BTC Sessions - MAJOR: Trump Bitcoin Executive Order! What's In It?

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

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What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Donald Trump has just signed an executive order that pertains to Bitcoin. So if you're in Bitcoin and you're curious what's going on, this directly will be impacting you. So what is in this executive order? Also, Ross Ulberg, officially free after 12 years in prison, released just the other day. I'm going to be chatting about that. and much more. We've got the best in all of Bitcoin news here. Nico from Simply Bitcoin is waiting in the wings. We're going to get started right away. I'm Ben with the BTC sessions.

This is your Simply session. All right. We are diving right in. I'm going to bring Nico in here as well. If you can, if you're in the chat, if you're watching live, make sure you do smash that like button. We're going to get as many likes as we can right out the gate. And yeah, let's dive in.

So buddy, how you doing? Welcome. Yo, dude. Happy to be back another episode of Simply Sessions, man. So much news to cover. So much things going on. Yeah, Trump. News Fest this week, right? Nothing going on.

I know, nothing going on. There's never anything going on in Bitcoin. So Trump, is he a villain? Is he a hero? What's going on here? Trump coin, Ross Fried, Sab 1221 repealed.

Now it's Sab. 122. No mention of Bitcoin in the executive order. So is he, I don't know, man. I don't know. Like there's pros, there's cons. And I think people have to really get used to. This is the way that politics works, by the way. For anyone, anyone not familiar with it, politics is a bunch of concessions. I think all of us Bitcoiners had this very high expectation that we were going to get this, you know, full Bitcoin president and whatever. It seems like it's a Bitcoin and crypto president. And it is what it is.

But I would say, and I said this earlier on in the week and the tweet did pretty well, so it resonated with a lot of people. I said two things could be true at the same time. You know, Trump could be a little bit of an alt-coiner, but he could also help Bitcoin and pump the price and free Ross, right? So beggars can't be choosers. and in a two-party system, like is like essentially politics in the United States, a Republican versus Democrats.

I think, I think Trump was the better candidate. Anyways, let's get to today's news. Let me show you guys the official headline, strengthening American leadership in the digital financial technology. And digital financial technology executive order January 23rd, 2025. This is officially from the White House website. itself. So let's get through to some of the details. Trump issues a crypto executive order to pave U.S. digital assets path. It goes on to say what to know. After a few days of handwriting

from the eager crypto sector that wondered how long the weight would be for Trump's digital asset push, the U.S. president finally delivered his first major step towards a crypto policy. executive orders don't tend to carry much legal weight, but they can set the tone of an administration on a specific topic. A fully regulated U.S. crypto industry may require a combination of congressional action, implementing rules from regulatory agencies, and federal court rulings that back it all up. And I'll give a little bit of education for anyone who's watching on American politics. a president has the ability to issue an executive order. However, executive orders, they don't hold much legal weight.

He can essentially tell the rest of the federal government to follow certain instructions because the federal government is technically part of the executive branch and the Trump, the president is the head of the executive branch. However, he doesn't have the legal authority to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve. He needs to go through Congress. He needs to go through the House and he needs to go through the Senate in order for the United States to start purchasing Bitcoin, which is part of the strategic Bitcoin Reserve. I spoke to Cynthia Lummis on Tuesday and essentially the plan is to buy one million Bitcoin or a, I think it's 5% of the overall supply,

1 million Bitcoin over a 5 to 10 year period. That's the plan. And the plan is to use some of that to pay off the national debt. However, Trump is he can do a lot with executive orders, but he can't do that. What he could do is essentially do what he promised at the Nashville conference, where essentially all the Bitcoin that the United States has not, that the United States has seized from quote unquote criminals,

essentially he could say we're not selling that, right? So that's essentially the general gist of it. But there's been different reactions from the community. David Bailey, really the one who got Trump to the Bitcoin conference, said the president just signed an executive order for the top financial regulators in the country, all who are bitcoins, to come together and establish a strategic stockpile of Bitcoin. However, we have another perspective, American Hoddle, make no mistake, we just got rugged. Everything else is cope.

It goes on to say this has nothing to do with the price. This changes nothing about Bitcoin, market structures, etc. but this was a political rug job brought to you by David Sacks and the parasites surrounding him. The strategic Bitcoin Reserve is dead now. Shitcoin stockpile stands in its place. Be honest about it. Sam Callahan responds, We all know the government is the worst allocator of capital.

