BTC Sessions - MAJOR ATTACK on Free Speech: RFK, Telegram & Simply Bitcoin! Who Will Be Next?! ep436

Starting point is 00:00:31 Yo, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Thursday, another triumphant episode of Simply Sessions. We've got the Phoenix rising from the ashes. He's sitting here in the wings, waiting to give you the latest and greatest in everything, Bitcoin, and to chat a little bit about what in the F has been going on in the past week. And it's going to be an exciting ride. So I hope you've all been having a good week. Of course, this is live, anything can happen, so I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live! Do it live! I'll write it and we'll do it live! The fucking thing sucks! Yeah. Now, if you have not already, please do like, subscribe, share all those things.

Starting point is 00:01:24 They help a ton getting this content in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC Sessions. This is your Simply session. Hottle by Bixor. Now before we dive in, we're going to to take a look at timechain calendar.com to see where we are in the market and simultaneously have pulled up the live chat over on the right hand side of the screen. Everything you say from here on in shall be live for the world to see for better or worse. And yeah, back on timechain

Starting point is 00:02:06 calendar.com, we're sitting at $59,422 per coin. A single US dollar will snag you 1,683 sats in terms of fees still low. I saw it as low as two sats per coin. A single US dollar will snag you 1,683 sats V-byte the other day, which is crazy. But currently sitting at four across the board. And in terms of Bitcoin mine, 19.74 million of them, that is 94.03% of the total supply. With that, we're going to give a quick shout out to our sponsors and dive right into the news. So we'll be right back.

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Starting point is 00:03:18 Check them out over at Bitcoinwell.com. Check out my full tutorial on how to use them. And you can check out the links in the show notes down below and sign up today. CoinKite.com has some of the best hardware on the market today to secure your Bitcoin. The cold card queue is an absolute powerhouse and is my daily driver. And on top of this, they have plenty of other goodies including the Mark 4, the tap signer, open dimes, the block clock, and much more. If you head over to their website, make sure you use code BTC sessions at checkout to get a nice disc.

Starting point is 00:03:52 count, links are in these show notes down below. All right, we are back in and let's welcome them back with a warm round of applause. Nico, I don't know why I made you so small there, man. There we go. Welcome. Welcome back, obviously not just on this channel, but on your own, which has been restored in full. Sorry that you had such a stress-induced week, but I'm very happy to see that in the end

Starting point is 00:04:22 things have finally turned back around to the way they should be. Well, I'm happy to be back. And yo, what's up everybody, man? Yeah, it was a crazy weekend. Did not sleep for like four days, just battling out on Twitter, calling in all the favors, trying to text everyone and their mother trying to figure out what's going on. It was a happy ending.

Starting point is 00:04:46 I think we were able to make enough noise. And I'm really grateful for the entire Bitcoin community for really. really stepping up and getting simply Bitcoins back. And, you know, I think the noise, the noise made it possible, right? So I want to thank Ben and, you know, anyone who's watching because it really, really meant the world to us, specifically the team. Like, the team was left with a lot of uncertainty, a lot of doubt. And, you know, it was, it was really heartwarming for a lot of us to just see all the words of encouragement and support. Oh, yeah, man. Well, I know how stressful that can be.

Starting point is 00:05:25 I've, you know, probably at about the same age of my channel, I had a similar thing occur on a couple occasions. And that was super stressful, you know, when you think that however many years of hard work have just been blown up in a second by a rogue algo or a disgruntled YouTube employee. So, yeah, man, welcome back. Yeah, man.

Starting point is 00:05:51 And happy to be back and happy to be back in the hot. I was like thinking about it. I was like, wait a second. So I'm going to be doing simply sessions and YouTube is still bend off Twitter. Like how's that going to work? I mean, bend off YouTube. Like how's that going to work? But yeah, I'm grateful, like I said, Bitcoin community for the publications that brought

Starting point is 00:06:11 attention to this. And also for team YouTube, also for reinstating the channel. So yeah, man, crazy roller coaster ride. But I mean, bro, if it was easy, everyone would do it, right? It comes down to that, huh? It's like that meme of like, it's like the guy pretending to, oh, I'm, I'm not stressed. I've been on YouTube for a few years and I'm only 25 years old and it's like some wrinkled old man just dying of stress. Yeah, 100%.

Starting point is 00:06:43 And it reminds me of this like quote from Elon, which was like, you know, starting a company as like, you know, eating glass. and jumping into an abyss. And like I've never, I, I never fully appreciated that quote until like an, like a big crisis moment like this weekend. Um, just because like, I think I'll be fine. But, you know, there's a lot of people like, believe it or not, there's a, the simply team is, we're, we're a decent amount of people and there's a couple amount of people that do this for a full time job, right?

Starting point is 00:07:18 So, and that was kind of left and uncertain. in the dark in the doubt. So yeah, man, it was, it was pretty crazy. But, you know, it was a happy ending. So I think that's what matters. Yeah, I mean, and the hat tip to the insane people that decide to make a living in Bitcoin. It's a bumpy road. Oh, for sure.

