BTC Sessions - NEW: $24 TRILLION Institutional Bitcoin Bombshell? | Cedric Youngelman, Joe Consorti, Seb Bunney

Episode Date: February 15, 2025

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What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Did you know the top 50 U.S. banks just in the U.S. have a combined $23.985 trillion in assets, according to S&P Global Markets Intelligence Data. And in the past two months, we've seen two major regulatory changes that have unlocked that liquidity to potentially begin flowing. into Bitcoin. When you pair that with 30 of 50 U.S. states at some phase of creating Bitcoin strategic reserves, let alone what comes to fruition on a federal level and with other nation states, the feeding frenzy may have been just about to begin at the beginning of this year.

So we've got a killer panel to discuss this and much more over the course of the episode. We're going to be chatting with Joe Consorti. He is Head of Growth at Thea. We also have Seb Bunny. He is author of the hidden cost of money. If you can see it down here in the corner. He also is co-founder of Looking Glass Education, jargon-free Bitcoin and finance education.

And he works over at Block Rewards, charge of education over there, doing the Lord's work, helping people, learn about Bitcoin. And then, of course, we've got the incredible Cedric Younglman. Of course, you'll recognize him from the Bitcoin Matrix podcast. And more recently, he's also on YouTube with Byte Federal with Bitcoin Center. We're going to be getting mega bullish. You are not bullish enough. And we're going to hear about why everyone here is so damn bullish. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session.

All right, let's get our guests in here. I want to welcome to the stage. Cedric and Seb and Joe. Gentlemen, welcome. How are you guys doing this evening? Absolutely fantastic. Thanks so much for having us on the show. It is pitch black outside.

It's only 6 p.m. here in the north, but we're loving it either way. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little chilly here too. It's been a solid minus 20 degrees where I am. I need to get some sun, I think. Seb, you look bundled up as well. You guys need to move over west, further west.

We're still got the light. It's totally fine. I don't know what I'm doing with my life here. Cedric, how are you? I'm doing awesome. Thanks for having me. I couldn't be more bullish. It's balmy 85 degrees and sunny outside.

So, yeah, man, things are good. I'll be down in Miami in about four days here. So I have that on my radar. I can escape the cold for a bit. But gentlemen, we are here. To get bullish. There's always a reason in Bitcoin to be bullish. I've alluded to some stuff off the top of the show. And Joe, I'm going to be tossing it to you first. And we're going to queue you up with the same question every gets. But before I do, I just want to say to everybody that's joining us live, thank you guys for being here.

Those of you that are in the live chat, great to see you. Operation Bitcoin, BTC Hardy, Johnny, Lightning Goats, everybody that's joining in. Great to see you guys. If you can, if you're on that live stream, make sure you hit that like button. It really, really does help get this out there and please those algorithmic gods to proliferate the show elsewhere. And if you're escaping all of the algorithms and you're joining us from a Noster, then hats off to all my Nostrogis. Thank you for being here. So yeah, smash that like button.

a share. But Joe, here's your question. Why are you bullish? Great question. You know, and that's why I like this show so much is because really in the world of Bitcoin, these developments are 24-7-365, just like the Bitcoin network itself. More recently, obviously, we had Trump come into office. Several of the promises that he made regarding Bitcoin have already been followed through on. The ones that could have been done with the stroke of a pen during the Biden administration have been done with the stroke of a pen. Now the Trump is in office. And I'll rattle off the two that I imagine we're going to spend a lot of time talking about.

Those are the repeal of SAB 121, which makes it so that banks will now be able to custody Bitcoin on behalf of their clients. And the FASB accounting change. So there was this rule that basically forced companies to mark their Bitcoin down as a liability rather than an asset. And they couldn't mark any of the gains. So for example, if a company bought Bitcoin at 15K, they couldn't mark its value up. to fair value, which is market value, which right now is $97,000, but they had to mark down all the losses, right? Because it's a liability. So if the price dropped from 15 to 12, they would log that even though the price right now is close to 100K. So that's a massive accounting change,

which will drive more CFOs to consider allocating to Bitcoin in size for their businesses. And so now we have micro strategy. We have similar. We have a couple of other companies here stateside and elsewhere who are customing Bitcoin. Now you're going to see a lot more companies, public and private, adding a whole bunch of Bitcoin to their treasuries because they can. It's much more easy to do without this regulatory scrutiny. And which are the biggest developments. And actually today we have some news on specific banks that have announced they're going to launch Bitcoin custody products.

Now banks can custody Bitcoin on behalf of clients. So I imagine we'll be talking about everything that has to do with this, Bitcoin lending products, being able to go to buy Bitcoin at your bank using an ATM and just your bank debit card. Really, these are the two biggest shifts in my mind for Bitcoin since the block size was. So that's why I'm bullish. I'm really excited to chat about it today. I like that. And so there's some nuance in and around, you know, banks being able to custody Bitcoin for their clientele. And, you know, obviously it gives more people exposure to the, I guess the price of Bitcoin. as it fluctuates, there's still this elephant in the room is something that you said regarding,

oh, maybe you'd be able to use your debit card and link it to a Bitcoin account. Right now the elephant in the room around that is the capital gains implications of that. Do you think that if we start seeing more products like this, there will be a reconsideration of that stance in the US? You know, I believe so. I believe that the prospect of repealing the capital gains tax on Bitcoin has never been higher. We saw one country in Europe. It's escaping me.

I think it was Belgium that got rid of capital gains tax on Bitcoin. I could be wrong. Check the Republic. Let me check. Okay. Fantastic. I apologize there. I focused on everything stateside.

Nothing to do with anywhere else in the world. Yeah, exactly. Just complete blinders. Look at deer in the headlights. But, you know, with Trump being so avowedly pro-Bitcoin, unfortunately, he's pro-Crypto too. His old life is a huckster selling, you know, puzzles and lunchboxes and stuff like that. It can't escape him. I love what he's doing for the country, right?

But that old tendency just can't seem to slip for now. So we launched Trump coin and Malani coin and all this other garbage. And so, you know, I have a feeling that even though he's done all those other things, he's still very avowedly pro-Bitcoin. And the task force that he assembled, led by David Sachs, is very, very, very, very well, promising. And the reason that I say that is during their first press conference, David Sacks used the term strategic Bitcoin Reserve. You didn't call it a national digital asset stockpile, which is the language that we used in the executive order that assembled this reserve, or this working group, which would determine the viability of a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

He used SBR, right, not the other digital asset stuff. And so for me, that's a really positive development. It tells me that this administration is serious, right? Trump himself may not know a whole lot about it, but he's assembling a team around him that is very serious. You know, on day one, proverbially, right, within the first 10 days, he repealed Sab 121. Obviously, January 1st of this year, the FASB accounting rule was changed. He's assembled his working group. So that tells me he's very serious. And Trump is a competitive guy, too.

You know, we've seen immediately what he's trying to do with Canada, sorry, and Mexico as well. You know, with tariffs, he's a very, very competitive guy. And so that tells me right off the bat that he's going to be very wary of capital flight from a potentially, you know, Bitcoin antagonistic country. And so he wants to make the United States the best country around the world to be a, you know, Bitcoin user, a Bitcoin business, whether you're mining, whether your financial services and the like. And so that leaves me highly encouraged that, yeah, we might very well get rid of capital gains tax on Bitcoin in the United States. and that would have absolutely seismic implications for the way that people treat the asset. I am curious to get thoughts and or questions from both other gentlemen in the room. So maybe I'll jump down to Seb first if you have any comments, questions,

in and around what Joe is talking about here. No, absolutely. And I think Joe, you're absolutely right. I think this is such a huge step forward. And what comes to mind is, as Bitcoin is, we always talk about Gresham's law, the bad money pushes out good. Well, this is only when we have legal tender laws in place. When the government puts regulation and pace that basically prevents competition, you see people

have to, or a merchant has to accept the bad money. They can't choose to accept the good money. And so in time, bad money pushes out the good. But what's interesting in what we don't usually talk about is Thier's law, which is in a free market when there's no legal tender laws, people will always choose to use the better money. So you actually get good money pushing out bad. And what's interesting is I think all of these steps are moving towards more of a free market. If we move, remove legal tender laws, we've got the repealing of SAB.

