BTC Sessions - NEWS ROUNDUP: Russia Eyes Accepting Bitcoin For Natural Gas ep245

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

Russia says it would consider taking payment for natural gas in Bitcoin, Ukraine refugees using BTC to escape with assets, El Salvador updates and more on today's show. 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shakepay is the easiest way to buy Bitcoin in Canada Sign up now and get $30 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 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

What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. We've got lots of news to talk about today in and around, well, a lot of geopolitical stuff. Obviously, Russia is on the docket today, as well as El Salvador, Thailand, Ukraine, and others. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of stuff. We've got some stuff about ExxonMobil as well. As always, this is live. Anything can happen. So, of course, I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live. Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live. The fucking thing sucks. If you haven't already, please like, subscribe, share. All those things are super important.

And thank you to those of you that have been doing them so far. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. All right, before we dive in, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. I'm pulling up the bitbo. dotio dashboard and of course my browser he's not working again I am leaving stream yard

sorry stream yard we're going to switch it back over to restream wow okay so we're going to do this without visual accompaniment as I've had to do numerous times previously because of stream yards so if you're using stream route it's probably time to switch restream I guess I'll be hitting you guys up next show anyways I digress

we're sitting at 43, 3,000 $2983 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 2,273 sats. Let's see here, 90.44% of all Bitcoin has been mined. And 11 sats per byte in terms of fees for the next block. Fees are a little bit higher today. Six sats per byte within half an hour. Three sats per byte still for an hour. So if you're doing anything, just if you want to expedite it, then add a little bit of an additional fee or use RBF replaced by fee. You can bump it if need be. Outside of that, of course, shout out to sponsors of the show, shakebay.com. You guys know these guys.

If you're in Canada and you're buying Bitcoin, one of the easiest ways to do so. E transfers are super simple, no deposit or withdrawal fees and thin spreads. If you use the link down below and sign up and buy your first hundred bucks for the Bitcoin, they'll give you $30 for free. You get the same deal when you refer your friends. And then you can shake your phone every single day for free sats. I've been doing it for a long time. I think I just hit the 175 day mark.

I'm getting 950 something sets free every single day. So I'm pretty excited about that. Also, we're going to be talking a bit more about shake pay near the end of the show. Why? Because they've sponsored a giveaway. I'm going to be bringing a couple people down to Miami. So if you're using ShakePay or if you're not, sign up right now and then you can enter this contest. But yeah, we're talking airfare.

We're talking hotel. We're talking two tickets to Bitcoin 2020 in Miami Beach, Florida. So I will detail that towards the end of the show. Anyways, let's keep going with the sponsors. Of course, leaden.com. You can use them for a variety of different services. In particular, if you're in a pinch and you need dollars, but you don't want to sell your Bitcoin. You can deposit Bitcoin with them.

Get a loan of dollars to your bank account within 24 hours. when you repay those dollars, you get back the same amount of Bitcoin. They, of course, also have savings accounts for Bitcoin in USC, and they have their B2X offering if you're feeling mega bullish. Moving on to Bit refil, these guys make it super easy to live on Bitcoin or exert some high time preference activity if you feel like treating yourself. They work in a ton of different countries. They have every gift card your little heart can imagine.

And you can use Bitcoin, both on chain and lightning, to buy them. They earn you sats back as you shop, and they have a referral program to earn you back even more sats. In terms of our next ones, Keystone, you know these guys, one of my favorite and most used hardware wallets. It is 100% air-gapped. You never plug it into anything internet connected. It's all done offline via QR code, and that scanning makes it super easy. And highly recommend you upgrade to the Bitcoin-only firmware. And it works beautifully with things like blue wallet, Sparrow, Spector, you name it.

