BTC Sessions - NEWS ROUNDUP: IMF Dismayed by Salvadoran BTC Standard ep323

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

IMF in disbelief that El Salvador’s Bitcoin standard hasn’t failed yet, Salvadoran Bitcoin embassy to be launched in Texas, Kumar wants to lecture you on proof of work, 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's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Quite a week. Let's talk about, yeah, we got some news. We're going to be chatting about IMF refusing to take the L on El Salvador and plenty more. We've got our good friend Nico from Simply Bitcoin here to fill us in. What's been going on. And we are so lucky to have Nico here. He's such a busy man. He does. Dude's always coming from another show or has done 17 shows throughout the day. and is managing other people doing other shows. And I don't know how he does it because I'm just one dude trying to get out like three shows a week. And I can't believe I still have my hair. So nonetheless, happy to have them. If you're not subscribed to Simply Bitcoin, please go do it. It's very important. It's very awesome.

This is live. Anything can happen. So I defer to my good friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live. Fuck it. 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 get this content in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. Before we bring in, Neagle, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now.

We're sitting at $24,055. We did, if I'm not mistaken, get up to $2,000. 25K today. The return of volatility. Nice to see a little bit of, you know, a couple little green dildos here and there. You know, don't get too excited.

I know. I don't, you never want to get over zealous, you know, as you're going through the bear market. Is it over? We'll never know. Maybe just by me saying that,

it'll drop another grant. So we'll see. Nonetheless, we are sitting at a single dollar. You can pick up 4,157 sats. 91.87% of all Bitcoin have been mine. That's 19.29 million. In terms of fees, actually just dropped a little bit.

It was up higher, but it looks like next block is 11 stats per byte, and around the same even if you're willing to wait a bit. And we've got about 70 blocks in the backlog, which is pretty close to almost having the full mempool. So time chain calendar, by the way, they've just added a few new metrics, and it'll start to show in the next couple updates. it'll show what they're purging. And so what that means is when you've got your mempool full,

it'll say, oh, it's purging any transactions below one sat per byte or below two sats per byte. Good information to have because you don't want to send through a one sat for byte transaction if it's going to be immediately purged from the mempool. So hats off to TC. Excellent tool. Always, always tinkering. So love to see it.

Shout out to sponsors of the show, Nunchuk. They are killing it with their wallet. and their inheritance planning product, their Honey Badger product. So this is basically an assisted multi-sig where they will hold a key. There'll be a signer for small transactions and a signer of last resort for your two of three multi-sig. I should say two of four. And then they also have an inheritance plan where you have an inheritance key. And you can easily pass on your sats to your loved ones and set thresholds and all that kind of stuff.

And the beautiful part about it, no KYC. No K-YC. You can sign up with nothing more than an email address and eventually just a private key. And that will give you full access to everything and the ease of use for family members down the line when they go to claim their inheritance is incredible. Check out my full tutorial on it. You will be impressed, I think. Up next, we've got coin kite.com. I love my cold car.

It's awesome. Cold car mark for it to secure my stack. Incredible stuff. Best hardware on the market, to be honest. Did you see their new drop? Cold card Q1? It looks beautiful. Dual SD cards connection via USBC, but also you can power with batteries. You can use NFC.

You can use the SD cards and QR scanning. It's got a camera now. And it looks like an old school Palm Pilot. So that's one for Opsics. So check them out. They've got tons of other stuff. The block clock, the open dimes, the stats cards, the tap signers, everything. So much.

stuff, I buy it all. So go check it out. CoinKite.com. You can use code BTC sessions for 5% off everything. Start9.com. Your sovereign, computing solution. If you're not running a node, you've got to get on that. You can then verify everything.

Be self-sovereign. Run your Bitcoin stack. Bitcoin core. Run a lightning node. You can run things like Mempool. Dot space, join market, all kinds of great stuff. And then host your own data as well, including passwords, files, photos, Noster relays, all.

kinds of great stuff coming out of them. So check them out. Head to Start9.com. Check out the Embassy 1 or if you're looking for something super beefy to host your whole life on, the Embassy Pro is robust. So check it out. And then finally, if you're stacking sets and you have some priorities, some of which may include peer-to-peer trading, immediate self-custody and no K-YC, then

Hoddle, Hoddle is the place to go. You can sign up with no more than an email address and be peer-to-peer trading in no time at all, tons of different payment methods. They link you up with other individuals who are buying and selling sats. And yeah, you don't have to give away an arm a leg and your firstborn child to achieve it. They also have a lending platform, which is never re-hypothicated. Check them out. Again, hoddlehawdle.com.

There's a link down below if you want to sign up right away and check them out. Jump to Helipad for some of the boostograms here. Just a few new ones here. Here we are. Second Breakfast said, as a community, we really need to. to promote more peer-to-peer solutions to acquire BTC. Agora DESk has been great non-KYC alternatives to local Bitcoins because we're talking about it being shut down last time.

