BTC Sessions - NEWS ROUNDUP: NFL's Aaron Rodgers, Miami Mayor and NYC Mayor Paid In BITCOIN ep212

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

NFL star Aaron Rodgers, the mayor of Miami, the newly elected Mayor of New York City, and many others are now getting paid in Bitcoin. Who will be next? This and more in today’s news roundup. 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shakepay is the easiest way to buy Bitcoin in Canada Sign up now and get $10 free after your first $100 purchase! https://shakepay.me/r/BTCSESSIONS ALSO search/subscribe to Shakepay on YouTube! LEDN Bitcoin backed loans –  get $10 free with a savings balance of $75 or more for 15 consecutive days! https://start.ledn.io/btcsessions Get Wasabi wallet for Bitcoin privacy https://wasabiwallet.io/ Keystone Wallet: secure your Bitcoin! http://bit.ly/KeyStoneSessions 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

unfairly private. Well, this show, we got a nice little talking about a bunch of people. Bitcoin, which seems to be a bit of a trend for me for well over a year. Into some of the regulatory side of thing, ETF realm. We're going to be talking a little stuff here as well. Of course, I'll say. We've got a thing. As always, this is live.

Anything here. We'll do it live. Okay. Live. Fuck it. And we'll do it live. Fucks. smash that like button give this a share of all those things really really do helps this is your

daily all right but where we are in the market right on io dashboard we're sitting at 61 per coin a single hundred and twenty six three percent of all bitcoin have been mined and today 12 sats per bite for next block but if hunger one sat per bite should of course shout at two sponsors of the show You know they just upped their referral bone? Basically, if you sign a dollar purchase, they give you 30 docks. I think that's only going up already. You might want to jump on that. There is a link to show when you do it. But regardless of what best, easiest, cheapest way in Canada, no deposit fee, no withdrawal fee, some of the best rates in Canada. And you can shake your phone every single day and streak the number of stats goes up. So that's how I stack sats in Canada. Oh, you can of course use your Bitcoin for a particular for myself. If you happen to get your hands on dollars, but you don't want a successful event and you're always worried about your price. You can use their Bitcoin back loan. Get a loan to your bank account. When you pay back those dollars, you get back the same number of number.

They, of course, have USDC. They've got their B2X offering. If you feel it, make show notes down below. I do with all of this. They've got just every day, of course, via Bitcoin either on time with Lightning Network and ever convenient, really easy to use. They've got a kill back as you shop. So check them out. You guys know Keystone, one of my favorite,

their Black Friday sale commenter. But regardless, you guys know who they are. Like goodness, you never plug this thing into an offline via QR code. That's shady internet connect. It's too. Blue wallet, wasabi, spectre, sparr, and a multi-sig. Check a me out of course. And finally, if you're backing Bill Fottle over at PrivacyPros.com.

And an important wallet, paper usually doesn't cut or damage. You might accidentally discard it just because it's a hunk of steel gets rid of any all of those scary items there. I've got my important wallets. And with that, let's pay in Bitcoin. Now, effectively living on Bitcoin year now coming up almost. That's crazy about that decision. More people paid in Bitcoin.

Aaron Rogers, he has partnered with cash app to receive a salary in Bitcoin. So he announced a ship, he's taking a portion of a salary. and he's also dollars worth of Bitcoin to his fans announcement. You just have to reply with your cash tag. Of course, that's only open to people in the States. I have not been with the cash app previously. But option. Again, there's been Russell Okun before and Sean from the NFL

that are taking large portion of their salaries in Bitcoin. Now, he didn't. A annual salary is 33 and a half million. So even percentage of that is a meaningful amount of Bitcoin. So yeah, stack those stats, Aaron. Now, he's not recently for taking payment in Miami wants to take his next full paycheck. So Francis Suarez taking his next full paycheck fully and becoming the first known US politician to make such a move who has been making large strides to integrate the network. It's announced today that his intention is to convert his paycheck into Bitcoin.

