BTC Sessions - MicroStrategy's Rebrand Signals MAJOR Shift?!

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

🔴 LIVE: ARK's Massive BTC Prediction, Czech Goes All In, U.S. Eyes Strategic Reserve, MicroStrategy Rebrands and Much More! Bitcoin’s biggest players are making bold moves! El Salvador walks back Bitcoin legal tender, the U.S. considers a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, and Trump launches a Sovereign Wealth Fund—could it buy Bitcoin? Meanwhile, the SEC scales back crypto enforcement, MicroStrategy rebrands to “Strategy”, and Ark Invest releases a massive Bitcoin price prediction for 2030. Plus, Czech goes all in on Bitcoin while top analysts reveal three key reasons to stay bullish in 2025. Don’t miss this action-packed episode—hit subscribe and join us LIVE to stay ahead in Bitcoin! 🚀🔥 —------------------------------ BOOK private one-on-one sessions with BITCOIN MENTOR! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more - all from a team of top notch educators that I've personally vetted. https://bitcoinmentor.io/ —------------------------------ FOLLOW Simply Bitcoin & BTC Sessions on other channels: Simply Bitcoin on Youtube: youtube.com/@SimplyBitcoin Simply Bitcoin on X: x.com/simplybitcointv Nico on X: x.com/bitvolt BTC Sessions on X: x.com/BTCsessions —------------------------------ SHOW SPONSORS: BITCOIN WELL BUY BITCOIN https://bitcoinwell.com/btcsessions MINING DISRUPT CONFERENCE https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mining-disrupt-conference-2025-fort-lauderdale-florida-tickets-980017277057?discount=BTCSESSIONS COINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount): https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions AQUA WALLET https://aquawallet.io/ NUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCE https://nunchuk.io/individuals HODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGE https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION DEBIFI LOANS https://debifi.com/ #bitcoin #crypto #btc #money

Yo, what's going on, everybody? Micro Strategy has had a major rebrand. Does this actually signal a major shift in their strategy? We're going to talk about that and plenty more on today's episode. We've got Nico from Simply Bitcoin, the best in all of Bitcoin news across all of YouTube and beyond. He's got plenty to go through with us today. I encourage you guys to smash that like button, help us spread Bitcoin knowledge to the masses,

and we are off to the races. So without further ado, I'm Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your Simply session. All right. We're right in. Let's get Nico in the house. Yo, buddy. How's it going, man?

Good to see you. Yo, dude. I'm back home. So back to the OG green screen. We got tons of news. Good to see you as well, man. and I didn't see you last week because I was traveling, but happy to be back in the co-hose seat.

You were in Freedom Country. I was. I was in Freedom Country. I filmed a podcast on top of Volcano. It was absolutely bonkers. And yeah, it was great. Dude, the Plan B forum, those guys do such a great job. And I know you're a big fan as well.

But essentially, I had to do two days of back-to-back podcasts in Spanish. And that was interesting. Yeah. So yeah, great time. Great time. Sounds like you killed it. Sounds like it was a good time. So yeah, man.

Well, I'll toss it to you. What's going on? What's top of mind? What is exciting this week in the world of Bitcoin? Yeah, absolutely. So speaking of El Salvador, I don't know if we timed this. El Salvador merchants no longer obliged to accept Bitcoin. Merchants in El Salvador, the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender,

will no longer be obliged to accept a cryptocurrency as payment under reform adopted to comply with conditions for an IMF loan. It says international loan, but it's an IMF loan. It goes on to say, the IMF said last month it had reached an agreement for a $1.4 billion loan with the government of President Nybukle, but a condition was that, quote, acceptance of Bitcoin by the private sector will be voluntary and public sector's participation in Bitcoin-related activities will be confined. That's an interesting word. Furthermore, taxes must only be paid in U.S. dollars. The country's other official currency and, quote, the government's participation in the crypto e-wallet, Chivo, will be gradually unwound. The IMF had said the loan was, quote, to address balance

of payment needs and support the government's economic reforms. The Central American country's Buckele-aligned Parliament adopted the reform late Wednesday, launching Bitcoin as legal tender on September 7, 2021, Buckelet said he wanted to bring the 70% of Salvadorians who do not use banks into the financial system. Swatting away warnings about volatility risks. I mean, the media, bro. The media. Oh, by the way, I'm going to interject here. So with this doge, and I'm not talking about the cryptocurrency, but the Department of Government Efficiency that Elon Musk is heading here in the U.S., it was discovered that essentially the USAID, or US aid has been paying the legacy media.

So they gave more than half a million dollars to Politico. They gave four and a half million dollars to New York Times. And then just connect the dots, right? The New York Times wrote a lot of hit pieces on Bitcoin last year, the last couple of years. Now we know who was paying them. It was the Biden administration that was paying them, right? And when you see these legacy media outlets

and the way that they're phrasing things towards El Salvador and Bitcoin, now we know that the U.S. government under the Biden administration was funding all these legacy media outlets the entire time. It's a huge scandal right now here in the U.S. Like it's a massive, massive scandal.

A lot of people are extremely, extremely upset about it. Like, how could you be free press? I mean, I know that in Canada there's like official state, like news networks. But the New York Times is supposed to be an independent news agency. How can you be an independent news agency

when the U.S. government is paying you $4 million a year, right? Like absolutely crazy. Anyways, going back, swatting away warnings about volatility risk, he promptly began plowing an undisclosed amount of public money into cryptocurrencies, now into Bitcoin, right?