Possible future tutorial? I'll work on that, absolutely. Bullish on minisccript from Cliff. Cliff also said 10K to take out the trash. Was this recorded in 2020? I don't remember what that was referring to. Something must have happened on the Friday. Maybe we were talking about ordinals or something.

I have no idea. Anyways. And Joey said, the only thing I'm more pumped for than getting my cold card Q1 is hashtag Benico, hashtag touching the tips at the conference as Bitcoin hits 100K as prophesized by yellow. Hashtag team beard. So many great, amazing hashtags there. Nico, what do you think of the hashtags?

I mean, Joey's really taking a double here, isn't he? Be Nico, bro. Touching the tips. Bullish on touching the tips in 2020. three. It's incredible. It's incredible. I love it. Oh, man. How are you doing, man? Dude, I'm doing good. I was looking at your, when you were talking about a coin kite and my, so we moved into a new apartment, my girlfriend, I, which you met. I took, I took my girlfriend away from a party at Pacific Bitcoin, and I took her two beds tutorial thing. Oh, she didn't talk to me for three days. I mean, she's

I'm sure she's full of knowledge now. In the end, it was the low time preference move. It was definitely low time. You know that meme, bro? It's so freaking funny of like, if you had 24 hours of me, what would you do? That was my favorite meme I've ever been a part of that somebody created. And I laughed so hard. And then they like clipped my, I never realized that my intro music is porn music until

until that clip. But yeah, no, it's a good one. Yeah. Well, dude, good to see you. Good to see you, man. Yeah, let's redecorate a little. Simply sessions. There we go.

What's been going on? What's top of mind? What am I pulling up? I see a video. Is that what I should be pulling up first? Let's start it, bro. Let's start with that. We'll start it strong.

Wakata. All right, here we go. So what makes cryptocurrency such an energy hog? Well, it comes down to three words, proof of work. Traditional old school money is created by a central institution that validates it and distributes it. But cryptocurrency relies on a network of computers to do this, called miners. These miners create new money and then verify transactions with the proof of work system. It's essentially a lottery that miners enter by attempting to solve a very complicated

calculation. The calculation itself is completely pointless, like high school geometry. But it proves that you've made a computational effort to mine that Bitcoin. That's the proof of the work of these transactions. And whichever miner wins the lottery wins Bitcoin, I mean, that's why they play. Unfortunately, no matter who wins, the climate loses. Because those miners aren't actually cute little cartoon workers with hard hats, although that would be awesome. There are giant containers full of thousands and thousands of purpose-built computers using massive amounts of electricity. Emissions from Bitcoin alone are estimated to be comparable to Austria. So if crypto is here to stay, the question becomes, what do we do about its massive carbon footprint?

Well, one option is to replace the proof of work system with a different system called proof of stake. Instead of miners doing calculations to enter the lottery, miners simply pay to enter. This This uses way less energy. By some estimates, 99.9% less. Ether, the world's number two cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, switched over to this method last year in a major upgrade known as the Merge. Sorry, I tried to make that sound epic, but still pretty nerdy. Bitcoin has no plans to switch to proof of stake, but miners can still reduce their footprint

if they switch to renewable energy. bro I mean okay so the the mining explanation was slightly better than I was kind of expecting but like all like the super complicated calculations

obviously is not true the emissions thing one is is wrong and two is irrelevant and the the dick sucking of of proof of stake and ether is was horrendous as if the as if there was no trade off there as if it was like and oh you just you simply pay to enter

wait so people pay if they if they have money then they get more newly created money i wonder if there's a problem with wealth disparity in that situation. Dude, so much propaganda, so much spin. The picking and fat, like the picking of little, like Bitcoin uses as much energy as Austria, but it doesn't get into the fact that Bitcoin uses stranded or isolated energy because if it wasn't stranded or isolated, it would be economical for miners. And that energy would already be going to waste, which is why it's so cheap and why Bitcoin miners is using in the first place,

completely missed that fact. It was spin. It was a high production value spin. That's literally what it was. Yeah. So bad. I mean, like, Kumar is telling us and lecturing us about proof of work. So, like, I don't know.

Stay in your lane, buddy. Like, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, that was probably the dumbest thing. I said, well, no. saw dumber stuff this week but i digress um yeah so so i don't know man i like walker's take here yeah yeah i thought this was a joke for at first but it's real truly shameful and pathetic anti-bict coin propaganda from bloomberg now ben at simply sessions we connect the dots um

i think this is part of a more a larger collaborated effort at pushing down the climate narrative around the time, Elizabeth Warren came out with this, EPA and energy, have the authority to require the crypto miners disclose their energy use and emissions. It's now time for them to use it. We need full transparency about how crypto mining is impacting our climate and electrical grid. Now, a lot of people forget, but Cal was part of the Obama administration of which Joe Biden was the vice president of, right? So interesting, big coincidences, right? And now check this out. Biden administration acknowledges it can force Bitcoin mines to disclose pollution. Mind you, other industries don't have those same disclosure requirements.

