BTC Sessions - NEWS ROUNDUP: Operation Choke Point Accelerates! ep330

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Operation chokepoint seems to be ramping up as Signature bank shut, confidence lost as bank contagion spreads, Gensler suggests staking is a security and much more on today’s show! 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Nunchuk Wallet and their Honey Badger plan is a best in class assisted multisig setup with built-in inheritance planning and NO KYC. Pass on your savings to your loved ones with ease in a simple claiming process with full customer support. Check them out today! https://nunchuk.io/ Start9 is your Bitcoin & lightning node, and full personal server - enabling you to take back control from the gatekeepers of your money and data! Grab an Embassy today and become truly self-sovereign! https://start9.com/ HodlHodl is a NON-CUSTODIAL, NON-KYC solution to stack sats peer to peer! Buy and sell Bitcoin while maintaining privacy. Furthermore, you can check out their Lend platform for p2p loans that are never rehypothecated. Sign up and try it out today! https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION Coinkite offers the BEST Bitcoin hardware on the market. Use this link to get 5% off anything in their store: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions The Miami Bitcoin Conference is the largest Bitcoin event in the world! Come check it out in Miami Beach Florida on May 18-20th. Use code BTCSESSIONS for 10% off your tickets! https://bm.b.tc/btcsessions Free video tutorials not enough? Need some extra hand-holding when mastering self-custody, multisig, coinjoin, running a node, or other skills? Book me for a private session on my website! https://www.btcsessions.ca/ Like what you see? BITCOIN TIPS: https://strike.me/btcsessions ⚡[e-mail]

What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. No, the Thursday, we've got a news roundup for you. We're going to be chatting all kinds of stuff. Obviously, the banking system has been shaken a little bit this past week. It started happening just shortly after myself and Nico spoke last week. So happy to have them back this week. There's been a lot going on. So we're going to be talking about, you know, what's been going on with the banks,

but also a little something called Operation. choke point, which we've alluded to before on the show. So you'll be filled on on that. Now, obviously, 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. Fuck it. Do it live. I can, I'll write it and we'll do it live. And thing sucks. Yeah. If you have not already, please do like, subscribe, share, all those things super important,

getting this content in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. Before we dive in, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. This is timechain calendar.com. We're sitting at 24,973 U.S. dollars per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 4,04 sats. In terms of Bitcoin that has already been mined, 92% percent,

We hit that threshold. 92% of all Bitcoin have been mine, which is 19.32 million of them. And in terms of fees, we're seeing a little bit of pressure in the Mempool right now by a little bit. I mean, a fair amount, 34 sats per byte next block, even if you're willing to wait a bit,

24 SATs per byte. And the Mempool, I haven't seen it like this before. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention at certain points. But mempool, on average, can, you know, the average mempool on somebody's note can hold 300, 300 megabytes worth of transactions sitting there waiting to confirm. There's 715 megabytes worth of transactions sitting in the queue. Anything with a transaction fee of under 3.21 sats per byte is being purged from the mempool.

So keep that in mind as you're sending transactions. Use RBF. Do what you need to do. And if you're not in a rush, you know, maybe set that, set that fee a little bit lower. and bump it if you need. Anyways, outside of that, shout out to sponsors of the show, hoddlehottle.com. If you're stacking sats and you have a few priorities in mind like peer to peer trading, being able to get instant self-c custody and not having to KYC yourself, aka give up all your personal information in the process, then Hoddle, Hoddle, is for you.

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And coming down the pipe here by the end of the year, the cold card, Q1 looks absolutely badass. If you want to reserve one of those, do it now. Head to coincite.com. Use code BTC sessions, 5% off everything in the store. Now, if you're looking to secure your stack a little bit more beyond just a single-sig option, you can check out the Nunchuk Honeybadger assisted multi-sig. So this is basically a multi-sig where they're going to hold a key just in case for you. They'll be your second signer when you need them.

And it's super easy onboarding. It works with stuff like the tap signer and the cold card and a whole bunch of other options. And beyond that, inheritance planning is baked in. So you know that your next of kin will get your sats should anything happen to you. No worries. And on top of that, you know, I love to say it, non-KYC. You don't have to give up all your personal information. This completely differentiates it from everything on the market.

You can sign up with an email address. Eventually, it'll be able to log in with nothing more than a private key. So anyways, check them out. Nunchuk.com. A link is down below. And finally, we love Start 9. Start 9, your sovereign computing solution. Some big updates coming out today.

I'll talk about those later towards the end of the show. But this is your sovereign computing solution. You can run your Bitcoin. stack, Bitcoin Core, Lightning, things like Mempool, a space, things like Join Market, all that great stuff. You can host your own data, passwords, files, photos, all of that stuff. You can host Noster Relays, all kinds of great stuff coming out of Start 9. Be sure to check them out.

