BTC Sessions - NEWS ROUNDUP: Bitcoin Fixes Financial Censorship ep297

Episode Date: October 18, 2022

JP Morgan becomes the thought police and closes Kanye West’s account, Paypal walks back misinformation fines, America’s oldest bank dives into Bitcoin, Coincenter sues OFAC and more on today’s show! 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: 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 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. New show happened a little bit early this week. I'm doing some traveling, so, you know, doing both live shows a couple of days early. But there's plenty to talk about this week. Nico is joining us this week with all of the goings-on of all of the craziness in and around this space. There's been a trend of financial. censorship, which is, I mean, that's always going on, but like particularly pronounced and

and like in the limelight this week. So we'll be chatting a little bit about that. As always, this is live. Anything can happen. So I'll defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live. Do it live. I can, I'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. If you have not already, like, subscribe, All those things help a ton in getting 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 on the market right now. We're sitting at $19,300 per coin. Single US dollar will pick you up 5,181 sats. 91.35% of all Bitcoin has been mined. and fees it's looking like 16 sats per bite next block still a little bit higher if you're waiting 30 minutes to an hour but you know mid to high single digits should do you just fine shout out to sponsor the show coin kite dot com these guys just have the best in bitcoin hardware i love my cold card mark four uh this thing's a beast when dealing with interacting with securing your bitcoin they've of course also got the open dimes here, the block clock and block clock micro. I'm going to be doing a video on that because I just got the micro delivered recently. So I'll cover that soon.

And then the SATs card I just recently covered the tap sign or all this awesome stuff. Be sure to check them out. CoinKite.com. You can use code BTC sessions for 5% off everything in the store. ShakePay.com. Easy way to be stacking stats in Canada. You can eTransfer in and out, no deposit or withdrawal fees, thin spread. If you use the link down below to sign up and you purchase your first

hundred bucks worth of Bitcoin, give you $10 for free. You get the same deal every time somebody signs up through a Eurolink and does the same. You can shake your phone every single day for free. Sats. They've got a Sats bag visa card. They've got all kinds of great stuff. So check them out. ShakePay.com. Link down below if you're interested in that 10 bucks. Leaden.com. These guys are great. I've been using them for years now. And they're really useful whenever I have a cash flow crunch. I need dollars, but I don't want to sell Bitcoin. I can deposit here, get a loan of dollars to my bank account within 24 hours, pay back those dollars, get back the same amount of Bitcoin. They've also got savings accounts for Bitcoin

and USC with quarterly third-party audits in which you can cryptographically verify your holdings were part of the audit, which is much needed. They also have their B2X offering and Bitcoin-backed mortgages in Canada and the U.S. So check out. amount start.ledon.io slash btc sessions. If you use that link, you can sign up, fund your account, you get 10 bucks for free. Bit refill. If I can get to a bit refill.com, these guys help me a ton living on Bitcoin. I can purchase any gift card, my little hard desires. And I can do it with Bitcoin, both via the Lightning Network and on chain. I earn stats back as I shop. I can get additional stats back through the referral program, as can you. You can do things like top.

up your phone, get inbound lightning channels, and if you're in the U.S., you can pay your bills and you can get on a Bitcoin standard like I'm currently living. So be sure to check them out again. A link down below, you want to check that out. And finally, if you're backing up any important Bitcoin wallet, get it in solid steel. Pieces of paper, especially in mind view, don't really cut it. You don't want to have to be worrying about fire damage, water damage, and all the crap that can go wrong with a piece of paper.

If you have in solid steel, those worries go away. So Bill Fottle, this is how I'm backing up my important wallets. You can check them out at PrivacyPros.io slash BTC sessions. Then I'll get you a little deal at the checkout. And before we bring in Nika, let's do some quick shoutouts on the Helipad boost tracker. Anybody streaming sats to the show via Fountain or Breeze app listening and streaming sats directly via the Lightning Network for anything they see and like. So obviously cryosats.

always peppering all of the Bitcoin podcast with Sats. Thanks, buddy. I see that. 3-3, magic number boost, booster shot. Cryosat said the Australian managing director of the Blockchain Council, Steve Valles, is working with the Reserve Bank of Australia, our version of the Fed, to develop a CBDC, quote, crypto bros working with the enemy to create tools of control and financial war. Keep fighting the good fight. Thanks, man. Indeed we will. A few others here. Michael said,

Every man must have freedom, must have the scope to form, test, and act upon his own choices for any sort of development of his own personality to take place. He must, in short, be free in order

that he may be fully human. Murray Rothbard. Ooh, good one, Michael. Thank you for that. Second Breakfast said, Calix and F-Droid tutorial soon. Seems like people will need alternative sooner rather than later. Indeed, sir, I think I'll be taking a look at that soon.

