BTC Sessions - NEWS ROUNDUP: BTC A Nigerian Safe Haven ep327

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

Bitcoin acting as a safe haven amidst the currency turmoil in Nigeria, head of SEC Gary Gensler doubles down on Bitcoin only and much more on today’s show! 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Nunchuk Wallet and their Honey Badger plan is a best in class assisted mutisig setup with built-in inheritance planning and NO KYC. Use awesome hardware options like the Tapsigner, Coldcard and others to secure your stack with spending limits, emergency lockdowns and more. Pass on your savings to your loved ones with ease in a simple claiming process with full customer support. Check them out today! https://nunchuk.io/ 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/BTCSESSION 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 The Miami Bitcoin Conference is the largest Bitcoin event in the world! Come check it out in Miami Beach Florida on May 18-20th. Use code BTCSESSIONS for 10% off your tickets! https://bm.b.tc/btcsessions Free video tutorials not enough? Need some extra hand-holding when mastering self-custody, multisig, coinjoin, running a node, or other skills? Book me for a private session on my website! https://www.btcsessions.ca/ Like what you see? BITCOIN TIPS: https://strike.me/btcsessions ⚡[e-mail]

What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. We got tons of news to chat with you about today. Lots of stuff going on. We're going to be talking a little bit about Bitcoin in Nigeria. We're going to be talking about our good old pal Gary. We've got a whole bunch coming down the pipe. We've got a friend, Nico, here from Simply Bitcoin to fill us all in. And we'll be diving into that momentarily. Now, 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 write it and we'll do it live. The fucking thing sucks.

Yeah. If you have not already, like, subscribe, share, all those things, help a ton. Getting this content in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. All right. before we bring in Niko, let's take a look at where are we on the market right now.

This is timechain calendar.com. We're sitting at $23,469. Nice. Dollars per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 4,261 sats. 91.94% of all Bitcoin have in mind. That's 19.3 million of them in terms of fees. Ooh, next block, 29 sats per byte.

If you're willing to wait a little bit, 13 sats per bite. should be fine. Mempool isn't that backed up, about 60 blocks, nowhere near as much as it was. I mean, it was purging transactions back when JPEGs were in. Is that still a thing? I don't know. Seems to

have fallen off a little bit. Anyways, that's that. Let's give a shout out to sponsors of the show. Nunchuk.io. Love these guys. These guys are legends. We have a very unique relationship. They were a huge help to me last year. I'll leave it at that. But nonetheless, these guys are killing it in the assisted multi-sig game.

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by step as you're setting this thing up it's beautiful so if you haven't played with their honey badger you can do it in test net first to see if you like it and then uh you know i'm i'm using this now this is now my inheritance planning so check out nunchuk dot i oh and even if you aren't using the honey badger plan get the wallet because it's badass uh and play around with it there anyways moving on uh coin kite dot com you guys know I love these guys. The cold card is so badass. I love it securing my stack.

I obviously use it in Nunchuk because that's one of their supported Wallace, along with the Tappsigner. But they've got all kinds of great stuff, the Block Clock, the Sats card. And oh, coming soon, Cold Card Q1. This thing looks like a beast. I can't wait to use it with Nunchuk. But yeah, QR scanner, NFC, SD cards, plug in if you choose. all the options there, full keyboard, all kinds of stuff.

It's got a flashlight in it even. I heard it also does math. So anyways, check out coincite.com, use code, BTC sessions for 5% off, everything in the store. Up next, we've got Start 9, your sovereign, computing, solution. Love these guys. I've done a full tutorial setting up your Bitcoin stack. So Bitcoin Core, Lightning Node, Memple. Dot, space, join market, all of that kind of stuff.

I've covered it all. But they do more than that. you can also run and host your own data, passwords, files, photos. You can run a Noster Relay, all kinds of great stuff. I'm going to do a data sovereignty video soon. But anyways, check them out. Start9.com. The Embassy One is your affordable option.

If you're looking for something super beefy with hardcore computing power to host your life, Embassy Pro is the way to go. Nothing beats it. Anyways, check them out. And finally, if you're stacking stats and you've got a few prior. in mind, peer-to-peer, instant self-custody, non-KYC, Hottle to Hall to Hall is the place to go. I've been helping a bunch of people getting started on here.

It's easy. You sign up with an email address. You can be trading in minutes. You don't need to give any information. You can use a dummy email address for all you care. Tons of payment options. Stack your non-KYC sats. Store it in Nunchuk with cold card and link it to your Start 9 note.

There you go. You're set. Anyways, check them out, hoddlehottle.com, link below. Shout out to the helipad booster tracker. We're going to go back in time here a little bit. Michael says, Joey says, will there be a shirtless wab at the Canadian Bitcoin conference? Hashtag Benico. Canada's cold, even in the summer, man.

No, it's not. I don't know that I would be allowed in the conference. We'll see. We'll see what I can pull. Michael says, following up on the hopium price prediction of Jesse Myers, one point to reiterate with regard

to his 10 million per coin conservative estimate is that that number is today's purchasing power terms, not the number of units. Indeed. Cliff says, will the BIS button hold to the halving? Good question.