They got it. and awesome in a multi-sake. So check them out. And finally, if you're backing up any important Bitcoin wallet, get in solid steel, the guys over at Privacyprose.io with the bill foddle, you can get that steel seed plate where you have your tiles that you slide in. You keep it somewhere safe. And that prevents things like fire damage and water damage or just accidentally

discarding it if it's a piece of paper. So this gives me peace of mind for backing up all my Bitcoin wallets. With that, let's dive into the news. We're going to talk a little bit about Russia. And so some news around Russia happening in the past 24 hours here. Now, this is in and around, of course, there's a lot of sanctions that are happening. And Russia is kind of clapping back to that, saying that given that they provide so much oil for a large portion of the globe, they're saying they no longer want to accept U.S. dollars in payment for oil. And this is a problem because, of course, the U.S. dollars is the world reserve currency, also known as the Petro dollar.

And that's a large part of what keeps it afloat and allows it to keep its value. It allows the U.S. to kind of be at the top of the totem pole in terms of global influence. And this is chipping away at that. We've seen now nations begin to trade oil for currencies other than the U.S. dollar. And so I'm reading a little bit here from Forbes. Basically, the key moments in this are that Putin demanded the Russian central bank craft a solution within a week to accept gas payments in rubles and task Russian state-owned energy giant gas prom, I think is the name of it, with modifying contracts.

Countries that have imposed penalties on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine have become Putin's latest target, including the United States, European Union, and EU member states and the UK and Japan. Russia supplies 40% of the EU's natural gas, according to the bloc's Directorate General for Energy. So basically, he's saying, like, listen, if you want to continue to get your oil, you got to pay us in rubles, which will strengthen the ruble, which could devalueue and contribute further to the inflationary pressures on the U.S. dollar. if people no longer need to hold dollars or it doesn't make sense for them to hold dollars in order to purchase their oil if they're purchasing it from Russia, then that could be a reason that some nations that would have been holding dollars

start to dump them. It also doesn't make sense for nations to save in a currency that cannot be used for energy in a lot of different ways. That's part of it. But then just about six or seven hours ago, it dropped that Russia is also open to selling natural gas for Bitcoin. Now, this was kind of a passive statement, but let me read a little bit here from Bitcoin magazine. Russia is open to accepting Bitcoin for its natural resources exports, the chairman of the country's Congressional Energy Committee, Pavel Zavell-Zevelny.

Zavalli, I believe, said in a press conference on Thursday. Zavalli explained that Russia is open to accepting different currencies for its exports, beginning with natural gas, depending on the buyer's preferred method of payment. However, the chairman said terms will depend on the importing country's foreign relations status with Russia. When it comes to our, this is the quote here, when it comes to our friendly countries like China or Turkey, which don't pressure us, then we have been offering them. for a while to switch payments to national currencies like rubles and the yuan as the zavalini said in a press conference with turkey it could be the lira and rubles so there can be a

variety of currencies and that's a standard practice if they want bitcoin we will trade in bitcoin kind of crazy to hear again like the the a high up congressional member in russia talk about accepting Bitcoin for natural gas and other natural resources. Now, of course, this is, it's not like them saying, hey, we're going to do this, but it's, it's opened the door. And it definitely probably perked up a few eyebrows around the world. So we'll see. Now, the main thing I worry about with this, obviously, I believe that Bitcoin is apolitical. Bitcoin is for friends and enemies. Bitcoin is for people you do like people you don't like. It's for political causes you do like, political causes you don't like. It's, it's neutral. It's a medium of exchange.

It's a way to transfer value. And I worry that this, this kind of passive statement here will result in knee-jerk reactions from, you know, other countries, you know, perhaps the United States, places in the EU, so and so forth. In the end, I don't think it matters in terms of game theory in the long run, but in the short term, it could be a bit of a pain in the ass, even though the price today seemed to react to it relatively positively. So we shall see. But let's talk geopolitically as well on the flip side here.

I want to talk to highlight a story that I saw on CNBC here about a Ukraine. Ukrainian refugee that flees to Poland with a portion of their wealth in Bitcoin on a USB drive. So I'm going to read just straight from the story here, a portion of it. So on the morning that Russia went to war with Ukraine, Faddy woke up at 9 a.m. to a deluge of telegram messages from friends asking him what was happening on the ground in the western city of Lviv. I'm sorry if I butcher the names of names and blazes. After a quick scan of the news, he realized his country is under siege.