There's graphene and there's calyx. I've currently got calyx on an old pixel four. I'll be taking a look at testing out graphene as well. Yeah, always a good idea to have alternatives when it comes to your app store, because that's a central point of failure when it comes to getting your Bitcoin wallets and you know, you don't want to get fucked. Giddyup from cryosats again. Lots of booster shots. Booster shots coming through. Zine Tags best show.

JPC says, thank you, Ben, another amazing podcast on the found podcast app. I'm currently reading the fourth turning and added three more books to my Amazon wish list. Dude, great book. Definitely read it. This is from a conversation with Alex Brammer, Jesse Berger, and Brian DeMintz just recently. get it again from cryosats and michael some bulls um last few here again cryosats jesus dude pepper in the sats strong signal on this one made me want to have another kid love it i love to hear that man that's from mr boo hoddle this is it boys from i r fan 369 and a few more bowls from michael

anyways thank you guys for the peppering of sats i appreciate it uh let's get niko in here to see Those weeks going, buddy, good to see you. How you doing? Yo, super pumped to be on BTZ sessions. Oh, you mean simply sessions. Now, you change it up on me. Yes, simply sessions. Oh, man.

I'm excited. Lots of things going on in Clown World, Ben. Dude, tell me about, I'll pull up your thing, but tell me about them. What's been going on, man? Oh, man. Dude, this one was interesting. And I think it means a lot. So check this out, guys.

New PayPal policy. Let's company pull 25. 500 from user users accounts if they promote misinformation. Now before I get into the article, PayPal walked this the F back. They went so hard in damage control. They got their friends in media. This is a screenshot from the What's Happening tab on Twitter. PayPal's no intention to find customers over misinformation, Verify, and Bloomberg report.

Now, unfortunately, Simply Sessions brings the receipts. I'll let you guys be the judge. Do you really think that this accidentally, this language happened to accidentally fall into the policy. So it goes on to say a new policy update from PayPal will permit the firm to sanction users who advanced purported misinformation. Who decides what is misinformation or not? There's an oracle problem there. Anyways, or present risk to users' well-being with fines of up to 2,500 per offense. The financial services company, which has repeatedly deplatform organizations and individual commentators for their political views,

will expand its existing list of prohibited actions, activity, sorry, on November 3rd. Prohibitions on the sending, posting, and publication of any messages, content, or materials that promote misinformation or present a risk to user safety, a well-being, right? That's not going to be abused or anything. It goes on to say, deliberations will be made at the sole discretion of PayPal

and may subject the user to damages, including the removal of $2,500, debited directly from your PayPal, account per offense. Presently, a reasonable minimal estimate of PayPal's actual damages due to the administrative cost of tracking violations and damage to the company's reputation. Quote, whatever motivation PayPal has for establishing these vague new categories of prohibited expression, they will almost certainly have a severe chilling effect on user speech. And I think that's the signal right there. The self-censorship that this is going to cause people who have. Now, if you want to

take a glimpse at what a future with central bank digital currencies is going to look like, here you go. That's exactly how it's going to look like. They had such a backlash. So many people were closing their accounts. There's even information that they stopped the automated account closure process. And now people have to call the 1-800 number to call the account. And of course, that's when they walked it back. But Ben, you read that language. How does that language accidentally get included in a policy if it wasn't for malicious or nefarious means. Oh, I mean, it's it's total bullshit, obviously. Like they saw I was hurting their bottom line. And that's, and that's, that is the bottom

line is theirs, right? And so you, you get to a point where you think, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to, uh, shape, um, you know, my, my, my political environment as I see fit because we're a, a giant tech company and nobody can hurt us and then it actually starts to hurt and they got they got to walk it back but you're right in a in a world with CBDCs that that is not the case because the government they preside over their their constituents uh or their their subjects as as we we mostly are treated as and so you don't have that check right you don't you don't have that oh all the sudden you're not going to get your money because they just tax the shit out of you. And it doesn't matter if they make poor choices that the users don't consent to.