This whole thing is inaccurate. To spur Salvadorians to use Bitcoin, he created the Chivo wallet app for sending and receiving Bitcoin free of charge and gave $30 to each new user. In September 2021, the cryptocurrency traded at $44,000, but its value has fluctuated greatly and a year goes worth $23,000. Since Donald Trump's election last November, the value has soared by about 50% topping $100,000. About 92% of the Salvadorians did not use Bitcoin in 2024. for. Okay. So I talked to Samson Mao about this, and I actually talked to Mrs. Magorga.

Majorga is the official representative to the United States, the ambassador to the United States from El Salvador. Now, to clarify a little bit, and it really kind of depends on how you're looking at it. So the legal tender law is no more. There's also no obligation for vendors to accept Bitcoin. However, and it depends on how you look at the glass. It's a half, is a glass half empty, a glass half full, right? So depending how you look at it, every vendor in El Salvador wasn't accepting Bitcoin anyhow, right? Like very few vendors, like only the official ones, like McDonald's or like whatever, like the vendors at the airport from big franchises were already accepting Bitcoin.

No one else was really accepting Bitcoin. That's number one. Number two, the adoption of Bitcoin on the ground in El Salvador is already happening because of volunteers. It never really happened from the top-down approach. People didn't, like, to be frank, like El Salvador, Bitcoin never really became very popular in El Salvador. There are sections of El Salvador where Bitcoin is extremely popular, but the top-down approach never worked. And then the last thing that I'll say is, despite all these quote-unquote concessions to the IMF, Buckele continues to smash buy Bitcoin every single day. And, I mean, look at that candle.

Yeah. And where is he getting that extra money? Could it be the IMF? This is a little bit. I know that I think there's conditions in the loan where they're not supposed to buy Bitcoin with the loan. But like really when it comes down to it, if they've got extra money that they can use for other purposes, does that not then free up other money to smash buy Bitcoin? Yeah, exactly. So I think they're smashed buying Bitcoin with, I think there's, I think there's, they're smash buying Bitcoin with that sweet, sweet IMF money. That's my humble opinion. I could be totally wrong here. I could be totally speculating. But that's what it looks like from my perspective.

Okay. Yeah. Anyhow. Any thoughts on this, Ben? Yeah. So, I mean, I'm torn on it. You're right. I think that top down, all that top down approval, I guess we'll call it that,

is, is, it gives you a little bit of runway to be able to kind of build things out and make it more resilient. But like, it's not like Satoshi invented Bitcoin and went to the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government said like, hey, guys, I'm putting together money that's going to directly compete with the U.S. dollar. Is that, is that cool with you guys? Can you guys get that a rubber stamp of approval? No, it's like he built it, released it to the world, and then the world had to grapple with the fact that it existed. And same thing with El Salvador itself. It didn't, like the whole Bitcoin thing there didn't start because Buckelly was like,

we're going to use this as legal tender. It started because of Alzante and a single bitconer who seated a local circular economy there anonymously, actually. And people voluntarily went out of their way to build up the community there until it was, until it couldn't be ignored. and they just happen to get a friendly government saying, hey, we'll run with this idea. And, you know, in no way should you ever really rely on government for any of this thing.

It's nice when they give you a little bit of a pass and you're able to just build unabated. But, yeah, I'd say in general, as long as it remains so that you don't have to pay capital gains on it, that's the main thing, right? as long as it remains, oh, you know, there's no penalty for you just using it in your day to day, then you still got a free and open playground to use Bitcoin as a local currency for those that want to do it. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, it's, it's, again, this is the way it should be done.

It should be voluntary adoption. It should be bottom up adoption. It shouldn't be top down, you know, and it doesn't work top down, right? Bitcoin's going to be adopted by its incentives because it's the fact that it's better money. But this whole top-down thing, it was a good try. And I'll be honest with you, Ben. I'm a little bit disappointed about it not being legal tender. It's a little bit of a letdown.

I'm not going to lie. But, you know, like, I guess they really needed that loan. But, you know, on the bright side, and this is one of the things that I ask, Mrs. Magiorga, the ambassador, I said, what about the capital gains implications? So there is no capital gains. So like if you use Bitcoin as currency in El Salvador, it's not like using Bitcoin in Canada or the United States. There is no capital gain implication.

Like you don't have to pay taxes because you're using Bitcoin, right? So again, it really kind of like it's a, it's a optics victory for the IMF because it's like, oh, look, Bitcoin isn't legal tender. but in reality, has anything really changed? And I would say no. Yeah, it wasn't being enforced in the first place. The legal tender law, because legal tender laws means that you're supposed to accept it as currency. And yeah, like you said, if you were to plunk down in the middle of San Salvador and walk into your average store, you're not going to be able to pay in Bitcoin.

That said, in San Salvador, if you wanted to, you could live on Bitcoin. you would just need to be cognizant of where you're shopping and which merchants you're going to go to. If you're in Elzante, yeah, you can just walk down the street to most businesses and they'll accept Bitcoin. So, yeah. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And Elzante, and again, they do it because they're incentivized to do it.

They don't have an alternative. They don't have visa. They don't have those things. So they use Bitcoin out of necessity, you know, and I think that's what we want out of Bitcoin adoption. We want people adopting it because they want to adopt it. rather than a government mandate. So moving on to the next big piece of news,

the United States is announcing Trump. Trump's going bananas. Apparently, Ben, we're going to be part of the same country. Apparently Canada is going to join the U.S., the Gulf of America. Apparently Greenland is coming. He's going ham, all to say the least. But one of the things that he's, one of the executive orders that he announced was the establishment of a source.