He decided to get out. Fady is 20 years old and asked to be identified by a pseudonym to protect his privacy because there is a conscription for Ukrainian nationals aged 18 to 60. Escaping duty on the front line meant having to clear the border before officials had the chance to lock it down. To do that, he needed two things fast, a negative COVID test and money. quote, I couldn't withdraw cash at all because the cues of the ATMs were too long and I couldn't wait that much time, Faddy told CNBC. So he turned to Bitcoin instead. Faddy tells CNBC that he made a peer-to-peer exchange with a friend trading $600 worth of his Bitcoin savings for Zlati, the Polish national currency, which he then used to pay for a bus across the border, a bed in a hostel for him and his girlfriend, and some food.

The speed and the ease of that crypto transaction proved instrumental. Within two hours of Fadde's safe passage into Poland, Ukraine closed its borders to all men of fighting age. Fadhi also took a USB stick with him across the border containing 40% of his life savings or about $2,000 in Bitcoin. That thumb drive combined with a unique passcode became the key to his financial survival. I could just write my seed phrase on a piece of paper. and take it with me. So again, in an instance where

an individual in a tough situation just wanted to get out of the Dodge and wanted to retain at least a portion of his wealth, he was able to effectively put it on what I imagine was a, what I imagine was probably like a hardware wallet, even though they're saying USB stick and cross a border.

Or as he said here, he could have just memorized a 12-word seed phrase and nobody would have been none the wiser. And that's pretty powerful. I don't envy people that are in those situations that have to do stuff like that. But this is how Bitcoin functions. And I'm glad that there's a tool for people like that. So let's kind of continue down the geopolitical rabbit hole. Naïbe Buckeli, president in El Salvador, that has, of course, accepted Bitcoin as legal tender in the country. He tweeted out, never in my wildest dreams where I have thought that the U.S. government would be afraid of what we are doing here.

And he showed screenshots of a bill presented to the Senate, or in Congress, rather. and it's a bill to require reports on the adoption of cryptocurrency as legal tender in El Salvador and for other purposes. Basically, what they want to do is within 60 days after the date of the enactment of this act, the Secretary of State in coordination with the heads of other relevant federal departments and agencies shall submit an appropriate to the appropriate committees of Congress, a report on the adoption of the government of El Salvador of Bitcoin as legal tender. The report is required to have things like a description of processes followed by the government, an assessment of the regulatory framework in El Salvador in terms of adoption, whether the regulatory framework meets the requirement of the financial action task force,

the impact on individuals and businesses requiring tender of Bitcoin, the impact of cryptocurrency on the macroeconomic stability in public finances, the rule of law and democratic governance, the unbanked population, the flow of remittances, El Salvador's relations with multinational or multilateral financial institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank, bilateral international efforts to combat transnational illicit activities, all kinds of stuff here. talking about sanctions and how that could be a problem if the U.S. wanted to sanction El Salvador, internet infrastructure.

Yeah, it's pretty wild. So at the end, it says in general, not later than 90 days after the submittal of this report required by the subsection, they shall submit an appropriate committee's plan to mitigate any potential risk to the United States. States financial system posed by the adoption of cryptocurrency as legal tender in El Salvador. So let's once again, can I read that one more time? They need to submit a report about mitigating any potential risk to the United States financial system posed by the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador. They are worried. about El Salvador impacting the U.S. financial system.

May I note that El Salvador is the fifth poorest nation in all of the Americas, and the United States, which has the World Reserve currency, is freaking out about the fifth poorest nation in all of the Americas, threatening the financial stability of the United States of America. Wild. Absolutely wild. That said, I don't think they're off base.

I think El Salvador itself, by itself, obviously is not a threat. But when Domino 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and they start to pick up speed

and more countries begin doing this, yes, that becomes an issue because there are many dollarized nations out there. And those dollarized nations are at the whim of the U.S. monetary policy with none of the benefit that the U.S. of course, enjoys by printing money and pumping it into wherever it sees fit. You know, those countries just get the inflation. first and none of the benefit of being able to allocate, reallocate funds wherever they see fit.