What we're doing is we're putting Bitcoin on a, on the same level as the US dollar, on the same level as the Canadian dollar, you name it. And I think in time, people recognize that Bitcoin is the superior money, and we're going to see more usage of Bitcoin, given that why would you want to save and store your value in a money that is deteriorating. Yeah. Cedric, I'll toss it to you. I've got some other than you, but you go ahead first. Well, I mean, I think Joe hit the nail on the head.

I mean, the repeal of Sab 121 and then Sab 122 is the pinnacle of what Michael Saler called the trifecter before the Bitcoin ETFs. He said there were three catalysts that will take Bitcoin to $5 million. First was, you know, spot ETFs being approved. The second was the fair value accounting rules from FASB changing. And the third was, you know, banks being able to custody and lend against Bitcoin is collateral. And all of these are tremendous sort of buy and hold momentum factors. You know, the one I would sort of push back on is I would see, you know, the repeal of capital gains tax and Bitcoin's legal tender as not bullish, right?

That's a reason to sell. I think a lot of Bitcoiners kind of thinking of fiat there, like, wow, I can exit and not pay taxes. I can take profits into fiat. And that would bring a lot of sell pressure to Bitcoin. But all these other things, being able to collateralize and borrow against Bitcoin, institutional-grade custody, which maybe is not self-custody, which we're all promote. But I think these are reasons to hold and never sell, being able to borrow against. So I think that these are catalyst to drive Bitcoin price appreciation tremendously. I couldn't be more bullish than on this reason.

I like that. Seb, I wanted to tag on something you said there about, again, the inverse, you know, bad money, pushing out good and good money pushing out bad. And, you know, I think what you've honed in on with Gresham's law being reliant on legal tender laws, it's so true. And I think that those legal tender laws, even in and of themselves, can only hold back that damn for so long, right? Like when the money gets so bad, people aren't going to care about what kind of

regulations they're going to be slapped with as they're trying to maintain holding onto the fruits of their labor. And I think that the first place or the first places we're going to see this again is, you know, even though El Salvador doesn't have a legal tender law in and around Bitcoin per se anymore, there's still no capital gains there. And so it's a voluntary, if you want to accept it, you can kind of situation. this is where we actually get to see that play out. And it's not like you flick a switch and everybody's accepting Bitcoin because everybody knows that it's better money. No, it's over time people see those that have accepted and held on to Bitcoin. They are much better off.

And when it comes to myself, I'm living on Bitcoin now. 95% of my income is Bitcoin. I have found ways to make that work. Some of its services where I can pay bills and some of it's, you know, using like gift cards and stuff like that. And others is actually building a circular economy here in my city. And so you are at it. You've got to come to the sat market, which is how I got my hands on this book, actually. But I think you can get to a point as I've experienced where you realize, you know what,

even though there are implications with using Bitcoin day to day, when I step outside of that system, on average, I'm going to be better off anyways. Because when you think about it, if you are penalized for having maintained or increased your purchasing power, that means that you're ahead. And so you're having to give up part of that gain. But it's it's, it's on the other side of the spectrum, if you're perpetually losing purchasing power, you're just always behind. And so it's like, it's like saying, I won the lottery, but I don't want it because I have to pay part of it in taxes. No, you're crazy. You're better off in that situation. So I think, I think that over time, you might, you might begin to see that. And again, I think it comes in a gradual

sway where people say, I'm going to accept Bitcoin. I prefer to accept Bitcoin. I'm going to incentivize people to pay me in Bitcoin or I'm going to disincentivize people from paying me in dollars and eventually I don't want dollars. Well, and I think as well, like what's so fascinating, which you're kind of bringing up is the fact that if Bitcoin is succeeding with all of these hurdles, with all of this kind of pressure to use U.S. dollars or, other assets, it really just shows you how superior it must be for people to still choose to use it. Even with like Michael Saylor choosing to use it prior to the repealing of SAB, you name it. And that's what I think is so incredible is that if we're able to even just level the playing

field, I think that it's just going to be no contest. Because at the moment, it's kind of like we're doing 100 meter sprint and the US dollar is starting at the 90 meter mark. Like it's nearly at the end and Bitcoin's starting from way back. So leveling the playing field, I think is just it's going to be no contest. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Do you guys, Joe, I'm with where we've kind of gone in this conversation. Do you have anything else you want to tag in here?

You know, nothing major. I think that ultimately like 2025 is just going to be the year where Bitcoin is totally refrained in everyone's minds. Obviously in El Salvador, they had to walk back some of the laws they had in place with Bitcoin, make it so it's not mandatory for merchants in order to get that IMF loan. One of the things they promised was that they would reduce purchases, but the moment that they got the loan, they stacked like 20 Bitcoin or something like that. So, you know, even I think that world governments, including places like the IMF, are going to have to come around to Bitcoin. Now that these banks are playing ball and we know that this whole intergovernmental cartel is controlled by the banks, heavily influenced by them, it's going to be in their best interest to make it so that there is accommodative toward Bitcoin as possible.

And today with the third and 14th largest banks in the United States, Citibank and State Street announcing they will create Bitcoin custody products, I think that's just even more proof that people like the IMF who were formerly hostile toward Bitcoin will have to play along. And then, you know, once that happens in everybody's minds, Bitcoin takes a fundamental step away from, you know, this lottery ticket, like these lottery ticket equivalents that we talk about, you know, crypto, sports gambling, actual lottery tickets. Bitcoin finally in most of the public zeit guides firmly steps away from all that stuff and into a whole new category of its own.

Yeah. Yeah. On that note, people coming around to Bitcoin and the inevitability of it all, before we shift gears and go to our next reason for being bullish, I just wanted to really quick give a shout out to on this lovely Valentine's Day. I want to give a quick shout to the European Central Bank and their cheeky tweet. Roses are red, violets are blue. Inflation is on track to settle around two. And the subsequent replies that they've gotten absolutely bombed with. Thanks, Knut for that one.

Walker, Walker, America with roses are red, violets are blue. Inflation's not transitory. Legarde's a criminal, too. So, yeah, roses are red, violets. our blue inflations on track to slowly steal from you. It's littered with fantastic replies. So, you know, happy Valentine's Day to you all. We are going to give a quick shout out to our sponsors of the show,

but on the other side of this, we're going to be asking Seb why he is just so damn bullish and he can't hold it in. We're also going to give away some sats on the show. other side of the break. So make sure you have your lightning wallets handy because whoever scans the QR code first is going to steal all the stats from everybody else. And if you're in the live chat, if you're watching this live, please do give that like button to smash. That really, really does help get more eyeballs and more people in the room. So smash that like. We're at 50

likes right now and across all platforms. So far we've had around 1,500 viewers pop in between YouTube, and X and others. So we will be right back in one moment. See in a sec. Bitcoin Well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the US. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place to be making large buys at their OTC desk of over $50,000. Their white glove service gives you fast transactions, no slippage, and the lowest fees. You can scan the QR code on the screen or simply head to Bitcoin well.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? Mining Disrupt is the

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I'll throw that QR code off to the side there. That'll get you 20% off tickets. This is my first mining conference, and I've been diving a lot more into kind of like the home pled pleb, lotto mining stuff as of late, and it's been a lot of fun. I've got behind me on the shelf, I've got two bid axes, a nerdax, a brains mini miner, and a future bit all purring away. And I just finished my bidax tutorial, hooking it up to data,

running on my own start 9 with Bitcoin knots. And so that's, that's, uh, I've been busy with that stuff and it's been a lot of fun. So I'm excited to get to a mining conference. Uh, so yeah, if anybody's curious about that, give that a scan. But we're going to give away some stats really quick here. I'm here on Bitcoin well. Of course, awesome place to be stacking stats in Canada and the US. The way it works is when you sign up when you buy Bitcoin, when you refer friends, you earn points. And you use those points to toss a coin in the Bitcoin wishing well. And every time you do, you earn a chance to win up to a million sats. So we're going to do that right now.

