BTC Sessions - NEWS ROUNDUP: Big Moves For Bitcoin In Africa ep307

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

Africa Bitcoin Conference showcases strong adoption on the continent, Iran freezing bank accounts of protesters, DCG owes Gemini customers $900m and more on today’s show. 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Start9 is your Bitcoin & lightning node, and full personal server - enabling you to take back control from the gatekeepers of your money and data! Grab an Embassy today and become truly self-sovereign! https://start9.com/ HodlHodl is a NON-CUSTODIAL, NON-KYC solution to stack sats peer to peer! Buy and sell Bitcoin while maintaining privacy. Furthermore, you can check out their Lend platform for p2p loans that are never rehypothecated. Sign up and try it out today! https://hodlhodl.com/join/QUEM 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, protect your hardware with faraday bags and much more! https://privacypros.io/btcsessions Shakepay is the easiest way to buy Bitcoin in Canada Sign up now and get $10 free after your first $100 purchase! https://shakepay.me/r/BTCSESSIONS Like what you see? BITCOIN TIPS: https://strike.me/btcsessions

What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. We've got many news items to chat about this week. Lots of stuff going on. A lot of interesting news coming out of Africa. They just had the African Bitcoin conference there and a few little tidbits that we're going to be talking about there. So plenty of stuff to discuss. Very happy to have Nico here again this week from Simply Bitcoin filling us in on all the goings on in the Bitcoin space. Dude's a legend. If you're not, subscribe to simply Bitcoin. I simply don't know what you're doing with your life. It's time to go and subscribe right now. Stop disappointing your parents. What are you doing? So anyways, we're we're gonna dive into it. 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 can do it. 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 super important.

They help get this content in front of more eyeballs. Do it, do it now. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. All right, before we dive into the news, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now with the bitbo. Oh, not the bitbo.io dashboard. Timechain calendar.com. Thanks, T.C.

Timechaincaller.com. Let's check where we're at. We're sitting at a price of 17,211 cuck bucks per coin. A single U.S. dollar or cup buck will pick you up 5,810 sats. Where else are we at here? In terms of fees, low, low pretty much across the board. Next block, six sats per byte, still single digits, everything else. One sat per bite.

Not bad. at all. And in terms of supply, 91.5, 6% of all Bitcoin have been mine. That's 19.23 million Bitcoin stack them all you can. Shout to sponsor the show. CoinGite.com. Love these guys. Best hardware in the game. Love my card, cold card mark four. It's the way to secure your Bitcoin. Love running these workshops. Some more in the cards here. Keep your eyes peeled. There may be some stuff happening in the new year. We shall see. Nonetheless, these guys have all the best hardware. Of course, the open dimes, the stats cards, the tab signers, the block clock. All of it is here over at coincite.com. Check out the store use code BTC sessions for 5% everything off. And check the

YouTube channel for tutorials on literally everything they have. Up next, start nine, start nine labs and the embassy one or the embassy pro. I just dropped a tutorial on this. on Tuesday, I think. On Tuesday, anyways, this is your sovereign computing solution so you can run your own personal server, Bitcoin node, lightning node, and host all of your data

and keep it out of the hands of privacy encroaching corporations. This is how you do it. I love this thing. It's beautiful. It works like a charm. And if you want to learn more about how to build one yourself or buy a plug-and-play model and

support the team at Start 9. You got to check it out. It is sleek. It is beautiful. You can connect all your wallets. Manage everything lightning. So check them out. Start9.com.

Up next, hoddle, hoddle. If you're stacking sats and your priorities are privacy, self-custity, peer-to-peer transactions, then hoddle-hottle is the place to go. You can get on there. Sign up in minutes with nothing more than an email address. And you can start training peer-to-peer. get your hands on Bitcoin or if you do need some cuckbucks or Canadian moose nickels, you can trade your Bitcoin here for that if you have some expenses to cover.

They also do have their lending platform in which your Bitcoin are never, never rehypropocated. So you can check that out too. So hoddlehottle.com, there's a link down below if you want to check them out. If you're backing up any important Bitcoin wallet, be sure to check out Privacyprose.io. You can get your seed phrase in solid steel with the bill foddle. This is how I'm backing up my important Bitcoin. Wallis because I don't want to worry about things like fire damage and water damage and all that crap.

