BTC Sessions - NEWS ROUNDUP: ECB Thinks Bitcoin Is Dying

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

ECB fuds BTC some more, Fidelity selling Bitcoin, Blockfi bankrupt and much more on today’s show. 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Start9 is your Bitcoin & lightning node, and full personal server - enabling you to take back control from the gatekeepers of your money and data! Grab an Embassy today and become truly self-sovereign! https://start9.com/ Shakepay is the easiest way to buy Bitcoin in Canada Sign up now and get $10 free after your first $100 purchase! https://shakepay.me/r/BTCSESSIONS ALSO search/subscribe to Shakepay on YouTube! Coinkite offers the BEST Bitcoin hardware on the market. Use this link to get 5% off anything in their store: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions BillFodl: get your wallet backups in solid steel. https://privacypros.io/btcsessions Bitrefill: use Bitcoin to purchase gift cards https://www.bitrefill.com/buy/?code=O04UMic9 Like what you see? BITCOIN TIPS: https://strike.me/btcsessions

I'm alive. I'm here. I've been away for a little bit. I was in LA and I'm back and I'm very excited about it. I'm happy to be home to have the familiar studio setting around me and have all the things I need. I'm not in a dumpy motel. I'm good. I did a little family vacay, spent some time with my daughter and my son and my wife. My in-laws in and around LA did the theme park thing, did a whole bunch of stuff. It was a lot of fun. My daughter was cute as hell. My son didn't know what was going on, but he pointed at stuff. So it was fun. I'm glad to be home, though. I'm glad to see you guys, well, virtually see you guys. I hope you've all been doing well. It's been, it's damn this month, hey? Well, it's new month now, but holy shit, November, that was a slap in the

face. I think in a good way for the world. And Bitcoiners just kind of took it in stride. We didn't flinched through it. So, but yeah, tons to talk about. And our good friend Nico from Simply Bitcoin is here to do just that with us. Before we do bring him in, 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, I'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. Yeah. If you have not already, please do like, subscribe, share all those things.

They help a ton. They get this content in front of more eyeballs. Without further ado, I'm Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. All right. Before we dive in, let's take a look at where we're on the market right now. I got the Bitcoin Clark Moody dashboard up. Bitbo was being funky for me.

So nonetheless, price $16,9602 per coin. A single US dollar will pick you up 5,896 sats. Looks like in terms of fees, 35 sats per byte for next block or for immediate. Even within an hour, it's still pretty high. So, yeah, use that RBF. Bump the fee if you need to. If you're not in a rush, then, yeah, don't worry too much. Outside of that, let's give a shout out to our sponsors.

There's some surprises today. Of course, first up, coin kite. I fucking love these guys. They got the best hardware in the game. I love doing my cold card workshop down in L.A. It was fantastic. Nico was there. He brought his better half.

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It was like 36 hours, which every other time I've done it through another. I've got like five nodes running right now. I typically it's like four or five days for me, maybe three depending. But like it was yeah, it was like a day and a half. It was pretty wild. Anyway, start 9 is super awesome. You can, again, run a Bitcoin node, run a lightning node. You can password managers.

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Matt's going to have to come on the show. We'll have them on a wall sometime soon. But yeah, nonetheless, hats off to start nine. Thanks for joining the party. ShakePay.com, if you're in Canada, super easy way to be stacking sats. You can e-transfer in and out very easily. No deposit fees, no withdrawal fees,

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Before we bring Nico in, of course, quick shout out. I was away for a bit, but a few quick shoutouts to Bitcoin Grandma said merchant adoption is so interesting. These are from streaming sats via the helipad boost tracker. Michael Madelof gave me some bulls. Mo BTC Dick, Monday, baby. Going on the cop for Ben's ripping job from cryosats who peppered the pod with sats. Random user said, Ben, thanks for the content.

Looking forward to the upcoming Nook episode. P.S. By the Dip, I will be covering how to build a node from a Nook as well. Again, Michael, dropping some more bulls. Back to working after three weeks. off due to a knee dislocation. So I'm celebrating with 100 stats for everybody. Thanks, Mo, BTC, Dick.