All you need is a lightning wallet. Whoever scans the QR code that pops up in the browser window first will steal the sats from everyone else. And by the way, if we go north of 100 likes on the video while we're live, then I'll do an additional giveaway at the end of the show. And also keep in mind, we'll get some audience questions at the end of the show too. So stick around for that. But anyways, let's toss a coin in the well really quick.

I'll make the screen nice and big for you guys so you can give it a scan. And whoever scans that in the middle first will snag the 210 sats from everybody else. Congrats to the winner. Let us know in the chat or in the comments if you got it. And you got to be quicker on the draw if you missed it. If you get in an error, somebody else has stolen them first. Anyways, with that, let's get our panel backup on the screen. And Seb, I'm looking at you.

same question. Why are you bullish? You know, I'd say like when it comes to the Bitcoin space, there's never enough stuff. Like, there's so many things going on at all times. And so you could mention riff off so many different things. But in the end, although I spend most of my time talking about the philosophical side of things, the psychological side of things, the big picture side of things, more recently, I would say that it is USDT and Tether releasing US dollars on Lightning. And to me, I think this is huge.

I think as Bitcoin is, we always want to have more people move over from the traditional financial space into the Bitcoin ecosystem. But the reality is that it is a big jump. And so I think that the more we can bridge some of the features of the traditional system into the Bitcoin ecosystem, the easier that jump becomes. And one of those is being able to move US dollars around inside the Bitcoin ecosystem efficiently without having to leave the system. And so up until now, if you wanted to move back into Fiat, but you didn't want to go into the traditional financial space, you kind of had to go to these other alt coins to go to USDT, USDC, you name it. And so with USDT moving over to Lightning, this is huge. And just to kind of share some of the numbers as to why this is so big, if you start digging into how big the stable coin market is in the cryptosphere, last year, well actually, sorry, in December, in January of this year, we have had. what is it, $1.4 trillion of funds moved through stablecoins. That annualizes to like

$8 something trillion of funds moved last year just in stable coins alone. That is huge. And so we have to recognize that if Bitcoin is 60% of the crypto markets, market share, and we had to start to see some of those funds move over to the Bitcoin ecosystem, we could see a 27% jump in transaction settled, given that Bitcoin settled $19 trillion last year. And if that was to move over to lightning, we would see a 1,190% increase in volume on the Lightning Network. So I think this is immense being able to move US dollars around in Bitcoin, simply because we need to be able to make it easier for those in the existing system to move over to Bitcoin. And to me, USDT allows us to do that. That's super interesting. And, and

it's it's something where I see it as a you know I guess I've gone beyond the the the the dollarization whereas you know I'm I'm currently on that Bitcoin standard though I do still use US dollars as a unit of an account um but I recognize like how how how uh how stable coins can be definitely attractive to people that just want that stable value, but they want, maybe they don't have access to banks or whatever it may be, or banks are just, they're just sick of dealing with banks as in and of themselves. We've seen attempts at this through other mechanisms. So obviously, you have tether on liquid, which is a side chain of Bitcoin.

We've seen things like stable sats, and so that is, I believe, Blink uses that in their lightning wallet where it's basically, they've got like a lightning channel and they're using, they're basically speculating on the price on the other side of it where you're able to more or less achieve a stable value within the channel to attain a quasi stable coin, but you're actually just holding Bitcoin. But yeah, this is the first time we've kind of actually seen directly in a way on Bitcoin itself, not like a side chain, direct access to this other than perhaps, what is it? What's the other network that I'm thinking of? It starts with an R. God, why am I forgetting it? Anyways, there is another mechanism, but it hasn't taken off. And so how ubiquitous lightning is, it would make it a lot, a lot easier to onboard to this.

I've seen an interesting thing, though, with what Aqua Wallet is doing in that they're trying to funnel people from that greater crypto ecosystem back into Bitcoin by allowing them to deposit tether. from any other chain and having it doing an atomic swap onto liquid. I would love to see the same type of mechanism onto lightning as well in other wallets. But the more we can kind of funnel people and make them realize like, hey, all this other stuff is completely unnecessary, even when it comes to utilizing stable coins, I think that can be a big win. But I'm curious to hear from maybe I'll go to Cedric first and then I'll get Joe's thoughts here.

I have lots of questions here. I want to try to understand like how is this bullish for price? Is it because huge channels are going to have to like soak up liquidity and the thought is maybe those coins are moving off exchanges? Is it somehow tied to the amount of value that's being moved around in stable coins is somehow tied to the amount of stats that would be needed to move that around? because I have to think that after this, when stable coins kind of get really friendly and comfortable on lightning, then it's probably going to be things like securities and stocks, right? And so I can see how we're moving a lot of value around on lightning, but how is this bullish for price appreciation and how is this different from like JPEGs kind of being moved

around and why is this great for Bitcoin? For sure. And maybe I should just classify that when I say, why are we bullish? I would say I'm bullish not necessarily just on like the price aspect of it, but the fact that I think one, for greater awareness and greater adoption of Bitcoin, if you're able to go into a company and mention, hey, we're able to move US dollars around and a almost trustless mechanism, almost trustless, we're still relying somewhat on tether, but you can move it around throughout lightning. I think this is huge.

Without ever mentioning Bitcoin, you're able to have people start interacting with Bitcoin. That is massive in itself. I also think that from a usability aspect of Bitcoin, the problem we face right now is if someone wants to remit money back to their home country, they live in the US, they want to remit money back to El Salvador, either you've got to rely on centralized companies like Strike, which is an awesome company, but we're still relying on a centralized company, whereas the moment we start to have USDT on something like Lightning,

you can start to have much more privacy-focused ways of interacting with Bitcoin, and moving between Bitcoin and Lightning, which we currently don't have. If people want to move back into Fiat, most of the time they've got to back through the traditional rails, there's KYC, all of these other issues. So I think that when I think about why are we bullish, it's not primarily on price. In this situation, it's more an awareness and it's on privacy and usability, I would tend to say. I would just tag in something there too.

Anything that we can do, again, to my previous point, anything that we can do, can do to make people that are utilizing the greater crypto ecosystem for these things to help them realize that it's all redundant with massive tradeoffs and just utilize Bitcoin. Because a lot of people are like, oh, you've got to use Tron or something because that's how I'm going to use my staple coins or whatever. You don't need Tron for that. You don't anymore. I think the end game here, though, is of course that eventually the U.S. dollar becomes king shit coin. And even the use of stable coins on lightning just becomes completely redundant because, like, what's more stable, the thing that's completely wasting away as you use it, or the thing that's actually increasing your purchasing power. And that becomes clear over extended periods of time.

