BTC Sessions - NEWS ROUNDUP: Bank Of England Takes Emergency Action ep292

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

The Bank of England enacts emergency bond-buying program, Strike raises $80M, Swan acquires Specter, Amazon in the CBDC business, Taro in Alpha. This and more on today’s show! 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shakepay is the easiest way to buy Bitcoin in Canada Sign up now and get $30 free after your first $100 purchase! https://shakepay.me/r/BTCSESSIONS ALSO search/subscribe to Shakepay on YouTube! LEDN Bitcoin backed loans –  get $10 free with a savings balance of $75 or more for 15 consecutive days! https://start.ledn.io/btcsessions Coinkite offers the BEST Bitcoin hardware on the market. Use this link to get 5% off anything in their store: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions BillFodl: get your wallet backups in solid steel. https://privacypros.io/btcsessions Bitrefill: use Bitcoin to purchase gift cards https://www.bitrefill.com/buy/?code=O04UMic9 Like what you see? BITCOIN TIPS: https://strike.me/btcsessions

What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. We've got a ton of news to talk about this week. We've got some stuff going on with strikes, some stuff happening on a macro landscape, some interesting announcements at a swan, all kinds of stuff to cover today. We've got Nico coming up to fill us in over from Simply Bitcoin. Super glad to have them every week. But of course, this is live.

Anything can happen. So I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live. Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live. The fucking thing sucks.

If you have not already, like, subscribe, share, all those things really help a ton. It gets this content in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. Before we dive into the news, let's take a look at where we are in the market. right now. This is the bitbo.io dashboard. We're sitting at $19,520 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 5,124 sats. 91.26% of all Bitcoin have been mine. And in terms of fees, looks like next block, 16 sats per byte, if you're willing to wait a little bit, single digits,

just shy of 10 stats per byte. Somewhere in there, should probably do you. Um, shout out to sponsors of the show, coincite.com. Honestly, best hardware in the game. Love these guys. I was just organizing my office. I've got so many cold cars kicking around. The Mark 4 is badass. We're going to be talking about a feature that is on this device that has just been enabled by a certain software wallet to work alongside the Mark 4.

But nonetheless, a beast of a machine. Absolutely awesome. They've got their open dimes. They've got the Block Clock and the Block Clock Micro, which has started shipping. Mine's on the way. The SATs card, which I've also just received video soon, two weeks TM, tab signer, all kinds of awesome stuff over here at Coin kite. Check them out.

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Sun, tons of ways to be stack and sats. Check them out at shakepay.com. The link is below if you want that 30 bucks. Ledin. Dotio, you can use your Bitcoin for a ton of different services. These guys have been super useful for me in the past and currently. In particular, if I'm in a cash flow crunch, I need to get my hands on dollars, but maybe I don't want to particularly sell Bitcoin at the moment. Well, I can deposit Bitcoin here. I can get a loan of dollars to my bank account within 24 hours. When I pay back those dollars, I get back the same amount of Bitcoin. They also have savings accounts for Bitcoin and USDC, so you can earn interest on your Bitcoin. Now, the difference here being that they have quarterly audits from a third party and you can

cryptographically verify that your holdings were involved in said audit so you don't get jerked around Celsius style. So if that's of interest, check that out. They've got their B2X offering. They've got Bitcoin-backed mortgages cross Canada and soon in some US states. Check them out, start.ledon.com.com. slash BTC Sessions. If you use that link and you fund your account, you'll get $10 for free.

Bitrefill.com helps me a ton living on Bitcoin. You can purchase just every damn gift card you can imagine with Bitcoin. And you can pay on-chain or via the Lightning Network. You can earn stats back as you shop, additional stats back for the referral program. You can do things like phone refills, lightning channels. And if you're in the U.S., you can indeed pay your bills with Bitcoin and get living on a Bitcoin standard. So again, check them out. Links are down below. And finally,

if you're backing up any important Bitcoin wallet, get it in solid steel friends. Paper just doesn't cut it. You know, you don't want little pieces of paper flitting around the office. You have to worry about fire damage and water damage and accidentally discarding it. So solid steel is the way I'm doing

it. Privacyprose.io slash BTC sessions. You can grab yourself a bill foddle if that is the way that you're leaning. But check them out. And one last thing here. Let's do our shoutouts from the helipad boost tracker on my umbral node. Thank you, everybody, that's been streaming sats and sending the boosts through my lightning node here from MoBTC Dick.

I like the way he spelled that. Dick with a Y. Happy Friday, Junior Mr. Sessions. Big fan of yours, Ben, been listening a while, but just moved over to Fountain. keep the awesome content coming. Thanks, man, from Rupp. Cool to see her on Fountain. Fountain's a badass way to be listening to podcast.

Happy Friday morning, Benjamin. Finally, you Canadian Bitcoiners have someone to back. Go French. I'm not sure. It was like a boy. Well, that went badly. I'll go back to bed. That's great.