From Pyes? New commenter here. Thank you for all the educational content and the pure truths. Thanks, man. And thanks for the hundred stats. Much appreciated it. Grapevine says, nailed it. Money backed by debt. Grapevine also says, laughing, when you respawn,

you lose all your shit. I thoroughly enjoyed, if you didn't see last week's Wobb with Luke Broil's Cypher Pink Cinema and CJK, go back. It was killer. Constantinos did for sure put this Wob episode on

fire. Thanks also to all others on the show for bringing up great conversations about your bullish case for Bitcoin. Always fun discovering new Bitcoiners on the show, in quotations, because CJ's been around for a long time, but he just kind of started hitting. He was on Simply. He's

awesome. Anyways, second breakfast says, blix and OBW are also great non-custodial lightning wallets. With Phoenix and Breeze, you're still relying on them to manage your channels. With Blixen obw, you can open any node as you see fit and

manage the liquidity yourself. All done, while without having to relay, rely on your LSP. That's cool. Good to know. And then Joey said, Unreal Rip folks, very valuable episode. I'm starring this one for the reference. Thanks, man. I appreciate that.

With that, let's bring in our buddy. Sir, how you doing? Yo, what's up, Ben? Happy to be here, bro. Good to see you, man. You had a busy week, I imagine? Yeah, dude. it's always uh you know you know how it is you're in the content creation game i i am i'm on

solo dad duty this week too my wife my wife is in belize i'm a little jealous interesting it's a beautiful country by the way yeah she uh well i mean i'm i'm always out of town going to conferences and stuff and so it's only fair that she gets her own little little trip so she was she won the friend she gets back in in a few days here but uh she's she's enjoyed some sunshine Man, but you haven't missed the beat, so that's good. Trying. I'm trying.

Maybe I can redecorate here, too, while I'm up at it here. There we go. Boom. We did it. Totally out of sync, nailed it. But yeah, man. What's been going on? What's exciting?

Crazy week of news, Ben. So many, so many exciting things. I think that this is the highlight of the entire week. absolutely bonkers. This is Gary Gensler, for anyone who's not in the know. He is the head of the SEC in the U.S., you know, big financial regulator. And this was an op-ed in the New York Mag. So it's not a small publication and made its rounds.

But the admissions in this makes you question whether a potential head of the U.S. Treasury, which we'll get to in the article, is a big. There's a lot of things that he says here that makes you ask questions about how he feels about money. Anyways, so I've highlighted the most important parts because this whole, this article was way too long to read the entire thing. So anyways, excuse me, Gensur began his career in government service at Treasury in the late 1990s. After nearly two decades at Goldman Sachs, and there have been slight rumblings, which have made their way into the financial press, that Gensler might be interested in leading the department if Yelen decides to leave at some point in the coming years, particularly if Biden is re-elected.

So it tells you right then and there if Joe Biden wins election, re-election in 2024, you are looking at the man that could potentially be the head of the U.S. Treasury. So that being said, let's scroll down a little bit to where he starts talking about Bitcoin. Oh, sorry. The whole thing is highlighted. I apologize. Here it is. Okay.

So this is the crazy parts, right? Everything other than Bitcoin, Genser told me, you can find a website. You can find a group of entrepreneurs. They might set up their legal entities in a tax haven. They might have a foundation. They might lawyer it up to try to arbitrage and make it hard jurisdictionally or so forth. Goes on to say parentheses. Bitcoin, because its unique history and creation story is fundamentally

different from other crypto projects in this respect. They might drop their tokens overseas at first and contend or pretend that it's going to take six months before they come back to the U.S., he continued, but at the core, he argued, these tokens are securities because there's a group in the middle and the public is anticipating profits based on that group. The claim that crypto investors are hoping to profit based on the efforts of those intermediaries in much the same way that stockholders in public companies hope to see their investments appreciate over time. It's central to Gensler's position on that. And as a legal matter, these are actually transactions in securities

that fall within the SEC's jurisdiction. As a matter of securities law, Gensler's view is not that hard to understand. Though it is still being tested in the courts, the agency racked up a significant win last November, but there are other pending legal rulings that are eagerly awaited by industry observers, and there is a well-resourced crypto lobby that is not likely to back down anytime soon. Goes on to say at the very end, Ben, I think this is the most revealing these couple of paragraphs.

History tells us throughout, through antiquity to now, that economies coalesce around one monetary unit. There is a network effect to having one unit that we humans accept as a medium of exchange and a unit of account. Interesting words here. A store of value. one unit. The two things governments do since Genghis Khan, he observed, is basically say, this is what's accepted for your taxes, and it's accepted for all debts, public and private. I don't think there's much economic use for a micro currency, and we haven't seen one in centuries, Ganser said. Most of these tokens will fail because the question is about these economics.