Starting point is 00:07:42 To say, bumpy, bumpy road to say the least. But anyways, man, it's been, it's not, it hasn't been only simply that, that, you know, This has been censored. This has been a historic weekend in terms of just censorship in general. And we have, of course, RFK who made a historic speech, essentially not saying that he was going to totally stop his campaign, but specifically in the battleground states, which apparently they're not letting him pull out of some of them, which is so fascinating to me. he is trying to take his name off the ballot so that more people vote for Trump.

Starting point is 00:08:24 And then he publicly endorsed Trump. They went on stage. They shook hands. There was like fire things in the background, like all the production. And I think Trump basically offered RFK to have a position in his cabinet and also to declassify certain files as it relates to. certain family members that he has, which was insane, right? So, yeah, it was just, it was pretty crazy.

Starting point is 00:08:54 And these are two individuals also that made epic historic speeches at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville. And, you know, they're essentially, I don't want to say they're on the same team, but, you know, technically RFK got Trump's back in the battleground states, which was insane. Now, this was part of his speech. And I felt like it was very applicable not only to myself, but to what's happening with social media in general. And specifically also this weekend,

Starting point is 00:09:23 we're going to get to that in a second. The telegram CEO was arrested while he landed in France in his private plane. Police were waiting for him on the tarmac. Like, you've seen that in movies a couple times, right? And they arrested him. And apparently the reason was for, get this, lack of content moderation on the platform.

Starting point is 00:09:46 So anyways, now that I've said that, check this out. And I think what I said about Telegram is going to be a little bit more impactful. I was a ferocious critic of many of the policies during his first administration. And there are still issues and approaches upon which we continue to have very serious differences. But we are aligned with each other on other key issues, like ending the Forever Wars, ending the childhood disease epidemic, securing the border, protecting freedom of speech, unraveling the corporate capture of our regulatory agencies, getting the U.S. intelligence agencies out of the business of propagandizing and censoring and surveilling Americans and interfering with our elections. Following my first discussion with President Trump, I tried unsuccessfully to open similar discussions with Vice President Harris. Vice President Harris declined to meet or even to speak with me. Suspending my candidacy is a hard-rending decision for me, but I'm convinced that it's the best hope

Starting point is 00:11:04 or ending the Ukraine war and ending the chronic disease epidemic that is eroding our nation's vitality from the inside and for finally protecting free so yeah i mean the ask the quote here right which was getting the u.s. intelligence agencies out of the business of propagandizing censoring and surveilling americans i mean that i think that's something really important to talk about in the sense that like uh why are government agencies propagandizing you know, censoring. And there's, I don't believe that he mentioned it part of this part of this, this video clip and this quote, but there is another part where he said that they were actually

Starting point is 00:11:51 even interfering in elections. So that's like a very big, you know, conversation that needs to be had. Is that really the role of government to do that? Isn't that the whole point of democracy where the people vote what they want rather than a bureaucratic elite that get to decide what they feel is best. That is like the exact opposite of what the definition of democracy is. And without any accountability, because a lot of these, you know, a lot of these people, people call it the deep state. It's not the deep state. It's the administrative state. What does that mean? That means it's the people that essentially stay in their jobs, regardless of whoever gets elected into office. So like, they're just lifelong government employees and they have a tremendous amount of power. And it's

Starting point is 00:12:40 getting to the point where, you know, like, it's not our, it's not me saying this. It's RFK literally saying propagandizing, censoring, and surveilling Americans. Yeah. It's, and, and we, we see examples of it. Even, even, and not that nobody knew this was happening already, thanks to Elon bringing a light to it with the, the Twitter files of, of how ingrained the government was. in shaping the way people think by monopolizing all of the social platforms that everybody used. And Elon, you know, was able to break out of that by basically being a billionaire that could actually buy one of the platforms and say no. But we saw just the other day Zuckerberg wrote a letter, a public letter, that basically said, yes, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:13:38 the FBI was up our fucking grill telling us we need to do this, that, and the other thing. And while they didn't use absolute force, the amount of pressure was insane. And that in hindsight, he would have not done what they had done, not complied as well, and that they've changed policy to ensure that that doesn't happen again. And that's wild. Again, like you, it's funny how accurate the quote-unquote conspiracy theorists have been about all of this. 100%. I mean, it's the, you know, again, like, I saw a clip. This is totally not related, but I saw a clip of Tucker.

Starting point is 00:14:27 I forget who it confirmed. Basically, you guys all know the meme about Alex Jones and the frogs. Well, that turned out to be 100% right. and it was confirmed by RFK. Like, what world do we live in? Like, you know? Anyways, yeah, and again, I think it really boils down to, like, the moment in history that we're living through, like, why all of this stuff is happening.