Clearly, he was tired. Michael Madelow, P.O. Prove of Work versus Prove of stake laws of physics versus laws of masters. Each individual will have to make this choice and it's more important than any future election. Totally agree there. Glad you mentioned the ham radio thing from at time chain. We should have stations that relay to the network surrounding jurisdictions that block the internet.

Not a bad idea. And Bitcoin is hope for a better world from Michael as well. Again, thank you guys for the boosts. Always great to hear from you guys. But with that, enough of my rant. Let's get Nico in here. Buddy, good to see you. Good to see you too, Ben.

Happy to be here. Change the decor a bit. Boom. Feels good. Feels good. The Simpley Sessions has started. It has. It has.

I'll bring up your screen here. Yeah, man. There's been a lot going on. What have you got in store for us this week? What's been top of mind? Dude, ultra-bullish week. The Jack Mahlers, Jack Ballers. Jack Ballers strikes again.

Absolutely crazy. I just want to point out, guys, just going to read the headline real quick, Bitcoin Rapid Payment Service Strike raises 80 million takes aim at Visa. I just, the reason I wanted to emphasize that is that this is at the bottom of a bull market where Bitcoin has dropped 70%. And he was still able to raise $80 million.

Do you think Bitcoin's going anywhere? It's a flash in the pan. Right. And honestly, Ben, that's an absurd amount of money. And then kind of connect this what we were covering a couple weeks ago with the in Wolf's clothing, Ross Stevens at BitBlok Boom. What did he do? He launched an initiative for lightning companies to launch as well. Also, at the bottom of a bear market.

Also, Black Rock launched Bitcoin for their institutions. also at the bottom of a bear market. Fidelity and Charles Schwab also launched an exchange at the bottom of a bear market. Bitcoin, where do you think Bitcoin's going? It's crazy because everybody's going to be like when the next bull comes along, everybody's going to be like, where'd all this stuff come from? There's nobody paid attention at all. No one paid attention.

They should be tuning into PTC sessions more. Okay. Anyways, moving on. Let's check it out. Strike, a digital wallet that relies on a fast version of Bitcoin. a Bitcoin network believes it could do something no one has done in half a century, challenge the credit card giant's visa and MasterCard when it comes to everyday payments. In an interview with Fortune, Mahler said Strike will use the money in part to develop

partnerships with major retailers such as Wendy's and Starbucks and to change the payment experience for merchants and customers alike. While the idea of challenging credit card giants with Bitcoin may sound pie in the sky, Strike already has shown real-world traction by persuading e-commerce giant Shopify, as well as the Globe Appoint of Sales Service NCR, to employ its technology. Strike relies on a technology called the Lightning Network, which is known as a layer two solution in crypto parlance.

In Bitcoin, I hate how they always do that. Lightning works by creating batches of Bitcoin transactions and then rapidly verifying them a much cheaper and faster alternative to the base Bitcoin network. Feature, not a buck. Twitter's tipping and payment services already used Strike and the Lightning Network.

Merchants who use Strikes, who use strike can opt to have any Bitcoin payments they receive converted immediately to U.S. dollars, Mallors predicts as many as 50% of U.S. businesses could come to adopt the technology by the end of 2023. Obviously, other people believe him as well, or he wouldn't raise $80 million in the bottom of a bear market. While a report by Investment Bank, Morgan Stanley suggests it could spur the use of Bitcoin as a mainstream payment method. That's right. That's not Nico or Ben saying that. Morgan Stanley said that. Mallors also believe strike will come to challenge Western Union as a remitted service. Goes on to say, and I want to read this last part, Ben,

before I get your thoughts. It remains to be seen, of course, whether Mahlers can translate his outsized ambitions into reality in the face of some obvious challenges. This includes Bitcoin's ongoing volatility. Let's ignore the 10% inflation in Europe. Let's ignore the 9% inflation in the United States. Bitcoin is the problem like always. Though as some have noted, the Bitcoin and shit coin has been less volatile than the British pound in recent weeks. There's also a problem in the fact that spending Bitcoin triggers tax obligations. And that is the part that I want to talk about a little bit then, right? There's going to be a question that governments are going to have to answer very soon. Why are we forced to earn and

use a money that is designed to go down in value, designed to steal from us, versus now they have a challenger and that money, that challenger is Bitcoin, which is designed to increase in purchasing power over time, right? This is huge news, a lot to impact, $80 million, bottom of a bear market, and that last sentence, that last sentence has so much signal. people are going to start asking questions why am I being forced to use money that steals for me yeah it's I mean it's when when bitcoin becomes integrated into all these companies and again during the next during the next bowl in particular when it becomes as morgan stanley was saying a potentially a mainstream method of payment um

then it forces that question of, you know, asking like, what is this? What, you know, why are we being taxed on, on the currency that, that doesn't, that actually preserves our purchasing power? Like, just for merely holding something that isn't perpetually going down and eroding for the audacity to want to actually protect the fruits of your labor. They're going to tax you on that, too. You know, you only avoid a small, you only avoid some taxes if you, if you opt to use dollars and opt into our hidden tax instead is basically what they're saying. Yep. And I think that over time, it's just going to become more and more apparent.