And he said that on Twitter. And this is in response to asking who would be the first U.S. politician to bring in Bitcoin. And so the mayor jumped on that and said, he basically said problem solved when you were. Now, he did previously receive a portion of his pay last week. And he said it went flawlessly. Same with who else, the CIO, Mike, Mark Saracity. Sorry, he's the one who said it went flawlessly. But he did say that Suarez's move was a boss move.

And yeah, you know, they've been vocal about turning Miami into a Bitcoin hub. There was a little bit of, I don't know, should we call it shit coinery? I think so, yeah. You know, he wanted to launch Miami coin on a layer of kind of a layer of Bitcoin. I guess you could call it that. It's called Stax, but it has its own native token that's built in to use us like the fees, the revenue, the gas to drive transactions. I'm not a big fan of that idea. I don't think you need a token to make that possible.

Case in point, something like Liquid Network, there is no, there is no like separate token that fluctuates in value. to make it speculative in any way. It's just one to one. Even though it is like a token representing locked up Bitcoin, it's still, it's not like somebody's doing it to make a buck. It's literally like, okay, this is a pegged value.

And Lightning Network doesn't even need that at all. It's just actual locked Bitcoin. So, yeah, long and the short of it. I am, I don't know, can you get,

politicians diving right into Bitcoin and being full on Bitcoin maximalists. I don't think we've really seen that yet. Am I missing somebody? I don't know. I feel like everybody's got to go down that shit coin rabbit hole before they realize what's up. Another case in point. This is the other big one. Newly elected mayor of New York.

Now, he ran on a platform saying that he was going to make New York a hub for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. And he, in response to the mayor of Miami, said he's taking his first three paychecks entirely in Bitcoin. So they're talking a little bit here on Bitcoin magazine about game theory playing out in politics in and around the U.S. So he said basically a couple days after the mayor of Miami counterpart shared a similar move. He said, in New York, we always go big. So I'm going to take my first three paychecks in Bitcoin when I become mayor. is going to be the center of cryptocurrency of the cryptocurrency industry and other fast-growing

innovative industries. Just wait. Now, he was recently elected, obviously. He did a run marked by enthusiasm and promises around Bitcoin. He vowed to Bloomberg yesterday that he will look at what's preventing the growth of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency inner city. I mean, part of it is that fucking bit license that Ben Lossky put in back in the day. what an absolute chode. If you don't know about him, he basically passed insane regulatory hurdles to operate within New York State in terms of anything Bitcoin or crypto related.

And then he jumped ship and then started making bank for large entities that could spend the money on him as an advisor of how to jump through those hoops easily. like what a what a fucking snake that guy was i still have a bad taste of my mouth from ben loski what a bag of shit that dude is anyways uh heads up to the mayor of new york that might be part of your problem could be it i think uh anyways also the mayor of new york here it is uh he said he has interest in launching new york coin similar to the one being implemented by sarez in Miami. He said, we're going to look in the direction and carry that out. Do you, do you need a city coin really? Like the whole point of Bitcoin is to be a global base layer of value. Again, I think, I think most of these guys maybe, maybe have their, their heart in the right

place, but they're going to have to go through the paces of figuring out what's up and figuring out what's a waste of time. Miami coin, New York coin, I can tell you right now, those are those are wastes of time. Let's keep going here. U.S. congressmen sent SEC letter advocating for spot Bitcoin ETF. So today, the SEC chairman Gary Gensler, was sent.

This was actually yesterday, a letter written by two congressmen, Tom Emmer and Darren Soto, advocating for the approval of a spot Bitcoin exchange traded fund or ETF. to begin trading in the country. They said, quote, we question why if you are comfortable allowing trading in an ETF based on derivatives contracts, you are not equally or more comfortable allowing trading to commence on ETFs based on spot Bitcoin. Bitcoin spot ETFs are based directly on the asset,

which inherently provides more protection for investors. They said, it is our understanding that previously as the SEC chose not to approve, a Bitcoin futures ETF or spot ETF due to concerns about the perceived potential for fraud and manipulation in Bitcoin markets. In fact, the SEC clearly articulated that these concerns could be addressed by demonstrating that the underlying Bitcoin market is inherently resistant to fraud and manipulation, or that there are other means to prevent fraudulent and manipulative apps and practices.

