BTC Sessions - NEWS ROUNDUP: Central Banks Will Limit Your Savings ep321

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

Bank of England to impose limits on CBDC holdings, Fed prohibits member banks from holding digital assets, Biden admin eyes miners due to emissions FUD. This and 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's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Thursday time for some news. We've got a good friend, Nico, over from Simply Bitcoin. Got lots of stuff to chat about, you know, we've got the typical regulatory creep going on. You know, regulators want to regulate. State's going to state. So all kinds of fun stuff in and around that.

Some exciting hardware news. There may or may not be a new brand of calculator hitting the, market. We're going to be talking about a whole bunch of stuff. Anyways, I digress. 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, I'll write it and we'll do it live. The fucking thing sucks. If you have not already, like, subscribe, share, all those things help a ton

getting this content in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. Before we dive in, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. This is TimeChane Calendar.com. We're sitting at 21,809 cut bucks per Bitcoin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 4,585 sats. 91.84% of all Bitcoin have been mine, which is 19.29 million of them. And in terms of fees, it looks like next block, only six sats per byte.

across the board, actually, there is a backlog of 55 bytes. Just a little side note, everybody's freaking out about the whole Ordinals thing. It seems that people aren't willing to pay more than two or three sats per bite to shove a JPEG on the time chain. So for now, you can still get through okay. Even when it builds up a little bit, you're probably thrown a few blocks as long as you stay ahead of the spam pegs that are hitting the chain. So don't worry too much about that.

Shout out to sponsors of the show. Nunchuck, if you guys haven't seen my tutorial on this, these guys have taken the great things about things like Unchain Capital and Casa in terms of multi-sig setup in an assisted way. So you have a signer of last resort. And they've done so much more. They've added inheritance planning so you can pass on your sats to your next-of-kin in an easy and simple way.

so that they can get their hands on it and not have to worry. And on top of that, they've done it in a way that does not require any K.C. You don't need to bring ID. You don't got to do anything. Nothing more than an email address. And pretty soon, just a private key via login, works with tap signer, cold card, and a whole bunch of other hardware options. This thing is badass.

Check of the tutorial. If you have not already, hit them up at nunchuck.io, badass wallet on its own, even without the inheritance planning. Up next, coincite.com. Love these guys. Best hardware in the game. I love my Mark 4. Awesome for securing your stack.

I'm going to be in Miami. I'm doing my workshop down there. So if you don't have tickets, be sure to grab them. Nonetheless, Conkite has tons of awesome stuff. They've got the tap sign of the Sats card. Of course, the cold card. We'll talk about this in a minute. We've got the block clock.

I got excited there. little excited about that. Open dives, all the good stuff. You know what's up with coin kites. So check them out. Go to their store, use code BTC sessions for 5% off, everything there. Start9.com. These guys are your sovereign computing solution.

You can run your full Bitcoin stack. And when I say that, I mean things like Bitcoin core, your lightning node, mempool. Dot space, join market, all these other great peripherals. You can actually run a Noster relay on it and a Noster client. And you can host your own data. passwords, files, photos, all of that stuff, you get to take control of your digital life in a self-sovereign way. Check them out. Check out the Embassy One, or if you're looking for something super beefy to run your life on

the Embassy Pro, you can't go wrong. Hodel, hoddle, if you're stacking sats, then of course you probably want to be doing it in a peer-to-peer way. You want instant self-custody, and you don't want to be dropping K-YC. If those things are important to you, Hodel, Hodel is the place to go. You can sign up in minutes with nothing more than an email address and be trading peer to peer and be stacking stats on the sly. Of course, they also have their lending platform, which never gets re-hypropicated. So check them out, hoddle, hoddle. There's a link down below where you can sign up and check it out. And then finally, who's going to be in Miami?

It's coming up. It's coming up quick. I can't wait. Both myself and the wifie shall be down there in Miami. There may be a hair-dying party in which tips are touched. All kinds of crazy things might happen. But be sure if you're if you haven't got your tickets yet, B.TC slash conference is going to be 150 plus speakers, 15,000 attendees, 2,000 companies and many tips shall be touched. You can use code BTC sessions for 10% off and also check out the workshop that's coming up.