Wealth Fund. Now, what's really interesting about the sovereign wealth fund is who was behind it. So the person behind it was Howard Lupnik. Howard Lupnik is the chairman of Counter-Fitchgerald, and he actually manages all the money for tether in the United States, number one. Number two, he actually went on POM's podcast not too long ago, and he said some interesting things about Bitcoin and being a Bitcoin owner. But before I get to that, here is Senator Cynthia Lummis, the Bitcoin Senator, and she says this is a big deal.

And the B is a Bitcoin B, right? So, I mean, just put two and two together, right? So sovereign wealth fund, Bitcoin B, Senator Cynthia Lammis, and the person behind it is one of the people behind it, these two gentlemen, the person on the right is Howard Lupnik. And this is what Howard Lepnick just said on Anthony Pompliano's podcast. I have one last question for you before I let you go. How rich are you and how much of your net worth is in Bitcoin?

Because if I don't ask you, everyone will be really mad at me. If you took my stake in my public companies, which is public and you did the public math, you'd see a couple of billion dollars. Okay. Okay. And then at least a couple of billion dollars. And then you'd have, you know, what's Canter worth? Yeah, I'm not saying. Okay. But things are good for me. How about that? Is that a nice way to say it? Since Canter owns the stakes in the other companies, it's good for me. So, and I have the percentage. You don't have to say exact number, but like, how do you think about either you or

Cantor? I don't have a big enough percentage. I probably have, you know, if, I can't say because then people can figure out that none and how much I have. I would say I have hundreds of millions of dollars. Okay. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Exposure to Bitcoin. And it will be billions. I was going to say, so next year when you come back,

and we'll do this again, and you'll be a Bitcoin billionaire. And you remember that model I told you. So if every time Bitcoin dips, I'm going to be the buyer. Trust me, I know why you're doing the lending. It's all coming. Listen, you don't have to explain that one around here. I got the 50% Bitcoin. I got the Bitcoin lending.

But basically, what you're going to see is Canada Fitzgerald is going to be the sponsor of Bitcoin intertraditional finance. And so we will be the leader of it. And I'll pull out this podcast in years to come and say, see, I told you because no one's going to remember. Of course. Right. But all the banks, after we do it and show people how to do it, right, they'll all

copy. And so the asset of Bitcoin will just, as it becomes more accepted, it will become more valuable. And the whole Bitcoin nation should just call it a commodity, never a currency. Just call it a commodity. Because if it's a currency, you're attacking the politicians of the country, right? You're trying to replace my currency with yours. But if you say, hey, hey, I'm just oil, I'm just gold. I'm just a commodity. Leave me be, right? Then they'll leave you be.

And that is true. And it will be why Bitcoin, which is rare and is special, will become ever more rare, as we both know, ever more valuable over time. It'll be financed just like gold is, right? Gold is, it's not like super-financeable, but it's financeable. Oil, it's not super-financible.

But it's financiable, right? Bitcoin will be financable. Bitcoin will be way, way, way higher, sometimes lower. You just have to have faith. All right. So that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Secretary of Commerce. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the dude to the right side of President Trump when he signed the sovereign wealth fund. Okay.

So why am I going down this whole, you know, like pointing all these pieces together? and connecting the dots, Bitcoin is going in that mother effing sovereign wealth fund. It's happening. It's like guarantee. The dude in charge of it just told you he owns hundreds of millions of dollars

with the Bitcoin. What do you think is going to happen? It's not rocket science. All right. Rent over. Yeah. I mean, show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome, right?

Like, this guy is very much incentivized to have Bitcoin in that sovereign wealth fund. I, So again, I get why he's saying, oh, don't call it a currency because then it'll be seen as an attack. And I get why people in positions of power would want to outwardly talk like that. But at the same time, F that, like for me, it's fully a currency. I'm fully replacing using dollars with Bitcoin instead.

I don't want the dollars. I disincentivize people from paying me in dollars. I want to accept Bitcoin. I want other people to accept and use Bitcoin day to day. And so, yeah, I get the sentiment. I get where he's like, oh, yeah, we'll finance it and we'll do all this other stuff. Like that's his use case. And to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

But yeah, man, I'm using it for savings, but I'm also using it for day to day. And I think that's very important. Yeah, 100%, 100%, man. And orange man, orange man, orange coin. So all the other shit he's doing is hilarious. Okay, moving on. So another orange man type of news, but this is not related to Howard Lupnik, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Commerce.

This is related to David Sacks. David Sacks is the so-called crypto and AI czar. and they held their first press conference. So I'll read a little bit about this, and then I'll play you guys the video. So today, David Sacks, and this is, let me tell you guys the date, this is from February 4th, so two days ago.

Today, David Sacks, President Trump's Crypto and AIsar, held a press conference alongside Senator Tim Scott, Representative French Hill, Senator John Boosman, and Representative G.T. Thompson, to unveil new plans for U.S. leadership in digital assets. They introduced the Genius Act, a bill aimed at regulating stable coins by establishing clear issuance procedures and designating federal and state regulators based on the issuer size.

SAC emphasized that keeping innovation onshore is a top priority to ensure the U.S. maintains global leadership in financial technology. To advance this initiative, he announced a joint working group between the House and Senate dedicated to crypto legislation. This effort reflects the administration's broader goal of creating regulatory clarity and fostering a thriving blockchain ecosystem within the United States. Despite these announcements, and that's another key point. We had a massive dump after this news.