And so what El Salvador has done is pretty unique in the fact that they could have gone ahead and said, hey, we're going to make a new central bank, we're going to create our own new currency so that we can then do the same thing at least within our own country of being able to print off money whenever we see fit, reallocate funds and maybe even prints to pay off our debts. But they didn't do that. They opted for a global, decentralized censorship-resistant money, hard money that cannot be debased. And that decision in and of itself, even if it was made by mistake, which I don't think it was.

But even if it was made by mistake. And they, you know, naive didn't realize the consequences of not being able to down the line print money. You know, the genies out of the bottle at this point. So that in and of itself is enough. Now, one thing I'm not a fan of, and we'll see how it turns out, but El Salvador turns to Binance to help on Bitcoin adoption. So this is from Reuters. And El Salvador is seeking support from cryptocurrency exchange Binance for its implementation of Bitcoin as legal tender and the issuance of Bitcoin bonds, the Central American Country's ambassador to the United States sell on Wednesday. Binance CEO, CZ, is visiting El Salvador and plans to meet the president on Thursday, today.

the ambassador told reporters. Yeah. So again, they're saying that CZ's visit is a vote of confidence in Buckelly's decision to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. My main worry here is that CZ running a cryptocurrency exchange, which more or less is a casino, right? Like it's just to add all the coins,

encourage trading and make bank. on the trading of all the assets. I worry that the influence of CZ will result in an undue diversification of focus in El Salvador. I hope not. They seem to have been resilient to those efforts before. But in the group of people that was coming through, I saw footage of CZ arriving and who's behind him, Brock Pierce.

You know, and if you know anything about Brock Pierce, that's not an encouraging thing. If you don't know who Brock Pierce is, you can look him up. But anyways, he shills a lot of things. He basically says, I love Bitcoin, buy my shit coin. This is kind of my read on him. But we shall see. Hopefully, Naïeb Bukeli has stronger resolve than that and can separate the noise from the signal. let's keep going with the geopolitical stuff.

There's obviously been a lot of rumblings around what's the next country to accept Bitcoin going to be. And recently there's been some rumblings around Honduras. Even recently we saw Max Kaiser had retweeted something from the IMF or an article about the IMF, not wanting another central or South American country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. And he said, too late, bitch. and he put a little Honduras flag beside it.

And prior to that, he had said, I already know what the next country is going to be while kind of keeping it quiet. But this seems to be him pointing to, hey, this is what it's going to be, although he didn't explicitly say it. Well, it would seem that may not be the case. So Alex Gladstein tweeted out or retweeted out

from the central bank of Honduras. He said, Honduras appears to be taking a pass on Bitcoin and is instead going the central bank digital currency route, choosing monetary control over monetary freedom. This is the likely move for most governments and underscores how exceptional Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador really is. I'd like to echo that because this is what El Salvador could have done and it would have given them more power within their own country. but those that understand and have a low time preference and they're okay with a gradual building and not just kind of kicking the can down the road will go that route and those that don't will go the central bank digital currency route and with term limits and the way that politics

works means a lot of places will go the central bank digital currency route unfortunate that Honduras looks to be doing this but you know there will be others that follow in El Salvador's footsteps I'm I am very confident in that and you know

we'll just have to wait to see who that ends up being also on the negative in terms of countries and their reactions to Bitcoin. Thailand announces medium of payment ban for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. So the long and the short of it is in accordance with the Central Bank of Thailand. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced a ban preventing business operators from accepting cryptocurrencies as a means of payment for their products or services. The ban will not prevent investing or trading in cryptocurrencies.

And should products or services used for investing be misused for payment services? operators are expected to inflict consequences. A 3% investment cap would be levied against commercial banks and fintech companies looking to invest in digital assets in a proposal from the Bank of Thailand. So the long and the short of it is they're saying that you can buy it, you can speculate on it, but God forbid you actually use it as a currency. Which I find funny, but I guess there's some merit to that in terms of like what the central bank. and the government is probably trying to do. They're saying they're trying to pigeonhole it into just being a gambling tool. And then they're trying to say, no, but for day to day,

so that there's still demand for the Thai bot. So I don't know. It's a bold, bold move. We'll see if it pays off from cotton. Let's keep going. To kind of round out this nation state stuff, I wanted to read a quote from Jeff Booth that I quite enjoyed that he sent out today. So Jeff Booth, if you're unfamiliar, he's the author of The Price of Tomorrow.