So check them out, privacypros.io. They also have Faraday bags. If you're the tinfoil hat-loving type person where you want to block potential outside signals from pampering or screwing with or wiping your devices. So check them out, Privacypros.com slash BTC sessions for a little deal. Finally, if you're in Canada, shakepay.com, easy way to stack sats. transfers in and out, no depositor with trophies, including withdrawing Bitcoin, which they encourage you to do. You can shake your phone every single day for free Sats. You can use their Sats

back program on their Visa card. And if you sign up with the link down below, purchase your first $100 worth of Bitcoin. They'll give you $10 for free, plenty of other ways to be stacking stats with them too. So shout out to Shake Pay. Link is down below. And then finally, let's check out some of the comments over the last week here. We've got Zyga Boy, guess who's back? Ben, you can't leave me for so long in the future. I've had to work out what Sam Bankman fraud has been up to on my own. Nico is good, but his hair isn't as bouncy as yours, Nico. We will fix that.

Don't worry. Nico is the source for news. I'm just here for the hair support, really. That's all it is. Michael says Bitcoin is a Trojan Horse for Freedom. Totally agree. The Luke Bird keeps smashing it. Love Start 9.

I have an Embassy Pro on the way. Dude. Ooh, beautiful. Thank you for talking about these guys and their amazing journey. Totally agree. Start 9 guys are legends. Cliff, Jay Banger, connected my sparrow wallet to Bitcoin Core for the first time. We're listening to this wobb.

Yes. Good for you, man. Congrats on that. And White Coat Pottle. Thank you for uploading. 9 embassy tutorial was waiting for it a long time. Sorry for the wait, man. Glad it is there for you so that you can start on your road to self-sovereignty.

With that, we need to bring in our friend here. Nico, good to see you, man. My hair is, no, it's not bouncy. It's right. It waves. You can wave your hair. I can, I don't know. Mine doesn't bounce.

It literally stays in place is what I would say. I feel like you get up in the morning. it's in the same exact position. More or less, unless it's been molded to my pillow in some way where I just need to start from scratch. That's fair to Bitcoin. Yeah, it is. It is what it is.

This is the most fiat thing about me. So, you know, it is what it is. Oh, we need some redecoration here. There we go. Much better. Dude, there's been a lot going on. I'll pull up your thing. But there's been a lot of stuff happening.

Out of Africa, there was that conference this week. So what caught your eye? What's been going on? Yeah. So what caught my eye was I, and I was reading into it, I was like, it's a conspiracy. No, but Jack, Jack Mullers, also known as Jack Ballers, and Jack Dorsey both tweeted, like, Jack Mallors just tweeted the flag of Ghana. And then Jack Dorsey said he was in Ghana.

And then I was like, my God, Ghana the next, you know, Bitcoin legal tender country. And then someone was very kind in my tweet because I asked Twitter. I was like, hey, what's going on with there? And they said, it's the Africa Bitcoin Conference. And that's what was happening. And that's where they were there. And there are on some awesome awesome panels, which I recommend you guys check out. That being said, this was Jack Dorsey's announcement.

So Jack Dorsey's Block invests in renewable Bitcoin Miner Gridless in Africa. It goes on to say Jack Dorsey's Block, Inc. is among the companies contributing to a funding round for a Bitcoin miner in Africa fired by renewable energy power. Digital payments firm Block and venture capital investors Stillmark had led a $2 million investment seed investment in grid list, a miner that harnesses a small-scale renewable energy grids in rural Africa, blocks it in a December 6th statement. Block mining is an energy-intensive process in which electricity guzzling computers secure the

digital assets blockchain by validating transaction data and unlocking tokens as a reward in return. Some studies estimate that the annual energy consumption involved exceeds the amount entire countries like Belgium use. The investment in Block's latest efforts to push for sustainable and decentralized mining operations. It has recruited veteran crypto mining engineers and managed why I say crypto mining. Anyways, it has requited veteran crypto mining engineers and manages to build out its mining unit and develop projects that can encourage individuals to mine Bitcoin. Most of the computing power for Bitcoin mining is currently from industrial scale centers. gridless seeks to harness excess energy at small-scale,

renewable power sites in rural Africa. Out of this whole piece, Ben, I think that's the signal right there. Gridless seeks to harness excess energy at small-scale, renewable power sites in rural Africa, right? Because Bitcoin fundamentally changes the game, right? Because before, if you lived in an area that has abundant power, but it was very secluded, it was very isolated, that power basically was going to waste.