Quick shout out to boost grams out there. From Owen, great takeaways in this episode. Very grounding. Take responsibility. Stay true to yourself. Bitcoin Grandma, thanks for your good work. BTC Dioch. Have a great day, everyone. Joey says, I don't know.

I just feel like if Nico gets a golden streak and touches tips with Ben, we might hit 100K. Just saying. If someone also gets a golden streak in their hair, can they also touch tips with hashtag Benico asking for a friend from Joey? Michael says, I guess we're all baby brain maximalist now. Shout out to Mr. Munger. Wow, got to love the Italian accents from Bitcoin Explorers. of course. More European Bitcoins.

It's great idea of playing shop with kids using a lightning wallet. Totally going to try that out. And then this one just in. Hashtag touching tips, a poem. Ben is ripped and Nico's got quips. Simply Sessions always gives me a kick. I can't wait for the conference so we can touch tips. I'm so thoroughly happy that this is becoming a thing.

Let's bring in Nico and see what he has to. to say about that. Buddy, are you getting getting pretty jacked for this or what? I'm debating. Like, do I put the tip on my beard or do I put the tip on my hair? I don't know. Maybe we should almost have like a lightning denominated donation page to dictate whether it goes hair or beard and then we can donate it to devs or something.

That sounds like a really good idea. By the way, I couldn't contain myself when you're talking about the NBC Pro. Oh my Lord and the design on it too It's from our friend space bowl isn't it Yes it is yes it is I have I've never shown that off on camera It looks pretty I gotta say oh my god I have to tell me how that goes because I'm I'm just rocking the one right now I need to upgrade myself to a pro

Dude I you know what it was it was Matt Matt convinced me on the floor of Bitcoin 2022 Yeah, like the pro and And then you put a deposit down. I was like, okay, you know what? Take my, you know the mean? Take my money, right? Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah, you're going to have to let me know.

Because, again, like Lex from Star 9, obviously, like all of them are running the pros. And now I'm looking at it. And I'm like, if I'm going to be running, because I'm running Noster Relay and stuff like that now, private one. And I'm like, well, maybe it makes sense. And like, if I'm going to start, the only thing holding me back from hosting my own data in terms of like photos and files is size of you know hard drive and like the what I can run all uh cohesively together um with the performance of the device and so like the the pro would be going to have to do it I got it for one reason so I hate on my wallet like I pull up

my wallet and it takes a minute like because the resource like like for example like if If you sync it with Blockstream or you sync it whatever, you docks your, you know, you docks your Bitcoin, your IP address, whatever, it's quick, man. It's like, DACA. Yeah. You sync with your, your Raspberry Pi, man, takes a little bit. Yeah, it's got a, it's got a query everything. And yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

That's where I got it. Yeah, I'm going to have to bite the bullet here. Let's redecorate a little bit here. Pretty. There we go. Much better. I mean, let's dive into it. I'm already seeing what's, I'm seeing what's up here.

And, oh, my, what's up, Nico? What's going on here? Dude, dude. You know what? I'm surprised the mixed reviews. I think this is badass. I think it's awesome. Coin Kite launches its new flagship Bitcoin hardware wallet,

cold card, cold card Q1. Really, really. really cool. Look at it, man. It's, I mean, the thing that I like about it is it's offset conscious. It looks like an old Palm Pilot or like a Ti-84, like Texas Instruments calculator. Like you're taking some, calculus or, you know, doing some trig or something like that. Dude, it looks badass. It looks really, really, really cool. Yeah. It's really cool. I can't wait to get one. I think it's, I think it's awesome. Anyway, here's a little quote from MVK. We always wanted to make a query device for fast passphrase input with battery power.

Never thought about that. That's very true. We've been towing with the QR idea for years, and we finally found a secure way of doing QR scanners. I'm very excited about this, and we think this is the ultimate hardware wallet. I'm very excited. Dude, like, think of, okay, so you've got SD card air gaping. you've got NFC air gaping you've got QR scanning

air gaping all on a single device you've got easy password entry with like actual buttons you've got like you've got the scanner on the top it has a flashlight on the fucking thing you can power it either with a cord

or you can put in batteries in the back of it like the the flexibility of being able to use that and then like that becomes like does that because again like just just having the fact that they've got the NFC and the QR scanning all all the other air gap methods on the market right now don't have those two things together on top of the SD like most have SD and either QR or NFC but none have all of those three things. So that's pretty badass. It's so badass. It's so badass. It's badass. It's