Excellent book. I highly recommend you read it. I think it's time for a reread for myself. Anyways, what he said was, what most don't realize is that as each nation turns to Bitcoin in their own self-interest, they in turn reinforce the network for the best interests of all. Incredible times as the world moves from a system of coercion to cooperation. Indeed. Let's move on.

Exxon Mobile. Let's talk about them. This is from Bloomberg. Exxon weighs taking gas to Bitcoin pilot to four countries. So what is this about? Exxon Mobile is running a pilot program using excess natural gas that would otherwise be burned off from North Dakota oil wells to power Bitcoin mining operations and is considering doing the same at other sites around the globe, according to people familiar with the

matter. The oil giant has an agreement with Crusoe Energy Systems Inc to take gas from an oil well pad in the back and shale basin to power mobile generators used to run Bitcoin miners or Bitcoin mining servers on site, said the people who asked not to be named because the information is in public. The pilot project, which launched in January 2021, expanded in July, uses up 18 million cubic feet of gas per month that would have otherwise been burned off or flared because there aren't enough pipelines. Exxon, the largest U.S. oil producer, is considering similar pilots in Alaska, Nigeria, the Argentina's Vecay-Muerta Schaelfield, Guyana and Germany, one of the people said.

The quote here, we continuously evaluate emerging technologies aimed at reducing flaring volumes across our operations. And Exxon expects to meet the World Bank's call to end routine flaring by 2030. The spokeswoman Sarah Norden said in an email. She declined to comment on rumors

and speculation regarding the pilot project. So obviously they're trying to keep it hush-hush. There's a lot of drama around Bitcoin these days, and everybody thinks it's boiling the oceans and that it's going to use all the world's energy and everything. And it's just, it's interesting. But this is going to be, I think, the third or fourth show that I bring up this quote from Troy Cross. On Twitter, his Twitter handle is at the T-R-O-C-R-O. And he tweeted out, according to Cambridge, there's enough flared gas to power five Bitcoin.

networks, all while converting methane to CO2. Methane is 80 times as warming as CO2 over the course of 20 years. Methane is responsible for one third of all warming. Bitcoin is a huge win for the climate. So basically what he's saying is by removing all of that flaring, if that's what was able to happen with Bitcoin mining, to scoop up all of that flare, methane and use it to mine Bitcoin, it would reduce the amount of warming or the amount

of harm to the atmosphere by 80 times. That's crazy. It's very interesting there. Let's talk a little bit about some of the price action in terms of a potential reason for it. And so one of them is, so there's, there's, there's, I think it's, uh, what is it called a Luna? Some shit coin called Luna. Anyways, um, last week the founder, by the way, I'm reading this from Bitcoinist.com. Uh, but last week, the founder of Tara network, Doe Kwan revealed that the project was planning to

purchase Bitcoin. Kwan explained that this Bitcoin would go towards the network's reserves. to back up UST, the predominant stable coin on the network. The founder also revealed the amount of Bitcoin that Tara was planning to purchase for its reserves, which he said would be $10 billion plus. That's a lot. That can definitely move the price. Kwan had also confirmed that the network had indeed started purchasing Bitcoin already. This is what fired up speculations that the network's Bitcoin purchases were driving up the price of the digital asset.

recently Tara Labs had moved $125 million worth of USDT to exchanges. This movement, which took place on Tuesday, March 22nd, has led to speculations as to whether Terra has begun purchasing Bitcoin. Many in the space believe that it is purchases on the part of Terra Labs that have been driving up the price. This is not a long shot given that Bitcoin exchange inflows have ramped up in recent times. over the past week, there has been a total of $6 billion worth of inflows recorded going to exchanges. If Terra is purchasing $125 million worth of Bitcoin in one go, then accumulation like this

could very well bump up the price. Now, I think that Nick Carter had one of the better takes on this. And this was, he was responding to Alex Berg on Twitter. But so Alex Berg tweeted out, if the Maxis don't. embrace the Duquan UST arc, then they are truly helpless. Should be a funny couple of weeks.