But in an ecosystem where people are utilizing, say, like a stable coin on lightning, and they're already utilizing that mechanism of transfer. And then they say, you know what? This sucks because I keep on being able to afford less. I'm just going to stay in Bitcoin. Then I think that to me is the bullish thing. It's like the first breadcrumb of many to lead people to do. just disavowing like not only shit coins but the US dollar and then just making their way gradually

to a Bitcoin standard. But Joe, I want to get your thoughts here too. Yeah. So I'm going to take I'm going to take the opposite side of that. I'm going to say that it strengthens dollar dominance and I'm going to explain why. So Nick, Nick Batia wrote back in 2016 or 17 way long ago, before I was even in Bitcoin, about the time value of Bitcoin. It's his, Twitter name. The reason he did that was because he looked at the potential for the Lightning Network to generate a Bitcoin native yield. I wrote a follow-up piece to that. And since then it has, right? I've generated a follow-up piece to that in 2022. So coming up on three years following that, and I wrote about Terra. And one of the big things I wrote about was the potential for the U.S.

dollar via U.S.D.T to be ported to lightning. And so basically porting the U.S. dollar. on to Bitcoin rails. So making it so that people never have to leave the ecosystem. And so for U.S. dollar payments, if you're going to do them over time as these tarot channels proliferate, then one of the easiest and most cost effective ways to do that will be on the Lightning Network. So what that will ultimately do is it will proliferate Bitcoin demand, of course, but it will also strengthen U.S. dollar dominance relative to other Fiat.

And so over time, what will happen is as other Fiatian, you know, as other Fiat will be, you, out wastes away like it is now, as other crypto wastes away like it is now, both Bitcoin and the dollar, through the dollar now being ported to Terra and now it can be used across lightning through Bitcoin channels. It will allow for both of these two to rise in tandem and strengthen each other. I'm actually currently proofreading and editing Nick's new book, The Bitcoin Age, or just Bitcoin Age rather, no the at the start. And he delves really deeply into monetary history, U.S. dollar.

dominance. He talks about all of the failings of the global credit system and why Bitcoin solves all those things. But at the end, he makes this very great assertion as to why the US dollar is still going to be so entrenched. And that's because the current system we're living in, it exists on top of it, right? If that were to go away tomorrow, there'd be chaos, complete another chaos. The world will probably end as we know it. And so it'll be a slow withering away process, But in that process, the U.S. dollar will continue to remain king of the pile of shit, right? Pardon my language, while Bitcoin proliferates and becomes more widely used. And so rather than these two being enemies, I tend to think of these two as being complimentary to each other.

And that's why this makes me especially bullish, because the U.S. dollar is king of Fiat. If we can port it to Bitcoin and make it the best way to send U.S. dollars back and forth between each other, you're porting an entirely new market right onto Bitcoin. The global remittance market is tens of billions of dollars in size. And so if you can port that to Bitcoin, that's tens of billions of dollars annually, eventually hundreds of billions of dollars annually that would need to be operating on Bitcoin Rails, therefore holding Bitcoin. So that's why I'm bullish.

It makes me bullish on Bitcoin. It also makes me bullish on U.S. dollar dominance. Doesn't it provide a vast heat sink for U.S. treasuries to be absorbed, which is what the Fed needs? They need someone to buy all the treasuries. and the more stable coins you have on the more the stable coin market increased, the more treasuries Tether has to buy to back it, which is your new biggest buyer of U.S. treasuries worldwide.

Correct. And they just need that market to grow. I mean, that's part of the Bitcoin dollar. Exactly. Yeah. Does that, can we fall like, there's something that this, like, can we tug on that threat a little bit? Okay, so Tether continues to grow.

They continue to buy more and more treasurer. So that they can make a gain on on holding all that and how much Bitcoin percentage wise is tetherhold maybe five or 10% of their 100% I'll take a look. So they they themselves privately become a Bitcoin bond because 90% plus of their portfolio was backed by the United States government so the government can print the money they need to deliver on those bonds. So that's going to be done and then they can bet a little bit on Bitcoin. So Tether holds 83,758 Bitcoin.

which is probably a small amount compared to the rest of the treasuries they hold yeah they hold mostly usts but it's a really nice bet i mean they're backed by the u.s government but they're providing the heat sink for the u.s. government to just sell as many treasuries as possible as long as the bitcoin market keeps growing what we need how big of a bond buyer is is tether in comparison to 160 billion so far i believe is what they're from what i from what i remember there are top 20 US Treasury buy. And growing faster than anyone else because the top five are not buying anymore. Totally.

And what's also fascinating, what was it? I was looking at Tether, even just as a company, in terms of gross revenue in comparison to employees. There was a chart that was showing like Goldman Sachs, a Bank of America, you name it. And Tether was up there in like the top three or four basically gross revenue producers, yet their employees is like 100 employees at Tether versus Tether. tens of thousands of these other banks. Well, they get to print money.

Yeah. So my question, you go then, is our Bitcoin and our Bitcoin and the U.S. dollar temporary frenemies until they become the final boss? The U.S. dollar needs Bitcoin to issue these treasuries into this heat sink. Yeah. And I mean, Adam Curry was on Joe Rogan today talking about sort of how we're going to get probably a domestic and an international dollar. And they're going to kind of split apart. Maybe Joe could probably elaborate a little bit more on that, but or just kind of go in a different direction that you want to comment on it.

But I just, I'm a little baffled why we're building the heat sink for the U.S. treasuries. Because we need to issue U.S. treasuries. If we decreased our issuance, we would default. It's plain and simple. We're not bringing in enough revenue elsewhere in order to make those payments. Rates are at like four and a half right now or $4.25. That's not Bitcoin's problem. Yeah, no, it's the U.S. Treasury's problem.

So we need a buyer, and the buyer is either going to be the Fed or this private company. Who just becomes our largest holder. What tether effectively is, is they are another. central bank for the US government. They're issuing this synthetic US dollar, not unlike the Euro dollar market when it emerged in the 18th and or the 19th and 20th century, where these banks abroad were issuing US dollars. And then the US government was like, wait a minute, stop that. But then the US banks realized, wait a second, this is actually really good business. I'm going to go, I'm going to do the same thing, go open up some banks in Europe and start

issuing dollars. And so what that did was it entrenched US dollar dominance even more. And so what I think, I think this is actually very good what Tether is doing for the Fed and for the U.S. Treasury because they're effectively just becoming this second central bank and they're issuing synthetic dollars and they're slowly but surely becoming the largest buyer of our debt. It's not inflationary for asset prices themselves because most people cannot buy goods or services with Tether. But it is good for our fiscal policy because we have this buyer that isn't the Fed because the buyer was. the Fed, then that would obviously be inflationary for asset prices. So it's actually really good what Tether is doing. I see the, I see Cedric being like, well, I mean, it's good for the Fed, I guess. But like, I mean, I want to separate money from state.

Right. I don't want to build necessarily a bridge for them. I mean, I think, you know, Bitcoin is for everyone. They're free to build on Bitcoin. I'm just surprised how excited Bitcoiners are to kind of roll out the bridge or the tools for them to build on Bitcoin and use Bitcoin as essentially a heat sink for US Treasuries. You know, like I'm not, this is not my opinion, but I think it's an interesting stance, which is I listened to Millay, the new leader of Argentina, when was it, maybe a month ago?

And he's talking to Lex Friedman. And one of the things he says is he is an anarcho-capitalist. Well, that's interesting. He's a leader of a country, yet he is against kind of having leaders of the country's government, you name it. So you think that, well, that is kind of contradictory to one another. But what he said is that the thing is, if you hold those beliefs, then you will never create any change. So what you've got to recognize is that you've got to step over the bounds, put yourself in the current system, and then tear down the system. And so I think that when it comes to Bitcoin and say the US dollar, we can hold true to our Bitcoin ethos of self-sovereignty. We want to be completely separate of Fiat and we want to have the system over here that's

independent. But the thing is, at what point are we actually kneecapping ourselves a handicraft capping that progress. So it's like, how do we use the system to our advantage in the short term? Because in the long term, we know that we have a better currency than the US dollar. So eventually when they do have to compete head to head, of course Bitcoin is going to win. And I think that maybe that could be a way to think about it. Yeah, we got to play ball. Yeah. Some Darius in the chat, Fed 2.0.