This thing is badass. This is what I'm using on the regular to host all my stuff. You can get the Embassy One pre-built from them on their website, or if you're looking for something super beefy to really host your life on, the Embassy Pro cannot go wrong. So head over to start nine.com. Before we bring in Niko, let's just do a couple quick shoutouts on the Fountain.fm sat streaming app. So those of you that are streaming or listening to this audio-wise, you can stream sats to the show. So, of course, quick shout out too.

Joey says, where's the BTC conference happening? No, not the Bitcoin conference. I'm talking about the Benico touching tips ceremony conference. We shall discuss. We'll find. Michael says our messrs have not heard the people's voice for generations, and it is much, much louder than they care to remember. Coach Carbin, Guy Swan, we are all,

is Cypia? I don't know, Isaiah. We are all Isaiah. Okay. Waruma says, Sats from Spain. Hey, I love Spain. I've been. I've thoroughly enjoyed it there.

Dennis, stack to live, don't live to stack. a good episode from Hansa Coach Carbon Be the Glitch you wish to see in the Matrix Love that quote Camel Weasel said cypherpunk holy grail Rappasan Noster

Noster is the Hydra and second breakfast said I think most people won't use BTC because of tax implications not everyone is an accountant nor should they be when the burden is lifted we will have a circular economy

stack to live uh entitled to your opinion, but I'm going to live. I'm living on a Bitcoin standard now. No turning back from me. Anyways, enough my rambling. Let's bring in our buddy. Nico, it's good to see you, man.

Good to see you too, man. Always hyped. It's been a busy week. It's been a lot has happened since the moment we went offline last week. Yeah, yeah. A lot has happened. I start to have withdraws, you know, because we are Benico, right so but it's missing the the be part yeah so like five days in I'm like ah

yeah I got to add that B E there we go so my my hair starts to spike up a little bit anticipation yeah think it's coming it's coming I got to I got to redecorate the place a little bit here oh there we go okay well dude uh what what should I be pulling up here first do we want a video just should I be pulling up here should we set the tone Yeah, yeah, what do you want to send it with? Some J-Pow or what? Some J-Pow. Okay.

All right. Jerome Powell, head of the Federal Reserve, J-Pow. Is this where he's asked some questions? Okay, well, I won't spoil it too much then. We're just going to go ahead and let this puppy fly and people can listen to the convo. Jerome Powell, head of the Federal Reserve being grilled. For the general public, for those working families of people, why 2%?

Why is getting it to 2% so important? So that has become the globally agreed, essentially all major central banks target 2% inflation in one form or another. How does that help my Nevada families? How does help people in Nevada? I'll tell you how it does. And I guess it's obviously not, it's not obvious how that is. But 2% inflation, to have people believe that inflation is going to go back to 2% really anchors inflation there. because, you know, the evidence is and the modern belief is that people's expectations about inflation

actually have an effect on inflation. If you expect inflation to go up 5%, then it will. You know, if everyone kind of expects that because that's what businesses and households will be expecting, and it will kind of happen because they expect it. So having a 2% inflation goal, which we had for many year. So what I'm my takeaway from this is that inflation is like tinkerbell's ability to fly. If you if you just believe it will do what it's supposed to do. Dude that is the head of the US central bank and she asked him a very direct question like why is this 2% number and bro he had no idea Like no clue. Like, it's the consensus of the, what does that mean?

Like, so, so just a bunch of central bankers got together and they're like, 2% theft for some reason that's okay with us. Like, I don't know, bro. It's just ridiculous. I wonder if there's ever been, if there's ever been testing on, on like, what people will tolerate the most, right? Like, what can they get away? Obviously, like, you know, this past.

couple of years like with inflation running hot it's it's front of mind everybody's you know talking about it everybody's interested in it and and is wondering what the hell's going on um but i wonder if there's actually been some kind of backroom like okay we can we can more or less get away with two percent pretty easily people will let it slide and they'll just expect it and it's enough of a slow burn that nobody really notices or if it's or if it was just literally like darts at a wall 2% that's the perfect number bro he had no answer like that's the crazy part he didn't answer the question he was just like it's a consensus of central banks like you know it's it's you have to try like and and i just like in my mind like when he's saying that i'm just like imagining christine legard like opti's ex-girlfriend

like just smiling like chris she loves when he toes the line Anyways, dude, so this was the big splash. This was a big splash this week. And basically the, and we've been covering this on Simply Sessions for quite a while now, Ben, right? The Biden administration has been using, no, no, no, sorry, before I get to that, but there's been a secret war, basically, on trying to isolate the industry from the legacy financial system. And Nick Carter wrote this great piece, which we've referenced many, many times on this show. But I'd love to read just the first paragraph so that it would give context to everybody.