So why is everyone surprised that it might buy some shit coins? The order prohibits central bank digital currencies and protects the right to develop open source code, self-custody, and mine. It's a win. It goes on, it doesn't do either of those things. The language is aspirational, meaning they might do it. Meanwhile, you get a committee of shit coin scammers sitting around deciding how much taxpayer money should be spent on their insider pump and dumps. Kronism of the highest degrees. Here's Joe Carler sorry, and he says the crypto executive order does not ban CBDCs, protect self-custody or mining, provide regulatory clarity, provide for a crypto stockpile. The executive order forms a working group to study these things, but does not impose legally binding rules.

It only instructs federal agencies to review and recommend actions. This means existing statutes remain unchanged, and agencies must follow standard rulemaking processes before implementing new regulations, while it outlines the administration's policy goals, the order is best viewed as an aspirational roadmap. So again, we are not getting a strategic Bitcoin reserve via executive order, but like I've been saying for the last couple weeks on Simply Sessions, you don't want a strategic Bitcoin reserve via executive order because like I mentioned,

that is just one administration away. from it being repealed by the next president. If you want a long-lasting strategic Bitcoin Reserve in the United States, you want it to be done on the legislative level. I don't know if they have the votes. They have, the Republicans have a slim minority in the House, a slim majority in the House, better said, and they have a majority in the Senate,

but they don't have the 60 votes that is required to overcome the filibuster. And that's what's required in the Senate. Because in the Senate, you don't just need a majority. You need a 60 vote majority. The Republicans only have 53 votes. So, yeah, I mean, this is where we are. Like I was saying earlier in regards to politics,

and I think a lot of Bitcoiners are kind of exposed to these things. It's ugly. It's messy. There's compromises. There's shit-cornery happening. Ross is free. SAB 121 was repealed. So there's a lot of good news, but it also isn't, it isn't perfect.

There's some bad news, which is obviously the shit coin degeneracy that I think is going to be explosive over the next couple of years. But at the same time, you know, like I said, Ross is free. Our industry is not going to get attacked. And yeah, so that's the general gist of it. It is what it is. Honestly, it's better than nothing. That's my take. Yeah.

And again, I am not at all surprised that the reserve is, or that it's not a reserve, rather, it's a potential digital asset stockpile. And it does say in the order about it being composed of stuff that they've already lawfully confiscated. and somebody had tweeted out a breakdown of what they had, the vast majority of which is Bitcoin, but then there's like Ethan, a bunch of other crap in there too. So, yeah, I'm not surprised.

I think this is what you get in a true kind of, when you're leaning towards more kind of free market with a mix of cronyism and all of that happening, of those dynamics. You know, I think, I think American Haudel's right. Like David Sachs is like just a parasite and, you know, the whole bunch that's going to be surrounding the president. Everybody's going to be kissing ass to try and get their shit coin in the stockpile and all

of this. That's to be expected. I'm not at all surprised by that. I really liked this take, and I'm going to share it for a sec, but I'm, I'm I really liked this take from Francis Pouliott. He said, he's actually happy with this. He said, Ross free, no strategic Bitcoin Reserve established, positive mentions of self-custody, sentiment to prevent debanking of Bitcoiners and Bitcoin companies, government distracted by meme coins.

And he's stoked about it, right? Like he's saying, like, he thinks that if the government can be. distracted and misallocating capital while also doing things that are favorable for the individual in a sense, then, I mean, whatever, call it a win. It's better than rounding up devs and throwing them in jail. It's better than debanking anybody that is involved in Bitcoin. But yeah, there's going to be a whole bunch of bullshit that happens in between two. So, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's the personification or it's, it's the, uh, the government equivalent of the Larry David meme where he's like on the corner and he's like undecided,

like, uh, like happy, but sad. I don't know. It is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, there's, there's, uh, man. I, again, like, it's, it's just because I'm a, I'm, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a politics junkie, man.

I watch Steve Bannon, like, every warning, and I just understand how this whole process is, like, so messy. And I think a lot of people had high expectations. But, again, Ross is free. Francis had a really, really good, like, summary of it all. Anyways, so on a more positive note, Cynthia Lammis was made an announcement this morning where she said, big things are coming.

stay tuned for for 10 a.m. So what was she talking about? Well, she was named chair of a subcommittee in the banking committee. And the subcommittee is called the subcommittee for digital assets. And this is her quote, digital assets are the future. And if the United States wants to remain a global leader in financial innovation, Congress needs to urgently pass bipartisan legislation establishing a comprehensive legal framework for digital assets that strengthens the U.S. dollar with a strategic Bitcoin Reserve. I am humbled by my colleagues have placed their trust to me to chair this historic subcommittee, and I look forward to shepherding bipartisan legislation to President Trump's desk this year that secures our future.