I also want to give a shout out to the company that led the round. and it is actually a company that we are familiar with. I can't find it, but I know it off the top of my head. It's called 1031. Odell and Marty are actually a part of it. And I'm actually in their office right now at Bitcoin Park. I'm using it as the Simpley Studio. I'm sorry, Matt.

But yeah, man. So shout out to those guys, absolutely crazy, incredibly bullish that there is this much interest in Bitcoin companies at the bottom of a bear market. Anyways, Ben, moving on to absolute clown worlds. The Bank of England pivoted. Bank of England launches $65 billion move to calm markets. Let's check out some of the article.

The Bank of England took emergency action on Wednesday. To avoid a meltdown in the UK pension sector, unleashing a 65 billion bond buying program to stem a crisis in government debt markets. The Bank of England suspended a program to sell guilt. to sell guilt guilt is the equivalent of bonds in the US for anyone who doesn't know part of an effort to get surging inflation under control did you hear what they just said we're going to print more money to get inflation under control but at least not everyone is the total clown goes on to say this move will be inflationary at a time of already high inflation said Daniel Mahoney UK economist at least they get both sides Ben, this scares the living crap out of me. It's actually a shit hitting the fan.

Like they're, again, in the midst of record inflation, they're saying, oh, shit, we tried to, we tried to tighten. And we can't, everything is breaking. Literally, pension funds are about to have their Lehman Brothers moment. if we don't step in and just just burr up those bonds like i i'm getting chills thinking about it they're printing more money already when the united kingdom right now has 10% inflation on top of that sprinkle in the energy crisis as well i don't like how this is going to end uh even you could say, hey, I have Bitcoin.

I'm going to be okay. This, this, this looks, this looks worse than 2008, 2009. And it's not only England, Ben. This came out today. Shout out to our friends of Bitcoin Mag. Germany agrees on $200 billion package to battle 70-year high inflation. That's right. Not only the United Kingdom, Germany is also printing more money to fight inflation,

but it isn't only just Germany. You guys remember the infamous. Inflation Reduction Act in the great old US of A. The law approves more than $700 billion in federal investments aimed at reducing the national deficit combating climate change and lowering health care costs. That's right. They're going to lower health care costs by printing more money, Ben. And here is a book. Here is actually that before I get to that, Naim Boukele, the Bank of England, give a little bit of context, actually attacked Naimbukele.

for doing the Bitcoin experiments. And Naim Bukeli said, Bank of England is worried about El Salvador's adoption of Bitcoin. Really? I guess Bank of England's interest and the well-being of our people is genuine, right? I mean, they have always cared about our people, always, right? I mean, not only that, I don't think the Bank of England cares about the people of England either. This is absolutely disgusting. This is going to wreck people, especially the lower and middle class that don't have the means to save an asset,

equities and real estate, they're going to get absolutely crushed and they're already getting crushed by the energy crisis. Ben, this is despicable and disgusting, man. I don't have words for this. And the worst part about it is there's no easy out, right? Because, I mean, part of it is Fiat land has made all politicians and all citizens super, super high time. preference. So everybody wants to fix, quote unquote, fix the thing that is happening currently right now today and screw tomorrow and screw next year and screw the next generation. Screw that all. We'll fix what's here today. We'll kick the can down the road.

And then as far as politicians go, I'll just wait until my term is up and the next guy will deal with it. And we're now seeing, again, record high inflation. and in the midst of that, the solution is print more money. We need to print more money to buy more bonds. We need to print more money to basically mail checks to everybody so that they can afford inflation. We need to print more money so that people can afford their energy bills because we fucked the entire energy grid. And the crazy thing is, is that the lines of thinking here in terms of, inflation is high nobody can afford everything it's the reasoning behind all of this is such an echo

of a book i have behind me hold on when money dies it's it's insane when i'm seeing these headlines and it's the same shit that happened here the the solution that these guys had in ymar germany was always there's so much demand for money people need more money so that they can pay for things so we'll print more money so that they can afford things. And then the prices of everything go up. Again, surprise, surprise, because there's more money chasing the same amount or less goods. It's not a fix. It's not a fix. It does nothing. It makes the problem worse. And again, I feel like I'm, to quote Zoolander, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because we have an example that happened in the past century of exactly what is what happened and what the wrong

thing to do was and they're doing it they're doing that's play by play the exact thing it's insane they they they can't help themselves it's hit it's history repeating itself and it goes down to a very simple issue that bitcoinsers fundamentally understand no one including governments no human being institutions that human beings are part of, should have the power to create money that for free that someone else has to work for. And that is the fundamental issue here. And here we are, history repeating itself, the cycles repeating itself. But the hope here is that this time we have a chance to break that cycle with Bitcoin. And even if we do learn the lessons of we have to get back on a sound money standard, at least with Bitcoin, it's protected from people trying to

attempt to debase it like they've done time and time again. So there's a silver lining to that. I got to throw one more thing in here. I'm going to, I just want to share my screen for a sec here. So I'm just going to pull this down on the naive Bekele thing. My favorite was the tweet from from safe saying Fiat bros might want to psychologically prepare for the possibility Bitcoin price recovers. Buckele wins re-election and he spends years debt-free dunking on broke First World Presidents and Central Banks on Twitter. He's going to troll them so hard. Well-deserved trolling, too.