badass. I'm going to get it just because of the Opset, bro. Yeah. I love my, I love my MK4. You know, I'm a big fan of the, I'm a big fan of the, the man, my brain is literally blanking right now. The passport or the, or the, or the Keystone or the. No, no, no, no, the Jade. I'm a big fan of the Jade. And I got the Nintendo, like the Nintendo see-through version. I have one of those. I got a, do an updated video on it too. I've had such a long day. My brain is literally working in slow motion. But yeah, no, I'm literally I'm a cold car jade maxi. That's that's that's my, those are my drivers right now. But yeah, I'm big fan of mk4 also. But dude, this, this is so badass. I can't wait to get it. Anyways. So I, dude, I just felt like that was so cool that I, I wanted

to bring it up today. Um, anyway, so this is breaking news, Ben. This came out and I literally added it last second. This is a tweet by a Fox business reporter. Gary Gensler is embarking on a midnight massacre in an attempt to bring all of crypto under his control in the coming weeks, the SEC, the NY, the something NYDFS, and the USO office of Comptroller will be bringing a myriad of enforcement actions against exchanges and banks. Right. And here. Here's the first one. Gary Genser hits Cracken with a $30 million settlement, prompting outcry of regulation by enforcement.

On Thursday, the U.S., is this the one with the tweet? I think this is the one with the tweet. Anyways, here it is. Yeah, okay, sorry, Ben. So Cracken agreed to pay a fine of $30 million and end the product. After SEC chair, Gary Genser threatened crypto companies that the, quote, the runway is getting shorter for firms to register with his agency.

The latest action increased his influence over the industry by penalizing Cracken, one of the largest global crypto firms. The move will also likely further accusations that Gensler is taking an approach of regulation by enforcement rather than creating new rules to govern the crypto ecosystem, which is kind of scary, bro. Regulation. So he just becomes his god king that gets the pick on. It's very, anyways.

Staking has emerged. is a key element of the crypto ecosystem, with users locking up their crypto tokens as part of the blockchain data validation process and receiving new tokens as a reward. Ethereum, the second largest blockchain move to a proof of stake model in September. Because of its complexity, many companies in the space like Cracken and its competitor Coinbase offer staking as a service where customers can custody assets with the exchanges. Now, what's interesting, Ben, right, is that take a look at this take a look at this comment and this came out before

this was announced, right? And this is Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase and he says we're hearing rumors that the SEC would like to get rid of crypto staking in the U.S. for retail customers. I hope that's not the case, dude. This is a, it's a bad day

to be a shit coiner right now, bro. That's all I got to say. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's funny. I tweeted this out like just before the show. But I was like, wait, do you mean that those investments of money in a common enterprise with the expectations of profits based on the actions of others were securities all along?

Like, I mean, of course, like that that was the definition. So again, like, I'm not. I think that people should be able to invest as they see fit and make their mistakes and learn from them and become better at at discerning risk. but at the end of the day, if this is kind of the framework that is out there, it seemed pretty obvious to just about every Bitcoin or that took two seconds to look at this stuff that it would be designated as such at some point in the future.

Yeah, bro, 100% facts. And I mean, is it a we told you so moment? I mean, everybody did. Yes, very much so. We are telling them so now and before. So what do you depend? So when I dye my hair, do you think people will just call us the tips as plural?

I perhaps. Oh my God. We're going to have to rename this show. Simply Sessions touching tips. Simply tips. All right. Okay. So, dude, absolutely crazy.

And I think this is going to continue escalating, Ben. I don't think this is the last we hear of it. Oh, yeah, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Like, Coinbase hasn't been slapped yet, have they? I don't think so. But I mean, like, that's why I was making sure if it had the tweet, bro. Like, I mean, how much more, like, I haven't obviously watched what Cracken has been doing too much.

But I always see, like, there's so many people that come to me and they're like, I need to get self-custody. They'll be like, and they even cringe when they say it. They're like, I got Bitcoin on Coinbase. And then they'll even like apologize to me that we have to then go into Coinbase and like learn how to withdraw. Like it's okay. I understand. Like it's probably the first thing you see when your buddy who's into NFTs wants you to buy crypto.