now with Bitcoin, we figured out a way to give that power value. And you do that by mining Bitcoin. And I think that in itself, Ben, is going to fundamentally change how humans organize around each other. This is, I love this because the other aspect of this is that a lot of these countries, like especially the, the, what's the, the, the, the, the Frank, CFR Frank region, the 14 countries that are basically, get their currency from from uh france and france gets first rights to basically strip their country of resources uh with their shitty money with their shitty funny money that they can print out of nothing um this is a mechanism through which all these countries that have been screwed by

more or less these colonizers this monetary colonialism um all the sudden that they're they have a mechanism to utilize their resources to obtain real world assets that cannot be debased. And that's pretty powerful, especially in these regions that have gone for hundreds of years just getting screwed. It's exciting to see. 100%. And here is the next one. And it still has to do with Africa, right? More Africa news.

and then interestingly is a Berkshire Hathaway company. So it's technically owned by Warren Buffett, which is very interesting. Anyways, goes on to say, strike launches lightning fast money transfers to Africa. Quote, high fees, slow settlement, lack of innovation, and cross-border payments have negatively impacted the developing world. With exorbitant fees to transfer funds in and out of Africa and incumbent providers halting services, payment companies are struggling to operate in Africa and people can't. cannot send money home to their family members. Strike offers an opportunity for people to transfer the U.S. dollars easily and instantly across borders. And I think that's the signal there goes on to say.

Using Send Globally, a strike user can send money to Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya instantly with no transaction fees. And I think, dude, a total game changer. And I'm going to double down on this concept. I think that the Bitcoin revolution is going to happen in developing countries because they need Bitcoin. It's like a necessity for them. And I think that's where you're going to see the vast majority of Bitcoin adoption sooner versus in the developed world. We have these relatively stable fiat currencies that doesn't wake enough people up to the fact that the money is stealing from them. And they don't really have the incentive than someone in Nigeria that is dealing with double digit inflation.

Right. So I'm very bullish on Central America, Latin America, very, very bullish on Africa as well in terms of Bitcoin adoption and Bitcoin's success and popularity. Yeah. I mean, you get the first story where now African countries can use their resources and receive compensation in a money that can't be debased. And then you get the second story where they're now using that same. asset to be able to remit money home and not get screwed in that process as well. It's a double whammy in which they're getting rid of these gatekeepers, these rent seekers in between that were just fucking them for years and years. And no more, no more. The door is open.

It's over. It's done. Bitcoin fixes this. So next thing coming up is Interesting. And I'm going to tie this in with an Alex Gladstein, with this Alex Gladstein article that we've referred to many times on Simply Sessions. And the name of the article before I get to it is called Bitcoin is a Trojan Horse for Freedom. And once you get, once again, in this article, before I start reading this, it makes the case. It says, Bitcoin is not just number go up technology. Hidden behind the eye-popping gains is a powerful freedom go-up technology that its new adapters are, knowingly or not. pushing forward NGU number go up and FGU freedom go up are inextricable meaning you can't disconnect them okay that being said right to move on to this article it says Bank of Russia

wants to ban minors from selling crypto to Russians the Russian Central Bank continues to maintain an extremely negative stance on cryptocurrencies proposing to ban local miners from selling coins to local people Bank of Russia has supported the idea of legalizing cryptocurrency mining in Russia is part of a draft bill introduced in mid-November 22nd. I mean, 2022. However, the Russian Central Bank allows a bank wants to allow

miners to sell their crypto only on foreign exchanges and not to non-residents of Russia, the local news agency Interfax report on December 7. We believe, quote, we believe that cryptocurrency obtained as a result of mining could be sold exclusively

using foreign infrastructure and only to non-residents. Quote, in general, we adhere to the position on the inamissibility of the circulation of digital currency on the territory of the Russian Federation. So, and then tie this in with what they did earlier, Ben, right, where they wanted to use Bitcoin to facilitate international trade, but they're wanting to pick and choose how they benefit from it.