So good. Oh, my God. Safe being a savage, as always. Wait, wait. Speaking of safe, steel, cast iron. I, I, dude, I've got like shitty Teflon. You're a true Bitcoiner. Like, I can't afford that.

Oh, man. All right. So moving on to the weekly central bank digital currency update. Ben, I found an awesome website. Our friends, I don't even know if we consider them friends, but people at the Atlantic Council, Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker. And check this out. It literally has a map, an interactive map that tells you what the current state of central bank digital currency implementation is around the world, right?

And you could just scroll through each country. and it tells you exactly, it tells you what companies are developing it, and it's really, really, really cool. But anyways, before I get further along, Ben, I actually wanted to play that video. This was from this week, it's a video of Jerome Powell saying, of course, Central Bank Digital Currencies cannot be anonymous. And it's a plea by Christine Lagarde. All right, I'll just say that. Here we go. If we were to pursue a CBDC, it would, at a minimum, have the following four characteristics.

First is intermediated. Second, is privacy protected. But third is identity verified. So it would not be anonymous. It would not be an anonymous bearer instrument. And fourth is transferable or interoperable. So we would be looking to balance privacy protection with identity verification, which has to be done, of course, in today's traditional banking system as well. Where do we stand?

We central bankers. We have been operating as a monetary anchor in relation to the commercial banks and the private money. If we are not in that game, if we are not involved in experimenting, in innovating in terms of digital central bank money, we risk losing the role of anchor that we have played for many, many decades. And we have historical examples of a period where the central bank. Central Bank monetary anchor was not there, and that precipitated crisis after crisis. That certainly was the case at the time of the free banking in the 19th century. Do we want to go back to those days?

Probably not. I would say certainly not from our vantage point. As a result of which we have to respond to the demand for those digital payments in order to maintain the role of anchor that we have been playing regularly. Did she just say go back to the days of crisis? Does she not watch the news? What anchor? What anchor? The last century, and this is Ron Paul's quote,

the last century, the most violent century in human history was the century of central banking. The Great Depression happened under central banking. 2008 happened under central banking. The dot-com bust happened under central banking. under central banking do like what is this what is that what is this that all happened under central banking and she's making the plea that we we have to

continue to be the anchor of this because if not the world is going to collapse has she she not aware of her surroundings of what is happening that was all caused because they the central bankers are so-called best printed too much money and now she's bargaining trying to make the case that somehow the world is going to continue to get better if they remain in control they remain they keep the privilege of being able to create money for free that everyone else has to work for i call BS dude that is an insane clip like her her trying to justify her own existence and the existence of her colleagues in the face of and in the context of being absolutely needed or everything would descend into chaos as if that isn't currently happening on their watch unbelievable do you smell that ben smell that smells like victory i smell it i smell it all right so um

Check this out, Ben. Something that back to Jerome Powell, he said that the transactions were not going to be peer to peer. And again, coincidentally, looks like the ECB is saying that central bank digital currencies are not going to be peer to peer as well. Why? Why is that the case? Because it's very easy for governments to capture a handful of intermediaries than it is millions upon millions of people transacting peer to peer. which is why they have to rely on those intermediaries. And it's very interesting that the European Central Bank,

on the same week that Jerome Powell said that bit, says the exact same thing. One last thing. He finally said the quiet part out loud. Central Bank digital currencies are not going to be anonymous. Do you trust the government to respect your privacy if there's no anonymity? BS.

I mean, there can't even be capable of it. Like, we know how many data leaks there's been of everything. Like, it's just, it's a fact of life. When you put information on the internet,

at some point, in some way, it's likely going to be compromised if there's some sort of a honeypot. And imagine the honeypot that is the digital identities of an entire population kept by their central bank. Are you fucking kidding me?

Of course people are getting into that. Dude, it's, that video is, is, it will be played 10 years from now. And there will be like our victory. It will be included in the victory. I don't know, in the victory speech. I have no idea. But it's going to be like the, it'll be like the block size wars, but like it'll be the CBDC wars.

Oh, man. I'm curious to see how this rolls out. Anyways, Ben, some positive news. I'm going to go down the line of this. So this is, first of all, this is CASA. CASA is a service, not sponsored by them, but this is part of the story. CASA is a service as an app, and it makes multi-sig. It makes self-custody easy.