Or that a significant amount of trading took place on a regulated market. For instance, if the CME traded Bitcoin futures market were to become the leading source of price discovery in the Bitcoin market. Please note that neither of these requirements state a preference for Bitcoin spot ETFs or future ETFs. They said for this reason, whether one, both or none of these requirements has been met, the SEC should no longer have concerns with Bitcoin spot ETFs and should show a similar willingness to permit the trade. a Bitcoin spot ETFs. Yeah, it says they also went on to say that permitting futures-based ETFs will simultaneously continuing to deny spot-based ETFs would further perpetuate these discounts, talking about

things like the GBTC and everything, which is trading at a discount to NAV, discount to actual price of the underlying assets. It said that denying spot-based ETFs would perpetuate these discounts and, clearly go against the SEC's core mission of protecting investors. Basically, these congressmen were saying, what are you guys doing? Why would you say that people can trade on speculative, risky, volatile futures Bitcoin contracts, which are basically people betting on the future price of Bitcoin rather than holding the underlying asset, rather than just saying, here's an ETF fully backed by actual Bitcoin that is held in some sort of a fund.

Why would you approve one and not the other? And because you've neglected to do so, all of these other instruments that people have been trying to use to get some exposure are way off base in their price. So I agree here. I think it's just a matter of time at this point. It's kind of insane to me that it's taken this long. And it's kind of insane to me that there's. futures ETF sitting up there and there's nothing for actual spot.

But whatever. And in the ETF realm, direction had filed, a company called Direction had filed for an ETF that would bet against the price of Bitcoin. It was called the Direction Bitcoin Strategy Bear ETF. And basically, as soon as they submitted it to the SEC for listing, the SEC immediately requested that they rescind their submission, that they pull it. So they did. They said, while it does seem a bit inconsistent, given their acceptance of Bitcoin futures markets, it isn't surprising and likely part of a baby steps regulatory mindset. They said, I bet we will

see someday, but only when they feel ready. Yeah, I mean, again, if they were to approve that and still also not have SPA ETFs, it would be kind of ridiculous. I'm kind of surprised that they didn't do spot first, then futures and that, but what do I know? Okay, let's keep going here. Nidig acquires British Bitcoin startup bottle pay in a $300 million stock purchase. So Nidig, the New York-based crypto company has acquired British payments, startup bottle pay, according to people familiar with the matter. Nidig will pay the company in shares. and the deal is worth between $280 to $300 million, which is equivalent to 3% of NIDIG's shares.

It closed earlier this week. A spokesperson declined to comment from NIDIG, founded in 2019, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, bottle pay facilitates instant payments in a range of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. The platform uses the Lightning Network,

a Bitcoin-Center protocol that aims to facilitate faster payments. So here's the interesting bit and why I wanted to touch on that. NIDIG purchasing BottlePay seems to be a play on the Lightning Network because that's what Bottle Pay was known for, right? They facilitated Bitcoin Lightning transactions. And NIDIG, those unfamiliar, I'm sure you've heard it, but they are actively working with banks across the U.S.

to enable them to utilize Bitcoin and offer it to their customers and work it into their banking apps and offer it as as payment solutions. So you've got to imagine that at some point those two worlds collide. If NIDIG is buying up a Bitcoin Lightning Network related company, it must be a play for some of the technology and infrastructure that they're building out. and I've got to imagine that will proliferate out into its other offerings. And so does that mean that banks start utilizing Lightning Network? I mean, I'm not big on custody.

I don't really, you know, that's not really super interesting to me. But at the same time, more usage of the Lightning Network, more liquidity, easier to send payments, easier to send large Lightning payments over time. I think that's a net positive. So I guess we'll see how that plays out. Let's keep going. JP Morgan. This remark is an insider.

They renewed their prediction that Bitcoin could hit $146,000 and says it's acting more like digital gold than ever. So they recently published a deep dive into digital assets. And what did they say here? They said it could surge to $146,000 in the long term. Long term, JP Morgan. Why are you so bearish? Long term. Come on.