What's the there there? If it was a diplomatic answer for someone who was tasked with reining in a well-funded and well-lawyered, industry that many people believe is a generally useless and economic and economic wasteful. Here's a simpler way of thinking about it if you're an ordinary investor who bought who bought chick coins in recent years. Perhaps because of the celebrity endorsements, the high profile ads, or plain old fear of missing out, get out while you can. Interesting, dude. So interesting. That article is fascinating. I will do you think. that do you ever wonder if gensler has like perused youtube and like watched a simply episode or btc sessions maybe maybe he's hitting up a tutorial maybe he's buying some non-k yc sets and mixing

him in whirlpool when gensler on why uh why are we bullish it's got to make the announcement for can you that that's how he's going to announce it he's going to like official SEC decision everything other than Bitcoin is a security. That's why I'm bullish. Oh, man. Dude, I'm so excited for that episode. Gary, the invite is there. Feel free to swing by.

You know, even if the show's full, I might bump a guest for you. I make that exception. As long as you make that announcement, just let me know. Oh, man. But how crazy is that? Dude, the wording. The wording makes you. think. Well, yeah, because it's exactly it's what we talk about, right? It's what everybody,

like, it's what Bitcoiners discuss. Like, hey, this is clearly, like, there's people out there basically printing money trying to fleece you. There's always somebody to go to. The, the idea, what's the, uh, Gresham's law, you know, like leading towards a singular unit. And, him being like everything else is superfluous. Like it's not needed. You don't need all of these other coins. Bitcoin can just do it. Yeah.

It makes me wonder if he's not on the maxi podcast circuit, just like looping in Simply and Odell and like all the others just listening going, yeah, yeah. I should create policy around me. They are shit coins. Yeah, it's interesting. Again, like, I don't think either of us are big fans of, like, telling people what to do with their own money. But, like, regulator is going to regulate.

And if you're using the outline of the laws as they currently exist, if you apply that litmus test to decipher for what's what. I mean, it's pretty clear when you look at basically every other coin, well, there's the people that made it

that are benefiting from it and they're selling it or they had a pre-mine or whatever. Like people are expecting profit based on their action. Like, it's pretty cut and dry. What's what in that lens?

Whether or not you're a fan of it. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. 100%. This is bonkers. This is, This is absolutely crazy.

Can't believe we are here in the movie. I don't know what comes next. Holy cow. The explosions, I guess. Anyways. So more interesting news coming out of Europe. This article is from the block. The headline is self-hosted wallet ban avoided a new draft of EU's anti-money laundering bill.

It goes on to say self-hosted addresses formerly known as unhosted wallets and the European Union's policies are back in discussion as European Parliament staff look to clarify that lawmakers do not want an outright ban on non-custodial services. Privacy enhancing crypto assets and anonymizing instruments, including privacy wallets or crypto mixers, may be prohibited under the current text of the anti-money laundering regulation draft bill according to documents seen by the block. So Samurai, Sabi, interesting. The latest, and again, you know, I hate saying this, but, you know,

Wasabi tried to get in front of it. They tried to, you know, blacklist addresses themselves. I just don't think you could placate these people. It's in my opinion. No, no. The latest changes to the text clarify that these restrictive provisions should not apply to self-hosted wallets in most cases. Most cases.

When it comes to rules on transaction limits, It's the latest version of the European Parliament's review of the anti-money laundering bill resulted in changing up the language to self-hosted addresses from self-hosted wallets. Oh, I still don't remember seeing that in the Bitcoin white paper. Anyways, goes on to say the last part, Ben, self-hosted wallets will still be subject to a transaction limit of a thousand euros if the owner cannot be identified. This aligns with the TFR requiring originator and beneficiary data on crypto transaction of the same cap.

Yeah, I'm not going to download that software. This is crazy, dude. Why would anybody like? And also, like, they are aware that it's not pull transactions, right? Like, it's, it's not like the system where you hand over a credit card and it gives you the credentials to pull money. The receiver has no say in what comes in. So it's like there's a Bitcoin address and somebody sends whatever, like, 2,000. euros to it. I mean, what the fuck do you do?

Straight to jude. Remember that meme? Yeah, straight to jill. Straight to jill. No trial. Oh, man. This is bonkers, dude. This is absolutely bonkers. I can't, but this is just total clown world. Anyways, so I wish I could play the video, but, uh, you know what I'm talking about, Ben, this crazy video coming out of El Salvador of these people, El Salvador, supposed it's Salvadorian gang members basically kneeling down, no shirt, just in like these white shorts, all uniform, and they're just being marched into a bus, into a new prison. It's copyrighted.

It can't play it, but it, you know, it wasn't a very, to say it nicely, it was a very effective piece of media that definitely resonated with a lot of people. And of course, the corporate media all around the world jumped on it. This is a headline from The Guardian. in El Salvador, crackdown breaks the gangs at huge cost of human rights. War on gangs by populous leader, Naim Buckele, has produced extraordinary change, but the cure could be as harmful as the disease. They've completely banished, she said, of the street members,

who for years ruled the area with an iron fist, nearby walls, once spattered with the black insignia of the community's crime bosses, had been painted white by the government to symbolize a new era of peace. Moving on to this article by Reuters, El Salvador vows gang crackdown will go on its citizens cheer safer streets. The El Salvador state of emergency to combat gangs, which has widespread public support despite a growing prison population and allegations of human right abuses will be maintained until all criminals are captured.