And just keep in mind, guys, when this was written. So this was written February 8th. Or it was published, better said. So he goes on to say, what began as a trickle was now flood. The U.S. government is using the banking sector to organize a sophisticated widespread crackdown, widespread crackdown against the crypto industry. And the administration's efforts are no secret. They're expressed plainly in memos, regulatory guidance, and blog post.

However, the breadth of this plan spanning virtually every financial regulator, as well as its highly coordinated nature, as even the most steely-eyed crypto veterans nervous that crypto businesses might end up completely unbanked, stable coins may be stranded and unable to manage flows in and out of crypto, and exchanges might be shut off from the banking system entirely. Let's dig in. Right. So you wrote that February 8th. And then this is Warren Tagami.

Warren Togami is the vice president of solutions at Blockstream. He goes on to say Operation Shoke Point 2.0. Today I heard this from the management of a small U.S. bank. Today, basically every bank regulator is calling every bank and asking for the liquidity report, asking whether they plan to apply for the new Fed program, and asking whether they have any exposure to crypto. They're definitely trying to ensure that smaller banks don't touch this area.

Now, this, like in the beginning of the week, I was suspicious. Right? I was suspicious. I was like, okay, what's going on here? But as you dig deeper, this is an article from Reuters. It goes on to say U.S. regulators eyes Friday bids for Silicon Valley Bank, signature bank, right? And if you scroll down to the bottom of this, it talks about the conditions as to like what conditions the government would be okay with the sale of these banks. Now, what's really interesting, and this matches what Warren Tagami was saying, is the two sources added any. buyer of signature must agree to give up all the crypto businesses at the bank. But interesting, but a government spokesperson, an FDIC spokesman, told Reuters after publication that the agency would not require the investment in crypto activities as part of any sale. It's suspicious, right? So you have two like cooperating things, right? You know, the sources told this, but the government were like, no, we're not doing that. And then this was a nail in the coffin. This is when I was like, okay, duh, like it's confirmed now. It's not just, you know, crazy bit-pointers on the internet saying,

there's a conspiracy. So it goes on to say Tom Emmer, today I spent, I sent a letter to the FDIC chairman. Did you, did you remember who said that? Who was the spokesman? An FDIC spokesman, right? So today, today I sent a letter to the FDIC chairman, uh, Grunberg regarding reports that the FDIC is weaponizing recent instability in the banking sector to purge legal crypto activity from the U.S. And Ben, if you could be so inclined, if you could play the clip of him on Fox Business talking about it, give more context. Let's take a listen. More importantly, Neil, why is our government going after the crypto business?

Signature, they initially announced that the issue was they were banking crypto and making loans. They weren't. They were just banking crypto. the the New York Financial Services Department. The head of that is acknowledged crypto had nothing to do with signature. Barney Frank, the former chair of the House Financial Services Committee, has said it appears that this is an attack on crypto. In fact, two sources have told Reuters that anybody who buys signature has to agree they will not bank crypto. So it's really interesting, Neil, more questions to be answered. If you look at the Fed, which just announced

that this summer it's going to release or going to kick off its Fed Now program, which is a payment system that would settle payments within seconds. It's interesting. Is our government competing with the private sector right now? And are these banks that are banking crypto actually the target of their angst. That's a fascinating, you know, subset of the story. It might be the story. Interesting. Very, very, very interesting. And then here's the cherry on top. This is like the smoking gun, right? The same week that all this happened, the Federal Reserve announces July launch for the Fed Now Service. And what is the Fed Now Service?

The Federal Reserve announced that the Fed Now Service will start operating in July and provide details and preparations for launch. The first week of April, the Federal Reserve will begin the formal certification of participants for launch of the service. Early adopters will complete a customer testing and certification program, informed by feedback from the FedNow pilot program to prepare for sending live transactions through the system. the same week that they sees signature is also the same week that the Fed is formally launching

what I believe is the first iteration of their central bank digital currency. Isn't that interesting? And again, it would be a conspiracy theory, but it's not just a bunch of crazy bitcoins saying on the internet, you have a congressman saying it as well. Lots of coincidence, Med. We've had a lot of coincidences these last couple months we've been doing this. I mean, so the shit. thing about this is that again, there's obviously you and I know most people watching

this know there's a major difference between Bitcoin and crypto, right? And unfortunately, the crypto bros are going to make Bitcoiners lives much harder because they're such easy cannon fodder, right? They go and they do like basically, what all of the Fiat banks have been doing for ages, but to the extreme, and given that the, you know, if they're dealing with Bitcoin, too, that's a finite asset. And you can't just go and fractional reserve that. And then there's, there's no backstop to that, right? If you screw up, then, you know, you're going to go under.