That's what government is for. Government is for taking your money and using it for shit you don't like. That tends to be the trend here. I don't believe for a second anything was a mistake. I believe that they fully just kicked open that door to direct financial censorship. And for the time being, there was enough repercussion for them to walk it back. But in the future, that largely won't be the case. Some of the language there is insane to hear.

Like the idea that that anybody that shares quote unquote misinformation, how much shit over the past two years was removed and flagged and deemed misinformation through mainstream media, through social media websites, all this kind of crap, only to later be like, oh, actually that, you know, that was true.

But, you know, there's no repercussion for us having done that because we own the platform. So yeah, man, it's scary. It's shitty. And, you know, I, it's a good thing that there's a built, ready to go solution.

100%. And I think that as time progresses, it will become incredibly obvious. There's really two alternatives. It's Bitcoin or slavery, slavery being central bank digital currencies, and there's Bitcoin, right? It was an open monetary network. But you also have to be, if it's an open monetary network, you have to be okay with people speaking their mind, even if you don't necessarily agree with it. And speaking of that, here is a retweet from Mark Moss, and he's retweeting Candice Owens. Anasone says earlier today, I learned that Kanye West was officially kicked out of J.P. Morgan Chase Bank.

I was told there was no official reason given, but they sent this letter as well to confirm that he has until late November to find another place for the Yeezy Empire to bank. It wasn't also that. It was Alex Jones must pay more than $900 million in damages to Sandy Hook families. Now, I want to preface this by saying, do I agree with the things that Kanye said? Do I agree the things with Alex Jones said? Absolutely not. I don't think you agree with them either, Ben. But I think it's a very slippery slope when a bureaucratic elite are getting to decide who is entitled to use money and who is not entitled to use money.

And there's unintended consequences to that system, including what we were talking about with PayPal, the self-censorship aspect, right? people out of fear of losing their business, losing their way of getting paid, losing their money, sending to relatives, now they start self-censoring themselves, going along with the establishment narrative so that they don't get in trouble, man. And I think what they did with Alex Jones is very similar to what Craig Wright did with Bitcoiners, right? He sued them using the UK's libel laws to scare the crap out of the community and send a signal, right? I don't remember anyone in the New York Times being sued or being awarded or being, you know, a fine against of $900 million because they lied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which led to tens of thousands of deaths, right? So again, it's a double standard here and it's a very slippery slope. So the real question, Ben, is what type of world do we want to live in in the future? What type of world do we want our kids to live in?

Do we want a world an open monetary network? or do we want a world where a small bureaucratic elite are getting to decide who's entitled to use money and who's not entitled to use money? Yeah, yeah. To your point of the double standard. Do you know who J.P. Morgan did continue to bank even after a conviction came through? I won't be surprised, but tell me. Jeffrey Epstein.

Like, just so, like, this is a tweet from, there's a journalist, independent, journalist Ian Miles Chong, I believe. Anyways, he's like, just so we're clear what's acceptable and what's not. And he shows the screenshots of that they continued to bank him even after he was indicted and charged for child trafficking. They're like, well, you know, money. It's, and it's funny because they say damage to our reputation's brand, like our brand's reputation.

It's like, you guys didn't care about that, did you? Yeah, you know, so clearly it has nothing to do with reputation. This is more a hierarchical play. It's like, listen, you guys are here. This is how you're going to be treated if you go against the official narrative. And it's really, really scary. Anyways, on a more positive note, that's right, Ben. Those are laser eyes on Alexander Hamilton on a page on the Wall Street Journal.

We are at that point in the movie. Check this out. The nation's oldest bank said it would begin receiving clients' cryptocurrencies on Tuesday, becoming the first large U.S. bank to safeguard digital assets alongside traditional investments on the same platform. BNY Mellon won the approval of New York's financial regulator earlier this fall to begin receiving select customers, Bitcoin and Ether starting this week. The bank will store the keys required to access and transfer those digital assets and provide the same bookkeeping services on those digital assets that it offers to fund managers for their portfolios of stocks, bonds, commodities, and other assets. Now, what's really interesting about this, Ben, though, is, and again, I think there's a little piece of signal, too, is that Catlin Long has been trying to do this for two years, and the Fed has been slow walking her.