Why is it specifically Bitcoin mining that they're focused on? Very important question. Anyways, here's a quote from it. It says, quote, we urge you to those, we urge you to use those authorities to implement a mandatory disclosure regime as rapidly as possible. Now, to shame the senators that are responsible for this, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Sheldon Whitehouse, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Dick Durbin, and representatives, Jared Huffman, Katie Porter, and Rashida Tilibe. All these people, they don't like Bitcoin. I think they don't want you using a money that doesn't steal from you.

I think that's really what it's about. You can't control this. And I think that's, they're using the climate as a justification in order to go after the industry. industry itself. And, oh, man. I, so my worry here is that what you said, that there's no similar requirement for other industries. And the reason I'm worried about that is they can simply kind of like everything with Bitcoin, because it's so transparent in how it works, people can point at it and be like, it uses this much energy. That's bad.

Not drawing a parallel with the existing system. How much money does it take to secure the petro dollar? How much energy does it take to secure the petro dollar? I mean, take a look at the costs of the military industrial complex. and maybe you can start to ballpark the beginnings of the costs of securing the petrodoller and the bloodshed that it requires. So when you don't have like comparisons, then all you literally have is just a number that you can float out there that is meaningless.

And so if they were like, my hope is that they try to do this and then miners are like, all right, as long as everybody else has to do the same, because then the numbers will be hilarious because mining a lot of its hydro, a lot of it is waste gas, so then they can, you know, do the argument of like reducing greenhouse effect like for using up the methane and converting it to CO2. So as long as there's like comparisons, then science will be on their side. But if they're just going to take an arbitrary number, not ask information of any other industry,

and then just float the number around, it's just going to be, again, a witch hunt. Yeah, 100%. Like, you hit the nail on the head, right? As long, it's, it's all arbitrary, bro. It's exactly what you said. It's all, it's all, it's a Fugazi, Wolf of Wall Street, bro. Yeah.

Oh, man. Oh, man. But are we in for a fight, dude? Are we in for a fight? Yeah. Absolutely. That's for sure. All right. So, propaganda, hit pieces coming out. It's, none of it is like, it's exactly what you said, Ben, like, rules for the, not for me, these industries are okay. These industries are not okay. You know, as long as we say, it's, it's so ridiculous.

But there is hope at the end of the tunnel. There is light at the end of the tunnel. This is a law that just got passed in Wyoming. Also, we had the, We had a very similar, not exactly the same, but we had a very similar law passed in the state of Mississippi. In the state of Mississippi, it was protecting minors, right? And also, I think, note operators as well, very interesting. I got excited for you when I heard that, you know, when they were reading out the bill, it's like, node operators. It's like, ah, Ben's going to be happy. Anyways, times five.

So this is fascinating. Wyoming lawmakers pass bill to prevent force disclosure of private keys. It goes on to say, no person shall be compelled to produce a private key or make private key known to any other person and any civil, criminal, administrative, legislative, or other proceeding in the state that relates to a digital asset, digital identity, or other interest or right to which the private key provides access unless a private key is unavailable or unable to disclose the requisite information. Nico read that word with respect to the digital asset. Digital identity or other interests are right. And they love to use these big, complicated words. Anyways, I suspect Caitlin Long played a major influence as this for anyone who doesn't know. Caitlin Long is the founder and CEO of Custodia Bank,

which recently got denied the federal banking charter. But that bank took advantage of the Wyoming law in order to incorporate itself there. So I suspect when Caitlin Long was behind this. Now, what's really interesting, if you just see this on its face, man, It's just a big nothing burger. It's just a bunch of noise. But the fascinating part is the moves by the federal government towards Bitcoin and then the moves by the individual states towards Bitcoin.

I think on a state level, I'm much more bullish on Bitcoin acceptance and adoption rather than the federal government because the federal government has the most to lose because they're the ones that issue the money in the first place. Yeah. Well, it's interesting there. like you could you could technically um domicile a a private key in Wyoming and then say while this key is is within that state and so then any you know even if you're living elsewhere you could say well the key is in within Wyoming and so it's protected by this law in which i'm not

required to disclose it to you even if other states have crappy laws about that so i mean that could be interesting. Yeah, that's super. And it kind of goes into the game theory of everything, right? The game theory, dude, it's so freaking,

absolutely, absolutely fascinating. I feel like voltage should, if they're not based in Wyoming, they should create headquarters in Wyoming. So that, I mean, technically they don't hold the keys for people,

but like the node information and all that kind of stuff is, is there. So any, or unchained or, or CASA, places that might have a key, if unchained sets up their headquarters within Wyoming, then that law will protect them from disclosing the private key of anybody's of anybody's multi-sick, which is fantastic. Yeah.