So you have things like FDX and Celsius and all that crap from last year. And then you have things kind of spilling over into regular banking. And it becomes easy to, for again, the Elizabeth Warrens of the world to point to just blanket point to everything and include Bitcoin in there and say this is the reason everything's for all of our troubles and we need to get rid of this and it's dangerous. and it's very easy right now for the Federal Reserve to start rolling out something like this and frame it as a necessary safety net for everyone. Oh, you got to use this because, you know, without it, you are unsafe.

Things could happen that are bad. This basically does exactly what Bitcoin does, but it's safe. And I think that's kind of the narrative we're going to be hearing over the next little bit. I mean, luckily, myself, you and the people watching this will largely ignore that advice. But again, it's coming. And we know what to expect out of it, at least in terms of narrative, I'm sure. 100%.

But isn't it, dude, isn't it weird? Like, we care about you. We're the government. You know, at the same time, we're trying to like stifle out the competition, even though the competition is what's actually going to help people, right? Like, it's so interesting to me how, and this is something that I've said many times, Ben, isn't it fascinating how Bitcoin exposes incentives? Right. And it doesn't matter who you are, like a company, a government, whatever. It's like, it just shows, exposes your incentives.

Like, what are you actually about? You know, and no one could hide from it. And it's glorious to see. Yeah. Well, it's Bitcoin is just because you can't bullshit for very long with it. It points out the economic reality of things much quicker than it would if it were, again, a fiat currency where the people in charge could paper over the mistakes and kick that can down the road. So again, it's, they point to, you know, the Federal Reserve and Central Bank.

and quantitative easing and all of the different names we're going to get for quantitative easing and say, well, this is how we keep things safe for everybody. But really, no, you're just, you're taking the pain, you're drawing it out longer and making the ultimate pain at the end even worse. Yes, 100.1 million million percent. Anyways, so that's an update on the U.S. what's going on in America, but this is also an international phenomenon. Coincidentally, look at the date, Ben, same week, IMF had warned that G20 widespread crypto use would impact banks, right? Mind you, this comes, you know, very recently after, you know, the seizure of, of, of signature. Anyways, the International Monetary Fund has warned the group of G20 nations, the widespread proliferation

of crypto assets could lead to bank losing deposits and curtailing lending, right? Has nothing to do with fractional reserve banking. mind you, it's not fractional anymore. The U.S. since like literally a couple years ago is zero reserve banking. The IMF report on macro financial implications of crypto assets given to the G20 in February during a meeting in India was made public on Monday days after the collapse of crypto-friendly bank, signature bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Silvergate Bank. India holds the G20 presidency this year.

Quote, a widespread proliferation of crypto assets comes with substantial risk to the effectiveness of monetary policy. I think, Ben, what do you think about that statement right there? I think it says everything. Well, yeah, the effectiveness of monetary policy. I mean, if I'm on a different monetary standard, then your monetary policy doesn't largely affect me. I mean, it does in a way because when the money printers go burrow, then yes, finite assets benefit from that and people fleet of other things, but that's denominated in dollars. Like at the end of the day, my my percentage of the purchasing power in the money that I choose to use remains the same. But yes, they're correct. If somebody's not using your system, your policies are ineffective.

Yes, 100%. 100%. It's just the word smithing is hilarious. So, and this has led to, so of course, we know what's happening in the U.S., but also in the U.K. NatWest limits customers, crypto transfers, from Tuesday customer transfers to cryptocurrency exchanges will be limited 5,000 pounds per 30 day period

with no more than 1,000 pounds per day. It's your money, you earned it, but hey, we get to decide how you spend it. And also, remember, Ben, we covered this when it came out, and we said, hey, we're going to be paying attention to this to see if it develops.

We covered this, right? Binance will suspend U.S. dollar transfer. It said, hmm, like, okay, maybe it's a coincidence. finance, halts, deposits, and withdrawals for customers in the UK, right? So, and then, again, like, in itself, you would say, okay, you know, Nico, like, is a coincidence. But, dude, IMF, banks in the UK. Yeah, United States, Federal Reserve, CBDC launch, the seizure of signature with the conditions that if we do sell signature, you guys have to de-incensensify, like, you guys

have to drop your crypto business. Bro, I don't, dude. at what point do you say okay i i get it now you know like yeah i mean the beautiful thing here is we've we've seen what it looks like when places ban bitcoin um and so for every little bit of tightening for every little bit of making it that much more of a pain in the ass to to get your hands on it if something is difficult to get a hold of it's going to command a print And we said perfect examples Nigeria right now. It's banned. They've got their CBDC.