They want to separate the freedom from the number go up, right? They want to use Bitcoin because it's, it's hard to center, right? all the good benefits of Bitcoin, but they want to separate the freedom so that the people don't benefit from the freedom. But I think what Alex Gladstein pointed out so well in that article is that you can't separate the two. And once you introduce Bitcoin,

once you introduce that NGO technology and that freedom enabling technology, it's game over. It's game set and match, right? So yeah, man, it's very, very interesting how they can't resist Bitcoin's incentives, but they also don't want their own population. benefiting from Bitcoin's incentives either.

Yeah. And I mean, it was obvious that this was where they were heading with it, where they, you know, they don't want, they want to preserve their fiat currency. So they have control over the populace. They're able to easily extract value when they see fit. But they don't like that happening to them as as a nation. And so you're absolutely right. You can't pick and choose.

It's a level playing field for everybody, whether you're a nation state or you're an individual citizen. And that's the beautiful thing about it. And this is great for detractors that inevitably will look at Bitcoin and see, look, Bitcoin is helping Russia skirt sanctions. Yes, it's also helping the citizens of Russia skirt the terrible, oppressive regulations of the Russian government. So, you know, it's not even that people get a choice of whether or not that's an okay tradeoff. People just have to parse through the fact that that is how it works now. 100%. 100%.

And I think that it's more so people. It's really government that are going to have to come to terms with the fact that their ability to control people via controlling the money. That's changed. That old mechanism is over. and but they can make our lives definitely very difficult during the transition. Anyways, also another example of, you know, why Bitcoin. Iran is set to freeze bank accounts of women who refuse to wear hijab, right? So you, this is not only in Iran, right?

This is just the latest example. So it gives us a, you know, a great reason to talk about this. But you're seeing this phenomenon on a worldwide level, right? The money in banks, if you have to ask someone else for permission, is to use your money, is it really your money? And I think that this example highlights that perfectly, just as the many other examples that we've seen over the last two or three years, right? Whether you're with a certain political movement,

the bank runs in Lebanon where they just froze people's accounts because they were trying to get the money out, right? So many examples of SBF collapse as well, right? So many examples of people trusting other people with their money, right? And then bad things happen when that happens, right? And now you have no excuse because now you have an alternative that's easy to use and that you could store millions of billions and trillions of dollars in your mind by memorizing a 12-word seed phrase.

So I believe that this type of totalitarianness from governments, right? This is just the latest example, right? Iran sits to freeze bank accounts of women who refuse to wear a hijab. So it's a personal decision by women and they're freezing accounts for it, right? You had the examples in the U.S. where they're freezing certain accounts of certain individuals because of certain beliefs that they have, right? But the message is the same, Ben, right? Also the examples of, you know, of certain countries that were freezing certain bank accounts of certain individuals, right?

So like it, but this is just going to continue happening over and over and over again. And the problem is simple. And central bank digital currencies are just going to make this 100 times worse, right? Stop trusting other people holding your money. They're going to do bad things to you, right? It's going to have a bad time. Yeah, I mean, it's it's time and time again through a variety of different scenarios. We're just being shown that self-custody is the way.

If somebody has control of your money, as you said, it's only a matter of time, but bad things will happen. And again, with this Iranian story, I hope to see the example yet again that these women move to Bitcoin. Because we've seen it in the past. we've seen it with like Roya Mabub from Afghanistan, where she was trying to pay the women with her female robotics team. They weren't allowed to have bank accounts. And she was like, fuck it, we'll use Bitcoin. And that was one of the earliest stories I read about Bitcoin back in 2014.

So I hope to see that this will be another perfect example of, hey, the state hates you and Bitcoin is indifferent. So use it. Yeah, exactly. It's the state hates you Bitcoin Bitcoin And it by the way

It cuts both ways right Ben Because it's like The state hate You have to be okay with your worst enemy using it as well Right So you know and I think That's really the And it's like