And, dude, Ben, could you play the video? Yeah, let's take a listen. This is a good one. And of whether crypto truly is risky within the traditional banking system and the connectivity, because there was a major announcement this morning, which is that Bank of New York, Mellon, which is, I believe the largest bank in the United States by assets, has officially now entered Bitcoin custody. And the interesting question that is raised by that is that they are a bank holding company that is regulated by the supervised by the Federal Reserve. My company, as you know, has a lawsuit against the Federal Reserve, and I am about to make some news. You will see a filing from my company in that lawsuit pertaining to the announcement this morning.

because the Federal Reserve filed filings last week talking about the risk to the financial system from crypto and then today a Federal Reserve supervised bank holding company enters crypto. We've been waiting for two and a half years to do that. And look what the Fed actually said last week versus what it did today. Well, yeah, no one, no one's ever accused. DC FinTech Week of not having to be shy people, not. Oh, man. Ooh.

Yeah, that's, I mean, it's just so in your face. Mm-hmm. It's so, it's so blatant, you know? It's wild. Like, I mean, part of me is like, okay, well, BNY Mell and, like, So it's like a It's it's It's kind of like a

A condone like a Like a semi condoning of it by the Fed But also like a An absolute Um Absolute proof that there's like a good old boys club. Right. It's like well

You can't do it But maybe we'll dabble. Um, but it's too. dangerous. Not for us, but for you. Dude, it's, you know, it goes back to like this theme that we've been talking about since we started doing this, Ben, it's the people that are responsible in regulating the on and off ramps are also the people that stand the most to lose if Bitcoin succeeds, right? And those are the people charged with regulating this. So I suspect you're going to

start to see more of this very shady kind of like, you're allowed, but you're not allowed, right? why is the spot ETF not approved in the future's ETF approved? You know, that's, this is very suspicious. Yeah. It seems like it's going to be cluster fuck for some time to come until it's just impossible not to, like they will push and wait in every aspect possible to the last possible minute

until it's just like so blatantly, disgustingly skewed that the entire public at large is like, what in the fuck is going on? Yeah, 100%. 100%, man. But we'll be here to cover it, I guess. Yeah. Sure, we will.

So, if I may. Yeah. All right, let's do it. This is stratum v2. It's kind of a big deal. It's a big, I'll read the headline. I think it says it perfectly. The software used in Bitcoin mining is getting its first big makeover and more than a decade.

Let's check it out. I just highlighted a couple paragraphs. The software used in Bitcoin mining just got its first upgrade since late 2012, and a coalition of companies including payments giant block is trying to help push the open source protocol forward to become an industry standard. The goes on to say, what does the stratum v2 do? And I think here's the signal, everybody. Currently, it is common for each mining rig in a large farm to directly connect to a pool.

This wastes a lot of energy. Lee says that stratum v2 supports a proxy that aggregates all the connections and only establishes one connection with the pool. Also, it goes on to say, man, here it is. Working for industry-wide adoption of upgraded... No, here it is. Sorry about that, Ben.

I forgot to highlight it. A feature that represents a historic shift in the censorship-resistant mechanics of Bitcoin mining by replacing a pool's responsibility of assigning work to miners with the ability for miners to select their own work. That is a huge deal. deal because the way that it works now is that only a handful of pools are getting to pick

what transactions are included in the blocks or not. This changes that and this will give the capability to individual miners if they find the block to pick and choose what transactions are included in the blockchain and what transactions are not. And I think that further decentralizes Bitcoin. This is extremely bullish and I don't hear enough people talking about it. I think this is, it's so poetic that this is implemented at the same time as we're seeing like 90% plus of, of eth blocks being O-FAC compliant, right? Like how beautiful is that where, and all you need to do, even if it wasn't that extreme on, on Ethereum after moving to proof of stake, even if it was just an increase in general, you just need to look directionally, which way are we going? And moving the stratham v2 kind of the standard, all of a sudden individual miners being

able to decide the transactions they include, it throws the idea of OFAC compliance and regulatory compliance in and around what Bitcoin blocks are and what transactions they include. It throws it out of the fucking window. And I think that's a beautiful thing. I love that this is the kind of stuff being built on Bitcoin. And it's, again, such the juxtaposition to Ethereum going down and continuing down a path that leads to nothing more than a new Fed. 100%.