But you made it here. We're working on your cold. It's fine. But like, holy shit. Have you looked at the interface of Coinbase lately? It is it is a fucking casino. It's just like flashing things and like this went up. Learn about this as an investment.

Like it's insanity. It's absolutely insanity. It looks like a poker website. It's insane. I don't know how. Yeah. And then and then the I think the worst and you know what? I do kind of feel dirty when I see the coin base app.

Yeah. You know? Like I'm like, how you have the coin base app on your phone? What fuck is wrong with you? Oh, man. No, but I agree. Like, it's like, no, dude, you got to hold people's hands, especially if it's the first time.

But I think the, the mortal sin is that they equate Bitcoin to the rest. It's like, it's treated the same in the UI. And you're just like, that is so messed up, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I mean, it would be like if you had, you know, a traditional, like, oh, I'm going to allocate money to to my retirement account. And it was like, you know, mutual funds next to penny

stocks, like all treated the same. Yeah. Yeah, totally. All right. So there's, oh, man. Okay. So, kind of sad news, Ben, I think we've been here for a bit, right? We all remember local bitcoins, peer-to-peer exchange local Bitcoins shutting down after over a decade of operations originally local Bitcoins was established to bring Bitcoin everywhere and drive global financial inclusion we have honored that mission for over 10 years

and we are proud of what we have achieved together with all of you, our loyal community. So dude, that is, I don't know why they would go away. That's nuts. That's the end of an era. I wonder if it was just them like, you know, maybe not able to keep things afloat or I wonder if it was like regulatory pressures or like something else

they just wanted to throw in there. It's like it's time. You know, we don't want to run the project anymore. Like I did they didn't give much detail around that. I would say number two, regulatory pressure. And then they're like what they've been in Bitcoin for 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to be here. I don't have to be here anymore. Yeah. Let somebody else run the, exchange where I can, you know, use my Bitcoin to purchase a house. Oh, man. Dude. Oh, so yeah.

End of an era. I completely agree. Now, the big cahuna this week. So obviously we had the SEC, which just dropped today. And the other big cahuna was that the Bank of England, the Treasury of England, announced a possible central bank digital currency of 20, in 23, like by 2030. But what they also announced, which is really interesting. So they announced, hey, this is a possibility. But the next day the Treasury tweeted like, hey, you know, we want to do this.

What is your guys's opinion? And anyways, this telegram, this telegraph article is fascinating. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but there's a couple parts. So I said the Bank of England Treasury will next week throw their weight behind a digital pound as they set out a roadmap to introduce new central bank digital currency by 2030. Andrew Bailey and Jeremy Hunt are expected to say it is less. likely that a new form of money will be needed as cash use continues to decline in an increasingly digital economy. Is it really that cash use is declining? And because cash use is declining, you're like, hey, guys, you know, somehow this cash is declining, but we got to introduce the CBDC. Now,

what's really interesting about this article is that they get the input of someone that worked at, like he was part of the bank. So let me see where it says. It's right here. So, Yeah. So Lord King warned this week that the introduction of a CBDC offered risks, quote, risk, but no obvious benefits. He cautioned against creating something that the public didn't need just because it had, quote, the sexy name of digital currency. CBDCs are about ways of making payments, not a new currency, he said. So whether a country needs a CBDC is really all about the state of its current payment system. He pointed out most transactions were already digital and served well by the current system. of commercial banking, quote, no doubt further improvements are possible, even desirable,

but none require a CBDC. A report by the Lord's Economic Affairs Committee also warned that the introduction of CBDC would lead to, quote, state surveillance of people's spending choices or even, quote, financial instability as people convert bank deposits to CBDC during periods of economic stress. And of course, the Treasury and the bank declined to comment, but now, that I said that, do you really believe that it has anything to do with cash? Now, what's really fucking hilarious, sorry, Ben, to curse, but it's really hilarious about this is that this came out two days later, quote, hoarding Bitcoin to be banned over bank run fears under Sinox digital currency proposals, consumers will be blocked from hoarding new digital

pounds issued by the Bank of England because officials fear a run on high street. Like, dude, it is such a cluster F of like, so no hoarding, which also translates to saving. Like hoarding is saving depending on who's looking at that. Like if it's a government official hoarding, if it, you know, if it's an individual, it's saving is a good thing. And then it also came out, Ben, that they would limit $20,000 transactions. Really? Dude, it is such a Frankenstein of a system that they're trying to implement because they want to be able to keep control.