What CASA did about two years ago is that they added the ability to buy Bitcoin directly from the CASA app. You'll see where I'm going with this in a second. This is Unchained Capital. They also make Multisig easy through, but instead of an app, it's a web interface, right? And they have the Volt service that they offer. Recently, they announced, they say it themselves, a better way to buy Bitcoin, purchase Bitcoin directly to a multi-sig vault you control. There's no simpler way to buy Bitcoin securely.

Well, today, there was a major announcement. Let me read the blog post by Corey Clipson. I'm sure at this point, Ben, you know where I'm going with this. SWAN acquires Spector Solutions. Spector is a very popular software wallet that does what? It allows you to set up a multi-sig wallet very easily. Anyways, it goes on to say, we are extremely excited to announce our acquisition of Spector Solutions,

a leader in self-custody solutions for Bitcoin. Today, alongside the Spector Solutions team, we are launching Spector Labs, a division of Swan that expands our alignment with Bitcoin principles by focusing on open source and privacy-oriented tools that help Bitcoiners secure their holdings in the best way possible. To quote,

do the best thing for BitConnor and Bitcoiners has always been Swan's guiding principle. Our mission is to convert the next 10 million Bitcoiners and walk with them on their journey to freedom, prosperity, and self-sovereignty. Goes on to say, the launch of Spector Labs will give Swan customers end-to-end services on their Bitcoin journey

from complete beginner to self-sovereign Bitcoiner by providing deep integrations with Specter's leading self-custity solution and other tools over time. So what does all this mean? That means you have three major Bitcoin companies that offer multi-sig solutions and self-custody solutions that are allowing you to buy Bitcoin directly and that Bitcoin that you buy goes directly into a self-custody wallet.

Basically, making the transition easier, right? They're facilitating. There's a fire truck outside. I apologize, everybody. They're coming for me because I'm talking about multisig. No, but so this is amazing news because one and Ben, you make tutorials, so you run into this all the time. What tends to happen is people sign up to, you know, the shit coin casino, Coinbase, they buy their Bitcoin and they leave it there. What I'm seeing here is great news because I'm seeing Casa, Unchained, and Swan, incentivizing it.

In fact, building it in into their services themselves where you can buy Bitcoin and with the click of a button, it goes directly into your self-custody without making it too complex. Now, the downside of this is that that's a honeypot, right? Specifically for governments. Now, if you think about the game theory a little bit, though, it's going to be very difficult for the government to seize millions upon millions of people holding their own keys. You know, the 6102 order works so well because, again, you know, the keyword is intermediaries, custodians. There was only a handful of custodians that people were storing their gold with, and it was very easy for the government to seize that stuff. But in Bitcoin's case, even if the government cracks down on swan, cracks down on on chain capital, cracks down on CASA, they still have to go to those individuals and get them by force to hand over. over access to their Bitcoin.

So it's a pro and it's a con, but I'll tell you this, Ben, this is definitely much better than what is happening today, where most people, most normies, they buy Bitcoin on Robin Hood, on Coinbase, they buy it, they think they own it, and they leave it on there. And I'm glad that there is some initiative, at least pushing for self-custody,

but also at the same time, taking human nature into account, understanding that most people just don't have the technical know-how in order to do that, to facilitate that. That was very complex to say, but I hope I said it right. No, I like this. So the interesting thing to me here is in the instance of CASA and Unchained, the flow of kind of the product that has developed there is they started as a like very secure, I guess,

collaborative custody option, but still like you're in. of your funds. Neither of those entities can take your funds from you because they don't have enough keys. But the fact of the matter is they started as like a self-custody solution that then added the ability to purchase. The thing I like here is that you're getting a something that's already a Bitcoin on ramp that people are currently using to purchase Bitcoin that may not have dove into self-custody yet. although Swan does a really good job of encouraging people to self-custody. But now they're integrating a thing that more or less like takes people through a flow of like purchase and self-custody immediately. Here's a way that this can integrate. I think that's a beautiful thing in two ways.

One, it expedites the process of people actually becoming self-sovereign and owning their own coins. But furthermore, you can still use Spector entire. without Swan. And all this does is, one, it improves the number of people that are actually self-custoding, but two, it's going to improve the software and the hardware in and around Specter for those, even those that don't use Swan, because there's all of a sudden going to be even more funding to help further develop and flesh out the GUI and all of this stuff. they're going to make it that much smoother.

And Spector was already awesome. Like it's already a really good interface. I'd say it's between that and Sparrow Wallet for me as kind of like the ones that I would typically use on a desktop. And yeah, I think this is going to be huge if you use Spector, not because Swan is integrated, but because Swan is going to be pumping more development money into this and making it much better. And if you're a swan user, then fantastic because now you have an easy flow into a really good wallet. Absolutely. And it's really good news. And what I'm really glad about then is

the and CASA does this and Unchanger is going to do this as well. And it's going to continue to improve is that they hide the complexity behind their interfaces. Right. So it's going to be you buy something on Swan at a top touch of a button, immediately it gets set, it's sent to your multi-sig. Right. And I really appreciate that because you and I, Ben, we've experimented with this. We've set up multi-sig. We understand how complex it could be, you know, especially doing it the first time with multiple wallets, getting the deviation paths correct, right?