You're so kind. Random user, again, keep up the good work. Thank you very much for that. And BTC Essex, I was talking about fake tochi here. He said, cunt is a term of endearment in the UK and Australia. I am not sure how fake toshi will take it.

Well, hopefully he took it the bad way because, you know, fuck that guy. Nonetheless, I'm going to stop renting here. I've got to bring in my buddy here. Nico, man. Good to see you. How you doing? Oh, I think you're muted, man.

What a rookie mistake. Good to see you too, man. Happy to be here. It was good to see in L.A. I was glad that we got to hang out. You killed it on the Swan Dome. Oh, man. Went in like a professional.

I love it. I had some advice from another professional. I think you did a better job than me. They were kind of like, my emceeing in between was like, they're like, well, they went up there really quick. So whatever. I was like, okay. So I did my best.

It was a really great time. It was amazing to see you. For anyone who doesn't know, Ben throws some of the best workshops on the cold cart. Look, I know a lot about the cold cart, okay? Because I'm a nerd and I dig deep and whatever, but I learned something new. And it was dope. It was like you create the seed. It's like a root seed, right?

And then you can create other seeds with that. And it was really, really cool. I can't recommend it enough. It's, it's super awesome. I loved the, because that, that talk when we get to the like the BIP 85 stuff, people are always like, they're like, wait, hold on. How is this? And then they used to go down like the BIP 85 section whole of like, wait, I can have a seed.

And then from that I can derive 10,000 other seeds. But could I then take that other seed and then derive 10,000 more? And the answer is. Oh my God. I didn't know that. Wow. So it's endless possibilities. It's like, go ahead.

Yeah. No, it's like, I mean, you could, you could have like a BIP 85 and go to account one and then be like, all right. Somebody checks that. They're going to assume there's nothing, but it's actually in derivation too. It's great for family members. It is so good for me. I wish I knew that before because it would have made my life 100 times easier. Oh, Uncle Jimification of everything is so easy with it.

Anyways, I don't want to rant on it too much. I should dress it up in here a little bit. There we go. Beautiful, beautiful. Lots been going on, man. I know that we missed a bunch, but I think you've kind of selected some stuff over, you know, like that's going on in the last week or so here. I'll bring up your screen, but dude, tell me, tell me what's been going on.

Tell me what's top of mind. Dude, I mean, clown world continues. ECB at this point, you can't say, like, at this point they're terrified. We beat them in the memetics. Okay, our memetics game is much stronger than theirs, but I don't know who over there thought it was a good idea to post this to Twitter. But the name of this report was Bitcoin's last stand. And again, like, there's this concept in psychology, which is called projection.

where someone that is guilty of something will project that onto you. And I think that's really the case here and just replace Bitcoin with Fiat's last stand. And the tweet says the apparent stabilization of Bitcoin's value is likely to be an artificially induced last gasp before the crypto asset embarks on a road to irrelevance. Hashtag the ECB blog looks at where Bitcoin stands amid widespread volatility in the crypto markets. but it's interesting because one of the authors, if you take a look at his employment page, and he's in charge,

occasional paper series, the Central Bank digital currency, right? And we all know, misaligned incentives, I guess. Here's this beautiful thread by Beauty on. Kind of describes what's going on. One of my favorite bitcoiners, very well-spoken.

It goes on to say, this patently absurd statement from the ECB is indicative of the malign trains and ignorance rife in that fraudulent institution. If they had any compens at all, they would know predictions like this are meat for Bitcoiners as well as as always being wrong. It's appalling. The statement that Bitcoin is experiencing a last gasp is a variant of Bitcoin is dead that you've seen over and over ad nauseum from computer illiterates for over a decade. BTC and increasingly Bitcoiners does not obey the fever dreams of the ECB. The Europeans seem to believe that their way of life and thinking is inevitable and that

the future belongs to me. This is in face of Great Britain leaving the European Union, widespread self-inflicted fuel crisis, and many other synthetic ills, including the tech exodus. And I, you know, not to, you know, pick and choose, like, you know, to get political or whatnot, but a lot of those things are true. Like, I would agree that the energy crisis is definitely self-inflicted. It goes on to say, these people are liars. If they believe that Bitcoin could not survive, they would not be working furiously to draft new law to control, quote, unhosted wallets.