We went from like 102. We dropped to like 93. No one gave an F. Here is the announcement. And this is, again, the best part. of this entire time, of this entire administration so far, like the repeal of Sab 121, the freedom of Ross, all of those were wonderful news. I was very happy with it. But, big but, here is the actual news. This is the first time it was actually the press. He didn't do

it on his own. The press asked him the question, what's the deal with the Bitcoin Reserve? and here is David Sacks' answer. So one of the things that the president instructed us to do was to evaluate the idea for a Bitcoin Reserve. And so that is one of the things, that's one of the first things we're going to look at as part of the internal working group in the administration. So as soon as we get all that set up,

we're still waiting for some cabinet secretaries who are on the working group to get confirmed. So we're still in the very early stages of this. But that's one of the first things we're going to look at is the feasibility of a Bitcoin Reservoir. I think the concept of the sovereign wealth funds a little separate, and you'd have to talk to Secretary Ludnik, or soon to be Secretary Ludnik about that. Thank you all very much.

So Secretary Lubnik, who's that? I mean, I just showed you guys, it's this dude that tells you that he has hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin, right? So connect the dots, everyone. This strategic Bitcoin Reserve, I think there's a high probability that it's going to happen. going to happen this year. Here's another press conference that he did. Actually, before we head into that, Ben. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's funny that they left it. They didn't, they didn't even say Bitcoin the whole time until explicitly asked. And I wonder if a little bit of that is by design

in that they, like, they don't want a buying frenzy before they can get this thing off the ground, right? Like, they don't want to signal for sure that they're doing this. So I feel like, like they're kind of trying to keep it quiet or as much as they can. They're, you know, they want to be quasi transparent, but they don't want to be like, hey, we're, we're gearing up to buy a shitload of Bitcoin. That would be counterproductive because then they can buy less Bitcoin if it's expensive. A hundred percent, 100, man. 100%. All right. Well, here's the second press conference, but Ben, shall we take a break? Let's do a quick little swaperoo here. say a quick yo to our sponsors. When we get back, we'll take a peek at what David Sacks here had to say

in this press conference. We'll be one minute. We'll also give away some stats on the other side of this too. So we'll be back in just a second. Bitcoin well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the U.S. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place to be making large buys at their OTC desk of over $50,000. There White Glove Service gives you fast transactions, no slippage, and the lowest fees. You can scan the QR code on the screen or simply head to Bitcoinwell.com slash BTC Sessions to sign up today. And you can share your own personalized referral link to earn commissions. Are you ready to level up your Bitcoin mining game?

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You have access to flexible conditions, the best rates, and institutional grade liquidity. If you're looking to make use of your capital, don't sell your Bitcoin, borrow against it. You can head over to debify.com to check them out or simply skin. All right. We are back in really quick before we take a look at what David Sacks had to say. We're just going to give away some quick sats here as well. Also, if anybody, Niko, you're going to be down at Mining Disrupt. Are you not? Yeah, bro, we have like the same sponsors. It's hilarious. I know. We will both be at Mining Disrupt. Simply will be doing the live stream. It's going to be a great time.

So, yeah, get your tickets to Mining Disrupt and Ben and I will be there for sure. Hell yeah. I'm excited. This is my first mining conference. So I've been diving in more. I've got my I got my bid ax right here ready to go. I'm doing a video on it soon. I've been playing around with lots of stuff. So it should be a good time. Anyways, if you're looking for tickets, QR codes on the screen right now, we're going to give away some sats as well. This is Bitcoin well. Great place to stack stats in Canada and the US. And the way it works, you sign up. You earn points. You buy Bitcoin. You're in points. You're in points. You're in points. And those points can be used to toss a coin into the Bitcoin wishing well. And every time you do,

You have a chance to win up to a million sats. Anybody watching right now, whoever scans the QR code first with a lightning wallet will steal the sats from everyone else. So we're going to do just that right now. And furthermore, for every 100 likes on this video, I'll do an extra giveaway at the end of the episode. So smash that like button. And let's get those, let's pump those numbers up, son. And we'll do another giveaway at the end. So off it goes.

I'll make it nice and big so you guys can give it a good scan here. and 210 sats whoever scans it first congratulations let us know in the chat or the comments wherever you're watching this uh if you steal them from everyone else and uh there you go that's all the time you get and nico i'll uh i'll get your screen up here again and uh let's take a little listen to what mr sacks had to say uh in this other press conference absolutely here's david dacks the so-called white house a and crypto czar let's check it out david recast for us if you will the value of bitcoin specifically cryptocurrency and blockchain technology in general as we're now in the trump administration era

we're in the back half of the 2020s back five years ago plus there was talks about you know using it as a means of buying things now it's more about uh the store of value in the and the way you perhaps hedge against inflation in various currencies. What do you see as the real value and the reason why the United States government should be paying so much attention to it? Well, I think there's a few different aspects here when you're talking about digital aspects. So first all, you got Bitcoin. It was the first digital currency, and it's the original. It's the strongest one.

In the parlance of the industry, it's the most lindy, meaning it's been around for over a dozen years now. No one's ever hacked it. No one's ever cracked the security around it. And so it is an excellent store of value. So that would be point number one. Bitcoin is run on, as you know, a blockchain. It's basically a distributed ledger, which is essentially a form of decentralized computing. And that platform can be used to create a lot of other types of products.