Starting point is 00:14:53 And I think it's important to kind of describe it from a historical perspective. But I'm going to read you some of Buckeley's words, where the, This is essentially he was reacting to the people that were so hell bent on reversing the Bitcoin law in El Salvador. And this always stuck to my mind when I was going through what I was going through this weekend, when I saw RFK speak and when the telegram news broke. But in this quote, Naim Bukeli wrote this for Bitcoin Magazine, he wrote, they're willing to fight, lie, smear, destroy, censor, confiscate, print, and do whatever it takes to maintain. and increase their control over the truth and everything and everyone. I think it's really, really important to understand. And then a theme that we've brought up on Simply Sessions, which is this, what is happening, right? It comes from the sovereign individual.

Starting point is 00:15:50 Sovereign individual predicted this in the book, but essentially the sovereign individual, I love how they put it. Governments see their citizens as cattle, but now the internet has given them wings. But there's two things that are happening. First of all, what we're living through currently, which is why all the censorship is happening, is the disintermediation of information. Mass-scale peer-to-peer communications on a global level, and it also allows you to build followings and build platforms without going through a handful of legacy media institutions.

Starting point is 00:16:26 And because individuals are able to build their own public platforms without having to go through a handful of companies, their narrative, their ideas are no longer so easily controlled. I remember hearing this very, like, this quote that really struck me hard. I think originally came from Jack Posobic, but he basically said in 2003, if social media was around, I don't think the war in Iraq would have happened, right? Like, this is how much social media has changed the conversation.

Starting point is 00:16:58 this is why governments are pushing back so hard because they can no longer just convince the American public. Imagine if the pandemic happened pre-social media. And all you had to hear was the people on TV. Like, I'll throw it to the audience because I don't want to just make any big claims. Like, were the people on TV more accurate or were you disseminating and,

Starting point is 00:17:28 researching, doing your own research via all the platforms more accurate to what the people on TV were saying, right? And this is what governments strongly dislike. Now, the reason I'm bringing all this up on a Bitcoin show is what's coming next, and I believe it's going to be a little bit more tumultuous, is the disintermediation of money. And we'll get to that in a second because we're already starting to see a little bit of a foreshadowing of what that might look like. based out of some news that is coming out of Nigeria. So anyways, Ben, I want to get your thoughts on this before I move on. Yeah, I mean, it's, as you're speaking and kind of matter-of-factly laying out

Starting point is 00:18:13 that this is kind of a natural government reaction to a tool that is subverting their power. It just, again, it speaks to so much of Jeff Booth's books. and his interviews where he's talking about that the existing system will fight tooth and nail to retain its power over the people. But it's inevitable that the better system will win out. It's just, you know, how bumpy is it in between and how well can you insulate yourself from that? And where are you going to put your energy? And depending on where you put your energy is how quickly and how quickly and how,

Starting point is 00:18:58 smoothly that transition can happen. And that's the number one thing that comes to mind, paired with those sovereign individual quotes and a little bit of a light sprinkling of the fourth turning when you were talking about individuals' reactions in early 2000s versus now. and how, you know, there was the quote about, oh, I don't think the Iraq war would have happened. If we had as much kind of social media apparatus to be able to basically send information everywhere instantly, easily,

Starting point is 00:19:42 and give an opinion and scare people into not taking those actions, whereas now, like the general public is just, you know, half of them seems super keen to just be like, yeah, we need that war and we need that war and we need that. And like, of course we're going to go to war over that. It's just like this complete shift from kind of, you know, from turning to turning. And it's very interesting to see all these concepts play out in real time in front of our own eyes. 100%. And isn't it crazy, Ben, like how accurate, like the fourth turning and the sovereignty. Like, it's so insane, like how, like, it just blows my mind, you know.

Starting point is 00:20:26 You're reading these books and you're like, wow, I'm seeing this play out in real time. And I'll get to the, because it's part of the themes, right? So this intermediation of money, but what's happening in Nigeria, you're starting to see this. And it's so funny. They're doing exactly what the sovereign individual predicted. So we're going to get to that later on in the show. But first, I do want to address. what happened. I think this is the biggest news, which is Telegram's CEO, founder. This guy's a

Starting point is 00:20:58 billionaire, very successful. He did a very famous episode with Tucker Carlson where he mentioned, like, I don't really like owning properties. I value my freedom. I have cash in the bank and Bitcoin. And he was arrested in France. He was landing in his private plane, arrested as soon as he landed on the tarmac, and the allegations is that Telegram lacked content moderation. And the amount of charges that they hit him with metaphorically, I mean, I don't know if that's metaphorically, the amount of charges that they assigned to him, I don't know what the correct legalese is, but 12 criminal counts, and I'll just get through it. So complicity, webmastering, an online platform in order to enable an illegal transaction,

Starting point is 00:21:50 refusal to communicate the request of competent authorities, complicitly possessing improper images of minors, complicitly distributing and offering, making available improper images of minors, complicity, acquiring, transporting, possessing, offering, and selling illegal substances, complicity, offering, selling, and making available without, I don't want to keep saying more because it's a lot of trigger words. The point is, though, is that he wasn't complicit in any of these things. Like, people used his platform.