And it's crazy that they don't even acknowledge that it's a problem, that Ethereum right now is working to censor for the United States government. Like no one's even talking about it. Here's another bullish piece of news on Bitcoin. I pronounced this wrong earlier today. I'm going to try it again. Early, maybe I said it wrong. I don't know.

Support signaling has been merged into Bitcoin Core. And Marty does a great job at explaining what it is. He says, what you're looking at freaks is a massive breakthrough and distributed network engineering that will enable Bitcoin to become a more robust, reliable, and private network. More robust because it enables more individuals to participate in network validation by opening up the potential universe of those who have the ability to run a node

by lowering the barrier to entry on the internet bandwidth side of things, more reliable by increasing the connectivity between nodes and more private by making it harder for attackers to identify the node from which a transaction originated. So makes it easier to run nodes, man. Again, further decentralization

and exactly what you said, Ben, you pointed it out on Ethereum, it's literally going the opposite direction, and they're celebrating it. Yeah. Yeah. It's you couldn't point at a better example. And it's,

it is, I'm glad that Ethereum is the second largest coin out there because the, the trajectory that it's on is so detached from where Bitcoin is and is going that it makes such a stark contrast that down the line as these things develop. And even you have, articles coming out of oh Ethereum's effectively

a lot more centralized since moving to proof of state coming out I think that was I don't know if it was Wall Street Journal or it was some like major publication or like CNBC or whatever it was nonetheless even they're recognizing it

like mainstream media like doing articles on well you know this has happened and you know down the line those things pile up and and it continues to make it more obvious why the development in and around Bitcoin has been so conservative and there's no no easy way out of just you know oh we've got a small group of developers that get to call the shots and and nobody runs a node and yeah I love to see stuff like this it's it's

incredibly bullish man and again it's heading in the right direction and shit coins sorry and alt coins are headed in the wrong direction you can you can say shit coins is fun Thanks, man. All right. So another update on the separation of money in state saga to give you guys a quick preface, right, the first time in U.S. history that the U.S. Treasury sanctioned open source software versus a government or an individual. We've been making the case that the reason for that is we believe, or I believe, better said,

that the U.S. government is trying to set a precedent because at the end of the day, what is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is an open source software. We're hearing rumblings from Iran from Russia saying that they're going to use Bitcoin to facilitate international trade circumventing US sanctions, right? So it's a big coincidence that, you know, the Treasury, you know, is doing these types of moves. Anyways, eventually I believe that this is eventually going to be sent to court, and I think that's exactly what's happening. Coin Center is suing the OFA over its tornado cast sanction. Here's a couple of announcements. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I'm going to read some of it. here is the announcement by CoinCenter.

Coin Center is a suing OFAC over its tornado cast sanction. Privacy is not default on Altcoin Ethereum. If you do your job on Ethereum, you coworkers can see your salary. If you donate to a pollute before you guys get your panties in a bunch, remember, pay attention. The Treasury is sanctioning open source software. Unfortunately, no, I mean, you could say fortunately, unfortunately, and whatever it is, they happen to pick a software, an open source software, that runs on Ethereum. And that's just a reality. But if we concede this and we say, oh, no, it's

Ethereum. It's not a big deal. The Treasury sets a precedent to go after other open source software. And we know for a fact, Ben, based on what we were saying earlier, is that the OFAC is already pressuring Ethereum to censor for them. Right. So this is, it's not a conspiracy. This is what's happening. Anyways, it goes on to say, if you donate to a political cause on Ethereum, the enemies of your of your cause can see your contribution. If you're a celebrity on Ethereum, your fans see not just your politicized activities, but also your private personal accounts. Privacy is not normal for a salaried employee, a charitable donor, even a celebrity.

But privacy is not normal if you do these things on Ethereum unless you use tornado cash. So look, I hate that we have to talk about a shit coin, but that's a distraction. The reality here is that this whole thing, right? It says it right there. OFC does not have the authority to sanction a smart contract and Americans have a right to use privacy tools. If the OFC gets away with this, that means that all privacy on Bitcoin

is that samurai, it's coin join, wasabi is kind of iffy nowadays, but let's just say all those three, it's all under threat. Because the battle that's really happening here is the right to privacy. I believe they're going after it is because Bitcoin is a fundamental threat to current U.S. sanction policy.