I talked to her about this for two days. I talked to her about this two days ago. You've been a bad man looking, looking slick there. Tailored suit and everything, baby, with a tie. So I talked to her with Dennis Porter and about this. This is really moving forward, but kind of tying this in with the exact. Trump can't, could only do so much via executive order. If the strategic Bitcoin Reserve thing wants to be.

wants to last pass multiple presidents, it needs to go through Congress. And after speaking to Senator Lummis, she feels very optimistic about it. And most importantly, she has bipartisan support for the bill. So there's Democrats that are supporting it. And then there's obviously Republicans that are supporting it. Now, what will she do as part of the Senate banking subcommittee? She will pass legislation promoting responsible innovation and consumer protection. She will eradicate Operation Shook Point 2.0 and make America the Bitcoin and digital asset capital of the world.

Now, what was really interesting is that CZ followed up with U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve pretty much confirmed crypto moving at crypto speed again. And he quote tweeted Senator Lummis's announcement that she was going to be named. She was going to be tapped to be the chair of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on digital assets. Now, if you look at the polymarket odds, I think a lot of people were expecting Trump's executive order to essentially establish the strategic Bitcoin Reserve. A lot of people obviously have been let down. The percentages have gone down to now 62% believe that a national Bitcoin Reserve will be established in 20%. 2025. So yeah, I mean, we'll see what happens. Trump could do this via executive order. It's, it won't last, it won't last forever if he does it in that fashion. The right way to do it is via

legislation. And I think with Senator Cynthia Lummis as the head of the banking committee, subcommittee on digital assets, we're one step closer to that. And all of this is extremely bullish from a number go up perspective, but from a revolution perspective, not so much because like Francis pointed out, it's actually better that it gives us more time

as individuals to stack Bitcoin, put that Bitcoin into self-custody rather than having the US government own, you know, a ridiculous amount of Bitcoin. So there's pluses in, this is going to be a plus. and minuses, a pros and cons day. So anyways, Ben, what do you think?

Yeah, I mean, I think that governments owning Bitcoin aligns incentives with other Bitcoiners. And it's not that I want governments to necessarily benefit from Bitcoin, but I want them to be hurt if they go after Bitcoin. And if they own Bitcoin, then that is what happens, right? So they're incentivized to own it because it's a way to shield purchasing power and have a reserve, especially when it becomes kind of like a global thing where people are trying to snatch as many of us, you know, scoop up as many stats as they can on the state level. And they can't change the protocol in a world like that because who's going to use the fork country specific coin.

when the rest of the world is using the global reserve asset, which is Bitcoin. And yeah, I think it just aligns the incentives of the governments with the people when it comes to preserving purchasing power and making sure that Bitcoin works. So, yeah, I don't know. That's kind of my take on it. Also, in and around the craziness of like the speculation about what was going on today and just like the price action around it, guys, I'm just going to give an unsolicited piece of advice here like this this here all of this like straight up straight down straight up i don't know

straight down straight up straight down like you don't need this stress in your life if you're speculating on like a government action you're doing it wrong you need to be thinking long term bitcoin is here to stay regardless of what the government does or does not do so just stay humble and stack those sets and Let the rest just, it's fun to talk about it. It's exciting as things are happening. But please, out of the speculation game, you don't need that. You don't need that stress in your life. Do you know how easy it is to just sit back and watch this thing ping pong around knowing and just being comforted by the fact that Bitcoin will outlast every single politician that's trying to get their fingers into it right now?

It's beautiful. So that's my piece of advice. Now, we're going to go to a quick break. I'm going to say we've got 630 live viewers right now. We're North 100 likes. Let's keep smashing that like button if you can. Give it a smash. On the other side of the break, we're going to give you a chance to win a million sats.

So get your lightning wallets ready. And Nico, can you give a little teaser? What are we going to be chatting about after the break here? Yeah, absolutely. We have a ton of news. We have the CEO of Bank of America, the CEO of UBS, the CEO of Morgan Stanley, all talking about essentially how they don't have a choice but to look at Bitcoin. And that's because of the Trump administration.

And also because people are adopting it. Of course, historic news, Ross Alberg has been freed. But we'll talk about that all when we get right back. I had to put the art up today for the occasion. But yeah. All right. We'll be back in a sec. Get your lightning wall.

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You can head to coinkite.com and use code BTC sessions for discounts, or simply scan the QR code on the screen to get started right away. All right, we are back in. We're going to give away some stats really quick here before we dive into the next stories. I am sitting here. Nico, don't you dare steal them? These are for the plebs that are watching right now. We're here on Bitcoin Well.