Why bother if Bitcoin doesn't work and is doomed, why legislate it at all? Right. And I think that's a great point, you know? So what do you think, Ben? I think this is, I think this is winning. This is what winning feels like. Well, I mean, okay, so the funny thing is, is the term that they use, this stabilization of value is likely to be artificially induced,

artificially induced in like the only thing that like has no guardrails to prevent it from dropping in price. In fact, all of the stuff that has been enabled through traditional finance are all mechanisms which almost guaranteed downward price movement. So the only manipulation here would be more or less to the downside. And it's hilarious that they're saying like, oh, the only reason it's got any value still must be artificial when every tool at their disposal has been used to try and tank the price and make it go away.

And it's still not fucking working. So they have to put out stuff like this. Bad memes is that's literally what this is. This is bad memes from the last century and they're trying to like put it into the internet sphere and just like like the whole officiality of it is just ludicrous at this point like the ECB blog like I trust the anonymous Bitcoin Twitter accounts more than I trust these guys. You know, then they just have they have a better record as well. In the actual report, they talk about, you know, Bitcoin's bad energy usage and all the, you know, all the attacks that you've heard over and over and over again that I feel like. It's just like beating a dead horse at this point. Anyways, more good news from Brazil.

Brazil approves bill regulating use of Bitcoin as payment. Now, we all know that can't really like Bitcoin, I think is on an, it's an individual thing. So I mean, like, I think governments are really irrelevant. You know, that's the beauty of Bitcoin is to centralize as peer to peer. But I mean, I guess it's, it's something in the right direction. specifically if you compare and contrast how developed countries are treating Bitcoin. You know, you see the hostility from the United States.

You see the hostility from Europe. But developing countries that have the most to gain, just they open their arms. And I think that's the signal with this article. It goes on to say, I'm not going to read all of it, but it goes on to say Brazilian lawmakers have approved a complete regulatory framework for the trading and use of cryptocurrencies in the country. Voted on on Tuesday evening in Brasilia, the country's capital, the new rules recognize. Bitcoin as a digital representation of value that can be used as a means of payment and as an investment asset in the South American nation. That's pretty big. The bill applies broadly to a sector which it calls virtual assets and now only needs the president's signature before it becomes

law. It does not make Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency legal tender in the country. The bill tasked executive branch with selecting government bodies to oversee the market. The expectation is that the central bank of Brazil will be in charge when Bitcoin is used as payment while the country security and exchange commission will be the watchdog when it is used as an investment asset, both the BCB and the CVM along the federal tax authority help lawmakers craft the overhaul legislation. Now, I'll tell you what, Ben, I'm cautiously optimistic, but at the same time, I'm a really big believer in incentives. And just as Iran and Russia are kind of, you know, looking into Bitcoin to facilitate international trade to not be so reliant on the U.S.

dollar, I think this could be another example of that as well. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. The part that stuck out to me is the attempt to kind of decipher whether it was being used as a method of payment or as an investment. So effectively, just within the legislation there, as they put it, they're kind of almost discouraging saving, right? Like it's a general kind of look at it as, oh, well, if you use it and you hold it for a long time, then and then you have additional purchasing power, then we'll treat it one way. but if it's kind of day to day, then we'll treat it another. So I'm wondering how they'll figure that out, like in terms of like, is there going to be a threshold of like if you hold onto it for so long?

Is it now an investment or is it like strictly in the places that you hold it? Like what if you are treating it out as an investment, but you bought it and then you put it in your own personal wallet. And then like, you know, the time frame, I'm wondering how, Del decipher like exactly somebody's intentions. Yeah, when I see these types of news, I can't help but to remember this article, a very famous article by Alex Klodstein. And the name of the article was Bitcoin is a Trojan horse for freedom.

And in that article, he basically made the claim that Bitcoin's number go up technology and freedom enabling technologies inextricably linked. But governments are going to try to separate the two. but the moment they take that orange pill, it's like a moment of no return. And I think that addresses your point, right? Which is like, I think that they're just looking at the benefits of Bitcoin.