They want everybody to use. And the premiums on Bitcoin in Nigeria have been at times what, like 50, 60 percent, something like that. It's been insane. Yes. So yeah. I mean, like I don't know that they would fully just my, my, I have an inkling that they're, they're going to severely limit.

ramps and then they're going to try and say, oh, you can get it through the big banks because, you know, they're the most regulated. They have the most hoops to jump through and nobody has the capital to pay the, you know, pay the Piper as much as they do. And then we've also got control over kind of what they can do. So I think we may be stepping into a paradigm where it's like, okay, you can buy Bitcoin of JP Morgan holds it for you. Is that the road that we might be going down?

I don't know. That's what they want. They can control it that way. Well, yeah, because if it's all in custody of somebody else, then you can re-hypothicate the hell out of it and keep that price down. But everybody watching this, don't do that. Go buy some non-KyC corn. Go at least, at the very least, what I'll say is if you're using some sort of KYC on-ramp

and it's working for you just fine. Fantastic. But, but you need to learn how to obtain Bitcoin outside of those rails. You need to learn about alternatives. I mentioned hoddle, hoddle off the top of the show, but there's also other things like Bisk and Robosats or just peer-to-peer at your meetups.

Find other ways to obtain your Bitcoin. Look for the, I've got tons of tutorials up on that type of thing. And just at least acquire that skill. So if you need it, you got it. Yeah, yeah, 100%. We've said this many times, bro, that, you know, things might get darker before they get brighter again. Anyways, moving on to more optimistic news.

The mining development kit unlocking innovation in Bitcoin mining. This is a post from Jack Dorsey's company. A little while back, Jack announced that Jack Dorsey, that's where they're referring to. and as that we were considering launching a Bitcoin mining system based on custom silicon and open source, and our intention is to build it in open collaboration with the community. The response was overwhelmingly positive with everyone from home hobbyists to developers, startups, and large mining operators expressing encouragement and interest in seeing us launch such a system. As a result, we announced our decision to move forward with the project.

Since then, we have been heads down building a team to explore our mining hardware strategy and have kicked off the long process of developing our own Bitcoin mining semiconductor chips. Now, this is the hardest part, right? Because, like, unfortunately, the reality is that the Chinese have a ridiculous advantage here. Right. The vast majority of, you know, basic manufacturing happens from Chinese companies, right? I know a lot of them have migrated since the China ban. But, you know, could you imagine that, like, the country.

with the latest tech in mining happens to be a country that's extremely hostile towards Bitcoin. These facilities have moved overseas. They've moved, some move to Thailand, right? So they've been trying to move away the manufacturing of it, but the reality is that a lot still gets made in China, right? So, and this is a problem. And I believe that this is why Jack Dorsey got into it. Also, Blockstream, specifically Adam Back, he acquired this company called Spadoodles. I completely butchered that name, right? But yeah, so like I do think that this is a, you know, a potential attack vector and I'm really happy that there's something being done for it or dumb about it. Yeah. Yeah. Again, like the more it should be a competitive market, right? The more people

coming in and creating these basic chips, the better. You'll have more options. You'll have more innovation. you know when back when it was basically only bitmain uh or like really only bitmain as like the the place where people got their stuff obviously they're still huge but like having more options can only lead to better things and i'm i'm glad he's doing this i'm glad that block stream is is diving down this uh this road um and i hope to see more uh i would really like to see more come out of this. I mean, you must be, you do mining, so you must be relatively happy about this development. I mean, I'll put it to you this way. Let's see how the performance of their minor compares to Bitman or Inno or Inno Silicon. Like, let's see. Because at the end of the day, like, it's like,

yeah, like, I applaud Dorsey's effort. But like at the end of the day, you want the most efficient miner, period. Like, you don't like, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, okay, that's cool. Love Jack, what he's been doing, but like, you know, at the end of the day, it's a business. Like, you still want to make money. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. So, anyways.

