smaller rounds of 0.01 Bitcoin. Now, I haven't used this myself. Actually, I didn't even know this was possible, but it's really cool to see the versatility and the way that you can plug into these different coordinators. Again, I would exercise caution in exploring this, but I'm bullish on having different size rounds for this.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn't mention obviously Samurai Wallet has various different rounds as well. Round sizes 0.1, 0.05, 0.01. So there's a lot of different sizes for Samurai Mobile mixing. I highly recommend if you're doing mobile mixing with Samurai to connect to your own dojo because if you're not doing that, then you're leaking what's known as your expub or your extended public key, which could feasibly be a, if they were acting in bad faith, a privacy destroying metric in which somebody could track all of your addresses and what you have. So if you're utilizing samurai, do indeed use your own dojo. And same with Wasabi for the same reasons.

Connect to your own node if you're utilizing Wasabi. Now it does by default connect through Tor as a Samara, but if you want to preserve privacy, if you're going down this road, then I would say that running a node is essential. Anyways, and one last thing I wanted to give a shout out to my good friend, Adam at Bitcoin Solutions. And so Adam, he runs a company called Bitcoin Solutions

that they have an in-person place where you, can actually go in Edmonton, Canada, and actually ask questions, and they do workshops there, and you can buy Bitcoin with cash or debit or whatever. But they also have a network of Bitcoin ATMs around the country. And back in the day, Adam was one of the people that gave me my very first Bitcoin-related job. I was helping him out with the ATMs and running around doing errands and getting paid in Bitcoin. and I will be forever grateful for that from him. But big news out of him,

Bitcoin Solutions provides corporate update and progress on becoming the first publicly traded Bitcoin ATM company. So he said here, Bitcoin Solutions, a profitable entity offering, convenient, secure, and reliable ways to buy and sell Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies through our trusted Bitcoin ATM network and web-based transaction services

is pleased to provide this corporate update. we are excited to share our progress in becoming the world's first publicly traded and Canada's longest serving founder-run Bitcoin ATM company. Through the expansion of our cross-country ATM network and our suite of online service capabilities, we are now poised for significant future growth supported by our recently oversubscribed, non-brokered private placement and ability to leverage our public listing.

So again, Adam, Excellent job. Happy to see you growing. And here's too many more years of Bitcoin solutions to come. With that, I'm going to wrap up here, guys. Thank you so much for watching and or listening. If you're here on YouTube, please do hit like, subscribe, and share all of those things. Really, really do help and they help grow the show. And again, I can't say enough to people that have done so in the past. Also, if you're on Twitter, remember there's that giveaway with Kobo. be sure to give it a retweet, tag myself and Kobo, and let us know why you want that steel

seed plate to secure your backup. If you want to help with this show in another way, be sure to hit the mention sponsors in the links down below. That was Ledin. That was Crypto Cloaks and Kobo, of course. And if you really liked what you saw, be sure to drop me a lightning network tip at my tippin.me page that is t-i-p-p-in.me.m-me slash at BTC sessions. I am out. Thank you guys for watching again. Have a wonderful evening or day wherever you are. And I'll see you next time for your daily session.