They think that they could separate the benefits from the freedom. But I think it's a one-way street, man. So I see this and I'm like, this is good. This is good. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I mean, if anything, as I tend to lean towards,

um, anything political for me is nothing more than a time. buying mechanism because as you said it's it's this is a tool of the people and it the the the bolstering of the network comes from the individual people that use it and refuse to use anything else and so you know if this helps more people utilize it um it's a lot harder to say no to them later on i 100 i i completely agree with you it's it's an individual thing but i also agree in the sense that if we avoid politics, they can make our lives very difficult. And I guess we are all moving to Salvador.

Yeah. Or Madeira, maybe. Oh, Madira is beautiful. I hear. Okay. So I think it's another, yeah, I mean, take it as you may. But fidelity, fidelity has $4.5 trillion under management, right? So fidelity begins opening retail Bitcoin trading accounts.

It goes on to say, I'm not going to say. read all of it, but it says, Fidelity, one of the world's largest financial service providers has officially started opening retail Bitcoin trading accounts. According to a report by the block, certain users, presumably those on the waitlist received an email detailing the release, which stated the wait is over. Fidelity has been active in the Bitcoin industry for some time. According to the company website, it began mining Bitcoin in 2014. In addition, it launched a spot Bitcoin ETF in Canada in December 2021. And it goes on to say, brings up the criticism by Elizabeth Warren says the same criticism has resurfaced against recently from the same group of senators

who stated in their latest letter, quote, Fidelity Investments has opted to expand beyond traditional finance and delve into the highly unstable and increasingly risky digital asset market. They're not offering crypto. They're offering Bitcoin and Bitcoin goes up into the right. It is volatile while it does that, but it does that. And if you compare and contrast Fiat, I would make the argument that Fiat is more unstable for people because you're guaranteed to lose purchasing power versus Bitcoin. Maybe in the short term, we don't know what the volatility is going to do.

But in the long term, Bitcoin's designed to go up in value. And another caution as well, right, is that someone asked a very important question. Shout out to the PLEBs. It says, Bitcoin Bombadil. I'm sorry. It says, can you withdraw to your own wallet and fidelity investments, the official account, I might add? It says, thanks for reaching out to us here on Twitter.

Twitter. In this early version of Fidelity Crypto, you won't be able to send or receive cryptocurrency, but we're exploring cryptocurrency transfers in the future. Turn on your notifications to receive updates. So I would say avoid like the plague for now. Yeah. It's interesting that they, that they mentioned that they may be looking into that. Because I think that's a consequence of market pressures from before. Like you saw the same thing with with what was it was it Robin Hood or was it PayPal Robin Hood yep yeah yeah and so I think because you've got this this again in like out if you're offering a product and within the product you're offering there's a transigent intolerant minority then you know you're

going to have to introduce certain features and I mean that's that's a great thing because then we can continue preaching those off ramps to everybody. Get your own custody. So yeah, I'm excited to see that. Also, just a side note, all the senators like

Elizabeth Warren that continue to whine and bitch about this and protest and stamp their feet. So I watched my first Christmas movie of the season last night and it just reminds me of a group in this movie. Movies called 8-bit Christmas. It came out like last year, but it's

Neil Patrick Harris is a dad, and he's describing what it was like growing up wanting Nintendo when he was a kid. And which is like, it's a great movie, by the way. But nonetheless, all through the movie, it's like the parents protesting video games

saying that like it's the devil and, you know, like all of these, I don't know, Luddites that just won't, won't admit that there's just a new thing that kids like to play with. Anyways, nonetheless, the protesting parents that like refuse to understand

and anything about anything, remind me of Elizabeth Warren. So, yeah. I think you hit the nail in the head, man. I don't know if she's, I don't know if she's malicious or she's just intolerant and she just, I don't know. But I think that analogy that you did with that movie is a good one, right? Just stubbornness, right? Like just unwilling to budge and they just, they, they sew this narrative in their head.

that it's all a bunch of evil shadowy super coders that are going to destroy the world from buying too many drugs. And I think that's projection just like the central bankers in the beginning because it's like what system is more shadowy, the one that you don't know what the supply of dollars is. Like you can't issue dollars and Bitcoin, all that stuff is public. You could issue Bitcoin. You just got to invest in the mining infrastructure, right?