There's definitely a lot of that sentiment from people like Mark Goodwin, Whitney Web. Whitney Webb. Yeah. And again, I haven't done a deep dive on a lot of that stuff. I am curious to see how that plays out. Again, for myself, I tend to just, I guess I struggle to see,

regardless of how this stuff plays out in the games that are played in the interim, as long as it's not preventing me from just using Bitcoin, then I'm kind of like, well, it's great. If this is a mechanism through which somebody that was using a shit coin with stable coins comes to Bitcoin, great. If this is a mechanism in which somebody who wanted a stable value and the ability to transfer across borders very seamlessly, and then it eventually leads them to using the same rails to just use Bitcoin instead, great. I don't know that it, yes, I understand the argument like, oh, are we propping up the institutions that we built this thing to replace? I can see the argument there.

But in terms of if you want the self-sovereignty, as long as you can reach out and grab it still and there's nothing that's coming to fruition that stops me from doing that, then I'm, you know, I guess I would say I'm quasi-indifferent to it, I suppose. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, if they want to be a part of the ecosystem, right, let them be. Ultimately, they can't do what is the most cataclysmic for Bitcoin, which is change its rules. You know, if they try to, they'll quickly find out they cannot. And then all of a sudden they realize I have to play this game too.

It's kind of what you see with these world superpowers considering buying it. Chances are, some of them may believe, I mean, or they may have believed over the last several years that they could change Bitcoin's rule set somehow. But they're quickly coming around to the same thing that everybody on this stage knows. And it's that I want to own as much Bitcoin as I possibly can before it gets too expensive in my denominating currencies terms. And so face with these insurmountable debt problems, I think slowly but surely these world superpowers are coming around to that reality that I can't change this thing, but

it's absolutely scarce. a once in a species asset, I better get my hands in it before my competitors do. I think that's the dynamic that we're seeing play out right now. Less adversarial, more cooperative, or at least wanting to own it rather than change it, which to me is encouraging. Yeah. So I'm going to, I'll put a bow on this topic here in regards to it. I think there's many different ways to look at it.

I think in the end for a number of people, at least the people that I care to bring into Bitcoin, it will be a segue for them to get here. But I do want to bring up one thing that taps into something, Gulaig in the chat, says, Tether is counterfeiting, a counterfeit instrument, UST. And I mean, there's nuance there, but I think the stark difference between them is, you know, you've got at its base the US dollar, which there's no limit on the supply and can be created at will by a specific set of people. And then you've got the banks which can re-hypothecate the hell out of everything and to create money out of nothing as well. So you've got like layers of create as much

money as you like. And then you've got an additional layer on top of the counterparty risk of dealing with a bank instead of cash. You've got a second layer of counterparty risk where you are using a token that represents a bank deposit for somebody else's bank deposit, which represents probably a whole bunch of debt that, who knows how sound the banking system is as is, but then it's all based upon the fiat system in and of itself where the supply is whatever versus bitcoin itself, which is you can just hold the base asset, which you know the exact supply of and which you can verify yourself at any time. So at the end of the day, I'm not particularly worried about

who comes out on top in that scenario. I feel like it's pretty clear eventually where people gravitate, but make sure that you also enjoy the benefits that Bitcoin can afford you by using it as such. But with that, we're going to do a rotation here. Cedric, when we get back, I'm going to be pointing towards you and asking the same question that everybody else has gotten. But everybody that's in the chat, thank you guys for being here. Make sure you do smash that like button. We're just shy. We're on 93 likes. If we get north of 100, we'll do another giveaway at the end of the episode. And we're going to be back on the other side of the break with Cedric's reason for being bullish. Also, at the end of the show, remember, we're going to take a few audience questions.

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I am super bullish. Well, Joe's reason and sub reasons. I mean, these are tremendously bullish things for Bitcoin. So I kind of got sloppy thirds here. But I am really bullish on GameStop considering investing in Bitcoin. Their market cap increased by a billion after hours. I was actually at Michael Saylor's house on New Year's Eve, and I was sitting in on a conversation with him asking Chris Pavlowski, the CEO from Rumble, about, do you have cash on hand after you raise money? Oh, your stock went up.

The stock market expects you to buy Bitcoin. You need to announce that you're going to buy Bitcoin. You need to buy the Bitcoin. You need to announce that you're going to buy the Bitcoin. You need to announce that you're going to buy more Bitcoin. You need to announce that you're going to borrow to buy more Bitcoin. And what's being shown here is what Michael Saylor is. is building is the social network of stocks so bitcoin is the social network of money it's the most

interesting thing in the world michael sailor has toned micro strategy into the most interesting stock in the world it's what people talk about every day what is he financializing with micro strategy what new debt product what new equity products how is he speculative attacking the dollar if the stock's up a lot of money they want to talk to him on cnbc if the stock's down a lot of money. They want to talk to him on CNBC, right? It's the most interesting stock each day. It's one of the most traded stocks in the world. It's the options are one of the most traded options in the world. And GameStop was, you know, temporarily for a while, one of the most exciting meme stocks, right? And so micro strategy is basically the king of the mean stocks or I don't say this pejority,

but like the king of the shit coins, right? It's the most exciting shit coin in the world. And I love the financialization of Bitcoin and eating Wall Street alive. And he's sort of the maestro here doing it. So GameStop, why is that exciting? Well, GameStop is the meme stock and it's exciting because I think middle class America is kind of excited about GameStop or they were. And I would like to see middle class America kind of get excited about Bitcoin. And there's a lot of nihilism, I think, in the world. And that's why people were excited about GameStop. But if people see GameStop go turn to Bitcoin and Bitcoin work for GameStop, like you were saying before, like it might, they might see it working for them. So and one thing I think of, I think of,

And I got this from Josh Mandel on Twitter, if you guys know who that is, but he's a trader. I'm not a trader, but stocks are essentially just a covered call in perpetuity. And you just pay 100% premium or 100% of the value today because there's no end date to the call option on the future cash flows or value of that company. And GameStop has a lot of cash and who's not going to want a call option on the future value of the amount of Bitcoin GameStop could put on their balance sheet today at today's prices, right? You could buy GameStop before they buy the Bitcoin. They have the cash for the Bitcoin, and then they load up on Bitcoin and you're fully ported. And again, I'm not telling people to sell Bitcoin for stocks or to buy stocks or that stocks have qualities that Bitcoin doesn't have. But it's just an exciting proposition.

I think it's turning, you know, we're seeing the social network of stocks here. And people are going to be talking about all these different stocks that are speculative attacking the dollar from similar scientific to what is a Kuhnler and now companies like GameStop. So I think it's really bullet. for for Bitcoin. I just want to highlight that as of October 2024, GameStop had $6.59 billion of cash on hand. So, I mean, yeah, I like what you said, Cetrick, in regards to the reason that GameStop was successful and became a meme stock, given that their, obviously their business model is a direct parallel to something like Blockbuster in an age of Netflix. You're now like, I have gaming consoles and both of them do not even have a receptacle to have a disc in it.

Like, it's all digital. And so, like, the business model, it's, other than, like, even with, like, Nintendo games, like, they still have cartridges. but for the most part, like, you can just download everything. So it's to the point where it's like, okay, the business model clearly, like, no wonder it wasn't doing particularly well before, but it just became a meme. Why? Not because everybody was like, oh, GameStop is going to crush it. It was, okay, you know what?

All of us are screwed. There's no way we make it to retirement. What are we going to do? Let's just, let's just ape into whatever random stock and see if we can. can screw with the financial markets. And so it was like absolute nihilism of like the system is rigged against us for whatever reason. Like we're all just like way worse off than our parents generation and our grandparents generation.