So I know this has to do with shit coins. I know that's what it said. And it was very painful to read that. But this is about the battle for Americans to use open source software and also the battle for Americans, the right for privacy. Right. So I believe this is really important, even though it made my ears. Yeah.

And again, it's, it's one thing to go after, you know, something and say, oh, this is a security because it's run by a group of people that, you know, people are banking on the efforts of them to make a gain. You know, I'm not huge on the regulations in and around that. But at the same time, if it's centralized enough, it can be attacked. it's an entirely different thing again to sanction like a piece of code like a piece of open source software because it sets the precedent that literally anybody using creating it says the precedent that people will be afraid to write code right like this is it's not like this guy who wrote tornado cash was like oh i'm going to write a problem

program and then it will be sanctioned by the treasury. Like prior to writing it. It's like, oh, I know I'm writing a tool that will be used so people can enjoy some privacy on Ethereum, which previously was not possible. I think it has a massive chilling effect on any sort of innovation in and around any of this, really? And in the end, yeah, the U.S. kind of shoots. itself in the foot, but, you know, other nations can follow suit.

God knows Canada has no problem following that kind of shit. Like, it's, it sets a terrible precedent. I don't want to have to deal with that shit. But at the end of the day, it'll also be the nation states that decide to be open to this that will benefit. I would like to have some of the benefits of being open to this great new, technology. I would like to not have to hack up and move. So yeah, it's scary. It's actually funny you say that because I've been saying this to my girlfriend all the time. I'm like,

look, we either stand our ground or we're moving to El Salvador. Like that, that's like, you know, that's the reality. You know, and you guys got your battle in Canada. It's looking great because the conservative, you know, and a lot of people are pissed off at, you know who, right? So the conservative candidate has a really good chance of winning. So yeah, I mean, if that happens, you know, he's a pro Bitcoin premiere, right, which is insane. Right. So I think we all kind of have our battles in front of us. But yeah, I think, I think, Ben, this is going to be a hell of a fight, man.

Like, I think that's just a reality. Yeah, it's not going to be an easy one. I think, you know, the coming years, things will get significantly more worse than, than they are right now. You know, there's going to be some dicey moments. In the end, I think it'll sort itself out or rather that Bitcoin will inevitably find its way. But, yeah, that doesn't mean that a lot of people can get caught in the crossfire in the meantime. 100%. So another piece of bullish news. I just want to tell you guys that first of all, this happened in March, but there is a little piece of signal that I picked up on. And on top of this, I want you guys to pay attention when this is happening, right? Because you're starting to see a pattern here. Coinbase, BlackRock, the depths of hell of the bear market, fidelity, the same thing, NASDAQ announcing that they're launching an exchange. Now take a look at when this acquisition happened. So this is news from March.

Exxon is mining Bitcoin in North Dakota as part of its plan to slash emissions. Now, the company that they used, let me see where it is, here it is. The company that they use is Crusoe. And Crusoe recently, it just came out that Crusoe actually acquired a company that we all know, Great American Mining. That's right. So the company that ExxonMobil used to mine Bitcoin just acquired Great American Mining. and that acquisition added approximately 9% to Khrsu's capacity, bringing Khrsou to a new total of approximately 125 Flair gas-powered modular data centers deployed and 300 employees across six states.

Now, another piece of signal here, right? Right now, it is extremely hard to be a Bitcoin miner. You're getting destroyed. If you don't have the latest and greatest equipment, minimum S-19, and you don't have good power costs, you're, you're, you're bled. leading chips right now. So the fact that this is happening at the bottom of a bare market is a piece of signal. And again, I think what's really bullish here is that this is the company that a huge energy company in the U.S. ExxonMobil is using to mine Bitcoin. So very, very bullish. Yeah. Again, it's the people making moves right now like this are the ones that are going to be the most efficient,

right they're finding waste and they're capitalizing on it and turning it into turning it into profit and they're turning it into a more secure bitcoin network and you love to see it and i mean the hash rate just had a huge upswing in the difficulty which is crazy to see given the bitcoin price but yeah you keep keep piling it on more the network just keeps getting more secure even though mining profitability continues to take a hit right So, Ben, out of all the news that we covered today, this is the most bullish and this is the most consequential. This is a retweet from Michael Saylor, and he's reposting an article from the New York, from the Wall Street Journal. It says financial accounting standards board on Wednesday said companies should use fair value accounting for measuring Bitcoin and other crypto assets.