So, I mean, it's bullish. Obviously, I commend the effort. I think it's worthwhile. And another news, Gensler suggests proof of stake tokens are securities. Here's the quick take. Securities and Exchange Commission chair, Gary Gensler, suggested Wednesday that tokens using staking protocols can be considered securities under U.S. law. Gensler suggested that the return token holders see from staking indicate that those tokens

are securities and would need to be registered as such under U.S. law. And this is interesting because it's following up his comments in New York Magazine where he went on to say, everything other than Bitcoin is a security and it's interesting to see how aggressive he is. is he doing this because of his dude he fucked up like with the fdags like he fucked up bad like is this trying to save his ass i don't know yeah i i still i very much wonder if he's going to go so far as to as to officially label ethereum a security i mean he would be in terms of like the framework that they set out of like hey this is what a security is

I mean, when you look at it through that lens, it definitely applies. But I just, I wonder if he's going to take that shot. And I'm not entirely convinced yet. But, I mean, basically everything else for sure is going to be, it's going to have to register at some point. I'm just waiting for that shoot a drop. I'm waiting to see what that moment looks like. Because right now, I feel like people look at this stuff and they're like, oh, and they'll kind of panic about it.

But they just kind of have ignored it so far. And when that shit actually hits the fan, part of me is I'm going to be thoroughly entertained by the panic. As much as I think people should be able to just like make their own mistakes. It seems pretty clear. like the writing is on the wall here. What's what's going to happen? Yeah, 100%. Let's see.

Oh, man. This is spicing up. It makes our job easy, though, as content creators. We got stuff to talk about. Yeah. What happens when Bitcoin wins, dude? Like, what do we do? I know.

Yeah. I mean, just sit around talking about the money that people already uses. Everybody already uses. Nobody will watch. So when you were talking, dude, I was, I was picturing him pointing. And it's like, hey, you, you take self-custody? Yeah. That guy.

Yeah, exactly. I'm looking at you. What are the, what are the, what are the orders that they send out or the, the, when, when they basically send out, not a summons or whatever, but they like send out the notices of like, oh hey you're fucked you you're not abiding by SEC rules or whatever anyways he's pointing he's going down the line you get a notice and you get a notice and you get a notice and you get a notice he's pointing at italic right now yeah security yeah all right um okay so moving on i dude also enormous news uh fidelity uh fidelity is a part of a part of branch of fidelity so fidelity has trillions of dollars under management.

And I think the most bullish part of that about this is that this news came out, right, while this was happening, right? So Fidelity was basically saying, like, while the, you know, the, basically if you believe, you know, what Tom Emmer is saying, right, where the federal government is trying to isolate the industry. And then Fidelity is like, I don't care. Fidelity crypto quietly went live, giving millions of retail customers to access to Bitcoin.

and should coin Ethereum. Fidelity Digital Assets quietly open access to Fidelity Crypto for that masses recently. Millions of users can now trade Bitcoin and Ether Commission free on the platform. The app was previously restricted to a waitlist

with users given access on a rolling basis. Fidelity crypto is open to new and existing customers. First-time customers must create a Fidelity brokerage account during the setup process. Fidelity, which 37.1 million total retail accounts has acted sooner than most of its peers in the U.S. in offering crypto to retail clients, the full launch happened over the past few weeks, according to SOSIS with knowledge of the matter. And then remember, I think

this is a bunch of signal because Elizabeth Warren, who's the anti-Bitcoin senator, any opportunity she can, she jumps on attacking Bitcoin. She attacked Fidelity for Fidelity's plans to allow Bitcoin investments in 401Ks. So you know that she's hell-bent on stopping Bitcoin adopt. She's anti-Bitcoin. So she sees the writing on the wall. If someone, a big player like Fidelity, gets in the back of this, you know, you could see a lot of people. And this is a lot of people. This is 37 million people now have access to buying, you know, it is paper Bitcoin.

Not specifying about the, you know, the ability to take self-custody if you buy on the Fidelity platform. But still, man, this is, I think is incredibly bullish, to be honest. Yeah. I mean, the part that I like the most is, despite the, the fact that Elizabeth Warren has been shrieking directly to fidelity about them wanting to do this, they didn't care. They just,

they just did it. I think, again, I think they kind of see the writing on the wall of like, you know, with, with what's happening, people are going to see this as, as an avenue to preserve their purchasing power over long periods of time. And so

obviously, as I find, financial institution. They're going to want to provide that thing because they can make money off of that. So everybody's incentivized to want to deal with this kind of stuff. And this is the other thing here in that headline that also throws back to Gensler. I have a hard time believing that fidelity would offer Ether if they thought the hammer was going to come down on it. So I'm wondering if they,

that that also kind of shows what we might see in the future, but we'll see. Yeah. One one million, one million percent. Anyways, last story for today, Ben. Oh, no. Oh, no. A bit of a mix up. Okay.

So I'll include it with this. It's kind of a double back. I apologize for that. So we were talking about, you know, Gensler suggests proof of stake tokens or security. So we riffed on that already. But I wanted to focus on this, right? So this is MEV watch. And since, you know, Ethereum migrated to proof of stake, who are the biggest stakers?