I still think we're in for a crazy end of the year. 146 long term seems pretty bearish, you guys. If they said, if volatility subsides an institution start preferring it to gold in their portfolios. So that's basically 130% above where it's sitting right around now. JP Morgan thinks Bitcoin, which is also a scarce product, is increasingly competing with gold for investors' attention as a hedge against inflation. And then they say that the reemergence of inflation concerns among investors during September and October appears to have renewed interest in the usage of Bitcoin as an inflation hedge.

This is my favorite quote here. Bitcoin's allure as an inflation hedge has perhaps been strengthened by the failure of gold to respond in recent weeks to heightened concerns over inflation. Peter Schiff must be losing his mind. reading stuff like this. Yeah, they said that there's a little doubt that the tokens competition with gold will continue as millennials become more powerful in the investing universe given their preference for cryptocurrencies. Yeah, I mean, they go on to talk about, well, you know, maybe it could

drop back below 30,000. And they say, oh, the next big price target is 73,000 if it keeps going up. I don't know. A lot of it seems kind of arbitrary. I do think that 146,000 like as a long-term target is

I don't know, like up 130% from here. And they even say in the article, Bitcoin is already up 340% over the last year. So yeah, I don't know. Maybe they're just being conservative with their play.

and they don't want to pull, I don't know, like a Scott Minard with Guggenheim and say it's going to be 400 or 600K and then make a bad move and sell it and, you know, get egg on their face when it doesn't go as low as they think it's going to go. Who knows? But, I mean, Jamie Diamond is probably not super excited about all of these price targets and positive sentiments coming out of his company, especially since he hates Bitcoin with a. burning passion. But, you know, I guess it's capitulation from people within. He couldn't stop that from happening, I suppose. Let's keep moving here. Let's go a little international here, Australia.

Australia's largest bank to integrate Bitcoin services in app. So Commonwealth Bank or CBA will reportedly enable a 6.5 million customers to buy, sell and hold Bitcoin directly in its banking app. And this is according to the Australian Financial Review. The bank will become the first in Australia to offer customers direct access to Bitcoin and join a handful of other financial institutions in the world to cater to the growing demand for the scarce asset. According to the report, CBA hasn't made a formal announcement yet and is preparing

to share its developments in integrating BTC into his app in and around now. What is today? I guess when was this? This was November 2nd. So maybe I'm a little bit behind. Any news from CBA? I didn't see anything extra published today, but who knows, maybe within the end of the week here. So basically, this is about 25% of the country's total population that would immediately have access.

That's no small feat. I'd like to see something like that in Canada. Again, not a fan of the custodial aspect of it, but just seeing that, having people log onto their bank and just see like, oh, I can get Bitcoin through my bank. And then it becomes a lot less foreign to them. And then all us Bitcoiners can tell them to stop buying shitty IOUs and actually go get real Bitcoin and withdraw to their own custody. they do say here it's unclear whether Commonwealth Bank will allow customers to withdraw

Bitcoin to an external wallet which holds the private keys yeah again I don't think that they will I think it'll be an IOU I think it'll be like exposure to Bitcoin in a custodial account that you can never withdraw

and if you want it in your own custody then you've got to sell incur capital gains and then buy elsewhere unless of of course, there's such a demand for it that they're losing business to alternatives, which could be the case. That could be the case.

I don't, it definitely won't come out as you can withdraw to your own custody right away. But look at the pressure that was placed on PayPal and Robin Hood. And now, now they're rolling that that out. So people can actually withdraw their own funds. And the pressure that that apps like strike puts on on payment processors and banks and stuff like that is not to be ignored. So while I don't think that's going to be their intention of the gate, I think eventually they could be forced into it.