And so that would be sort of technology area number two is all the innovation that can be built on top of blockchains. And then I would say a third area that's very interesting as stable coins. And this is an area that has already taken off, but mostly offshore. We want to bring that innovation onshore. We want to enable legislation to allow the issuance of stable coins in the United States. And I think the power of stable coins is that it could extend the dollar's dominance internationally, extended online digitally, and create potentially trillions of dollars of new demand for our

US treasuries, which could help support our debt and bring down long-term interest rates. So I think these are all three very exciting areas of digital asset technology. Yeah, I mean, bro, dude, that's crazy. I mean, how long ago was it when we were like essentially considering having to flee? And now there's a there's a Bitcoin and shitcoin czar in the White House. And of course, you have Howard Lubnick right here next to Trump. I think there's a very high probability. The sovereign wealth fund and the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve happened this year.

Here's Senator Cynthia Lummis. and I think it's important for everyone. A lot to do if you're frustrated that the thing you are hoping for isn't done yet. And of course, she's talking about the strategic Bitcoin Reserve. We are 15 days into a new and utterly transformative administration. Keep the pressure on, but don't get discouraged. And then there's the Finding Nemo, just keep swimming.

Here's David Bailey. David Bailey was the one responsible for getting, he's the CEO of BTC Inc, Bitcoin Magazine, the Bitcoin Conference. he actually got the, he actually got Trump to speak at the Bitcoin conference. And he says Senator Lummis should drag DOJ, the Department of Justice, in front of committee, to say what they're doing with the nation's Bitcoin. Completely inappropriate for them not to respond to her letter in light of President Trump's priorities. And I'll leave it at that.

Kind of a sovereign wealth fund update, a strategic Bitcoin update. I think it's happening, bro. I feel really good about it. Like, look, he's looking at Trump saying, hey, do you want to do the strategic Bitcoin reserve? And Trump's like, just giving him a serious face. Do it. It's going to be huge. It's going to be massive.

The biggest reserve. The orangesest. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think the more I kind of listen and the more I see what's happening with all of the appointees and all the people, all the pieces of on the board. It seems like we're going to get some flavor of it. I'm not unconvinced that we won't get some sort of like a shit coin stew in there too. There's probably going to be, you know, David Sacks and stuff in there. This is going to be a light sprinkling of whatever he's got in his portfolio too, I'm sure. Yeah, dude, it's going to be a fucking shitcoin extravaganza, man. It's going to be

like, you know, it's chichcoinery to, you know, chichcoinery to another level. Chichoyinery to another level, but Bitcoin's going to be there. And I don't think Bitcoin needs any help. Anyhow, now to the, let's get to the micro strategy rebrand. So micro strategy is now strategy. They are no longer micro strategy. They are now strategy.

That's bigger. A strategy is bigger. than a micro strategy, you know. This is true. And here's Sailor with the picture and everything, right? So it's super legit and it has strategy with a Bitcoin B, which I think is pretty cool. Sailor has changed his attire since he like 100x the market cap of his company. And here's a little bit more information.

Micro Strategy rebrands as strategy leaning further into its Bitcoin commitment. Micro Strategy announced a splashy rebrand Wednesday that, scored its commitment to its cryptocurrency strategy. The company said it will now do business under the name strategy and change this logo to a Bitcoin symbol. In its announcement, strategy said it is, quote, the world's first and largest Bitcoin treasury company. Shares of the company were down about 2% on Wednesday and were little changed after the

midday announcement. Year to date, the stock is up 17% against Bitcoin's more modest 1% gain. The company said in a regulatory filing Monday that it holds more than 470,000 Bitcoin purchased over the years for an estimated $30 billion. It began buying Bitcoin in 2020. The company recently sold preferred stock at a discount to fund its Bitcoin investments and has said it plans to raise $42 billion over the next three years as part of its strategy. Once a software firm, it is now the world's largest Bitcoin holding company and its spending, spree on the cryptocurrency has seen the stock outperform Bitcoin handedly over the last five years. Strategy shares soared on the heels of the election of crypto-friendly U.S. President Donald Trump

as part of the so-called Trump trade, but more recent Bitcoin purchases have received a cooler reception as uncertainty surrounding Trump's economic policies puts crypto stocks under pressure. New tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico, and now. Monday, for example, sent crypto stocks tumbling along with the broader market. The company is set to report fourth quarter earnings after the bell Wednesday. So here is Sailor when he approved the rebrand. He said, yes, I will do it. This is 4K footage of him doing it live. But in all actuality, I mean, Ben, what do you think about it? What do you think about it? Should we, should, should, should, should, should we drop a poll in the chat?

Yeah. I mean, do people like the, we want to know the over and under? Are people thinking this is a bullish rebrand or yeah, I think that's not a bad idea. MS rebrand,

M-S-T-R-rebrand, yay or nay? I'm, uh, yeah, I mean, like, it's just, it's weird.

We've been saying micro strategy for so long that, yeah, it seems on to me. I mean, like, yeah, I kind of feel like when I saw it, I was like Strategy B. I thought that's what they were called now, Strategy B. I mean, like, if it was called Strategy B, that it would kind of seem like, oh, we went with, we went with a different strategy, which I guess is, you know, That could be fun in its own right. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

I don't own any micro strategy currently. Maybe I'll own some strategy. I don't know. I have no idea, man. Oh, man. Look, it's simplified. I mean, Ben, like, I think we should seriously consider rebranding our channels. Okay.