Changes. Even one that's defunct, right? So you see the biggest ones like Binance, Bitfinex, OKX, Krakken, Celsius. And you could see what percentage of the transactions they're censoring. And specifically, they're censoring for the Office of Foreign Asset Control, which is part of the U.S. Treasury. dude man what a what a excuse my language a cluster fuck yeah yeah i mean of course this this would be this would happen like obviously when you design a system that is such that the rich get richer uh the and the richest are the ones that also have control over how the system works of course

centralization of power will happen over time. So yeah, no surprise there. No surprise there whatsoever. Yeah, man. Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. You know. Well, dude, thank you for coming and filling us all in. I'm getting more and more excited.

It's happening, man. It's happening. We're like, geez, we're two months out from Miami. It's going to be a party. What are you doing there? Are you going to hit a few things? Like, are you going to a couple of parties or what do you do? What am I doing in Miami? So the club party?

Yeah, I mean, I have to go. I have to go. Part of my job. But yeah, so I'm going to the pleb party, probably be hanging out at Sun Swan events for sure. Yeah. I'm going to be crashing the BTT sessions, whatever events you plan to do. I'm going to bring Sophie specifically, tell her it's a party. She's like, I can.

What are you in? I did this already. Yeah, but you don't remember it. So do it again. And then I'm going to play the video, the meme video of you, bro. Like, if you had 24 hours with me, what are you going to do? Like that one. So, yeah, man, dude, I'm just excited to kick it with you, bro.

Get some beers, hang out, talk, dye my hair, all that good stuff. It's going to be a good time. I'm excited. I'm excited that my wife is coming down. And yeah, I'm spending a week down there. I'm getting down on the 15th. And I'll be there through to the like Monday to Monday, basically. So yeah.

What do you think about doing a live show? Let's do it. Yeah? Yeah. Why not? Why not? Some simply sessions, simply, BTC sessions, simply Bitcoin cross-pollination.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Let's let's find a time and do it. We can do it. Are you going to, are you setting up there? Like, are you going to be doing like a live show like on the floor or what are you doing? So I live in Miami. I live in Miami. I live 10 minutes away from the conference. Okay. But no, I'm going to be, I'm going to be like you. I'm going to be on the, on the desk, the analyst desk. Oh yeah, perfect. Yeah. Okay. Sweet. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited. It's going to be a good time. And, and yeah, well, very, very excited for the touching of the tip.

it should be good. Again, I feel like we need to start adding the context because the people that started talking about this probably there's like 80 or so people right now that are like, I don't follow. Anyways, Nico's dying his hair and we're going to touch the tips. It's going to be awesome. Anyways, Ben, there's a lot of fun as well as your simplicity sessions.

Later, man. Awesome. All right, everybody. A few things. Before we wrap up here, I will show. share my screen. I wanted to bring a couple things to your attention, some exciting things that I thought were worth sharing this week. First up, those of you on Noster, there's a basically a spec for a DIY signing device by LN. Bits. So this little thing, it's like, I think it's like 10 bucks or the

hardware or something like that. Either way, it's really, really cheap. But effectively, if you're on Nostr, you'll be familiar with the idea that you have a public key and a private key. And whenever you're posting something, effectively, you're signing that with your private key to prove that it is indeed this account putting up the information. Well, when you have that key as a hot key on a device, then there's always the potential that somebody gets into your device or somebody accesses your device in some way and is able to pull that private key and then assume your digital identity, at least on Noster. And so this device would effectively be like a UB key style thing for Noster.

All right. So it would go up. It would house your private key for Noster and then approval of posts would go through it. Obviously, plenty of work to be done here. But interesting to see that things like this are already happening. Yeah, keep on going. Also, update to Spector desktop, refined use. Electrum Server support and Tor connectivity.

So I just download this, updated and everything. I'm excited to dive in. I've done a video on Spectre before, and I do have a Spectre DIY device here that I need to do a video on as well. So maybe this is my signal that it's time to do that. What else here? We got some big announcements in terms of updates

from Start 9 Labs. So upgrade to Embassy, VOS version 0.3.4, security patches, bug fixes, faster tour, which is nice. EFI build support, community registry, SSL support for IPXS, and new system metrics. I just upgraded earlier. And with that upgrade, they also dropped Iris. So if you're unfamiliar with Iris, it is a Noster client, and you can run it natively on your Start9 embassy. Speaking of Start 9, Gary Leland, thanks for the shoutout.