Starting point is 00:22:26 Like, it's like charging, like, a telephone company with, like, if someone, you know, did something illegal and they used a telephone company to make the call, it's like you're responsible because you offered that service in order for that person to make that call in the first place. But that's not what it's about. What it's about is this. And David Sachs nails this. The U.S. government forced TikTok to sell to an American entity.

Starting point is 00:22:58 Couldn't control it. And here's the list. Telegram was the only one left off. Telegram, no content moderation. X, no content moderation. Or the way they like to see it. Rumble, no content moderation. So they're going after the so-called free speech platforms.

Starting point is 00:23:18 And you can scratch another one off that list. This is why X gets so much heat. This is why Rumble has so much heat. The CEO of Rumble fled Europe as soon as he heard this news, fearing for his arrest. And again, what's he guilty of? All he has is a platform in which he doesn't feel like he wants to censor certain types of speech. And while all of this was happening, this historic weekend, of course,

Starting point is 00:23:49 you know, Simply Bitcoin was banned on Friday, right? So here's the zero-zero hedge article, Simply Bitcoin, Google's latest victim of targeted censorship, the platforming. And then, of course, I think the Forbes article really kind of summarizes not only what happened with Simply, but also what happened with Telegram. It goes on to say, while much of the focus on Bitcoin has been on Bitcoin's price, its tenets and censorship-proof mechanisms haven't been on the news as often, that now has changed with the arrest of Telegram's founder and the takedown of Simply Bitcoin's YouTube channel for violating YouTube's, quote, harmful and dangerous policies. D'Av's arrest and the takedown of Bitcoin content without much explicit reasoning

Starting point is 00:24:32 speaks to the power of corporations to mediate the reach of speech. French authorities have claimed that Derov was arrested for, among other things, providing cryptocurrency. Photology tools, countries like France, can lean on the human heads of companies, a playbook that has been ongoing for centuries and continues to this day. In the case of certain companies, there is almost a reflex desire to bend the need to the states of all kind, no matter how far the ass might be from its stated core principles. Google, which owns YouTube, was notorious for almost fielding a project called Jargonfly that would create a censored version of the search engine that would fit China's circumstances. Apple has obeyed orders to app takedowns with hundreds of requests coming in from China. Anyways, it keeps going.

Starting point is 00:25:19 Now, here, I think the part of the article absolutely nails it. I don't blame Google. I don't blame Apple. I think inherently it's a centralized platform and eventually it's inevitable that it's going to be co-opted or put pressure on by the state. This is exactly why Bitcoin was created. Like Satoshi inherently knew that the central bank, even if it was born with great principles, even if it was born on born with the foundation of sound money, that at the time was gold, What you've seen throughout human history, including all the way back to the Roman times, is that in the very beginning, you know, they start cutting a little bit of corners.

Starting point is 00:26:07 And then fast forward, you know, decades or hundreds of years later, what happens, right? When the DeNaris was introduced back in the Roman Republic, it had like, I think, like 93% silver. then at the end of the Roman Empire, the Western Roman Empire, the amount of silver in each dinaris was 0.0083%. So they essentially debased the currency. What happened here in the United States? The same story, but just over a matter of 100 years. What happened?

Starting point is 00:26:39 First, it was based on a gold standard. And then over time, what happened? They went off a gold standard, and now they're just pure fiat. So essentially what I'm trying to say is like, What happened in those cases? The money was co-opted and corrupted by very powerful forces. What is beautiful about the protocols, Bitcoin being one and Nosser being the other, is that they can't be co-opted and they can't be corrupted.

Starting point is 00:27:06 They're censorship resistant. They're decentralized. And because of that, they stay pure in a way. And what happens when the conversation becomes, why aren't these people? platforms taking down this certain content to, holy cow, we can't take down that content. We can't confiscate that money. We can't debase that money. And we can't censor that money.

Starting point is 00:27:33 What happens is that it becomes a forcing function where now all of a sudden the state has to compete on somewhat equal ground with alternative currencies and also alternative information. And they can't make it go away. They can't make it go away. And because they can't make it go away, they're forced to compete. And this is where the theory from the sovereign individual comes into play, where he believes that, or they believes, his two authors, they believe that over a long enough time period, what you're going to start to see is nation states starting to compete for citizens for them to bring their business, which is in stark contrast to how, you're going to, the individual and the state react today,

Starting point is 00:28:21 which is this kind of, it feels a little bit like extortion, in my opinion, right? But as the book so beautifully put, right, the state sees its citizens as tax cattle, but now the internet and Bitcoin and Noster has given those cows or cattle wings. Yeah. Dude, it's amazing to be living in a time

Starting point is 00:28:45 where, um, you see, the culmination of way too much power going to a certain set of elite people's heads to the point where they've gotten society metaphorically and in cases physically by the balls and are able to dictate what they look at, how they spend, able to siphon off 50% of time, aka you are 50% a slave, and see the solutions to those problems be presented in front of us, again, in real time. And we're seeing this digital battle play out, but it is resulting in real world skirmishes.