Hear me out. Okay, okay. I'm just simply, you're just sessions. Yeah. I mean, just take the, the Bitcoin is out. It's out. It's just simply in sessions. Yeah. I mean, so this is when everybody uses Bitcoin and there's no such thing as like a Bitcoin company or a Bitcoin branded anything, that's what it's going to be. It's just going to be the Sessions channel and it's going to be simply. Yeah, I guess so. That's how it goes. So we'll see you guys in a few in five to ten years when everybody's using Bitcoin. Oh, man. Then we went. Okay.

And other news, extremely bullish news coming out of the Czech Republic. Czech Central Bank head wants it to buy billions of euros in Bitcoin. The head of the Czech National Bank wants to plow billions. That's an interesting word. Billions of euros worth of the country's reserves into Bitcoin, a groundbreaking move that could make it the first Western Central Bank known to hold crypto assets. Governor Alice Michelle told the Financial Times that he would present a plan to the board to invest in Bitcoin as a way of diversifying the CNB's reserves at a meeting on Thursday.

Should the board approve this, then the CNB could eventually hold as much as 5% of its $140 billion of reserves in Bitcoin, 140 billion euros of reserves in Bitcoin, he said. While acknowledging Bitcoin's extreme volatility and limited record, Michelle highlighted wider investor interest in Bitcoin since BlackRock and other companies last year launched Bitcoin ETFs. He also pointed to the U.S. President Donald Trump's pledges on deregulation and the growing influence of cryptocurrency executives over his administration. In an executive order last week, Trump said set up a working group to evaluate the creation of a national digital asset stockpile. Quote, for the diversification of assets, Bitcoin seems really good, Michelle said in an interview.

Quote, those Trump guys can now kind of create some bubble for Bitcoin, but I think the trend would be an increase without those guys as well, because it's an alternative investment for more people. Now, here's the other bullish news coming out of the Czech Republic. Czech President Peter Pavel signed law to remove capital gains tax on Bitcoin after three years. I mean, how bullish is that? They're incentivizing you to hold it. If you hold Bitcoin for three years and then you sell it, you don't have to pay any taxes at all. The Czech Republic, I think, has always been leading the Bitcoin industry in Europe.

They have the famous BTC Prague conference. Also, the first hardware wallet manufacturer Trezer is from the Czech Republic. And also one of the largest and most well-known Bitcoin mining pools, brains, is actually from the Czech Republic as well. So, I mean, if you live in the Czech Republic, man, you're winning. This is very, very favorable Bitcoin. and the central bank is looking at Bitcoin and saying, hey, maybe that's probably a good idea to get some just in case it catches on.

Yeah, it's honestly the Bitcoin community in Czech Republic is incredible, in particular in Prague. That Prague conference is one of my favorite events to go to every single year. Going back again this year in May, June, June. And yeah, it's like, yeah, the BTC Prague is incredible. If you haven't been, you should probably check it out. It's awesome. It's big.

It's very well run. Lots of signal there. And the cool thing is they've got this payment system in Prague where you can, there's like an app that you can use and you can pay for meals, like, through various payment processes and everything. But it's just like a QR code on the table of various restaurants. You just scan it. And then it goes to the app. can pay however you want. But that payment processor, which is like everywhere throughout Prague, is integrated now to use Bitcoin. So you can use Bitcoin at just like countless merchants

in and around Prague. Like you open up the map of all of the merchants you can use Bitcoin at, and it's crazy. And so it makes sense to me that they would do this in Czech Republic of of all kind of European countries. And furthermore, just to point in and around capital gains, like they're this close to more or less having the same good deal that El Salvador has. Right? Like El Salvador just doesn't have capital gains at all. So you can use it day to day very easily.

But, I mean, you know, this three years wait to not have capital gains is just a stone's throw from just no capital gains on it at all. I'd love to see that happen there. Absolutely. Absolutely, man. And I hope this spreads everywhere else, too. Like, you know, no capital gains on Bitcoin. I mean, it's just money.

It's just money. Why should you have to pay a capital gain because you're using better money? And I think that's a really, really important question. Anyways, this was your Simpley session for February 6, 2025. I'm Nico from Simply Bitcoin. Ben, see you later. Hell yeah. Cheers, man.

I'll see you shortly. And everybody else, stick around. because we've got plenty to talk about on the tech side of things. In particular, what exchange has a problem with users losing hundreds of millions of dollars per year? It's a big one. It's a familiar name. And how are people losing that money? We're going to be investigating that momentarily.

We're going to give a quick shout out to our sponsors. If you could, before we go to break, please. hit that like button. It helps a ton helping this content get to new eyeballs so people can get informed on the latest and greatest in Bitcoin. We'll be back in one minute. See you soon. Looking for a simple and secure way to manage your Bitcoin on mobile, Aqua wallet has you covered. It's user-friendly and puts you in full control of your Bitcoin with secure self-custody. Aqua also supports Lightning and Liquid Network, making fast, fast, cheap Bitcoin payments and asset is easier than ever. Plus, it even supports stable coins giving you ultimate flexibility.

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traveling you can head to coin kite.com and use code btcessions for discounts or simply scan the QR code on the screen to get started right away i got to say i love you guys in the chat um i've got a i'm you know i propose a question uh what exchange is it that is uh that is losing people tons of money and how and uh and i see people uh and i'll i'll bring it up here i'm going to bring up a few of the comments here. Everybody's saying Coinbase. Is it Coinbase? Could it be Coinbase? And there are a few people saying Coinbase. And then somebody even said Conbase and they're all joking about con base. The hilarious thing is, is that the people in the chat, number one, you called it. But number two, you called the title of the meme article here that actually said conbase.