You know, just one little mess up, right? And it's a cool, it's a totally different wallet. And I'm just glad that they're developing the interface, encouraging more people to take self-custody without sacrificing the convenience as well. Hey, what do you think? Do you think, I mean, to me it seems like a no-brainer, but do you think that Swan moves into collaborative custody? Yeah, definitely. I'll say this. Okay. Unchained Swan and all those Bitcoin companies, these are it's just a matter of time before they realize the one stop shop wins that's that's my those are my thoughts on that yeah yeah exactly like they're all they're all going to have to realize that that the you know like unchained and casts are going to have to be the the ones to be like

oh we're actually uh you know you can come to us to buy your bitcoin like as as as just a regular user and advertise that way. And Swan is they've already got that. So now it's just making that flow and then adding in products, which to me, it only makes sense that they would be like, hey, if you really want to like idiot proof this and you want us to hold one key out of a two of three multi-sig, we can do that for you for a fee. Well, think about it. If they don't offer that multi-sig solution, what they're doing is that they're losing

clients to other companies, right? So I think just using basic game theory, you know, this is just a way to, you know, keep people within the ecosystems, whether that's CASA, whether that's unchained, whether that's Swan. I really believe it's just a matter of time before all these companies, all these awesome companies head in that direction. Yeah, absolutely, man. So how much time we got left, Ben? We got some time. You can chip away at whatever you got left there. Okay, awesome.

So real quick, let's do this. I think this is awesome. I'm just going to read this real quick. This is Michael Levin. He's developing Taro. He says today we're excited to announce the alpha release of the Tarot Damien or Demon. Enabling, they still don't know how to say that word. Enabling developers to mint, send, and receive assets on the Bitcoin blockchain.

In April, we first announced Taro a taproot powered protocol. for issuing assets that could be transferred over Bitcoin in the in the future the Lightning Network for instant high volume low fee transactions we are grateful to the Bitcoin developer community for their valuable feedback and we have incorporated it into the draft Bitcoin improvement pro proposals which specify the protocol and the Taufa Taro Alpha Damien or demon implementation so dude frickin awesome so you could build on top of Bitcoin with which once again defeats the narrative and the purpose of shitcoins.

But if you're going to build on top of Bitcoin, you're a building on the soundest and best and most secure base layer. Bullish. Defeats the purpose of Ethereum with this. It does. It's fantastic. I'm glad to see it. Again, I think that there's kind of like two ways of looking at it.

and the reality might be somewhere in the middle. But there's the there's the this obsolets everything. And we can now, we should now build every single thing on top of Bitcoin. And then there's the, this is going to be shit coins on Bitcoin. And I think the reality will be somewhere in between. I tend to lean towards like in a lot of instances, tokens may not be necessary.

I don't mind the idea of like voucher is ridiculous. Vouchers for something, but and like for the time being stable coins, which is basically just Fiat with additional counterparty risk. But if the transactability of that internationally is of top concern, then there's a solution and the tradeoff is additional counterparty risk. But it'll be interesting to see how this develops. And I am happy that it obsolete shirk. coins. Yeah, 100%. I'm really excited to see where this ends up. That this infatements and all this

positive news makes me incredibly bullish, man. Oh, wow. Yeah. We're winning, Ben. We're winning. All right. So last piece of news, Ben, this is pretty big news. And you asked me a very, really, actually really interesting question. And I actually had to put a lot of thought into it. And you said, Nico, with the price going down, why is the hash rate going to continue why is the hash rate continuing to go up and that's because it's a it's lagging in to think about how long it takes to build out this mining infrastructure all the money that was borrowed in order to deploy all these machines deploy all these systems they can't just stop once the price of bitcoin goes down right so they had to build all of this out immediately and i think now you're

starting to see some of the consequences of that some of the capitulation i actually got this from a buddy of mine. I got this piece of news and he said, he works for a large Bitcoin mining company and he's the chief guy there and he actually said this to me and he said capitulation question mark and this is the result of that. And it's getting even worse for Bitcoin miners and I'm going to dig into some of the data. But first let me read some of this. It says compute North files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Bitcoin mining hosting provider. Compute North has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a federal court as the industry struggles with the decline in Bitcoin pricing and rising power costs. Compute North has between $100,500 million both in estimated liabilities

and estimated assets according to the filing. The company raised $385 million in equity and debt funding earlier this year to finance its new Bitcoin mining data centers. Talk about timing it wrong. The deal was structured as an 85 million in equity funding for Mercura, a global energy and commodities trading company, generate capital and infrastructure investment firm, and other investors, and 300 million from generate capital. It also raised 25 million in equity in debt from Post Road Group, a privately held U.S. investment group. Later in July, founder and CEO of Compute North, Dave Perrell told the block that the company plan to increase its capacity by 1.2 over the next 12 months.