And then Nick Carter replied, he said, I have a hard time celebrating a fundamentally unstable system absorbing collateral that will inevitably have to sell off when it unwinds. And I think that's a pretty solid take.

And what he's getting at is he's not confident that Luna or Terra or whatever the hell it is, that this ecosystem is going to have the demand in the long term for the need for $10 billion worth of Bitcoin to back its tether or its U.S. dollar reserves. And so eventually what would have to happen if the network was in low demand eventually and people weren't using Luna or Terra or whatever the fuck it is, then they would not need. $10 billion with a Bitcoin sitting there backing up its stable coin reserves. And what happens when they don't need that backing it up is they sell it. And so, you know, it's kind of a low or rather a high time preference thing to celebrate

what could potentially be just another sale waiting to happen. you know it is what it is all types of people will be using bitcoin and accumulating it for different reasons you know hopefully these guys hold on to it for for a long time but we shall see but i do appreciate nick's take here again like celebrating um a random shitcoin ecosystem that is is backing a stable coin with Bitcoin that likely won't survive in the long term just means that that's Bitcoin that is just being waited to, we're waiting on the moment for it to dump. So I'm not saying that's going to happen anytime soon, but you know, take take the news of all this with a grain of salt.

Don't celebrate too much. It is what it is. Now, in relation to stable coins, there was something interesting that that, that came about. Synonym. This is a company started by John Carvalo, the guy who made Roger lose his shit and quit in the middle of a podcast because he kept on saying the word B-cash. They are, in terms of stable coins, they are using the first, or they did the first

stable coin tether transaction on the Lightning Network. And so what they did is they used Omnilair, which is a layer on Bitcoin that allows you to create tokenized values actually using the Bitcoin protocol. And then they opened lightning channels with stable coins on Omnilair and then transacted on lightning with a stable coin. So the long and the short of it, if you didn't get the technicals of that, is effectively you now have using Bitcoin's lightning.

network the ability to do stable coins. So that's cool. If somebody needs for whatever reason, they need to have a stable US dollar value for something, you can now use Bitcoin for that. Awesome. Let's keep going here. Another cool thing that I saw pop up this week.

There's a pull request to add support for BIP 47 reusable payment codes to BDK. BDK is a Bitcoin development kit. And it's a library that allows you to seamlessly, build cross-platform Bitcoin wallets without worrying about Bitcoin internals. So what does this mean? Bib 47 is Paynems. And I've done a couple videos on Paynams recently within Samurai Wallet and within Sparrow wallet.

It's a publicly shareable ID that allows you to say, hey, this is my Paynum ID without having to actually share a Bitcoin address. People can then connect to that Paynum and then they will have an address. generated for them. And what that does in terms of privacy is it doesn't share that Bitcoin address with the world. The whole world can't look and say, ah, now we know this particular Bitcoin address belongs to this person. We can track the money that goes to it. And then where that money goes from there, we can look at what it commingles with and try to decipher what this person owns. No, no. All they see is the pay an MID. Nobody knows the addresses that are generated.

between you and the individual that connects to your pain. Only you and that individual know, unless it's somehow publicly shared outside of that. But it's a privacy helper from the get-go and something that I wish I would have been privy to sooner, but nonetheless, a really cool tool. And adding support for Bit47 in the Bitcoin Development Kit kit would be fantastic because it would mean

it would make it incredibly easy for our, a lot more wallets to implement Payneems into their own wallets. So, awesome. I'm very excited to see more focus on privacy stuff. And kudos to anybody that helps with this. So if you're a developer and you want to help with that, then start implementing Payneems into your wallets. Okay.

I always ask people for their favorite pieces of content each week. And I got a couple things. One of them is actually another tweet from Jeff Booth. Somebody AI God trading tweeted out, people seem to forget you can't build a monetary system on hard money like Bitcoin or gold. Inflation is needed for proper growth. Jeff Booth jumped in and replied. He said, this is one of the biggest believable lies ever told.