the money. This is what it's about. It has nothing to do with getting rid of cash. You said, you heard someone, Lord King at the very bottom saying, like, look, this is unnecessary. And it makes look, if we live in a country that has cash app, Venmo, PayPal, why do we need a CBDC? Yeah. Like, it's, it's literally nothing other than, again, the argument, oh, you know, there's no more, nobody's using cash anymore. We got to get us cash substantive. That's not at all what they're doing. They're looking at this. They're using that as an excuse because like if they wanted a cash substitute, it would be something that has all the like self-sovereignty and privacy of using cash day to day. That's not what this is. It's it's more draconian than the,

than all of the controls that the banks currently have on us. Right. Like if if people are are using like you said, like banking and third party apps like PayPal and. and Venmo and all that crap already. If they're naturally gravitating away from cash just because of the convenience of tapping a card and whatever, you know, obviously not entirely aware of the tradeoffs there yet until until shit hits the fan. The central bank doesn't give a shit about, about like, the reinstating a cash like medium. they just want more control because, again, if they wanted a cash like medium,

they would just drop the regulations on the existing financial system and allow people to transact as if it was cash. But no, you need to provide all this information and jump through hoops. Do you think that another system created directly by the people that want to control how our money works is going to have less hoops to jump through? I don't fucking think so. Yeah. No, dude.

they're trying to fix a problem that already has a solution. You know, like, it's like, because that's the way that you justify the existence of this nightmarish system. But it's, it's so crazy how hell-bent they are on like, with this thing must exist. Like, it must exist for them, like, for them, right? But that's clearly not the best case and the best choice for the individual for people. It's the best choice for… It's the best choice for them.

Dude, it's so crazy. Anyways, so another thing that happened this week, and coincidentally, this happened... It's not a coincidence, actually. This happened just as the news dropped about... This happened just as the news dropped about the Kraken thing. I don't think that... I don't think one is isolated.

I think it's all connected. And Nick Carter actually wrote a piece on it. The name of the piece is called Operation Choke Point 2.0 is underway. And crypto is in its crosshairs. But, dude, so much news has been coming out. So first, Fed Board prohibits member banks from holding crypto assets as principal. This also came out, you know, just a directive from the White House, the Biden administration, the administration's roadmap to mitigate cryptocurrency risks.

You have Custodia, which we've talked about on Simply Sessions before Ben. You know, her bank was rejected. By the way, same date as this White House press release. And of course, Nick Carter did a great job at summarizing and basically laying out the dates on all the things that have happened. I'm going to read the first paragraph. But essentially, he's making the case that there's a shadow war going on. And it's something that I've picked up on before. Like, I've started to notice it, I think it was like six months ago.

So I'm like, wait a second, there's hostility, but you could have made the argument that it was a coincidence. It's too many coincidences now, right? The Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Marshall Bill both came out, and it's like too many coincidences. Anyways, what began as a trickle is now a flood. The U.S. government is using the banking sector to organize a sophisticated widespread crackdown against the crypto industry. And the administration's efforts are no secret. They're expressed plainly in memo. regulatory guidance and blog post.

However, the breath, the breath, the breath, was I say breath? Yeah, breath. The breath, this is a weird word. Breath of this plan spanning virtually every financial regulator, as well, its highly coordinated nature, has even the most steely-eyed crypto veterans nervous that crypto businesses might end up completely unbanked.

Stable coins may be stranded and unable to manage flows in and out of crypto, and exchanges might be shut off from the banking system. entirely. Let's dig in. Mind you, this article came out before the Cracken News and it came out before this tweet by the Fox Reporter. You get where I'm going with this, Ben? Like, dude, there is clearly hostility towards the entire industry by some very powerful people in government in the U.S. Yeah. My main takeaway when I see stuff like this is get to your local meetups, start reaching out to individuals in your circles, and start creating that circular economy now yesterday. Find people that are like-minded that want to work and create value and save the fruits of their labor and something that can't be debased and figure out how to exchange goods and services with each other.

because when you rely on on these off ramps and they're taken away, then you're kind of screwed. When you can survive without them, life continues for you as normal. So do it now. Get to those meetups. Spend five minutes every meetup saying, hey,