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So here it comes, and we got 210 there. That's not the, only time we're going to be doing it through the show. So stay tuned for more chances to win. But Nico, we are going to go right back to you and we'll continue on. What else has been going on? And let me get your screen going here. What else has been going on this week? Yeah, absolutely. So historic, I mean, look, again, pros and minuses. I feel like that's going to be the theme of today's episode. So this is a huge pro, obviously. Ross Ulbrick has been freed. The Orange Man has kept his promise.

He, this is what he said, quote, I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbrick to let her know that in honor of her and the libertarian movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son Ross. The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences plus 40 years ridiculous. Now, what's really awesome, again, what he promised the libertarians at the convention was to commute Ross Albrecht's sentence. He gave him a pardon, a full,

pardon, which means it's like as if Ross never committed a crime. He does not have a record. He doesn't have a record. He's not a convicted criminal anymore. He just got pardoned 100%. So that means that all the problems that you have if you're a convicted person, like not being able to get certain jobs or, you know, like user IDs or whatever, like, you know, rent certain apartments and like all that stuff. Travel. Travel exactly. He's literally like,

like not only a free man. It's like he never committed a crime. It's a full pardon. Right. So, Trump, underpressed, over delivered.

So again, guys, I keep telling you like, this whole episode, it's like, I'm feeling moments of joy. I'm feeling moments of sadness. Like,

it's like, you know, the, it's like, we didn't get the strategic big one reserve, but we kind of got like promises to protect self-custody. And at the same time, Senator Cynthia Lummis was named the head of the banking committee. This is politics. This is the nature of the beast.

This is how the compromises are. So anyways, more detail on this. And I think I tweeted this out a couple days ago. I said, if Trump hadn't had one, he would have been sent to jail for life. They would have been, they would have kept attacking our industry. shut down X and Ross will still be in prison. So again, right? You have to, you have to take the wins when you can get them. The other thing that I'll say is we got a lot of heat on Simply sessions for the last six months or so when we kept saying it would probably be a better idea

to vote for Trump. And I think the reason that so many people are saying that voting doesn't matter is because it's easier to opt out of politics than to participate. Even if Trump didn't keep his promise, which he did. At least we gave it our best shot. Courage in the eyes of uncertainty is required to win. And here's a picture, first picture of Ross out of prison. And look at that giant, giant smile on his face. And he has a plant in his hands. I'm assuming that plant has been with him. So yeah, man, I'm very happy that Ross is free. And can't win them all. Can't win the mall with the current administration. But definitely way. way better than what we got under Kamala.

So, yeah. Yeah. Also, the pictures of him seeing his mom for the first time. Oh, God. Like, the water works wrong for me for that one. It was pretty intense to see. I'll say, again, in the chat, like, sorry, guys. Yeah, like, I know that people have a displace for the,

sorry, for the website, but. I personally am a fan of free markets. Sorry, scratchy throat. But I think people should be able to choose what they consume and stuff like that. And somebody creating a website that simply facilitates free trade, I don't think that two life sentences plus 40 years lines up with that. 100%. Are you okay, Ben?

Yeah, yeah. I just caught something in my throat. So I'm good now. Okay. Let's use yellow. Thank you, yellow. Comedic relief. Okay.

So now on a positive new, right? So we got a bunch of shit coinerie. We got a strategic, we got an executive order that said, you know, we are looking into this. We're not looking into this. We're kind of friends. Anyways, this is extremely good news. And the reason this is extremely good news is I'll let Sailor say it himself. Let's check it out.

Look, first of all, it's going up by a factor of 10, whether they fix any of the stuff, right? It's going to go a lot. It's going to be a grind up by a factor of 10 just because gold is broken and the coin's going to replace gold. And now everybody in the universe knows they need a non-solver and store a value in the form of a bearer instrument. So now they're looking the amount of stories. For last year, people said inflation may be coming. We're not sure. Now the mainstream narrative is flipped to inflation is here. You need inflation hedge. So it's going to grind up to replace gold. It'll go to $500,000 a coin regardless of whether they fix these things. But there are three things

that are massive catalysts that cause an acceleration. And I don't think that those three things don't take us to $500,000. They take us to $5 million a coin. Those three things are a spot ETF where someone can go ahead and buy a hundred million dollars of Bitcoin by a security, an ETF security. I think that's one. Two is your bank is going to custody it for you and lend against it. And three is I can mark it up or mark it down on my balance sheet based on fair value. Pesu. It'll be para Pesu to the way I'd handle Apple stock or at least that good. If it's if you have property with fair value accounting by the way, it becomes parapsu to the way handle treasury bonds on a treasury balance sheet treasuries are better than stocks because treasury is