Bitcoin allows almost unlimited monetary velocity through technology, instead of debt. A very big difference that allows humanity to transition from control, coercion, and scarcity to abundance over time. And he actually got the person to respond. They were very interested. They were asking about resources. They're skeptical, but they're willing to learn. Jeff, you are an absolute asset to the Bitcoin community. So thank you for that. The other thing that was brought to my attention is there was an article in Bitcoin magazine by Mike Hobart. And it's called Why Russia Will Cause a Bitcoin

Arms Race. And it was also then made into a mini video documentary. And it was the channel is called Power Laws, Bitcoin Documentaries.

And you can look it up again, why Russia will cause a Bitcoin arms race. Very interesting video. Highly recommend. And it was done just prior to the actual invasion of Ukraine. And so you could, you know, it's, it's relatively recent. And so it's taking into account the current geopolitical stuff that was going on.

So yeah, highly recommend you watch and or read that. What else do I got for you? Oh, here we go. Okay, let's get into the fun stuff. I alluded to a contest that I am holding. And Shakepei is helping sponsor this one. So basically, I am going to Miami for Bitcoin 2022, and I would love for a couple of you to come with me.

It will be one winner, but then you get to bring a friend. You must be a shake pay user, which means that you have to be Canadian. You don't have to be currently in Canada, though. You can be a Canadian person that has a shake pay account and you're currently somewhere else, and they can fly you in from wherever. So basically, all you need to do, I'm going to give you a breakdown is this would be a trip for two.

It would be airfare. It would be hotel Miami Beach. Shit, that's expensive. And two tickets to two general admission tickets to Bitcoin 2020, which also is very expensive. Estimated value is about $4,000 Canadian dollars. Not bad. So what do you got to do? You have to tweet at me and at ShakePay.

You got to tell me why you want to go. You got to include your Shake Tag if you're using ShakePay. Again, if you're not, you can sign up, get one, and then tweet. You got to use the hashtags hashtag Shake Paid. Shake paid, S-H-A-K-E-P-A-I-D and Shake-Pade Miami. Tag a fellow Shaker that you'd like to take with you and have your friend reply to that tweet. with their shake tag. There is a blog post about this.

So just head to my website, BTCSessions.ca, and click on the blog. You'll see it. It's the first one there. I've also tweeted it out. I'll try to retweet it today as well. And, yeah,

we are going to be making a draw of who's winning this. At some point, later tomorrow, probably, yeah, we'll figure that out. So basically you have today and tomorrow to get these entries in. Let's go. But yeah, basically I'm giving away a trip to Miami for two.

And shake pay is helping me do it. And they'll fly you down. You get to meet all the Shake Pay guys. And then I'll also be happy to hang out. I love meeting Bitcoiners. So, yeah. What else? Monday, I dropped a wallet of Satoshi tutorial.

Yes, it is a custodial lightning wallet. mostly just good for small amounts and easy use of lightning if you're in a pinch. But the draw is they added lightning addresses. So basically an address that looks like an email address that you can send to and from for receiving lightning payments, which is kind of cool. So I did a tutorial on that. Feel free to check that out. And of course, I've got, Why Are We Bullish tomorrow at 6pm Eastern Time.

I've got Tomer Strolight. I've got BTC Casey, writer for Bitcoin Magazine. And I've got Dred, aka Polvault Dream, a member of KYC jelly, of PlebNet, of all the good things, lightning. Yeah, going to be a killer panel. Very excited. Tomer's been on before. Dread has been on before. BTC. Casey, this will be his first time on.

Very excited nonetheless. I think that's it, you guys. Thank you so much for watching and or listening. Please do, like, subscribe, share, all those things. super important. Of course, hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below if you want to help the show. Shake pay, leaden, bit refill, keystone, Bill Fottle, they're all down here. And if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a Bitcoin tip either on Twitter or on my strike page. That is strike.com. Me slash BTC sessions. You can go there, type in any

amount you want. You hit the tip button. You'll be gritted with a lightning invoice. Or if you tap the arrow to the right, it will be a regular Bitcoin QR code. With that, I'm out. I'll see you guys next time and yeah have a wonderful day or evening wherever you may be see you guys next time for your daily session. Tuddle by Bitcoin.