So A plus gold star for everybody in the chat, you guys know what's up. So let's talk about what's going on over at Conbase here. Coinbase users are estimated to lose at least $300 million worth of assets per year to various social engineering attacks. So this is from Zach XPT. He does a lot of good research. So Coinbase users, again, made it lose over $300 million worth of assets per year due to various social engineering scams due to the platform's continuous failure to address key security issues. Again, this is a report

from on-chain investigators, Zach, XPT. Quote, Coinbase needs to urgently make changes as more and more users are being scammed for tens of millions every month, he said. The analyst also shared a table documenting $65 million stolen from Coinbase users from December 24 to January, 2025 alone. So this past calendar month, basically 65 million stolen from users. Quote, our number is likely much lower than the actual amount stolen as our data was limited to my DMs and thefts we discovered on chain, which does not account for Coinbase support tickets and police reports we do not have access to. Look at this list that he has here of all of these these thefts. According to the report, scammers target Coinbase users using a combination of spoofed

phone numbers and emails, leaked personal information, Coinbase wallet, cloned Coinbase sites, sim swap attacks, old API keys, platform bugs, and other evolving social engineering techniques. Quote, competitors like Crackin, OKX, Binance, do not have the same issue. This is the important part. Do not have the same issue. I do not blame all Coinbase employees as most of the fault lies on leadership for these decisions, added Zagg-XBT. He also pointed out that Coinbase does not report theft addresses in popular compliance tools, and victims are often left with useless, unresponsive customer support agents that are nearly impossible to reach outside of U.S. business hours.

According to the analysts, Coinbase should at least make phone number verification optional for advanced users only while also improving its communication concerning security issues and enabling beginner elderly-friendly accounts that do not allow withdrawals. Coinbase is in a position where they have the power to make these changes

and set a good example, but they have chosen to do little to nothing. Again, a bunch of screenshots here of just all of these different things. The other month, Coinbase employee told people an X to stop using VPNs to avoid being flagged as suspicious. Meanwhile, threat actors will explicitly block VPNs from fishing sites

and not use them. Again, Marco, I've been a customer for years and you froze it for four months, a month-long response times on messages until I filed a complaint, never putting serious money on Coinbase again, discouraged all my friends from doing so, never got a response. Coinbase has been the only company I've attempted to work with and felt completely defeated. started giving high quality intel to a TNS manager in September 2023. And over the following year, there was zero meaningful action taken, whether directly against the scammers, their infrastructure or their methods, essentially nothing was done. There are many, many security incidents that Coinbase has not and probably will never make public just endless stories of stuff. Do not use Coinbase.

They are not a well-run company. Again, as Zach points out, like, well, I mean, there's different people working there, and it's not necessarily all of them. It's just like the general leadership has just made a ton of shit decisions. And they've been really, really bad over the past number of years, I mean, for quite some time. So, yeah, you got to be careful out there, guys. Don't fall for fishing scams. People try to extract information for you.

Always be very, very skeptical of. anybody on the phone or anybody reaching out to you trying to get information, it is a minefield out there. I get regularly, regular phone calls, emails, messages, all these things trying to extract money from me in various different ways. So just keep an eye out. Moving on, Bitcoin Keeper version 2.0.1. There's a new design, miniscript integration with Bitbox, cold card, Jade, Ledger, and more. So what is new? There's a fresh design across the app. They've enhanced vaults powered by minisccript with lots of support for various hardware, including my Fave, the cold card. They've got in-app concierge support as well, which is a bonus feature. They've got onboarding calls for

diamond-hand subscribers, cold QR support, which I'm so glad they used. They had NFC, but they didn't have the QR support yet. Now they do. Inherence key option for single key wallets and various bug fixes. They've also got a desktop integration with some updates there. Seed Siner has their first multilingual release now in Spanish. So if you're Spanish speaking, then there you go. You've got an easy way. Seed Siner, awesome project, by the way. Sparrow wallet version 2.1.1. They've got an update to how USB plugged-in signers integrate with the platform, which is helpful. Sometimes it wouldn't recognize. So it's a way that hardware wallets communicate via USB.

They also have, you can store and send multi-sig wallet registrations on ledger devices to avoid re-registration, which is the pain in the butt if you're using that. They also support the new jade over USB. Yeah, lots of little updates here, mostly like a bug fix update. but and also are they changing their logo it looks like it i don't know i'm just going to take some getting used to if they are i don't know anyways craig what's up envoy wallet version 1.8.6 improvement and fixes so what's new buy button is now removed from the main view uh if disabled in settings updated support area bitcoin atm map now uses information from open street maps and then a lot of various fixes i haven't played around too much with

avoid wallets. Any foundation users out there? Let me know. What do you think? Zeus, version 0.9.5, easier exporting of your on-chain seed, optimizations, and more. So again, you can export your on-chain wallet a lot easier. We previously provided users guidance on how to export their Zuse wallet on-chain seed to other wallets. Now we've made the process very easy. Again, ability to use all funds for a channel open, activity lists, optimizations, wallet lists. better highlighting of active mode, all kinds of stuff. Zeus continuing to innovate. I primarily use Zeus with AlbiHub linked to my Start 9, but I quite like it.