property whereas a stock is a security and you're capped out at 40 percent of your balance sheet of security so so it would be a major major breakthrough if you saw any of those three things and i'll end with this one observation i tweeted this last week but i still i think it's very powerful it's if the banks can hold this stuff on their balance sheet then a whole new class of investors are going to buy it people are going to put in billion and multi-billion multi-billion dollar orders to buy it as a treasury asset, nobody's going to sell it because there's no reason to sell it if you can borrow against it at LIBOR plus or it's Sofer plus 50 basis points, right? So you'll be you'll be barring against Bitcoin as Sofer plus 50 or

sulfur plus 100 basis points. No one's ever going to sell it. And then as I joked, you won't be able to afford it. I mean, you will be able to afford it, but you know, everybody gets Bitcoin at the price they deserve. When the banks normalize it and you can draw a hundred million dollar credit line at 100 basis points from an FDIC and insured bank at that point, right, we're going to blow through the market cap of gold by a factor of 10. Right. So, you know, I think the best thing is those three things are highly likely to happen. I don't know if they happen in 36 months or 24 months or 12 months, but I would be shocked

if it's more than 36 months. And I hope, guys, I hope it doesn't happen in 12 months because my view is the longer it takes, the more progressive, the grind, the more time I have to buy more of it. And I think right now, if I'm boom. So, okay, ladies and gentlemen, what are those three things that are going to catapult Bitcoin into $5 million, 10x from here? Number one, the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF, that check, check that, check that, that, check that, check that, check that, off the list.

That happened January of 2024. Number two was the change in the accounting, the FASB accounting rules. That happened December 25th of 2024. And the ability. for banks to custody Bitcoin. Ladies and gentlemen, that started January 23rd of 2025. This news just broke as Ben and I were going live. And again, Trump meme coin, right?

Like the executive order wasn't exactly what we were hoping for, but he did just repeal. Sab 121. And this opens the, this allows banks to custody Bitcoin. This is absolutely major. This is insane. This is a huge effing deal. And I'm not the only one to believe this. The man who I just played you, the audio recording of says, quote, Sab 121 has been resended allowing banks to custody Bitcoin. So huge effing news. And once again, you know, the Alkcoin slash Bitcoin president has delivered here.

So way better than what we would have gotten with Kamala. What's your take, man? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty crazy to see all these things. Again, listening to that clip back. How long ago was that clip that you played? Three, three years ago, dude. Three years ago.

Yeah. So there you go. I mean, 36 months. There you go. He's like, I'd be shocked if it'd be longer than 36 months. It basically was right on the nose was how long it was. So that's pretty wild and of itself. So, I mean, again, I hate that there was even a regulation in the first place saying that they couldn't do this.

I'm a very much free market kind of like, you know, pick your poison kind of and learn from your mistakes. kind of person. I would say that I saw some rumblings from a few people. Caitlin Long being one of them being like, we've got to be careful in and around

allowing like the rehypothecation and you know like fractional reserve of Bitcoin within these banks and loaning against that and all of that because that could be

a massive contagion within the traditional financial system because i mean what have these guys been doing for decades now is like fiat to the max like leverage on leverage on leverage and in a bitcoin world we've seen that play out before but because the asset at the base has no lender of last resort um bitcoin is very efficient at pointing out fuckery it's very efficient at pointing out hey like somebody's screwing around here like look how quickly from the the inception of ft x and its rise to the top to them screwing around and then bear market hits and like it's it's a disaster everybody gets wiped out all of these lending firms all of these things that blew up three hours capital like all of this

stuff. And it's because the underlying asset itself, you can't bullshit with it. You can't bail it out. The truth comes home to roost with this stuff. And so if I had to guess, if there's not some sort of like, oh, you're not allowed to rehypothecate or whatever when it comes to Bitcoin, it's going to be a rehash of the same story we've seen again and again. Every time, every single cycle, everybody assumes that the industry has matured because the bigger players come in. It started with Mount Gawks and others before, but that was the first big one. Flash forward to the next cycle. What was it?

It was Quadriga CX, the biggest exchange in Canada. There's a literal Netflix documentary on it. Flash forward to the next cycle. Everybody's like, oh, we're way past all that. That was ages ago. Now we've got FTX. His parents are literally regulators. just what happened, what fucking happened?

It blew up again. So if you think that traditional banks are beyond that kind of shitty behavior and the exact same type of blowouts, I've got news for you. The exact opposite is going to happen. Banks are going to fuck around. But this time, they're actually going to find out because nobody is there to print more Bitcoin for them. Amen.