So it's a totally, it's projection 101. Anyways, Ben, we nailed this because we called this on Simply Sessions months ago. And it was just confirmed by some professor at Harvard. This is an article from political magazine. And there's a newsletter, better said, political newsletter. It says Harvard paper to central banks by Bitcoin, right? You never have imagined that, especially academia that's, been historically pretty hostile. It goes on to say Bitcoin was invented to circumvent the

world's central banks, so the idea that those banks would start buying Bitcoin in bulk ranks somewhere from counterintuitive to far-fetched. But after Western governments froze Russia's foreign exchange reserves earlier this year, speculation mounted that some central banks would acquire cryptocurrency as a form of insurance against financial blockades from the U.S. and its allies. It goes on to say, a new working paper on the subject by Matthew Ferranti, a fifth-year PhD candidate in Harvard's economics department, advisee Ken Rogoff, a former economist at the IMF and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors,

who is now a Harvard professor, has caused a minor splash. In it, Ferranti argues that it makes sense for central banks to hold a small amount of Bitcoin under normal circumstances and much more Bitcoin if they face sanctioned risk, though his analysis finds gold is a more useful sanctions hedge. It goes on to say, quote, we overuse sanctions. It's going, it's going to come back to bite us because people are not going to want to use dollars, but the contribution of my paper is to put a number on that and say, how big of a deal

is this really? How much should we be concerned about it? And I mean, Ben, we called this. We said it when we first heard the news of Iran and Russia, you know, using Bitcoin to potentially circumvent U.S. sanctions. We had the reaction by the Treasury. But I mean, Like if you just like look at like normal human nature, humans are obviously going to try to find an alternative. They don't want that power head, you know, held over their head. But I think the very dangerous thing here, specifically for the United States,

that benefits tremendously from having this police like power, is this time when people opt out, the alternative of which they're opting out to is better than the dollar in the dollar the first place. So good luck trying to get them back in the door once you've forced them out in the first place. So I think this is, I think the U.S. government specifically is playing with fire here. Yeah. I love that this guy comes to the conclusion like, well, you better, you better have Bitcoin just in case. Like that's, that's where it starts. And then everybody

realizes, oh, this is, this is so much easier. It's, it's coming. It's coming. 100% 100% it is coming and dude and it comes from academia out of all places um so i thought this was really interesting and i put some some pieces together ben uh this is Elon must the slides from my Twitter company talk you know everyone knows that Twitter you know that Elon acquired Twitter but if you go through the slides right and you go to the last page the last page of the slides it's payments and it's absolutely blank and my thesis is that i think that If Elon really wants to integrate a payments platform on top of Twitter and doesn't want it to be captured like PayPal was, he's going to have to use Bitcoin. And if you look at it historically, right, here's an article from Venture Pete.

The name of the article is Cryptocurrency is accomplishing PayPal's original mission. Remember, Elon founded PayPal, right? And its original mission essentially was to become the world currency. It says Bitcoin is fulfilling PayPal's original vision to create the new world currency, which we actually had T-shirts printed in 1999 with that mission statement. But the reason that PayPal wasn't able to do it was because it's centralized. And remember, we saw Mark Zuckerberg try the same thing with Facebook's digital currency called Libra, which was inevitably closed down due to regulatory pressure.

pressure, right? So if Elon's smart, right, he's going to come to the inevitable conclusion that the only payment system that you can use is something that is truly decentralized because if it's not decentralized, it will inevitably be co-opted by Bitcoin. So look, it's blank. I'm allowed to have an imagination. I think you just use some game theory. I think it, I don't know how you can come to another conclusion. Yeah, I hope he's, I hope he's kind of dug, in deeper than he had been like last year. It seems now, like I've seen a couple threads where he's talking about how you, like, he has kind of realized that you can't just scale on chain. And he, I seem to remember seeing a few back and forth tweets where he's like, well, you need to scale with layers. And like, he mentioned something about lightning in there. If I'm not mistaken.