Starting point is 00:29:41 Like all of the craziness in the world is, I believe, believe directly and indirectly related to what's happening on those fronts. It's again, to harken back to Jeff Booth and the ideas of the fourth turning and the sovereign individual, there's a natural reaction based on the circumstances in which you were born, how you were brought up in a particular generation, and the stimuli that you experience on how you will react to those things. And yeah, we're very much seeing that now. And it's a tumultuous but also exciting time because what comes after this is a period of calm, a period of having worked out all of those kinks, maybe not all of those kinks, but worked out a lot of

Starting point is 00:30:37 those problems to elevate us to a place where humanity as a whole can accomplish more and do more and be more cohesive. And I look forward to that because what that means is that's the world that my kids, your kid, probably kids, will get to actually enjoy as they come of age. they're going to have quite a good early life and be able to establish themselves, I think, quite well in that new epoch of humanity. It's going to be amazing. 100%. I 100% agree with you, man. After we get over this little bump, I think humanity is going to go through an age of human flourishing and freedom,

Starting point is 00:31:34 the likes of which has never been seen before in human history. And I'm so happy that, you know, our children, Ben, are going to be able to grow in that type of future. And if it means that, you know, we have to fight in not in the kinetic sense, but in the, like, this new age of, it's really information warfare, right? So be it. I mean, you, you already went, you had your first bout man with the Canadian truckers protest. you were part of all that, right?

Starting point is 00:32:06 And, you know, that is what is, what I see as this, a freedom fighter in the new age. Because really, it's like, you know, it's all, it's all through, it's all via the internet. It's like communicating and speaking and winning over the hearts of minds of individuals. And you see the government going in there and saying, like, no, this information is misinformation. And actually, this isn't money, but we're going to regulate it like it's money. Like, it's, you know, it's, it's, you see the old world clashing with the new world. And I think what's going to come out on the other side is going to be a much better place. And one last thing, because you did mention Jeff Booth.

Starting point is 00:32:48 Um, I love the way that Jeff put it in, in, uh, in my data at Bitcoin Atlantis. Basically says like, look, like, if you want to start living that world, all you got to do is just opt out. You could start participating now, right? You don't have to wait. And that's the beauty of Bitcoin. It's just like, take self-cust to your Bitcoin, put it in cold storage, and you could start benefiting from it now. You know, download a use Noster, download Primal or Domus, whatever floats your boat or the other clients. And like, no one's going to be able to censor your speech on that protocol, right?

Starting point is 00:33:24 So you can start living, you can start becoming or working towards becoming a sovereign individual. right now. The tools are available. And it's only going to accelerate from here. Anyways, I did want, I did like mention slightly this, this, how, let me pull it back, how essentially what we're going through is this right here, the disintermediation of information. And of course, the state is fighting back. We are in the first innings of this. Why? So you guys know, I don't want to beat a dead horse at this point. But this election will have consequences. When I say this election, I mean the election in the United States.

Starting point is 00:34:07 And quite frankly, the election in Canada, too. Not for all of the other political stuff that we don't talk about because this is a Bitcoin show, but from a regulatory perspective as a Bitcoin are living in those countries. So in the United States, you've had multiple lightning wallets leave. You've had 30% Bitcoin mining tax proposals. You've had the denial of Caitlin Long's federal custodia bank federal banking charter. You had the attack on self-custody. You have the arrest of the tornado cash developer, the arrest of the samurai wallet developer as well.

Starting point is 00:34:44 And the way that things stand right now is that Trump is a pro-B-B-B-D-C candidate, and Harris is a anti-B Bitcoin pro-C-BDC candidate. So it's like, this is where we are. We're like on, you're starting to see the first inklings of this. And I think what's happening in Nigeria is a foreshadowing of what potentially could come. And again, I want to focus on a specific passage where they mention this, which is just absolutely hilarious to me, where they say lacking their accustomed scope to tax and inflate governments, even in traditionally civil countries will turn nasty. As income tax becomes uncollectable, older, more arbitrary methods of extraction will resurface. And by the way, when they say tax, that includes inflation, by the way, the ultimate form of withholding tax, the de facto or even overt hostage taking.

Starting point is 00:35:44 So keep that in your mind for a second. And I want to break down what's happening in Nigeria. So Nigeria is really fascinating case study because Nigeria rolled out a CBDC and it was a total failure. It's called the E Naira. And the reason that it failed is because CBDCs don't fundamentally solve two issues as to why people seek Bitcoin in the first place. So issue number one is inflation. CBDCs don't solve that. CBDCs also don't solve censorship and confiscation.

Starting point is 00:36:15 Bitcoin does. Bitcoin is deflationary and Bitcoin is censorship resistant. So that experiment failed, but this is just fascinating to me. And I think it's a bit of a foreshadowing and once again, a prophecy from the authors from the sovereign individual. Let's check it out. So Nigeria detains American Binance executive over dispute with the crypto company. The article goes on to say, we now turn to Nigeria, where an American man is caught up in a dispute between the government and the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Nigeria accuses Binance of tanking its currency.