I do this or I'm looking for this or what do you do? And can, you know, can I pay you in Bitcoin for that? There you go. Yeah, yeah. And I think that message is very powerful, Ben. And perhaps maybe a lot of people don't understand. But it's like we have to localize. We have to get close with the, you know, whether it's, you know, the beef initiative is like meet your local rancher. Right. Like me, the bitcoinsers in your local community. Right. Because I think that that is going to be very difficult for them to stifle. You know, anyways. This is. is crazy, dude. Definitely. Oh, man. I think this is just the beginning. Anyways, so check this out. I think that this kind of relates to what we were talking about. Bitcoin sells a 60% premium in

Nigeria as the government shifts to a cashless policy. So a quick, like quick context on what's happening in Nigeria. The Nigerian government made cash illegal. They've been stifening cash withdraws from ATMs. The Nigerian people are forming a ruckus. They're just complaining on the streets. There's a breaking ATMs. They're trying to get it. People can't get their money. Like, clearly, people are pissed off. There's like fires going on. So this has been happening for a while now in Nigeria. But what's really interesting about Nigeria is that the government is attempting to force people to use the CBDC over there. But what the actual adoption rate has shown, though, is that the CBDC is not very popular and Bitcoin and shit coin adoption is going through the roof.

In fact, it's the highest in Africa. So I'm making the case, Ben, that this is a foreshadowing into what I believe is going to happen for the rest of the world. Yeah, 100%. Like if the previous stories that you mentioned become even more draconian for, you know, locally in Western countries, this is the first. future that we see for ourselves then. It becomes things are more of a pain in the ass, but people realize what they want from their money and people go out and get it, the ones that

recognize, and you start to see, yeah, Bitcoin has a premium. Of course it does. Of course it does. It's massively undervalued when people realize how bad their own money is. Yeah. Yeah. Dude. And I think that's the cognitive dissidence with the CBDCs. And like, look, I really believe like all these stories are interconnected, right? The, you know, the hostility towards Bitcoin, you know, you have the UK basically. Like, isn't it crazy that countries all around the world are all marching forward towards these CBDCs, dude? Like, all these stories are connected. Like, it's the UK, the White House's hostility.

And then, of course, you have Nigeria. they're all kind of like in lockstep. They're all like marching towards this like CBDCs are our future. The White House report, the future of was called the future of money. And that entire report literally called the future of money. They never mentioned Bitcoin. They mentioned stable coins.

They mentioned play with platforms. And in their eyes, the future of money is central bank digital currencies. Like it and then this kind of like you go full circle with the logic and you're like, okay. So like, is it really a government by the people? people for the people are the best interests of the people or is it really a government by the government for the government? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. This, again, this takes away their exorbitant

privilege of being able to create their own money at will and distort the economic incentives and the values of the people that they govern. Yeah, 100%. 100%. So power to the people in Nigeria and Bitcoin does empower, but only if you take self-custody. Exactly. Anyways, kind of a happy ending, I guess, but still don't go through the scare if you take self-custody. So Gemini, Genesis reached $100 million agreement over Earned program. Let's check some of it out. It says Gemini Earned users are a step closer to recovering their money with an agreement

announced today between U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, Genesis Global Capital, and digital currency group. Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevi announced the agreement on Twitter. Quote, Today, Gemini reached an agreement in principle with Genesis Global Capital, DCG Co, and other creditors on a plan that provides a path for earn users to recover their assets. Winklevye tweeted, quote, this agreement was announced in bankruptcy court today.

Gemini will contribute up to $100 million more for earn users. And according to a press release sent to decrypt, the terms of the agreement with DCG includes the sale of Genesis global trading. Further, DCG will exchange its existing $1.1 billion note due in 2032 for convertible preferred stock and refinance its existing 2023 term loans in two trenches made payable to creditors with an aggregate total value of approximately $500 million. So, I mean, it's not a total happy ending, but like, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. So what? They basically got a haircut of around 50%. Sounds like it. Dude, but I mean like, Ben, like if you're taking self-custody, does this really affect you? Not at all. It's almost as if we once again told you so. The tips were right again. Oh, man.