Yeah. And they're going to go so hard against them. You just said. But yeah, no, it's absolutely true. And then that kind of goes into the idea of the importance of self-custody, the fact that you can separate each individual keys and spread them out through different jurisdictions. Now we know that Wyoming is a great place to get a safety deposit box, apparently.

And again, if you use a two of three or three of five, of which you can learn how to use those on Ben's YouTube channel, you know, you could put one of those keys in one of those locations and even if they do get compromised, right? No one could really do anything with it, you know? The beauty of multi-sick, the power of multi-sig, better said. Love it. Love it. All right.

Moving on to the next one. You hear that, Sophie? We, that you got, next time we are, we're learning how to take self-custody. All right. I can hear screaming. Anyways, Reuters. Ben, El Salvador is winning. It's winning hard.

We are. It's winning hard. IMF says El Salvador's Bitcoin risks have not materialized but should be addressed. And this whole thing, Ben, I hate to read the whole thing, but it really, like, you have to read it to fully embrace, you know, how hard they're spinning this. It's crazy. Anyways, risk over El Salvador's embrace of Bitcoin have not materialized, but use of the cryptocurrency still requires transparency and attention. The IMF said Friday in a statement after a visit to the Central American country. quote, given the legal risk, fiscal fragility, and largely speculative nature of crypto markets,

the authorities should reconsider their plans to expand government exposures to Bitcoin. The IMF said in a statement. The annual visit by IMF staff followed a $600 million bond payment by El Salvador last month amid investor concerns over its financing sources and fiscal policy. The IMF so-called Article 4 visit has been sharply critical in the past. El Salvador's moved to Bitcoin legal tender in September 2020. effectively close the doors to IMF financing. While the lender noted that risk, quote,

have not materialized due to the limited Bitcoin use so far. You see how they spend that? It's like because Bitcoin isn't completely adopted, that's why things have not materialized. It wasn't that we were completely wrong. El Salvador had a record GDP growth, lowest murder rate in like 50 years or something. None of that have to do with it.

It's because there was limited adoption of Bitcoin. And that's why our concerns are not my. Like, who the F are these people? You know how they call the psychopaths? They're the psychopaths, Ben. They're the psychopaths. I love that they can't just take the L. Like, they can't just be like, maybe we overstated the risks.

They're like, wow, it's because not enough people are using it. It's not risky enough yet because there's not enough people taking the risk. But when they take the risk, it'll be risky. It's so. And then when it gets, and then when it like does really, well and El Salvador is sitting like on a fat stack and they have no debt anywhere and they're like making their way up the ranks in terms of like developing economies. They'll be like, well, it's going to implode any day now. IMF. I'm calling it now. IMF is the Peter Schiff of Nation

State Bitcoin calls. They will perpetually until they die, they will perpetually call the end of Bitcoin and the end of El Salvador. Bro, I wish I had Opti's air horns right now because that definitely deserved it. I wish I, dude, I have epic music. I could have played it while you said that. It would have been great. Sound track.

Fantastic. All right. El Salvador's Congress last month passed a law regulating the issuance of digital assets by both the state and private entities. President Naim Bucalia announced on Twitter a series of purchases of some 2,380 Bitcoin before mid-November when he said the Treasury would buy a Bitcoin every day. If those purchases were made, the government holds nearly 2,470

coins acquired for about 106 million U.S. dollars. The current value of that investment is 52 million U.S. dollars for a paper loss of over 50%. The numbers are Reuters, the numbers are Reuters estimates as the government does not fully... You hear that? Oh, man. Anyways, quote, greater transparency over the government transactions in Bitcoin and the financial situation of the state-owned Bitcoin wallet remains essential. You know what remains essential, IMF, the fact that you continue to steal from other countries, you continue to enslave other countries, neo-colonialism with these so-called bailout slash loans that come with all these crazy conditions of which the Argentino one is the most despicable. The IMF,

for Argentina, the bailout requirement was that the Argentinian government must de-incentivize the adoption of Bitcoin in Argentina. Meanwhile, the country is suffering from just reported this week, Bloomberg, 99% inflation. These people are despicable, and they project onto us what it is they know they're guilty of themselves. It's disgusting, really, when you see the IMF directly say like they're dangling money in front of the politicians heads hey you know here take your take your money do with it as you please obviously they're not going to do anything that fixes anything they've been Argentina's been through this many times before um so it'll just you know it's it's a temporary fix until shit goes sideways so badly

that they need to you know be bailed out again or they need to like have a new currency like it's it's all gonna the currency goes to total shit and then they just need to get rid of it and create a new one. It'll happen again and again, and it'll continue to happen until they, like Bikkelly, tell the IMF to go pound sand and go on a Bitcoin standard because that's really, it's the only way out. And I'm curious at what point they clue in. I wonder if there's going to be a rising set of politicians that look at the ones that took this deal.

and then look at El Salvador over the coming, you know, half decade or decade. And they say, holy geez, if we would have not taken that deal, we could have gone off on our own and look at how much better El Salvador is doing now. Like, we need to cut ties. I feel like that's going to be a sentiment in Central and South America in the coming years. Yeah, yeah. And what country is next? What do you anticipate?