Starting point is 00:36:52 You know how crazy that is? I thought it was going to be, I was like, it's got to be evading, you know, the sanctions or like some sort of like weird like, oh, you're not allowed to pay this person or somebody, no, you're wrecking our crap currency. Please stop. By providing an on ramp so that people could exit out of the, you know what crazy? That is, right? Okay. So now keep in mind the passage from what I read from the book, right? And now some U.S. lawmakers say that that Nigeria is effectively, get this, holding

Starting point is 00:37:36 hostage an American whose company's head of financial crime compliance. The irony, bro. The irony is hilarious. I mean, that's horrible. like I feel really, but like, again, the irony of that all is, I just, it's, I imagine like, imagine if all the sudden, you know, some, some like, cheap, like, knockoff brand of cereal was like, or that was like competing against some other brand of cereal started like kidnapping. they're all their competitors guys stop making stuff that takes away from our product like it's just I okay well no no it's hilarious bro because it like think about the cognitive dissidents there it's like maybe we should probably like you know stop printing maybe we should be fiscally responsible

Starting point is 00:38:43 so that people aren't incentivized to seek alternatives no no no no no no man we love escaping our currency. Like usually when you have to, exactly, usually when you have to coerce people into doing something, it generally tends to not work out. Okay. So I told you in that that passage that I read, it's hostage taking and then holding them for ransom. Well, some more information came out lately. Apparently he's not in a good state health-wise.

Starting point is 00:39:16 But some more information came out that basically, they want $160 million. Like, I'm sorry to laugh. Why don't they want Naira? I'm sorry to laugh. And this is not a funny situation. Like, poor guy, his family. But again, like, sovereign individual,

Starting point is 00:39:36 nailing it, overt hostage taking, holding for ransom. And I think it's a foreshadowing of what's potentially to come in the West. Just based on, look at how hard they're fighting just information. Like, look at how hard they're fighting just to control information. Could you imagine when that apparatus starts to fight to retaining and coercing and trying

Starting point is 00:40:00 to get people to continue to use Fiat money? Like, it's going to be gnarly, dude. Yeah. Like, at the end of the day, like, the people in Nigeria were looking for an exit to be able to obtain a currency other than their own. And what ended up happening is the on-ramp, or rather off-ramp, that provided that capability for regular citizens to do so, was kidnapped and held for ransom so that the country of Nigeria could be provided an off-ramp so they could obtain an alternative currency to the very one that they print and are forcing all of their constituent. to use. That is crazy.

Starting point is 00:40:51 It's, dude, it's, it's mind-blowing, but I can't say I'm surprised, right? Anyways, guys, this was your Simply Sessions for August 29, 2024. One, your co-host, Nico from Simply Bitcoin. If you guys want to see the news Monday through Friday, tune in at 1215, PM Eastern Standard Time at the Simply Bitcoin channel. Guys, this was your Simply Sessions. Ben, I'll see you next week. Cool, man. Thanks. And congrats. on being back. Everybody smash that subscribe button so that you too can let team YouTube know

Starting point is 00:41:24 how pissed you are if this ever happens again. And in the meantime, let's build up Noster and start streaming over there too. Absolutely. Take care, Ben. Sure's man. Awesome. All right. We are going to keep going. I've got tech updates for you coming right after the break. Also, we're going to be given away some free sats. So get out your lightning wallets. Get ready to scan. you are because only one person gets them and we'll find out exactly how many stats you're going to win in just a moment. We will be right back after I shout out from our sponsors. See you guys in a sec. Speed wallet is a Bitcoin lightning wallet built with simplicity in mind. Spend and receive with ease. Claim your own lightning address,

Starting point is 00:42:10 shop your favorite gift cards, and even earn rewards when you spend. Head over to speed. dot app to download the app on your mobile or desktop today and use the link down below to get 5,000 sats for free and have the chance to win even more. Keeper is a mobile Bitcoin application for managing and securing your funds for the long term. You can set up hot wallets for day-to-day spending or create digital vaults for deep cold storage. They also offer assisted multi-sig options as well as inheritance planning. And on top of that, Keeper boasts a long list of support for Bitcoin hardware, longer than I've seen for any other mobile application. You can check them out today by searching Bitcoin Keeper in your app store or heading to Bitcoinkeeper.com.

Starting point is 00:43:03 Debify.com allows you to borrow against your Bitcoin in a non-custodial way. Collateral is held in a three or four distributed multi-sig with trusted parties. It provides institutional liquidity providers, loan periods of up to five years with flexible conditions and the best rates. And best of all, no rehypification of your funds. If you want to check them out today, head over to debify.com or hit the link in these show notes down below. All right, we are back in. And it's time to give away some stats. I hope you have your lightning wallets ready.