The country's security minister told Reuters. So, I mean, dude, the framing to me, like, it just, I don't know, bro, it kind of reminds me of this passage from, from the Orange Party edition, Bitcoin Magazine. At the very end, Naim Bukele is an op-ed written by it, Naimukele. He says, they're willing to fight, lie, smear, destroy, censor, confiscate, print, and do whatever it takes them,

and increase their control over the truth and everything and everyone. I mean, but if you look at the data, you know, as much as those articles, you know, they say, oh, he did decrease the crime, but, you know, the cure could be worse than disease. This guy, you know, he's a Bitcoin. dictator. I don't know what's going on there. But if you actually look at the data, if you look at

the results, you can't deny that Naim Bukhali has delivered. The homicide rate is down from an all-time high of 18.2 per 100,000 people to 1.4. So huge decrease. Also not to mention the record GDP growth. This chart goes back all the way to 1966. The latest one is 10.3%. And for a country to increase in GDP 10.3%, that is absolutely. massive. So you can't deny Naimu Kale's policies have been effective, but it's crazy how much the corporate media is trying to pick and choose. It's like the human rights abuses, I don't remember them saying that about Canada. What is going on there? This is a double standard. This is what I'm seeing here. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, so I'm not sure in general how to feel about things.

So like one, you know, I understand the sentiment of, I understand actually both sides of it, right? Like I look at that and I'm like, these people lived in a place with this horrend. It was like the per capita, one of the largest murder rates on earth for the longest time. It was like one of the, I think it did take top spot for an extended period of time or at least like a number of years. and now it's it's fallen off a cliff which is you know for for people that had family members being murdered regular and it's not a large it's not a large population to be to begin with um and yeah no question that shit's been cleaned up and and so i wonder if so i my my concern would be obviously is like, oh, you know, what about the the person that gets caught up with it?

They were just keeping bad company and now they're in prison forever. I mean, the U.S. has the biggest prison population per capita anywhere, right? More or less. One of the biggest per capita prison populations on earth. And for like stupid little like marijuana charges and like, you know, it's, you know, US loves incarcerating its own people. So when it comes to that, like you're throwing, you know, the U.S. is throwing stones in a glass house. I feel like down the line, let's say like years out, countries cleaned up, you know, gangs are effectively gone.

Like there's very little crime and everything. It becomes effectively a version of like Singapore. Singapore is still very strict around a lot of things, but it's a pretty like civil society. And if you decide to live there, you just got to be like, well, I'm not allowed to do the following things.

You're not allowed to have like gum because it's very clean. There's a lot of like stupid little rules, but you're just like, well, it's also really nice here. And so you make the decision of do I want to live in this place? If so, then I live according to the rules of that place.

I feel like El Salvador becomes that. I feel like it still is very like the government says, this is kind of the way it is. And then people choose whether or not they live there. And it in certain aspects, it still is, you know, it's still government.

They still govern. I just think that maybe in a world of Bitcoin where there's a little bit more ease of, you know, there's that sovereign individual mentality where you just go where you're treated best. Maybe that encourages, um, you know, policy to shift based on public sentiment. I don't know, but like when, when your, when your country is, is that screwed and just like that inundated with gangs. I remember you saying earlier, like the politics is different down there, man.

And, and everything is so corrupt that it's, it's, it's, basically impossible to go about this in a Western mindset to clean it up in the first place. I just hope that the exceptional amount of control that's there doesn't become too draconian to a point where lots of regular people get caught up in things later on down the road. I don't know. I don't know how to think about it. I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head, you know, because you describe. what the pros and cons are to societies, but at the same time, you mentioned that government is still

government, right? Like, people are cheering, you know, the growth of the state, the growth of the, of the, of the violent capability of the state, right? The ability for the state to coerce. And how long, you know, because if you look at it historically, these arms that are currently being pointed at violent gang members. Who's to say they won't be pointed at the population eventually, specifically if the population doesn't like something that the government does? Yeah. People opposing the existing government, protesters, things like that.

Like, that's what I worry. But I think of, like, Canada. And, you know, there's, it got crazy here. And people cheered it on. But at the same time, like, that was a small suburb. You know, that's small. Like it was the largest protest in Canadian history, but it was still, it was a subset of the population and people cheered it on. And so in an instance like this where maybe there's a vocal group of people that don't like something that Naia Bukle does, can he weaponize his supporters and do something like Canada would do?

I don't know. Yeah. I 100% agree. let's see what happens. So far, he's being good. So far, you can't deny that he's bringing results. Yeah, yeah. But let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. Anyways, moving on to, moving on to this, which I think is fascinating. There's a tweet by Corey, CEO of Swan, said, here's the story of both me and Swan Bitcoin getting debanked by Citibanked with zero explanation, zero notice and zero recourse. He's retweeting a, He's retweeting a Wall Street Journal article. Banks are cutting ties to crypto companies spooked by a regulatory clampdown in the wake of FTX collapse.