It's tough. I mean, I think there's going to be a lot happening in Africa. Like all of those French colonial states that basically have monetary colonialism with the Frank. Those are just rife for the picking. But I think that will be, depending on how ballsy they get, I think that'll be more kind of like a ground up thing. because there's been assassinations, basically every time a leader of those countries wants to go off to Frank.

So, yeah, I don't quite know, but I think there'll be a ton in and around Africa. I would love to see some other Central American countries, but I think, again, a lot of it's more kind of ground up or like little not quite kind of like little, I don't know how you would even call it. Like, what is Medira? It's like it's off of Portugal, but it's like a kind of like a sovereign state almost. I think you'll see more of that first. Yeah, yeah. And I agree. I think Africa is ripe. And Jack Dorsey agrees with you by the way. Medira like little little, you know, Christiana Rinaldo's from there, by the way. For anyone. I don't know that. Yeah. Have you been? Did you see? Did you see the Pleb music was dropped. some amazing videos from there. I watched his film.

My favorite was when they were talking to the energy board and Greg Foss had like euros and he's like, it's like, this is fucking shit and he throws it on the table. He's like afterwards, he's like, well, I ended up having to apologize because it was a little disrespectful. But like, I wanted to get the point across. Of course, Greg Foss would do that. I love it. I wish Max was in the room as well.

Yeah. Anyways. So let's check this out. Also, so this came out, let's take it the date. This came out February 10th. And then this was a ricket they win. So we won, but now it's a ricket they win. How El Salvador's Bitcoin-loving president won over Wall Street.

Interesting, right? Anyways, he goes on to say, for much of the four years since he won office, El Salvador's president named Mukeli has relished his role as an anti-establishing warrior. He sacked judges exited a regional anti-corruption pack, spurred the international monetary fund and adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, all the while he seemed wholly indifferent to what foreign investors thought of him.

Turns out the brash, ball cap backwards 41-year-old president is a hit with Wall Street. Is that why they changed tune? Is that why the IMF is like, you know what? You know what? We'll give you a win. Yeah. Good Lord. That's hilarious.

I mean, of course. Like, look, he's actually doing some good things. And again, I don't put too much faith in any politician, but like compared to what they had before, I mean, it's better. It's definitely better. You know, he's adopted something. He's adopted a monetary standard in which like even if he wanted to take it back, you've already planted those seeds. and so much of the country now understands self-sovereign money that the speed at which things will proliferate compared to other nations.

Like even though, yeah, you can go there and, you know, from people that have been there, they say, well, you know, a lot of people still don't use it. And like you might have trouble actually using it in a lot of places. And you can't just like live on it easily all the time. Yeah, but like comparatively, all of those seeds are planted with a younger generation, with people that are using it. And those people are orange-pilled or a lot of them are. And that knowledge, like it doesn't go away.

It's not like Buckelly, you know, kicks open the door. It's like, all right, Bitcoin's gone. Nobody used it anymore. And the people that actually understood it. And we're like, wow, this is actually revolutionary, are going to be like, yeah, I guess we're done. That's not how it works. They'll be like, oh, geez, and maybe he's realizing that he doesn't have control of this thing.

but I still very much like that. So, yeah, he's done something that if he changed his mind, he would not be able to undo. And that in and of itself takes a degree of conviction and a degree of, I don't want to say selflessness, but like a degree of like wanting to grant more self-sovereignty to the people in your country. Yes, 100%. 100% dude, bullish on El Salvador,

bullish on Central America, bullish on the global south, because they're the most incentivized to adopt something like Bitcoin. Yep. Anyways, so what crazy reality we live in Ben, the reality is stranger than fiction, Michael Saylor is throwing a Bitcoin conference.

Not only is it a Bitcoin conference, a Bitcoin and Lightning conference. I know, I know a lot of people would be like, Nico, it's not just a Bitcoin conference. It's a Bitcoin conference. It's a Bitcoin conference for corporations, but it's still a Bitcoin conference. Anyways, on May 3rd and 4th in Orlando, Florida, Microstrategy, will host our first in-person conference to discuss Bitcoin and Lightning for corporations.

The reason he's throwing it in Orlando is because he likes to go to Disney World. Just kidding. Totally made that up. But I would totally go to Disney World if I was going to this conference before because it's dope. Anyways, Bitcoin and Lightning for corporations as part of Microsoft. Microstrategy World, 23, May 3rd to the 4th, Orlando, Florida. And it goes on to say Bitcoin and Lightning for corporations is a unique opportunity for corporate leaders, financial executives, and technology innovators to discuss the future of Bitcoin in the corporate world.