I don't think human being Should have that power To get to pick and choose Who's entitled to use money or not Speaking of crazy power Um EU aims to require crypto providers

to report transaction data, right? You see that, you're like, oh, it's not that bad. Let me translate it to how no BS Bitcoin described it. Because the European Union will force cryptocurrency companies to report European users' holdings to authorities. That's how you should read this headline because that's what it means, right? And then I believe, Ben, I would make the case

that this is the first step to inevitably banning self-custody. I think that this is just like, this is just one step towards that direction. We reported a couple weeks ago, Ben, that they are going to try to KYC wallets, right? So this is just one step towards that, right? They can't have you having freedom. That's dangerous. Anyways, the European Union proposed new rules Thursday to combat tax fraud and evasion in the

crypto sector by requiring all digital asset service providers to report transactions involving customers residing in the block. The initiative by the EU's executive arm part of a package to increase the transparency in the tax system aims to ensure that the block's residents, pay taxes on gains from trading or investing in crypto assets. It would establish a common minimum level of penalties for cases of serious noncompliance, including the absence of reporting despite reminders. Quote, the cover of anonymity, the fact that there are more than 9,000 different crypto assets currently available, and the inherent digital nature of the trade means that

many crypto asset users that are making huge profits fall under the radar of national tax authorities. I think that is the excuse. That is the justification, just as the U.S. Treasury used North Korea, the North Koreans are using it, as a justification to sanction open source software. And that remains. It's being challenged in court. But I think that we should be skeptical of the excuses that they're using to take away freedoms of which they never give back. It goes on to say the European Commission said that the tax authorities currently lack proper information about the gains of crypto holders limiting the tax revenues deriving from a booming sector. And I think this is really where the signal is in this entire report, Ben. It says the rules would

cover crypto service providers of all sizes and both for domestic and cross-border transactions. And I think that right there really tells you what you need to know, really tells me what they're really trying to achieve with this, is that they're trying to put the old system, the system of exclusion onto the new system, right? They haven't learned lessons of the past. They'd rather hold on to control, power and control. And I think that's what they're trying to set on top of Bitcoin. Unfortunately for them, right, once Bitcoin, this is just going to force people to stay in Bitcoin, right?

It exacerbates the problem they're trying to shut off. What was Christine Lagarde's own words, Ben? It was like, we have to close the escape valve, right? I think that's what they're trying to do here. Yeah, yeah. It's, I'll lead people with a call to action for this particular story. One, learn how to use a non-KYC, a peer-to-peer exchange. So I mentioned Hoddle-Hoddle at the top of the show.

There's also Robosats and BISC. Those are options that you can check out. Also, learn how to use alternative app stores on your phone. So if you're on Android, check out FDroid or the Aurora store. You can also, if you're on Apple, you can side load apps. So just learn how to do that. And then, of course, you can easily get Bitcoin wallets on your computer. So just a couple things that you can learn, non-KYC sources of Bitcoin,

earn Bitcoin, circular economies, and learn how to load up apps, even if an App Store tells you no. Yes, 100%. And then disable that setting on your iPhone where they automatically delete apps. Or they update apps to... They do that? Is that thing?

That is totally a thing. Speaking of App Store, speaking of iPhone, Ledger announces new hardware wallet, Ledger Stacks. Now, what's really interesting about this, Ben, it's designed by Tony Fidel, the inventor of the iPod and co-creator of the iPhone.

The Ledger Stacks will have an e-ink touchscreen and can be used with a phone directly without a computer. It's set to launch next year and will be priced at $279. A markup from its Ledger NanoX, which currently retails at 149. The Ledger stacks will be available by the end of March 2023. You can pre-order today on ledger.com. In the future, it will be available from select retailers such as Best Buy in the United States. Now, all of this is just fucking noise.

I don't really care. And then I would say this is noise too. But what's really interesting is this. And I think this is a little bit of signal. And it really goes to show how big this industry is becoming, right? You have Shell announcing that they're getting into the industry. They're making, you know, liquid for the miners or forget the specific terminology. You have ExxonMobil, you know, using excess gas to to mine Bitcoin.

And now you have basically the inventor of the iPhone and the iPod making hardware wallets. Like, what the fuck is going on? What reality is this? You've been here a little bit longer than I have. Could you ever have imagined this five, six years ago? Look at how far we've come. Yeah, it's interesting to see it's, you know, at the same time that we're getting stuff like the last story that you mentioned,

we're also getting, hey, the inventor of the iPod and the iPhone just created a hardware device. Like that's, it's the world's powers that be are coming to a head. and one is kind of like this free market of we want to build things and and allow people to do as they see fit with their own assets. And the other is we want to shoehorn you into custody only so that eventually we can make self custody illegal and then add, you know, taxes and all kinds of stuff on unrealized gains and confiscation and all that kind of stuff. So we'll see who wins It'll be interesting But yeah In terms of the