He goes on to say, have you or your business been debanked because of your involvement in Bitcoin? And if you click on it, you'll see a lot of interesting names. Here is David Bailey. David Bailey is the CEO of Bitcoin Inc. or BTC. Inc., which is the mother company of Bitcoin Magazine and the Bitcoin Conference. And he goes on to say, yeah, Bitcoin Magazine lost its account in 2018, right after announcing we were going Bitcoin only. How fascinating is that. The old it was a new compliance policy gave us 30 days to get out.

So and then there's also, you have Lynn in the comments as well. So it's really interesting, right? Now here's the article. I'll read, you know, a couple sentences of it says banks are backing away from crypto companies, spooked by regulatory crackdown. Now bankers are reevaluating any exposure to. to the crypto sector, no matter how small, according to people familiar with their thinking. Now, again, on its own, you would say, okay, that's newsworthy, but still, it's kind of noise.

What's really interesting is what happens when you connect the dots. Forget Coinbase. Banks may win U.S. crypto custody race. How convenient is that, isn't it? It goes on to say. Several of old school finance biggest names, including Brevin Howard, asset manager, State Street, and Standard Chartered currently own, invest in hold major partnerships with crypto custodians like PolySign, Standard Custody, Copper Technologies, Zodia Custody, those firms in turn get the best of both worlds from the arrangement, an enhanced reputation that can reduce counterparty risk for clients and the distance to be technologically nimble in a way that banks can't. To be sure, these efforts are still in their infancy, and for some, the runway that's left to reach the size of Coinbase or Gemini, huge, but it's not insurmountable.

Executives at the bank-backed firms that I spoke to this week said the traditional firms that are considering getting into digital assets, and there are quite a few of them. Basically, have two options in the face of SEC's current attitude towards crypto-native companies, build it yourself or acquire someone who can. Neither is a barrier to entry. So, dude, isn't it convenient, right, that banks shut off, you know, a lot of potential competitors, right? And to say, hey, no, we're getting out of the industry. But then in a way, they're saying, hey, we could offer those custodial solutions. We could offer those exchange

solutions. We could be your broker. You don't need those new, you know, shit coin and Bitcoin exchanges. What are you guys doing? I find that really interesting. Maybe I'm connecting something that's not there, but to me, it's very obvious. You know what I can't wait for? is there is, I feel like the sentiment from them is, oh, all these, all these people that are putting on, you know, making these exchanges so and so forth, they're amateurs and they're not, you know, they're not being careful with things and everything. I mean, meanwhile, like the banks, obviously are some of the most irresponsible shit bags out there, right? Like they like the the the the 2008 collapse was just them leveraging to the tits everything every pile of dog shit they were buying it selling it rehypothicating it to no end and now there's no reserve requirements whatsoever. I can't wait for a handful of them to it seems like they're effectively trying to front run this and be like yeah let's let's cut off all these accounts make it a living nightmare for all these. other companies so they can't grow and then we'll offer it to our existing clientele and at the

same time that we have to concede and say oh yes okay we can we can bank you maybe um and put all these hurdles in their way but they're going to do the same damn thing they're going to continue to be fiat bankers and they're going to re-hypublicate they're going to do crazy shit with it and they will be the ones once again i i'm very firmly believe it's just a revolving door of larger and larger implosions because people still have fiat mindset and they think they continue can continue to bank as they used to bank

and that collateral doesn't matter and that maintaining a reserve doesn't matter. And so I would not be surprised if in our future we saw another financial crisis that is effectively caused not by Bitcoin but by people treating Bitcoin as if it's fiat and they can be bailed out by central banks

if they make stupid mobs. And they will quickly find out that's not the case. And you'll probably have what will probably end up happening is they will get a bailout in terms of dollars, but they'll pay out the dollars to the people that got screwed at the time of loss, not, you know, the valuation at the time of loss, not reflective of the valuation. down the road because nobody will be able to buy the Bitcoin in that amount. Yeah, I mean, that's what happened with Mount Cox, right?

Literally what you're describing is what happened with Mount Cox. And I agree, man. I agree. Interesting. These are very interesting days, Ben. It makes our job easy, man. It does. It does.

Anyways. All right, moving on, update from Nigeria. The Naira crisis is fueling Bitcoin adoption in, Nigeria. Very cool article. It can release March 1st recently. Obviously, we don't have time to read the whole thing, so I'm going to read you some of the key facts I think interest is interesting. Naira redesign has exacerbated the current economic hardship faced by Nigerians and increased pressure on the unbanked. Nigerians headed to the polls on Saturday to decide the next leader of Africa's largest democracy, with economic challenges being top of mind. Given the current economic climate, Bitcoin is viewed by many, Nigerians, especially amongst the younger generation as a safe haven for both the unbanked and unbanked as underbanked and unbanked as economic conditions worsen. And here are some of the, it's describing what basically has happened to the Naira. It goes on to say battling the double-digit inflation due in part to the record high levels of money in supply that the central bank of Nigeria

reports being in excess of n-50 trillion as of October last year. I mean, when they say N-50, I think they mean Naira, 50. Dude, that's so crazy. Remember the hundred could zillion-billion-dollar Zimbabwe bill? Yeah. Oh, man. Oh, man. Curbing the high rate of counterfeiting of the Nigerian 200.

and I don't know, man. If it's not the dollar, I get confused. Lastly, to reel in the currency in circulation to strengthen the effect of monetary policy, especially against the rising costs across the country.