But I still, I have. that like oh god what if he puts doge though i don't think that's going to happen but like there's this part of my brain that's like he's gonna fucking put doge in there he's gonna totally try to put doge oh it would just be so horrible like the last thing the world needs is elon to pump doge coin again in the midst like just just to get the idiots wrecked just a little bit more one more time to like sucker in a bunch of people to be like oh

it's real this time. No, it's not. But so let's say he does use Doge, right? He uses Doge. It's going to be co-opted, right? So it all roads lead to Bitcoin if he truly does want to build a payments platform. Another thing also, though, is that Bitcoin's peer-to-peer. So, I mean, it doesn't really need a payments platform. But I mean, I guess you can make the argument that it's a good place to find other individuals on the internet, right? I mean, you could just put your Bitcoin address in your Twitter bio,

and it could function as a payment platform today. Like, they do have strike. So, I don't know, just some thoughts. Yeah, yeah. It's, I don't know, I'll hold my breath on it. Or I won't hold my breath on it. But I'm, you know, cautiously optimistic that something might materialize there. We'll see.

We'll see what happens. If he doesn't get pulled from the Apple App Store first, that is. Speaking of absolutely wrecked, I'm not going to name any names, but do you remember the very important, powerful influencers that were pushing this? Yeah. And now they declare bankruptcy, high-risk loans resulted in insolvency. This is, again, like, the, I mean, the crazy thing to watch was all of all of these. different companies in trouble, then FTX coming and swooping in and being like, we're going to buy all of this. And then FTX itself, just being, because it was buying it with like imaginary capital effectively.

Like they were propped on hot air. And so they buy up all these things and bail out all these companies. They look like messiahs to all these guys. And then, oh, wait, no, we're fucked too. Dude, and I was, so I was in the spaces and we were talking about it. And I was like, yeah, I got to like a $300 million valuation and someone corrected me in this. I know, Nico. It got to a $5 billion valuation.

All of that just wiped out. Like FTX, I think it was like 26 million, 26 billion with the B. Yeah. This another, another, like it's, it's so ridiculous. And I think the lesson here is. is if you've just been staying humble, stacking sats, taken into cold storage, right? Not like, it's like this stuff wouldn't have.

You wouldn't even be aware this is happening. And you'd be like, okay, just another day. Cheaper bitcoins, great opportunity for me, et cetera, et cetera. I feel so shitty. Like, if, if you were sitting in this and you're, like, especially, because like some people, they were like, oh, I'll just put all my Bitcoin there, like 6% or whatever it was.

Of course, yeah. Like, thinking that it's needed. But, like, at the end of the day, like, the whole point of Bitcoin is that you don't need, you don't need yield on it. And the harsh reality is any type of yield anywhere for anything gets, like, has real risk. The difference in the legacy financial system is, The upside is privatized and the losses are socialized. Now, socializing the losses also means that the depositors that took that risk sometimes don't have to bear it if the implosion is large enough. But in Bitcoin, that's not how it works.

There's nobody to steal from the populace at large to make the people that made an investment. decision whole. And as shitty as it is that there were some people that maybe didn't, didn't fully understand what was a foot here in terms of like actual risk that's associated with it. This is the reality. When dealing with a fixed supply money, it's inherently there will be somebody on the losing end of, of that at some point. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Um, And it's a tough lesson, but I mean, I think the silver lining, Ben, with all the, all the, you know, blood on the streets, so to speak, is the record amount of outflows coming out of exchanges. Yes. And just individuals taking self-custody.

So, I mean, I guess there's a happy ending. I mean, this is, I consider this to be, well, you've said it before. It's the price of cost tuition, right? and and you know some people i mean i've had my cost of tuition through the years i've made stupid decisions done dumb things bought things that i shouldn't have bought you know been uncareful in a variety of different ways and you become a better bitconer at the end of it um and it it kind of hardens you as an individual and makes you better at hopefully understanding the risks of what you're doing and how precious the asset you're dealing with actually is.