Starting point is 00:43:36 This is the Bitcoin Well Dashboard. If you're unfamiliar with them, they are available in both Canada and the USA. And it's a great place to buy and sell Bitcoin. Of course, when you sign up, you earn points when you buy Bitcoin. you earn points when you refer friends you earn points and those points can be used to win anywhere for each role of or I guess for each flip of the coin into the well you can win between 500 and a million sats up to a million sats so I'm going to go ahead I'm going to play now and we're going to toss a coin in the well so again get those lightning wall that's ready I'm going to

Starting point is 00:44:16 enlarge this here for you guys so that you can see and there's the well. And whoever scans this first will win 500 sats. It will go directly into your lightning wallet as long as you've got an LN URL enabled wallet. So congrats to whoever ends of snagging those sats. If you do win, of course, feel free to let me know on the chat or hit me up on X or Noster or in the YouTube comments wherever you are. And yeah, let me know that you sniped those sats from today's episode. But with that, we're going to dive into the tech updates. So a few things I wanted to go over. Geyser Fund. So this is being able to fundraise via Bitcoin Lightning Network. They have a major Ux redesign quote. We're excited to introduce

Starting point is 00:45:08 a major redesign of Geyser's user experience. One of the one of the most requested updates from our community since launching Geiser almost two years ago. We've gained valuable insights. And this update reflects what we've learned. So they have creator and contributor emails. They have notification settings. They have project pages updates. They have a top navigation bar, individual reward pages, project leaderboards, rebranded posts, improved sharing.

Starting point is 00:45:38 They also have platform navigation, enhanced discovery pages. They have down below My Projects. The My Projects page now brings together. the projects you've created or contributed to. The activity feed, you can stay informed about all the projects you care about. And the Global Leadle Board, they've added a global leader board for projects and contributors, providing insight into how stats are flowing through the ecosystem. So if it's been a while since you've been on Geyserfan, check it out, head over there and see

Starting point is 00:46:09 what they've been up to. This is a big one. So moving on here, of course, I just got back from Nostriga. Lots of cool stuff coming out of there. but definitely worth checking this out. Noster Web Services. I actually was unfamiliar with this before, or NWS. And so, quote,

Starting point is 00:46:27 I'm excited to announce the first release of NWS, a resilient connectivity solution that leverages Nostr as a transport for TCP. NWS enables seamless communication between devices without public IP addresses. That's awesome. This is just the beginning with many more features and enhancements on our roadmap. We are excited about the future of NWS and its potential.

Starting point is 00:46:55 Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to develop NWS, which is the developer as Mogo. Key features, you have exit node, internet relay, you have dot Noster domain support, and you have a reverse TCP connect node. I know that's a lot of technical stuff, but trust me, it can make the internet more private and more censorship resistant. Moving on, let's take a look. Amethyst, also in the realm of Noster, version 0.90.3, torrents and outbox restructuring. So what is this?

Starting point is 00:47:31 This introduces support for NIP 35 torrent files. That's so awesome. Significantly prunes memory for encrypted payloads and large events. And restructures caching to enable immediate subscription updates using the Outbox model on custom feeds. This version also offers new defaults for NIP65 and DM RelayLists for new users and fixes several bugs in consistencies. Honestly, I've been using Primal a lot, but after watching a presentation from Derek Ross

Starting point is 00:48:09 in Nostriga, I still have Amethyst on my phone, but I opened it. up for the first time in a while. I'm like, man, there's a lot of bells and whistles that I did not realize. And it's a pretty versatile client. I still think primal is kind of the smoothest, easiest onboarding and simplest onboarding experience. But if you're a person that likes to have a ton of extra features, then Amethyst is solid. So be sure to check it out. Moving on, Zeus Wallet. Now, I've chatted about some of these updates before, but it was in beta. This is now a main release. So Zeus Wallet version 0.9.0. It has hardware wallet support, C-lightening backend, LSP service, and more. So what's new? Purchase channels in advance. This is a service. This interface is accessible

Starting point is 00:49:04 on the channels view by hitting the view button by hitting the button labeled Purchase Inbound channel and so then you can purchase a channel that will connect to whatever node you're referring to. Hardware wallet signing device support. So it allows users to craft on-chain transactions and open and closed channels to and from popular external signers. More commonly known as hardware wallets, functionality should work with any external signer that is air-gapped, support signing partially signed Bitcoin transactions, PSBTs, and has a camera. This includes, but is not limited to the cold card queue, the foundation passport, the seed signer, crux, keystone three, and many others, there will be a more comprehensive list as users test out the functionality with their favorite devices.

Starting point is 00:49:52 You can also close channels to external addresses. You can see pending HTLCs. You can have watch-only accounts imports, so X-Pubs. You can batch channel opens and transactions. has C-L-N-REST interface for core lightning users. They have a new performance camera and some layout changes, you know, checking through a lot of the menus and the settings and all that. So another huge release from Zeus, man, they are working hard. Shout out to Evan. He is killing it. So moving on from there.

Starting point is 00:50:33 Envoy version 1.8.2 has seen. Seed QR import and more. So what's new? Added the ability to import a seed QR seed as your Envoy mobile wallet seed. And so they've also added, what is that, New Zealand dollars as a fiat currency, their Tor library is updated, a number of things. But I think importing the seed QR is kind of the large feature along this. a bunch of other translation improves here.