So cutting a zero off the currency doesn't stop inflation as much as they wanted to. That third point, real in the currency in circulation to strengthen the effect of monetary policy. Is that basically saying, Like they need the paper currency to like they need the currency coming in so that they can rely more heavily on their CBDC.

And then. What it means. Yeah. Yeah. So exactly what everybody has been warning about. Oh, we need to more effectively control monetary policy. Not not through like, you know, interest rates and issuance, but like. so that we can force people to spend this shit as quickly as possible, you know, with fear of debasement.

And yeah, God. Dude, it's absolutely crazy. But there is a silver lining at the end of this, at the end of this article or towards the middle. There is still hope. However, as Bitcoin offers a global alternative to the traditional financial rails, Bitcoin remains a lifeline for Nigerians when economic uncertainty, political unrest, and unemployment are at record highs. For those in the despora,

it has become the only medium to remit from the hard work they've put in abroad, not fractions reduced by high fees, as is the case with traditional rails, such as Western Union. For contacts, according to chain analysis, 2022, Crypto Index report, Africa currently receives $49 billion in remittances globally.

As such, many Nigerians are now sending remittances using Bitcoin in 2022, according to the same chain analysis report, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for a hundred billion in on-chain cryptocurrency volume, 16% higher than in 2021. With the recent Naira redesigned debacle, we might expect those numbers to be even higher in 2020.

That's crazy. Because like the bare market of 2022 and this kind of adoption happening in Africa, It's still like just for that still to have happened in 2022. That's wild. Yeah. And that's the actual use case, right? Like this is the use case.

Like this is like we're privileged, bro. Like we live in countries that have relatively stable, uh, fiat currencies, you know, relatively low inflation rate versus for the Nigerian who's dealing with 21% inflation rate. It's not an option. Like it is the only alternative. you know. Yikes.

Dude. Yeah, I, I'm very interested to see because this, this particularly Nigeria, ground up with a government that hates it, right? With a government that's trying to, like, the most extreme version of everything we've said could happen. A hostile government pushing their CBDC so they can force people to do. do something, canceling all the cash, and then Bitcoin still as like from a ground up perspective, not top down, ground up, and it's taking hold over the country because people

realize the value of it despite whatever the government says. Like Nigeria is the example of, I think, how Bitcoin will begin to proliferate around the world and become commonplace. You know, it would be in Nigeria and then just a same, another nation that gets a little too ahead of themselves, thinks they can pull a little too much tricky business with their currency. And there you go. There you go. Exactly. Oh, man.

But this is what it's all about. This is an example, a representation of the peaceful revolution. This is why they're pushing so hard to implement those capital controls, push people into central bank digital. currencies because it's happening. It's happening. People are just, it's like, I don't want to deal with that anymore. I want money that works. And I think it's beautiful to see. But you know, it is still a little bit tumultuous, obviously.

So much time? Yeah, we got enough for one more story, Ben. Let's squeeze it in. Let's do it. Bitcoin Core maintainer, Markle Falk steps down. Goes on to say, I have been the quality assurance and testing maintainer of Bitcoin Core for about seven years. now in a challenging decision I concluded to transition out of my role as maintainer.

I remain passionate about open source and Bitcoin and I'm positive about the future. However, being a maintainer is no longer a good fit for me personally. I am happy about my achievements and recognize they would not have been possible without my sponsors. I am grateful for Ocoin, having supported three out of my seven years as maintainer, and for paradigm, having co-sponsored the last grant. Okay, I don't know, Ben, like, how much do you think of this is due to the current regulatory environment? I don't know.

I mean, it's not the first thing that popped up. The first thing I popped up to me is fucking Craig Wright, trying to, you know, all the legal action and stuff that just like, and it's not that I think he'll ever win any of that shit. But I think it's such the whole point of all of the stuff that he does is to give people just like an absolute nightmare of a time and drain them of their resources. So, I mean, I don't know if that plays into this either. I don't know if Marco's been targeted by any of that. But I know that a bunch of Bitcoin developers have been. Yeah, I don't know, man. Like sometimes I think it's just, I mean, seven years is a long time.

And again, like to be that guy the entire time. Like sometimes I get tired doing the show. I can't, I can only imagine the stress of trying to do quality control on Bitcoin core. Holy Jesus. I don't know. Sometimes people just get burnt out too. But I mean, yeah, it's definitely sad. You know, anytime somebody who's who's contributed so much steps back a little bit.

It's unfortunate. I think that, I mean, obviously this will continually happen. It has to, if Bitcoin is decentralized, you can't just be relying on individual people. And I also think that development is going to be even more closely scrutinized with a lot of people unhappy with the fallout from Taproop, aka the ability to do ordinals or like to the scale that they are. Yeah, I don't know. I think we'll get to a point where everything ossifies and this conversation will be not even necessary. But yeah, as to reasoning, I have no idea. Yeah, dude. We can only speculate, but it is, it's interesting, dude. When this happens, it's interesting. You know, because it's like you would think that Bitcoin is like in its most exciting years are still ahead of it. in my opinion. Yeah.