Yeah, yeah. We're live and learn, I guess. Hopefully. Anyways, people tend not to live and learn. They tend to repeat. But this is true. This is true. All right. So the last story of day to end it with a happy note. Right. So, you know, you see the darkness. You see the ominous clouds. You know, England, the United States, like the current administration in the U.S. Nigeria, you're like, oh, my God, this monolith of government. But it kind of goes, it goes back to what we were saying, Ben, of this idea of local. or some people call it Balkanization, right? So it's really the local governments. And in the United States, specifically the states, and perhaps in Canada, you call it the provinces,

that the local provinces that actually benefit from Bitcoin. And they're the ones that are going to stand up to the large central government, right? Because they actually stand something to gain. And I think we're already starting to see that. In this case, it's Mississippi Senate passed this historic bill protecting Bitcoin mining. Quote, it shall be legal in the state of Mississippi to run a node for the purposes of home digital asset mining and, quote, operate a digital asset mining business. It's crazy, dude. And then it's not also happening in Mississippi, but also Russian government subsidizes crypto mining facility in Siberia.

So, again, if the U.S. becomes hostile, if Nigeria becomes hostile, if Nigeria becomes hostile, the UK becomes hostile, that just creates another opportunity for another country. Russia went from, we don't like crypto, to, oh, wow, you know, this could be a potential opportunity for us, specifically because we're under sanctions and Bitcoin could potentially facilitate international trade, you know, kind of skirting against U.S. sanctions. So it's just fascinating watching the flag theory play out. And I think this is great, like, dude, I think this is great news. It's like I think the, you know, the UK, the Nigeria news, it's like dark.

It's like, holy cow, how are we going to defeat this monolith? But I see little hope. Like this is little shining lights of hope here and there, man. It's like, look, like, you know, a state house, like, look, we have to protect Bitcoin mining. It's going to be very difficult, man. It's going to be very difficult unless they have this total monolithic giant world government that bans Bitcoin all that was. It's like, but when have you ever seen governments all over the world?

working with each other, no conflict. Total, it's never happened before in history. Right. So anyways. I think, I think you're right. Like we're going to see more of this kind of push of localization. We're going to see more, whether it be states or provinces or in some cases, municipalities, just say, no, we're not, this is horrible for us.

We're not following along with this. if you have a problem and come here and deal with it. You know, I'm seeing more of this at home here. I live in Alberta, and Alberta has been, you know, for the last, I don't know, how long, I mean, since the inception of Canada, probably, has been very segregated in terms of, or like, you know, our opinions or the people, the opinions of the people there, here, rather, are not often listened to when it comes to elections, and so and so forth.

I've watched many elections where they start counting the votes on the East Coast. And by the time it gets halfway through the country and hasn't even gone to Alberta, the election has already decided. And so, you know, it lends to a culture of, well, our, you know, voices on this side of the country aren't really heard. And so why would we continue to, you know, tow the line of, you know, a federal government that tends not to look out for the best interest? of our local communities.

And like you said, seeing it there in a specific state, you're going to see more and more of it. And especially as shit begins to hit the fan in terms of monetary policy and the way people have to live their lives because of that, yeah, you're going to see more and more pushback and more and more pushes for self-sovereignty when it comes to money and when it comes to resources.

So I'm looking forward to that. Absolutely, man. I love it. Well, dude, this, you know, Again, like you said, there's some dark stuff on the horizon, but there's also glimmers of light. There's those silver linings in it. And the silver linings are the local communities and the ground up pushes to localize.

And we'll watch more of it happen. And if you're watching, you can be part of that. Like we said, go to your local meetups, meet your other bitcoinsers, start reaching out to others. Start. And as we see in the comments here, somebody said, not just meet your local Bitcoiners. but start orange pilling others and getting them, adding them to your ranks because when you build a strong community, it's really hard to shake.

Absolutely. Awesome. Well, dude, thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming in, filling us in. So shall we do it again next week? Absolutely.

Always. Guys, this was your Simply sessions. Later, Matt. Peace, bro. All right, guys. Make sure you go. Follow Nico on Twitter.

follow simply Bitcoin on Twitter and on YouTube. Check them out. They're doing the news every damn day. If you're not checking them out already, I don't know. I don't know what you're doing. A few things before we go. I just wanted to say I started up. Umberl added their Noster Relay, private Noster Relay that you can add to your device.