The event features expert advice needed for corporations to plug into Bitcoin and lightning and reimagine their business directly from the market's most credible voices and experienced practitioners. Here are some of the events that are being thrown. Bitcoin keynote, Wall Street and Bitcoin, corporate treasury. session. And then it's more like accounting and legal stuff. But interesting, I feel like Ben would definitely go on the second day. Lightning keynote, the Lightning ecosystem panel, Microstrategy Lightning, Lightning breakout sessions. That's Ben. He's throwing that one. I didn't get my invite. I waited the whole day to make that joke. So, but yeah, so no,

you guys get the point in all seriousness. This is incredibly bullish. put put the jokes aside you know he's he's pushing bitcoin for corporations he wants corporation adoption he wants corporations to choose bitcoin as an alternative to fiat it's a much better alternative but i think it's just a matter of education and i think that this is just that dude i look at this and like part of me like i i i don't want to say like i get emotional but like i remember watching in God, it must have been 2018,

like in and around the summer of 2018. I remember seeing this image of a cat, like basically a cat kind of like drawn out with like just symbols and it was something that was encoded on the Bitcoin blockchain. That was like the first

lightning transaction taking place. And it was, and I remember seeing it and being like, I feel like this is a big deal. I don't quite understand everything about lightning, but like these humble beginnings, this tiny little thing. And then you've got this thing that's, that is enabling transfer of value globally

is instant. It's censorship resistant. It's it's cheap to use. And then you've got people that are educating other, again, like major entities and corporations to use it. The thing that struck me, on this kind of the breakdown,

the schedule, is under the lightning day, the Thursday, under the Lightning ecosystem panel, the description of it says, need an example of how lightning can impact your business? Voice over Internet protocol,

VoIP, upended the telecommunications industry. Lightning is analogous to MOIP, money over Internet protocol. It's, ability to deliver secure transactions with scale and speed is a seismic shift in what's possible. And that description, it's pretty profound in that think of what it was like before VoIP, if some people watching are old enough to have not been around before that.

But effectively, like you had switchboards directing phone calls over the phone lines. and the cost of making a phone call was insane. I backpacked Australia in 2007, and I called home on a pay phone with a credit card, this is my main mistake, to a girl I'm obviously no longer with. And I talked to her for about 20 minutes, and I got a $300 charge on my card for a 20-minute phone call. Can you imagine anything like that today? It's like, wait, you didn't, you weren't able to talk to somebody for free. What, what world are you living in? And this is the same type of thing. People are going to be like, you paid to move money. Like, you paid an exorbitant amount

to transfer value everywhere. What, what were you doing? Like, other than it's, it's monumental. And to see not only people getting it, but people helping spread this messaging and, and, and, and, getting down to the point. This is a single paragraph that basically says how important lightning is. That's incredible. So again,

hats off to Sailor and what he's doing. Hats off to Sailor, dude. This is absolutely incredible. Holy cow. We're just the beginning. Okay. So also the Big Kahuna in today's news as well.

Ben, check this out. SEC proposes rules that would change which crypto firms can custody customers' assets. here the key points. Shout out to McKenzie Seagalos, by the way. She's a great job. SEC chair, she covers the entire industry. So SEC chair, Gary Genser proposed amending federal custody requirements, expanding the rules to include assets like crypto, a change that would require crypto exchanges to gain further regulatory approval. The proposed changes would mandate

custodians, including crypto exchanges, secure or maintain certain federal or state registrations, even as regulators are both increasing scrutiny on cryptocurrency. companies and making it more difficult to secure regulatory approval for crypto products. And this is just the, they're enforcing the same requirements that are forced upon the traditional legacy financial system. And those requirements have been around since the Depression era. And it's very simple, right? The custodian and the broker should be separate entities because if they're not separate

entities, the, the incentives don't align. And how the entire crap coin industry works today is the custodian is the same as the exchange. And what happens with that is the misalignment of incentives as the case with FTX, as the case with Binance. And I think that they're just pushing the industry to separate the two. Now, do I believe this could be successful? I think that this is going to force more exchanges to go overseas. I don't think that the geographical monopoly

that that Fiat currencies allows governments to have I don't think it applies to the industry. I think there's also going to be a tremendous amount of pushback not to mention our favorite shit coin casinos, Coinbase, finance, that have a tremendous amount of money, therefore they have a tremendous amount of political influence as well.

So I don't know if this is going to pass and then maybe they could have gone in a way maybe they could have, maybe they should have implemented this years ago rather than wait for this massive exchange to blow up and for people to lose their life savings before they get their act together. I don't know. This is my two sets on it. Yeah. I, I think a couple things will happen, like you said, more overseas and people just skirting those regulations with VPNs. I think some will stick it out and try and, you know, try and provide services, but it'll mean the cost of services go up.

So like you'll have higher withdrawal fees, which incentivizes you to leave your money on the exchange and, you know, just fees for everything. And they'll try and, you know, throw other products and services at you to try and recoup those losses that they have to spend on all these additional hoops to jump through. And then finally, I think you'll see more direct brokers where there is no custody available, where effectively it's like you send dollars. and then at the same time you provide a withdrawal address so that the custody never actually happens.