Oof, beautifully put. That was so articulate. It was poetic. I feel my tip. On my head, on my head. Okay. We got to celebrate. We're getting close to 800 people in here, man.

It's like 700 people. So guys, smash those like buttons if you can. Smash the like button. All right, everybody. Moving on to the next piece of news. Let's wait, what should we cover today? Okay, here it is. So there has been multiple reports from Donald Trump.

I mean, sorry, from Anthony Pompliano and David Bailey, that Donald Trump holds a lot of Bitcoin. So let's check out this clip from Pomp. Here we go. Joins me now. He has a thing or two about crypto. In your opinion, will be the ideal way to regulate crypto. Well, I think there's two different things. The SEC's got to get clear rules in place.

Obviously, Bitcoin is through the regulatory threshold. I think it's very well accepted. It's not a security. And investors are going to continue to buy that asset. and hold that asset. But there's a whole other plethora of assets that exist in the market, and people want to know, are these securities, are they not? How should they be treated? The second thing is not only regulation, which this crypto task force is focused on, but also what can Donald Trump do to further push this forward? More than 50% of his net worth is now in the

crypto market. And so obviously he's paying attention to this. But I think there's three things. They can repeal SAB-21, which would allow banks to hold these assets and make it more safe for people. The second thing is that we can establish a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve and have the United States government now buying Bitcoin in the market. And then the third thing is we should change the tax treatment of these assets. Right now, if you buy goods or services with Bitcoin, even though it's a currency, you still pay capital gains tax. And so removing those three things, I think, would really be a tailwind for the industry as well. Are you a fan of the strategic Bitcoin Reserve? Because the government starts buying and up goes the price, right?

Well, I think that obviously the price will go up. But the more important thing is that the U.S. government currently holds a lot of gold. So do many central banks around the world. And Bitcoin is pristine collateral. It is gold with wings. And so the United States government buying Bitcoin is not only a really big deal for the United States today, but actually the future health of the United States having an asset like this in its reserves. And I think probably one of the most important parts about this strategic Bitcoin reserve is that it would signal to the rest of the world that this asset has finally arrived. Donald Trump campaigned as being the first Bitcoin president. And I do think that he is going to establish that strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

So, I mean, thoughts, Ben? Yeah, I mean, it's funny because, again, even just there, he's outlining kind of that sailor, like, hey, these are the things that need to happen. I, again, I think it's a positive thing if governments are holding Bitcoin, but they have to be separate. They have to be like, it's got to be like Russia and China and the U.S. Because that's what aligns those incentives and doesn't give anybody too much control. Yeah, I mean, obviously he was a little off on the Strategic Reserve thing, you know, but the day is young. Who knows? Let's see what Lomas can do too, because, you know, having her in a position where she can hopefully have some influence will.

will help the whole thing. I don't know. Absolutely. We shall wait and see. Anyways, we're getting to the top of the hour. Guys, this was your Simply Sessions. I'm Nico from Simply Bitcoin. Ben, I will see you next week. Peace out. Hell yeah, dude. See you soon. Everybody else, stick around.

Make sure you do go and subscribe to Simply Bitcoin. We've got more coming up here. I have to let you guys know about the Ledger CEO that was kidnapped and held for ransom for his Bitcoin and crypto and about the new product or we'll call it a multi-sig solution that could have fixed that entire situation and made sure that he wouldn't have lost a penny. So that's coming up next. And we're also going to be given away the chance to win even more stats. You guys have been killing it.

We have like damn near 870 people watching. We're up to 257 likes. Smash that like button if you're in here. If you're having a good time, we're going to give a quick shout out to our sponsors. And we're going to come back. We're going to give you not one, but two chances to win a million stats because you're doing so great today. So we'll see you guys in a sec.

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Bitcoin transactions via the Lightning Network, and you can also send, receive, hold, and swap between stablecoins, aka EUSDT, via the Lightning Network. They baked in a ton of other great features as well, where you're able to earn Bitcoin. This can include referring your friends, shopping your favorite gift cards, or playing fun games via the Speed Arcade. I encourage you to sign up today. There's a QR code on the screen to do so, where you can hit the link in the show notes down below, When you do, you will earn 5,000 sats as you create your first. All right, we are back in. I hope you have your lightning wallets ready because we're going to do a couple rolls of the dice here,

or rather tosses into the Bitcoin wishing well. And best of luck. All you need to do is have a Bitcoin lightning wallet on your phone. And right on the middle of my screen here where I'm moving my mouse, I'm going to throw a coin into the well. and whoever scans it first will steal the sats from everyone else. So off it goes into the well. You got to be quick on the draw there.