Check this out, Ben. This is interesting. Among Compute Nort's list of clients are some of the biggest Bitcoin mining companies, including Marathon, which recently started energizing at a co-located 280 megawatt Bitcoin mining facility in West Texas.

The two companies also closed an additional 42 megawatts hosting deal in July. I think this is the beginning of capitulation, and I have some data that is really good at visualizing or explaining what the predicament of Bitcoin miner is today. This is a stat by hash rate index from our friends at Luxor Mining Pool. And what it represents is this. Our ASIC price index reflects the current price per tera hash of different Bitcoin mining ASICs grouped by three efficiency tiers. The ASIC price index is measured in both US dollars and in Bitcoin.

So here the three tiers says under 38 volts per tarahash, 38 to 68 volts per terah hash, and 68 volts per tear hash, right? So these are the different efficiencies in each miner. Under you could, sorry, I meant watts. I didn't say, I didn't mean false. Anyways, under 38 watts includes the latest generation Bitcoin mining A6 like Bitcoin, Antminer S19, S19, S19. So the second tier, the 38 to 68 watts per tera hash include the mid-generation A6 like BitMains, S17, T-17, micro-BTs, what's minor, M20, and the least efficient are the old generation A6 like BitMains, Ant Minor, S-9, T-9, S-11. So what does all this mean, right? And here's a really interesting graph, right? It means that if you are not running the latest and greatest mining machines, your operating expenses are more than your what you're taking in and profit, right?

So these are the most efficient machines right here. I mean, the least efficient machines like the S9. As you could see, the operating expense is way higher than any type of profitability. And what happened recently because of the recent decline in Bitcoin price, the mid-tier machines like the S-17, and there was a lot of those, just became more expensive to run than in profitability. Meaning the only profitable Bitcoin mining A6 right now on the market are the latest and greatest, either the M30 or the S-19 or the S-19-J-Pro. But not even then, Ben. They're not even that profitable nowadays either. So this is looking very hairy, very nasty for Bitcoin miners right now, and they're experiencing a ton of pain. It is extremely difficult to be profitable nowadays.

It's coming close. And I believe that if Bitcoin's price continues to go down, you're going to see more pain. The last stat that I saw, I think it was by brains. They're awesome, was that right now it costs about 24,000. to produce one Bitcoin when the price of Bitcoin is currently sitting at 19,500. So we should see more capitulation to come, but the good news is through that capitulation means less hash rate, less hash rate leads to a difficulty adjustment. A difficulty adjustment leads to an increased incentive where potentially these mid-generation machines

like the S-17s could potentially become profitable again, which would lead people to plug them in again. I hope I got that right. That was complex as well. I love it. I love what a self-correcting machine Bitcoin is. It's just TikTok next block. And like this is, it's such a good thing because the market regulates itself. As soon as people make decisions that maybe would have been jumping the gun a little bit,

like the examples of getting these rounds of funding and making. the assumption that Bitcoin's price would be X amount moving forward. Well, sometimes you can't make those assumptions, especially moving into, you know, at the time, a bear market. And all of it, whatever their price projections were, they obviously weren't what it is now. And, you know, you've got to be, you've got to be nimble, you've got to be smart, and you've got to be versatile in the way that you operate your facility. otherwise this is what happens right like you get you the least efficient get knocked out and um you know

the all of that hash rate all of those machines if they're filing for bankruptcy they're gonna what going to have to sell off all those machines they'll end up in other hands um and then the difficulty adjustment will come along and gradually those things will probably get plugged in and as the price eventually rises again they will get plugged in and used but you know casualties are just the name of the game. Dude, and it was a disaster because when they raised that money, take a look at this profitability. They raised that money at the peak and they used all that money to buy all of those miners and the price of Bitcoin kept going down as they were plugging in those miners,

meaning the difficulty will continue to come up, meaning their probability would continue to go down as well as the Bitcoin price going down. Dude, talk about pain. Ouch. Ouch. Brutal. Yeah. Oh, man.

I feel bad, but like, again, that's, that's, this is how Bitcoin just kind of, Bitcoin does its thing. Bitcoin is going to move and you can't make assumptions as to the price of Bitcoin. Absolutely. But out of the ashes, a Phoenix will rise above. Ben, this has been awesome. I love it. Thanks so much, man. Loved everything you had for us today.

If you're not following Nico, if you're not following and subscribe to a Simply Bitcoin, you need to get on that shit today. Go subscribe. Nico, thank you so much for being here, Matt. This was your Simply session. See you next week, Ben. See you, man.

All right, everybody. Before we go, I've got a couple things I wanted to mention that I thought were pretty sweet. A couple quick things on the horizon. One of them, Guy Swan, just tweeted out. Just received my first Chalmian eCash sats. Crazy to see Fetamins finally becoming a reality. And he left a link Fawcett.Sit.Syrian.0. Anyways, Fedomints, very interesting. If you're unfamiliar, check it out. But it's a new way of almost like trusted. First of all, it adds to privacy

on Bitcoin. The goal here is to assist in more people having customers. or at least having like a community custody available. All all transactions within a fetament, a group are basically completely blinded, and you can connect to different fetaments via lightning. Nonetheless, super cool. I haven't played with this yet, but I'm very curious, so I'm going to check it out.