Now I'm going to get to what that means. But first, let's sprinkle some bullishness onto this. This is Neil Jacobs. And he says, today the FASB said companies should use fair value. value accounting for measuring Bitcoin. Almost a year ago, Michael Saylor said that that was one of three things that would take Bitcoin to $5 million per coin. Now, let's take out some of the Wall Street Journal article and let's take a look at what all that means. I'm going to try to condense it as many words as possible. I literally did not understand this the first time I read it.

Anyways, let's give it a shot. The Financial Accounting Standards Board on Wednesday said companies should use fair of value accounting for measuring Bitcoin and other crypto assets, moving a step closer to a standard that would clear up uncertainty over reporting on, uh, over reporting how much such holdings are worth. There are currently no specific accounting or disclosure rules for cryptocurrency assets. So businesses classify them as indefinite lived intangible assets similar to intellectual property such as trademarks. Companies must review the value of such assets at least once a year and write it down

if it drops below the purchase price. If the value rises, companies could only record a gain when they sell the asset, not if they continue to hold it. Well, that has changed, right? And I think that's the big deal, that last sentence. If the value rises, companies can only record a gain when they sell the asset and not if they continue holding it. And that's how the requirements were before for accounting. But now the rules have changed. And it's such incredibly bullish news.

Look, I read it right there, right? Almost a year ago, Michael Saylor, that was one of three things that would take Bitcoin to $5 million a coin. So Ben, holy cow, dude, what took them so long? Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, I didn't know that that's how the accounting rules worked for institutions prior. But, yeah, I mean, in the instance of Saylor, right, he's looking at this thing going,

okay, well, this is the asset I want to hold. I never want to get rid of it. And as it accrues value, like typically you have an asset that's valued at a certain amount. It can be used as collateral for things. But if you can't record the increase in value in a particular asset until you sell it,

that forces selling to be able to enjoy the benefits of having a large amount of assets. assets, but that's no longer the case. And if anything in fiat land, that now that you can like benefit from your Bitcoin holdings as an institution and acquire more fiat because of them without having to sell your Bitcoin, holy shit, I feel like that's one thing that will add to a snowball effect down the line. That's great.

100% agree. And I think that's why Sailor said what he said, right? It's like this needed to happen. Because how it was before, even if you're holding hundreds of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin on your balance sheet, you can't reflect that unless you sold it. That's how it worked before. Now that's changed. Now it says it right there. The method would allow companies to recognize losses and gains immediately, making it a lot more efficient. And also making it a lot more attractive, attractive and lucrative for companies. to potentially hold Bitcoin rather than fiat currencies. Yeah, that's amazing.

That's fantastic, man. I love it. Awesome. Well, that's our final story. Is that correct? Right on time, yes. Dude, that was fantastic. Well, I mean, I'm glad we ended on a bullish note there.

There's plenty to scoff at in the world today of financial censorship and, you know, sanctions against open source code but there are orange glimmers of light out there where people are getting it and things are shifting in in the favor of bitcoin so i think that will continue but uh we're ready to to buckle in and and and prep for the fight because it's it's coming yeah definitely then they fight you stage but i know i know that once we get over that hill man i'm very excited for that for that. What does Corey say, that bright orange future? Yes, yes, exactly. Awesome, man.

Well, dude, I appreciate it. Thank you for spending the time. Yeah, we did an early one this week because I'll be traveling a bit, but we will be back again next week to hit it. Thanks, Ben. Always an honor, guys, this is your Simply sessions. Thanks, man. All right, everybody watching.

A few extra things before we leave here. I got to show you a clip. I got to show you a clip that happened in Amsterdam. Giacomo, he was chatting. He had a little debate talking about companies whether or not they should support shit coins and whether it was an ethical thing or smart thing to do, even if the market currently was asking for it. I got brought up.