Starting point is 00:51:13 But, you know, that was kind of my main takeaway from this one. I did want to bring attention to something. It's been around for a little bit now. I mean, not a super long time, but like more than a month. But I finally got to tinker around with a little bit, Albi Hub. So they're moving away from kind of the model of custodial, lightning, plug-in, everything, and kind of giving you an easy hub to manage self-custodial, which is awesome. So basically you could have like a, you could host something on a cloud provider,

Starting point is 00:51:46 or you could host it yourself on your own server. And so I did it on my start nine. So if you notice up here, this is my start nine right now, and I have Albi Hub right here. And so this is not yet in the marketplace here on Star 9, but you can install it as a side-loaded service. So you go to system, and you would go to side-load a service, and there's just a file that you would download,

Starting point is 00:52:13 and you would choose that file. So you go here, browse for the file that you've downloaded, and it'll install it directly onto your Start 9. And then once you have that, you have basically your Noster, you can connect it via L&D Hub to your Start 9. And so, like, I've got this Noster wallet, not Noster wallet, but it, you know, it can be connected to a Noster account as well. But this can be kind of my hub through which I deal with all of my maybe Noster-related stuff, but it's also just a handy web plug-ins for dealing with payments on the web as well. it does give you see here's here's the interface open open albi web and it'll give me kind of all my

Starting point is 00:53:03 info here here's the wallet and i can use it there but um it shows me everything here uh that i can do and like adding connections and all of the different apps that you can use it easily with so anyways i've found it pretty interesting i'm going to have to tinker with it some more but uh i love seeing more cool stuff than I can add to my start nine server and I love seeing what Elby continues to work on here. So kudos to the team over there. Now on a more personal front, I'm super stoked about this. This is a tweet from Cold Card. Big news, you've asked us who we trust for Cold Card and TapSiner-related services and education. Starting today, you can buy services from some of the Bitcoin industry's biggest right in the Coin Cart store.

Starting point is 00:53:53 For the, for now, the focus is on education and custody options with our partners at Unchained, the Bitcoin Mentor, and Nunchuk.io, of course. I'm very, very excited about the Bitcoin mentor partnership here. Simply add your existing CoinCite order, paid directly, Bitcoin Credit Card, and some types of coin card gift cards, and then receive a voucher code in your mailbox, redeem with our partner to claim your service when you're ready. We've also put together some special hardware bundles, which include discounts on these services with matching products you'll need to use with them. So here is the Bitcoin mentor page. And so it has different like, oh, you can just book a personal session, but also you can get a package where maybe you have

Starting point is 00:54:38 two sessions and a cold card queue or three sessions and a cold card queue and two tap signers. And these are based on the different types of things you might want to learn. And so it's all that you get discounted sessions, there's a discount on everything kind of all together by buying it as a package. And so like this, hats off to NVK and the team at Coin Kite and to Nathan from the Bitcoin mentor team for working behind the scenes to put this all together. I'm super excited about it. And I love that the amazing educators that we've aggregated are also aligning with things that we know we love and use and can teach people about while also being able to get people awesome discounts when combining sessions if they need additional help with the hardware that they need.

Starting point is 00:55:26 So anyways, I'm super stoked about that. And yeah, I'm very happy to see that come to fruition. So but with that, I'm going to start rounding out here. Everybody that has been watching, of course, thank you for being here. Like Subshare, all those are very important. Again, in light of the censorship that we've seen, please do consider checking out zap.stream. So if you're currently on Noster or if you're not on Noster yet, check out ZAP.Stream. And you can, you know, you can see live streams here and you can start kind of watching them from a different platform.

Starting point is 00:56:09 And yeah, you can zap in the middle of the stream. You can still get to this site without having a Nostr account, but you can create a Nostra account really simply, and you can use it to log in to ZAPDStream. I'd say the easiest way to get yourself set up on Nostra for the first time is using the Primal app, which is both iPhone and on Android. So check that out, and that can kind of get you through the gate. I've got a tutorial video on it.

Starting point is 00:56:35 But then, yeah, explore the idea of consuming content through alternative platforms that can't so easily be shut down. But anyways, I digress. We'll round it out here. Of course, if you want to help the show in another way, you can hit up their previously mentioned sponsors down below. And if you like what you see out of Bitcoin Mentor, if you're sorting through the channel and the tutorials,

Starting point is 00:56:58 you need some extra help, you need some handholding. Do reach out to my team over there, Bitcoin Mentor.io. Everybody there is amazing. They can help you through anything from wallets to hardware to multi-sig to lightning, to running a node, to home mining, to whatever you are trying to accomplish. they can get you to feel confident self-sovereign along the way. So with that, I am out.

Starting point is 00:57:24 Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening wherever you may be. And I will see you guys next time for your Simply Session.

BTC Sessions - MAJOR ATTACK on Free Speech: RFK, Telegram & Simply Bitcoin! Who Will Be Next?! ep436

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