Up next, Samurai Wall, there's been an update, new collaborative transaction UI, Off 47 integration, and more. So what is this? Samurai updated. They got a new release, 0.99.98f. They added new Paynim bot and toolbar menu. They can now, you can authenticate using PayNMs.

So, you know, you can log in, and maybe you're not familiar, but you can log in with the keys from a lightning wallet. So it's called LN off. And you can simply scan a QR code to log in. Well, now you can do that with Samurai wallet using PayNMs. So sign into websites without an email. on passwords, simply scan a QR code. And of course, it's anonymous. It's just a verification of somebody who holds a particular key, which is super awesome.

Brand new UI for both initiating and collaborating on Stonewall or Stowaway transactions. There's a new join bot for a small spam prevention fee. You can have JoinBot act as a second participant in a Stonewall, which is basically a bot that will be another half and do a two-person coin join with you. lots of cool stuff. I'm going to have to play with this a whole new flow. So, you know,

add that to things for me to do. My Sats card just arrived. Very excited about that. Sats card, if you're unfamiliar, is effectively, if you know what an open dime is, basically a bearer asset for Bitcoin. You can load it up with Bitcoin

and you can hand it physically to somebody. And when they walk away with it, there's no way that you can take the private key and steal that money back because it is sealed in the device until you break a circuit. Sats card does the same thing, but it's via NFC. There are 10 digital slots that act as individual open dimes. You load up one. You hand the card to somebody. They can unseal that virtual open dime and take those sats. And then it's still an open dime. There's nine more slots available. So it can be reused 10 times as an open dime as a way of transferring funds from one person to another as a bearer asset.

So I'm going to be playing around with that. That is integrated with Nunchuk Wallet. Very excited there. And speaking of Nunnchuk Wallet, damn, they're working hard because they just released NFC functionality for the cold card mark four. And I've been playing with it. I got it to work. I did my first NFC initiated cold card transaction. via Nunchuck wallet on my phone.

It was really cool. So I'm going to do a video tutorial on that soon, but nonetheless, super awesome to see that finally roll out to a wallet. I'm hoping that I see it on even more. Maybe perhaps blue wallet. That'd be nice to see some of the other mobile wallets. Anyways, super awesome.

And expect to see that soon. What else we got on the docket here? Hey, again, reminder, if you're going to be in Charlotte or Los Angeles, I'm going to be in Charlotte for Haudlewine, a little bit-o-get-together, day of talks and chats. It's going to be a Halloween party. There's going to be all kinds of awesome stuff. But I'm going to be doing a cold card deep dive workshop in Charlotte, North Carolina

on Friday, October 21st. So you can check that out on my website. Also, I'm going to be in Los Angeles before and after, I guess, but I'm going to be there for Pacific Bitcoin, which is going on Thursday and Friday, Saturday, or Thursday and Friday, November 10th and 11th, and I'm going to be running a cold card workshop as a satellite event on the afternoon of the 12th.

So if you want to check out either of those, if you're going to be in town, come along, you'll be a cold card expert. By the time we wrap up, these things are four hours long. So if you want to grab tickets, for those. There's only 15 available spots for each one. So check them out. You can also, if you want to grab your cold card, you can bring your own or you can order one either on your

own or through the website here and they will be picked up at the event. Also, another thing I'm working on, a little screen cap here. I had a suggestion from Bitcoin all caps on Twitter and he said, hey man, love your stuff. But I'd love to see you. start encouraging people to verify the signatures on software that they run. So I figured it was time. And I went ahead. And I am in the final stages of editing that video so that you can cryptographically verify signatures on any Bitcoin software or other software for that matter that you run on your computer. If you're unfamiliar with that, highly encourage you to check it out.

It'll be coming out tomorrow morning. And speaking of tomorrow, why are we bullish? We've got Ian Major, Texas Slim from the Beef Initiative, and My Live and Truth also, or Opti, from Simply Bitcoin. We'll be joining us here. Very excited to have all these gentlemen on. Don't miss it tomorrow, 6 p.m. Eastern. Keep your eyes out for the tutorial on GPG tomorrow morning.

And that's about it. So I'm going to wrap up here, guys. Thank you so much for watching and or listening. streaming this. Please do. Like, subscribe, share, all those things, help a ton. If you want to help the show in another way, you can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below, coin kite, shake, pay, lead,

and bit refill, bill, fottle. They're all down here. And if you really liked what you saw, you can drop me a Bitcoin tip at my strike page. Strike.me slash BTC sessions. Get there, type in any amount you want. Hit the tip button. You will see a lightning invoice, or if you prefer, tap to the right, you'll see a regular Bitcoin QR code. With that, I'm

out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening and I'll see you guys next time for your daily session.