If you don't get it first, it's just going to give you an error. So there's another 210 sats. You got to be fast. If you're getting an error, somebody already snagged them from you. You got to be quick there. But don't worry. You have another chance. There's another 210.

So I'm going to click away from that. If you miss it, you can always scrub back through the video and see if you can get it if somebody didn't already. And then I'll just do a quick refresh and we'll do it one more time. Thank you guys for being here, of course. Smash that like button if you get the chance. And we're going to dive into the Ledger CEO being kidnapped and held for ransom. 500 stats there.

I'll leave it up for a few seconds for you guys to grab it. And then we'll dive in and let me know what you're thinking about all this in the chat there as well. So let's jump over. Ledger co-founder, I should clarify there, he was freed after a ransom kidnapping. So David Balland, the co-founder of Ledger, was kidnapped from his home in France early Tuesday and released Wednesday night following a police operation. According to the prosecutor's office, the kidnappers demanded a large ransom in cryptocurrency.

Following his kidnapping, Ballin was transported by car to a different location and held captive there. the prosecutor's office stated that he is currently receiving treatment from emergency services. The criminals demanded the payment of a significant ransom of cryptocurrency, said the prosecutors. The GIGN, one of France's elite tactical police units, was involved in the rescue operation. The police are continuing their investigation to identify and apprehend all individuals involved. No further details were provided. So this is actually quite scary. Now, he is very, very high profile, of course, in terms of somebody who might have a lot of Bitcoin kicking around.

So he's a target. But you shouldn't discount this because there, I was seeing a tweet from Jameson Lopp earlier today where there has been seven, seven $5 wrench attacks on individuals for Bitcoin or cryptocurrency this year alone. the beginning of the year. It's January 23rd. So this is becoming more and more prevalent. And you need to be careful out there. So not only do you need to protect your stack, but you also need to protect some of your privacy. And there's a number of things you can do, namely trying not to use your real address when you're shipping stuff. So get a PO box. So like ledger itself already leaked everybody's data when it came to especially email addresses, some people, phone numbers, people physical addresses in a hack way back when. And to this day, people are still getting

fishing attempts, you know, mailouts, phone calls, all that kind of stuff. So you got to be conscious about where your data is. Now, the interesting thing about this is with some new stuff hitting the market as of late, this guy technically, if he was using a particular product, he could have actually insured himself entirely so that even if he had a wrench attack and even if he contacted the shared custody provider, he would have been fully insured. And that is Anchor Watch. And so this is Becca Amalie from Anchor Watch. They do multi-sig assisted multi-sig custody where you would have.

hold keys, they would hold keys, and they're kind of there just in case, but they incorporate insurance into it. And so this is her tweeting, I fought so hard to include wrench attack coverage to our insurance policies. We were successful. We convinced the Lloyds of London that to fully protect Bitcoin owners, we need to cover losses due to violent theft, multi-month process to add this coverage, extra actuarial studies, process building, advocating on behalf of you and the risk you face. Worth it. These wrench attacks reports are frequent.

And if you notice, when you read the articles, people are getting attacked for reasonable amounts of Bitcoin, kidnapped for 500K or a million of Bitcoin. Not only company CEOs, but normal people too. So what they've done is effectively, they've got this really cool setup where you would have a two of three multi-sig. Anchor watch has a two-of-three multi-sig.

It requires both entities to successfully sign the two-of-three multi-sig. of three multi-sig to move funds, but then at certain intervals, like six months, yours degrades to a one-of-three multi-sig while theirs remains two of three. And at the last month of the policy, it degrades to where there's an impartial third party that can help move funds unilaterally in the instance of like an inheritance or something like that. So if you're not around, and you can always bump those and use the previous settings before. But with this, you can also get insurance coverage and it ends up being somewhere in the realm on the lower end of the spectrum half a percent of the total dollar amount that is insured so if you had like millions of

dollars a hundred million dollars of bitcoin sitting there and don't let anybody know if you do in the chat that's how this happens but you can insure that and you pay half a percent on that per year and then even if you get wrench attacked like this you're insured which is wild and you retain custody during it. So that's, you know, they've, they've worked really hard. Rob and Becca at Anchor Watch, you know, they've got their heads on straight. Really cool to see. Anyways, moving on.