Right. So for you to step back, you know, again, absolutely super grateful for Marco and everything he's contributed. You know, I'm not going to try to take away anything from that. And maybe there is personal issues. But I think it is important to bring up the questions because the reality is that these individuals are prone, right? They are prone to government pressure, state pressure, media pressure, social pressure,

right? Because it is an individual, right? And that's one of the reasons that Satoshi originally stepped away. I remember one of the last things he said, he's like, Swarm is coming. In reference to, I think it was WikiLeaks accepting Bitcoin. Yeah. So anyways. Yeah.

We just need more A&D devs, right? Yes. And I think, yeah, you'll probably start to see a more consistent rise of individuals that have been making commits and that have been contributing to Bitcoin Core and. some way becoming more active, like making their way up, you know, the trust ladder and then having a more important role in the future. And that's just how it's going to be because these people are, they're doing important work that's heavily scrutinized, but like they're not immune to Theot World coming after them too. Yeah. 100, 100%. Dude. Well, thank you for, thank

for coming and filling us in. It was a good time. I'm getting very stoked to meet up with you again in the sunshine soon. It's coming. It's like it might even die itself by the time we get there just out of pure excitement. Oh man. I'm so excited to touch the tips in Miami Beach in the sun. If anyone doesn't know, that's going to sound a certain way to you. But that's okay. That's okay. Yeah, we'll get it eventually. Anyways, Ben, always a pleasure, and I'll see you again next week. Yeah, see you there. Your Simply sessions.

Cheers, man. Peace, bro. All right, everybody. A few more things to get out of the way before we wrap up the show. First off, few orders of business. Anybody in Calgary or the Calgary area or who wants to come? to Calgary where we're very close to the Rocky Mountains and we have the Calgary Stampede. Coming up this summer, of course, there's the Bitcoin Rodeo.

And so that's July 4th and 5th in Calgary where I live. There's going to be some awesome people there. We'll chat about that more in future shows, I'm sure. But there's going to be a pitch competition, an elevator, an elevator pitch competition. Like how if you had a minute in an elevator to pitch somebody Bitcoin or tell them what Bitcoin was, do you think you have the chops to be able to do it? Well, there's a competition coming up and there's going to, a number of the speakers are going to do it.

But perhaps you would like to have your pitch thrown in the ring. And perhaps you'd like to be able to come to Calgary and do your pitch on stage. That's a possibility. And so if you want, if you think you got the chops, you can DM, at the Bitcoin rodeo, shoot a DM and say, hey, I've got a pitch for you. And then maybe we'll chat a little bit. You and the organizers can chat a little bit.

You can also on Noster message Bitcoin Brains. By the way, the best-looking Bitcoin entrepreneur in Canada. Anyways, shoot him a DM. You can find him Bitcoin Brains at Noster. dot the orange pill app.com. That's his Nipo5. So you could send a message there as well. So either Bitcoin brains on

Noster or the Bitcoin Rodeo at the Bitcoin Rodeo on Twitter. Shoot my DM. If you'd maybe like to be a part of that pitch competition. And again, that's July 4th and 5th in Calgary. I will, of course, be here. There'll be a number of other awesome bitcoins here.

And it'll be a great time. It was a lot of fun. We did it back in 2018. and we figured it's time to do it again. A few of the things I want to bring up here as well. First off, the bends. The bends must be stopped. The bends are coming to Miami again.

Will it be a takeover? I don't know. It could be. It could be. There was a video I really wanted to show you here about the bends. And I thought it was pretty hilarious. I think this is it. Let me just load it up here.

If you don't know what the deal with the Benz is, there's a lot of Benz in Bitcoin, so much so that there's some worry about our growing power and how we might try to attack Bitcoin. I mean, I'm part of the Benz, and I will say that, well, I'll let you watch this clip. And then you tell me if you're worried, about the bends. Too many bends.

The opponents of Bitcoin have been successful in diverting all of your attention toward things like ESG regulation, China, and other silly things when the real threat is glaringly obvious. The council of Benz is in the midst of an attempted 51% attack on the mail names in the space. Oh, there's just way too many bends in Bitcoin. This is part, part too many.

They've got a whole council. They've got this giant subversive element. They're trying to 51% attack. the male names in Bitcoin. And I think it's a big problem. I don't like any of them. I don't like, especially Ben the Carman and a Kiwi Hodel. I don't like them at all.

And I think that a lot of people are not aware of how big of a problem it is. They have a long history of using devious tactics to insert their members in positions of influence and should not be trusted. Do your part to reject this attack. I don't know what they had planned for. for Miami, but I'm certain it is not good. Skiy. Five Benz speaking at the Bitcoin conference.

And we hear it's simply Bitcoin. We support the Ben's. OK? We are avid Ben supporters. That's right. OK. That sounds like some Big Brother double speak right there. I also strongly regret having six Benz in the Bitcoin

2022 programming. These days, most of my energy goes as being an anti-Bent activist. Spicy. What's going to happen? We reconvene this May in Miami. It's going to be, it's going to be a time. Shout out to Kiwi Hoddle, another Ben, for reposting this just the other day.