It's like, okay, the moment we get the dollars, we never have your Bitcoin, we give the dollars to whatever this brokerage is, and then it sends Bitcoin directly to you upon receipt. So I think you'll see more of that. Basically what Bull Bitcoin does here in Canada, where you deposit dollars with them, they can hold your dollars,

but the second you say, I want Bitcoin, you're required to provide a Bitcoin address. and then you trade your dollars for Bitcoin and get sent out immediately. So you'll probably see more of that to get around the custodian requirements in the U.S., which will be a positive for you guys down there to have more of that. I think more non-custodial Bitcoin exchanges is a positive thing. Yeah, I think I don't see how this would really affect the Bitcoin industry.

I think, you know, it's just minor little changes here and there. like I think that I was mostly focused on the the crypto for like is that it like it really really affects them yeah you know it really really affects them all of the changes in and around obviously like the staking programs and all the shit that they try to pull and trade and do this and we want to hold all your money and yeah I think um yeah it's going to be they can't they won't be able to play as many games and like I think they just took so long with this is because they were trying to figure out all of the games that are being played, but they took too long almost. And again, I'm not super pro regulation.

Like people can learn from their mistakes, touch that stove. But, you know, they took in terms of their goals, they took a little too long to decipher all the games that were being played. And a ton of people got burned because, well, none of these things that they're now starting to roll out were in place. So I feel like FTCSler was like, oh, shit. Okay, we're doing stuff now. Look at all the things we're doing because, you know, now there's pressure.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. They waited for the thing to blow up to be like, hey, we were here the entire time. You know, you know the meme with the guy with the house on fire? He's like, well, it's okay. Like that's what I feel this is. Yeah. Anyways, then always a pleasure, dude. Dude, that was great.

Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Everybody goes, subscribe to Simply Bitcoin, give Nico a follow, and we'll do it again next week. Hell yeah. You know it. All right, man. Have a wonderful rest of your day.

I'll see you guys. I see you soon. This was your Simple session. I love doing that. See you later, man. Peace, bro. All right, everybody. Got a few things I want to get out of the way

before we log off. I got some suggestions, some things that you should check out if you have not already have not already heard these pods and stuff like that. A couple of things. A couple from Preston Pish that are worth checking out. Number one, he had Pierre Richard on to talk. And Pierre Richard is a big critic of the NFTs and the ordinals and all that crap that's

happening right now. If your men pool is full, Pierre Richard kind of breaks it down pretty well in regards to what's happening, what can be done, should anything be done? And all of that stuff is in this one. It's a pretty good listen. Now, what I will say is it's also worth listening to the guy who created ordinals. Go listen to him on Citadel Dispatch with Matt. Because that was a good episode too, because of anybody that's going to have Casey on

and actually ask the important questions, it's going to be Odell, right? So go listen to that one too. I'm like, I'm not quite finished it. I'm probably about 75% of the way through. So I got a little bit more to listen. But it's a good one. It's interesting. And Odell brings up a lot of good questions that people just in general would want to know.

Anyways, so I suggest that the other one that I have not listened to yet, but everybody was saying you should check out is Luke Broils also on, on Preston Pish with the Investors podcast. Apparently this one was awesome. He's actually going to be on wire. Are we bullish? Not this week, but next week. So looking forward to having Luke on. A few other things I've been checking out this week. If you haven't tried it now, I was going to show a tutorial for this, but I've not done it yet. So it'll be coming around next week. But there's something called Cashew, which is a standard to create Chelmian e-cash funded by Lightning. So basically, super private transaction. with no fees associated based in lightning. And you can create kind of like communities in which you can transact.

Literally nobody knows who owns anything. And then even when you spend out of a mint, you're kind of hiding in a crowd. So there's no way to even really tell who sent the transaction. So very interesting. I've been playing around with this one called, I think it's called NutStash. Anyways, worth checking out. And it's super interesting in that you can actually, you can link up Noster to it and you can send it to somebody's public key. There's a few kind of hoops you have to jump through.

It's very, very early. Like this wallet in particular is in alpha. So Nutstash is in alpha. And then the other one just called Cashew wallet. That's in like beta. So it's, but it's worth playing around. Keep your eyes out for it. I will be doing a tutorial.

And yeah, and then you can send transactions on Noster as well, as well as outside of it. And it interacts seamlessly with lightning itself. So kind of cool. A couple other things. This was yesterday. Plan Marcus tweeted this out. But to your anniversary of the birth of Laser Eyes. So it was, if those of you that don't know, was the meme factory that created.

And more specifically, Chair Force Hoddle created Laser Eyes. at the time, laser ray to 100K, but now it's laser eyes till Fiat dies. But they posted like the screenshots of them planning the release of the meme laser eyes and like all of the shit that went down in the background. And then Greg, of course it was Greg accidentally doing it early. And then everybody being like, all right, we're going. Laser eyes, go.