It's going the opposite direction of what it should be. How do we deal with that meme stocks and gambling? Like that's the only hope that we have of making it to retirement. But if that switch could be flicked and through that. path of nihilism and finding GameStop and then GameStop capitalizing on this temporary moment in time where they are still a meme and have cash on hand to be able to be like, how do we turn this around? Like, how do we, what do we do with this opportunity? And they find the right opportunity and it ends up being like something that can string them along in perpetuity moving forward. And

then the masses that like the absolute rabid fan base in and around that stuff sees that and goes, oh, this fixes how I felt and fixes what brought me to GameStop in the first place. If they could see that through this, it could be one of those inflection points. Funny enough that the meme stock becomes the value stock. It could be very, very interesting. Anyways, I thought that's... Make GameStop Hope again. I like that.

So I want to get thoughts from Seb and Joe, whoever wants to dive in first. Yeah, so one thing I'll touch on with the financial nihilism point is I'm planning for a wedding right now. I mentioned before we went live that I'm getting married in August. And right now we're planning for it. You know, I'm doing all the budget and everything. My mom told me when she had her wedding back in the 90s, she spent 75. $500, which was still inexpensive at the time, right? It was relatively low. The median wedding costs in the United States today is $35,000, right? So that's not the mean, right? So that's

the median. That's the average if you exclude all of the extremes. That's insane, right? And so young people like me, I'm 23, don't want to get married. They don't want to have kids. And they're buying lottery tickets instead. Our fertility rate in the United States is like 1.65. Replacement is 2.1, right, factoring in children who, you know, don't make it all the way to term. And so basically people are just resorting to lottery tickets and any variation of lottery tickets, whether it's crypto, right, non-Bitcoin digital assets or sports betting, right? Those have hugely, you know, blown up in the last several years, barstool sports, draft kings, all these different other apps where you could, you know, bet on really silly innocuous outcomes like

steak and others, even things like the rise of polymarket, right? Betting markets for just regular world events. Even though things like polymarket are very cool, it's a really cool financial innovation, all of these are symptomatic of the same disease, and that's this financial nihilism caused by perpetual monetary expansion. And so for a company like GameStop, which was kind of, it symbolically kicked off this era of financial nihilism where it was when Robin Hood exploded in popularity and everybody realize, wait a minute, lottery tickets are more available than ever. I can download Robin Hood.

I'm going to play with options. I'm going to do this and that. And then you see the rise of all these other sites that came after it. It would be hugely symbolic for that very same company that kind of kicked all of this off to begin allocating to Bitcoin and then save itself, right? You mentioned Ben that, you know, obviously games are digital now. Nintendo, they're launching, I'm a big Nintendo fan. They're launching the Switch 2. Probably in like major. June or July this year, they're still using cartridges, but largely all games are digital now. What is what does this company GameStop do? Microstrategy software business was floundering before it came to Bitcoin.

It came to Bitcoin. Now it's, you know, the best performing asset, you know, in U.S. markets, you know, in history, in the world in 2024, at the very least. And it's being included in the NASDAQ. It's about to be included in the S&P 500, thanks to this FASB accounting change. And so GameStop could could do the exact same thing. It could turn its fortunes around. It could go from only being known as, oh, yeah,

I used to go there was a kid, and I heard about the thing that happened in 2021, to one of those valuable plays in US markets in 2025, 2026, or 2027. So I think it would be highly poetic if they did it. Yeah, I think so. So do you want to also shout out to Bitcoin Dev in the comments. Good Lord, I spent a shit ton of money at GameStop on my millennial kids.

Yeah, you and my mom as well, and then my mom. myself in early adulthood. Seb, go ahead. What are your thoughts here? You know, maybe turning it back on Cedric, previously when I'd mentioned about kind of lightning, you mentioned what about the hesitance towards kind of the US dollar and the values of Bitcoin is. And I think the one thing I would say is that there is definitely

hesitance in that I find that sometimes as a community, we like to put people on a pedestal. And we've done it with Elon Musk and Tesla in the previous ball market cycle, and then he purchased Bitcoin. Bitcoin and then sold 50% of it. And we do it with Michael Saylor. And I worry that when we put these people on a pedestal, especially if they do not

have conviction, that sometimes it comes back to bite us. And that's where I get a little worried sometimes where something like GameStop, this guy may have met with Saylor and has somewhat of an understanding of Bitcoin and sees the media frenzy from buying Bitcoin. But if he doesn't have that conviction, my only fear is that six months time when Bitcoin's price starts to kind of take a bit of a downturn. He just goes and unloads that. So I think in the long term, what is the most stable way to see adoption? I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

What is the most stable way to see adoption long term? I mean, I hate to say it, but convince your friends and family to buy and stack bit. But it's hard to be an evangelist. I've gotten sick of it. It's one of the reasons I started the show. I wanted to talk to the like-minded people and stop, you know, proselytizing to all my friends and family who were sick of it. So that's a great question. I think Bitcoin, because it's so interesting, we can't stop talking about and trying to orange pill people. But I don't know what the best way is to garner adoption.

I mean, I think, though, we're seeing tremendous institutional adoption and soon to be nation state adoption, but at every level, state, local, and cities. So I think we're in hyper-bitquinization now. I think we're at the beginning of the S-curve. I mean, everything we're seeing. Wall Street is rolling out the red carpet, SAB 122, in-kind redemptions on ETFs, FASB rule change, you know, all these small public companies are really starting to edge up to Bitcoin, and they're seeing what Michael Saylor is doing.

I don't think we should revere Michael Saylor or idolize him in terms of sort of like where, you know, if he sells, oh, no, that my conviction's gone. But, I mean, it's reassuring seeing like tens of, companies start coming to this arena. And, you know, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if it's, nine out of a hundred that stay with it are going to survive and the game stops won't. So I think just the proof's going to be in the pudding. I think it's a simple A-B test for humanity. Uh, adoption will always go up like the internet. So I think even if it's slow, it's going up

forever and supply is finite and scarce and predetermined. So I think we're well on the way, uh, but I don't know what the best way is. Sorry. I'm going to yes and that. Because so with with the changes in El Salvador recently. So they they get that IMF loan and some of the conditions are, hey, you've got to make some changes. And so it points to the fact that the whole thing in El Salvador didn't start because the president first said, I like Bitcoin. we're going to be the Bitcoin country. How did it start? It started because a single bitcoiner seated a community in a random beach town and it grew large enough that people could not ignore it to the point where the president of a country said, we're going to make this legal tender.

Bitcoin was created in this exact same vein. It wasn't a, hey, let's go to people in positions of power, see how they like it and propose it to them. and get their stamp of approval, and then we'll launch Bitcoin. Hey, guys, I've got this thing, and it is a direct competitor to the U.S. dollar. I was just wondering if you could, just give me the thumbs up before I hit launch on this thing. No, I was, hey, I'm just going to go and do this, and the world is now going to have to grapple with the fact that this exists. I think that ethos is going to be the thing that has, that has,

the most life in it. There will be people that come and go that do grandiose things, and many of which are going to be positive. Like I saw the legal tender thing in El Salvador, and that was a huge announcement. It was like earth-shattering news for a lot of people, and it did move us forward quite a bit. But the even like a moderate step back from that is also viewed as like a major that that hurts kind of thing. And so, but what didn't step back is Elzonte.

Like has anything changed since the law in El Salvador changed so it's no longer legal tender? No, everybody in Elzonte is doing the exact same thing they've always done. You know? And so I think that grassroots kind of ground up adoption, as you said, like building your community, I think we place way too little value on your immediate surroundings. People think, well, how am I going to affect change all over the globe and get people to adopt Bitcoin? Don't. Don't. Look at where you are.

Look at the people that around you. And look at the people that are most too nice. in to understand Bitcoin and start with the lowest hanging fruit. And holy crap, can you ever make a lot of ground just by starting there? And then through that six degrees of Kevin Bacon from your base group, you can create a hell of a community and go from there. And so, yeah, I agree. It's starting small and you become something too big to ignore. Joe, I don't know if you want to chime in here, too. Couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. I mean, you know, it starts at the individual level, Cedric, like you said,

orange-pilling friends and family members. It's a long game. Sometimes it gets really annoying. You know, more often than not with people who I haven't seen, you know, since high school or college, you know, they call me the Bitcoin guy. They may have a few passing questions about it. When Bitcoin's price rockets up, they text me and ask about it. I get calls saying, how do I work in the industry, things like that.