And I got it up and running today. I was messing around. It wasn't working for me at first. So any of you that are running Noster that have been trying to connect this, if you're having issues, there's some clients that it won't work with certain links. So here's like a relay link and it starts with WS. Some clients won't accept those links. They require WSS, which unfortunately won't work. What you can do is you can go to certain clients and utilize that particular link and it should work. just fine. So try different clients until you find one that it actually takes and then it will blanket work across your clients if I'm not mistaken. Anyways, I started to get it running and

working today. So seems to be a little bit better than it was, but looking forward to stuff like this rolling out on start nine too. They do have a relay there as well on start nine. And I did get that to work as well. But looking forward to things like seeing latest actions and all that kind of stuff and more features rolling out. Another little announcement in and around new updates. Sparrow wallet has a huge list of updates. One of the ones I was most excited about in the thread is TapSigner is now a desktop wallet.

How about that? You can get an NFC card reader for your desktop and you can now use TapSiner as a signer for your Sparrow Wall, which is super badass. I love the tab signer and I love that I can now use. use it with my computer. A ton of other things. Again, Tapper wallet.

When you're filling in your passphrases, it'll automatically generate the master fingerprint. So if you're using a passphrase wallet and you know the fingerprint for it, it'll auto fill the fingerprint. So you know you've typed your password correctly. Yeah, tons of other stuff. Sats card support as well. What else?

Just so much. Anyways, go through. They're adding a ton. update if you haven't already. Very exciting. In terms of, I dropped a tutorial yesterday. If you're unfamiliar with Blue Wallet or even if you are familiar, did you know that you can use an old phone as a signing device? And what I mean by that is let's say you're a person who perhaps can't currently afford a hardware wallet or perhaps just your part of the world. It's hard to get your hands on one. But maybe you have an old phone kicking around. Well,

as long as you're okay with that old phone no longer being used to connect to the internet, you can actually create an air gap signing device, aka hardware wallet, if you prefer that term. You can generate keys on it and then use it kind of like you would with a regular air gap, kind of like signing device like a seed signer type thing with Blue Wallet. So I went through, I showed how to do that. Now keep in mind, this is not as secure as something that has a secure element. And what I mean by that is not hacking from afar, but if somebody got their hands on the physical device,

it might be questionable to get into it, bypass the pin code, and then get access to the keys that way. But it is more secure than just having your funds sitting on a haunt wallet. So way that either way, watch a video, a lot of fun. And of course, tomorrow we've got, why are we bullish? We've got Rob Hamilton, John Gordon, and Aaron Foster. And it should be a good time.

Anybody in familiar, John Gordon's the guy with crowd health. So they're doing some interesting stuff in and around health care in a quasi-decentralized manner. And it integrates with Bitcoin as well. And I'm sure we'll get into it. Aaron Foster might be a spicy one with all the ordinal stuff going on right now. Oddly enough, I invited him on before all the shit started hitting the fan. but he's with Luxor. So that could be an interesting conversation.

So we'll see. And Sail Dog says, hey, what's the drink for tomorrow? I think I'm going to be, it's been a while since I mixed myself an old-fashioned. I think I'm going to mix myself one of those tomorrow. How about yourself? You join me in one?

We'll see. And other than that, of course, I said before Bitcoin Miami, very excited for it. but I've got my workshop coming up there in Miami on Wednesday, May 17th. So the conference starts while the industry day is the 18th and then the conference days are the 19th and 20th. So if you're going to be in Miami Beach for that event for Bitcoin Week because there's a ton of events happening, then maybe you want to check out the workshop.

It's going to be a four-hour deep dive. It's going to be a good time. Tickets are near sold out. So if you haven't grabbed them already, be sure to check them out. You can just head to my website, BTCSessions.ca. Looks like this. I just updated it, by the way. I kind of updated my getting started section,

which has like a trajectory of knowledge that people can kind of take in as you're just heading into Bitcoin. But you can also get to the in-person workshops there, as well as private sessions and all that stuff. So be sure to check that out. Anyways, guys, thank you so much for being here. Like, subscribe, share, all those things super important. You can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below.

Nunchuk, coin kite, start nine, hoddle, hoddle. And of course, the Bitcoin Conference, B.C. slash conference. And with that, of course, you can also drop me a Bitcoin tip at my strike page. You don't need strike to use it. Just go there. Strike.combe slash BTC sessions. Type 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 am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening. I'll see you guys next time for your daily session. We have BTC sessions. Bitcoin is FU 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.