And I will say out of this, I've had quite a few one-on-one bookings to learn self-custody in the past few weeks. People booking me, like filling up my calendar saying, hey, can you help me figure out how to get on a cold card, how to withdraw, how to do multi-sig maybe. Like there's been a number of people reaching out on my website being like, I need help with this. Now is the time. Now is the time to learn it. There's so much good material out there to learn how to self-custody. It's not nearly as daunting as you think. And I will pound this point like a drum. I don't think that self-custody is any more difficult than legacy finance and

traditional banking. You had to learn it at some point. You had to learn how to do online banking and all of that shit and sign up and provide all this information. It is not harder than that. to download an app and write down 12 or 24 words. 100%. I 100% agree with you. But unfortunately, and the analogy that I always use is people have been living in the Fiat matrix for such a long time. You know, that they've just been accustomed to outsourcing that personal responsibility to a third party. You know, so it, but I mean, this is where it kind of fall, you know, and I mean, it really does.

is where it kind of falls on to us, Ben, to get that message out there. And I think these blowups also, you know, provide a huge incentive as well. Anyways, I think we have time for one more. I think this is very, very big news. I'm going to take you through a timeline real quick. This is Tucker Carlson.

First of all, Tucker Carlson is the second most popular broadcaster in the United States, in the world, you could say. Behind Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan gets around 11 million average views and listens per show. Calvin, Tucker Carlson gets 3.24, so 324,000, 300,000. I can't speak today. Sorry, guys, I'm tired. We're going to 3.24 million. There we go. Close enough. So it's interesting because I think Tucker Carlson has slowly been getting orange pilled. And why am I saying this? So this is Michael Saylor that Tucker had him on the show about like a year ago or so.

And then after six months later, he had Naim Bukele. And not only did he have Naim Buckele on the Today Show, he also had Nain Buckele on the more popular Tonight Show. And what's really interesting is that Naim Buckele on the Today Show said the quiet part out loud. He said, look, the Federal Reserve is not a federal thing. It's not part of the government. And it steals from people.

It steals people's savings. And he's saying that to the mainstream consciousness, which is why I believe this is newsworthy. And today or yesterday, one of the most, you know, maxy bitcoinsers ever, Max Kaiser, went on Tucker. And if you listen to his interview, man, was he just going hard? Right. So this is insane. And also I heard some things in, you know, from, you know, private sources and whatnot basically making the claim that at this point, you know, Tucker's completely orange pill.

Right. So, dude, I think that's huge. I think this makes our job a hundred times easier because I think one of the problems that Bitcoiners have, like Ben, myself, just pretty much Bitcoin content creators in general, is that, yeah, we might be popular and well known in Bitcoin. But if you, anywhere outside of the mainstream sphere, Niko, who? You know, and it's it's 100% true. So I think these types of things, whether it's Naimu Keli, Michael Saler, Max Kiser, penetrating into the mainstream consciousness is a very big deal for the movement. And I think that's how you really effectuate change with the Normies.

Yeah. I love to see this. And it's not just on Tucker Carlson. There's been more and more consistent appearances of Bitcoins, not crypto people, but Bitcoins, on mainstream media and the best part is that the message is all the same that there is a difference between Bitcoin and everything else and that's starting to get through.

That's starting to be a common thing. I was saying to Dave Bradley, he's a co-founder of Bull Bitcoin. I was hanging out with him the other night and I was like, I'm starting to really see that this intransigent minority thesis is a thing because it's, growing and there's more people that I see that are tuning into the bitcoins the only thing that

makes sense that that thought process it's starting to make sense to more and more people because more and more people are getting in front and saying hey like here's the differences evaluate for yourself but this is what this is kind of what we think here and a lot of people are unless they're incentivized not to understand it directly because they're right. running a shit coin or a shit coin casino, it seems to make a lot of sense to a lot of people if they dive in deep enough. And that narrative is being proliferated across the globe. And I'm here for it, man. I'm here for it. That narrative, I think, is the, you hit the nail on the head. And that narrative is the

dangerous one. Not to us, not to individuals, but it's the dangerous one to the status quo. and kind of tie this in with, and this is what we do for you guys at Simply Sessions, we connect the dots, tie this in with the ECB mematic in the very beginning, right? Coming out with a hit piece, why do you think they're coming out with a hit piece?

Because they know, they feel it, they ain't stupid, they know that the ideas and principles of Bitcoin are seeping into the mainstream consciousness. And I think that once people wake up to the scam that is government money, you know, whether that's control or debasement, it's going to be very difficult to convince them to go back.