And Tucson Bitcoin is the person who put this together and Skeef for loving all the bends. But nonetheless, we'll see in Miami. A couple other things. Sparrow wallet, new update, 1.7.3. Bitcoin Secure Multi-Sig setup, import and export. So if you got your BSMS files, which would be like Nunchuk deals with those for Multisig, you can now import it to Sparrow very easily. Also, speaking of Nunchuk, Nunchuk and Coin Kite now have a strategic partnership.

So you can get discounts if you're using the Nunchuk Honeybadger, then you can get discounts on Cold Card and Tablet. signer, which is super awesome. So be sure to check that out. If you were looking at the Honey Badger thing, you might be able to get some hardware cheaper. Again, I was just going to say some general stuff on Noster. Noster has been, I've been using it more and more. If you're not on Noster, come find me or get on there first. I've done a couple tutorials, which I'll bring up in a second. So I just dropped a tutorial earlier in the week on D-A-M-U-S, and that's probably, that's the main client that is in the iOS App Store. So if you're on iPhone, then that's easy

for you. There's one in the Google Play Store called Amethyst, A-M-E-T-H-Y-S-T-E-M-A-M-A-S-T-E-E-T-E-E-T-E-E-S-A-S-A-S. That's a decent one. But in, in your browser, you can use Nostergram.com or Iris.com, or IRIS.O, or There's a ton of them. Anyways, I've got a couple different Nostra tutorials at this point. But something exciting just came out. We're in the, there's work being done on basically creating a spaces version within Nostr. So right now it's Noster nests.com. And you can do spaces on Nostr.

All right. So that's in the pipe. It's a work in progress. But holy hell, the amount of work and the amount of innovation that's happening over here so quickly is wild to me. There's so much going on. But nonetheless, get on Noster if you're not already. It's awesome. I was just talking about Miami.

I can't wait. I'm super stoked to go. This is my fourth year going. 150 speakers, 15,000 attendees, 2,000 companies. It's going to be a blast. My wife's coming down with me. We're going to have a lot of fun. There's going to be a ton of great events.

If you haven't already got your tickets, they go up every. I'm not sure the intervals. Oh, this is eight days. There we go. Eight days, five hours and one minute before it goes up again. They increase the prices, the closer it gets to the conference. So we're a few, you know, a couple of months out here. So if you're getting tickets, then do it quick.

Also shout out to Anders and Pubby from Toxic Happy Hour. they're doing the PLEB party. And that's a good time. Get tickets to that if you can. There's still tickets available for sure. And they're not that, they're not that expensive, I think maybe like 75 bucks or something for the PLEB party.

But that's a banger. There's going to be hundreds of plebs there. That's going to be a good time. Check that out. If you go to B.TC slash conference, you can use code BTC sessions for 10% off. That'll hopefully help a little bit. And then if you're coming down,

I've got my cold card workshop happening the day before everything kicks off, which is Wednesday, May 17th. It is a four hour, four hour deep dive on the cold card. So going from the very beginning of setting it up, backing it up, recovery, sending air gap transactions, using it with sparrow wallet, doing all of that stuff. So pretty much like the basics. And then we go beyond that and we cover some of the advanced features so that you can learn even above and beyond. your average plebs so that you'll be like a cold card expert by the time you walk out of there. Anyways, this is going to be listed on the Bitcoin Conference website soon. So there's still tickets left. But if you want to get in before it goes out to the mailing

lists of everybody going to the conference already, then yeah, just head over to my website and grab a ticket before they're gone. Anyways, BTCsessions.ca. And there's a thing that says in-person workshops. It'll be right there. It'll take you to BTC pay server. And yeah, and that's that. Anyways, wrap it up tomorrow. Why are we bullish at 6 p.m. Eastern time.

I've got Cedric Youngman, George McHale, and Nolan. I'm going to butcher his last name, but Bowerly, Bowerly, maybe. I probably screwed that up. But anyways, Nolan's awesome. Count BTC is his Twitter. But anyways, Cedric, George, Nolan. They're all going to be all first time on the show.

actually. Very excited to have them on. Don't miss it tomorrow. 6 p.m. Eastern time. It's going to be a good time. I'll see you there. Thank you guys. Like, subscribe, share. All those things. Albatan. You can hit up the sponsors I mentioned down below. Nunchuk, coin kite, start nine, hoddle, hoddle. And if you really liked what you saw, you can drop me a tip at my strike page. You don't need strike to use it. Just go to strike. dot me slash BTC sessions. Type in any amount. Hit the tip button. You'll see a lightning invoice or if you tap to the right, a regular Bitcoin QR code. With that, I'm out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening. See you guys next time for your daily session.

We have BTC sessions. Bitcoin is every money. You can't stop it. Get yourself some Bitcoin and hold it yourself. Pure to pure exchange. You know, people are going to organically come to it and gravitate towards it, especially in the world we're living in now. It's incredible, it's a great tool, and I can't wait to see it proliferate everywhere.