I'm I'll obviously get one of these just to be able to Do a video on it and see what it's like Hopefully it's good But again of course Ledger Close source Lots of shit coin support

But nonetheless It does look slick So hopefully even if people opt not to use ledger hopefully the design and cues from that will be looked at and people will use those ideas and build up better bitcoin only solutions as well i think it's all good in the end 100% dude i agree um now what do we have next digital currency group owes gemini users 900 million u.s dollars amid genesis insolvency for anyone does know genesis is the main partner in Gemini's Earned program where retail investors lend out their coins in exchange

for a fixed stream of returns, also known as yields. Gemini halted what draws from the scheme. I love the word. The scheme last month. And here is Barry trying to explain what's going on. Gen. It goes on to say Genesis is the main partner of Gemini's. I've read that. Gemini has now formed a creditors committee to recoup the funds from Genesis and its parent company DCG. the people said Gemini and Genesis declined to comment. DCG itself owes money to its subsidiary Genesis. These intercompany loans have complicated the picture for creditors. DCG has $2 billion worth of outstanding debt,

1.7 billion of which is owned to its own subsidiary Genesis through two loans. Over the summer, Genesis lost $1.1 billion on a loan to collapse hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. DCG took on Genesis liability. in the process subsequently owing 1.1 billion Genesis. Sobert told investors that last week that DCG had separately borrowed 575 million from Genesis on an arm's length basis to fund undisclosed investments and share buybacks from non-employee shareholders. Okay.

All of that bullshit being read. I'll tell you this, Ben. Okay. Stop trusting other people with your money. It's crazy because. Because you see all this shit, like the explanation of who lent who to what to who and where. It's just this convoluted mess of shit. And it comes down to that very fact that you just stated, you should not trust other people with your money.

Because even if the group that you're leaving it with, if you think that they're super, super responsible, you don't know specifically what their relationships. with other companies are like, you then have to account for the risk of anybody else that they are dealing with. And as we've seen, shit hits the fan eventually. So you've got to be so careful. Just hold your own keys. 100%. Stop trusting. Stop outsourcing the personal responsibility of the storage of your wealth. Speaking of storage of wealth, I don't know how I feel about this. El Salvador Bitcoin Treasury lacks transparency. Goes on to say,

since making the cryptocurrency legal tender last year, the country has failed to officially declare any of its holdings. The public has to rely on President Nayam Bukheli's word, or more specifically his tweets, to find out when he's buying Bitcoin, how much and at what price. A human rights group in El Salvador has deemed the government's restrictive policy

on public information regarding its Bitcoin accounts to be unconstitutional. I mean, dude, like, it's like, you know, stop trusting other people with your money. Like, it's like, dude, that's crazy. That's nuts. Well, and I agree. I agree with the sentiment here. Like if, if, so here's the thing.

If it was just somebody's own non-public company, private company, or if it was just an individual, whatever, I don't care. but if it's an individual using like the country's money and that that money comes from taxpayers and you know then i feel like governments should be incredibly transparent with that like there should be this is an instance where it should be like here are the addresses that all the countries of bitcoin are sitting in and you can see every movement of it like i feel like that level transparency is is warranted in this instance. I don't know. What do you think? Don't trust verify. That's a tremendous, that's like the company's, I mean, sorry, the company, the country's finances resting in the hands of one man and everyone kind of has to take his word for it, which is like

really interesting. Like that is really, really interesting. Michael Saylor's micro strategy has more transparency than a country, right? And you would make the argument because it's a public company, it's forced to do reporting. I mean, but, you know, the American government, right? Like, they're pretty opaque about their finances. So I mean, yeah. I mean, so there's a good in the comments here, Tyler, Tyler Durdon says, I imagine El Salvador keeps it on the download because they fear attacks from the West. I mean, perhaps, but you can, you can physically hedge against. that risk, right? Like, you can have a geographically dispersed multi-sig. You can do it in such ways where you really lock that shit down. Yeah, I don't know what to say. Like, yeah,

you've got to balance transparency with, you know, risk management in that type of a situation. Like right now, obviously the U.S. isn't going to, but like, I mean, somebody could go through his quote unquote tweets be like, geez, this guy has X number of Bitcoin based on the timing of these buys. But yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know.