But over time, it really, you know, it ultimately be. becomes fruit in one way or another. I mean, I got my 61 year old mom to understand Bitcoin and buy some. So it's a huge win for me. But the bigger thing I feel, you know, when it comes to orange billing, is what I just mentioned at the top of the show is the repeal of SAV-121. You know, making it so that any individual can walk into their bank, right? Because once one bank supports this and they see that customers are demanding a service

like this, banks love money. They're very greedy people. They will want to offer a service like that too. Obviously, there are going to be some people who try to play around with customer funds, but it's going to be very difficult to do that because you can't bail out a financial institution that's lost their Bitcoin with new Bitcoin. You can't mint new Bitcoin in a crisis. So it's going to lead to much higher quality credit creation. These banks are going to be more responsible with the Bitcoin that they're holding on behalf of their clients over their fiat. And so, you know, that for me is the biggest, orange-pilling tool. When people type in their pin code at the ATM and they see, wait

a second, what is this? There's a checking account, a savings account, and a Bitcoin account. What? And then they click the Bitcoin account, they can buy Bitcoin to the account in 20, 40, 100, $200 amounts, right? And suddenly curiosity gets sparked in their mind. That's the biggest on-ramp for me. And that's the biggest way to orange-pill people. Unfortunately, a lot of people trust their bank still. You just can't shake that out of normies. And so them going to the bank and seeing that this is an option and hearing from their banker about Bitcoin financial products, they could buy Bitcoin backed mortgages, Bitcoin backed lending, other different instruments that they could use that are attached in some way to Bitcoin as the collateral for it. It's going to get the cogs

turning. And for me, that trust that they in view with the bank is going to port itself over to Bitcoin. They're going to start thinking of it differently. For me, that's the, It's the most substantial development, one of the most substantial developments in Bitcoin's history, because we talk about how do we orange pill the masses? How do we onboard people? For me, this is the easiest way to onboard millions more people on the Bitcoin. Is this one repeal? It turns out it literally just took a stroke of a patent and it's gone. On your point of there's some people that still trust banks. There's people in the room here that still trust banks.

Come here. Come here. talk to you for a second um i'm from canada uh don't trust your fucking banks guys we've we've seen some shit up here um got a little rough uh people did not do so well uh some people uh put up some bouncy castles shit got a little wild it was cold um fun was had but uh we got debanked so you got be careful uh don't trust your banks don't trust your banks don't stay stay out of the banks. I use as little banking as humanly possible these days. But trust me on that one, from a Canadian to the rest of the world, avoid them when possible. But anyways, I think that the time has come to field some questions from the audience. So everybody that is in the live chat, I want you to

lock and load some questions. And guys, you can see the live chat over on the right. Is that correct? Okay, perfect, perfect. Okay. So everybody that's in the live chat right now, get your questions ready. Start dropping them in there. I'm going to do a quick little shout out here while we are letting you guys get your questions in. And then we'll dive right into it. So I do want to say, hey, we got north of, we got north of 100 likes. So I'm going to do another quick set. that giveaway. So everybody with a lightning wallet, please do grab that out because we're going to do that giveaway here right away first. And then we'll go on from there. So again, Bitcoin well, whoever scans a QR code first with their lightning wallet will steal the stats from everybody

else. And off it goes. And again, if you end up snagging the stats, let us know in the chat. We'd love to hear it. So there's another 210 sats for whoever scans. it first. And then, of course, I do want to give a shout out to my team over at Bitcoin Mentor. If you need any additional help in your Bitcoin Journey, then please to reach out to us over at Bitcoin Mentor.io. That's where you can learn about all kinds of things. And we did just drop a new Cold Card Mastery course that you can check out. And so I'm going to, I just wanted to bring up the QR code for it here. So if you want to check it out, if you're looking at getting a cold card and you want to

play around with it, then well worth really leveling up handling. This thing has so many features. It's absolutely insane. And so I just wanted to, like in terms of what you're going to learn with this thing, yes, the basics of setting it up if you go through Bitcoin Mentor, but we will. help you set the thing up. We'll make sure that you know how to back it up, recover it. Do all kinds of different transactions via SD card, via QR code, NFC, plugging it in, whichever your preference is, teach you how to use Sparrow wallet with it, Nunchalk wallet with it, maybe Thia

with it. You guys have QR. Do you guys have support for cold card? Is that correct? We do. Yeah, both models with QR. Nice, nice. See? And so you got to learn. But this thing is packing. with so many ridiculous features that you don't even know about. BIP 85 is an absolute crutch for me. If you don't know what it is, you've got to learn. All of the

trick pins and the hidden accounts and all this kind of stuff. You can use it as a password manager. There's something called tap to broadcast that you can use. There's just so many crazy things. So if you want to be an absolute master, then you can scan that QR code and sign up for the masterclass.

It is for a limited time only. It's not going to be a permanent fixture. but we will lead you through every facet of the cold card, and we're talking multiple sessions because you can get so in depth with this thing, the amount of things that you can do with the queue is unreal. So anyways, if you care to check it out, please do. But gentlemen, I think it's time for question period. I was going to quickly say that for the longest time,

I sought the cold car cue as an April Fool's joke, a play on Blackberry. for the longest time I thought. Yes, it 100%. And I almost love the throwback because the calculator profile, it makes sense that they would lean, you know, some sort of, it was either going to be a Texas Instruments calculator

for the queue or it was going to be a Blackberry. It was going to be one of those profiles for sure. So, okay, so I've got a question here from Deb. any successful talking point snippet that you feel is often successful in orange pilling a no-coiner. So that can go out to the whole panel, whoever wants to chime in there. Cedric, you go ahead. I like Parker Lewis's advice. Don't go for the Mike Tyson knockout and try to uppercut them into believing that Bitcoin is the greatest thing on earth.

Just stick to one fact that you think will strike through with them. And I think that's usually $21 million. Just keep hammering home. It's only going to be $21 million. is your opportunity to get a piece of that 21 million and just keep mentioning 21 million and just hammering home scarcity and just landing body blows pick one point do it for about 15 20 minutes no one wants to hear you talk for an hour no one wants the whole orange pill in their first session it's way too much information i like that i like that uh okay so let's see here nathan asked

joe besides bitcoin how do you get the younger generation back on the making babies train? Well, you know, that's an interesting question for me because I have no kids yet. Hopefully I will next year, you know, hopefully around May or June timeframe, God willing. But the only other thing I do is I encourage people to go to church. You know, I'm a devout Christian. I have been for my entire life, except for a window of time in college. I came back to the faith a couple of years ago. And that's my biggest advice for most people, especially younger people like myself who feel demoralized, who feel forgotten by the powers that be, they feel like the future is impossible. I try to bring them into the church. I advise them to go to

the church because ultimately that is where you will develop those familial values. You will understand that fully and that would be my advice. Cool. I've got one. I'm going to fill this one over to Seb, but I'm going to interject before you can answer first so that you can't self-show, which I'm sure you wouldn't have, but David asked, what is your favorite book about Bitcoin or Money? And so, David, I'm going to say, I'm going to recommend that you pick up the hidden costs of money by Seb Bunny.

It is an excellent read. Well worth your stats, please do check it out. But Seb, outside of your own works, what Bitcoin or money-related books have inspired you and helped you in your understanding? This is, you know what? This is such a tough one because I feel as if I don't know if there's any perfect book. And I think people are like multi-dimensional.