Let's go further abroad to Laos. I did spend some time backpacking Laos. It was really cool. It's probably the most off the grid I've ever felt. I floated down the Mekong River in one of those long boats with my wife. It was amazing. And funny enough, in a place called Luang Perbang, I, we wandered into a little cafe that was hidden away in the jungle and we sat down,

we're hanging out. My wife goes up to the bar to grab a drink. She comes back and she says, you're never going to believe this. They accept Bitcoin. And so I was like, no way I go up and I talk to the guy. The guy that owned the bar was actually from Canada. And yeah, he was super nice. I got chatting with him and he actually, because they just rake you over the cold.

when you use the ATMs to take out cash in Laos. He was like, oh, I can exchange you some cash for Bitcoin if you need some more while you're here local. And it's mostly cash-based economy. So that was a huge help and definitely helped me get local cash much easier. Anyways, to the story, sorry, I digress. Lows is expected to earn $190 million from Bitcoin mining in 2022. The government of Laos, which is in Southeast Asia, between Thailand and Vietnam, reportedly

expects to earn around 190 million in revenue from Bitcoin mining next year. And this is according to a report by the Cambodian newspaper, the Nampen Post. Total loud domestic revenue, which reportedly accounts for 15% of their GDP, is expected to amount to nearly 2.8 billion in 2022. And that's from the Minister of Finance. Quote, presenting the National Assembly's 22 draft budget plan to the session, the minister said the new source of revenue would increase the projected revenue for next year by 20% compared to the target for 2021. That's not a joke. 20% up?

Impressive. All right. It says, according to the post, the loud government plans to employ these new revenue streams proceeds on, quote, priority programs. These include increasing supporting allowances to cover the liberal. expenses of officials and security force personnel, not too self-understood there, expenditure on efforts to respond to the, we'll just say, the pandemic outbreak and the payment of debts.

Well, at least they're paying down some debt there. I guess, I suppose that's good. Yeah. Well, this is interesting. I think more countries, it's kind of hard to ignore, hey? Now that we've got volcanoed down in El Salvador, they're using geothermal to mine. And you see more small countries coming on board and seeing this as a potential revenue source. Kazakhstan is like one of the largest miners now.

And that proliferation of mining infrastructure that just left China after the ban and is now finding new homes, it looks like some small countries are capitalizing on that. redistribution of hash rates. So more power to allows. And finally, and again, on the benefits of Bitcoin for small countries, back with El Salvador, President Buckele, El Salvador to use Bitcoin profits to build 20 schools. And specifically, let's chat about how that's being achieved. So he said he's going to build 20 new schools with Bitcoin profits. This is actually from the press secretary.

the funds come from the surplus of the Salvadoran trust for the adoption of Bitcoin, which is currently enjoying all-time highs at above the $60,000 price mark. And so they had just built the first public veterinary hospital based on the upswing in the price of Bitcoin in their reserves. He said that I'm going to skip all the details about the veterinary hospital. So he said that these 20 new schools are in addition to the 400 schools from the My New School program. This comes just a week after the all-time high was broken. And after they bought the dip multiple times, they now got 1120 Bitcoin. Their last dip buy was 420 Bitcoin.

He's a professional troll, I think, in that one. Now, it says here, that they are actually, they're not planning to take profits from their Bitcoin stack to fund the hospital or the new schools. Rather, they'll continue to use dollars

also held in the fund. So I love this because they're recognizing, we don't want to convert the Bitcoin. We've got, you know, we've got dollars sitting in this fund here. We may as, we better use the dollars and hold the Bitcoin. they're getting it he's getting it uh i enjoy that because it's like why would you get rid of the

sounder money it's fantastic uh i love seeing i love i know that's such a tiny little tidbit at the end of an article but it really makes me smile because somebody looked and made a call and said we've got bitcoin sitting here and we've got u.s dollars sitting here and we've got us dollars sitting here and we need to spend one of them to build some infrastructure. Which one are we going to get rid of? Which one is least valuable? Which one do we not want sitting here in this fund? And the answer was dollars.

That's kind of a big fucking deal. I think that's pretty cool. Anyways, one last thing I wanted to do. This is local to me, but it just popped into my feed. I know a lot of people dealing with this in a lot of different cities. But it is, again, it just kind of drives. drives home the YWi Bitcoin point. It's an article from the CBC.