He just got his embassy and he tweeted out that, hey, same shirt too, by the way, in the video there. Anyways, he was watching my tutorial and sitting up his Start 9. So Gary, hope it went well. But yeah, I got Iris up and running here on my embassy now. And so here's my, there we go. Yeah. So anyways, yeah, basically you can run this natively on your own hardware and then access it remotely if you see fit as well. Other than that, I also wanted to draw attention to this.

Julian, if you're unfamiliar with him, aka on Twitter at Kinnetic Finance, he did one of the most professional, awesome videos regarding his trip to Guatemala to go to Bitcoin Lake. And so I had to show the trailer on here. It's about a 10-minute video. The trailer is just a minute or so. But please go watch this thing. Here's a little preview. Enjoy. Two years ago, El Salvador became the first country to declare Bitcoin as an official currency.

Since then, people are split between whether their Bitcoin law was a wild success or a total flaw. And that's not even mentioning all the other drama since then. Your corporate accounts will be frozen. Who owes who? the now bankrupt FTX. I'm deeply sorry about what happened. But a few hundred miles away in the neighboring country of Guatemala, the Bitcoin movement continues to spread,

not through a legal currency law, but by a purely grassroots initiative set in the bustling lakeside town of Panahacill. All in a country with a surprisingly different economy, heritage, and monetary history. So what makes using Bitcoin here drastically different than El Salvador? Could Bitcoin empower the indigenous communities of Guatemala to achieve monetary sovereignty? And could this town be the new blueprint for how Bitcoin becomes accepted in dozens of countries, hundreds of towns, and millions of people across the world?

Join me as I discover the story and the secrets behind Logo Bitcoin. Seriously, it is absolutely badass. Look him up. He's on Twitter at Kinetic underscore Finance, but you can also find his YouTube channel under the same handle, kinetic finance. So go check it out. Other than that, of course, we're just talking about Miami.

If you're going to head down to Miami, be sure to go ahead and grab tickets soon. Again, they go up at regular intervals in terms of price. So if you want to grab a ticket, B.TC slash conference, and you can use code BTC sessions and get yourself 10% off. If you're unsure if you're going to make it, but you're on the fence and you're worried about those price increases as they hit, I found that. especially if it's earlier on, if you can get in before the next price hikes,

then you can always go and resell your ticket before the event, if you can't make it just hopping on Twitter and stuff like that. I found this is a good outlet to offload any extra tickets you may have. But nonetheless, I do hope to see a bunch of you there. Very excited for it. As I was saying earlier, I'm going to be having my cold card workshop down in Miami. It's going to be a blast.

If you are basically waiting or you have a cold, card and you've been kind of waiting to learn about how to use it. You're a little timid or you need to get a cold card and you want to be basically an expert in that thing. If you're going to be in Miami on May 17th, that's the Wednesday before the conference kicks off, I'm going to be running my cold card workshop is four hours from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. We're going to start with the basics, get everybody set up so that they can use this thing, do air gap transactions.

And then we're going to dive into some of the more detailed advanced features so that you really can get more bank for your buck out of your cold card. You can head over to my website, BTCSessions.ca, and you can grab tickets there. Just head over on the right-hand side. There's a thing that says in-person workshops right next to my private one-on-ones if you need those as well. But either way, I'm looking forward to seeing you guys in Miami for that and at the Pleb party and all the other things that'll be going on.

And finally, tomorrow, we got, Why Are We Bullish? I'm going to be at, again, 6 p.m. Eastern time. we've got Annette from from Keeper app which is like an assisted multi-sig deal we've got somebody coming on from Geyser Fund and we've got Count BTC or Nolan he was going to be on the show a few weeks back and then I just I wasn't feeling well unfortunately and so he did his spaces with me though which and the guy was knocking everything out of the park so I'm very excited to have him on as well. It's going to be a blast.

Make sure you tune in tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern time should be a lot of fun. Anyways, guys, of course, like, subscribe, share. All those things are super important. You can also hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below. Hoddle, hoddle, coin kite, nunchucks, start nine. They're all down here. And again, tickets for the conference.

If you really liked what you saw, you can always hit me up with a Bitcoin tip at my strike page. You don't need strike to use it. You just go there. You type in any amount you want. Hit the tip button. You'll be greeted with a regular lightning invoice, or if you tap to the right, a Bitcoin on-chain invoice for the same amount. With that, I am out.

Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening, wherever you may be. See you guys next time for your daily session. We have ETC sessions. Bitcoin is every money. You can't stop it. Get yourself some Bitcoin and hold it yourself. Pure to pure exchange. You know, people are going to organically come to it and gravitate towards it.

especially in the world we're living in now. It's incredible. It's a great tool, and I can't wait to see it proliferate everywhere. Huddled by Bitcoin.