I thought it was funny. So I thought I would share it with you. This is Giacomo Zuko at Bitcoin Amsterdam. I give you an example. I don't know if you guys look at YouTube videos by BTC sessions. Great videos about Bitcoin stuff. So Ben is doing a tutorial for Wasabi 2.0 for a cold card. And if you really look at the views of that and you look at the views of porn,

it's clear that the market wants porn videos and non-Bitcoin educational video. So you can just call Ben and say, Ben, your wasabi educational video is great, but just get naked and do something nasty. So the point is not just following the demand, but it's also somehow guiding it. This one in a close for the proposal. Now, okay, porn will be banned on YouTube anyway, so a better equivalence will be flat earth videos.

That will hit so many views more than a Bitcoin tutorial. But it's stupid. I love that. I laughed so hard. I was getting tagged in clips and I thought it was. damn hilarious so i like yeah in in the comments applause yes i laughed when the audience applause for the uh so anyways i i thought it was funny um maybe i'll maybe i'll just upload my videos to porn hub without changing them but give them sexy titles uh you know confident stud shows off

his hardware what do you think let me know um anyways a few other things to mention here before we log off. I had a visitor the other day. Mr. Steve Barber swung by the house with a little present. I'm going to be using a black box soon. And I've got an M30 plus miner on the way. I'm going to start doing a little bit of mining. And you better believe there's going to be,

there's going to be some videos. to come along with that. So very excited. Thanks, Steve, for that, for making the personalized trip. We live close together. But he did drive that thing down from much further north. A couple other things. Highly recommend you guys check out, since we're talking about Michael Saylor just here,

highly recommend you check out a recent episode, Press and Fish, The Investors Podcast, deep dive on Bitcoin Energy, misconceptions with Michael Saylor. It is a beast of an episode. Yeah, definitely check that one out. Now, why am I doing the show early this week? It's because I'm headed to Charlotte, North Carolina for Hoddlewine. Very excited. There's going to be a bunch of awesome people there.

Anders and Pubby are going to be there if you ever listen to Toxic Happy Hour. Guy Swan and his brother are going to be there doing some chats as well. Very excited to get down there. And again, thanks to Jake and Liz for having me down. I'm going to be doing the opening talk to get things kicked off. There's going to be workshops and all kinds of crazy stuff. There's going to be a Halloween party. And Texas Slim from the Beef Initiative is going to be there doing a beef dinner.

I can't wait. It's going to be a lot of fun. So if you're in Charlotte or in the area or you can make it there and you want to meet up, let me know. I'll be there. We're flying in. We get in late Thursday night, but we're going to be there all day, Friday, Saturday.

We're heading back on Sunday. So yeah, let me know if you're in town. Very excited. Also, coming up, Pacific Bitcoin in L.A., more specifically, Santa Monica, but nonetheless, Pacific Bitcoin is happening the 10th and 11th of November. I'm going to be there for that. But I am doing my cold card deep dive workshop. I did one of these in Vancouver.

It was awesome. And yeah, anyway, so if you are going to be in the L. LA area. Be sure to check that out. You can grab. There's only 15 tickets available. I want to keep it small, condensed, so that I can get one-on-one time with everybody. But nonetheless, BTCSessions.

.ca.ca. Slash events. And you will be able to find details there. And tomorrow, coming up, why are we bullish? It's an unchained capital takeover.

I'm doing it early in the week again because of the travel. But we've got Tyler Campbell, Phil Geiger, and Sahil Chattervedi. I hope I'm saying his last name right. I don't want to screw it up. But nonetheless, we got the boys from Unchained Capital coming on for an early edition of Why Are We Bullish? Tomorrow night at 6pm Eastern Time, do not miss it. It's going to be a banger. Very excited. And with that, I'm going to wrap up. Thank you guys so much for watching and or listening if you're on the pod, streaming stats after the fact. Of course, you should please like, subscribe, share.

All those things help a ton getting this content in front of more eyeballs. 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 of course, if you're going to be in LA, you can grab a ticket for that event. And if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a Bitcoin tip at my strike page. Strike.comme slash BTC sessions. Get there.

Type in any amount you want. Hit the tip button. you'll see a regular or see sorry you'll see a lightning invoice or if you prefer tap to the right you'll see a bitcoin QR code with that i am out have yourselves a wonderful day or evening and i'll see you guys next time for your daily session