We have interests from so many different areas. In terms of it's not actually a Bitcoin book that made one of the biggest impacts on me in terms of my understanding of money. There's a book called Debt the first 5,000 years by a guy called David Graber. And he kind of really goes kind of a deep dive into the history of money. And I found that book to be incredibly insightful. and really shed light on how we got to where we are today with money. That book really stands out to me. And I would say, like, if I'd read broken money early on in my journey,

I'm sure that would have had a huge impact. It's always so tough because I feel like the longer you don't go down the journey of money, you've read all of these various different perspectives. But, yeah, the first 5,000 years has definitely been a huge standout for me. Nice. I like that. This will be a general run to everyone here. When it comes to getting stacking sats in a way that is KYC slash AML free, are there any things that stand out to you that you can use?

I've got a couple locked and loaded, but if anybody else wants to chime in on something that you think is useful, then go ahead first. Maybe this is a kind of a beat around the bush version of answering that question, but I would say write a book. Like, go write a book and then go sell your book for Bitcoin at conferences. And it is a profound way to get non-KYC Bitcoin. And on top of that, what's fascinating, so I released the hidden cost of money.

When was it in December of 2023? And at the time, Bitcoin was around like high 30s, low 40s, US dollars. And today we're around 100. And so what's really interesting is every book that I sold back then for, what, $23 is equivalent to me selling it now for like 50 bucks, 55 bucks. And so I think that when you are a self-publisher, you may not be able to make up for it in terms of volume, but you make up for it in saving in Bitcoin

and you're getting non-KYC stats at the same time. That would have been so awesome if you hadn't had that tragic boating accident after accepting all that, right? 100%. Non-KYC? I don't know what you're talking about. I will also chime in on the non-KYC train.

So if you're in Canada, Bitcoin well allows you to do light accounts, which effectively is just an email and password. And then because they own the infrastructure, you can go to their Bitcoin ATMs and there's regulations on how much you're allowed to sell to an individual person without hitting those thresholds. But because they can say this user with this account, even though we don't have ID on their behalf, We know that it's a particular user. So you have like a QR code on an app, you scan it at the Bitcoin ATM, you plunk in cash,

and you can buy just shy of $1,000, I think, per day up to, I think it might be up to $10,000 a week or something like that, $3,000 a day, $1,000 per transaction, up to $10,000 a week in cash if you're in Canada. If you're more international, hoddle, hoddle is like peer-to-peer, non-Germain. K-Y-C so that's an option. Now it's not available in the U.S. How can I put this? It's not available in the U.S., but if I were to capitalize the first letters of the following words, I would say that it's available in various places now. So if you want to, if you want to, to check out Hoddle, Hoddle,

and you are in various places now, then you can definitely check it out. So I'll leave that as it is. I'm going to take another one or two questions, then we'll round it out. P-Man says, and welcome P-Man. He's always in the chat, so it's good to see him here. One thing I'm not too clear about,

and forgive my ignorance, and I'll let somebody else chime on this, and it's a weird thing to conceptualize for a lot of people, but we've been measuring Bitcoin value to USD. How will we measure its value in the future when we're on a Bitcoin standard? Yeah. My thoughts? Yeah.

So we will measure Bitcoin's value by how much we can buy with it, right? You know, in the same way now that we look back and we look at dollar devaluation, interesting stat, you could buy 40 houses for a million dollars in 1971 today in the United States. you can barely buy two, median home prices, you know, $450,000. So in the same way that we measure dollar devaluation by looking at what you used to buy, be able to buy what you can buy now, that's how we'll value Bitcoin. When we start denominating goods and services in Bitcoin, it will be about how much you can buy for it, right? So for example, you go to Costco, you'll get the stake, you say, okay,

you know, last year the stake was, you know, 500 Satoshis, now it's 450, fantastic, right? you know, and you begin, that's, that's how you do it, right? So it's it's kind of a reframing. You're taking Bitcoin out of the numerator, right, BTC, USD. You're putting it in the denominator, right? So home over BTC, stake over BTC, et cetera. Yeah. Well, again, it's we don't really measure the value of, of U.S. dollars in anything.

It's just you, you, the problem is, is kind of in a way that we don't. It's that we just go about our day as if the US dollar is just worth what the US dollar is worth. And then everybody's confused about why is everything so expensive and they're not realizing it's not that everything is so expensive. It's that the supply of dollars has ballooned and the supply of goods has not ballooned alongside it. Therefore, the purchasing power of the dollars are no longer the same. And so they're not realizing that the value of the money is gone.

down and so this is where you get that knee-jerk reaction of this is expensive I had to spend more money I bought the good or service from this person that person is to blame and there's no deeper thinking than that there's no well that person also has to buy supplies and do it you know and then price accordingly like how did everybody get greedy simultaneously and so it's it's a hard thing to wrap your mind around that using purchasing as an anchor for your understanding of value. So, yeah, it's a tough one. I'm going to finish out with one last thing here.

It's in and around OTC, so Dread Pirate Picardo wanted to know. I've heard that OTC sales eventually affect the price. If so, how does this happen? Does anybody want to grab this one? So, like, I think there's a misconception that, like, if you're OTC, Like if you're just buying person to person, it's not going to exactly affect the price because it's not like I'm an order book on an exchange or something like that. But I think there's a little confusion about how that still impacts the price regardless. I mean, I think it's along the lines of like that.

The singular sale at the OTC desk doesn't move the price because it's a predetermined price that's aside from the spot price. But obviously to come to the OTC desk. OTC desk, buyers and sellers could choose how much they want. And if they demand more over time, then that's going to drive the long side of the spot price. Demand over time goes up on all levels of Bitcoin, including OTC sales. I think like to your point as well, Cedric, I think what's what maybe people don't necessarily understand is there's not one price for Bitcoin.

If you go to any other exchange, exchanges will have a price at which they're based on supply and demand, what people are buying it for, what people are selling it for, there'll be a price and typically that price would be very similar to another exchange and the reason why is because if there was a big discrepancy we would have people trying to arbitrage that price people be buying it's the here and selling it over there and so i think the reality is there isn't a single price of bitcoin and so when if joe and i decided to do a peer to peer transaction we're not actually impacting the price at all and to be honest even if we're on exchange we're only impacting the exchange at which we're on and that price from and price is discovered at the margins so like when we

at peak price. That's not everyone trading at that price. That's usually like one last transaction at the peak. And it could be a small, it could be like one sat traded at that price. You know, it doesn't have to be all the Bitcoin on the exchange going back and forth with high volume. It's usually very low volume at peak

and lowest prices. I've got one last one for you guys to round it out and it's a good one. Nathan wants to know, what's your go-to pump-up song? I'll rephrase. is it what is your your bull market anthem if you had to choose a song for for this cycle i would say out of touch by uh darrell hall and john oates oh yeah okay i'll go with rocket man by

elton john then nice i'm a big audio slave fan so i'll go of coach ice by audio slave i you know what i'm not a big outon john fan that's not why i said it though I'm going to pull Ben Justman and I'm going to default to Creed hiring. I'm going hard. That is in my karaoke vernacular for the extended future here. So we'll just go with that. Anyways, gentlemen, I am going to round it out here. Everybody, thank you guys, of course, for being here.

everybody that watched the show in the chat, smash that like button. Thank you for being a part of the show. Make sure you follow all these gentlemen. Their links are in these show notes down below. So please do check them out. Check out Bitcoin Mentor.io and the cold card masterclass over the side. And of course, all of the previously mentioned sponsors are on these show notes down below. Seb, Joe, Cedric.

This was absolutely awesome. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to get bullish with me. on a Friday. Thank you for being here. On Valentine's Day. Bulls on parade. I'm changing my answer. Yes. Yes. Joe, get making those babies. That's right. Not yet. Not until we're married. There we go. There we go. Thank you guys. Have a wonderful one. Thanks, everyone. Cheers, guys.