And they have to nip it in the buck. From their perspective, I think that's what they're thinking. Yeah. It's, and you'll note, like, how many previous conflations of crypto being like fully encompassing, including Bitcoin, have we seen in the narrative of the mainstream media? But it comes out of the ECB when they want to shit talk something. oh, they specifically mentioned Bitcoin in the title. Because they know that's the one we can't co-opt.

That's the one we need to smear and destroy. So it's no mistake that they named it Bitcoin's last stand, not Crypto's last stand. It reminds me of that gif. It's afraid. It's afraid, right? From the Starship Troopers. That's 100%. That's exactly what's happening.

It's literally afraid. It's terrified. Absolutely. Dude, this was fantastic. I'm so glad to be back, and I'm especially glad to have you back and be doing the shows again. So thank you for your time. And should we perhaps do this again? Yeah, absolutely.

I think so. I think so. So we'll be back again next weekend. And hey, you know what's coming up is the Christmas show? I'm so excited. And Sailor agreed to come. I know. It's hilarious.

I'll start dropping a little tidbits about what's going on. But we had a discussion of what kind of panel you wanted to be on. We'll drop some info on that's in the coming weeks here. But I'm looking forward to that one. I am also looking forward to it. Ben, this is a pleasure like always. I'm Nico from Simply Bitcoin. And this is, I missed it.

This is your Simply Sessions. Yeah. See you later. All right. Everybody, thank you for being here. I appreciate all of your time. I'm so glad that you guys drunk. I'm so glad that Nigo could be here.

Just a few last things before we wrap this one up. Just a few things that I thought might be worth you guys checking out. Preston Pish has been killing it this past week and a bit. There's a couple pods that I really enjoyed. The one with Corey Clipson was fantastic. I just finished it yesterday. And then I listened to this newer one with Dillen-Laclair just today. at the gym and it was fantastic

so check both those out they were great also if you do want to check out that Tucker Carlson with Max Kaiser I haven't watched it yet I have seen a clip of it it looks spicy but nonetheless

I'm sure you can find that many different places it is on bit shoot that's one option and then I want to give a shout out to a fellow Canadian his name is Julian and he runs He has a YouTube channel. He does stuff on like TikTok and everything.

Awesome Bitcoiner based out of Vancouver. And his Twitter handle is Kinetik underscore Finance at Kinetik Finance. And yeah, he did just a killer job. He was on Yahoo Finance. And he posted up a couple clips of him explaining the fallacy that is the conflation of Bitcoin and crypto together. And he tries to separate them out for the viewer in a very consistent. concise manner in short clips. He knocked it out of the park.

So I encourage you, follow him, go give those clips a watch, and then probably subscribe to his YouTube channel and his other social media presences because dude's awesome. And he's been on the show before. So for sure, check him out. And then finally, Friday, we got, Why Are We Bullish, we'll be back tomorrow.

We have Dread, aka Polvault Dream on Twitter. Also does work with Start 9. We've got Jason Mayer. I hope I'm saying that last name, Mayor, I believe. Anyways, he is an author. He's currently working on a book called The Progressive Case for Bitcoin. And then we've got Urban Hacker. He's working on a Bitcoin video game,

kind of in the style of how would I, like Oregon Trail type like OG style video game. Like it looks pretty badass. So we'll have screen grabs up. for it when he's I'm sure he's going to be talking about that tomorrow. Either way, it's going to be a really fun panel tomorrow. Make sure you don't miss it. That'll be live tomorrow. 6 p.m. Eastern time. And with that, we're going to wrap it. Guys, thank you so much for being here. Like, subscribe, share, all those things super important. They help get this content for more eyeballs.

You can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below. Coin Kite, Start 9, brand new edition. Thanks for being here, guys. Shake Pay. Hoddle, Hottle, linked below at Bit Refill and Bill Fottle. They're all down here. And if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a strike tip at my Bitcoin tip at my strike page. Strike. Strike.combe slash BTC sessions. Head there in your browser.

Type in any amount you want. Hit the tip button. You'll see a lightning invoice or if you tap the arrow to the right, a regular Bitcoin QR code. You don't need strike to use it yourself. You can scan that. Anyways, thank you guys again. I will see you guys tomorrow.

I am Ben with the BTC session and this was your daily session.