Bull Bitcoin has expanded to Europe. So this is a non-custodial Bitcoin exchange. It started here in Canada. They're now available on the old continent to help Europeans reclaim their sovereignty, use our platform to buy-sell and pay any bank account with Bitcoin today, according to terms and conditions of the service, it's now available in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary,

Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden, hot damn. They previously supported countries including Canada, Costa Rica and Mexico. New platform is at Aptop bull bitcoin.com. Congrats to the team. Again, they support lightning. They support liquid on chain, of course, instant CEPA transfers, self-custody and transparency. You never leave your funds on the platform as soon as you fund it and you want to buy Bitcoin. It goes directly into your own wallet.

So, congrats to Francis and the team. Good to see them rolling out to Europe. BTC pay server version 2.0.6 has come out. They are preventing duplicate payouts and certain on-chain configurations. They have a whole bunch of different security fixes. and updates here. So if you're using it, check out my tutorial that I did recently on BTC Pay.

And yeah, make sure you update. Domas, for those nostraches that are watching, everybody on Noster, version 1.12, UX improvements and fixes. So you've got GIF and video files.

You'll be able to see while you're making posts. Add profile to text and instructable banner with follow buttons. Lots of just general Ux improvements and a few buck fixes as well. I can't wait for DOMUS to hit Android because I'm not an iPhone. Another thing, special thanks to D++ for sending this orange pill purse over to the Wifi here. Mrs. Sessions was very excited about it, so I appreciate that. I wanted to let you guys know that I dropped a tutorial just yesterday on the Jade Plus.

So jade plus, obviously the updated version of the previous block stream jade, is it worth it? Is it a meaningful improvement over the last iteration? I would say yes. If you're already on a jade and you like it and you like the interface, then the jade plus is a meaningful leap forward, mainly because of the improved camera. I've got to say my main gripe with the old one was scanning an air gap mode, was a pain in the butt. It was tough.

this fixes that for sure. There's some tradeoffs with the blind Oracle the way it works and how you sign transactions if you're air gaping. There's a couple extra steps there, but I encourage you to check out the video on the channel here and let me know your thoughts in the comments about it. Now, what am I working on next? Well, I'm checking out the Umbrell home.

I've done videos on the Umbrell before, but this is the new Umbrell home. Of course, I love my stuff. start nine. I've got that running, but I want to make sure that I'm covering all of our bases and letting people know how stuff works. And so this is an easy way to be able to run a Bitcoin node with a little plug-and-play device. It's like yay big. You plug it into your router, plug it into the wall. You're running a Bitcoin node. You download a couple apps. So my Bitcoin node, oh, it already synced. Holy crap. I started this yesterday. I synced in one day. Sweet. Okay, well, I'm getting

to work on this ASAP. I'll be making a video on how to set up a Bitcoin node, link your on-chain wallets to it, how to set up a lightning node and set it up with AlbiHub here, and then Mempool. That space to be able to view an audit transactions, all of that. I'll cover the basics and I'll cover some of the other cool stuff that's available in the app store that you might also want to check out. So stay tuned for that and give a thumbs up if you're looking forward to that video. And then finally, hey, how about some free stuff? You guys know my company, Bitcoin Mentor, where you can go to Bitcoin Mentor.io and book

one-on-one educational sessions. Well, with this, you can get a free book. I'm going to put a QR code up right now. It leads to this link. One of the Bitcoin mentors, Jesse Berger, wrote an excellent book called Magic Internet Money, a book about Bitcoin. So if you scan that, all you got to do is drop an email. and we will get a copy to you for free.

It's an awesome read. It's up on my shelf right there. I won't go off screen to grab it. But it is awesome. So many chapters in that book, there'll be a paragraph that describes something. And I'm like, oh, wow, that would have taken me, you know, 20 minutes to describe.

And you condensed it down into four sentences. So he does a really, really good job of explaining the ins and outs of Bitcoin. It's a great gift, too, if you're trying to orange pill some people, this cycle. Grab yourself this book. Go check it out. I think it is a solid read and check out Bitcoin Mentor while you're at at Bitcoin Mentor.io. Yeah. So let's go ahead and let you know about tomorrow. We've got Bob Burnett, Natalie Brunel, Preston Pish on tomorrow. We're going to be talking about all the crazy stuff that's gone on this week. And what we're going to be talking about. we're most bullish about on the horizon.

Not going to want to miss this one. It's at 6 p.m. Eastern Time tomorrow. This is a stacked, stacked panel. I'm very excited for it. It should be a good time. Preston's always a good time. Nat is so succinct. Bob is a legend.

So love to have all of them on. So make sure, again, you visit the show tomorrow, 6 p.m. Eastern time. Anyways, guys, thank you so much for being here. I hope you had a good time. Smash that like button on the way out. And that's it. Stack sats.

Continue stacking skills. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This was your simply session. Huddled by Bitcoin.