And the one thing I worry about too for them is God knows what they're, because it's not transparent, you don't know where it's stored. Maybe some of the coins were on some of these platforms that imploded, right? Like what about that?

What if half the country's Bitcoin was like stuck in one of these these insolvencies you would never know because there's no transparency so yeah I don't know shitty I'm just looking like do you think that nation states are like like you know in the case of like naive we have to set up a multi-sick what do we do check out BTC sessions one day maybe I'll be that would be the most hilarious encounter of my life if one day some world leader was like yo i used your video to set up the country's multi-stage i'd be like oh shit i hope that was a good tutorial how old was it and then they start sharing it it's like the specter one the specter one oh man

dude that's funny yeah that's funny okay all right next one uh this last one uh silvergate So they kind of came out. I'm just going to read the first part. Then we'll talk about it. I wanted to take out. I wanted to take this opportunity to set the record straight about Silvergate's role and the digital asset ecosystem. And what we have always done and continue to ensure our customers act in accordance with our robust risk management controls. I read all that and I'm like, I don't trust anything.

That sounds like a lot of Fiat speak. But yeah, and then let's take a look at their Silvergate Exchange network. FTX, crypto.com, Gemini. I mean, brother,

like, you know, what robustness? How many out of all of them with are those three? That's like, that's like at least a quarter of the, yeah, but a quarter of the ones there.

So, and then the rest of the letter, they basically want to say we take risk management and compliance extremely seriously. We conduct extensive due diligence. We conducted extensive due diligence on FTX and Almeida. We have resilient balance sheet and ample liquidity. I mean, like, brother, like, fine, it's an announcement. It makes sense.

Silvergate deals with a lot of the people. But like that sounds like a very, very well written and well drawn out fiat excuse. Stop trusting other people with your money. Yeah. You hear the word robust. I don't know. It doesn't, for some reason, that word robust does not exude confidence to me. But I don't know, man.

You know, it seems like all of this bullshit is just a huge house of cards. Like nobody is really privy to how much risk there is. And it's clear because we've seen how this year has panned out for many people. Nobody had any handle on just how much risk. much this shit was teetering on the brink of collapse and when things started to fall it was like one after the other after the other and has just been an absolute shitstorm and i think that there's probably some that just just made it um and if there were another big implosion they would probably topple as well i'm sure there's some that were just just on the cusp being like oh god

please not one more. If we don't have another one, we'll be okay. I don't know. It's. Yeah. No, I, I 100% agree. And I think it really comes down to what we've been saying this entire show, right? It's like stop trusting other people with your money

so that you don't have to read these types of excuses and be like, oh my God, what's going on? I thought they were robust. They said robust. Yeah, yeah. I echo that, man. Well, hold your own keys, everybody. That is the theme of the year.

It was always the theme since 2009, but it's especially the theme this year. So, Nico, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for filling us in on the goings-on. And I will see you next week, and then I'll see you the week after for an even more special week, which I'm going to talk about in a minute here.

So, dude, I appreciate you. Thank you. I appreciate you. This was your Simply sessions. Thanks, man. I'll see you soon. Everybody, thank you. We got a few more things to chat about before we wrap this thing.

There's a few things I wanted to point to that I think are worth you guys checking out this week. There are some awesome content. So I got to give a shout out to Natalie Smolenski. She gave an excellent presentation. at the Texas blockchain summit, but she's part of the Texas Bitcoin Council or something along those lines. She would have preferred it to be called the Texas Bitcoin Summit. But nonetheless, her rant is all everything Bitcoin. And basically she talks about the House of Cards that our current financial system is built on.

and the long-term debt cycle and how things need to basically be entirely repriced and debt to be entirely restructured on a less risky model. And how we're seeing the beginnings of that now is a lot of these quote unquote crypto implosions. And we'll be seeing more potentially soon, not just in this ecosystem or that ecosystem, but with the economy as a whole. She goes on to talk about how Bitcoin is different and how Bitcoin was built for this and it will endure and why it's important. It's a hell of a talk. It's a 10 minute video. Tour de Meester posted it. But the reason I bring her up is because she's going to be on the show tomorrow.