It says Calgary families see roughly $220 added to their monthly grocery bill. CBC launches new focus on food cost. It's crazy. Like this one got me. This portion here. It says it released a report Monday. Researchers found prices in many areas increased with inflation, but food prices increased faster. Now, a family with two adults and two kids can expect to spend nearly 1,200 Canadian

dollars a month to ensure a full fridge and kitchen cupboards. That is insane. That is an insane amount of money monthly on groceries. And I think about it and I think, okay, so we've got, I've got two kids, to me and my wife, my one kid is seven months old, so he's not. you know, he's breastfeeding and he gets like some little pouches of food here and there as he's starting to learn to eat solids. But like that's not much. My daughter is four. She doesn't eat like a ton.

So that's not a lot of extra food. But I've got to imagine that. I think of what we're spending right now on food. And we were purposely making efforts to get healthy food, which is food that you can't bullshit with poor ingredients to drive down the cost. So like I'm stalking up on steak and stuff. I've got I've got meat in my freezer. I have a meat guy that comes.

And then, you know, we do like actual fresh produce and stuff like that. And you can't you can't fake the prices of that. You notice when they're more expensive. And yeah, I can only imagine as my kids get older, it's going to be so expensive. And thank God. I'm not using Canadian dollars as a method to store my purchasing power because Jesus, it's not working out for most people.

And you can blame it on supply chains and you can blame it on other factors. But we need to not forget that like 30 to 40% of all existing base money on the planet was created in the past year. and that's having a real effect on things. And I think that there's a lot of excuse making when the culprit is staring us right in the fucking face. So anyways, yeah, that's that's it for why we Bitcoin this week. A couple of things I wouldn't mind checking out. This just caught my eye, Mercury wallet, and state chains.

It's not something that I dove into extensive. but I've been reading a little bit about it the past couple days. It looks kind of cool. What it is is basically transacting off chain with Bitcoin in a way where there are no fees and where there is no on-chain transaction made, thus making it effectively anonymous. There's no indication that a transaction even took place. So you can kind of think of it as like a mishmash of coin join and lightning network. And it looks pretty interesting.

Now it's not it's not fully trustless. There's a degree of risk there. But those are, I'm trying to understand those better. And effectively what it is is it, you create UTXOs for specific amounts, say like a million sats or 10 million sats. whatever it may be. And then you actually swap the keys that govern those particular UATXOs. So you have ownership and a key for a certain UTXO. And then you have, and it's kind of done in a multi-sig way. It's, it's hard to explain. I'm learning. But basically, you're swapping the keys for UTXOs with somebody else so that they have control of yours and no longer have control of theirs and vice versa.

And you can do that via this wallet, which I've yet to try. So don't take my word for it. And this is a protocol that can be used by lots of different implementations. They have a GitHub. You can go and audit the code itself. But it basically looks like a way to coin join and transact and eliminate privacy concerns and eliminate fees for specific amounts. It's kind of like trading $100 bills, you know,

or $50 bills or whatever you're doing. So it's interesting. I'm going to be diving into this. And if I start to learn more about it and I continue to think it's interesting, then I will be for sure making a video on this. It's in beta. So it's very early days.

We'll see. We'll see. And one other thing I'd like you guys to check out, there's a new 15-minute video, a little film put together. It's on Swan Signal. It's called Bitcoin is generational wealth, a short film by Matt Hornick and Tomer Stroll. light.

Pretty good. I quite enjoyed it. So head over to Swan Signal and check that one out. It's already got like 54,000 views. Pretty good considering it dropped like three days ago. So yeah, check it out. Share it around. It's a good watch.

With that, I'm going to wrap up. Thank you guys very much for swinging by watching. I've got a killer. Why are we bullish tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern time. Make sure you don't miss that one. Of course, like, subscribe, share. All those things really help.

You can hit up the sponsors down below. Shake paid, leaden, bit refill, Keystone, Bill Fottle. They're all in the show notes. And if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a Bitcoin tip at my strike page. That is strike. Dot me slash BTC sessions. Head there, hit whatever amount you like. Hit the tip button.

You'll be greeted, rather, with 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. And I'll see you guys next time for your. Daily Session.