And then it just proliferated everywhere. So anyways, fun thread. Go follow at plan underscore Marcus. and you can find that thread there. It's a lot of fun. Also, interesting. There's a little thing that happened earlier this week. I got to give a shout out to Joe, Joe Hall.

So Jordan Peterson is raising funds for an indigenous man named Charles Joseph. And I listened to the podcast of kind of what's going on during this guy's life. it's an incredibly difficult listen. He's been through a lot, but nonetheless, he's had a streak of really bad luck. And so Jordan Peterson's trying to raise some money to kind of lift this guy back up to hopefully kind of put back together his life. Anyways, Joe Hall replied to Jordan Peterson and said, awful story, hey, posting a lightning address would open up donations from the entire world, those without debit or credit cards.

A lot of people have had enough GoFund me. because he posted it on GoFundMe and GoFundMe is the crowdfunding platform that shut down the truckers protest funds and everything. He replied and said, I don't know how to do this. Enlighten me if you would. And Joe actually messaged me. He's like, hey, you should jump in here. Maybe you can help him out. I responded, if you want me to walk you through it personally in a video call, I'd be happy to help out.

A ton of people jumped in and, you know, said, basically encouraged him. I've we made contact. I'm not going to promise anything, but I'm basically putting something together for him to kind of show him how to, you know, set up everything to be able to accept Bitcoin payments in a way that he would be in full control of his funds. That would be, you know, as private as possible for donors and all of that. So I'm in the midst of it. It should be interesting. Hopefully I don't scare him away with too many technicals. I'm going to try and keep it as simple as possible.

But yeah, we'll see. I'm not going to live stream it or anything. You know, I just want to kind of help him out with this. And hopefully he does find it helpful. But I'll keep you informed. And obviously, you'll see it if he posts a page that you can donate with Bitcoin. But yeah, I'll keep you posted. Also, these just arrived.

These are a couple pieces that will go on my S9, my Bitcoin miner, that is being retrofitted to become a space heater. I'm almost there. I'm just going to be getting a crypto-cloaks case for it or a stand or what, I don't know, enclosure to make it look a little prettier than just like a hunk of metal sitting around, making my room warm. So that's in the works. Very excited for that, actually.

That'll be nice. It'll be a fun video to put together. It's more or less set up. I just need to kind of film it. So, yeah, that's coming down the pipe. Yeah, and then we've got, why are we bullish tomorrow at 6 p.m. Easter time. I've got Ant. I've got Bill from Bitcoin Island, which is Borikai in the Philippines.

If you're unfamiliar, there's an island where they have like, I can't even remember how like just a stupid number of merchants on this small Filipino island, which is incredible. So I'm very excited to hear from him. And then DeCentra Sous, who Suzanne was, she recently was on a news show. where she talked about how draconian CBDCs are and how people should beware of what's coming. Excellent job by her. So anyways, very excited to have all these people on tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern time.

Don't miss it. Before we go, hey, are you heading to Miami? Very excited about that. It's coming up. Myself and my wife are going to be headed down. It is May 18th through 20 in Miami Beach, Florida, Bitcoin 203, largest Bitcoin event on the planet. be my fourth time attending. I did 2019. 2020 was canceled, but I did 21 and 22. This is makes number

three. And yeah, very excited. So 150 speakers, 15,000 attendees, 2,000 companies. It's crazy. I got to say, like, there's so much going on. There's so many people to meet, like the connections that you make. They're insane. If you're going to come down, B.tc slash conference, there's a code BTC sessions. You can get 10% off. Also, I'm going to be hosting my cold. workshop there that is going to be on the 17th. So the day before everything kicks off, it's a four hour deep dive. We're going through everything with the cold card. We're going to do initial setup, backing it up, doing air gap transactions with sparrow

wallet on your desktop. And then we're also going to dive into recovery and some of the more advanced features like BIP 85, having like up to 10,000 accounts underneath that you can easily access and becoming an uncle gym for your family using that. all kinds of great stuff. So yeah, if you want to check it out, head to my website, BTCSessions.ca, and there's an events page on there where you can basically grab tickets. Limited attendance.

I don't even know what's left, but yeah, grab them up. Grab them while you can. This will be going up on the actual BTC, the Bitcoin Miami website soon once they add their, what do they even call them? Their external events, their external events page, they'll have it there. And at that point, I think it'll probably sell out. So anyways, grab them before it goes up there if you want some. And then finally, if you need any additional help, again, my website has tons of stuff

in getting started. Or if you have newcomers that need some help, head there, one-on-ones, there's tons of info, tutorials, all that stuff is there. And with that, I'm out. If you want to help this show in another way, hit up the sponsors I mentioned again down below. You can drop a tip at my strike page, strike.me slash BTC sessions, type in any amount, hit the tip button. You 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, and I'll see you guys

next time for your daily session. We have BTC sessions. Bitcoin is after your 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. Total the Bitcoin.