So I'll tell you more about that in a second. But if you don't follow tour, be sure to go follow him. Go follow Natalie. And you'll see more of her tomorrow. It was awesome. The other thing that I thought was really cool, this just dropped maybe an hour ago. From Bitcoin magazine, they did a documentary. There's a bunch of bitcoins that went to Madeira, met the president there and are basically working on the next potential Bitcoin adopting nation.

Medira is an autonomous zone off the coast of Portugal, just north of Africa. it is technically, I think, part of the EU. Nonetheless, it's like a 17-minute watch. It's a really cool video of kind of their experiences there as they went. It did happen some time ago, but this is like the final kind of product of like, hey, this was our trip and this is who we talked to and this is kind of like what the efforts were. Very, very interesting. And I hear that things are very,

very kind of promising there. It's a small enough nation or autonomous zone that I think they have a bit more play with how they actually structure things. And they're also uniquely positioned from a power perspective and energy perspective to appreciate Bitcoin and why it can help in that sector. So anyways, highly recommend checking out this video. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's on the Bitcoin magazine YouTube channel.

So head over and check it out. A couple of other things to mention, of course, Start 9. I did my video earlier this week. I dropped it on Tuesday. And that was my tutorial on how to build, set up, and use your Start 9 embassy, running a full Bitcoin stack. So Bitcoin Core, connecting your external wallets, running a lightning node, using it transactionally,

running Specter with it, Mempool up space. All of this stuff I basically go through, how do you set up your Bitcoin node? And there will be more videos coming on some of the other awesome stuff that they have available through the Start 9 marketplace. We've got tons of tools, more coming all the time. Really, really awesome stuff out of them. So you can head over, you can check out.

There's part of me building it. But yeah, I dropped that just a few days ago. Lots of people already watching it. and some good comments. So thank you guys for checking that out. Again, tomorrow, why are we bullish? As I mentioned, we have Natalie Smolenski. We have TC Meditation Man, who is the genius,

who put together this little tool that I showed at the beginning of the show, the time chain calendar.com. We've also got Nicholas Gregory, and he is from Mercury Wallet, which uses state chains to help preserve your... Bitcoin privacy. I've done a tutorial on that previously. This guy's awesome. Lots of interesting stuff to say. So anyways, this is going to be a killer panel. Be sure to check that out. Now, I've also got to say that there's been some exciting developments in and around my upcoming Christmas show Friday, December 23rd. Oh my God, the guest list. It is insane. I'm just going to

read you a few names, not to name drop or anything, but I got to read you a few names. I've got it up in front of me. I'm not going to show it on the screen, but just for a few, just to mention, NVK from Coin Kite, Stefan Lavera, Max from Hoddle Hoddle, Matt Hill from Start Nine Labs, John Stephanopoulos from Future Bit, Seed Siner, Adam and Steve Barber from upstream data. Of course, Nico is going to be on there as well from Simply Bitcoin. We've got Alex Glassstein, Robert Breedlove, Tip, John Valis, Michael Saylor, Samson Mao, Jack Mallors, Joe Hall, Jeff Booth, Oby, Adam Back, Elise Colleen, Mark Moss. And then we've got a little pleb after party going on as well. Plus a couple more names, maybe coming down the pipe, just filling in the last few spots. Holy hell, it is going to be a party. And don't you miss it? That's going to be on December 23rd. That's a Friday. It's going to be starting an hour. earlier than it would be. And it's going to be a marathon.

This thing's going to be like. Last year, it was like six hours long. So get some popcorn, get yourself a beverage. Make sure you got a full meal there. We'll have some festivities going on. It's going to be wild. Nonetheless, thank you guys so much for watching. As always, like, subscribe, share, all those things, super important.

It will help get this content in front of more eyeballs. You can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below as well. Coin kite, start nine, hoddle, hoddle, hoddle, bill fottle, and shake pay. They're all down below. If you need help with any tutorials, anything like that, where you need some one-on-one, you can hit up me at my website, btccessions.ca, and book a personal one-on-one session. And finally, if you really liked what you saw, you can draw me a Bitcoin tip at my strike page. Strike.me slash BTC sessions.

Head there, hit the tip button. You will see a lightning invoice, or if you tap to the right, regular Bitcoin. Bitcoin QR code. With that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening wherever you may be. See you guys next time for your daily session.