Block, this is very interesting. Blocks, Proto Partners with the 256 Foundation. If that sounds familiar, those are the guys that just had a telehash where basically instead of a telethon where people call in and donate money, a telehash is where, where you create your own mining pool and people point their hash rate towards it to help the increase the chances of you mining a block and they successfully on a live stream mined a block

and got 3.125 plus fees in Bitcoin, which is awesome. So you should go back and watch that anyways. Quote, today we're pleased to announce long-term partnership with the 256 Foundation, a Nashville-based nonprofit, focused on developing and advocating for solutions that lower Bitcoin's mining,

Bitcoin mining's barrier to entry from educational resources to open source software, firmware, and hardware solutions and out's Proto. The 256 Foundation of its community have developed an array of new small-scale applications for mining hardware. These applications range from heating home water systems

to low-power solutions and open-source projects designed to lower the barrier to entry, making mining accessible to a broader audience. Proto has donated up to 256K BZM to ASIC chips to the foundation. That's a cool way of doing a donation. That's really, really awesome.

Anyways, shout to Scott 9,000 and the Bitax. Again, I've got my Bitaxe here. I'm going to be doing a video on it soon. I got to make this bigger. You guys got to take a peek at this thing. It's pretty. Oh, do I? No, hold on a sec.

Let me do this. Geez, I'm just really shit in the bed on this, aren't I? My bad. Okay, here we go. So this is my 3D printed Bitax case that I just got in from CryptoCloaks. I'm very stoked to do a video on this thing. I also just had a call with Bitcoin Mechanic, and I was learning about running datum and being able to basically create my own,

my own templates for blocks and everything and mine locally with my Start 9 and my Bitax. So I'm very, very excited to dive into that tutorial. But I just had to show off a little bit there. Last couple of things here, Tether. This is very interesting, too. Tether and Lightning Labs announced USDT on the Lightning Network. So what's the deal here? Paolo from Tether and Elizabeth Stark, CEO of Lightning Labs, made the announcement during

their fireside chat that the first ever played. Plan B form in El Salvador, the integration will use taproot assets, a protocol that enables interoperability between stable coins and a range of other assets issued on Bitcoin and move via the Lightning Network. Quote, once fully integrated, Tether will operate seamlessly on Bitcoin's base layer and its layer to Lightning Network. This will enable high-speed, low-cost transactions while combining Bitcoin's robust security and scalability.

So this signifies a potential change for stable coins, which have mostly been utilized on alt-coin networks such as Ethereum and Tron. Quote, Tether is committed to driving innovation in the Bitcoin ecosystem by enabling USDT on the Lightning Network. We're not only reinforcing Bitcoin's foundational principles of decentralization and security, but also creating practical solutions for remittances, payments, and other financial applications that demand both speed and reliability. So that's very interesting. I wonder, I'm waiting to see if that has real impact. Like, are people actually going to migrate to this? Are they going to keep on using, you know, shitcoin, you know, like Ethereum and Tron and stuff like that for stable coins?

I don't know. But again, I mean, if you look at Liquid, Tether is on the Liquid network. And like that hasn't really picked up that much. I mean, if I was going to use stable coins, I'd probably use. use liquid over anything else to do so because at least there's not like a token associated with it. But I don't know. I'll have to play with it, though. I'm sure I'll do a video tutorial on how to use it.

You guys got to swing by tomorrow evening for Why Are We Bullish. We've got Mike Germano. We've got the most frequent visitor to Why Are We Bullish, Guy Swan. And this guy over here on the left, he may look familiar to. Miller. If you're saying, why does that guy look familiar? Where do I know him from? Well, it might be one of these movies or TV shows. He's been on Silicon Valley. He was in the first two Deadpool movies. He does voices for how to train your dragon. He was in Cloverfield, one of the Transformers movies. Yeah, and he's a bit coiner. And I met him New Year's Eve at

Sailor's 100K party. And he has agreed to come on the show. So, maybe. make sure that you swing by to chill out with myself, Mike Germano, Guy Swan, and T.J. Miller. And yeah, it should be a good time. He's a pretty cool guy. He's a lot of fun. And I'm excited to have him on. So, yeah, come join in and have some fun. If he can, head up to the channel right after this and mark a little reminder for yourself to hit it up. But that's tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern Time should be a good time. And then outside of that, check out the latest tutorial that I dropped earlier in the week. I did a refresh of the Umbral Home. So how to set up your own Bitcoin node with Umbrel. And yeah, I just basically ran through running Bitcoin Core and Lightning, setting up Albi Hub, linking on-chain and lightning wallets,

and accessing it remotely with something called Tailscale. So hopefully you guys find it useful. Give it a share all around. And then finally, hey, you guys want some free stuff. You can get yourself a free book from Jesse Berger of Bitcoin Mentor. I'll bring up a QR code for you. You can scan that, drop an email address in there, and you will get yourself a free copy of his book. Magic Internet Money, I'll read a little bit about it.

Magic Internet Money, a book written by one of our top mentors, Jesse Berger, explains many key concepts, underpinning Bitcoin in simple and relatable terms beyond the basics. It explores topics such as banking, cryptography, economics, governance, and more. This added context highlights how Bitcoin can address many problems facing the global economy and why it's position to usher in a brighter future for all. So, yeah, it's great for simplifying, answering questions about why Bitcoin matters. And it's a great resource to give to newcomers. He's very concise in his descriptions of stuff.

So if you've got somebody in your life that you think could benefit from a little bit of Bitcoin education, scan that QR code and drop your email and get a customer. copy of the book and gift it to them. Well worth it, in my opinion. And with that, we're going to round out now. Thank you guys so much for watching. Make sure you do smash that like button on your way out of the room. And of course, keep stacking sets. Keep stacking skills. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This was your Simply session.